Madness Meters for World of Darkness

From Gothpoodle

Latest revision as of 20:29, 4 November 2014

Converted from Unknown Armies for Kult for World of Darkness.

Sanity Checks

Sanity checks require a Resolve + Composure - Intensity roll. Success gives a Hardened dot and failure gives a Failure dot and a choice between fight, flight, or freeze. Dramatic failure also adds physical changes and/or projection.

Magic

Skill in magical Lores is limited by the character's highest number of dots in Hardening or Failure for a specific track: Death (Violence), Dream (Isolation), Madness (Helplessness), Passion (Self), and Time & Space (Unnatural).

Violence Meter

Intensity

1. Be attacked with a weapon, witness an act of torture, get shot at random, or be tortured briefly.
2. Kill someone in a fight or be present at a massive battle with hundreds of deaths on both sides.
3. Perform an act of torture or kill a helpless target.
4. Get tortured for an hour or longer or witness a brutal mass execution.
5. Watch a loved one tortured to death.

Failures

1. At this level, you're superficially fine. Perhaps you're a little edgy whenever a knfie in the room happens to be pointing your direction.
2. You are very aware of violence, both as it exists and as it is depicted. It strikes you as somewhat odd that so many people don't realize that movie violence is very different from real violence.
3. You get alert or uneasy every time you see blood, even badly faked blood in a horror flick or when someone cuts a rare steak. Sometimes you have nightmares about violence you've witnessed.
4. You instinctively take a defensive posture whenever there's a loud noise or raised voice nearby. Your nightmares are frequent, and you have a hard time looking at anyone without imagining (if briefly) what you would do at that moment if they attacked you.
5. Insanity.

Hardening

1. Superficially, you're much like everyone else.
2. Your attitude towards violence shows on your face when the subject comes up in conversation, unless you work to keep it hidden. It might be intensity, or nervousness, or just a grim silence, depending on how you cope.
3. Violence is a common feature of your mental landscape. Unlike less-hardened people, you show little reaction at all when it is discussed or depicted in fiction.
4. Your callousness shows in your every word and expression unless you make a continuous effort to suppress it. Again, the exact tone is up to you: it could be bitter and harsh, feverish and vehement, or icy cold. (+1 Intimidate, -1 Empathy)
5. It's not hard for people to realize that the deepest horrors of torture and brutality have become commonplace to you, unless you work very, very hard to keep it hidden--which means you come off as tense and guarded all the time. The death of others, or yourself, has no intrinsic significance. You might prefer to stay alive, but it's only a matter of personal taste. Life, in the abstract, doesn't mean anything. (+2 Intimidate, -2 Empathy)

Unnatural Meter

Intensity

1. Experience a preternaturally strong deja vu, see a creature or machine that cannot logically exist, or realize that a vision you had of the future came true.
2. See convincing proof that 2+2 does not equal 4 or be successfully attacked with magic.
3. See someone you know killed by magick, without any visible or "rational" cause or have a conversation with a loved one whom you know is dead.
4. See an animal with human features or the dead rise.
5. Realize that the reason you and your husband of ten years have never had children is that he's not really a human being.

Failures

1. At this level it's pretty hard to tell. Perhaps you become a little superstitious--reading your horoscope daily, watching for "lucky" numbers, avoiding cracks in the sidewalk, etc.
2. You have a few nightmares, and you are suspicious of and/or fascinated by occult and religious books, places, paraphernalia, and people.
3. You frequently feel like you're being watches, even when there's no one around. Sometimes it seems like you hear voices in "white noise"--sounds like the wind in the trees, the sloshing of a washing machine, or the noises of traffic.
4. The nightmares are frequent, and often you don't know you're dreaming until you jerk awake. Sometimes you feel like there's someone--or something--watching you and you can almost see it out of the corner of your eye. When you whip your head around, there's nothing there.
5. Insanity.

Hardening

1. There's little to distinguish you from the average person, except perhaps a tendency to snort derisively when someone mentions their "intuitions".
2. You tend to listen very closely and intently when someone discusses the paranormal or supernatural, trying to figure out if they know something or if they're just talking trash.
3. You now know and accept that there are vast, incomprehensible forces governing the universe. It strikes you as odd when people act as if they're in control of their lives: you know better.
4. Things that average people consider "meaningless coincidences" strike you as deeply, intensely funny because you see the connections that they do not. You may develop a reputation for laughing inappropriately. (+1 Occult, -1 Science)
5. You are no longer surprised by violations of ordinary logic. Everything is "normal" to you--talking foliage, spontaneous combustion, and stigmata are as ordinary and reasonable as cats, dogs, and rain. (+2 Occult, -2 Science)

Helplessness Meter

Intensity

1. Unintentionally humiliate yourself in public, get fired from a job you love, or fail at something when it's imperative that you succeed.
2. Get dumped into a pit of maggots or spend a month in jail.
3. Watch a videotape of your spouse committing adultery and be placed in a situation where you have to either saw off one of your limbs or die.
4. Watching someone you love die.
5. Be possessed, yet conscious, as your body commits unspeakable acts against your will.

Failures

1. At this level you're fairly normal. Perhaps you're a little finicky or meticulous, trying to eliminate the possibility of something going wrong.
2. You have a tendency to get unreasonably nervous and pessimistic when small things go wrong. You may be irritated if a bus is just a few minutes late, or if your computer freezes up.
3. You have an intense dislike for surprises, even good ones. They remind you of the essentially unpredictable nature of reality, and that scares and annoys you.
4. You find it very difficult to trust anything. Your friends, your own abilities, even your memories could be false, waiting to betray you. You have a tendency towards obsessive-compulsive behaviors such as checking the door to your house two or three (or more) times every time you leave to make absolutely certain it's locked. You attempt to be prepared for every eventuality.
5. Insanity.

Hardening

1. You don't have any major behavior or attitude shifts yet, just minor things. You tend to be pessimistic and fatalistic, perhaps.
2. Your fatalism has increased. When things go wrong in a big, bad way, or when trouble comes from completely unexpected or unlikely source, you handle it with a remarkable lack of affect.
4. You have a boundless faith in the ability of chaos to screw you over. You can easily believe that even the most suspicious of mishaps is simple random chance. (-1 Investigation)
5. The distinction between "intentional" and "accidental" is pretty much lost on you. Maybe you believe that everything is completely predestined, or maybe you believe that everything in the world happens due to chance. The one thing you find hard to swallow is the idea that we are the captains of our fates. (-2 Investigation)

Isolation Meter

Intensity

1. Spend a day without seeing someone you know or three days without talking to another human being.
2. Spend a week in solitary confinement or be institutionalized by a loved one.
3. Spend a month in a country where you don't speak the language, see someone you thought you knew behaving contrary to normal.
4. Be betrayed by someone you love or treated like a stranger by close friends.
5. Spend a month in sensory deprivation.

Failures

1. You can interact in society and get through your everyday life with no real problems. You're maybe a little shy with people at first, but you feel a kind of gratitude whenever a new acquaintance doesn't reject you.
2. You're a bit nervous around new people, eager to make a good impression. This could be expressed as shyness or through "chatterbox" behaviors.
3. If you sleep alone, you sometimes suffer from insomnia. Perhaps you don't like silence when you're by yourself, and always keep a television on or a radio playing. Sometimes, when you're not paying attention, you talk to yourself or think out loud.
4. Sometimes when you're isolated (either all by yourself or surrounded by strangers) you have panic attacks--a sense of intangible, impending doom. Your skin flushes, your breath becomes rapid and labored, you sweat. Simply put, you show the signs of being in mortal danger, when there is no danger around.
5. Insanity.

Hardening

1. There are no really obvious signs of your experiences. Perhaps you're a little standoffish or curt.
2. You can be unthinkably rude, breaking in during the middle of a conversation before someone's done speaking, scratching yourself in an indelicate fashion, or telling the truth when it isn't diplomatic to do so.
3. You lack patience with people who don't immediately understand what you're trying to tell them. Your natural inclination is to repeat the same explanations (which are obvious to you) over and over, or just give up.
4. Unless you're concentrating, you lack dialogue skills. You don't like it when people interrupt, but you frequently interrupt others. You also don't see the point of a lot of social conventions such as clothing, grooming, etc. You might still shave every day, but it all seems a little silly. (-1 Socialize)
5. At some level, you not only don't care what people think about you: you can't understand how anyone could care. You are very aware that people are inherently alone, that we can never really understand anyone or communicate anything but the most rudimentary ideas and feelings. You know everyone is an island, in the final analysis. Especially you. (-2 Socialize)

Self Meter

Intensity

1. Break a minor promise, be confronted with proof that your self-image is incorrect, or secretly gratify an urge that is unacceptable to your upbringing and background.
2. Lie to conceal some aspect of your personality from a close friend or loved one who trusts you implicitly or decide not to act on an impulse from your Noble stimulus because it's "too dangerous".
3. Deliberately deceive someone you love in a way that is certain to cause them terrible pain if they find out or discover that you have inadvertently committed an act of cannibalism.
4. Deliberately act completely contrary to your Noble impulse or kill someone you love.
5. Deliberately destroy everything you've risked your life to support.

Failures

1. You don't have any real kinks yet, but every now and again you feel a sense of dissociation, an eerie moment when you feel alienated from your own character and motivations.
2. The "who am I?" moments come more frequently. You tend to become introspective whenever someone mentions "truth" or "lies" or "promises".
3. Half the time your words and actions feel oddly forced, fake, or rehearsed to you--as if, rather than yourself, you were an actor playing the role of you.
4. You frequently feel like you're watching your every action from the outside. You have little or no sense of will or volition: it's as if you're a passive observer, along for the ride while your body goes through the motions.
5. Insanity.

Hardening

1. There are few external signs of your interior struggle: people may sometimes find you to be a little brittle or "phony seeming".
2. Even when you're telling the truth, people often think you're lying, unless you make a particular effort to act "natural".
3. You're lost a sense of connection to those who were previously close to you. You can predict the actions of your friends, relatives, or lovers, but you no longer know exactly what you feel about them.
4. Half the time, you only know you're telling the truth if you take a minute to think about it. Truth and lies aren't nearly as important as they used to be--back before you quit lying to yourself. (+1 Subterfuge, -1 Persuasion)
5. Life has been pared down to the essentials for you: you no longer have opinions about music, food, or fashion. You've lost the ability to enjoy or dislike things, because there's so little "you" there to interact. (+2 Subterfuge, -2 Persuasion)