Re: [FMAS] Is this insane or what? Re: real-life FT playing (was: Re: Fighter Group Turn around time was: YAFS

agoodall@att.net wrote:
> [...]
> For a miniatures game, you need both. I thought of doing sanity as a
part of
> the morale system, however you need to have two stats: a Fear stat and
a
> Sanity stat. Why? Because you have insane cultists with zero sanity
who may
> or may not be affected by morale. Some will, some won't. You can't
have low
> sanity meaning you run screaming into the night whenever someone yells
"Boo!"
> because then the insane cult leader would be the biggest chicken in
the game.
> [...]

Did you ever see or play R. Talsorian Games Cyberpunk, and it's
combat system Friday Night Firefight? IIRC, FNFF used a smaller
set of stats, including a "Cool" stat for morale, while Cyberpunk
expanded the list to include an "Empathy" stat for PCs.

The Empathy stat itself multiplied by ten to give "humanity
points" which were lost as people corrupted themselves with bionic
parts ("cyberware"). To much bionics led to "Cyberpsychosis",
complete loss of all fellow-feeling for humanity (and removal from
the game). 

>From what I saw the min-maxers descended on the game and played it
as dungeon-bashing D&D (kill things, steal money, buy new stuff)
with the cyberware subbing in for magic items and every PC just
naturally started with the absolute maximum Empathy stat, so as to
be able to play with the maximum amount of upgrades. It was like a
whole generation of fluffy, touchy-feely, granola-eating poets all
spontaneously decided to have all their limbs cut off an their
eyes poked out so they could hit the mean streets and rob people
with their gigantic guns and monoblade katanas.

Nevertheless, I thought this was a reasonably compact set of
mechanics for psychology (to the extent that the idea isn't
laughable). Quite a few people crossed Cyberpunk over with CoC and
mapped SAN points directly on to Humanity points, which I thought
missed the point a little. The classic result of SAN loss, whether
in a CoC game or in Lovecraftian fiction is fearfulness, paranoia,
catatonia, and a great list of phobias and neuroses. In short, you
are damaged permanently from losing your Cool, blowing your
morale, getting the Fear. Your cultists, however, have lost all
their Empathy, has no conception of the feelings of others. They
are psychotics and sociopaths. 

So, anyway, I think it's fair to use morale checks as SAN checks.
I don't know that the loss of humanity leading to
fearless-but-batty cultist behaviour is going to happen over the
scale of a wargame.

-- 
David Brewer

"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Theory of Scientific 
Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of 
facts." - P.K.Dick (from VALIS)