The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents… – HPL
One of the things that’s often discussed/debated/argued/studied in regards to Call of Cthulhu games is the justification behind Mythos knowledge imparting a loss in the sanity of individuals. While Lovecraft’s protagonists often found themselves loosing grips with reality, it was arugably in regard to both the horrors of the Mythos as well as the non-Mythos horror of the situation as a whole. When analyzed from this fashion, one could conclude that the bulk of the sanity loss could easily be attributable to non-Mythos reasons. And that’s a valid stance.
But for the game, the mechanics are quite sound and help to evoke the way that Lovecraft’s protagonists often found themselves in a sanity-eroding death spiral culminating in little more than a pyrrhic victory. Sanity as a statistic works well to quantify the nature of this spiral.
Mythos creatures and events might not appear to be sanity reducing per se, and in an attempt to explain sanity loss, some Keepers take the track that what they represent is so foreign, so blasphemous, that the very knowledge of their existence or exposure to their presence is detrimental to our well-being. A reasonable answer, but why would the Universe create mankind to be so foreign to herself and so easily damaged by her truths?
Unless of course that Universe was herself beyond our understanding… a valid answer to be sure. – KO
In contrast, I’ve often considered the sanity loss more of an “eye opening” than anything else. Witnessing Mythos events, reading and understanding Mythos lore, and coming into contact with Mythos creatures tugs at something deep within a collective subconscious. That something is the racial memory that what the character has just encountered is the truth of the Universe.
Under this light, sanity is seen as the barrier that prevents mankind from understanding the Mythos more fully. Interaction with the Mythos erodes that wall, opening us up to a better understanding of the reality to which we are blind. Consider sanity the denial mechanism that prevents mankind from understanding the truth.
In this fashion, just as denial prevents truths from being internalized and insulates a person from facts too uncomfortable to accept, so does sanity protect the protagonists from the facts that the Mythos is the truth.
In this regard, it is not Azathoth that is a blind idiot god, rather it is the denial mechanism that is our sanity which makes mankind blind and idiotic. Remove the denail mechanism and protagonists view the Universe is all her horrid and blasphemous glory.
Tags: Call of Cthulhu, horror, mechanics, rpg, rules, Setting, system, technique
