[MUD-Dev] Re: Attributes: Sanity

[Travis S. Casey]

On Mon, 11 May 1998, Holly Sommer wrote:

> I had written:
> : Too much loss of sanity, however, results in negative effects like 
> : paranoia and hallucinations - it tends to lower one's credibility and 
> : reliability in the eyes of others.

Small question:  Did you get this idea from the _Call of Cthulhu_ paper
RPG, or did you invent it independently?

[much cut]

> This is an example of a reality check that failed for Newman :) Now, it 
> was harmless, as this was just a combat in her mind, but if she thought 
> that perhaps someone had told her the directions to a secret treasure, 
> and she drew up a map for its location, to lead the party onward... well, 
> that could have bad results for EVERYONE... or it could be good results, 
> if indeed it was a leprechaun which had told her - see, as someone with 
> low sanity, Newman would see and hear a valid leprechaun, but her party 
> members who are 100% sane wouldn't... and might miss out on the pot of 
> gold entirely :) It's a risk dealing with someone who is a bit low on 
> sanity, but the things they can see and hear might very well be real... 
> you can't tell (but then again, neither can they, sometimes) which is 
> real and which is not :)

Why should complete sanity prevent someone from seeing and hearing a
leprechaun?  Denying the evidence of one's senses is a mark of *insanity*,
not of sanity.

Another name might be more appropriate, or it might be appropriate to
break this into two attributes -- one which gives the ability to see
fantastic creatures, and one in which low values cause hallucinations.
With this split, it would become possible for there to be some people who
can reliably see fantastic creatures without confounding hallucinations,
some who just hallucinate, and some who do both.  For extra fun, this
also means that someone who was reliable, and whose visions characters had
come to trust, could start to go insane.

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