I'm in the middle of creating my own list of go to madnesses for CoC and was wondering if anyone of you had any interesting one to add. I'm looking for the most lovecraftian mental problems possible this is my current list very small but growing.
Long Term
>Phobia
>Obsession
>Loss of core faith
>Loss of drive
>Hallucination
>Background Change
>Paranoia
>Dreams
Short Term
>Flee in panic
>Violent Outburst
>Suicidal Episode
>Psychosomatic Disability
>Hallucinations
>Hysterical Raving
>Fainting
>>44257589
Have you heard of the Capgras Delusion? It's the belief that certain people have been swapped with identical duplicates or dopplegangers - zombies, robots, alien mimics etc - and are just pretending to be people.
There's also the idea of Folie A Deux - "the madness of two" - which makes mental illness all the more horrifying because it means crazy can be contagious.
>>44257644
There's also the neurologically-similar Cotard Delusion, which makes the sufferer convinced that they are a ghost or don't exist at all. That one's trippy.
>>44258053
They both kind of work in the Lovecraftian world, though. Like, it's actually fairly rational once you know about the Shan to be fucking terrified that anyone you meet might in fact be an alien meat-puppet. Once you know about the grander cosmic scale stuff, or encounter the entirety of human history via the timefuckers of Yith, you might well realise that you basically DONT exist in any meaningful fashion.
>>44257589
CoC original or d20? I assume original but just want to know for clarification.
>>44258329
Yeah original.
I think the general 7th ed mechanics are absolutely fantastic but they lead a little too pulpy for my taste so I want some real madness that fit the cosmic horror genre.
The Classic
>I'm a fucking glass of orange juice
>Auditory hallucinations
>Legs breaking
>>44257589
I'll try to think of some.
>Dreams of sinking to the core of the earth
>regular hearing of far away screams
>Fear of trees, seeing trees as veins and capillaries
>Fear of sprouting roots
>must keep hands in own field of view, loss of object permanence for own body
>Compulsion to hide face from others
>feeling hot/cold constantly
Fear of rythmic sounds like a clock tick or dripping water Perhaps?
I assume for the first if you've ever encountered the hounds and their association with time then one could grow some distressing fear of clocks, the second one could be having hidden away while being chased by dripping wet Deep One hybrids or worse
>Fear of being poisoned
>Fear of backlit silhouettes
>Paranoia about fumes and gasses
>Fear of fast motions
>Fear of blurry images
>Fear of bare earth
>>44257589
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia
>>44257589
>I'm in the middle of creating my own list of go to madnesses for CoC
Touching butts.
>>44257589
Sudden changes in sight with regards to direction (left suddenly becomes right, up is down, etc.
Every third word you hear spoken is a thought from the spoken person's mind.
>Illusions of smell
>Fear that food is still alive
>Reversed sense of gravity
>Fingernails are perceived as foreign objects lodged in skin
>Feeling as if bleeding when sweating
>Believing oneself to be unable to see through transparent objects
These are all wonderful insanity's to have on hand but few of them feel like they belong in CoC and may are just too specific to be of any use.
Something based on a direct lovecraft story would be appreciated or on the ideas of nihilism, fatalism and cosmicism.
>>44259506
You see exactly one second into the future.
There is no more surprise.
There is no more chance.
There is only the cold hard dildo of fate facefucking you until your mind Bonita all over the bed.
>>44259506
If they belong or not would be a question of execution.
Wouldn't nihilism and fatalism be more a question of attitude towards the situation?
Many of these can be triggered by placement of objects or serve to harass PCs or give them social obstacles that could be hidden with work.
>>44257589
Short Term:
>Excessive, uncontrollable profanity
>Repetitive Action (such as reloading)
>Color-changing (Objects appear to be subtly changing colors around the person)
>Compulsive eating or drinking
>Security Blanket (Won't let go of a specific object)
>Jerusalem Syndrome (Developing an abnormally strong religious conviction, bordering on fanaticism, when exposed to a specific event or location almost overnight. Named after people going to the Holy Land and being so moved by the religious significance of the place they will radicalize without any outside intervention; primarily among Protestant Christians and Muslims).
>Repetitive Phrases
>Accent change (especially among people who are non-locals or ESL)
Long Term:
>Permanent Accent Change - usually a regression to their "original" language or dialect; signifies a regression to the familiar or a desire to rekindle what was once lost
>Permanent tic
>Permanent Compulsions
>Emotional Regression/Introversion
>Emotional Extroversion
>Multiple Personality Disorder (Common in people who have experienced extremely traumatic events and simply cannot deal with it - their mind then creates a new "personality" to deal with it, and remove that pain from the "main" personality. Usually the two personalities are not aware of each other, or the "second" is not aware of the "first," and the traumatic event in question is usually only consciously known to the created personality).
Just a few.
When I was in high school and college I had OCD something fierce. It arose from a bad spot of food poisoning when I was younger, I think. I could not eat any food that was not prepared (or that I was convinced was prepared) in a very specific manner. I lost twenty pounds. People thought I was anorexic, but I was really just too scared to eat. I became obsessed with illness and contamination, to the point that I changed my pillow cases nightly because I was afraid residual bacteria from my face might somehow fester there. I used hand sanitizer religiously, to the point that the skin on my hands is permanently damaged with these annoying itchy patches of flaking skin. For a while there, yeah. I was a little crazy.
>>44257589
The glass delusion
The sufferer believes they are made of glass and may break at any touch or fall
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_delusion
What a jumbled mess!
I appreciate the flavor of using clinical terms, especially in a 1920s setting. But they should be era appropriate and not modern. It's okay to bend the setting appropriate terms a little or lack a comprehensive understanding of them. But if you use modern terms then this no longer applies and instead a universal model of psychological trauma is postulated. But a few terms cannot deliver that.
If you want a functional system of madness encroaching on the mind check out the Madness Meter in UA or Nemesis. It separates dimensions of trauma and offers a clear readout of a character's current state of mind in respect to different triggers
If you want the clinical terms, and I can completely understand, then use things like
>hysteria
>schizophrenia
>somnambulism
>fixation
>laudanum addiction (treat with cocaine)
>possession
>>44257589
supplication to higher powers that are experimenting on humanity after cursing them with a deadly plague that causes unstable amounts of violence and physical metamorphosis, and the supplicants kill these cursed beings to obtain their will to praise the God so they better understand humanity so they can have better intercourse for successful offspring.
all of which may or not be actually happening
>>44260121
The "Don't touch me" part just sounds like a symptom of autism. I have a cousin that was apparently like that
>Krantzberg Syndrome
The detrimental effect prologued containment of functional arcane formulas in neural tissue can have on the human brain. The symptoms can include progressive dementia, partial memory loss, and intermittent external sensory perceptions.
>Short-term memory loss
>Emotional withdrawal
>Clowns
Something freaks you out so hard, you stop being able to see movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akinetopsia
>>44259414
>food is still alive
>>44257589
Believing you are someone else.
>>44261610
You could pair that with auditory hallucinations and an exaggerated sense of guilt. So if you eat some poached fish, you can hear faint screaming and taste blood.
Personally, I'm a fan of minor things that gradually accumulate. Replace the taste of 'savory' with ashes. Even go so far as to describe different gradients of ashes, and encourage the character to think of his/her own guide for what tastes like what. Maybe the next step is to make 'sweet' tastes trigger a sense of schadenfreude (joy at others sufferings); like they can taste the tears and hunger of 3rd world children. Branch out to other senses. The human mind is infinately screwy, espeically in a setting like CoC.
If you want something with some more in-game application, maybe extreme light sensitivity (like, vampire level shit) or the constant sense of cold and smell of ammonia (references!)
I really like the way GUMSHOE does it. Instead of telling the player what he has, you bring in it the rest of the party (e.g. players start passing notes in secret to represent paranoia).
>>44262124
Possibly the only redeeming feature of shoegum.
>>44257589
I've only seen one person with mental problems in real life. She was almost completely normal. She just believed that ants ate her eye muscles and now she had ants that moved her eyes. Because of this she was "not in control of where she looked."
Shit was weird. She talked as if it was the most normal and logical thing in the word.
>>44260836
>Gained Trait: Intense fear of clowns
>Gained Trait: Sexual arousal - Clowns
Fuck my DM.
>>44262169
OCD and shit like that count as mental problems.
>>44258901
>constant feeling of dejà vu
>obsession with brouzoufs
>>44262181
Slight mental handicaps! So many slight mental handicaps!
- Inability to distinguish between faces
- Inability to remember strings of numbers
- Inexplicably start only speaking Hungarian
- Occasional uncontrollable vomiting
- Crippling drowning hallucinations whenever they're mostly covered by water (good luck being sanitary)
- Inability to distinguish tastes
- Very revealing sleep-talk
- Inability to tell how hungry they are
- Random fake memories every once in a while
- Pathologically bites fingernails raw
- Revulsion at the sight of dogs
You know, people who encountered the various nasties in Lovecraft's works didn't tend to go crazy.
A decent number of times, the stress from the situation made them nervous to the point of breakdown, or they fainted. In some cases, the experience left them nervous wrecks, unable to cope with the reality of the world they lived in, but more often, they got better after a good nght of sleep and some time to recover.
I don't think there is any who suddenly develops mental problem like schyzophrenia, hallucinations, or the like.
>>44262845
And this include the very powerful abominations. In "Dreams in the Witch House", the protagonist looks at Azathoth and simply comment he's glad he has read bits of the Necronomicon, so he knows what's going on.
>>44257589
Tip: how to simulate paranoia in a tabletop RPG
Tell one of your player that he got so close to insanity that he understood a terrible truth: one of the party members is actually a *evil guy* (i.e. wizard, cultist, alien...)
He will totally act paranoid
>>44262845
I would say that some of the narrators seem to be nervous people, although it's hard to call them paranoid at times. You probably really shouldn't go poking your nose around some ancient cities in his world.
It's also probably not wise to go looking for some kinds of creatures either for that matter.
I will also allow that Randolph Carter, in spite of his initially callow showings did toughen up nicely. But then, Randolph Carter is a sort of Wizard King or Philosopher King. He stands at the top of the hierarchy of men in Lovecraft just as Conan stands at the top of Howard. He has quite a bit of grit. Him and like, Kuranes. (Who is about the only Human who has mentally traveled far beyond the reaches of our area of space time and came back sane. That is one thing that CAN mess you up. Especially if you end up in a body that's just not very human, and where the locals think the way you look is as disgusting as the way you think they do.)
Of course, Kuranes is also dead, at least his ordinary body is. He walked off a cliff after a long spell of substance abuse so he could spend more time dreaming and the destruction of a quite large inheritance to finance this.
One interesting irony is that his favorite part of the kingdom he rules in the Dreamlands is the village he has carefully cultivated to highly resemble a small village in Cornwall, within the limits of available people, plants, and building materials.
Then you have the "Dream version" of New England that Carter has, which is what he's really looking for in the end, and which he is manipulated into evicting the feeble gods of earth from. (Apparently they liked it. There is also a suggestion that they found that being wards of the Outer Gods disturbing or in someway unpleasant, and that being made to come back to Kadath was another sneering cruelty by Nyarlathotep, glad to have his charges back to be a dick to.)
>>44262975
>You probably really shouldn't go poking your nose around some ancient cities in his world.
>It's also probably not wise to go looking for some kinds of creatures either for that matter.
The funny thing about the Necronomicon is that it's full of advice like that. The longest quotation we see of it basicaly says " sorcerers are bad news, even dead, so be careful even then, in case nasty stuff happens with their corpses."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect
There's a very rare mental illness that usually is related to brain injury, but being unable to perceive the left side of anything could be used in the weird type of horror.
>>44259414
>Reversed sense of gravity
>look up at the night sky
>never go outside again
That's perhaps the most terrifying thing I can imagine, the idea of plummeting into an abyss so vast and dark as to dwarf and consume everything I have ever known or seen, falling literally forever beyond the reach of eyes either man or stranger, to disappear in an instant and be utterly forgotten by all but my ever-falling self, it would be akin to my sensibilities to losing the entire world.
This is Lovecraft.
>>44257589
An easy short-term one could be a simple panic attack. Complete loss of control while having difficulty breathing, overwhelmed by fear.
>>44262328
>- Inability to distinguish between faces
>- Inexplicably start only speaking Hungarian
>- Occasional uncontrollable vomiting
>- Random fake memories every once in a while
>Slight
>>44262181
>>44257589
Knew I saved this for a reason.
>>44264038
>kicked in the head by a horse
Welp, that explains my sister finally. No wonder she turned out to be a bad apple.
>>44262328
>- Revulsion at the sight of dogs
I got that one.
>>44263915
thatsmyfetish.jpg
>>44264038
>Salvation army
>>44257589
>transgenderism
ho ho ho
>>44264038
>deranged masturbation
>suppressed masturbation
Excuse me?
>>44262186
>misstrusting long life friend and mentor
>compulsion to keep working forgetting you had a wife
>>44264038
>Novel reading
I knew it
>>44264872
those were gay fanfic novels.
>>44260821
someone's been reading the Laundry novels...
>>44257589
My grandmother was schizophrenic paranoid she would babble about how her gay brother shot Merle haggard at their wedding because he wanted to fuck her
And how she has 20 sisters s named (her name) that all died
According to her I plotted to kill Jason aldeen and stole his songs for my country band that I secretly had, was a sex addict and all my friends were gay or if female I was plowing them
Implement this on players by describing stuff how they see it, not how it is
"He casts suspicious glances at you" when the dude isint getting glances Ect.
>>44264038
>Gun Shot Wound
>>44265180
>Implement this on players by describing stuff how they see it, not how it is
>"He casts suspicious glances at you" when the dude isint getting glances Ect.
This is probably the best tip possible. Some of the most terrifying mental illnesses are illnesses of perception, where your brain's ability to process what its sense organs give it is damaged and producing faulty results. That's your only way to access reality, the only manner in which the being that is you is connected to the things that actually are, so the idea of your sense to brain pathway being faulty is absolutely fucking terrifying.
And what makes it work even better is that, in an RPG, the DM is the sense to brain pathway. The DM describes not what is actually happening, but what the characters perceive is happening. Abuse that. Abuse the shit out of it.
>>44264038
>The War
>>44265249
presumably self-afflicted?
>>44259414
>Believing oneself to be unable to see through transparent objects
Wait, so blindness? Because air is transparent.
>>44265249
Could lead to PTSD or something.
>>44265833
Not for long.
>>44264038
>masturbation for 30 years
that's gotta be a record
>>44262181
Is your GM a Clown?
>the sensation of spiders crawling on the tips of your fingers
>a constant feeling of someone licking your toes
>>44264038
of all the absurd things on there fucking asthma really seems to stick out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichotillomania
>>44269729
I prefer this
Could we compile a collection of images to serve as handouts that evoke a reaction in the player which can be linked to the character's experience?
We've had some revolting images over the years...
>>44269753
Totally fake.
>>44269843
Didn't say otherwise, but it'll still give a reaction to some people.
>>44269753
>hand covered in holes
>not barnacles
step it up senpai
>>44269868
I was grossed out for half a second until I saw the color disparity between the skin and the latex. If they had gotten that right, the pic would be creepier. Then again I might have chosen a more fleshy area than the palm.
>>44270060
It'speanut butter
>>44269753
That must have taken a while to set up.
>>44270060
That is the weirdest nipple I ever saw.Look at the skin around the fake pimple.
>>44265261
One time I had this experience where the letters on the spines of books, posters, ect started scrolling and floating around as if they were like computer text. Slowly the letters rearranged them into messages that I feared would prove that the things I was scared of were real and I couldn't bring myself to look at anything with writing on it. It was weird but might be of interest?
coprophagia. nom nom.
Itchiness, not full body hives but just that there is always somewhere slightly itchy.
Even worse if the itchiness is felt where there isn't anything.
Sense of touch is slightly off, everything feels like its three inches to left of where it is or there is a delay before you feel something.
Always feeling mildly peckish, and or thirsty, even if you feel full to bursting you still feel like a snack or quick swig.
