RP Advice: Insanity
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It started off being a troll character, but could potentially be more fun.
He's mad, and has the intelligence and charisma to reflect that, but I'm having trouble portraying insanity without being over the top comedic. I'm looking for ways to reflect the aforementioned poor stats via lunacy without being a complete joke character. In fact, scary would be nice.
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How about depressing?
I find that the best mentally ill characters are those who invoke a mix of fear, pity and sadness. Take a look into some of the really suckage aspects of mental illnesses and portray a bit of that, perhaps? I am sure you can find descriptions of certain symptoms that would make just the right mix for that cocktail attainable.
Just a suggestion.
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Coming at this as a student of psychology with a particular focus in forensic psychology and a keen interest in abnormal psychology, I can offer you what help I can.
Disclaimer for anyone reading this: The advice I present here is by no means universal for all mentally unstable individuals.
It really depends on what sort of mental malady you're aiming for. Is the person a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks Kara-Turan ninjas are out on his back porch trying to kill him Wyvern poison? Is he obsessive in his physical upkeep, to the point that he twitches at the slightest hint of dust on him?
Generally speaking, twitches or other rapid physical movements can aid to that mystique of, "Something is wrong with this guy." Also, whispering to a voice that others can't hear could be incredibly creepy. Whenever I bring this example up, I think of Gaius Baltar and his relationship with No. 6 in Battlestar Galactica - it's flawless. More often than not, I've seen references to hallucinations, either visual or auditory, coming from potent sources - i.e., God, the Devil, an important authority figure in their life, etc. Consider that if you roleplay voices.
If you're playing someone who has something akin to bipolar disorder, remember that extreme cycling of emotions are common. In very severe causes, a person can have up to six cycles a day. These cycles could be from outrage to love, sadness to elation, and so on.
I'm sure I can go on, but I'll let that sit. If you want more, just ask and I'll be happy to supply.
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Perhaps research (wikipedia is always an option) a few different mental afflictions and use that as a base.
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talk in third person
"Bob despises you he does"
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No, dont talk in third person. Every low int halforc and half the halflings I've met do that!
As for the OP, watch some movies like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "The Three Faces of Eve," "Raising Cain," "Girl, Interrupted," or "Twelve Monkeys" – movies that feature mental illness as the focus.
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Hey, my genius level tiefling talked in the third person :(
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Thank you for confirming my point.
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Raving lunatics are hardly really scary for long. And it is a challenge to play them in the long term. Really great insanity can be found in real life. Do so readings on insanity.
The truly terror instilling and disturbing insanity is layered. It slowly reveals itself scene after scene.
The man problem when playing a raving lunatic is how hard it is for them to be in even fantasy normal civilization.
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Judging by my favorite guys down here on the corner:
Take copious amounts of drugs to try and quiet the voices in your head or overwhelming paranoia. While sober, constantly beg for money to buy drugs, while slowly slipping into more and more irrational thought, body tics and spurts of yelling at things at random. Eventually the voices or paranoia win out and you start fights with others as unstable as you, or sometimes shouting matches with inanimate objects. When all else fails, stab someone at random who you've seen before because they look out of place or turn to committing some petty crime so the authorities will lock you up somewhere quiet for a little bit.
You could substitute potions of owls wisdom or something instead of drugs?
Most the guys I say hi to are capable of being really nice and holding intelligent conversations… for about 3 minutes, if they're in a nice balance between being totally cracked out and being so sober they're completely in their own world.
Most the non-homeless people I'd classify insane I know just do really messed up things without any consideration for how others might feel or what others might think. They have real confusion over how most social situations turn out. i.e. They go and dig up log files on their co-worker messing around at work and turn it over to their boss, all the while going out for drinks with the co-worker on a regular basis and being friendly. They then are dismayed when the person they got fired won't return their calls or go out for drinks any more. I'd give more examples, but everyone I know like that is in the tech industry and all the stories are about the same. The sort of people who smile when others are smiling and laugh at jokes they don't relate to just because they're mimicking what normal people do. Like dealing with 18 month olds who drive Audis.
In my professional opinion I guess it comes down to are you going for sociopathic behavior or just plain bat-sh*t crazy?
((EDIT: The obviously hilarious outcome with playing someone who is extremely paranoid and delusional is that you could hatch an elaborate player plot to collects a bunch of reagents and build some sort of machine to stop horrible imaginary monsters from invading. It could take months of people stockpiling fairy dust and rat-brioches for you for them to figure out there is no invading monsters and that you're building what amounts to tin-foil hats to keep the aliens from hearing your thoughts.))
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The homeless guys you mention seem like they might be some form of schizophrenic. While the "non-homeless" ones sound like psychopaths.
OP, you might want to look into psychopathy (which can (roughly) be summarised as a lack of empathy, amongst other stuff), by the way.
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One thing I've noticed that breaks immersion for crazy people…
You have to rp both the good and the bad... Sometimes not being sane will inevitably lead to doing something that is very detrimental for yourself... Most people who rp crazy will avoid doing these things because (obviously they don't want horrible stuff to happen to their characters)
But lunacy is essentially a disadvantage and a disadvantage that isn't disadvantageous is not very realistic... And a non realistic character trait generates less intrigue.
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One of my insane characters, Samuel Sane, the Bhaliiran was always changing his attitudes and was always going from an urbane, poshy temperment to a darker, sinister killer the next. The situation largely judged what sort of personality he would use at the time and he had ties to every single faction at the time because of this.
In my experience, getting close to certain characters is key. You want to add shock value for the players that you mingle with often; irratic decisions and decisions that could even cost lives can work to a point, but its the little things like certain aspects of your characters dialogue or little habbits that people begin to notice that start you on that spiral for the best.
To be more for specific, I love playing the insane, but I think my perception of insane always has somesort of multi-personality thing going on all the time. Pretty fun.
Also, see if there are any screenshots for Petey's Bhaliiran, I forget his name, Tom Foolery? Something like that. He was also very insane. B-Rocks Kinko too.
Fuck. Infact any Bhaliiran retainer during the civil war was insane in one way or another.
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Yup. Mine was pre Civil war but also quite insane.
I suppose it entirely depends on which character it is.
My bhaliiran retainer, was simply delusional. She actually believed she was a good person most of the time. She believed she was a good tymoran, despite having killing sprees in the basement.
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@O'louth:
Yup. Mine was pre Civil war but also quite insane.
Marcus Nightcrawler? :wink: Yeah that dude was insane alright.
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Damien Locke would start freaking out at the word "mother" or "mom" or anything mother related. His eye would twitch and his grip on his blade would tighten. This actually freaked a lot of people out, because nobody knew when he was going to snap and stab someone.
You could do something similar. Have a dude with mommy issues, or daddy issues, or just any issue that comes up a lot on conversation. I just chose something that most people talk about enough for it to be easy to portray, but not so often that it would get boring.
Hope that helps. Oh, and I'm just like Neo. Psych major with forensic/abnormal/counseling interest. Seen a lot of weird shit in my life, so I sort of just portray madness by people I've met. Damien Locke's persona is similar to a particular person I've met. Scary as hell.
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Hope that helps. Oh, and I'm just like Neo. Psych major with forensic/abnormal/counseling interest. Seen a lot of weird shit in my life, so I sort of just portray madness by people I've met. Damien Locke's persona is similar to a particular person I've met. Scary as hell.
O_O
Send me PMs so we can geek out together! <3
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You got it! PSYCH MAJORS! HOOOOOOOO!
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Actually, the main problem in playing a mentally ill character realistically, is that other characters will have about the same reaction as RL persons have to the RL mentally ill: they avoid them. That's why real symptoms of psychological disorder are rarely seen in fiction, or usually played for laughs.
I remember sitting on a two-hour train drive next to a man who spent one whole hour stacking and restacking tape cases on the tablet before him, changing their order, moving them left and right etc… until selecting one and spending the rest of the trip in abslolute immobility WITHOUT TURNING THE WALKMAN ON.
Real mental illness is extremely debilitating, to the point of preventing action even in case of danger. To whit, the PnP rules define "madness" as a curse/disease that permanently puts the character under the effect of the confusion spell. So I'd suggest you choose fictional madmen for your examples rather than real ones.
One good angle (that I use with my current char) is to play symptoms that could either be a mental illness or something magical or mystical happening to the character.
Actually, in a society where magic, spirits and the gods are prevalent, I would suppose almost everyone would be considering madness as a curse/blessing/spell and not a disease. -
I suppose everyone is little crazy, i.e. not exactly on the average-of-behaviors-over-all-humans. Most of us will be reasonably close to the average, and thus seen as 'normal enough', some people will be a bit more out of the 'center' and then there's a few who tick (or maybe tock) so much differently from the rest of us that they might aswell be from another planet.
The last group is usually avoided/ignored by others, and probably wouldn't be seen as fun as much as annoying. I'd say the trick is to pick your poison so that there's clearly something abnormal, but that the total sum of the character is still avarage enough to function.
Karandil's character is an example of someone that seems to function just fine, except he has his condition, that to me as a player immediately gets recognized as "Oh, he's a lunatic". To some characters he might be perfectly normal, and they can take his condition as 'mystical', others might treat him as a crazy fool. My own character realized that he's probably deluded, but decided the best way to handle it would be to just go along with him, treating it as if it were 'mystical'. Someone else might just more or less ignore the condition, and yet another could treat it as a joke, or even use it against him.
P.