Sanity is an agreement reached by the majority as to the basic state of reality. If five people are standing in a quiet room, and I’m the only one who hears a voice, odds are favorable that the voice is in my head, and my sanity is in question.

If I’m the only one who sees my wife as a hat, again the problem is probably my own.

And so today’s chapter explores Asymmetrical Representation as a design mechanism for simulating madness.

The fiction of H.P. Lovecraft is heavy on eldritch horrors and incomprehensible geometries that drive men to insanity.

For the purpose of discussion, a perfect fit.

As in previous  installments, this Cthulhu game is multiplayer only. The game is an FP/RPG in the vein of Deus Ex and System Shock, simplified in terms of inventory and skill advancement to keep players immersed in the story.

Each player plays a member of an ill-omened scientific expedition to the Plateau of Leng. Each member serves a vital purpose, and has different skills; the language specialist, the radio operator, the airplane pilot, the archeologist, the guide.

As with all good horror, they key is to start out with familiar surroundings and events, and slowly drift into wrongness. The expedition starts normally, with all challenges strictly in the realm of the natural, wild animals, thieves and saboteurs. As the discovery of artifacts, and eventually worshippers, and then one of the old great ones proceeds, players begin to lose their grip on reality.

Enter AR.

Intra-party communication in game is voice chat, along with in-game notes, artifacts and runes.

Introduced very slowly, and focusing on a single player at a time, the following tricks are played (in no particular order):

• A player is temporarily dropped out of voice chat.

• Earlier sections of voice chat are recorded, and a player receives old voice chat while others receive current chat.

• Current chat stream is repeated as soon as it is finished.

• Notes, log books of previous expeditions are passed between players, one player sees a different message, preferably one that cause him to act strangely with the rest of the party.

• All other player seem disappear, leaving the target player “alone” in the camp.

• Natural sounding voice chat pre-recorded by voice actors gives player instructions.

• Terrain feature are revealed to or masked from target player.

• Terrain changes entirely for target player.

• NPCs that can only be seen by a single player.

• Chat stream is delayed, and single words are reversed, or mangled. Amount of traffic mangled grows over time.

• Illusory attacks are launched against player.

The key is to introduce the feature very slowly, and targeting a different player each time. The goal is for the player to doubt the evidence of their senses. Most of the time, they must be in consensus reality.

Text chat is obviously another area ripe for meddling, and especially for keyword replacement, left for right, north for south, “Stay away!” for “Help!” etc.

-game over-

Tomorrow, The Thing: AR as Paranoia.

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.