Mental Illness in RPGs (was Games based on T2K rules...)

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not a light subject really - some in our gaming group have it .(And I strongly suspect Gen.Pain has an undiagnosed condition ).

I wanted to make it part of the game because I needed a sort of sanction against players who werent paying attention to the limitations of man so to say .(A well scored and equipped PC can be fun to run like a super villain more or less , killing thousands ,no matter of atroceties matter to you etc )

So I came up with sanitypoints (initiative+intelligence) for a max of 16 points .They loose 1 everytime their HP gets negative,or everytime they are up close and personal in a killing or some other bad stuff happens.(everyone lost 1D6+2 sanitypoints when the world as they knew it ended - mental trauma)

Anyways - too keep it from being just another excuse for being an arsehole player as some stated I took the line that sometimes mental illness manifests itself in ways that could be negative for a person in a playercharacter type enviroment .Lack of sleep/rest , selfmedication to control the illness or its symptoms ( using whatever available , mostly alcohol and organic drugs ) and this in turn leading to negative modifiers like a penalty for shooting when drunk etc .

So now most of the PCs that have been in the wars for awhile have to start every game day with a check against intelligence or initiative or they start every task with the penalty they incurred by missing the roll. (Please all - I do not want any controversy over the choice of intelligence and initiative as the control scores -I needed numbers to hang this on and my lack of intelligence and initiative told me to make it easy on my self and just choose these two)

There are still effects like "animosity towards.." " will turn violent within 1D6 hours after last drop of alcohol (minimum 60 proof ) is swallowed" etc included in the disorders ,but when I thought about it most war veterans that I have spoken to or heard of that had problems after there was some sort of substance abuse problem,sleep disorder or fatigue syndrom.(Or the most common were these ) .