Insanity & Madness
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
Instead of stuff like "health" players have Insanity and Madness.
Insanity: Humans are not meant to deal with this kind of stuff. Because their minds are so fragile, they break easily. Insanity determines how damaged your mind is. It goes up slowly but constantly when exposed to the horrors of the cosmos. Once it reaches the max, your character goes permanently insane until the end of the mission and once it ends, you are removed from the game and returned to the waitlist. Insanity levels can be reduced with actions, but once it reaches the limit, it can't be fixed by anyone but a certain Outer God.
If it goes too high, characters might instantly die from the trauma. Only certain specific monsters and gods can continue to increase Insanity once a player reaches the max.
Madness: Unlike Insanity, this stuff goes up FAST. It represents the panic a character is currently going through. If you don't take time to calm your nerves, you can go mad and enter a frenzy. Goes up rapidly from the same stuff that gives Insanity (eldritch stuff). It goes up faster than Insanity, but it also times out AND can be cured once it reaches the limit. Once it goes high enough, a character goes Mad. When under the effects of Madness, they can suffer from severe hallucinations, scream in horror or go into panic until calmed down.
If it's untreated for too long and let go extremely high while under the effects of madness, characters might go Insane. Madness continues to increase once it reaches the limit and you continue to stay close to whatever made you go Mad, so be careful.
In short: Insanity is "death", goes up slowly and can't be cured once it goes too high. At this point, characters go Insane and lose control over most of their actions. You could still attemp to do something, but the results will be highly disorted to be as bad as possible. Players who die return to the waitlist at the end of a mission.
Madness has more immediate effects and goes up easily. If it goes too high, characters go Mad. In this state, their perpective of the world is altered and they might not be able to discern ally from enemy, or maybe they just go into shock and become unable to move. The effects vary, but it can time out if kept away from the source of madness for long enough or cured by either mundane or magical means.
Powers & Artifacts
"Immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we must possess it; that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centuried grave."
Every character starts with a minor power or ability, unnoticed by themselves and those who surround them. They can later upgrade their power or gain new ones by progressing in missions and completing objetives. Powers are minor things, like detecting lies or having improved luck. A power allows rolls to be made with any action related to them and gives a +1 when directly using them. A character who can sense the feelings of other humans can attemp to read their minds with a luck roll and gains a +1 when trying to sense someone's feelings.
Tokens can also be used to buy Artifacts. Artifacts are special items with peculiar qualities. These have innate powers and are cheaper to upgrade, but you don't control what they do and can be stolen or destroyed. They are more powerful, though. An artifact has a number of random spheres, and gain more every time they are upgraded. You don't know what the spheres are or what they do, but they are stronger and gain a +1 when doing anything related to their sphere. A sword with the sphere of Fire can be used as a flamethrower with a +1, but you first need to know that the sphere is Fire by experimentation. Prepare to burn your hands a whole bunch of times.
Every mission grants a player a few Tokens. Tokens can be spent for either upgrading or buying Powers/Artifacts while in the hub. The top player in a mission wins extra tokens and so do any player who archieves anything remarkable during the mission. Any player who dies or goes insane wins an extra Token when they return to the waitlist, so they can keep up with those who continue playing once they return.
Knowledge
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."
The first time you meet a cosmic horror, you horribly freak out and maybe even go Mad during the very first turn of "combat". This is because you have absolutely no idea about what you are fighting against. The more you see, the more you learn. Knowledge determines your ability to fight the eldritch and how to defend yourself from the abominations from spacetime. Knowledge is divided in 3 levels (but characters start with 0 in everything but one single thing). I, II and III.
At level 0 (First encounter) you have absolutely no idea about what the hell is that huge aberration of nature with tentacles in his eyes. Once you at least understand what you are looking at, your Knowledge increases to I. At this point, all insanity and madness gains (regarding the subject) are greatly reduced. When you actually learn how to fight agaist the beast, your Knowledge level goes to II. Now you know that, for example, you have to cover your eyes while fighting the eye mutants (Mutants: II) or that reading the Necronomicon is a Bad Idea
TM(Eldritch Tomes: II). Once you reach level III in Knowledge through extensive experience, you gain mastery on the subject and learn more advanced stuff, like how to talk to a Deep One (Deep Ones: III) or translating blood runes (Runes: III).
Every level reduces how fast Madness and Insanity go up when dealing with the subject
Favor
"From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent."
Every character starts under the "protection" of a lovecraftian entity. The stronger they are and the more followers a god has, the less likely for them to help you and the harder for you to gain their favour or attention. When a character is in danger, they can attemp to call out for their god. A luck roll happens and it determines what does the god do to help their follower. They might either teleport them to a secured vault in a bank because it's safe-r there or send a bunch of cultists armed with sticks to teach them a lesson for disturbing their bath. Those who are truly crazy may attemp to contact a second god and obtain their protection, in which case they will now be under the dubious care of two monsters from beyond the universe, competing for their worship. Damaging things under the protection of a god causes divine punishment, but for the same reason followers of the same god don't attack each other. Someone with the protection of Cthulhu could just talk their way in one of his many, many cults.
Death and Waitlist
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die."
Apparently, horrors from beyond are incredibly lethal. When a character dies, their corpse is free for the looting and any other sentinet being is able to steal any of their stuff. Any Artifact in the body can just be taken by anyone nearby, players or enemies with human intelligence or higher. Powers, in the other hand, are kept with all of their upgrades with the character. At the end of a mission. any character that went insane or died goes into the waitlist. They keep everything but their artifacts and gain a free Token to use once they get back in the game.
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Topic: [Waitlisters Welcome] Servants of Madness: A Lovecraftian RTD (6/8) Turn 19 (Read 37616 times)