A player wants me to help him RP compelling voices in his head


Advice


I have been GMing for my skype Roleplaying group for about a year now and after our first AP (ROTRL) we are about to start Kingmaker.

Before we started ROTRL none of us had roleplaying/gm experience so we had rather standard characters. Now with our second AP we feel more secure to choose more challenging character concepts.

Now one of my player had the idea to play a deranged barbarian who sometimes hears voices in his head and is compelled to follow whatever they say. He wants me to play those voices by privately messaging him what they tell him to do.
Now while this can lead to crazy situations I find it difficult to find a way to not GMmetagame what the voices might randomly say depending on the situation.
The other issue is that the character and his actions should not overshadow or burden the others too much, so it needs to be subtle as well.

So that why I am asking for your advice how can I mechanically make this character concept valid and interesting without putting the spotlight on one player all the time?


I would have a script of dialogue from a novel picked ahead of time for the voices in his head. I don't know of any voice in main character's head novels, but any dialogue should work. That helps avoid metagaming.


Compile a list (the longer the better) of suggestions (maybe have other people not in the game write some) and assign a random roll system. Hell, you could give him a different list as often as you like, let him roll himself, maybe make a will save to resist, or add wisdom modifier to the roll to change the result, etc.

Liberty's Edge

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There is a very narrow range here between "trivial input, just let him do it himself" and "dude, you forced me to do something stupid/lame/etc.

Strong suggestion to let him handle the voices himself. If GMs can handle multiple characters, so can players.


Ain't nobody got time foh dat!

Hand it off to another player. It worked fine in Wraith: The oblivion over a decade ago, no reason it wouldn't work today.


Ya I like the role thing, or possibly even like 10 randomly determined words, and form a sentence around a couple of them (gm/player discretion), and then player follows it.

There will probably be some issues with alignment and stuff


I have not played or GM-ed this situation myself, but a good friend GM-ed a (male) player/character who had multiple (but distinct) personalities due to (IIRC) a cursed item the PC had picked up along the way, including that of a six year old little girl. Each campaign day the player rolled on a specific chart to see which personality was "in charge" for the next 24-hour period, and the player role-played each personality as it appeared to the best of his ability.

Perhaps a variation of this might work for you, with an pre-arranged limit between you and your player as to what his "voices" would and would not tell him to do? Unless your player was experienced and you had complete confidence in him not leading the campaign over a cliff "because the voices told him to" I would be VERY cautious before I left a decision like that entirely in the hands of a player.


Thanks for the advice. I will talk some more with the player.

Without spoiling anything I thought I could maybe also use the madness as a way to foreshadow the BBEG of Kingmaker. I think it would be within his/her skills to influence an already weak mind?


Pupsocket wrote:

Ain't nobody got time foh dat!

Hand it off to another player. It worked fine in Wraith: The oblivion over a decade ago, no reason it wouldn't work today.

<twitch> Gods save us from Shadow....

To the OP.... might I offer a suggestion as well. How does he want the voices in his head to play out? Haunted by a bunch of spirits where there are multiple voices whispering to him, that may follow him around or just vary a little area by area? Does he just have a mental condition and believe there is a magical voice in his head called 'The doctor' that alternates between saying 'Trust me' and 'RUN!!!!'.

Also, ask they player what they think you having that is going to do to benefit things overall, and where he'd like to see that sort of plot arc go.

If your going with the 'random spirit thing', then you'd want to look at what sorts of area your in and what the spirits in that area might want. Eg. A graveyard (just to continue the wraith example above) might have spirits begging for the barbarian to find or look after a loved one, or to find their lost teddy.... alternately they might be screaming for bloody vengeance against their murderers.

If he thinks that they should be fixed personalities then take the time to work up the personality in question and what it'll add.... and WHO this personality really is. Imaginary friend. Disposessed soul of his dead twin sister that has taken up residence in a tribal fetish. The best one I could think of here would be an Avatar of his totem (if he's going that sort of barbarian). He doesn't need to know this and can be saved for a reveal later, but remember that it IS a team game. You don't want his story overshadowing the rest of the AP and the party. He's just one part of it.

What I'd probably do is read through the AP and find a couple (no more than 1 or 2) of key points in the AP that the voice can give him some instruction based on whatever the voice's agenda is. It might be good, it might be bad. It might be a mixture of both. Create it as a living, breathing NPC with an agenda and work out how that agenda will fit in with the AP (which should hopefully be a mixture of both). Eg. If her sister's soul is the plaything of a given demon prince (and she's evil to the core), she might want see the prince de-stabalised as much as possible, but the general 'evil' of the world left alone (for her to recruit if / when she ascends to being a demon).


Have a look at the fate system, where "compelling aspects" is a key part of the game.

Have the character write down 3 or 4 aspects, such as "hates elves", or "I owe everything to character xyz".

When something like this comes up in play, send him a note that the voices in his head are forcing him to act on it, then let him decide how to play out the encounter from there.

You might want to give the character the option of buying his way out of this by paying a hero point.


Decide now whether the 'voices' are real and what they are up to.

This should be good! Sounds like some interesting RP possibilities!

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