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IDEAS ON MADNESS

As we strengthen the impact of Adimarchus' madness upon the Cagewright cult and nightmare scenario, It's also worth plotting to allow madness to have an impact upon our PC's. I've decide to pillage and convert some ideas from a Call of Cthulhu module (i.e. "The Truth Shall Set You Free" by Bruce Ballon) and use them as the party gets closer to Adimarchus. Here's the briefest of a summary of some effects that can be used.

THE ONSET

- Make a DC25 wisdom roll for the party. Whomever fails would begin to experience symptoms of madness and the DM informs the character(s) that they have fallen into a catatonic state for 1d3 days. In actuality, the PC's have learned something of Adimarchus' madness and torment, but that knowledge is so awful that they have repressed the information. When they awaken after the 3 days (or after a Cure Disease spell is cast) they remember nothing.

Any character who failed the initial Wisdom roll is subject to additional Wisdom rolls, one per week thereafter. If the characters pass the wisdom roll in the future, then they lose the symptoms until another failure. Each time a Wisdom roll is failed, the DC is increased by 1, thus the character becomes more and more subject to increased madness.

GENERAL THOUGHTS ON ROLEPLAYING MADNESS

- The key is to use skill rolls. The affected character(s) will misinterpret stimuli and be fed odd ideas by the DM. At first these ideas would be minor. They slowly grow in intensity until suddenly the character realizes, "It's all real!" At that point, only the DM knows that the player character is psychotic.

- A player may eventually begin to believe that his or her character is not sane, but the player character is not so lucky. For example, the DM says that a player's character is convinced that his friend is about to pull out their sword and attack them, and the character then realizes that this friend is actually a demon (or doppleganger). The player decides that the character does nothing. Knowing the character would be freaked out for not trying to defend himself/herself, the DM increases the DC of the Wisdom check for Madness (or alternately could lose a point of Wisdom).

EARLY SYMPTOMS: The afflicted start to notice that things are a bit odd. They notice some people staring at them, or think that they are being laughed at when they hear someone giggle, and so on. Sometimes in the morning, with failed CON rolls, they feel somehow "insubstantial" for a few minutes. At other moments during the day, with a failed WIS roll, they get the impression of viewing the world as if it was a painted backdrop. They now experience deja vu a few times a week. The afflicted are otherwise functional, and able to maintain their adventures.

- The afflicted could start to have more intense symptoms, perhaps becoming convinced that they have developed psychic/psionic powers. This may include voices in the shadows, Watchers dressed in black with strange masks, and images of death.

LATER SYMPTOMS: The afflicted encounter a Mysterious Friend (an imaginary friend who only is seen by the character and feeds the character (false) information). This friend would explain the (false) evils of their current situation and outlines a plan to save the world.

LATEST STAGES: The character responds to hallucinations and delusions, and will likely try to kill individuals from his past who he now considers demons (dopplegangers). With the help of the Mysterious Friend, the afflicted will also attempt to gather followers to challenge the forces aligned against Adimarchus, and in fact will be forming a cult dedicated to freeing the demon.

This path would present unique roleplaying challenges, and may threaten the end battle with Adimarchus since the afflicted character would not want to kill the demon, but rather only free it.

I'll need to think about this a bit more to ensure that it's a logical series of events, but I'm sure that the end result will be a very memorable and dramatic campaign ending.

Hurm.