Have any of you ever played a character with depression or suicidal thoughts without becoming an edgy sue? If so, how did it play out?
>>43567123
Still going on, but unsure how long I can keep doing this.
Just sort of want it all to stop, you know? Not even be good, or better, just, just want it to stop.
>>43567168
Well, I guess if we wanted this to go into deeper more personal territory. This could also be a thread on depression, suicide, and how its effected your games and how your games have effected it.
>>43567123
>>43567199
Oh, OP meant if the *character* had depression.
Haha, no, virtually all of my characters have some sense of self worth and desire to achieve something, or otherwise an ambition to keep going.
Now, someone who is suicidal *can* work, if it's a cultural thing, like the Legion of the Dead in DA or Berserkers from Warhammer.
But overall, your character needs to have a reason to adventure, you know? At the very least another PC has to drag them around, otherwise you're just stuck somewhere.
>>43567123
Does it count if it was an Evangelion game? Because being depressed in an Evangelion game is sort of expected.
My pilot really couldn't handle the pressure and pain of being an Eva pilot, but running away wasn't an option. It got to the point where she started to think that the only way she could escape Nerv was to kill herself.
The only reason she didn't was because before she could, it was revealed that the Evangelions all had souls trapped in them. She thought death was the only way to escape Nerv, and here she had proof that even death wouldn't stop them from making her fight.
That sort of broke her.
Bump for discussion and potential feels.
>>43567123
I had one character who was stuck in a depressed state for a few sessions
>playing a new member of the akashic brotherhood in oWoD mage
>very good at killing vampires and black spiral dancers
>saw themselves as a monster killing badass
>accidentally killed a mind controlled human during a raid on a vampire den
>froze up, and got attacked by another mind controlled human
>ally blasts enemy with smg, character is covered in blood
>has a mental break because she had never killed a regular human before
>starts to question whether she was justified in killing everything that she did
The character had become very aloof about killing enemies in the game, and the storyteller and I both realized that this was a bit much for a character who had been a regular college student up until her awakening. So we justified it by saying she never really considered vampires or werewolves to be people, and killed them as if they were simply dangerous animals.
After a session of being super depressed in character and refusing to take any violent action, her mentor recommended she visit one of the enclaves of the akashic brotherhood in china, her home country
>books a one way ticket to china as a tourist, using magic to smooth everything out
>walk for several dozen miles to base of the mountain where the enclave is
>over several days, climb the mountain on foot rather than use magic to reach the summit
>meet strange old man who meditates with me
>listen to his advice, and resume the climb
Eventually, she reached the enclave, and spent a few weeks learning from her superiors and self reflecting. Eventually, she accepted the fact that she might need to get her hands dirty in the future, and resolved to consider all options before turning to violence.
It was a fun little character arc, and the rest of the players in the game said it was pretty well done, though the resolution came quicker and more easily than a solution to actual depression would.
>>43568213
>tfw your issues can't be solved by a mysterious elderly stranger that offers you some advice and just leaves you to think.
Someone deleted their story. But they mentioned that their NPCs often reflect their best and worst attributes, I do this a lot too. DMing can be a great way to get stuff out of your head and to vent.
I guess to anybody that's lurking and unable to post something related to a game or their personal depression, hope things turn out alright for you.
Pick a character background.
>>43568147
>A lot of my characters are unintentionally built to mirror or mimic a side of myself that I don't like
don't take this too far anon, it can get messy.
I have always been an introvert with no social skills, always tried to think things through before doing them and never wanted to take obvious risks but I have a flip-side to each of those, it just doesn't come out often. After a particularly bad day (complete identity crisis, struggled with a few things. Lost badly) I made a second personality to encompass all of the dangerous, aggressive shit that only appears occasionally.
Now things can get sticky upon occasion but I'm usually quite good at keeping 'Her' in the box that should never be opened. I don't envy the first person to dislodge the lid with anger.
>>43568352
Damn, care to go into more detail on that one? That sounds rough.
>>43568352
That's normal, and you need those parts to be a functional person. Find healthy ways to deal with them. Roleplaying it can be a good idea. But it won't make the game good, just therapeutic.
My NPCs aren't anything like me, most of the time. They're just people who make sense in their environment, people who made it somewhere, or tried to. Some fail. Some don't. Some never try, but they have a certain fullness to their being that lets them keep going.
I once made a character, not on purpose, mind you, that was everything I could hope to be. He was old, a Half-Elf bard with maybe a couple of years left to live. But the character had lived, you know? He had fought monsters and lived glories, he'd suffered too.
But he was old now. His limbs were creaky, his joints stiff, he'd forgotten the magic words and couldn't swing his sword anymore. His glory was as faded as his gear, but he thought there was still something he could do. Not really to help others, or to vanquish evil, but because he took joy in action.
I never played that character. Somehow I feel the taste would sour and I'd grow to hate him. Don't think I could live with that.
I understand that you probably don't want your players to read this. But don't be scared. People are people. And they stick together.
Also, deleting things on the internet never works,
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/43567123/#43568147
>>43568399
so far it's been kinda easy going, but it's kind of like having a hive of hornets beneath your floor; they haven't hurt you so far but one day they are going to fuck someone's shit up.
Imagine your father is a quiet, reserved man, always polite and has never angered in your life-time. But you know he was a mobster who did some brutal things and holds absolutely no remorse for them, one day someone is going to tip him over the edge and end up in a shallow grave.
Only, it's not your father, it's you.
>>43567123
I decided to make a lawful evil tragic villain who is a war veteran that is no longer able to function in normal society and now works for a PMC that starts wars for profits. When he got killed and his opponent started gloating about how my character was about to die he simply said "Good Riddance".
>>43568595
By the way, he was also fully aware that War is Hell. Being evil sucked for him but evil was also all he had left in the world.
>>43568595
I had a similar one, but I literally just ripped off Ed Harris' character in The Rock as the BBEG.
>>43568464
I realise I need them but they get out of hand and I lose my shit, become emotional about random things (like putting change in charity pots), or have another gender identity crisis (I think I have cracked this one mind).
>>43568608
That's pretty depressing. Its a rough point in life when you have to do shitty stuff because you can't really do anything else.
I have debated how I would play a character with 'issues', not necessarily depression. Mostly because I want to possibly play a Lost from Eclipse Phase properly. But it's always a struggle on how to do some accurately, without making it some sort of caricature.
It was a mystery game involving time travel in the modern world, where my character, knowing an NPC's fated death would shunt his clock back 24 hours, was hellbent on saving her.
The GM was a gracious guy; he gave me free reign to figure out how she died (heart failure), only chiming in when my train of thought had veered too far off-course. I tried tapping into every surgeon contact I had that could operate on her within the day, but just establishing an operating room meant not having enough time to fly any of my contacts to my location. I ended up virtually spending years to learn heart surgery from zero.
This next part was what really drove me to the wall: apparently, the difficulty of doing surgery on her was so high that ANYTHING less than a Natural 20 would lead to me getting shunted back. The GM showed his true colors of dickery, giving the suggestion that I could simply tell her she would die today and make her last day comfortable, but he knew me too well by dangling the possibility of me saving her.
The dice gods hated me so much.
One. Whole. Week.
Zero Natural 20.
I was on the brink of giving up, and my GM had the widest grin on his face.
>>43567123
Nah I play characters with a sense of self-worth, confidence and unshakable faith in something positive. Why would I want to play a character that struggles to get out of bed each day?
I guess it could be fun for someone but I live that already.
>>43568999
It may have been the dice gods telling you to let go.
>>43569507
If you saw Groundhog Day, you know this part:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NjNOAncIlI
My GM admitted to taking inspiration from this video to break me. Damn bastard.
That last part in my previous post? That paled in comparison to what he did earlier today.
Day 7. Before the last of my failed rolls, the GM told me the woman I was about to operate on noticed my thousand-yard stare. I thought nothing of that detail until after I got shunted back yet again.
It was when I approached her the next time did I notice her dialogue was different.When she saw my weary state last loop, she had given up hope of living past that day; by accepting her own death, I had accidentally shunted her 24 hours back as well. My "curse" had already locked on to a new NPC who would die a few seconds after the fated death of the woman in front of me.
I know this is my GM's signal to let her go and continue the game at a new setting, but my heart was twisting in agony: to accept her death and help the next person was to accept that some lives simply could not be saved even with my foresight.
>>43569924
>Since she accepted her own death, my desire to save her despite that accidentally shunted her 24 hours back as well.
Whoops, mistyped.
>>43569924
I forgot about that bit. The feels.
>>43567123
Dm had us play as an uplifted version of ourselves if that counts.
>>43567123
Yes, I DM a game I play with 5 guys that's all about depression!
>>43567123
In WoD MES LARP, my character had that trait thing where if someone says that one word your character starts pulling a Shinji. Nobody but me knows what that word is so it's meant to be an on accident thing.
Otherwise there was a time when I played a depressive suicidal schizo-wizard. Dice rolls on whether I pull each spell off successfully or if I start Shinji-ing. Though it was a lot more complex than that, too, eventually leading the character to unintentionally hurt other party members (in mostly non-lethal ways) and become like a bastion of hatred of others. To most other characters that encountered the wizard the wizard was an ass, but the fact that the wizard has all this unstable self-loathing and that he commands magic which also becomes unstable due to lack of concentration he's just someone who accidentally hurts those he shouldn't. Also due to lack of physical stamina cuz depression, physical rolls were much harder to do.
Read the Hyperbole and a Half comics on depression.
I once played a girl who ended up with an aura of death a few months before the game started, amongst other trauma (witnessing innocent people get massacred, getting trapped by monsters, etc). Like, if she picked up a flower it'd wilt, people would get sick if they got close to her, etc. Her self esteem was in the toilet and she was generally a depressed wreck (though in retrospect I probably could have roleplayed it a bit better).
Was a really fun character, I'm sad the game died before we seriously got into it.
Ran an old character a second time around, as an 'after the end' thing for our group, who realised that despite being a basically unstoppable killing machine, he had nothing.
All the money in the world, he still couldn't sleep in a bed because he had spent so many years on the road, sleeping on the ground. No family. No friends, because he voluntarily warped himself to get the job done. Hated being inside - always slept in the back yard of his house. Couldn't stop training compulsively. Was still called on routinely for work, and did it just to have something to do. No hobbies that he couldn't look at as anything other than dangerous frivolities that might get you killed.
He didn't know how to live as a human being. For all that he'd done, all he'd seen, all he'd achieved, all he had was a full wallet, a trail of corpses and noone would ever know the good things he'd done - only the bad.
One morning he got up, shaved, showered, put on a nice suit he bought but never wore, left his usual armour and weapons behind, went to a cafe. Had breakfast. Midway through his final coffee, he pulled out his pistol and shot himself. A note in his pocket read "I wanted to die as a person". I don't think any of our characters actually survived that second 'campaign'.
>>43570996
What happened in the first game?
I'm playing an orphan, turned experiment, then indoctrinated into a special military program. He's spent his whole life listening to orders, doing whatever the person above him said, whether it be the drunk, violent orphanage owner, the emotionless scientists, or his COs said what to do, when to do it, and gave no reason why. Finally his body gives, the experimental powers he had burnt out, and he had no further use. They dumped him with a decent bank account and made him sign waivers to not give out military secrets then he was on his own.
He never got a job, spent all of his money on smoking, alcohol, prostitutes, and in only a couple of years went through his account. An adventuring merc company offered him a job, so he took it.
His teammates are all good people, with goals and drives, and want to always do the right thing. He doesn't get it, though. He doesn't know what the hell he should be doing. He's still killing people just this time his team acts like he's doing some kind of righteous thing but he doesn't see it being very different.
He came across a demon, alone, about to consume a girl's soul because it was hungry. He weirdly offered to take her place, unsure why. The demon decided to use his body as a vessel, promising power in exchange for a regular supply of death. My character didn't really care about that, he just didn't think that letting a demon stroll around was a good idea. He's continued for a while now, demonic powers are pretty useful during intimidation, which makes things easier. He doesn't really need those powers to keep killing though.
His teammates are starting to achieve things, one rescued his family, another got admitted into a special order, one impressed their family so much they became the new heir. He's still himself though, just with a weird voice in his head. Nothing would probably change even if he died, though some people might live. If he is depressed, he doesn't know it, this is just life as usual for him.
Yes, a Dark Heresy character. She endured deep depression and suicidal tendencies because of the immense guilt over atrocities the Inquisitor made her do, even though she was hailed as a hero for it and became pretty famous.
>>43571380
Shadowrun: Exalted edition. Basically. There may have been a dropkick in Lofwyr's snout at once point.
>>43570996
>One morning he got up, shaved, showered, put on a nice suit he bought but never wore, left his usual armour and weapons behind, went to a cafe. Had breakfast. Midway through his final coffee, he pulled out his pistol and shot himself. A note in his pocket read "I wanted to die as a person".
Pic related. How the fuck did you come up with such a shitty and corny way to end a character that you liked so much that you gave them an epilogue basically?
>>43571521
Because it seemed in context with what he'd do given the situation and how he'd changed toward the end of the first.
>>43571412
>40k
>suffering depression over actions that are commonplace in a setting based around grimdark
>>43568595
I've also done a villain like this. A former hero who was the veteran of several long wars but couldn't adapt to a wotld of peace. I was inspired by John Rambo and Gundam Wing Rythmn Emotion. The idea that society just casts off and abandons its warriors when they're no longer needed.
This is also the Canonical motivation for Big Boss
Now a character I did was an elf bard who was the survivor of a destroyed civilization. He was a very young man and, despite being a soldier, fled in fear from the battle and was his peoples only survivor. He concealed his identity for centuries living under various pseudonyms, to the party he was just "Steve'. He always planned to get revenge on the enemy that destroyed his people but was too terrified of death or discovery to act, so he wandered the world loathing himself and acting against the enemy indirectly. To the party he was just a normal manwhore bard but that was because he concealed his self loathing beneath self destructive hedonistic behaviour.
>>43567123
I once played a character whose whole shtick was she had depression. She was broody and anti-social, it manifested more of her just being a doormat and just letting other PCs bully her. Was one of the most fun characters I've played.
It's possible for characters to be sad without making them full on Crawling in my Skin.
I love characters who are damaged goods, and depression, anxiety, and abandonment issues are some of my favorite areas to explore when creating or writing characters.
>>43567262
Could always do a guy who was planning on offing himself and then something important came up (maybe taking out a bbeg) and decided to move his appointment with death to the end of the campaign.
>>43571558
Even inquisitors have acknowledged that they do horrible shit. It's a hard galaxy, but humans are still humans, and empathy and sympathy still exist.
>>43567123
No. I take a lot from myself to give to characters I create, but my own personal dissatisfaction and suicidal tendencies has never been one of them.
>>43567123
Played a game once where I figured out early on that my character was depressed and possibly on the edge of alcoholism. He was a washed up failure with a lot of regrets. The main thing that held him together was that other pcs needed him. He couldn't clean up his act for his own good because he hated himself too much for past screwups, but he could do it for these assholes that needed him to be the team Responsible Adult. We might've gone somewhere with an arc, but the game stopped happening.
I also had one that was from a race with a really intense caste system who had completely internalized all the propaganda and official decrees about how people from his low caste should behave. He was supposed to be subservient, unquestioning, willing to die without hesitation for his betters, things like that. Like a reasonable person he found all of those things terrifying and upsetting, but instead of getting angry at his people's social structure he just beat himself up for not being an ideal member of his caste and clearly someone was going to kill him someday when they found out. He was shy and quiet and just tried not to let people onto how much of an anxious wreck he was on the inside
Manic Depression is preferable over "normal" depression because having some ups makes it more fun to the other players and probably for yourself.
Having a coping mechanism like alcohol or other drugs makes it also more bearable for others.
The most important step to not become an edgy sue is for your character to not fish for attention during his down phases. Or to be more precise it shouldn't occure every session at every possible oppertunity, only if the mood calls for it.
It's also easier to have your character become depressive rather than to start with a depressive character because finding a reason why one would start adventuring is harder than to just have him continue doing what he was doing anyway.
Your other players will most likely be more invested in your character and genuinely want to help him.
And it also makes more sense for your party to keep you around instead of forming a team with a depressive person.
>>43572689
>It's also easier to have your character become depressive rather than to start with a depressive character because finding a reason why one would start adventuring is harder than to just have him continue doing what he was doing anyway.
This. I have depression, it makes it hard enough to muster the energy to do things that I actually want to do, just sort of keep doing what I'm doing because it's easier than change, let alone a change as big as becoming an adventurer.
Also, it probably shouldn't explicitly come up. Most depressed people (and I know several other than me) don't really tell anyone about it. If anything, it should become apparent in their actions
>>43567123
depression is a made up illness, depression is a code word for loser
>>43572803
Have you tried trolling wizard chan?
>>43567123
Every character in CoC.
>>43567123
I never did as I am forever GM. But one of my players played a depressed hitman in Shadowrun. His only true friend was his chinese water lily and his pillbox.
He used to be a corporate drone, but lost his job after several major negotiations were bungled due to his lack of empathy. Wife leaves him and takes child. He turns to petty crime to make ends and child support.
Became a really cool member of the team. Fully enjoyed by all. I know at the end of the day it sounds a tad like wank, but he really sold it.
Have a true immortal character who's lived through a few big bangs.
Another character is able to tangibly see and edit concepts like a computer program.
Both suffer from a horrendous amount of existential depression and it's made worse by the fact that it's very contagious.
>>43567123
I guess so, but it was just a tendency the charcater wasn't even quite self-aware of. He was a soldier his whole life, but after his wife died during a troll attack, wanted to die as a hero.
It translated to him being too impulsive in combat. Not "I attack" territory, but he would do so even when the odds weren't on his favor.
I gradually lessened it as the character became attached to this "band of ruffians" he had to work with, as the imperial liaison.
It was quite pertinent because our BBEG was a fragment of a god, specifically his junguian shadow. All PCs had a shadow portion, and the way one dealt with it would make the character more or less susceptible to the entity, whose goal was to induce hopeleness and drive people to commit suicide so it could suck their souls.
We had demons helping us, because it went beyond being good or evil.
Mind you, this was done by a GM who's a psychologist, and players he knew for years.
>>43575716
Were you playing fantasy Persona?
>>43575788
No, D&D 3.5.
Does this "Persona" RPG has anything to do with the Persona vidyas? Because that was a influence. Players which managed to mend with their shadows would acquire powers from it. My old veteran became able to invoke the ghosts of old comrades, which would possess his troops during battles.
>>43575880
It's not an RPG (at least as far as I know, someone might have made a system I don't know of), just a video game series.
I'm playing a character who is slightly depressed over the loss of his daughter. He took up adventuring to try to keep the pain back, but it doesn't always work. Magical drugs might become a problem
>>43568347
I'm sure it makes for good characters, but this is awful.
>>43580111
You're not meant to copy-paste anon, just use it as inspiration.
>>43572803
Paraplegia is a made up illness, paraplegia is a code word for being a lazy ass all day sittin on a chair.
>>43568347
Huh, my childhood was several of those.
Last page bump
>>43568347
>Not playing a game that has an actual childhood trauma table
Cyberpunk woooo
>>43572319
Ayy! Join the club, bud. All aboard the suicide train!
>>43584318
Choo Choo! Next stop: Sweet Release of Death Terminal!
No, but I'm currently unable to play a character due to depression and suicidal thoughts.
It's a vicious fucking circle. I'm the type of person who really, really needs to create. It's the single most fulfilling thing in my life. I used to write, brainstorm, draw and in general just CREATE a whole lot. Nowadays though, it's become this fucking terrible self-damaging shitty circle.
I can honestly recognize that a lot of why I can't get any ideas to work is due to depression and all that entails. And yet, I really, really need it and want to do it and feel good. And most of the time, it ends up going nowhere and making me feel really bad instead. This whole situation makes me feel powerless and stupid and incapable, and sometimes it gets absolutely unbearable. I live in a fucking circle of frantically trying to create and feel better about myself and prove how I can still do it, and crying uncontrollably because I couldn't actually come up with a character I'd like to play, story I'd like to write, or anything at all.
How the fuck can something be so fulfilling and so painful at once?
I gues the takeaway here, if you want to make this post relevant, is that depression isn't going to be fun to play unless you like characters being worthless sad sacks of broken down shit. I'd make a joke about some game system and how it'd be perfect for that, but writing this made me feel really bad.
>>43584403
i hear you
>>43584403
The problem with trying to portray real depression and mental problems in tabletop is that mental problems are by their nature hindering and disempowering. They make your life hard, they make regular things difficult, they make you struggle with just getting through the day without breaking down. Or in milder cases, they still make your life harder. They're counterproductive, in the real meaning of the word.
Meanwhile, RPGs are very often about achieving goals, performing well, striving towards something, and succeeding. If you try to roleplay something like depression as it actually is in a game like this, it's going to be very frustrating for everyone involved.
Much has been said about the mental health of the stereotypical player character (Murderhoboes et al), but nobody can really claim they're depressed or otherwise hindered from actually functioning.
It's hard to think of a game where actually roleplaying a depressed person competently would be intuitive and add to the experience instead of seving to hinder the game. There's maybe something, but I can't think of any. Certainly not any of the more mainstream games.
>>43584856
>Meanwhile, RPGs are very often about achieving goals, performing well, striving towards something, and succeeding. If you try to roleplay something like depression as it actually is in a game like this, it's going to be very frustrating for everyone involved.
Eh. I think this attitude could use some dialing back in general.
Failure is potentially very interesting. Defeats can meaningfully add to a story, as much or more than successes can. Challenges don't exist just so you can overcome them. A flawed hero struggling with their personal failings can add quite well to a game. The success or failure of your characters isn't your personal success or failure.
Granted, there are degrees. Severe mental illnesses tend to make you not PC material. I'd go as far as to say that most mental illnesses would make you not great PC material in general. No, DID or schizophrenia should not be making their way into a serious game (unless it's very atypical). But the milder levels of depression don't take you out of the running for being an interesting PC. Hell, lacking the ability to play a reasonably depressed character would infringe on potential character concepts pretty badly in some cases.
Granted, I tend to play things that aren't mainstream games myself (I don't think I've touched adventuring fantasy in years and years, even.)
>>43585065
Well, the problem is that most RPGs (at least mainstream ones) don't have mechanics for failure, other than, well, failing. When you play most RPGs, the basic assumption is that you try to succeed. It generally turns the mindset towards success being the only valid option, and all others being, well, failures. Certainly you can play a person who's shouldering flaws and failures of the past, but in most games you're still doing your best to succeed.
Some games have stuff like inbuilt character flaws and limitations that can make you fail, but that tends to be something you try to avoid triggering or fight against. But very few mainstream games actually ever posit you the question of whether or not you want your character to succeed at what he's doing, or if it'd be more intresting and compelling if he didn't. They tend to assume that since you're making him attempt something, you're wanting success, and success is what you find intriguing. And fair enough, this is pretty intuitive and easy to get.
I think I've mostly seen more narrative, less mainstream stuff where the question of success isn't so simple. These are probably better suited to mental illnesses and stuff like that. Hell, now that I think about it, I've played some where that played a large role.
But yes, I can agree that less severe mental troubles wouldn't be outright ruinous to a game. As long as it can be kept more as a "character trait" than an overbearing difficulty that hinders your whole life and undermines your functionality, it's probably not gonna ruin anything.
>>43585163
I don't really think it needs to be coded into the mechanics for a group to play with an eye towards failure being a part of the game. It's certainly a question you can consider from the game design angle, but it's also a question you can (and should) consider from the GM level.
When I GM, I treat challenges like real challenges. I don't put them up just for you to conquer them so you can feel accomplished. Of course, not everything will have an equal chance of causing serious problems to you. If you run into an enemy that's weaker than you, it likely won't pose a serious roadblock to you. But on the flip side there will be desperate situations where failure is as likely, or more likely than success. And maybe some flaws about the characters make their chances of failure more likely. Those flaws don't have to be contained in the mechanics. Could simply be their personality leading them to make less than ideal decisions. Could be something like depression.
It's an interesting topic to consider, either way.
>>43567123
I mean, I live with depression, so its all just a mask when I live day to day life as a average smiling joe. So ICly it all plays the same without being much of a front story of who I play and what they are doing
>>43583737
Oh boy! ADEVA has a competing system!
>>43567199
I don't have depression and I'm not a danger to myself or others, butI have Asperger's syndrome, OCD, and an abusive family, and they suck the hope and meaning out of everything. Asperger's is a spectrum and a lot of people with it are happy, but it's honestly crazymaking to have all of what I have together.
This is how it normally goes. Crazy person does crazy thing, you realize that. They either deny it or admit it, and either way you know what happened was crazy.
This is what it's like with Asperger's. Crazy person does crazy thing, they go on a huge rant about how you're Autistic and what they're doing is okay. They alternate between doing extremely nice things and blatantly terrorizing you, which is extremely confusing. They gaslight you constantly and claim that you're remembering things. They lie through their teeth multiple times a day, every day. You can never tell what the fuck is going on. You're the only source you have on what's happening in your life, and that source can't be trusted. They lie about the world in weird ways and you don't know if they're wrong, or you're being Autistic. You never know if you're being Autistic, even with nice people outside of your house. Eventually the only thing that stays clear is that your situation is fucked up, and now comes the worst part. You can't tell anyone.
You have Asperger's syndrome. Any explanation of what's happening to you is going to drag on for hours and either be miscommunicated or put people to sleep. From the outside your life is fantastic, and on the inside you're constantly waiting for some disaster, another explosive argument, and knowing the only close relationships you have are built on multiple layers of lies.
Everything becomes a frantic search for some kind of independence, which is difficult when your family is controlling and you find it hard to be independent as is.
Wraith: the Oblivion.
Most of my characters are successful suicides.
>tfw mental illness and the strain of life keep you from gaming
>tfw you've given up on ever doing it again
>>43567123
>If so, how did it play out?
By having the illness manifest in limited incidents of self-destructive or goal-contrary ways, and have them be ashamed of it in some capacity.
I had a character intentionally give up.
The game was one traumatic event after another for her once the GM set off a series of events that turned a sandbox campaign into a fugitive campaign. As the game progressed, she lost everything she cared about, became alienated from other survivors, and realized that nothing she did was going was going to get her off her enemies' radar.
She finally left the party temporarily and let herself get captured. No defiant last stand, no destructive spiral that harmed other party members, just a quiet sigh and putting her hands over her head.
>>43567515
Good narrative shit right there. How did that revelation break her? Can she still pilot?
>>43571521
Did you read the post? And death is one of those things allowed to be shitty (death always is) and corny.
I'm a sick bastard who makes strong characters, but tries to figure out what would break them down or push them over the edge in the end.
My paladin of justice, for instance, seemed completely unshakeable, but he didn't have a good relationship with his father, who he could never fully forgive for cheating on his mother. His entire life was also built around his god, so if the god somehow left the equation, the only thing he could do would be to try and bring the god back - by whatever means necessary.
His half-sister, who I made as a backup character who would only be brought in if the paladin died, absolutely adored her older brother despite the distance of her monk temple only allowing them to communicate by letter. She went to great pains to try and copy his ideals and even his accent. But when she finally gets a chance to meet her kin face to face, she'd find out he's dead. She'd be bitter over that, but even more so over the fact that she can't be him - her emotions would cloud her judgement and keep what should be pure justice as more of vengeance.
>>43572803
In that case you must be the most depressed man on earth :^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^)
Only War, with its system of insanity comes close.
As the GM, I saw the driver of the group's tank (tank based campaign) going into quite a state of sadness and unwillingness to gight after his tank was destroyed, both in and out of the game. We had to drag him to the sessions, but fortunately it ended up with the Machine Spirit of the Russ being put into another chassis and the group riding the same beast again.
Since he was so "depressed" I tweaked the system to give him debuffs to show it. But obviously I took them back when both in and out of character he rejoiced when I gave him a new tank.
Played one in a game of Kult, a guy who was both suicidal, depressed, yet afraid to die. He had a lot of negative traits which kept piling up on him, and after some quite questionable decisions, the game ended inconclusivly but I like to believe he ended his own life on his own accord in his shitty apartment.
The other players didn't know much about his state of mind however, until much later after the game was done, because I never tried to overplay it or lampshade it, just give small hints.
>>43567123
My current character and I both have BPD. It's cathartic.
A murderhobo that was briefly killed by a Lich and then brought back by the party with an artifact that could bring people back to life (we spent the last charge of the artifact on him). After spending most of the campaign killing people for fun and profit, his player decided that he was pretty broken by the experience of being killed.
I actually liked that, to be honest, after three months with him being just a murderhobo. Makes me wonder if he and the DM had planned something like this all along.
