The investigators are all on the governing body for the Buffalo Terminal Restoration Group. They sit in the boardroom as the contractor hired to restore the terminal’s soda shop tells how multiple workmen have gone missing while in the building… and now the rest of the workmen refuse to enter this blighted spot.
One of the investigators (the one with the lowest Luck score) looks down at her teacup and sees a large hairy spider crawling around the rim.
Call for a 0/2 Sanity roll. This means, the player of this character needs to roll 1d100 and get equal to or less than her Sanity points. On a success, she loses no points of Sanity. On a failure, she loses two points of Sanity. Four points lost yields the character losing it. Why call for a small sanity loss in the beginning of a Cthulhu game? The premise is a slow downward spiral into madness. Often the first things experienced are unnerving but not enough to drive a character mad. It’s seeing icky spiders, feeling cold spots in a haunted place or even witnessing gore. These small events add up, resulting in the character’s slow demise into insanity.
Readers of the last article might note Luck can be spent to counter Sanity loss. However, the precious resource of Luck, required to grant successes out of failed rolls, or in Pulp games, the ability to survive lethal attacks, becomes whittled down.
About halfway through the adventure, the investigators experience their first big scare, like a Deep One, a ghoul or even nasty cultists doing the unspeakable. The cost of witnessing these creatures should be around 0/1d4 or 1/1d6. In the latter case, on a successful Sanity roll, the character loses one point of Sanity. On a failure, the character loses 1d6 Sanity points. In both cases, the investigator is in danger of experiencing a bout of madness, which could disrupt the group’s ability to fight the evil, let alone keep the group cohesive.
Through the next part of the adventure, the group delves further into the blasphemous world of the Mythos, finds evidence of horrible deeds and explores ghastly lairs. These experiences should carry with them further nickel and dimming of the characters’ sanity, without a significant chance of causing bouts of madness. Here, they explore the subbasement of the Buffalo Terminal and discover there is a cult down there that has been capturing workmen and having their dark spider god judge them as worthy additions to the cult… to be transformed into spider-like monstrosities or be destroyed.
This evidence is through testimonies, journals and remains of the captured workmen, as well as rooms providing for the needs and living quarters for cultists intent to live in the darkness of their lair.
Finally, the investigators see the cult leader in front of a hideous statue of the spider god, Atlach-Nacha. On a railroad boxcar are giant cocoons that hatch, revealing spider-like monstrosities happy to kill the investigators. The cultists move in with their knives. Time for the big Sanity roll of the game. This one should be about 1/1d8 or 1/1d10 for witnessing the horror, experiencing the onslaught of a horde of cultists and the scariness of the cult leader. The Sanity loss should be higher than what’s prescribed in the stat block for seeing the monster. Note that here there is a very good chance a quarter of the group will experience bouts of madness and possibly be incapacitated for the duration of the final fight. They might even join the cultists’ side. There should be a chance of there being a game-changing dynamic. With the horror of their allies losing their wits and with all the mind-shattering threats presented before them, the investigators flee or fight against the forces of darkness.
As the fight progresses, experienced Keepers should not put away their Sanity rolls for the session but continue to use them as horrible things happen to the investigators. A character gets bitten in half by a monstrous Daughter of Atlach-Nacha. Everyone who sees this should make a 0/1d4 Sanity roll. There’s a chance here another character might have a bout of madness and be incapacitated from effectively participating in the duration of the battle or chase scene.
By following this template, Keepers can manipulate the investigators’ Sanity loss in their Call of Cthulhu adventure, gradually ticking away Sanity points before mind-shattering major events where everything goes down in the climax. Keepers should handle the decline of the investigators’ sanity like a dance through the horror they are experiencing.
