(in)SANinty for RuneQuest? 🤪

[SDLeary]

9 hours ago, g33k said:

My standard advice here is to look at the "Madness Meter" mechanic, from Unknown Armies.

CoC's SAN rules are really quite underwhelming, for a variety of reasons, and don't feel particularly apt to RQ, at all.

This. If you have access to UA2, it can port over somewhat seamlessly. And based on your other posts, it sounds like it models more the kind of madness that you're after.

SDLeary

[icebrand]

7 hours ago, SDLeary said:

This. If you have access to UA2, it can port over somewhat seamlessly. And based on your other posts, it sounds like it models more the kind of madness that you're after.

SDLeary

Yeah im gonna use that -or something like- with POW rolls. I suppose ill wing it as we go (as usual). It's not a "permanent" rule anyway, it's just for the Chalana RL heroquest when she becomes priest... Can't have a lord+priest without an epic "fight" and the CA will have to use lots of spells to keep her panicking people trying to hold the line till she defeats the malia champion in a magic duel and saves the day (or dies horribly, that works too)

Magic duels are always hard to pull off!

Of course im making the PCs roll for shock anyway, since it will last for 20-POW rounds and runelords will get Magic resistance on it so they have 5% to lose a round, nothing too drastic!

Edited May 3, 2022 by icebrand

[Darius West]

20 hours ago, icebrand said:

Dont we NEED sanity rules?

What happens when the PCs enter a chaos nest, and find human remains decorating the place?

What happens when your friend, who fought side by side by you in countless battles, gets horribly mutilated and murdered in front of your eyes?

What happens when you come face to face with an ancient terror???

Does any of you guys use SAN? If so, what rules do you use?

I dismiss this.  You speak of seeing friends mutilated etc.  I point out that these are bronze age people who hands-on kill their own animals, often more than once a week, and have regularly witnessed violence in a way we pampered 21st century bookish toffs can barely comprehend.  Romans for example used to pay to see, hear and smell people being murdered in public spectacles, and would go home thoroughly delighted by what we would regard as a ghastly and inhuman spectacle that would likely drive some to vomit or otherwise lose control of themselves.  Yes, the Gloranthans may have PTSD, but that's great!  It helps you go berserk when you next see chaos, dropping into a glazed trance where you find it easier to re-enact the violence of previous experiences upon fresh victims.  By foregoing sanity rules, we allow players to choose to let their character be heroic, or run away at the player's discretion.  If players get struck by mindblast or lunes they will go mad.  We have rules for that.  If they meet an ancient terror, they need to choose whether they have the grit to stay and fight, or will take to their heels like so many before them.  Yes, there may be insane NPCs, but PCs are made of sterner stuff imo.  They have enough to contend with without adding mental illness to the pot.

Edited May 3, 2022 by Darius West

[icebrand]

3 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I dismiss this.  You speak of seeing friends mutilated etc.  I point out that these are bronze age people who hands-on kill their own animals, often more than once a week, and have regularly witnessed violence in a way we pampered 21st century bookish toffs can barely comprehend.  Romans for example used to pay to see, hear and smell people being murdered in public spectacles, and would go home thoroughly delighted by what we would regard as a ghastly and inhuman spectacle that would likely drive some to vomit or otherwise lose control of themselves.  

Oh but i did my research! Turns out all that stuff doesnt do anything for your mental health when you are killing and getting killed! 

I did toy with adding SAN for everyone early on, but those are very heavy rules that add a lot of stuff and i like as rules light as possible (heck we even play RQ2 instead of G because it's lighter). I can frighten my players with music mood about half the time anyway...

What i realize is that i don't need SAN rules, but *Morale* rules. Do we have those in any edition? 

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, icebrand said:

What i realize is that i don't need SAN rules, but *Morale* rules. Do we have those in any edition? 

That's what your Passions are for, units use a Guiding Passion.

We experimented with SAN in the Risklands campaign when it came out, but it just introduced another mechanic and value to track. We ended up just bolting on the morale values for GDW's Striker, we were playing a lot of 15mm tactical and most us could remember the values and results: Recruit 4, Regular 7, Veteran 10, Elite 13. 2D6 roll, with + for nearby leaders, - casualties. Depending on what you failed by gave you Suppressed, Fall back, Forced back,  Routed results. War cults were veterans, cults that taught weapon skills were regulars, everyone else was a recruit. It was flexible, pretty simple to run and worked at the time.

[Martin Dick]

I don't really think that RQG needs Sanity rules, it's perfectly easy to roleplay the consequences for the exceptional circumstances when your character is overwhelmed or use Passions, but my Orlanthi RunePriest was as terrified as any of my CoC characters have been when we ran in to the Crimson Bat and that was at a distance of kilometres and the immediate consensus was to get the hell out of there. The Sam Wood picture (twitter) shows just how terrifying it would be to meet some of the ancient terrors (True Dragons, Cwim, pretty much anything in Dorastor) for even hardened adventurers and some will break when meeting them. But as Darius said, RQG is mostly not played in a horror mode, so our valiant protagonists can overcome their fears and face up to even the greatest of terrors, if they want to!

[Akhôrahil]

SAN in the Mythos sense doesn't seem like it would have a place - that's all about having your comforting illusions about reality shattered as you're exposed to the cosmic truth, and that doesn't obviously fit for Glorantha (or well, it might be Illumination...).

Some kind of generalized mental stress rule could fit well, though. 

[icebrand]

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

That's what your Passions are for, units use a Guiding Passion.

We experimented with SAN in the Risklands campaign when it came out, but it just introduced another mechanic and value to track. We ended up just bolting on the morale values for GDW's Striker, we were playing a lot of 15mm tactical and most us could remember the values and results: Recruit 4, Regular 7, Veteran 10, Elite 13. 2D6 roll, with + for nearby leaders, - casualties. Depending on what you failed by gave you Suppressed, Fall back, Forced back,  Routed results. War cults were veterans, cults that taught weapon skills were regulars, everyone else was a recruit. It was flexible, pretty simple to run and worked at the time.

Are the guiding passions in RQG? Index not helping me!

Also what's a GDW striker???

[David Scott]

34 minutes ago, icebrand said:

Are the guiding passions in RQG? Index not helping me!

it links to a search for the term on this board where the references can be found. 

34 minutes ago, icebrand said:

Also what's a GDW striker???

Striker was a 15mm tactical sci-if war game for Traveller, published by GDW:

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Striker

[SDLeary]

17 hours ago, icebrand said:

Yeah im gonna use that -or something like- with POW rolls. I suppose ill wing it as we go (as usual). It's not a "permanent" rule anyway, it's just for the Chalana RL heroquest when she becomes priest... Can't have a lord+priest without an epic "fight" and the CA will have to use lots of spells to keep her panicking people trying to hold the line till she defeats the malia champion in a magic duel and saves the day (or dies horribly, that works too)

I would mix it up a bit depending upon the Stress. Perhaps something along the lines of a personal passion with POW for Helplessness for example. Or POW + INT for Violence, or something like that. Of course it depends on what you are using for Stress sutuations.

You might want to give your CA player some additional skills or spells that act as temporary psychotherapy. 

I would also advise you take a look at Delta Green, and Apocthulhu. They both have a D100 take on using this kind of Stress/Sanity system.

SDLeary

[SDLeary]

14 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Some kind of generalized mental stress rule could fit well, though. 

Yes. Delta Green/Apocthulhu Sanity rules can pull this off at a relatively low level; they have Fight/Flight/Freeze rules at the core. Can bolt on all the other stuff as needed (perhaps in the case of a Fumble).

SDLeary

[svensson]

On 5/2/2022 at 8:34 AM, icebrand said:

Dont we NEED sanity rules?

What happens when the PCs enter a chaos nest, and find human remains decorating the place?

What happens when your friend, who fought side by side by you in countless battles, gets horribly mutilated and murdered in front of your eyes?

What happens when you come face to face with an ancient terror???

Does any of you guys use SAN? If so, what rules do you use?

Response to OP...

That's the beauty of RQ/CoC/BRP... if you want to add the complications of SAN checks, they're there to use as your Glorantha requires.

I myself am of two minds about it.

On the one hand, the 'normal person' level of things almost requires SAN checks when confronting major Chaos infestations.

OTOH, the PCs are supposed to a cut above the bulk of humanity... they're the ones with the courage and ambition to confront what they perceive as Evil. They lay their lives on the line, to win or lose it all one throw on the Resistance Table 😉 They shouldn't be troubled by constant rolls of Sanity every they see a broo. Where in Lovecraftian Earth, cults are well hidden and obscured by layer upon layer of rumor and false myth, a Gloranthan knows fully Orlanth-be-damned well that 'weird stuff' is right over the hill and can intrude on one's pastoral lifestyle at any time. Dinosaurs, dragonewts, Uz riding giant insects, and tusk riders are just some of the threats out there... and those aren't even Chaos! So the PCs already have to have a certain mental toughness above all the rest.

But both viewpoints are equally valid. YGMV and all that.

[soltakss]

On 5/2/2022 at 6:40 PM, icebrand said:

Do they sleep fine at night, or do they see the faces of every person they killed?

Both, the faces of those they killed do a little dance around them at night, protecting them from attacks.

Sure, if you want that kind of thing, then give them an appropriate Passion. That is the way we did it in How Humakt Learned to Grieve, which is basically how to deal with Gloranthan PSTD.

 

[soltakss]

What I don't want to see in my Glorantha are the Funny Phobias from Call of Cthulhu. You know, where you see something, go a bit insane, roll a Funny Phobia and everyone else laughs at what you got. That doesn't feel Gloranthan to me, at all.

 

[Lordabdul]

On 5/5/2022 at 10:50 AM, soltakss said:

You know, where you see something, go a bit insane, roll a Funny Phobia and everyone else laughs at what you got. That doesn't feel Gloranthan to me, at all.

Doesn't feel like cosmic horror either anyway. So don't do that 😉 

Edited May 7, 2022 by lordabdul

[g33k]

On 5/5/2022 at 10:50 AM, soltakss said:

... go a bit insane, roll a Funny Phobia and everyone else laughs at what you got ...

That, right there, is the worst of the problems (though not the only one).

But, all by itself, it's why I'd never again run CoC (any edition) without a better solution in-hand; and probably never play any, either.

[soltakss]

5 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Doesn't feel like cosmic horror either anyway. So don't do that 😉

It's how I have seen Call of Cthulhu when I have played it, except at very serios convention games.

[Jeff]

I see absolutely no need for SAN rules in RuneQuest. 

[icebrand]

52 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I see absolutely no need for SAN rules in RuneQuest. 

Well if you did they would be RAW right? 😂

Edited May 7, 2022 by icebrand

[Lordabdul]

10 hours ago, soltakss said:

It's how I have seen Call of Cthulhu when I have played it, except at very serios convention games.

It's possible that some people play it like this, and if they want to have a laugh then I'm not going to ruin their fun (there's no such thing as "wrong fun"). In my CoC circles, most of us ran into this issue in our early games (back in the 90s for me), figured it wasn't very satisfying nor tone-appropriate, re-read the rules we had only skimmed, and went "oh hey, we're not supposed to roll on tables actually". I can assure you that deep horror stuff like Delta Green wouldn't work well if we did ridiculous stuff like that.

[Jeff]

15 hours ago, g33k said:

That, right there, is the worst of the problems (though not the only one).

But, all by itself, it's why I'd never again run CoC (any edition) without a better solution in-hand; and probably never play any, either.

I've played in easily hundreds of sessions of CoC over 40 years. I've never seen that done.

[g33k]

48 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I've played in easily hundreds of sessions of CoC over 40 years. I've never seen that done.

I haven't played nearly that much!  But (in 3 different groups) my experience is that all the groups played insanity "for the lolz" at least some of the time, and often (2 of the 3 goups) most of the time.

I've also seen some people from the mental-health community -- both people in practice, and people suffering -- who find the SAN mechanics of CoC to be frankly "problematic" at best. 

I've played much more RQ than CoC, so I'm willing to GM ... well, any flavor of BRP, really ... based on my overall grasp of the d100 core mechanic.  I've only GM'ed CoC a few times, though -- all 1-shots -- and I avoided stories that would lead to severe SAN incidents.  I seriously need something different for the SAN mechanics before I go for CoC again -- from either side of the GM screen.

[Jeff]

12 minutes ago, g33k said:

I haven't played nearly that much!  But (in 3 different groups) my experience is that all the groups played insanity "for the lolz" at least some of the time, and often (2 of the 3 goups) most of the time.

I've also seen some people from the mental-health community -- both people in practice, and people suffering -- who find the SAN mechanics of CoC to be frankly "problematic" at best. 

I've played much more RQ than CoC, so I'm willing to GM ... well, any flavor of BRP, really ... based on my overall grasp of the d100 core mechanic.  I've only GM'ed CoC a few times, though -- all 1-shots -- and I avoided stories that would lead to severe SAN incidents.  I seriously need something different for the SAN mechanics before I go for CoC again -- from either side of the GM screen.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I am just saying I have played and GMed a LOT of Call of Cthulhu over the years, and I've never seen anyone play up insanity "for the lolz". 

I am sure it happens, but we'd likely either tell the player to knock it off or to just leave.

[g33k]

51 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I am sure it happens, but we'd likely either tell the player to knock it off or to just leave.

I have left groups that didn't have a compatible "vibe."

I've never kicked-out a player, but have had to correct several times.

One of my groups (where over half of the players were sometime-GMs, depending on who was in the mood for what) imploded when one of the GMs kicked another one.

[Joerg]

With passions and rules for despair for certain passion or rune mishaps we have something like Sanity effects, as far as I am concerned.

CoC SAN is an ablative protection against the existential horror that our mundane world isn't all there is to reality. For a Gloranthan, the proper reaction would be "boring, we know that already!". Initiation rites take care of that insight, at least for Heortling male adulthood rites this is made explicit.