I'm running Out of the Abyss for my players. There are 6, all with different levels of experience. A couple are brand new and 1 is a legend from the 80s. 2 of my players are playing an Oath of Devotion paladin and a war domain cleric. The paladin has a haunted one background and the war cleric a soldier background. Both of them have tragic backstories where their close companions were ambushed and killed while they survived.
Given that all the PCs are getting levels of madness, it made sense to me that the PCs who lost their friends would have some kind of trauma. Is it unfair of me to introduce some kind of PTSD mechanic? What would you make the rules? I was thinking something around the lines of anytime they suffer a critical hit or a party companion goes down, they must make a Wisdom saving throw during their next long rest or take a level of exhaustion from sleeplessness or bad dreams.
I agree with everyone here. I would use the Indefinite Madness table from the Dungeon Masters Guide. If the players choose to role play their characters this way when they get hit but a critical or what not then great! However, imposing negative effects as the Dungeon Master is probably not the way you want to be going about this.
If you wanted to use something similar to an exhaustion mechanic, I'd homebrew your own "mental exhaustion" track rather than rely on the physical exhaustion one.
Something like this (made in about 10 minutes, so may not be is probably not balanced and can more than likely be improved)
Exhaustion level - Effect: As with normal exhaustion, all exhaustion levels are cumulative.
1 - Lingering doubts have begun to enter your mind. You now have disadvantage to save against effects that Frighten you. Abilities and spells that would prevent you from being subject to the Frightened condition, such as a Berserker Barbarian's "Mindless Rage" and a Monk's "Stillness of Mind", no longer prevent you from being subject to this condition.
2 - As the darkness grows, you find yourself being more cautious about the dangers that may try to harm you. You can move no more than 10 feet per turn when in darkness, even if an ability or spell would let you see or act normally in darkness.
3 - You begin to hear sounds of whispers around you, causing you to panic. When you are subject to the Frightened condition, you are also now Incapacitated.
4 - You begin to yell back at these whispers, but nothing can silence them. You no longer gain the immunity from an effect or ability that grants immunity after saving against the Frightened condition it generated.
5 - The madness has taken you. When you fail a saving throw against an ability or spell that causes you to be Frightened, you also fall Unconscious until the frightened condition ends or until 8 hours have passed. This 8 hours counts as a long rest. You may continue to roll saving throws against the Frightened condition on your turn, as normal, however if you fail the saving throw three times, you remain Unconscious for the full 8 hours and nothing can wake you. You are not considered to be sleeping during this time.
as mentioned before 1) you are making a huge character decision for your players which they should get decide not you 2) MH is not a mechanic, it’s a real thing, if you ignore all the people here saying don’t and do it anyway you need to speak to all your players. Let them know you are introducing content to a game that has weight to it. You never know what someone has going on with them, the last thing you want to do is add something that stops the game being fun due to it touching on something that is genuinely painful for a player.
Ambivalent, part of me Is worried you're layering a psychic meat grinder over a physical meat grinder (you make mention of characters dropping ... keep in mind trauma is not just things happening to your friends, it's witnessing things, and doing things) and that might just be overkill, though I'm aware that there are games where the PCs just assume they'll be slaughtered (80s throwback can probably speak more to that).
That said, rather than PTSD be handled through the games existing "lingering madness" mechanics, which is addressing real world psychology with cartoon playable psychology, I appreciate the exhaustion possibility. However, rather than it be something that is simply imposed on the PC, give them a chance to push back. Recent iterations of Call of Cthulhu rely on a characters "bonds" to draw strength from to carry on when confronted with trauma. Your Cleric and Paladins have faiths and oaths, the party has its connection with each other. If you're going to make trauma an additional adversary give them the community grounding used in modern trauma counseling to give them a fighting chance. Otherwise, it's just sadistic, and rings little problematic from an admittedly outsider perspective (although acknowledging there are groups that like games where the party is constantly getting beat down and TPK leads to high fives round the table and toasts over Mountain Dew for the fallen ... not that I ever played a game like that).
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Saddling some of your players and not others with a mechanical disadvantage because of their their backstories is hardly fair, and the lesson you are teaching is that boring backstories are the way to go.
Also, you really shouldn't be thinking about game changing new rules from the standpoint of what you think makes sense. You should be asking yourself if what you have in mind is going to make the game more fun for the players. The idea of the game is to have fun after all.
as mentioned before 1) you are making a huge character decision for your players which they should get decide not you 2) MH is not a mechanic, it’s a real thing, if you ignore all the people here saying don’t and do it anyway you need to speak to all your players. Let them know you are introducing content to a game that has weight to it. You never know what someone has going on with them, the last thing you want to do is add something that stops the game being fun due to it touching on something that is genuinely painful for a player.
Exactly this.
If a player chooses for their character to have issues, that is their choice. I wouldn't even bring it up as an option or suggestion.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
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"real life is a super high CR."
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
It's also possible that some of your players may have actual mental injuries / illnesses, and introducing something as close to real life as PTSD into a fantasy game mechanic without a whole lot of safe guards in place could be putting peoples' well-being at risk, as well as their enjoyment of the game. A lot of people aren't comfortable talking about their personal struggles when playing a game, even if they may be using the game to work through things. Let players have agency and control over how they want to role play, then they can control what effect the back story has. Taking that control away from them may be counter productive.
Honestly, just giving the players bad dreams alone both gives weight to their backstories and also gives players an additional new angle to explore. I'm not a big fan of dreams where the DM just narrates a scene and the character is stuck in it... but take a few minutes after a particularly harrowing day and present your character with a nightmare scenario. Ask them what their character tries to do in the dream. Have them do some rolls. If the player's response is actually, "I try to force myself awake", then let them do that and give them a point of exhaustion that way. Most players won't, but if RP is super important to them... hey, they might, and it's their choice at that point. They can take it as far as they want. Some players might lean into the tragedy and enjoy playing their character collapsing under the weight of their sorrow. Some players might decide that this is a challenge and try to "win" the dream by confronting their trauma and overcoming it. Just be careful not to spend too much time with one character's dreams... it's easy to fall into a rabbit hole and get super into the absolute freedom a dream affords, but keep in mind that the other players at the table, unless they have the right spells for it, can't participate.
I threw a false hydra at my players and went with the "mystery companion who had been with you from the beginning of the campaign but you don't remember any of that since the hydra just at them 5 minutes ago" hook as mapped on on several forums. It went pretty well as I had been leaving clues from the beginning.
However, some of the revelations about what was missing at what was erased from their memories really hit one character much harder than the others. The player confided in me that he thought the character was going to lose his mind and slide deeper and deeper into paranoia and psychosis... not believing reality was real anymore. We worked out a few in-between-game sessions where one of the other player characters and I (as one of the NPCs) had some campfire counseling sessions with the distressed player character. Now, whenever the player feels something in-game is triggering issues he will say something to the other player and they will offer some encouragement. It was a little more intense than I had intended when I set this hook up, but both players really dug it and it made the characters more real and meaningful to them.
While not exactly PTSD I think that is similar to what the OP is talking about. Perhaps the two players can be each other's support/confidant when times get bleak. As a DM who frequently finds himself overwhelmed with the different mechanics I need to constantly be aware of, anything that can be roleplayed rather than rolled I try to encourage.
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PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM -(Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown *Red Dead Annihilation: ToA *Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
Thanks for all the feedback! All of it has been helpful.
I will not be introducing a new mechanic to my game. There were a few mentions of letting players have agency, reminders that the game is meant to be fun, and that mental health is a serious issue. I have struggled with depression and deal with anxiety every day so this struck a chord!
What I will do is a private conversation with these 2 players. I will let them know how I feel when they spend most of the session on their phones, how it looks when they don't know their characters after 10 months, and talk about ways to engage them.
It's consistent thru the game. It's the typical combat scenario where they aren't paying attention until it's their turn. They also get distracted during shopping, negotiations with NPCs, exploration, and strategizing.
i've had NPC's with ptsd, but not forced it on a player. I agree with sticking with indefinite madness rules. you could also maybe say 'you have a flashback of whatever and your palms are all sweaty', but that's as far as i'd go.
Thanks for all the feedback! All of it has been helpful.
I will not be introducing a new mechanic to my game. There were a few mentions of letting players have agency, reminders that the game is meant to be fun, and that mental health is a serious issue. I have struggled with depression and deal with anxiety every day so this struck a chord!
What I will do is a private conversation with these 2 players. I will let them know how I feel when they spend most of the session on their phones, how it looks when they don't know their characters after 10 months, and talk about ways to engage them.
Thanks for the perspective, people. 👍🏻🙂
Just catching up on this, were you planning on giving them PTSD for not paying the game enough attention? You made no mention in your first post about OOC behaviour, just seems kind of a swerve ball.
I wasn't planning on punishing my players, no. My personal frustrations with new players are set aside as soon as I'm sitting behind the screen.
I talked to each player before the campaign started and discussed what they expect and enjoy from D&D. I asked every one if they were comfortable playing in a setting where their characters will deal with insanity (demon lords breaking into the world has caused a ripple affect, especially Demogorgon) and every player was on board.
Session 0 comes and 2 players have decided to play characters who have experienced serious loss in their recent history. I go along with it. The sessions start to pile up and these 2 players aren't engaging in role play with their characters, even though every other player is. A player approaches me out of game and says that they are annoyed that they are pushing themselves out of their comfort zone while Disinterested Players A & B aren't paying attention or engaging with the group. I have a talk with A and B, separately, out of game and bring up how each of them has a rich backstory but they aren't playing their characters as if they did. A responds by saying that it's my job to create circumstances where their loss is highlighted and B says that they aren't totally comfortable with the group yet and asks for help.
These talks happened 2 months ago. 1 player (B) is showing a little improvement and A hasn't shown any change. Another player approaches me out of game and suggests that I think about introducing a mechanic where A & B's tragic backstory have an actual impact on their characters, in an effort to engage A & B. I'm not entirely comfortable with that, so I jump on the DM forum for advice.
Are you assigning behavior to your players roleplaying. Are they willing, capable, and able to enjoy it? The DM controls the whole world around the players, and you can impose madness to their character, but you can't make your players roleplay it, so you need their permission, because roleplaying your assignments is just as voluntary as arriving to play, it might be fun, and it might not.
Your asking the wrong ppl.
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I'm running Out of the Abyss for my players. There are 6, all with different levels of experience. A couple are brand new and 1 is a legend from the 80s. 2 of my players are playing an Oath of Devotion paladin and a war domain cleric. The paladin has a haunted one background and the war cleric a soldier background. Both of them have tragic backstories where their close companions were ambushed and killed while they survived.
Given that all the PCs are getting levels of madness, it made sense to me that the PCs who lost their friends would have some kind of trauma. Is it unfair of me to introduce some kind of PTSD mechanic? What would you make the rules? I was thinking something around the lines of anytime they suffer a critical hit or a party companion goes down, they must make a Wisdom saving throw during their next long rest or take a level of exhaustion from sleeplessness or bad dreams.
I would not do such a thing. The most I would do is utilize “Indefinite Madness” from the DMG.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/running-the-game#Madness
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If you wanted to use something similar to an exhaustion mechanic, I'd homebrew your own "mental exhaustion" track rather than rely on the physical exhaustion one.
Something like this (made in about 10 minutes, so
may not beis probably not balanced and can more than likely be improved)Exhaustion level - Effect: As with normal exhaustion, all exhaustion levels are cumulative.
1 - Lingering doubts have begun to enter your mind. You now have disadvantage to save against effects that Frighten you. Abilities and spells that would prevent you from being subject to the Frightened condition, such as a Berserker Barbarian's "Mindless Rage" and a Monk's "Stillness of Mind", no longer prevent you from being subject to this condition.
2 - As the darkness grows, you find yourself being more cautious about the dangers that may try to harm you. You can move no more than 10 feet per turn when in darkness, even if an ability or spell would let you see or act normally in darkness.
3 - You begin to hear sounds of whispers around you, causing you to panic. When you are subject to the Frightened condition, you are also now Incapacitated.
4 - You begin to yell back at these whispers, but nothing can silence them. You no longer gain the immunity from an effect or ability that grants immunity after saving against the Frightened condition it generated.
5 - The madness has taken you. When you fail a saving throw against an ability or spell that causes you to be Frightened, you also fall Unconscious until the frightened condition ends or until 8 hours have passed. This 8 hours counts as a long rest. You may continue to roll saving throws against the Frightened condition on your turn, as normal, however if you fail the saving throw three times, you remain Unconscious for the full 8 hours and nothing can wake you. You are not considered to be sleeping during this time.
I would not.
as mentioned before 1) you are making a huge character decision for your players which they should get decide not you 2) MH is not a mechanic, it’s a real thing, if you ignore all the people here saying don’t and do it anyway you need to speak to all your players. Let them know you are introducing content to a game that has weight to it. You never know what someone has going on with them, the last thing you want to do is add something that stops the game being fun due to it touching on something that is genuinely painful for a player.
Ambivalent, part of me Is worried you're layering a psychic meat grinder over a physical meat grinder (you make mention of characters dropping ... keep in mind trauma is not just things happening to your friends, it's witnessing things, and doing things) and that might just be overkill, though I'm aware that there are games where the PCs just assume they'll be slaughtered (80s throwback can probably speak more to that).
That said, rather than PTSD be handled through the games existing "lingering madness" mechanics, which is addressing real world psychology with cartoon playable psychology, I appreciate the exhaustion possibility. However, rather than it be something that is simply imposed on the PC, give them a chance to push back. Recent iterations of Call of Cthulhu rely on a characters "bonds" to draw strength from to carry on when confronted with trauma. Your Cleric and Paladins have faiths and oaths, the party has its connection with each other. If you're going to make trauma an additional adversary give them the community grounding used in modern trauma counseling to give them a fighting chance. Otherwise, it's just sadistic, and rings little problematic from an admittedly outsider perspective (although acknowledging there are groups that like games where the party is constantly getting beat down and TPK leads to high fives round the table and toasts over Mountain Dew for the fallen ... not that I ever played a game like that).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Saddling some of your players and not others with a mechanical disadvantage because of their their backstories is hardly fair, and the lesson you are teaching is that boring backstories are the way to go.
Also, you really shouldn't be thinking about game changing new rules from the standpoint of what you think makes sense. You should be asking yourself if what you have in mind is going to make the game more fun for the players. The idea of the game is to have fun after all.
<Insert clever signature here>
Exactly this.
If a player chooses for their character to have issues, that is their choice. I wouldn't even bring it up as an option or suggestion.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
It's also possible that some of your players may have actual mental injuries / illnesses, and introducing something as close to real life as PTSD into a fantasy game mechanic without a whole lot of safe guards in place could be putting peoples' well-being at risk, as well as their enjoyment of the game. A lot of people aren't comfortable talking about their personal struggles when playing a game, even if they may be using the game to work through things. Let players have agency and control over how they want to role play, then they can control what effect the back story has. Taking that control away from them may be counter productive.
Honestly, just giving the players bad dreams alone both gives weight to their backstories and also gives players an additional new angle to explore. I'm not a big fan of dreams where the DM just narrates a scene and the character is stuck in it... but take a few minutes after a particularly harrowing day and present your character with a nightmare scenario. Ask them what their character tries to do in the dream. Have them do some rolls. If the player's response is actually, "I try to force myself awake", then let them do that and give them a point of exhaustion that way. Most players won't, but if RP is super important to them... hey, they might, and it's their choice at that point. They can take it as far as they want. Some players might lean into the tragedy and enjoy playing their character collapsing under the weight of their sorrow. Some players might decide that this is a challenge and try to "win" the dream by confronting their trauma and overcoming it. Just be careful not to spend too much time with one character's dreams... it's easy to fall into a rabbit hole and get super into the absolute freedom a dream affords, but keep in mind that the other players at the table, unless they have the right spells for it, can't participate.
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I threw a false hydra at my players and went with the "mystery companion who had been with you from the beginning of the campaign but you don't remember any of that since the hydra just at them 5 minutes ago" hook as mapped on on several forums. It went pretty well as I had been leaving clues from the beginning.
However, some of the revelations about what was missing at what was erased from their memories really hit one character much harder than the others. The player confided in me that he thought the character was going to lose his mind and slide deeper and deeper into paranoia and psychosis... not believing reality was real anymore. We worked out a few in-between-game sessions where one of the other player characters and I (as one of the NPCs) had some campfire counseling sessions with the distressed player character. Now, whenever the player feels something in-game is triggering issues he will say something to the other player and they will offer some encouragement. It was a little more intense than I had intended when I set this hook up, but both players really dug it and it made the characters more real and meaningful to them.
While not exactly PTSD I think that is similar to what the OP is talking about. Perhaps the two players can be each other's support/confidant when times get bleak. As a DM who frequently finds himself overwhelmed with the different mechanics I need to constantly be aware of, anything that can be roleplayed rather than rolled I try to encourage.
PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM - (Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown * Red Dead Annihilation: ToA * Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
Thanks for all the feedback! All of it has been helpful.
I will not be introducing a new mechanic to my game. There were a few mentions of letting players have agency, reminders that the game is meant to be fun, and that mental health is a serious issue. I have struggled with depression and deal with anxiety every day so this struck a chord!
What I will do is a private conversation with these 2 players. I will let them know how I feel when they spend most of the session on their phones, how it looks when they don't know their characters after 10 months, and talk about ways to engage them.
Thanks for the perspective, people. 👍🏻🙂
Uff, that is difficult. Nowadays everyone has a portable distraction box. Are they on phones mostly during combat, or is it during the whole game?
It's consistent thru the game. It's the typical combat scenario where they aren't paying attention until it's their turn. They also get distracted during shopping, negotiations with NPCs, exploration, and strategizing.
i've had NPC's with ptsd, but not forced it on a player. I agree with sticking with indefinite madness rules. you could also maybe say 'you have a flashback of whatever and your palms are all sweaty', but that's as far as i'd go.
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I have never made it a mechanic as a DM, but I have certainly put it into characters I have played (or at least ones I want to play).
Just catching up on this, were you planning on giving them PTSD for not paying the game enough attention? You made no mention in your first post about OOC behaviour, just seems kind of a swerve ball.
I wasn't planning on punishing my players, no. My personal frustrations with new players are set aside as soon as I'm sitting behind the screen.
I talked to each player before the campaign started and discussed what they expect and enjoy from D&D. I asked every one if they were comfortable playing in a setting where their characters will deal with insanity (demon lords breaking into the world has caused a ripple affect, especially Demogorgon) and every player was on board.
Session 0 comes and 2 players have decided to play characters who have experienced serious loss in their recent history. I go along with it. The sessions start to pile up and these 2 players aren't engaging in role play with their characters, even though every other player is. A player approaches me out of game and says that they are annoyed that they are pushing themselves out of their comfort zone while Disinterested Players A & B aren't paying attention or engaging with the group. I have a talk with A and B, separately, out of game and bring up how each of them has a rich backstory but they aren't playing their characters as if they did. A responds by saying that it's my job to create circumstances where their loss is highlighted and B says that they aren't totally comfortable with the group yet and asks for help.
These talks happened 2 months ago. 1 player (B) is showing a little improvement and A hasn't shown any change. Another player approaches me out of game and suggests that I think about introducing a mechanic where A & B's tragic backstory have an actual impact on their characters, in an effort to engage A & B. I'm not entirely comfortable with that, so I jump on the DM forum for advice.
Are you assigning behavior to your players roleplaying. Are they willing, capable, and able to enjoy it? The DM controls the whole world around the players, and you can impose madness to their character, but you can't make your players roleplay it, so you need their permission, because roleplaying your assignments is just as voluntary as arriving to play, it might be fun, and it might not.
Your asking the wrong ppl.