I’m fond of a SAN system, but as people have said there should be no stupid gameovers: If you’re insane, you play on as insane.
“this is the Necronomicon. After a stint in a certain country, the pages are all stuck together.”
Dude, what have you been doing with your Necronomicon?
I’m against a sanity system. I see little hope in modeling them in a game such as this. In the games that feature such systems, a specific character is involved, and it makes it believable that these are HIS/HER fears, and though we may think they’re pussies for having them, it affects them regardless. For example, you have Amnesia, where the character freaks out over being in the dark. I think he’s a wimp and that that’s absolutely stupid because darkness is safety, but hey, it’s that character, it’s his fear, it’s believable. These systems work because they’re targeted at specific characters.
Take away the specific nature of the character, and the whole thing falls apart. You may find spiders scary, I may find cockroaches scary, they may find darkness scary, or I may find the color purple to be absolutely terrifying. Implementing a sanity system implies that all characters are the same person and will behave in the same way, and I feel this robs everyone’s character of individuality.
Why? Mental conditions could be many, and you particular sets of problems and phobia would evolve during gameplay.
Or just have phobias and mental issues be part of character creation.
Or have “Mentally Sound” be a positive trait. Like Cold Hearted, it could shield you from the effects of staring down the Hounds Of Tindalos, as the rats scratch from within the walls of reality!
I just think slaughter should be more mentally fatiguing. Like PTSD and such. You should be able to come back all 'Nammed out if you’ve just had an absolute blood bath of a thing. Someone with Animal Empathy should be able to become depressed from killing a ton of animals.
These sanity effects should be conditional. Not universal across the board. People go crazy in such unique ways. What a boring world it would be if everyone shared the same delusion.