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Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2014 9:34 pm
by Wordcraftian
Excellent summary, I agree completely. There are all kinds of different crazy!

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2014 1:28 pm
by Cearlan
I too like the facade test .... could be a keeper roll or just a seemingly random - roll d% request to a victi ... I mean player.

Trouble is though, are we adding yet more work to the game. As always everyone's mileage may vary on this, but it would be interesting to see how other keepers would handle this.

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 7:58 am
by Shannon Mac
Agreed. The facade test has possibilities.

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 11:04 am
by KeeperAntUK
Sorry to necro this thread but it reminded me of a story I heard .

A man is driving along a road at night. It is a lonely road and to make matters worse it runs alongside an old, but still active asylum.

As the fog and mist swirl around, obscuring his view of the road ahead, the man becomes more and more uneasy as he catches glimpses of lights and movement through the chain link fence.

Suddenly there is a loud bang! And the car slews across the road before coming to a halt on the verge.

Upon investigating, the thoroughly shaken up driver finds a punctured tyre caused the accident.

Eager to get moving again the driver focuses on changing his wheel whilst trying to ignore his eerie location. He removes the last nut and places it carefully with the others in the hub cap on the ground beside him. The driver stands and stretches before turning to get his spare.

As he turns he shocked and startled to see a face peering at him from the asylum side of the fence. Reacting on instinct, and fearing the worst, the driver takes a step back ..... and his foot lands on the rim of the hub cap! The hub cap flips up and catapults the 4 nuts into the night where they disappear with a plop into misty, swampy darkness.

The driver looks around in fear but stops when he sees the person on the other side of the fence has not moved and appears to be looking concerned.

"Sorry if I startled you" said the person from the other side of the fence "I saw your headlights so I thought I'd come and take a look".

The driver takes a deep breath, slowing his breathing and racing heart before answering "it's not your fault, I was just letting the night, the fog and the fact that I know this is an asylum get the better of me". He glances around motioning in the direction the nuts took in their flight to freedom.

"Now I'm in real trouble though. I'm not sure what to do".

The figure the other side of the fence is silent for a moment before making a suggestion " Why don't you take a nut off each of the other three wheels and use those? Then you'd have three nuts holding each tyre. It's not ideal but there's a town a few miles down the road and you can get new ones there"

The driver smiles "That's a brilliant idea! Three nuts on each will certainly get me to town"

The driver begins making the suggested adjustments, all the while making small talk with his rescuer.

Eventually the driver stands after securing the last nut. He turns to his rescuer. "Hey man, thanks a lot" he blushes in the darkness before continuing sheepishly " I gotta admit you scared the hell outta me when I saw you standing there. I'm afraid I thought you were one of those crazies they got in there until you came up the idea about the nuts".

The man behind the fence moves into a patch of moonlight and glances over his shoulder towards the sudden sound of dogs and searching men. He turns back, the moonlight clearly illuminating his straight jacket hanging loose and his dishevelled appearance.

"Oh, I am one if the crazies. But just because I'm insane doesn't mean that I'm stupid" He grins and winks before turning back into the trees, saying over his shoulder "Gotta go. I think they've found the guard".

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 4:38 pm
by KeeperMurph
Oh I like that story KeeperAntUK!

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:11 pm
by Dr. Gerard
Agree completely. And it's a great illustration.

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2015 5:10 pm
by KeeperAntUK
Thank you.

I can't take any credit for the story though, it was told to me years ago. I just wrote it down in a readable form ... with a few added dramatic flourishes of course!

Reading it back, it could make quite a nice little plot seed. It feels a little bit 'cthulhu-y' ...

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Sat May 30, 2015 3:43 pm
by fox01313
For me most of the low ranking cultists are pretty much just the same kind of drug crazed or drunk type of thug just with a bit more brainwashed in his/her background. Though I agree that at lower levels of sanity, the person probably has multiple permanent insanities which is a great thing for the keeper to play with for helping the story out or help the players get a break early on to have the story progressing. At low levels of sanity the lower rank cultists aren't going to be that productive in society but easy to just give them some knife or tell them the players are out to get them & then let them try to kill the players. For higher ranking cultists, I'd just give it more of what others mentioned of it being devoid of morality though follow what was done in Masks of Nyarlathotep, just because you lead a cult, you had to walk some sanity blasting hell to get there so when coming up with cults just make the lower ranking people hired thugs but pick a 1-2 permanent insanities for the leaders to make them all really interesting (this way when the leader has a huge number of artifacts or spells to just wipe out the players, they can find out about the insanities he/she has the players can get some advantage on).

As the investigators aren't supposed to be a pack of murder fiends & they should be decent people, surprising the cultist trying to kill them because they trigger some phobia or addiction that the cultist has leads to a lot of possible things on what's next. The keeper can also have fun with the cultist trying to go against the cult brainwashing to just be some drunk hobo to get away for another shot later.

If I recall in 7th ed, there's something that helps show off how the lower levels of sanity act.

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 1:10 pm
by SamS
I'm very temped to add something from ToC to CoC. Stability. You still have a Sanity score but ToC has added Stability to the character sheet to show you can be completely insane but be stable enough to react somewhat normal in society.

It deserves some thought.

Re: How Do Bat-Crap Insane Cultists Hold Down a Day Job?

Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 2:50 pm
by Keeper Jon
For cultists who are bat-shit crazy, I run them as capable people when they are interacting with stuff that is familiar to them. For example, if the antique shop owner is a zero SAN cultist, then as long as the investigators interact with the shop owner while in his shop during business hours, then everything is pretty cool. But, if the investigators follow the shop owner to his home, (even though he doesn't do his culty rituals there), then he gets real agitated and tweaky real quick. Short fuse and a hot temper. Very uncharacteristic of his attitude in the shop.

Think about the Buffalo Bill killer in the movie Silence of the Lambs. To his neighbors and the outside world, he was a pretty normal Joe. But once he got one of his victims, he was totally koo-koo for Coco Puffs!