Sanity Meter: Difference between revisions
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Some games will try to measure [[Karma Meter|how bad or good you're being]], on the basis that the game is set in a moral universe. This ain't one of those games. ''[[Cosmic Horror|This]]'' is one of those games where [[Reality Is Out to Lunch|the very nature of reality is mutable]], there are [[Eldritch Abomination|''things'']] out there beyond human imagining that mean us ill, and [[Mind Rape|you've encountered several of them first hand]]. After a while, that's ''really'' going to wear on a person...
Ergo, the
[[Disney Owns This Trope|"Sanity Meter in video games" is, by the way,]] [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6935954 patented] [[Disney Owns This Trope|by]] [[Nintendo]], the publishers of ''[[Eternal Darkness]]''.
{{examples|Examples of this trope include:}}
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' pretty much [[Trope Maker|pioneered]] the Sanity Meter. Each character starts with some measure of Sanity out of 100. When encountering a Mythos horror, or something just plain horrific, they roll their Sanity score. If they succeed, they roll to see how many of a smaller amount of Sanity points they lose; if they fail, they roll to see how many of a ''larger'' amount of Sanity points they lose (e.g., "roll for 1d6/1d20 SAN"). SAN points can be regained through psychotherapy and successful adventuring, but learning more about the Mythos ''permanently'' decreases your maximum Sanity. In fact, it is absolutely impossible to learn everything about the mythos without your SAN falling to 0 before.
** A form of
** In another take on Lovecraft RPGs, Trail Of Cthulhu, the
** Parodied in ''[[Toon the Cartoon Role Playing Game]]''. One of the settings in the ''Tooniversal Tour Guide'' supplement is "[[Parody Names|Crawl of Catchooloo]]", where exposure to the eldritch but otherwise strait-laced minions of the Elderly Gods drives the 'toon PCs ''sane'' (since they're already crazy to begin with). Sane PCs become boring, unremarkable characters with pointlessly dull interests.
** ''[[Arkham Horror]]'', being [[Cthulhu Mythos]] [[The Board Game]], also makes use of sanity rules. Seeing monsters and casting spells are the primary cause of sanity loss, but many encounters can also trigger it. Being reduced to zero sends you to Arkham Asylum ([[Batman: Arkham Asylum|not that one]]) with some items lost. (Before long, you'll regain enough Sanity to leave ... but you'll be back. Oh yes. This game takes ''hours.'')
* ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'' has a Clarity rating for its characters. Unlike the standard [[Karma Meter
** There is also the fact that in all of the gamelines, when the [[Karma Meter]] decreases, a charecter has to roll to determine if they gain a Derangement. The Storyteller is advised to select a Derangement appropriate to whatever caused the [[Karma Meter]] to decrease.
* ''[[Exalted]]'' has the Limit meter, which measures mental and emotional stress. Max it out, and it drops back down to zero...because you've just unleashed all that stress in an outburst of insanity that can last anywhere from a few hours to ''several months.''
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* The Madness Meters in ''[[Unknown Armies]]''. There are five; Isolation, Helplessness, Violence, Self, and The Unnatural. Depending on how well you roll when confronted with triggers, you either fill them with a Failed notch, or a Hardened notch. The more Failed notches you gather, the more likely you are to break down crying when you experience a trigger; the more Hardened notches you gather, the more immune you become to the trigger (to the point where a character with all Hardened notches in their Violence meter becomes a sociopath who doesn't really see the problem with carving a guy's face off with a potato peeler, and is only vaguely aware that others might not feel like he does).
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' has a Humanity meter for vampires, which the lower it becomes increases the chance that a character will Frenzy, causing them to lose all control and attack targets randomly (both enemy and friendly targets) until it fades away.
** A character's Humanity stat in the table game did much more than it did in Bloodlines. The Humanity stat for vampires is curious in that it did double duty as
** Low humanity vampires also found it excruciating to act in the day, had extreme difficulty in mimicking human physiology when it would help them (for example, warming your skin so a potential meal you were attempting to seduce wouldn't realize you were a corpse), and at Humanity Zero, a character would pretty much become a mad dog who had to be put down. Many princes of the Camarilla (the "less evil" faction) would put a vampire down before Humanity 0 just because they became so violent, inhuman, and [[Axe Crazy]] they would threaten [[The Masquerade]] just by existing.
** The game also featured alternative moral systems which were horrifying and outright evil by pretty much anyone's standards, but kept the Beast at bay. Such characters dove headfirst into being monsters to avoid becoming berserk, mad killing machines. For examples, one path says [http://wiki.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?title=Path_of_Night be God's personal scourge], another mandates you should [http://wiki.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?title=Path_of_Power_and_the_Inner_Voice be a ruthless bastard] with [[Chronic Backstabbing Syndrome]], and a third suggests you become an [http://wiki.white-wolf.com/worldofdarkness/index.php?title=Path_of_Bones emotionless killer and student of death]. Characters on these paths used very dark [[Blue and Orange Morality]] to remain less insane than the beast.
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** Once you [[Go Mad From the Revelation]], it can be easily brought back down through actions in the special location you're sent to, but once you become sane again, you will ''lose all of your dream progress'', making it the most punishing of the four Menace locations.
* ''[[Elona]]'' has a sanity stat. It is, however, mistranslated and actually a measure of insanity, as the healthiest possible level is 0. As it increases you are more vulnerable to effects that cause the insanity status which causes you to lose control of your character.
* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'' brings the
* ''[[Fahrenheit (2005 video game)]]'' has a
** Tyler gets one moment at the end of the game, {{spoiler|where he has to choose between his duty to the NYPD, or his long-time girlfriend that he loves who is leaving the rapidly freezing north for Florida. Interestingly, regardless of which choice you take, his sanity meter gets dinged (taking about a 50% loss if he leaves, and a whopping 95% crash is he stays). In both cases, it's entirely irrelevant, however: he's never seen again.}}
* For an incredibly early (perhaps the earliest?) example, check out Domark's 1985 ''[[Friday the 13th]]'' on the Commodore 64, Amstrad and Spectrum (it's nothing like [[Friday the 13th (video game)|the NES version]]). The game has a sanity/fear meter that raises as the game goes on. It's represented as a kid's head, with the hair starting to stand on end as you get more frightened. If the meter maxes out, you die of fright... this almost never happens in-game, but it does increase the chances of seeing hallucinations (a pile of skulls covered in blood, someone with a machete through their head, etc) accompanied by a blood-curdling scream. Surprisingly effective for 16-colour graphics!
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