Models of Madness Part 1: “Alas, I shall go mad”

The first truly long campaign I ever played was a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (2nd edition, if you care), where I had the fortuitous luck to play an apprentice wizard. In the spirit of the game, I of course ended up accruing Insanity Points while trying to conjure light in the sewers – and I got the condition “Wheel of Darkness and Light” (or something like that). So, I played this wizard for a long, long time alternating between states of horrid bleakness and manic joy.

Now, many years later, with many psychiatric visits, a schizophrenia diagnosis, and a network of friends with a wide variety of mental anormalities, I recognize “the wheel” to be bipolar disorder. In fact, when looking for it in the TTRPG genre, madness of different kinds is everywhere – Call of Cthulhu is the obvious example, but I’d also argue that madness sneaks into games mostly outside the usual “systems” that model it.

So this is something I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about – also spurred on by reading Foucault and Anti-Oedipus – and I figured I’d write some ‘Models of Madness’, which you can use for inspiration in your games, if you’re looking to use it in your games. These aren’t systems per se, but rather things you can look to in order to make madness more, in my opinion, respectful than points and modifiers, while retaining what makes it interesting.

Disclaimer: This is not medical advice. I’d wager I know more about madness as a socio-cultural concept than the average schizo, but I have absolutely no qualifications apart from reading too much post-structural philosophy.

The Tragic Model

I think most people know this model already, but hesitate to use it. Its strength is that it is really simple:

Something horrible happens –> Person goes mad

We see this most prominently in Shakespeare. Lear is betrayed by his daughters, and starts wandering the fields speaking riddles. Ophelias father dies, and she is distraught by Hamlets behaviour, so she starts singing and handing out flowers. Lady Macbeth cannot live with the guilt of the murder she’s helped commit, so she becomes obsessed with her hands, bloodstained in her imagination.

Now, I love this model, but I can understand if people hesitate to use it – it simplifies mental illness, with its myriad causes, into something much too easy to comprehend. But there is a kernel of truth in this model that I think is good to latch onto, and it lies in why I use the word “madness” instead of mental illness, or schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a spectrum disorder characterized by long-lasting psychosis, and a reduction in brain function. It hits somewhere between .2 and .6 of the population, depending on where you live. It is uncommon.

‘Madness’ is a social construct, an umbrella term if you will, and can hit anyone. A common example used is that the incidence of temporary psychosis rises in the wake of a natural disaster – it is a stress response that can hit pretty much anyone. It is common.

So, if you’re a neurotypical, able-minded fellow who generally know nothing about the intricacies of living with mental illness, I think this is a perfectly fine model to use. I’d argue it is the most unproblematic of the models I’m going to propose, simply because it is so simple people won’t mix up the “madness” with actual mental illness.

It works as a dramatic technique. It can be laced with symbolism, all because it is so simple people probably won’t mix it up with the “real thing”.

The next one is more complex, and delve into the very, very complicated relationship between fiction and psychiatry.

Endnote: But how do I do it

I only realized right now that a common question is probably ‘… but how do I portray madness?’, and I think it’s a different question to answer – so I will put an endnote like this to each model.

When using this model, I think it makes sense to go HARD on symbolism, narrative themes, and archetypes. The Lear we see walking in the fields might be perceived as nonsensical, but in classic tragic style, his words do make a peculiar kind of sense.

This is not typical for psychosis – in fact, language is typically so utterly disturbed it makes no sense to the listener – but I think it works for two reasons:

1 – it is kind of obvious that reality isn’t like this. As long as you don’t do stuff that’s clearly degrading, you will be fine.

2 – Think of what this actually says about the way King Lear as a play is structured. The world (mostly) does not understand him, but we, the audience, do. By being capable of deriving sense from the madman, we are placed in the place of mad-sympathetic.

Anywho, that’s how I would do it.