[RPG] What’s the differance between max sanity and start sanity

Powerful drama requires powerful motivations. When everyone at the table agrees that they want a Horror game, they must craft their characters around these motivations. If they don't buy in, then you get the kind of power-fantasy where the heroes do the quite sensible thing of feeding Cthulhu a couple cases of dynamite and legging it. That isn't horror, that's fantasy (and it's totally cool if everyone wants that other kind of story.)

The mark of a sane person is to be able to see something that's likely to get them killed, incarcerated, driven insane, or otherwise disrupt their status quo and go "Nope! I've got taxes to do!." And then goes and does them.

Sane people, unfortunately, are boring. (This bug has been filed and is currently in the triage queue for Human 1.2. It's a very long queue.)

Take a look at True Detective, the protagonists are horrible, driven, people who cannot let things lie, who cannot take the easy route, and who, by existing, create drama. People like these are the fodder for horror stories, because at some level, all horror stories resonate with "don't be that guy."

Every single character must have an overriding need that cannot be simply fulfilled by going home and doing the (equivalent of) taxes. They may be fleeing something, trying to right an injustice, rightly (or wrongly) wanting something, or someone that they're willing to go through hell for. They must be able to point to their motivation as the answer to "What do you value more than life itself?" The purpose of the dramatic horror is to put that goal in jeopardy. "If you turn away, you'll never get the story." "If you go back to being sane... you'll always know that you could have been somebody."

The trick is getting player buyin. Horror stories require very specific protagonists, as they cannot be power-fantasies. The first requirement for a horror character to be effective in themselves is for the thing, duty, ideal, or person, that they're willing to make poor personal judgements for. Start character creation with that, and then figure out what kind of person is willing to make those poor life choices. Then watch to see how life puts them through the blender. If they ever achieve their goal, their arc is done. Either they must have some new, even more impossible dream, or they've won, and they can go retire and the player should make a new character.

Take a look at the types of horror protagonist:

Winning is not what we associate with horror, though. The protagonist who is destroyed might be a subset of dramatic hero, the tragic hero. Aristotle tells us that the tragic hero is brought low by an internal flaw, which leads to a grave mistake. Awareness of this mistake comes only after it’s too late to rectify: this is his anagnorisis. His arc is from a state of unawareness to one of belated awareness.

Horror is a tragedy rife with various anxieties.

Tragedy:

Tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero or heroine, usually through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods. The tragic hero's powerful wish to achieve some goal inevitably encounters limits, usually those of human frailty (flaws in reason, hubris, society), the gods (through oracles, prophets, fate), or nature. Aristotle says that the tragic hero should have a flaw and/or make some mistake (hamartia). The hero need not die at the end, but he/she must undergo a change in fortune. In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis--"knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout" ) about human fate, destiny, and the will of the gods. Aristotle quite nicely terms this sort of recognition "a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate."

Horror takes this and removes all of the "fate" bits. It presents us with a horrible uncaring universe, rife with the unknowable, and tells the story of the futility of challenge. The basic contract of the character with the story is "find motivations for doing this stupid stuff. In return, you may realise your own stupidity in time to regret it." **It's a story of hubris, the compulsions beyond the pale, set against a backdrop that simply doesn't care or even potentially comprehend.

Here are some further resources, so this doesn't turn into a conference paper:

• The Philosophy of Horror
• Charlie's Demons (at the end of the Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross.
• The Poetics of Horror

Rationalists can experience horror, for they are driven by the need for understanding. Take Harry Potter James Evans Verres, a rationalist with an alarming amount of hubris. If you replace his antagonist with the literally unknowable, and force him to choose between the lies of the real, and the truth of the uncaring void, without allowing rationalism to win, you have both a really (even more) depressing story, and horror.

Experienced Keepers

The rules for play and for character creation are present in the Keeper's Guide, and it appears to be meant to be a stand-alone book for a Keeper who is already familiar with the game, and its common setting of the 1920s. If a Keeper were shifting to this edition from an earlier one, the Keeper's Guide would be sufficient.

New Keepers

Those new Keepers without a grounding in the game, its inspirational material, its setting and conceits, and/or who wish to be in tune with the advice given to new players and with the point of view fostered for play will need to consider getting, or having access to, both.

Players

Likewise, players will find all the information they need to create and ground characters in the 1920s setting if they obtain the Investigator's Handbook and will require nothing from the Keeper's Guide. If they later intend to run the game as well as play it, however, they will need both.

Quickstart

It should be noted that the system rules are available in a PDF Quickstart format from the usual sources as well as Chaosium, so they can be investigated prior to making a purchase.

The Table of Contents for the Keeper's Guide

1. Introduction

2. HP Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos

3. Creating Investigators
4. Skills
5. Game System
6. Combat
7. Chases
8. Sanity
9. Magic
10. Playing the Game
11. Tomes of Eldritch Lore
12. Grimoire
13. Artifacts and Alien Devices
14. Monsters, Beasts, and Alien Gods
15. Scenarios (2)
16. Appendices

421 pages of content

The Table of Contents for the Investigator's Handbook

1. Introduction
2. The Dunwich Horror
3. Creating Investigators
4. Occupations
5. Skills
6. Investigator Organizations
7. Life as an Investigator
8. The Roaring Twenties
9. Advice for Players 10 Reference
10. Character Sheets

268 pages of content