Your Bout of Madness episodes

[Deadmanwalking]

We've played the whole of Tales of Wilderland plus Words of the Wise and The Marsh Bell. And some early stuff from Darkening of Mirkwood (we often do a couple of adventures a year, so we're only a bit over 5 years into the timeline).

During that whole time we've had two Bouts of Madness. The two mentioned above. Both were, I think, in the same session, and both were absolutely on the way back to Rhosgobel from Dol Guldur (having traveled there with Radagast to scout things).

Of course, we're a five person group with a Hobbit, a Beorning, and a tendency to average 2 or 3 extra Hope a session from Songs via the rules in the Rivendell book (we've all got Song 3+ and have written something on the order of five songs, 4 of them Elven, all TN 14 or less to sing). Heck, we're actually almost at full hope right now (nobody is more than a point below maximum). So...I'd expect a less musical group to maybe get Miserable more often.

[Corvo]

So, albeit a bit tangential to the main thrust of this thread, how many Bouts of Madness have occurred so far in your campaigns and across how many adventures did they happen? Like I said earlier, we've played about 10 adventures so far and not had one Bout to contend with.

I have had some Bouts of Madness during some "one-shot": short adventures with pregenerated PCs, deliberately low on Hope and high on Shadow.

In campaign play I got 2 fellowships: one with 8 adventures under their belt, the other with 17. Zero BoMs in both*.
Yes, even the Hero that was miserable engaged Tyulqin, wounded the beast and survived the encounter without rolling any Eye.

* Note: in my games the Heal Corruption Undertaking is severely limited, and tied to campaign event. As a rule of thumb, the Heroes manage to shed just 1 Shadow point per year.

[Rich H]

* Note: in my games the Heal Corruption Undertaking is severely limited...

I've done the same; if I recall, without reference to my house rules, I've reduced it to recovering 2, 3 and 4 on an ordinary, great or extraordinary success and still not got close to a Bout of Madness. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing - just the players knowing about has had the desired effect that they really keep an eye on their Hope and Shadow scores.

[Majestic]

I've had just the two Bouts of Madness (written about above), and that's in about 25 adventures and 30+ sessions. Our group is also quite musical now, with an extensive Song List, and they do a pretty good job of managing their Shadow scores.

[zedturtle]

We've had a dwarf with two bouts of madness (one in the presence of Raenar... several of the party kept him restrained whilst the others dealt with a live dragon), and a High Elf with one bout.

I struggle with coming up with stuff, especially as I'm running PbP... taking control for a scene could mean days or weeks of down-time for the player, so I usually try to have one big thing happen that doesn't disrupt things too much, but still shows that the hero lost themselves for a moment.

[Rich H]

Across how many adventures were those, Zed?

Another question: do LMs take control of the characters during a Bout or do you provide the player with a brief to work to and then add elements if/when required. If one every happens for me I was thinking of doing the latter to see how it worked out.

[Majestic]

Across how many adventures were those, Zed?

Another question: do LMs take control of the characters during a Bout or do you provide the player with a brief to work to and then add elements if/when required. If one every happens for me I was thinking of doing the latter to see how it worked out.

I have a long history with my players, so I trust them to role-play things appropriately.

[Edit: Not that anybody who doesn't do so doesn't trust their players, just that, after a long time, you know if you have players that can allow their characters to do things like attack their friends when mind controlled, or lose player agency temporarily]

[beckett]

My group has had several Bouts of Madness, resulting in two player-heroes falling to the Shadow. One of those player-heroes returned with a new name: Mogdred. The other is now in the service of the White Wizard.

One memorable episode happened during the Watch on the Heath when the company encountered the dragon. The Barding in our group had the Slayer calling with the Curse of Vengeance Shadow Weakness. When he created his character, he wrote this great backstory about how his parents were killed by Smaug. Well, he suffered his Bout of Madness at a very unfortunate moment and charged Raenar the Plunderer. Never charge a dragon.

The other memorable episode occurred many game years later. Our Wood-elf Scholar was obsessed with uncovering dark knowledge and had already suffered several Bouts of Madness because of this. He never fully recovered emotionally from the death of his mortal friend (the Barding) and secretly wished to learn the arts of necromancy to reverse the Doom of Men. During his final Bout of Madness, he abandoned the company to seek out this forbidden knowledge on his own. He now works for the White Wizard.

As far as managing the Bout of Madness at the table, I let the player role-play it. I tell the player the situation his hero is faced with and ask how his character feels. Based on the response, I might ask another question. In this way, the player has a general idea how to proceed and he runs with it.

[zedturtle]

Across how many adventures were those, Zed?

Almost all of Tales and we're at 2951 in Darkening presently.

Another question: do LMs take control of the characters during a Bout or do you provide the player with a brief to work to and then add elements if/when required. If one every happens for me I was thinking of doing the latter to see how it worked out.

My players are pretty good at being Miserable so I don't go crazy with the Bouts. I haven't yet let a player loose on a Bout but I'm certainly open to it.

[SirGamingScotsman]

I've only had two Bouts happen so far in my games, both happened to the same character, Scholar Dwarf, in the same adventure, the Watch on the Heath. My players have been, and still are, very careful with their Hope spending, but during the adventure they needed to spend a lot. The first Bout happened after the battle with the Gibbet King/Raenar, the party's Hobbit archer, Falco, had been knocked out, out of the view of the rest of the party, and the lone surviving Goblin was dragging him away to be eaten. The Dwarf, Grundin and a Beorning, Magneric, went to find the Hobbit and caught up to the Goblin just as it was leaving the fort. Magneric killed the Goblin and Grundin went to see if Falco was ok. He failed his Healing check, with a Sauron, and being Miserable had a Bout of Madness. He thought Falco was dead and the despair was too much for him, there was also another Dwarf in the party who had been knocked unconscious during the fight too. So he just started to walk away out into the snow storm, Magneric tried to stop him but Grundin shunned his friend as he left. Grundin survived the snow long enough to come to his senses and return to his friends, finding them all alive, if badly beaten, and a rather vexed dragon telling them to leave.

The second Bout happened on their return Journey to Erebor. They were about halfway home and Grundin failed a Fatigue Test with a Sauron. This second Bout fell more in with his Scholarly Calling. He just kept his head down reading the book they had secured from the Lonely Mountain's library, ignoring the other members of the party and refusing to contribute. Essentially his character wasn't allowed to make any input towards plans or courses of action that they may have discussed as a group on the way back. Fortunately they return Journey was fairly uneventful.

I did have a few instances, in later adventures, to use Grundin's flaws as he had taken on some Diplomatic duties for Erebor.

We are now working our way through the Darkening campaign, and there are plenty of chances for further Bouts of Madness to occur, we have had a few characters retire, and a couple of new people join the game so I'm looking forward to, potentially, stretching my LM muscles to come up with some interesting scenarios.