Tag: mental health

Five or So Questions with Graham Walmsley on Cthulhu Dark

Today I have an interview with Graham Walmsley on the new Kickstarter project, Cthulhu Dark. In spite of all of my misgivings about Lovecraftian themed games, I do still love the aesthetic and a lot of the elements – and Graham is pretty considerate about topics that matter most to me in the setting. Because of this, I’m excited to share this interview with you all!

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Tell me a little about Cthulhu Dark. What excites you about it?

When you see Cthulhu Dark, the first thing you notice is how simple it is. But that’s not the thing that excites me. What excites me is how precise it is.

Take the Insight rule as an example. Your Insight starts at 1. Every time you see something that creeps you out, roll a die (that’s an “Insight roll”). If you get higher than your current Insight, your Insight increases by 1, until it reaches 6 and you lose your mind.

That sounds like a simple rule, but it’s designed very precisely. It means that your Insight increases fast at the start, then slower later. When it reaches 5, you’re on a knife edge, where every Insight Roll could send you over the edge but only if you roll a 6. (I did hours of thinking about probabilities for that rule.)

The whole game is like that. It looks simple, but it’s all perfectly engineered. And all of that feeds back into the game. Every so often, the dice throw out a little surprise that makes the story better.

That’s what excites me about the rules. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that excites me about the project: the settings, my cowriters, the art, everything.


What kind of settings do you have as a part of, or in addition to, Cthulhu Dark? What in them shows the themes of the system?

Cthulhu Dark comes with four settings: London 1851, the dirty, stinking capital of the British Empire; Arkham 1692, Lovecraft’s city in a time of witch-hunts; Jaiwo 2017, modern-day West Africa; and Mumbai 2037, cyberpunk India.

Each of them comes with a scenario that showcases Cthulhu Dark‘s trademark style of bleak horror. But there’s something subtler going on too.

One of the main themes of Cthulhu Dark is: you play people with little power, investigating horror at the heart of the power. For example, in London 1851, you play thieves, beggars and other slum dwellers, investigating monsters within the aristocracy. That’s a deliberate choice: in other games, you’d be more likely to play aristocrats, investigating a horror in the slums. Cthulhu Dark switches that around. It means you play Investigators you wouldn’t usually play.

by Matteo Bocci, Mumbai 2037

How have you developed Cthulhu Dark – a lot of playtesting, revisions, new ideas?

Since the original two-page version of Cthulhu Dark, I’ve played it to death, and so have lots of others. It’s a robust, polished set of rules, so it didn’t need much revising.

What’s new is everything else in the book. There’s a section on how to use Cthulhu Dark‘s rules to full effect, with all the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years. There’s a guide to Writing a Mystery, which takes you step-by-step through the process of writing a horror story to play, starting with the things you fear and ending with the finished mystery. And there’s a section on Playing A Mystery, which tells you how to play horror at the table, and another describing the Threats of the Mythos and how to use them in your game.

And then there’s the four settings above. There’s a lot of new stuff.


You know that this is well within my interests, so I have to ask – anything with the term “Cthulhu” in the title approaches the question of how mental health and “insanity” are handled. How did you approach this concept in Cthulhu Dark?

Instead of “insanity”, the new Cthulhu Dark talks about Insight. That’s your insight into the horror, the dark patterns behind the universe, the Mythos. Every time you see something that creeps you out, you roll to see whether your Insight increases.

To the outside world, your Insight looks like insanity. But you know better. You see things others don’t see. You understand things they don’t understand.

Cthulhu games haven’t always treated mental health well, but there’s no reason that they can’t. After all, Cthulhu is really the only genre that even includes mental health. You never think about mental health in a dungeon-crawling game, but you have to think about it in Cthulhu games. So, I think there’s the possibility of doing something really positive with mental health and Cthulhu gaming.

What sort of play does Cthulhu Dark do best? What can players expect when they sit down at a table?

Cthulhu Dark does bleak, mindbending horror. You can’t fight the Mythos: you can only run, hide or watch helplessly.

When you sit down to play Cthulhu Dark, expect your Investigator to spiral slowly down into darkness. Expect to be creeped out. Expect hyperpowerful creatures, which you cannot understand, let alone fight. Expect all that, then enjoy the ride.

by Matteo Bocci
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Thanks so much to Graham for the interview! I’m excited to see the final product, it sounds really great! Readers, remember to check out Cthulhu Dark on Kickstarter and share with your friends!

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Off Target


An experience


Needed
8 people
Random props, 10 per player (smaller is good)
Prewritten lists of items.
Playlist of muzak, played in the background with random control of the volume. Include at least one song played twice in a row (“Call Me Maybe” is great for this).


Roles
Four players are the cognizant, and control the mind.
Four players are the present, and control the body.


Setting
Players are people shopping at a Target [or equivalent shopping venue] for five things on their list. Each character will experience the dissociation of their mind from their body. When the parts of the character separate, the players will risk failure.


Play
There are ten things in the store as options to buy, and only five of them are on the characters’ lists. Characters must buy exactly those five items. When they enter the store, cognizant players flip a coin. On a heads, the character buys the first item on their list. On a tails, they miss it. After flipping, the cognizant steps one step back, away from the present. They must verbally communicate to the present no matter how far away they are, or how many people are shouting.


As they travel through the store, the players should converse about their day (in character or out). As each character finds an item, the cognizant will flip the coin to see if they buy it and take a step back. The present will pick up the item if appropriate. If the coin is ever dropped, the present will drop an item at random.


Play continues for no more than 15 flips. At the end, the cognizant tears up the list entirely and throws it away. The cognizant and the present come together and look at the items, to see if they matched their list to their remembrance.


Even if they did, they have no means to confirm.


– end –
It’s recommended to use the Script Change tools to ensure all players enjoy the game. It’s highly recommended to have a Wrap Meeting to go over the events of the game and decompress.

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Of Three Minds (x-posted Imaginary Funerals)

This post has been crossposted from the Imaginary Funerals blog that has since been discontinued. Posts are hosted on the Imaginary Funerals G+ page.


OF THREE MINDS (link to main host)

by +Brie Sheldon (originally posted July 7, 2014)

I sit at the table and roll the dice and don’t care how they land.

I sit at the table and play out stories and cry for real.

I sit at the table and my friends are my friends, are not my friends, are alien.

I sit at the table and break into bitty pieces when my character dies.

Playing games when you have bipolar disorder is really an experiment in experience. Sometimes I feel normal, and play normally. What is normal? I don’t know, it’s how I feel when I’m on the level. But, I respond to things appropriately, my emotions make sense, and I’m in something resembling a good mood. That means my characters act rationally and I have fun.

But then sometimes I’m manic, and I respond to everything erratically. I can’t focus, and I talk too much. Sometimes I’m over-excited so I am hyper positive. Other times I’m irritable and just want to kill things in game, so my calm characters become murderous and my good characters often find their way to evil, or something like it. I’m antagonistic to other players. My emotions are unusual and nonsensical. I laugh or cry at inappropriate times. I am confusing.

When I am depressed, it is the worst. There are two sides to depression for me: sadness and apathy. Sadness, I can deal with. I play tragic characters, in tragic situations, and eke out little bits of bittersweet happiness. I cry when my characters cry. I cling to my friends and companions in desperation – don’t let me go to where the sadness is. I struggle for happiness. But apathy… apathy is the hardest. Of all of the things I have experienced – fear, paranoia, mania, anger, elation – apathy takes away more than any of them. To take something that brings me joy and rip it away from me and leave me absently writing out character details and hoping that something will happen that is extreme, so maybe I finally feel something, it is painful. But it only lasts so long, and when it wears off, it is truly extreme. It either gives way to sadness that wearies me or mania that tears me apart.

And so I feel like I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The bomb to go off. Waiting for my mind to decide that this character is going to risk everything and get themselves killed because I’m having a bad day. Waiting for my mind to decide to blow up the plot, or leave the party, or burn down the fictional house. For me, this shows up in game as small aggressions – my characters might ruin other players’ plans, or I might unknowingly metagame, or I break the rules. I get a little twisted around on the split between fiction and reality. But in a game, I can leave the party, or burn down the house – and the divisions between game and life don’t really seem to matter anymore. The most important part is that my reality isn’t everyone else’s reality, and it’s entirely possible that my breaking will break the game.

It doesn’t matter which part of the cycle I’m in, I just know that the next step is unpredictable, and that it puts my games and my friendships at risk. I just have to wait and see.

I am a time bomb.



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I AM Mental

A slight diversion from our normal content, here. It’s semi-political, if my mental health is political. 

Content/Trigger Notice: mental health, depression, bipolar, and similar illnesses are all discussed/specific mentions of binge drinking, suicide, and self-destructive behavior. 

I was going to write about Are You Mental? and its Kickstarter when I got home today. I don’t need to, because there’s this excellent post by Kate Bullock, who is wonderful. I’m going to say shit anyway.

I know I do problematic things in relation to mental health and representation, I totally do, but I’m also extremely aware of how my literal crazy is heavily misrepresented by media and fiction crazy. See, here’s the thing. I live my crazy in public. I don’t think there has ever been a day when someone has asked me about my mental health and I’ve denied them an answer. I joke about it, occasionally, but not often. Often, I’m too busy with it. 

For reference, I have bipolar disorder, anxiety (generalized and social), mild obsessive/compulsive behaviors, issues with seasonal depression, a history of emotional abuse, and have many panic attacks.

Somewhere around 2013ish, I’m not sure when, I started a spiral into an incredibly tragic and damaging mixed/manic episode in which I destroyed friendships, professional relationships, had abusive relationships and may have been abusive myself, wasted more money than is reasonable, experienced massive physical health issues in part because of the irresponsible and self-destructive behavior, and I did a lot of wrong things, including some things that other people would never admit to.

If you ask me? I will try to tell you honestly what happened. There are some times I don’t really know. The funny thing about being so crazy is that you don’t always remember the worst things. Or the best things. Like, I remember drinking an entire bottle of vodka after my then-partner screamed and shook the dinner table for half the meal and tried to hit me. That was not my crazy, nope, but there it was, nestled in the situation my crazy put me in. I don’t remember seeing some of my best friends at conventions where I was so manic, so close to breaking, that I didn’t really sleep for almost 72 hours, and barely ate, and talked so fast I don’t even remember how I managed to talk. I crave those moments. Those moments, at a gaming con, as a gamer, where I was crazy.

I am well medicated, doing therapy, and thankfully with access to good healthcare to keep those things. (No worries, potential employers!) Not everyone has that. Even having it doesn’t mean you’re safe. Everyone who watches me on social media sees these ups and downs of my moods, my bleak moments of depression, my hypomania. Lithium is great, but it does not cure me.

If you sit down and play a game, and you play a mad character, a crazy character, oh, it’s so exciting, isn’t it? To be crazy? To be INSANE? You can do whatever you want! No matter what you do, it’s okay, you’re crazy! Hahaha OMG NOT REALLY.

My freelance career is mostly in tatters. I couldn’t do the work. I couldn’t’ focus. I got nothing done. I have some work – thanks to some very, very generous people – but I’m not a professional. I burned that flag to ashes and dust. I was not a nice person. I wasn’t respectful. Hell, I honestly feel like I lost tons of social relationships alone on this, in part because everyone thought I made someone cheat on their wife,* because that’s totally something I want on my resume.

I am very honest about my mental illnesses so that people can see, in reality, what crazy is. It is not laughing enthusiastically because things are so, so funny, it’s laughing because you actually can’t stop and you don’t know what’s wrong and if you stop you might die. It’s not feeling morose and sad, sitting at a windowsill dripping with raindrops, it’s sitting on your kitchen floor crying because you almost killed yourself, again, you might do it again, you might die. It’s not being nervous around new people you’ve never met before, it’s being afraid to go to your best friend’s house and if they see how much of a goddamn mess you are, you might die. Some of these are figurative. Some of them are extremely not.

Are You Mental? may be super fun and exciting and make a lot of people very happy. All I can say is that I am, actually, mental, and games like that make me feel like I should fucking die.

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Small addendum: 1) I am not asking for this to be paid via Patreon. That feels weird. 2) I did do consulting on the essays for mental health representation in the Lovecraftesque game by Becky Annison and Joshua Fox, and I’m available to do that for other games. Just comment and tag me and we’ll go from there.

*I literally have no desire to deal with people’s defenses of this or justifications. Just leave it alone, it’s better off dead.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Whose Stories We Tell

If you are making a thing about people who are not like you, you should talk to people who are like that.

I can’t count how many game ideas or fiction ideas I’ve dropped completely because I couldn’t do the research, didn’t have the time to interview, or couldn’t read accurate accounts. People’s stories matter so much. We should not fly off the cuff. We should not make assumptions based on media.

If you’re working on something about people other than you that those people could be emotionally affected by,* pause and 

Consider whether you should do it at all. 

If you’re still determined to do it, look for the people you are writing about or people similar to them. Ask them if they will share their experience. If they will not,

Consider whether you should continue.

If you’re still determined to do it, look for accurate and complete personal accounts. If you can’t find them, or they seem unreliable, or they are confirmed to be inaccurate,

Consider whether you should keep going.

If you’re still determined to do it, review the available media regarding those people or their experiences. If you can’t find them, or they seem unreliable, or they are confirmed to be inaccurate,

Stop.

That’s right. Stop. Take a break, return to it later. Think about why you want to tell these stories.

Ask yourself:

  • Are you willing to tell stories without people’s permission?
  • Are you willing to tell stories without accurate information?
  • Are you willing to tell stories that could be inaccurate or misleading?
  • Are you willing to tell stories that could damage reputations, risk people’s jobs, or their lives?
  • Are you willing to tell stories that ignore people’s identities, stereotype them, or marginalize them? 
  • Are you willing to lie?

If you answer yes to those questions, I say to you: Look at your life. Look at your choices.

Walk away.



*Sex, wars, religion, gender, queerness, identities, trauma, politics, etc. – all of these are important. Imagine if someone wrote a story about something you consider personal and emotional, like about your life personally, and told it wrong, and maybe even lied or misrepresented you in a way that stereotyped you or made you seem dangerous, evil, or just simply wrong. If it’s a topic like that? Think about it.


Note: When you consult people, compensate them fairly for their time and experience.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings: They Are Not What You Think

Content Warning: I’m going to talk about trigger warnings here, so if you don’t like hearing about that, click away now.

Hey humans! 

I want to talk about what content and trigger warnings are, and why they are important. Let’s first establish what these things are:

Trigger Warnings:

Trigger warnings are related to psychological triggers, like those from abuse and trauma. Triggers are things like sights, scents, sounds, and sensations that can produce flashbacks, painful memories, or anxiety/panic reactions in people who have experienced abuse and/or trauma.

For example: I have been sexually assaulted. When I watch movies, play games, or read books that have sexual assault in them, I can become panicked, stressed, and uncomfortable. This feeling can last anywhere from a minute or so to days or weeks. Some people I know are triggered by scents like smoke, sounds like yelling, or sights like specific violence in media or even something like being on snowy roads in winter.

Triggers are not something of cowardice. They are a psychological reaction to traumatic experiences of someone’s past. No one can define the severity of someone else’s trauma. Even when it comes to professionals, they can’t read someone’s mind. When someone is triggered, they can have complex and extreme reactions, or just some stress and a desire to remove themselves from the situation.

Content Warnings:

Content warnings have some things in common with trigger warnings, but they are not the same. We see content warnings all the time – at the movies (Rated R for language, violence, and sex!), on TV (This presentation may contain material that could upset viewers – just like Law and Order), and on video games (Rated M for content). They are not new, and anyone who is surprised by them may have been living under a rock.

Content warnings are not in regards to people’s mental health or put together to avoid panic attacks or flashbacks. Content warnings are there so people can prepare, or decide what they should let their kids see. They are not censorship, and they are not any restriction on media. They are there to guide consumers to media they want, or away from media they don’t want.

Common Objections:

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are for cowards/babies/wusses/immature people!”
Nope! Trigger warnings are there to prevent people with past trauma from experiencing further trauma. Believe it or not, a lot of people suffer from trauma, and it is not something that you can just “tough it out” most of the time. Soldiers who return from war with PTSD (diagnosed or not) can have trouble because of triggers. People who were abused as children can have triggers. Not just soldiers have PTSD, and people of all ages have experienced trauma in their life. This is why trigger warnings are valuable. When you expose someone to a trigger, it has a psychological impact. In some ways, it is like an allergy. If someone were allergic to peanuts, would you tell them to eat peanuts anyway, because their allergy is just “all in their head”?

“Trigger warnings and content warnings are censorship!”
Nope! Slapping a rating or a simplified list of the content of media on the package doesn’t censor anything. The media is still produced, and available for consumption. It might be limited by age, but parents can buy for their kids, so that isn’t a significant issue. People who are triggered by the content might be upset that the product exists – and that’s okay! They can talk to other people about it and say, “hey, if you don’t like this stuff, don’t buy this thing!” and maybe other people won’t buy it. Maybe they still will. People can make choices!

“If people see trigger or content warnings that have stuff they don’t like in them, they won’t buy it or consume it!”
Not necessarily true! While everyone, regardless of their issues with triggers, might decide not to consume a product, there are plenty of people who still will. People can, and often will, still consume media that has objectionable material in it, and that has triggers for them. Seeing a trigger warning isn’t always “That’s not for me!” It might be “I can watch this when I am having a good day” or “Maybe I will save this until when I am not in a depression” or “If I get a friend to watch this with me, I’ll be great” or even “Maybe if someone tells me what part to skip, I can enjoy the rest of the thing!” Also, we are not in the business of forcing people to buy things. No one has to buy what you are selling. It’s not like creators walk beside people in the store just putting things in their cart and telling them that it’s something they should watch, even if they don’t like it. That’s like forcing people who like action movies to watch Oscar bait.

“People will abuse them to get out of work/school/responsibilities!”
Totally! And you know what? That’s okay. It’s okay because those people will be few. It’s okay because people use excuses to get out of work/school/responsibilities already. It’s okay because the people who use trigger warnings and content warnings for their own wellbeing and awareness will, a lot of the time, still take the classes or go to work or fulfill their responsibilities. People abusing systems is nothing new, and we shouldn’t put other people through difficult and often dangerous situations just because some people are jerks.

ETA: “You can’t possibly list all of the triggers, how am I supposed to know what they are?”
Well, for one, you can’t list all of them. That’s okay. You don’t have to list them all, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t list any. Part of the point of trigger warnings is demonstrating that you are aware of your audience and willing to listen to them. You can try to focus on the common ones: graphic violence, sexual assault and abuse, domestic/child abuse, and rape. From that, most people can get an idea of whether it’s their kind of media. Trigger and content warnings are not an all or nothing tool. You can talk to your audiences or potential audiences, you can check around in forums and on social media to see what your potential audiences might have issues with. Even if you don’t do that, you can still be considerate even with limited information.


Why are these things important?

A lot of reasons, actually! I have covered a lot of them already, but I’ll summarize.

  • Many people have been affected by trauma in their lives, and it is important to provide support for them to feel safe and still able to enjoy their lives in any way we can.
  • A lot of people prefer to consume different types of media for many different reasons. Some have kids, some like to compartmentalize their media, and some people just don’t enjoy all types of content.
  • We should respect psychological issues just like we do physical issues. They are valid, and denying people the ability to avoid things that hurt them is, honestly, just rude.
  • Everyone should have choices in their media! Everyone is different, and we shouldn’t force everyone to enjoy one thing just because the majority enjoys it, or because not liking it makes them seem judgmental. 

How can this be applied?

In school, it’s simple. Put a note on your syllabus about what kind of content will be discussed in class, what materials you’ll be using, and how to contact instructors to either change classes, consider alternate materials or assignments, or help to figure out a good way to go through the classes without putting students in a position where they don’t feel safe in class.

In media, it’s pretty easy. Create what you want, but put a note on it. It can be simple: “This film includes rape, sexual assault, and sexualized violence.” It can also be more complex: “This game has mechanics that allow for PC mind control, which are not optional and central to the game’s premise.” Either of these options are great, and importantly, they are way better than nothing. If you are planning a convention game, you can put notes in your description, or let the players know when they arrive at the table, and offer them the opportunity to step out.
What about in games where we aren’t using a script? What if something happens in game that wasn’t planned?
This is more difficult! The cool thing is that it’s not impossible! One of the first things you can do is establish boundaries with your players so that if there is something completely off the table, you know in advance and can avoid that material. Another thing is that you can provide tools like Script Change and the X Card. These tools give you either the option to skip content altogether, or to back up and go through a scene again with new content, fade to black, or pause for a moment to evaluate players’ comfort with moving forward. It gives players more control of the content, as well as helping them to feel comfortable. It is awesome because sometimes it makes players even more likely to try adventurous content they may not have otherwise tried.
I want to emphasize: You can still create whatever you want to create. The key is to allow those who aren’t interested in your content to safely avoid it, and give those who want to enjoy your content an easy way to navigate. People have more fun doing the things that they enjoy, and when they are stuck doing things they don’t want to, it drags everyone down. Trigger warnings and content warnings help people find content that they can enjoy, and can encourage them to try new things.
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In the end, trigger warnings and content warnings are a great way to support other people in trying new things, expanding their boundaries, and exploring, without leaving them with no safety net, and without ignoring the importance of their mental and emotional health. Some people might not care about this at all, and that’s okay. However, I think that kind of attitude definitely shines a light on who is likely to consume their media, and whether they are the kind of person those who have experienced trauma are willing to trust. For me, there’s no question: I want everyone to have fun – not just the people who don’t care.


This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Insanity in Horror and Lovecraftian RPGs

A friend who I don’t know if they want to be tagged was discussing mental illness and insanity mechanics in RPGs with Lovecraftian themes on G+, and I wanted to share my original response, and kind of give some more thoughts.

I honestly think that part of the experience of trauma and disconnection with reality that is represented by insanity mechanics in games is a combination of personal suffering brought on by the exposure to a greater existence and comprehension skewed by denial.

I don’t know if any of you have experienced real life paranoia or psychotic experiences. It is, from personal experience, completely terrifying. When it happened to me, I had to cope with the things that I knew for sure were not real only because of how unreal they were, and then the things that I could not tell if they were real because how very real they could be. I imagine that the true horror of Lovecraftian exposure would be that the things that definitely could not be real are actually definitely real, and knowing that, and feeling as though you cannot trust your own mind to tell the difference between what you see as “normal” or even “unusual” is now corrupted by the extreme and phantasmagoric. When the unreality is the new reality, what then is truly real?

For me, the experience of paranoia and psychosis may definitely have been unique to me, so I don’t mean to speak for everyone.

It was the oddest thing. I have some idea of what triggered the paranoia to seep in, but it’s not entirely clear. What I do know is that I woke up after a series of nightmares and found that the mere idea of walking outside the house was nearly impossible to grasp. I knew, I just knew that if I walked outside and, I knew would happen, someone would see me, and they would burst into flames. It’s completely irrational. It defies all logic and is impossible. But I knew it. It was true, and I was so frightened. It was even deeper than that, in that I knew people could hear what I was thinking. I could see in their minds what they thought of me, and how vile a creature I was. When I looked in the mirror I did not look like what I previously had thought I looked like, and until the episode ended, I couldn’t tell what was real and what I just knew.

The hallucinations I experienced were sometimes silly and simple. My cats talked to me and told me about games they wanted to design and screenplays they wanted to write. Others were not as good, like the movement out of the corner of my eye that became a car crashing into the side of my vehicle while I was driving. Others, they were unbelievable and I denied them, because they were things I knew couldn’t be real, but god, they felt real.

When I played Black Stars Rise, one of the breaks that was given to me was a card with a man of shadows who followed me. I laughed when I got it, because I knew that man. For literally my entire life, I have had experiences that lasted long periods of time when the shadow man followed me. He never hurt me, he never did anything to me, but he was there. Watching. It was something that was so startlingly real that I could perfectly imagine it in-game, and it made me think a lot about how we translate real-life phenomena into games.

It can or may be very easy for someone with good mental health or less extreme mental health issues to portray mental illness in a character and portray something like mental illness in a character. For me, when I am having a bad time of it, even something like receiving the paranoia or hallucinations cards in Eldrich Horror makes me anxious, and watching other players portray characters who are “insane” or “mad” can be very difficult.

Working to comprehend the differences between natural chemical imbalances, trauma-induced chemical imbalances, and otherworldly trauma mental impacts is something that I think needs to be worked on. Some games have approached it (one in particular, Lovecraftesque, I consulted on), and others have chosen to avoid it altogether, and I’m not condemning any specific game or way of handling it.

However, we really do need to understand that part of what is experienced in Lovecraftian RPGs is trauma. It is not simply the otherworldly experience, or the defiance of reality. While I agree with myself in my original statement up near the top, I honestly don’t think that encompasses the entire experience. Traumatic events in RPGs are often either dismissed or responded to with extremes, like flashbacks or violent outbursts. While those things can be response to trauma, they are not the only response to trauma. Sometimes it results in having triggers, where certain things cause an emotional response – anything from anxiety, to a panic attack, to a physiological response, to rage, to violence. I personally discourage people from playing characters who respond to trauma with extreme responses unless they are willing to play it respectfully. I don’t like to see players doing the comedy crazy. If you play a mentally ill character, it should not be for laughs, because those are _real people_ you are mocking. And that is my only real problem with insanity mechanics: they separate us from understanding the differences between the impacts of otherworldly exposure.

Here are the three ways of portraying characters in horror or Lovecraftian RPGs with complicated mental and/or emotional states that I think make sense:
Characters who start out as having a mental illness or mental difference: these are characters who have depression or bipolar disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder or even autism. Their behavior may seem abnormal to other characters and that’s okay, if you’re playing it with respect it can add a lot to the story, because, like in my case, how would I know whether what I was seeing is a hallucination or a delusion or if it was actually real? Is the obsession with researching and cataloging unnatural events really influence by an unnatural power, or is it a natural compulsion? These are things you can explore, but I definitely advise doing at least a little bit of research before you do it, or taking the time to think about how you would feel if someone had these issues was there.
Characters who have experienced trauma and as a result have mental or emotional response: these are characters who, whether in the course of game or as part of their background have had a traumatic experience either directly related or indirectly related to the horrific subjects at hand. This is a point that is extremely delicate. Post-traumatic stress can be represented in so many different ways, and there are a few important things to think about. One, you need to make sure that it ties together. The behavior is not necessarily logical, but you don’t want someone who was kidnapped by a cult to have panic attacks because they are in open spaces, unless you have more detailed justification. There are certain words or experiences that might trigger someone’s issues with PTSD or trauma, like with victims of sexual assault, but that trauma can present in multiple ways: shutting down and not responding, panicking, emotional response (crying or distress), or in some cases, yes, violence. The final response is not nearly as common as we see represented. Trauma responses are something that definitely have their place in horror and Lovecraftian games, but they should be handled with care. You never know who shares the table, and who you might hurt. 
Finally, characters who experience otherworldly trauma: these characters, in my opinion, are somewhat different than the previous category because they have a different type of experience that actually may be stacked on top of typical trauma. The otherworldly trauma is kind of like a combination of the previous two, where you experience something so unreal, so disconnected from your reality, that you now question your very existence, and it consumes you. This is the kind of thing where a character might see into the void, and when they return, they are no longer the same. Maybe their behavior will be unusual, or they respond irrationally to normal stimuli, but they are not “crazy” nor have they experienced what we normally would explain as “trauma”, because it’s not a natural trauma. It is something that they may not be able to explain or even understand themselves. This also needs to be treated carefully because it can infringe upon both of the other types of character behavior and representation. Be mindful of what natural responses to trauma and mental illness people have, and try to show yours as different. Perhaps they do have hallucinations, but because they have seen the reality of the void, they don’t react as though they are troubled by them because they are confused and it is unnatural, but instead they have a reaction of discontent and frustration – less “Is this real? What do I do?” and more “Why do you plague me? I wish you weren’t real.”
This is not a perfect way to do it, I know. I think it’s just one of the ways to look at the situation and a way that people can think in more detail about the themes we work with in horror and especially things like Lovecraftian fiction in games. If you choose to play a character who has been scarred by their experiences, think very carefully about how you’re doing it, why you’re doing it, and how best you can represent it without making other people feel like you’re treating them like a joke or like something to be feared. Even the mad have feelings, and darkness only gets darker when you lose trust in those around you.
 

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.