Character Creation: Madhouse: A Lockwood's Asylum Roleplaying Game

What kind of crazy man blows up a crazy house?

The Game: Madhouse: A Lockwood's Asylum Roleplaying Game
The Publisher: Blackout Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Madhouse is a stretch goal to the crowdfunding campaign for a deck-building game called Lockwood's Asylum. I didn't back it, I just got Madhouse in a bundle, I think. (I did note, however, that the same company is producing Monster Wrangler, which I did back on Kickstarter. It's basically an off-brand Pokemon RPG, but the artwork is really cool and it looked fun.)

Madhouse is a survival horror game in which, by default, you play inmates of the titular asylum. There's a lot of scary and gross shit going on, running the gamut from body horror to cosmic horror to nurses that are torn apart and stitched back together. I don't hate it, but I don't think I'd run it. 

I wouldn't run it for a couple of reasons. The first is that I already have Chill, which is my go-to for investigative horror, and Fear Itself would work if Chill didn't. Hell, I think Unisystem would be fine, too, if we wanted to take a few pages from All Flesh Must Be Eaten's playbook. 

But the larger reason is that in Madhouse, all of the PCs have some kind of Disorder and that gives them superpowers. They're not overt, but maybe that makes it worse. Check it out.

That's...not remotely what psychosis means. They might be thinking of psychopathy, except that's not remotely what that means, either. The game seems to want to take pop culture misunderstandings of mental illnesses, refit them as character classes, and interpret them based on what role in a D&D-esque game they might fulfill. And that, folks, is what we call "problematic." 

What's kind of heartbreaking about it is that there are things about the game I like. The detail that goes into the town of Lakeshore and the history of the asylum is rich and easy to follow; it's not without its own problematic aspects, but nothing that couldn't be excised or massaged so that there's, say, fewer killer Native tribes. The system is a d10 roll-and-keep kind of thing (I didn't get too deep into it), there's a lot of attention paid to ritual magic and the various ways that gribblies can eat you in the asylum. It's a horror setting that's extremely tight in focus, and that's pretty cool. But again, I have a hard time imagining how I'd pitch the game to my friends, almost all of whom have interacted with mental illness in either a personal or professional capacity (or both). 

Anyway, let's make an unfortunate fellow who's been committed to the Lakeshore Asylum. Ugh, the PDF isn't bookmarked, grumblecakes.

Step One: Concept. The game is set modern day and I'm an inmate at Lakeshore. Let's see. I think in a game like this I'd prefer to have my "madness" stem from actual supernatural exposure rather than try to play a real mental illness; it would just feel a little less gross. So let's say that my guy was hired as part of a big crew in (whatever the nearest big city is to Lakeshore) to go into the city's decaying subway lines and help clean them out. This was a big urban renewal kind of job - lots of federal grant money and private donors and everyone was just real gung-ho about it, and then about two years in the mayor got embroiled in some big scandal and the project took a hit in the public eye, and it didn't stop, it just didn't get funded as much. So my guy, who had been part of a big team, now found his work force cut in half but his goals unchanged (or intensified). The stress was bad enough, but then one day he took a wrong turn, got lost, and was stuck in the underground for 72 hours. When his team finally found him, he was catatonic. It took five months before he spoke again, and he's by no means ready to live on his own, but like, Lakeshore isn't exactly a place of tranquil healing. 

OK, so I get 35 XP to build this guy. Step Two: Perks and Flaws is basically the same as any other game that uses this kind of setup, though I think it's interesting that it asks us to do that before the bare-bones stats. I think that actually makes sense, though - the ad/disad, edge/drawback, perk/flaw part of a character is often where the core of the character lies, in my experience. 

I can have a maximum of three each Perks and Flaws. Perks cost XP, Flws give you more, pretty standard. Let's see. I'll spend 3 XP and buy Handy, making me competent with power tools and such. Actually, I like Paranoid and Unassuming - basically I'm always on edge but the staff doesn't tend to notice me, both of which are appropriate. Those are 2XP each, so I've spent 7. 

Flaws! I'll take Ignorant; it just affects Science and Medicine rolls, and I think my guy is better with his hands. I'll take Nightmares, too, for probably obvious reasons. That's 4 points back. If I can find a 3-point Flaw I like I'll even out. Oh, well, Phobia makes sense. I'll take the two-point version, which actually means I have two phobias. I'll say he's afraid of the dark and of rats. Again, shouldn't be a big stretch to imagine why. That's only 2 points, though, so I've spent 1 point out of my 35. 

Step Three: Purchase Attributes. Six Attributes (Strength, Agility, Toughness, Perception, Intellect, Willpower). Everything starts at 2, and then buying them up costs 3 x (new rating), meaning it'd cost 9 points to go up to 3. I can also get myself an extra 4 points if I drop an Attribute down to 1. The game tells me that's a significant handicap, though, and that 2 is average, so I'm inclined to just leave my Attributes where they are and let Skills do the heavy lifting. 

Step Four: Skills. And here we are at Skills. Skills start at 0 and you pay (new rating) to raise them, meaning if I wanted a rating of 3 in a Skill it'll cost me 6 XP. Also, at 3 and 5, you get Techniques from Skills. Let's see here. 

Well, I never regret taking Athletics. I'll think I'll blow the 6 points to take a rating of 3, since that'll give me a Technique and I like Surefoot (I'm good on rough terrain; seems to fit). I'll spend 3 and take Brawl 2, and 1 to get Melee 1 (he's not good at fighting but he can hit you with a stick). 

Evasion seems like it makes sense, so I'll blow 6 more and take 3 points there, with the Dodge Technique. Three more gets me Stealth 2; I'm up to 20 spent (because I came into this with 1 already spent). 14 to go. 

Three points for Endurance 2, six for Tolerance 3 (drugs barely register anymore). Five more points. I'll spent 3 for Craft 2 (yeah, no Technique, but that's OK), and then 1 each for 1 point in Composure and Scrutiny. 

Step Five is (sigh) Disorder. As much time as he's spent silent, Depressive would seem like it fits, but I'm gonna go for Delusional. In this game, Delusional eventually lets you make reality fit with your delusions, but at starting level it makes you have instructive hallucinations, which can, among other things, give you a bump to Crafts. 

Step Six: Derived Traits, right here at the end, where they should go. Let's see. Defense is (Agility x 5) + 5 + (Evasion x 2), or 21 in my case. Conviction is (Willpower x 5) + 5 + (Composure x 2), or 17. Notice is the same thing with Perception and Investigate (so just 15, since I don't have Investigate). I get Health equal to twice my Toughness (4) plus one for every rank of Endurance (2), so I get 6 boxes. My Insanity starts at 0, which seems...low, considering? Ah, well. 

Step Seven is Finalize Backstory. There are questions. Cool!

• Why was the character committed? We covered that; he went catatonic for months after the incident in the tunnels. 
• Who does the character care about? He has a brother (Thomas) who was on his crew, but was laid off when the budget cuts came down. That means Thomas could very well have been there in the dark with him, if things had been a little different. 
• Who cares about the character? Thomas comes to visit him every week or two (gas is expensive). His parents have been to see him once or twice, but his dad is embarrassed by the whole thing.
• Who hates the character? No one that he knows of. Not yet, anyway.
• What frightens the character? Rats and the dark. He was stuck underground, in pitch darkness, listening to (and sometimes being nibbled by) the rats for three days. He can't sleep without a light on and the sight of a rat is often enough to send him into a panic attack. 
• What does the character look like? He used to be kind of a strapping dude, but he's lost a lot of muscle mass. He's about six feet tall, thin, pale, a mop of brown hair (he doesn't like to have it cut) and his fingers are always raw because he chews the ends. 

Should probably have a name, too. Let's call him Philip Zimmerman. Folks on the crew used to call him "Zim", but no one at the asylum does. 

I picture Phil as the kind of guy that resists the initial call to adventure, and then bursts into the room when the other people are getting their asses kicked and swats someone with a board. Kind of soft-spoken, but out of vulnerability rather than being really aloof. 

That'll do it!