Unknown Armies:Madness

You’re going to face a lot of threats out there, and not all of them are physical. You’re going to be exposed to stresses that are beyond the normal, experiences that challenge your mind’s ability to fit them into your view of how the world works.

These stresses are measured on the Madness Meters. These are five gauges that measure how resilient or susceptible you are to different mental threats. First, let’s explain how challenges to your sanity are handled.

Stress Checks

There are five categories of mental stress: Violence, the Unnatural, Helplessness, Isolation, and Self. It’s quite possible to be very casual about, say, Violence, while being a basket case when it comes to The Unnatural.

Each stress has two types of notches you can mark off. Hardened notches represent stress checks you’ve beaten, and they are numbered 1–10. Failed notches represent stress checks you’ve blown, and they are numbered 1–5.

Different stresses have different power levels, ranging from 1–10. These are called ranks. The higher the rank, the more extreme the stress and the more you’re likely to suffer if you fail the check.

If you already have a hardened notch at the same rank as the stress, and in the same meter, you don’t have to roll. You automatically beat the check because you’ve faced this down before and prevailed. Failed notches don’t effect stress checks.

If you don’t have a hardened notch at the rank of the stress check, make a Mind roll. If you succeed, mark off the lowest unmarked "hardened" notch on the appropriate madness meter. If you fail, you mark off the lowest unmarked "failed" notch instead and choose one of three reactions: panic, paralysis, or frenzy; these are discussed more under "Getting Crazy". A failure may have other long-term effects as well.

It’s common to have both hardened and failed notches in the same meter. Someone who’s deep in both directions on Isolation probably has a highly ambivalent attitude towards being alone, which is perfectly in character for people who have been repeatedly exposed to that mental stress. Someone with the same situation for Violence feels little or nothing when exposed to most forms of bloodshed, but when something is so shocking that it gets through the hardened barrier, the result is devastating.

Getting Callous

Cops, coroners, and social workers know about getting callous. When you’ve seen enough horror, it loses its power to horrify you. The more hardened notches you have on a single meter, the more it takes for that kind of stress to rip up your head. Once you resist ten incidents on a meter—that is, all ten hardened notches on that gauge are filled in—you’re so jaded and blasé about it that nothing in that category of stress can endanger your mind.

This is not a good thing.

Mental stress makes us vulnerable. But it also makes us human. If you fill in too many hardened marks, you become so completely callous that you are unable to feel fear at all. That’s because you are now cut off from a broad range of emotional experiences that everyone else shares. You’re “hardened” all right: hardened into an emotional fortresses, completely isolated, unable to make a fundamental connection with other human beings.

You’re a sociopath.

You become a sociopath when you have all ten hard marks in two or more gauges, or when your total sum of hardened marks exceeds thirty-five.

If you’ve descended into this state, you can no longer use your passions—the Noble, Rage, and Fear events that represent you at your most intense. You just can’t relate to them anymore, and you don’t get to flip-flop those passion-related rolls.

If you’re an avatar who becomes a sociopath, you cannot use your Avatar skill until you get treatment. Avatars rely on an empathic connection to the global unconsciousness, and sociopaths slam that particular door shut.

Getting Crazy

When you fail a stress check, you mark off a failed notch on the appropriate meter. You also freak out in one of three ways: panic, paralysis, and frenzy.

If you panic, you run away at high speed. You can take no action except to run full out in the direction farthest from what made you panic.

On the other hand, disturbing events often produce paralysis: indecision, terror, and a general “deer in the headlights” effect that persists until the stimulus ceases. This can be completely silent, or accompanied by screams and moans.

Frenzy is just what it sounds like. You attack the source of discomfort with any means at your disposal. You can’t dodge or attempt any fancy moves, like multiple attacks on a single target. You just shoot or punch or start biting.

You act like this until the stress that triggered the behavior is gone. Until then, you must follow your choice. If you frenzy against someone who can beat the holy heck out of you, you are not able to run away. You fight until you or your opponent is dead.

While you’re in this state, you don’t have to make any more stress checks. You’re too screwed up to process any other stresses.

Mental Help: Pre-Insanity

You can get counseling to help you with your mental problems before you become certifiable—that is, before all the failed notches on one of your meters are filled. To do so, you need a psychotherapist, social worker, philosophical counselor, or another professional you trust. Even if you’re a mental-health professional, you cannot perform this on yourself.

The GM decides what your counselor’s relevant skill score is. After a few introductory sessions to get trust established, you make a Mind roll and your counselor makes a skill roll on her Psychoanalysis skill for each session.

• Any time either you or your counselor get a matched success, you can erase a hardened notch or a failed notch of your choice.
• Any time both you and your counselor succeed, you can erase a hardened notch or a failed notch of your choice.
• If you succeed and your counselor fails, you can choose to erase any failed notch.
• If you fail and your counselor succeeds, you can choose to erase any hardened notch. (Or choose not to erase any notch—and get a lecture on “resisting therapy.”)
• Any time both of you get a matched success, you can erase up to three failed or up to three hardened notches in any one gauge. (You cannot erase some of each; excess erasures are lost.)

Another option is to get psychological first aid, though this only works to erase failed notches, not hardened ones. If you’ve got a friend with psychological training, he can attempt to counsel you right away—as long as you talk to him within an hour of your Mind check failure. Anecdotal evidence indicates that people who get counseling right away tend to do better in the long run. After all, if the counselor can put things in perspective right away, it saves the effort of uprooting an entrenched and sick attitude. If you can get counseling that fast, your counselor makes a roll. If he makes any success, you can erase that failed notch.

Permanent Madness

Once you have five failed notches marked in a single meter, you don’t have to make stress checks when confronted with that stress any more. You just flee, fight, or freeze as if you’d failed the roll. The only exception is when your hardened notches are enough to void the stress check anyway, in which case you suffer no effects at all. Otherwise, you have your short-term freak-out, mark no notches, and life goes on.

Of course, it’s not really that simple. The first time you hit five failed notches in a single meter, you pick up some kind of mental aberration. You and the GM should work out your insanity together. Note that a permanent madness should play off your obsession and your passions, because anything that central to your personality is reflected in your disorder. Also keep in mind that insane people can often get along okay (if not very well) in the world. Many go undetected for years, making their mad way through life.

An automatic failure on a meter you’ve maxed out on doesn’t give you another aberration. One per stress is plenty.

Some permanent forms of madness include:

• Phobia. If something drove you mad, it’s quite likely you’ll develop a debilitating and irrational fear of it. If someone only talks about it or shows you a picture of it, you have to make a Mind check in order to avoid freezing or panicking. If you’re exposed to the thing itself, you automatically freak out without making a check.
• Trauma Bond. This is like a phobia, but instead of the actual stimulus, you get scared around something incidental to the trauma. If your father molested you in the mornings before work, you might repress your memories of that event but the smell of brewing coffee would set you off.
• Flashbacks. This is also known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD for short). If you’re exposed to any element that was present during the trauma, you’re in danger of reliving the event. In the example given above, the smell of coffee might sometimes be a perfectly okay scent for you—but other times, it might make you relive the event. Or sometimes you might flash back from hearing footsteps on stairs, or simply from waking up in a bed that reminds you of the bed where the assault took place. There are many examples of combat veterans who flash back at the sound of fireworks, or when in a setting similar to that where combat occurred.
• Blackouts. You can slip into a semi-conscious state and simply wander away in an attempt to flee your past. When you come to, you have no recollection of your flight. These blackouts (or “fugue states”) can last for days and cover a lot of territory. You’re usually non-violent and seem pretty dazed—you’re just wandering away. Threatening stimuli usually snap you out of a fugue. So can the presence of friends or trusted individuals.
• Addictive Behaviors. You can smother your memories of the past with any one of the countless chemicals available in this modern world. Alcohol is a perennial favorite—powerful and easily available. Marijuana, heroin, and synthetic depressants might appeal to you because they deaden the pain and make everything seem okay. On the other hand, uppers like ’drines, speed, or coke give you vital illusions of being in control.
• Philia/Obsession. You may develop an unhealthy affection for an individual, object, or action that you perceive (for whatever reason) to have “saved” you from the trauma. The target of your affection didn’t necessarily have to save you directly—you see some sort of salvation connection that isn’t necessarily rational. This philia could result in a desire to constantly be around that person/object/area, or it could result in a compulsive repetition of the saving action. If you said the Lord’s Prayer when you were “saved,” you might develop an obsession with the Lord’s Prayer, say it constantly, carry a rosary at all times, etc.
• Delusions. You believe something that simply isn’t true because it covers up the pain. Delusions in response to trauma can range from flat denial to elaborate confabulations that rationalize or justify the experience.

Mental Help: Post-Insanity

“Permanent madness” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s only permanent if you don’t get cured. But curing insanity is no walk in the park. By the time you’re that badly hung up on an issue, it’s sunk deep into your psyche. Seeking professional help at this point is like shutting the gate after the cows have wandered away.

To get rid of a permanent insanity, you need a therapist to rid you of that final, fifth failure notch that drove you over the edge. Your therapist probably suggests residential treatment—often a good idea. You pack up your things, leave your job, and go to live in a residential treatment facility to try and get better. (You can try normal therapy, but as you’ll see, it takes a lot longer once you’ve gone mad.)

Every month of residential treatment, or every six months of non-residential treatment (normal therapy), you make a Mind check while your therapist makes his skill check. If both of you succeed then you can shake off your insanity and go back to four failed notches in that gauge—you’re not stable, but you’re okay, and you can leave the residence and go back to normal therapy. If either of you fails, you’re still insane. (Matches have no effect on these outcomes.)

Needless to say, it’s a good idea to continue normal therapy after this point to work off a few more of those failed notches. Otherwise, all it takes is one failed Mind check on that same old mental stress to knock you back into your insanity again.