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Hard Space Redux
- Thread starter Golan2072
- Start date
I'll use these for random input in creating the Hard Space colonies. This helps me create dozens of interesting and varies colonies.
Indeed! Mi-Go Brain Cylinder FTW!
Some initial thoughts about Insanity
Note that all of this is very initial, and subject to changes. Potentially significant changes.
1) You start with 0 Insanity, plus twice your Occult skill. After being exposed to supernatural horrors, even after you recover, your minimum Insanity equals twice your Occult skill, and cannot go below 1.
2) Your maximum Insanity equals your END+INT scores. Note that I'm not very sure about this rule, as both characteristics do not represent mental resilience very well (though END seems to include it), and I do like the idea of very smart people being, in some cases, mentally fragile. But END+INT seems like a good approximation.
3) Encountering the supernatural, the Mythos or - less often - "mundane" horrors, forces Insanity checks. These are END throws. An insanity throw may be noted, for example, as END 8+/0/1d3, which means that you must throw 8+ and add your END DM (as in MGT/CE) to succeed; you don't gain Insanity if you succeed; and you suffer 1d3 insanity if you fail.
4) Studying Mythos texts, learning magic, and in some cases using magic increases your Insanity.
5) Misjumps, or EVA while in Jump Space, may cause Insanity. Resurrection as a Cyborg definitely incurs serious Insanity.
6) If you roll “snake eyes” (a “natural” 2) on your Insanity check, or gain 3 or more points of Insanity within a single encounter, the character gains Temporary Affliction, which lasts 1D rounds. This includes things such as fainting, running away in terror, psychosomatic blindness, or a violent outbreak against all in sight.
7) When the character’s Insanity score reaches half of their maximum Insanity (rounded up), the character suffers a Permanent Affliction such as phobias, compulsions, random bursts of anger, or amnesia.
10) If and when a character’s Insanity score reaches its maximum, the character becomes a permanently insane NPC, unless the Referee decrees that advanced psychiatric care (when available) can restore the character to a semblance of sanity.
11) Characters may reduce their Insanity in various ways:
* Successfully completing an adventure against the Mythos reduces Insanity by 1 point.
* Every year of convalescence (non-adventuring life) reduces Insanity by 1 point.
* Every week in psychiatric hospitalization reduces Insanity by 1 point.
12) 1D months in psychiatric hospitalization may remove a single Permanent Affliction.
13) Lethe - a highly illegal, addictive psychotropic drug costing Cr1000 per dose - removed 1D Insanity immediately upon injection. However, throw END 4+ (DM-4 per additional dose used in the same month) when injecting it; failure (or “snake eyes”) means addiction. An addict must inject Lethe once per week, or suffer 1 point of Insanity and lose one point of END. END fully recovers upon renewed injection. Reaching zero END means death from withdrawal. Finding a supplier for Lethe is a Streetwise 6+ task, and this is only available at Starport C or better where there is a good market for the drug. Suppliers have 1D doses of Lethe in stock. Lethe addiction cannot be cured.
Note that all of this is very initial, and subject to changes. Potentially significant changes.
1) You start with 0 Insanity, plus twice your Occult skill. After being exposed to supernatural horrors, even after you recover, your minimum Insanity equals twice your Occult skill, and cannot go below 1.
2) Your maximum Insanity equals your END+INT scores. Note that I'm not very sure about this rule, as both characteristics do not represent mental resilience very well (though END seems to include it), and I do like the idea of very smart people being, in some cases, mentally fragile. But END+INT seems like a good approximation.
3) Encountering the supernatural, the Mythos or - less often - "mundane" horrors, forces Insanity checks. These are END throws. An insanity throw may be noted, for example, as END 8+/0/1d3, which means that you must throw 8+ and add your END DM (as in MGT/CE) to succeed; you don't gain Insanity if you succeed; and you suffer 1d3 insanity if you fail.
4) Studying Mythos texts, learning magic, and in some cases using magic increases your Insanity.
5) Misjumps, or EVA while in Jump Space, may cause Insanity. Resurrection as a Cyborg definitely incurs serious Insanity.
6) If you roll “snake eyes” (a “natural” 2) on your Insanity check, or gain 3 or more points of Insanity within a single encounter, the character gains Temporary Affliction, which lasts 1D rounds. This includes things such as fainting, running away in terror, psychosomatic blindness, or a violent outbreak against all in sight.
7) When the character’s Insanity score reaches half of their maximum Insanity (rounded up), the character suffers a Permanent Affliction such as phobias, compulsions, random bursts of anger, or amnesia.
10) If and when a character’s Insanity score reaches its maximum, the character becomes a permanently insane NPC, unless the Referee decrees that advanced psychiatric care (when available) can restore the character to a semblance of sanity.
11) Characters may reduce their Insanity in various ways:
* Successfully completing an adventure against the Mythos reduces Insanity by 1 point.
* Every year of convalescence (non-adventuring life) reduces Insanity by 1 point.
* Every week in psychiatric hospitalization reduces Insanity by 1 point.
12) 1D months in psychiatric hospitalization may remove a single Permanent Affliction.
13) Lethe - a highly illegal, addictive psychotropic drug costing Cr1000 per dose - removed 1D Insanity immediately upon injection. However, throw END 4+ (DM-4 per additional dose used in the same month) when injecting it; failure (or “snake eyes”) means addiction. An addict must inject Lethe once per week, or suffer 1 point of Insanity and lose one point of END. END fully recovers upon renewed injection. Reaching zero END means death from withdrawal. Finding a supplier for Lethe is a Streetwise 6+ task, and this is only available at Starport C or better where there is a good market for the drug. Suppliers have 1D doses of Lethe in stock. Lethe addiction cannot be cured.
In a universe with the Mythos, absolute statements may only be temporary. However, it is YTU so what you say goes.
It would be an interesting series of or just a long scenario going out there to find a substance, cure or process that could overcome a Lethe addiction.
On another note, in a CoC game I had a character with some problems after a few encounters with mythos creatures. In order to deal with it, the ref and I came up with a rule whereby my character could get a Sanity boost in % that represented his level of inebriation. That % though was equally knocked off his skills. So it became a case of: Want to deal with these otherworldly horrors and not lose your marbles? Then drink up lads.
You could try a similar sort of thing here - the beneficial modifier to insanity tests would also be a detrimental modifier in all others.
Lethe is the part of the above rules I'm least sure about.
The considerations are:
1. It should be powerful enough to be worth its cost.
2. It should be dangerous enough so that using it will be a tough choice.
3. Addiction should get characters into trouble and be dangerous enough to fulfill at least part of point #2. Plus, the haunted mercenary injecting Lethe to forget the horrors he/she saw is an image I have in mind about this setting.
And I do agree that finding a cure could be a campaign goal, but you should watch out to avoid making addiction easily enough to cure that it won't be a major danger to the character.
I like the "if you're drunk, you get a bonus to throws vs. the Mythos" vibe of this, though in the cyberpunk genre this is as likely to be designer drugs rather than booze, or in addition to booze. Maybe this will be the way Lethe works rather than reduce sanity after the fact?
I think I'll write my own magic rules. Psionics are quite safe, and lack the summoning-centric nature of Lovecraftian magic.
I'll detail the proposed system later on. In a nutshell anybody can attempt to learn spells by studying Mythos tomes; anybody can attempt to cast any spell. And there are no spell points or "hard" daily "spell slots".
HOWEVER:
1. Learning spells has an Insanity cost. So does studying the tomes to begin with. Learning also requires an INT throw to successfully learn; failure means you need to repeat studying it, again - with an Insanity cost.
2. Spells take time to cast; in many cases, hours.
3. Spellcasting requires an Occult skill throw. Fail by 4 or more "points" or roll "snake eyes", you'll get the spell's integral "critical failure" result. The stronger the spell - the nastier the critical failure.
4. The really powerful spells damage your sanity on failure AND/OR on success! (Commune with Cthulhu at your own peril!!!!!!!!)
So you, you can technically attempt to cast any number of spells a day as you'd like, and a totally clueless layman can try to learn and cast magic (with the usual DM-3 Unskilled Penalty), but the limiting factor is the risk you're taking (a very, very powerful limiting factor), as well as casting time. Cast as many times as you dare - at your own peril!
This, of course, leads to all sorts of sorcerous disasters (read: adventures), as some utterly unskilled fool is just bound to try casting that 6th Circle earth-shattering summoning spell, unleashing something horrid upon the local colony!
Can a computer cast spells?
My gut instinct says "no", but who knows - biomechanical contraptions might be able of this. Lots of possibilities for covert research trying to create a mage-puter. With disastrous results. Might end up looking like a (much) grittier, Lovecraftier version of the DOOM computer game, with cyborg daemons! Prepare your chainsaw.
Interesting question.
Most people have at least simple implants allowing neural AR (Augmented Reality) interfacing with almost any device, with data projected as an overlay on the field of vision through the optic nerve. Such implants also serve as a "cybermouse", allowing basic control of computers by thought.*
These replaced the earlier AR glasses and contacts which, in turn, replaced the smartphone in the 2030's.
For more intense work, people in 2120 still use keyboards and wide, very thin screens.
___
* We're quite getting there in real life, though unlike our TL8, at TL10 the device is highly miniaturized and wireless.
You might want to check out Stross' The Laundry Files. Magic is a type of applied computation, so equations run on computers are orders of magnitude better than the classic "bell, book, and candle".
Would you say terminals & laptops here sort of look like this?:
A Day Made of Glass, Part 1: https://youtu.be/6Cf7IL_eZ38
A Day Made of Glass, Part 2: https://youtu.be/X-GXO_urMow
Do you think holographic interfaces are a thing or they wouldn't fit the overall look you think?
In addition, since the UN & Euro-American blocs are sort of rivals here, is the currency of known space different in each area of i fluence?
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Wouldn't that depend on the nature of spells in a particular setting? Do they require specific material components, or just some "magical" input? Does any "magical" input come from a rare or restricted source? If so then how does a caster get access to that source: random access, training, enlightenment, etc?
Indeed.
In some 'Mythos' stories, magic is arguably not 'magic' but Clarke's Law in effect.
It may involve bizarre math and alien geometry.
That suggest to me the possibility of computers either casting spells or at least assisting.
I was only halfway joking about Virus.
Killer AI driven nutty by Mythos corruption might fit Golan's setting.
Or maybe not.
Couldn't ppssibly attempting to use computers to analyze or record Mythos spells cause them to blow up or meltdown or something?
The Stross' novels computers used for computational magic can become possessed...
