Characters....that are insane.

[Docter]

It's very fun playing a insane, mentally-ill character... especially in groups, when there's a bunch of crazy people wrestling the air.

[Armaddict]

Cool.

[Xamminy]

Please, just don't use this to have an excuse to do anything.  Think through the mental illness very carefully.  I've seen some characters with well-defined mental illnesses and some without...and the one's without make my head hurt.  It's like playing a HG like a five year old with ridiculous strength as some have.

[Docter]

No, seriously. It can get funny if they're the 'see-random-thingys without spices ' kind of thing.

[Xamminy]

Yes it can...but that's comic relief...like the HG that craps his pants and says, "Ut-oh!"  It's funny.  I've seen someone played with that sort of psychosis before, and it was a well-explored character that was not played for comic relief.  If that's all you're going for...don't expect anyone to take you seriously over anything, or plan on keeping you around much.  You'll be fairly useless for anything but comic relief, and people don't just want a jester.

[Delirium]

I've seen someone play out a delusional character ingame and it was very, very well done.. and it was not funny at all, 90% of the time. Mentally ill characters are actually the hardest to play out correctly, IMHO.

Including, in a way, half-elves, all magickers, muls, and sorcerers.

[Rhyden]

I agree with Xaminny. Mental ill characters should not be taken so lightly and should never be an excuse to turn Arm into a hacker game.

On another note, I once had a character so mentally ill, the templarette in the city my character was in had to put him/her down. During the process, there was some colorful emotes that even gave me nightmares.  :twisted:

-Don't take mentally ill characters lightly, instead, characterize personal illnesses and base your character around those traits. It can be fun, and sometimes horrific.

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

A mental illness, when done properly, can add new depth to a character, and make him or her interesting to be around for other players.
A mental illness, when done poorly, can be severely damaging to the atmosphere of the game, and, to use a writing term, "take you out" in a negative way.
You should be aware of the following:
-No one in reality exists purely for 'comic relief', nor should they on Zalanthas. Even world-famous entertainers are people inside, with real fears, goals, motives, and emotions.
-You should be sensitive to the fact that players on Armageddon might have had personal experiences with the mental illness you are trying to portray, and therefore you should try to present it realistically.
-Mental illness is rarely a funny thing.
-Expect IC consequences. Low-tech, largely uneducated civilizations are not usually very understanding towards raving lunatics.

[wizturbo]

Completely depends on the mental illness.  If you set it up VERY strictly in advance, choosing the exact mental illness and playing out scenarios in your head on how your character would react to many situations, it has potential for amazing roleplay.  If you just go "he/she is crazy" thats totally worthless from a roleplaying perspective, its just used to justify any stupid action you want to take that might be against the grain.

Insane characters that do not adhere to society around them in SOME fashions, will die so fast, that it is not rational for them to have survived to 16 (minimum character age).

Insanity doesn't mean a complete lack of mental stability.  It means a specific, rigid, and predictable pattern of abnormal thought processes.  It means a TON of planning on your part to determine exactly how that character ticks.

In all honesty, i see mentally ill characters like Karma characters.  If played well, they can be AMAZING.  But they are INCREDIBLY hard to play well and have still have a positive effect on the game.  I'm personally a big fan of DEVELOPING mental illnesses from already sane characters.  Having your character develop some forms of delusion or insanity to cope with extremely stressful situations.  They see their beloved mate get executed by that evil templar...something snaps inside them and they lose grip on reality.  A mindbender is tormenting them on a regular basis, they begin to develop paranoid delusions.  Etc.  Etc.

[Anonymous]

I've been around institutionalized people.  They aren't comedic relief.  They are disturbing.  Not in a 'cut your heart out and eat it' sort of way but in a different way.  Their entire view of the world is so skewed, relative to ours, that dealing with them is just plain uncomfortable.  From simple things like bursting out into giddy laughter at a woman's story of being raped to having to be kept in a room at all times because they are unpredictably violent towards themselves or others.

I don't mean to join in with the poo-poo'ing of the OP's original point, but I've seen my share of I'M SO KOOKY cartoony PCs and I think the world doesn't need a proliferation of them.

[Dracul]

I am totally biased against the original poster. Just the way it was worded I also read into it as KOOKY chars...which I would hate to see. Although someone I just played with recently.

Dude...fucking awesome. I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone inspired to a character by this thread though, but I met a character that obviously has mental issues...but so far hasnt been undefinably off the wall, follows a pattern...whatever.

I'm entertained in a serious way.


Comical Releif is bad.

[Bogre]

I've seen a very very well played mentally-ill character before. It was very serious and very dramatic though. I wouldn't suggest making a comic-relief character without any serious points, for those characters aren't very realistic. Even the class clown will be serious at some times.

[killa]

I've seen someone play out a delusional character ingame and it was very, very well done.. and it was not funny at all, 90% of the time. Mentally ill characters are actually the hardest to play out correctly, IMHO.

Including, in a way, half-elves, all magickers, muls, and sorcerers.

unless the gamer is mentally ill to that would make it easier :roll:

[Angela Christine]

unless the gamer is mentally ill to that would make it easier :roll:

Only if they have had the opportunity to observe other ill people, for example if they have been hospitalized for mental illness.  Chances are that their personal triggers won't come up much in game, because they would be unlikely to play a game that made them crazy.  Or their behavior would seem so odd and eratic that they'd get booted off for having a "bad attitude".

Personally I'm heavily medicated and have trouble leaving my building, sometimes I can't even answer the phone and may spend 15 hours a day sleeping, but those things rarely affect my characters.  When I am not doing well I don't play much, and if it gets really bad I even lose interest in the GDB, so online people don't see me at my worst.  Plus, most of the things that trigger me to get crazier aren't possible through electronic media, at least not yet.  I can't hear you breathing or swallowing, I can't feel your body heat or smell your breath and personal body odour, I can't see your eyes or all the annoing twitching you do, and I don't have to stand nearby while you eat or defecate, so you don't bother me . . . at least not much.     Oh yeah, I'd be a tonne of fun at an APM.


The media rarely does mental illness well, but I rather like Monk.  It is a series about a brilliant detective who is also a multi-phobic obsessive-compulsive.  It is funny, but it also shows how mental illness is sad and incredibly frustrating both for the ill person and the people around them.  It would be really depressing if it wasn't also funny, and who wants to watch more depressing crap?  I get enough of that on the evening news.  If you want non-funny crazy there are a few movies and documentaries that are perhaps more realistic, but they are also sad, depressing and very disturbing.  An alien psyche isn't fun to try to deal with, or even to watch.

Mental illness does't define your entire character, but it does limit them, and not always in ways that are amusing or convienient.  If you want to play an intrusive mental illness, then I recomend NOT playing it by ear.  The whole point of mental illness is that you are not in control of your thoughts, emotions or even your body.  So decide what your characters triggers are, what kinds of stress will trigger a reaction.  Stress usually causes an escalation of symptoms (occasionally a life and death stress can momentarily relieve the symptoms, but not always.  Some agoraphobics die in house fires despite being awake and aware of what is happening because despite the fact that their house is on fire they still are unable to open the door and walk outside).  Once you have a general idea of stressors and probable reactions, keep dice or a single die on hand.  Use it when you aren't sure if the current situation would affect the character, or if you are sure that it should but the character is trying to NOT give in to his illness.  1-3 his illness takes over, 4-6 he manages to keep his shit together and deal with the situation rationally (adjust for the difficulty of the situation).  As your own personal DM you can over-rule the dice, but dice do help keep you honest and keep the illness from becoming a RP crutch that you discard whenever it would be inconvinient.  Crazy isn't supposed to be convinient.


Angela Christine

[JollyGreenGiant]

There are milder things you can affect that are easier to play.  A term, for example, that hasn't hit the dictionary yet (but you can find in the wikipedia) is apophenia.  Essentially, this is false pattern matching.  It tends to manifest itself as taking a series of unconnected events and forming a pattern which seems logical, but does not in fact exist.  

A basic example of this has become lore among artificial intelligence programmers.  A team of programmers were using learning software to try to teach a missile that was to be fired from a helicopter to find tanks.  They would give the program a picture, and the program quickly learned on the first series of pictures what was a tank and what wasn't.  When given a second set of pictures, the program performed terribly.  It turned out that in the first set of pictures, all the ones with tanks had been taken during the day.  All the ones without had been taken at night.  The program had learned the difference between night and day instead of "tank" and "not a tank."

Someone affected by apophenia will tend to make connections that don't exist, much like most conspiracy theorists.  Other things you can add for fun to a character might be mild phobias, high blood pressure, etc.

[Xamminy]

There was a HG that had met several magickers and noticed that they all smelled of dust and sweat...

I won't say any more.

[proxie]

Story time! From at least one King's age ago, about a totally insignificant pc, so it should be fine.


I played an assassin guard pc who went absolutely flipping nuts.

Admittedly, she wasn't too sane to begin with. See... she had this kid. And lost it due to a nasty situation. And then, instead of accepting this loss, a while later, reality started warping to the point where people were hiding the kid from her, that he was hurt and needed her. So she went and dug up the kid. Mummified corpse of a baby. And put it in her quarters, in her dresser to be exact.  Then realized that her usual bitchy attitude might earn enemies and might get her killed, thus taking her from the recouperation of her baby. So, a quick trip to Kadius, a shedding of the oh so beloved black leathers and a donning of silks. Her employers didn't notice this, other than hey, she's not nearly so nasty to be around.

So... eventually it all unwound, culminating with some time in a padded cell while she rediscovered her sense of reality... that did not involve a mummified baby to love and squeeze and call george.

But the buildup was fantastically fun, and it all happened in game. Actually, the culmination was a blast too, I really thought my poor psychotic shadowguard was toast for a while, or at least locked in a padded cell for a few years. She got better, then died. (ain't that always how it works?)

My advise is if you want to play a crazy pc... take some time to build it up slowly... Lots of time.  And don't go for the obvious insanity. Make people think about it... give them time to wonder... have lucid moments. Make your color of crazy your own.

The comic relief crazy is cool, but the kindof crazy that makes people just SQUIRM... I mean... mummified baby in the dresser... *SHUDDERS*

God I miss that girl!

Proxie