Lore and Legends of the Dezzyverse

I know, right now, you can’t tell

…with apologies to Matchbox 20 for using their lyrics in my title.

I was introduced to Call of Cthulhu right after Dungeons and Dragons. My friends and I had all sorts of those thin little boxed editions from Chaosium back in the 80s. The Sanity mechanic they pioneered was, if you’ll forgive me, mind-bending. Our characters weren’t just at risk of death that would remove them from play, they could lose their minds! The horrors of the Mythos could break them beyond the players’ ability to play them.

Over four, nearly five, decades that mechanic has evolved and has been adapted to the point where, “making a SAN check” or “lost some Sanity Points” is a part of our gaming language, beyond horror roleplaying or even tabletop gaming. We can even say it’s part of the fabric of gaming.

But things change…

Those terms; santiy, insanity, crazy, they’re all antiquated at best, and prejudiced at worst. They perpetuate a stigma towards real-world neurodivergent or traumatized people. I kinda get it, this is a game, make believe, there aren’t any Shoggoths, or Vampires, or Secret Math that breaks people’s mental and emotional stability.

There is real world trauma, though. People are subjected to all to real horrors, and just like the body can be injured, so can the mind. People can be born with physical impairments and people are also born with neuro-divergent conditions. These people play tabletop roleplaying games too. They want to portray aspects of themselves in their own stories too.

My change to terminology

I am renaming a lot of the terms in this mechanic going forward in my games. A characters replacement for their sanity pool I’m calling Stability. Damage and checks are re-termed as Stress. Effects of accumulated stress are re-termed as Trauma. Enforced behavior from Trauma I’m calling Compulsions.

The mechanic is the same as that found in all the editions of Call of Cthulhu, or Basic Roleplaying. It’s just the terminology that changes. Instead of making Sanity checks, the player makes Stability checks, they suffer Stress instead of Sanity Damage, and they develop Traumas instead of Insanity.

Delta Green

The Call of Cthulhu based game Delta Green by Arc Dream Publishing adds a new twist to this mechanic that I love. Agents in Delta Green all start with 5 bonds with NPCs, representing family, friends, lovers, contacts and peers. They can develop more through roleplaying during game play, and each bond has a score between 1 and their Charisma score. The higher the score, the stronger the bond is.

Bonds can be spent in place of reducing Stress. For every point of a Bond used in this manner the amount of Stress taken is reduced by the same amount. When a Bond’s score reaches zero, it’s broken, and the NPC is estranged from the Agent. I love how this simulates the toll that a horror campaign takes on the characters, stealing the people in their lives and isolating them. Agents in Delta Green, as they learn more and more secrets become less and less relatable until they are all alone in a dingy, empty room surrounded by corkboard and string.

I’ll be adding and adapting this mechanic to my future horror campaigns.

Conclusion

Tabletop gaming continues to evolve. There was a time, especially in the horror genre where consent was really not offered, and when it was asked for, the player was told (rather condescendingly) that “it’s just make believe, stop being so sensitive”. Shock horror techniques involving blood, gore, violations and over-the-top violence was common, and reflected the media era that tabletop evolved with. It didn’t matter if things like sexual assault or extreme violence harmed some players, it was expected that if you sat down at a table for a game of horror you as the player were agreeing to be exposed to these things.

We’ve come a rather long way in forty years. Consent is a large part of this progress. The recognition of a social contract at the gaming table is transforming our hobby to one of shared experience. I think this adjustment in terminology is a small step in pushing the appeal of gaming forward. If referring to a character’s mental state as being Stable and Stressed helps a player feel less judged for their own struggles, especially if they keep those struggles to themselves, this is a good thing. If everyone at the table is empowered to express what boundaries they have without fear of judgement prevents hurtful mistakes that invokes a trauma that affects the player, then we can tell better stories with one another.

Older gamers, elder nerds are no longer gatekeepers to the clubhouse, checking everyone’s tolerance and understanding of details. We have a responsibility to new and old players alike to use the experience we have earned at the table to make these games a fun escape for everyone who wants to join in.