Derangements are behaviors that occur when the mind is forced to confront intolerable or conflicting feelings, such as overwhelming terror or profound guilt. When your character is faced with impressions or emotions that he cannot reconcile, his mind attempts to ease the inner turmoil by stimulating behavior such as megalomania, schizophrenia or hysteria as an outlet. People in the World of Darkness, unwittingly tormented, persecuted and preyed upon by incomprehensible beings, often develop these ailments by the mere fact of existing. Alternatively, regret, guilt or remorselessness for inflicting abuses eats away at mind and soul. The night’s creatures are not immune to such pressures, either. Existence as an unnatural thing overwhelms what little humanity these beings might have left, driving them mad.
The primary means by which your character may develop derangements is by performing heinous acts and suffering the mental or emotional repercussions. See “Morality,” earlier in this chapter, for more details.
Otherwise, the Storyteller may decide that a scene or circumstance to which your character is exposed is too much for him to bear and he breaks under the pressure. A bad drug trip might reveal too much of the monstrous reality of the world for a person’s mind to bear. A drug overdose could imbalance a character mentally. Or witnessing a creature in all its horrific glory might make an onlooker snap.
Ailments caused by fallen Morality can be healed through your character’s own efforts toward treatment or contrition (by spending experience points). The Storyteller decides if a more spontaneously inspired condition is temporary or permanent. A spontaneous ailment might be temporary, lasting until the character resolves the situation that triggered the condition. It might become permanent if reconciliation is refused, the condition goes untreated or the trigger that caused it is insurmountable. With Storyteller approval, a starting character might have a spontaneously inspired derangement as a Flaw (see p. 217), gaining experience in stories in which the condition or problem is prominent. Spontaneous ailments developed during play might be represented in-game as evolutionary Flaws, not ones established at character creation.
It must be noted that people who are “crazy” are neither funny nor arbitrary in their actions. Insanity is frightening to onlookers who witness someone rage against an unseen presence or hoard rotten meat “to feed to mon- sters.” Even something as harmless-sounding as constantly talking to one’s self can be disturbing to observers.
The insane respond to a pattern only they grasp, to stimuli that they perceive in their own minds. To their skewed perceptions, what happens to them is perfectly normal. A character’s derangement is there for a reason, whether she committed a crime or saw her own children devoured. What stimuli does her insanity inflict upon her, and how does she react to what happens? Work with the Storyteller to create a pattern of provocations for your character’s derangement, and then decide how she reacts.
Whenever your character is stymied by a quandary and must make an important decision about a course of action, or is under extreme stress, she might talk to herself without realizing it. Roll Resolve + Composure to avoid this discomforting habit.
Examples of important decisions include:
Effect: On a failed roll, your character vocalizes her internal monologue but only realizes it if it’s pointed out by others, at which point she can stop for one turn per dot of Wits that she has. After that period, she forgets herself and starts doing it all over again. This behavior persists for the remainder of the scene.
Your character vocalizes even if opponents or rivals can hear. It’s hard to keep her thoughts and feelings secret when she speaks them aloud. For example, a rival might demand that she reveal the location of a hidden heirloom. She smirks and think to herself (and unwittingly speaks aloud), “You’ll never find it in my hidden wall safe.”
There are some Kindred who are so shattered by an explosion of the unthinking Beast that they never really seem to return to their fully rational selves. Driven over the threshold of madness by degeneration or torment, they lose the capacity to understand and form speech, seeming more the mute animal than the thinking man. Rising from torpor, frenzy or torture into uncomprehending psychosis, they wander through a world of gibberish, unable to draw meaning from anything they hear.
This is a purely psychological derangement. The vampire can still hear everything that is being said and has all of the physical faculty necessary to form words, but just doesn’t understand what comes in and seems to have no control over what comes out. His speech is reduced to meaningless babble or clicks and smacks.
This is a horrifying derangement, especially for Kindred who tend to rely on their wit and charm for survival. Frustration and resulting frenzy always threaten a vampire who suffers from Aphasia, arising whenever he is forced to acknowledge that he can no longer comport himself normally in social situations.
Effect: The vampire is unable to communicate via speech. A Wits + Empathy roll must be made to get the basic emotional gist of conversational dialog, and cannot be undertaken at all if the speaker is not visible. He cannot speak intelligibly, and must resort to sign language, written text or telepathy to get his meaning across. The expenditure of a Willpower point allows the vampire to comprehend and form speech for one scene, but he descends back into his sorry state within minutes or hours, at the Storyteller’s discretion.
Conflicting sets of feelings and impulses that cannot be resolved can cause your character to develop schizophrenia, which manifests as a withdrawal from reality, violent changes in behavior and hallucinations. This derangement is the classic sort, causing victims to talk to walls, imagine themselves to be the King of Siam, or to receive murderous instructions from their pets.
Roleplaying this derangement requires careful thought. The Storyteller must determine a general set of behaviors relevant to the trauma that causes the condition. Hallucinations, bizarre behavior and disembodied voices stem from a terrible inner conflict that the individual cannot resolve. Establish a firm idea of what that conflict is and then rationalize what kind of behavior it causes.
Effect: A character with this derangement is unpredictable and dangerous. He automatically suffers a -2 penalty on all Social rolls and may be aggressive or violent toward people who confront him with trauma such as accusations, disturbing truths or heated arguments. Make a Resolve + Composure roll for your character to avoid escaping or attacking the source of trauma.
Schizophrenia is the most severe of all derangements. This mental illness includes hallucinations, delusions, radical mood swings, manic or obsessive babbling on certain themes, and outbursts of violence. The victim constantly hears strange hums, roars or voices in his head. People on TV or passing by seem to look at and threaten him. Delusions of grandeur are common: The schizophrenic thinks he’s Jesus, Napoleon (no, really, it happens) or the president.
Unlike most lesser derangements, schizophrenia has a proven organic cause, an imbalance of brain chemistry that drugs can treat in mortals. Stress also plays a role in sending a latent schizophrenic over the edge, though, and mortals need both drugs and psychotherapy to recover from the disease (if they can at all).
Schizophrenia presents a formidable roleplaying challenge. The player must decide on a general set of delusions, hallucinations and behaviors that relate to the trauma that causes the derangement. The Storyteller, meanwhile, should prepare to include hallucinatory details in her descriptions to the player. The character doesn’t know what’s real, so the player shouldn’t either. The player can probably guess that when the TV weatherman looks at the character and says, “Your sire wants to kill you. You have to kill him first,” that isn’t real. When he waits at a bus stop and someone pulls a dagger from under a coat, however....
Effect: A character with this derangement is unpredictable and dangerous. His player automatically suffers a -2 penalty on all Social rolls, and he might be aggressive or violent toward people who confront him with trauma such as accusations, disturbing truths or heated arguments. Make a Resolve + Composure roll for your character to avoid escaping or attacking the source of trauma. The player and Storyteller should also designate a set of conditions that trigger the character’s mood swings and delusions. Under these conditions, a -2 penalty applies to resist frenzy and Rötschreck as the vampire’s mind is racked by imaginary horrors.
Your character must experience a life-altering trauma or supernatural tragedy to acquire this extreme derangement. It cannot normally be acquired by failing a Humanity roll unless the sin performed is truly gut wrenching or horrific.
Whenever your character is subjected to a stressful situation in which the result of a single choice or dice roll can determine success or failure, she might be overcome with such self-doubt that she threatens the outcome. She might need to tell a convincing lie to get out of a dangerous situation or cut a wire to disable a bomb. Roll your character’s Resolve + Composure for her to remain composed.
Effect: If your roll fails, the weight of the momentous choice is too much for your character and she is flustered, doubting her ability to choose correctly or to perform adequately. Once in this state, any rolls made for the remainder of the scene — including the momentous act itself — suffer a -1 penalty. In addition, a Willpower point cannot be spent on the singular roll that inspires her bout of inferiority.
As Inferiority Complex, but your character’s general anxiety plagues things so badly that she suffers a -2 penalty on all rolls for the remainder of the scene, and Willpower points cannot be spent to bolster any rolls in that period.
In Kindred, this derangement often follows a traumatic loss of Humanity. The vampire begins to see herself as something less than human, and either makes a conscious decision to stop grooming herself normally or simply forgets to bother, satisfying the subconscious urge to chastise the self. She stops changing her clothes, makes no attempt to bathe or comb her hair and doesn’t bother cleaning spilled blood from her face after feeding. She makes no attempt to clean up her haven, and will readily sleep in filth. She ignores vermin that infest her clothes or hair, and although she may be shamed by the disgust of onlookers, she rarely acknowledges the real reason for their reaction.
Worse, vampires suffering from this derangement often fail to heal wounds in their waking hours, bearing them as if unawares and waiting for them to heal in the day’s sleep.
Effect: The character suffers a –3 dice penalty on all Social Ability rolls (except Intimidation and Disciplines) because of her filthy, disheveled state. A Willpower point must be expended if the character attempts to clean herself in any way or pay attention to her injuries. Even crippling pain will fail to compel her to heal herself unless she makes this expenditure. She will, however, expend Vitae to heal her wounds while she sleeps.
This derangement emerges because of a vampire’s subconscious wish to deny the truth of her undead state. Without willing it, she spends Vitae to bring warmth and color to her skin whenever in the company of others, draining herself in an effort to maintain the façade of life. Even conscious attempts to prevent the expenditure fail; there is a part of the vampire that is simply broken, forcing her to present the illusion whether she likes it or not.
Vampires suffering from Erythema are often subjected to the derision of their contemporaries, either because they seem to be desperate to pretend that they are still alive or because they are unable to control their own expenditures of Vitae. They also suffer an increased need to feed, since they spend so much blood fueling their pitiful masquerade.
Effect: The vampire automatically spends a point of Vitae to counterfeit life whenever she is in the company of others. Attempts to prevent this expenditure requires a successful Resolve + Composure roll. This roll carries a –2 dice penalty if the encounter with others is unexpected, and an additional –1 if there are more than three people present at the encounter (in addition to the vampire).
Whenever your character is threatened with violence or suffers extreme tension by being persecuted, challenged or accused, she might react without logic or reason. Roll her Resolve + Composure to keep her cool.
The persecution, challenge or accusation needs to bear some realistic threat to your character’s wellbeing, whether related to finances, emotional security or social standing. A hobo threatening to sue is no real threat, but a rich executive who says he’s going to ruin your character qualifies as a threat. Likewise, a society-page gossipmonger who threatens to expose your character’s faults is a threat if your character relies on that crowd for social acceptance, but not if he is a bicycle messenger who’s never been inside a penthouse.
Effect: On a failed roll, your character’s only way to comfortably deal with confrontation is to act crazy or over the top, in wild hopes that she will scare away her oppressor or at least mitigate her own fears. This behavior persists for the remainder of the scene. Ironically, she takes dangerous risks that might harm her worse than the actual threat posed. If a bouncer demands to know what your character is doing in an off-limits part of a club, she might overreact and get in his face. Make a Wits + Composure roll for her to be able to take any action that removes her from the scene or that directly diffuses the situation (such as accepting a hand offered in a conciliatory handshake). The truly ironic part about this behavior is that during such a bout, your character cannot initiate violence, only respond to it if it occurs. She can threaten or cajole challengers, but can’t take the first swing. (That, in fact, is what her crazed behavior tries to avoid.)
This derangement can emerge because of centuries of torpid dreams, or simply a strong desire for the world to be the way a character wants. Delusional obsession consists of a fanatical belief in something that just isn’t true. Lots of people hold beliefs that other people find absurd, of course, but a delusional obsessive structures his life or unlife on them. Classic examples include the survivalist holed up in a cabin with canned beans and a shotgun, the street-corner preacher ranting that “The end is near,” and the dotty old lady with a hundred cats. Nearly any hobby, belief or interest can seem dangerously crazed when it takes over a character’s existence. Delusional obsession might be dismissed as fanaticism, but it is even more extreme.
Effect: A Willpower point must be spent to resist whenever an opportunity arises to act in accordance with the character’s obsession, or whenever he must act in direct opposition to his obsession. For instance, a gardening fanatic might have to expend Willpower to stay out of a florist’s shop. A Kindred who believes that every instance of a crescent or lunar reference indicates Lupine activity might need to expend a Willpower point to step into an Islamic cultural center or to stay in the same room as someone named Moon.
This emotional derangement most often afflicts ghouls or blood-bound Kindred. The character becomes utterly dependent on his regnant or domitor. He resists making even the most trivial decision for himself. This disorder might arise from fear of abandonment (especially strong in the case of ghouls who know that sudden aging or death awaits them if they lose their supply of Vitae). It might also grow from an exaggerated fear of displeasing a harsh or demanding master.
Effect: If a character has this derangement, the player does not include Resolve in contested dice pools when the domitor attempts to Dominate him (although Blood Potency still applies). Indeed, the character often follows up on any statement that might be construed as a request for the character to do something.
This emotional derangement most often afflicts ghouls or blood-bound Kindred. The character becomes utterly dependent on his regnant or domitor. He resists making even the most trivial decision for himself. This disorder might arise from fear of abandonment (especially strong in the case of ghouls who know that sudden aging or death awaits them if they lose their supply of Vitae). It might also grow from an exaggerated fear of displeasing a harsh or demanding master.
Effect: If a character has this derangement, the player does not include Resolve in contested dice pools when the domitor attempts to Dominate him (although Blood Potency still applies). Indeed, the character often follows up on any statement that might be construed as a request for the character to do something.
Kindred Intermetamorphosis arises almost exclusively after long periods spent in torpor. The vampire suffering this derangement confuses the identities of mortals and Kindred he has known over the ages, often swapping those that he knew in life (or before his bout of torpor) with those who greet him in the modern world. For example, a vampire arising from a 400-year torpor might mistake his neonate grandchilde for his long-destroyed sire, or a living woman for his centuries-passed mortal wife. Most who observe this derangement in action believe it is caused by the vampire’s overpowering nostalgia for nights (and days) long gone, working in conjunction with the befuddlement prevalent in those arising from decades or centuries of torpor.
These Kindred may or may not be aware that the people they are dealing with cannot possibly be who they seem, but they cannot deny the identification. They feel as if the target of their derangement is actually someone else, even if it doesn’t make any sense. Some construct elaborate systems of belief to explain the phenomenon, ascribing it to reincarnation, telepathic body-swapping, miraculous “second chances” or more bizarre occult phenomena. They will not accept evidence to the contrary, and may even attempt to “save” a contemporary who denies “the truth.”
The mistaken identity will influence and supersede a vampire’s opinion of the modern subject. If the vampire believes that a neonate female is really his former lover, he will not accept acts of aggression at face value, always attempting to explain it in terms of his “real” relationship to her. If he can’t dismiss her actions out of hand, he will assume that she is acting against her will or is somehow unaware of his identity.
Effect: The character suffering from Intermetamorphosis will instantly draw associations between modern individuals and those from long past based on the flimsiest of similarities. Hair color, certain mannerisms, tone of voice or even gender could be enough to set off the Kindred’s derangement. Once a mortal or vampire is associated with a figure from the sufferer’s past, nothing (short of the actual interference of the figure in question) will convince him otherwise. He may spend Willpower to shake off the delusion for one scene, but must operate under its infl uence at all other times.
Your character feels trapped by his superiors and may lash out when he feels persecuted, accused or smothered. This disorder causes your character to feel personally threatened (see Irrationality) by seemingly harmless instructions and orders given by people with authority over him, especially when the deeper reasons behind such instructions aren’t revealed. Roll Resolve + Composure to keep his cool.
If the roll fails, your character undermines his own attempts to carry out the action instructed or ordered, no matter how innocuous or even beneficial it really is. For the rest of the scene, your character suffers a –5 penalty on dice pools for actions that contribute to the fulfillment of the order or instruction. How this manifests through your character’s behavior depends on the nature of his derangement. In the style of Irrationality, your character may fume and overreact, complaining loudly the whole time. On the other hand, your character may passive-aggressively acquiesce, and then seethe and procrastinate, before finally delivering only half-hearted work.
The trauma that spawns this derangement fractures your character’s personality into one or more additional personas, allowing her to deny her trauma or any actions the trauma causes by placing the blame on “someone else.” Each personality is created to respond to certain emotional stimuli. An abused person might develop a tough-as-nails survivor personality, create a “protector” or even become a murderer to deny the abuse she suffers. In most cases, none of these personalities is aware of the others, and they come and go through your character’s mind in response to specific situations or conditions.
Effect: A character with multiple personalities can manifest different Skills or perhaps increased or diminished Social Attributes for each identity (the number of dots allocated to your character’s Social Attributes are rearranged by anywhere from one to three).
Multiple-Personality Disorder (MPD) results from traumas so severe and prolonged that the victim’s mind splits into several personalities. When a vampire suffers this derangement, the Storyteller and player need to agree on a set of alternative personalities for the character, as well as on what situations call each personality to the fore. Each personality should have some connection to the trauma that fractured the character’s mind. Alternate personalities might believe they belong to different clans, bloodlines or covenants, or even not be aware that they are undead.
Effect: A character with multiple personalities can manifest different Skills or perhaps increased or diminished Social Attributes for each identity (the number of dots allocated to your character’s Social Attributes are rearranged by anywhere from one to three). The character does not actually possess more Skills than other characters, he merely switches personalities when he needs to use certain Skills. For instance, a tough-guy “protector” persona might emerge whenever the character needs to fight, so the baseline identity doesn’t need to face the moral and emotional stress of combat. The “protector” persona takes possession of the character’s combat Skills, while the other personalities don’t admit that they know how to fight.
This is an extreme derangement. The character must experience a life-altering trauma or supernatural tragedy to manifest it. The ailment cannot normally be acquired by failing a Humanity roll unless the sin performed is truly ghastly. MPD is an elaborate derangement, and a challenge to roleplay. Its symptoms are frightening and the suffering it exacts from its victim is monumental. It should not be an excuse for slapstick, wacky, foolish or childish behavior.
Some Kindred, overwhelmed by the demands of vampire society and unable to keep up with the complexities of Status, intrigue and predatory warfare, sometimes suffer an overwhelming urge to withdraw completely from the world around them. Severe trauma can lead to the dissolution of rational bounds on this urge, resulting in an absolute abandonment of social interaction and obligation regardless of the detrimental effect on the vampire’s own existence.
Vampires suffering from Withdrawal avoid leaving their havens and interacting with others as much as possible. They do not attend any Elysium events, and they allow all friendships and alliances to wither, never bothering to initiate communication. The Requiem of a vampire in Withdrawal is one of solitary nights spent in silent retreat. Some turn to scholarly pursuits, losing themselves in dusty tomes and occult research, but most just take on idle hobbies, accomplishing little of value and waiting until hunger demands that they strike out in search of blood.
Withdrawal is not a derangement for characters in play. It should be restricted to Storyteller characters only, because Withdrawal isolates the vampire and threatens to destroy all of the work he’s done to establish himself in Kindred society. A player may wish to add Withdrawal to his character’s history, as a cured derangement (or one that awaits him if he drops again to a formerly low Humanity rating) to explain a long absence from Kindred society, but should be aware of its implications if he does so.
Effect: The character must succeed on a Resolve + Composure roll to leave his haven each night. He suffers a –3 dice penalty on all Social Ability rolls (except for resistance on contested ones) because of his extreme unwillingness to speak to others, and his obvious attempts to get away from public dealings as quickly as possible.