[MUD-Dev] Re: Attributes: Sanity

[Holly Sommer]

On Fri, 15 May 1998, Travis S. Casey wrote:

> I think I'm not communicating well here... sane people may deny the
> reality of what they sense, but they do not normally deny that they are
> sensing it, and they search for explanations of *why* they are sensing
> something that they don't believe could be real.

OK, this makes more sense :)

> To give an example, if someone is walking down the street and sees a 
> dragon, they're not going to simply decide, "Oh, there can't be a dragon
> there, I'll just ignore it."  They're going to wonder, "What the hell is
> that?  It looks like a dragon, but it can't be."  And then they're going
> to try to figure out what it could be.

That is, *if* they see it. The sanity is proposed to be the roll that 
determines that "if." Once it is revealed, then it's up to the player to 
decide if that was a hallucination or something real. Heck, we might even 
add in random hallucinatory encounters, to spice things up ;)

> Or, to give another example, if I'm fully awake and see something that
> looks like a ghost in a dark room, I'm not just going to ignore it -- at
> the very least, I'm going to take a good look into the room to make sure
> I'm not seeing something.  If I *still* see it, I'm going to observe it
> more closely and see if I can figure out what it is.

Again, this is an "if" situation, under our gaming system (proposed). The 
only folks who would be guaranteed to see it (provided we don't give the 
dead/fantastical the choice of whether they can be seen/heard) are the 
clarivoyant types I mentioned earlier.

> The only sort of people who are likely to simply ignore something that
> they see on the basis that it's impossible are those who hallucinate
> regularly and know that they do.  And yes, it is possible to be
> hallucinatory and know that you are.  I tend to hallucinate when I'm
> sleep-deprived.  However, since I know this, if I see someone out of the
> corner of my eye when I'm very tired, but they're gone when I look towards
> them, I don't seek any other explanation.  The same is true if I hear
> whispering voices talking to me -- I *know* that I tend to hallucinate
> these things, so I know that there's probably nothing there to
> investigate.

*nod*

> I think part of the problem in this case is that you're oversimplifying --
> you're creating a "sanity" which has only one axis.  In the real world,
> it's quite possible for someone to have hallucinations but otherwise be
> sane.

Of course :) Even the most sane person (in our system) could see 
something weird - if it were totally bulletproof, then sanity would never 
fall. It's just far more unlikely, while your sanity is high.

-Holly

--
MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.