Sanity loss in horror games

The best detailed solution is in Unknown Armies and Nemesis: The Madness Meter. It tracks sanity in different dimension (violence, helplessness, self/morals, supernatural, and in UA isolation) and characters can get cowered (failed) and desensitized (hardened) with every roll. It presents a nice readout of a characters stress level in any given situation, and it allows the GM to tie effects to a number of certain notches in certain or all tracks. UA lets it affect base stats in the new edition.

Another way is CoC's sanity. The new edition really condenses a lot of keeper lore into written out rules and the sanity stat is not a mere number that counts down, even if you don't know what you're doing. At thresholds of san loss effects kick in. These definitely affect the story and potentially the character sheet. The second page of the sheet is mostly background. It seems like flavor at first, but with san loss the keeper can now change details.
>That study where you were always punished as a child? It's now the place where you first realized you are special and different than these sheep-people.
This loss of reality can go further. The keeper may describe a scene /wrong/ to the character and the player may risk additional san loss by rolling against it if they suspect it is going on. But why should they? But the best effect is a bout of madness. The player loses control of the character and the keeper doesn't have to explain what happens. The character can wake up naked in the woods and covered in blood not their own. Or they can go off to get some gas and return hours later with a torn backpack full of grenades, an AR-15 without ammo, a combat knife, and two bullet wounds, and no idea how they acquired those.

In DRYH you get more madness powers the more madness dice you roll. But madness dice don't go away, you have to keep rolling with them. And the more madness dice in the pool the easier it is for madness to dominate the scene.

>>48606255
Thanks dude, DRYH sounds better and better the more I hear about it. I guess some variant DnD rules put me off CoC's sanity meter where it seemed just like a stat, not unlike hp which just ticked down. The way unknown armies do it seems really interesting but too complex for a rules light system we'll be using. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm under impression that rules heavy systems would make the player care too much about the mechanical aspect without actually helping him/her immerse in the story at hand. Any stories, personal experiences with the systems you mentioned. Also, thanks for taking your time to write that down famalam

>>48606368
Not that anon but UA is a very rules light game and its sanity system isn't really complex at all if you're actually looking at is as it's presented in the rulebook.

You do you though.

>>48606431
More reading, less talking then!

>>48606368
Nemesis is very similar to UA (from what I've heard, never read UA) and it is rules light as shit. It isn't really complicated. At least I don't remember it being complicated, been some time since I read through it. But Nemesis is free so you can also get legal free source inspiration.

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>>48606505

here hear

>>48606368
>DRYH sounds better and better the more I hear about it
>>48605444

>>48606544
That doesn't work super well with the 7th edition.

>>48609198
I still think postmodernism is the dumbest name for any -ism. Only a bit worse than modernism.

>>48606544
>read page 144
Of the 6th edition? The guide to scale for sanity loss? What's that got to do with us all being doomed or giant alien beetle colonies?

>>48606255
>>48606368
I recently read up on Vampire the Dark Ages where they do something similar to UA for morality. The big change there is that the different moral stats are only important for your character depending on their philosophy, so you choose a few of them and only those will be rolled with and influencing you. Maybe apply something like that to the UA dimensions? Have a very extroverted character be very susceptible to isolation and helplessness, and have stuff like violence happen more at the GMs discretion?

>>48616526
The Madness Meter doesn't tell you what to do. It can outline levels of stress, but it never suggests any action. It's more about how the character appears to others. The only exception is a failed roll which is immediately followed by a short fight/flight/freeze reaction.

>>48616599
Well neither does the morality in Vampire really. It is more used as a way to see how well you can rationalize events and actions around you (or your own, such as you killing someone), and to see if you lose yourself more to the Beast or not. At most the morality will illustrate how you feel after the action, whether or not you feel remorse or self-loathing, whether or not you desentisize yourself or break down.

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>>48606544
In 5.6 it's a page about Yithians.

This really wasn't planned well.

But for ultimate Mythos doom maybe the stars come right and the Sleeper wakes?

I like me some Laundry. We know CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is coming, we're part of it. But we can't tell anyone, because that would make it much worse. I never thought the setting needed the pyramid on Death Plateau. It's nice, and the White Elephant surveillance certainly manages to fascinate. But it's really a thinly veiled Cthulhu homage and like the original it would have greatly benefited from not being approached so directly.

>>48611207
It's knowingly ironic, just like the -ism itself

Rather than sanity points, I'd try to implement a system based on character anxiety and morale levels. Intense anxiety does tend to override a person's agency, because it invokes physiological changes that the person can't necessarily suppress. For instance, panic attacks may cause people to hyperventilate and black out, or may basically cripple them for the duration that the attack lasts. You can have particularly disturbing events thrust characters into these kinds of episodes and severely diminish their ability scores as a result. Maybe over time, characters start to adapt to all these phenomena and suffer attacks less frequently, or with less intensity.

As for morale, that would tie in with anxiety as well. Characters might instinctively flee from eldritch abominations, unless they've become accustomed to their presence.

>>48622899
It's good, but it overlooks disgust, which is a useful tool.

See: Lovecraft and King. I think The Lurking Fear is a good example for the former.