Taint of Madness: Insanity and Dread Within Asylum Walls (Call of Cthulhu Horror Roleplaying)

TAINT OF MADNESS is a sourcebook of Sanity, Insanity, Therapies, Asylums, and Laws & Procedures Relating to Such Topics. Only small events are needed to shake shared beliefs--a suspect friendship, for instance, or a machinating government, or a doctor's threatening manner, or inexplicable evidence of a dreadfulness older than the stars. When we perceive this change in ourselves, we soon learn whether we are disturbingly normal, or completely insane....

TAINT OF MADNESS discusses the recognizable forms of insanity, the historical treatment of the insane, how the mad or the incompetent are handled, and what the legal complications of being classified insane may portend. Plenty of game-related information and suggestions are made. The Cthulhu sanity rules are modified. There are three fully-developed asylums (Bethlehem for the 1890s, Arkham Sanitarium for the 1920s, and Bellevue for the 1990s), as well as a short scenario for each.

Background information includes notes for conducting psychiatric interviews, sample commitment and release papers, a glossary of psychiatric terms corrected for the era, extensive information concerning historical asylums in the U.S. and across the globe, an annotated bibliography, and plenty of illustrations. Indexed.