I'm fascinated by psychological mechanisms. How do you incorporate and gamify mental health and neurodivergence into your characters?
GURPS has good traits for this
>>97968715GURPS does it probably the only way any game can. Because mental health / disabilities are not all equal in their actual effect on a person's abilities and competences. They require specific treatment for their impact on gameplay. And it's gameplay that game systems are concerned with. Not understanding the human condition.So, to answer the OP's question,>>97968687All you need to know is what the actual consequence / impact of the thing is. Do not try to model mental health or neurology beyond numerical impact on existing character mechanics. Do not try to invent entirely new frameworks for dealing with it. Do not involve tedious calculations for describing nuances or progression. Treat them as normal debuffs. Your game almost certainly already has defined debuff conditions for stuff like being tired or afraid. Use those where possible.
>>97968687I avoid playing with retards like (you), so it's not an issue.
>>97968687Any character (you) play will be neurodivergant and mentally ill, op.
>>97968990>>97971246womp womp nobody cared lmao
>>97968687Loved DE's system of having your skills provide additional narration via the voices in your head, but it would never work at the table.
>>97968687Incorporating is one thing, turning it into a mechanic? No idea. The closest thing was being part of this campaign: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/46895203/#46906151 The DM gave mechanical pros & cons very closely related to each character and respective player. Very unbalanced and customized, considering decisions, situations and even inaction.
>>97968687>mental healthUnknown Armies (2nd edition, I think) has, hands down, the best system for psychological trauma.In short>There's a few types of stuff that brings trauma: Supernatural, Violence, Powerlessness etc...>When your character is exposed to fucked up stuff, he rolls for psychological trauma>If he fails, he gets trauma points in the related category>If he succeeds, he gets resistance points in the related category>Trauma means you get more sensitive to the related category. For example, psychological trauma for violence means you could panic at the sight of just a little bit of blood>Resistance means you get desensitised to the related category. That's bad, too: It means you could see a dismembered dead body and giggleIt's elegant and it feels true, it's great.Trail of Cthulhu is also great. It features two health points for sanity:>Stress>You lose this one whenever you are put in contact with fucked up stuff.>You can regain it by spending some time relaxing. In some versions of the game, the stress points are regained by engaging with characters who you are close to: wife, colleague, friend... but it destroys the relationship over time.>It's great because it represents well how relationship are vital to get you grounded and how exposition to violence can ruin your mariage>Sanity>This one represents the understanding that the world doesn't work the way people think. This one can't be regained. Obviously, in a Lovecraftian story it's mostly about the Great Old Ones being real and how precarious the place of mankind is, but it could work well in all sorts of settings.>Also great, because it represents insanity of a different kind, much more ambivalent, which gets you to wonder if it's not the mainstream understanding of reality which is blissfully insane.
>>97968687>neurodivergenceComes to think of it, Unknown Armies does that pretty well, too, with the Adepts (ie: the magic users in the game).>Each magical school is centred around an obsession.>Can be stuff like being obsessed with TV series, collecting books, getting drunk, self mutilating etc...>You get magical charges by indulging in it or pushing it to new heights>You can lose them if you infringe a taboo related to it>The types of spells you can cast is also related to that obsession (being obsessed with TV series allows you to perform stunts as seen on TV, for example)Again, it works great because the mechanics really parallel the way obsessions like these feels.You love collecting books and you get a rare edition of a book you were looking for? F yeah you get mana for it. You lose one of your books? Yeah of course you'd lose all of your mana if that happened.
>>97968687>Mental healthI like Solaris: Chivalric Tragedy At The Utmost North's approach.Stats are essentially sliders. You begin a hopeful dumbass and slowly become knowledgeable and hopeless. You begin a brave fool and gradually become wise but bitter.In the end you either die, or you break and get corrupted and turned into a demon. Such is the fate of the knights of a doomed kingdom. But all that happened a long time ago, and now there's no one left to remember it.
