Save versus insanity

One of my favorite parts of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide is the section dealing with Insanity. Long before the tides of political correctness and upright moral sensibilities lapped against the shores of Lake Geneva where TSR made its headquarters back in the day, one could find a rule for just about everything under the sun in the old AD&D rulebooks -- from the effects of alcohol and narcotics on player characters to the necessity of quelling peasant revolts as quickly and brutally as possible.

(Drugs! Violence! And drawings of bare-chested women! How could a prepubescent kid resist such a treasure trove of questionable human behavior?)

The Insanity table was sandwiched in with a lot of other odds and ends at the conclusion of the Combat rules, since Insanity was primarily encountered as a special form of damage dealt by certain monsters with psychic or psionic powers. Basically it was a list of 20 psychiatric conditions cribbed from the DSMV:

1. Dipsomania
2. Kleptomania
3. Schizoid
4. Pathological Liar
5. Monomania
6. Dementia Praecox
7. Melancholia
8. Megalomania
9. Delusional Insanity
10. Schizophrenia
11. Mania
12. Lunacy
13. Paranoia
14. Manic-Depressive
15. Hallucinatory Insanity
16. Sado-Masochism
17. Homicidal Mania
18. Hebephrenia
19. Suicidal Mania
20. Catatonia

This made for a simple enough mechanic: in case of Insanity, roll d20.

The funny thing about Insanity is that the 1st Edition rules assume that it's a deal-breaker as far as roleplaying is concerned. The DMG sayeth, "As DM you will have to assume the role of the insane character whenever the madness strikes, for most players will not be willing to go so far." Unfortunately taking such an arbitrary course of action robs Dungeon Master and players alike of a rare opportunity that is afforded by Insanity, one that I completely forgot about until my friend's Planescape run last week -- namely, that Insanity is the perfect cover for in-game PvP (player vs. player) action.

Not to give too much of a play-by-play of what happened at the gaming table, but suffice it to say that a weird and unexpected passage between planes of existence forced our party to make Saving Throws versus Insanity. Of the four PCs, two of us blew our rolls: yours truly and the player with whom I had had the most antagonist relationship in the campaign up until this point. Instead of rolling a d20, our DM had prepared several little slips of paper with different forms of insanity written down on them and asked those of us who had missed the Save to pick one, read it, and to keep the contents a secret from the other players. I chose Manic/Depressive; my friend picked Paranoia.

And hilarity ensued.

Due to the peculiar brew of Faction politics and other shifting allegiances which characterize a Planescape campaign, my character and his would-be antagonist had quickly settled into a relationship of animosity and mutual distrust that while realistic proved to be less and less enjoyable to play out with each successive adventure. It was becoming increasingly obvious to both of us that our characters were on a collision course, and that sooner rather than later one of us was either going to have to retire from the party or kill the other.

In the midst of resigning ourselves to this eventuality, however, the DM sprung his Insanity mechanic on us, and suddenly a conflict that had been brewing just under the surface had been forced out into the open -- only instead of being a gut-wrenching episode of accusation and betrayal, my fellow gamer and I spent most of the time laughing our asses off as we played our respective characters' insanity to the hilt. When's the last time you thought it was funny when someone in your party fireballed you on purpose?

The reason for why this worked when regular PvP probably would have failed miserably is that when properly roleplayed, Insanity adds an extra layer of abstraction to the mix. Sure, we're all already a combination of people, players, and characters when sitting at the table, but then when the characters we are running are also wearing masks of their own we are able to surrender a little of our precious emotional investment as people and/or players into those characters and enjoy their actions as as if we watching them act and not in fact directing their actions. Wild stuff, if you think about it, but then again roleplaying games are far more complicated social activities than we credit them for being in the first place...

(Funny postscript: I went back to my old DMG in order to look up the various forms of Insanity and found that my player friends from high school had written each others' names next to several of the headings. So even though Mr. Gygax didn't realize it at the time (or rather, perhaps because he did realize it and didn't want to encourage such divisive sentiments in what was still very much a party-based gaming dynamic), Insanity had already become a vehicle for airing PvP sentiments.)