Mentally Disabled Characters?

[Peter Quill]

Simple, you're in a RPG when all of a sudden your character is stuck in a car accident. It was almost fatal!

Ok, that's only a scenario, but has one really thought of RPing with someone mentally disabled? Or insane?

The thought has occured to me. But how should one be able to effectively incorporate this into a RPG without it being totally uneedlingly convoluted? Hard enough for people to understand your character, but how do you get into the proper mindframe?

Just thought this would be interesting discussion. And it could help us out for some more "interesting" characters.

 

[RaZoR LeAf]

I think it would be hard for just anyone to do effectively, but if someone had a friend or a relative (a close relative like parent or brother/sister would be 'better') with a mental disability then they would have a better understanding of how to portray it in writing. I'm not saying that authors who do have these characters can't do them just be researching, but for us lowly unprofessionals, making it up as we go along might not cut it as well.

 

[Psychic]

Simple, you're in a RPG when all of a sudden your character is stuck in a car accident. It was almost fatal!

Ok, that's only a scenario, but has one really thought of RPing with someone mentally disabled? Or insane?

I...don't think that people can become mentally hadicapped like that. Becoming physically disabled, like becoming paralyzed, yes, but I don't think someone can develope any purely mental disabilities at a later stage in life. I could be wrong, but I believe the most that could happen would something like paralysis, memory loss or a coma.

In any case, to portray someone with a real mental handicap is certainly not easy, especially since in many cases, their thought process often won't be similar to yours or mine. Even doing a lot of research might not help all that much - as mentioned, I think the "optimal" situation would be knowing and being close to someone with whatever disorder you wish to explore/emulate in your character. Knowing and understanding them would be the biggest help to you, as well as giving you a unique and interesting experience to interract with such a person. Even someone with a strong addiction can be difficult to emulate without knowing their regular thought process and behaviours.


But to be honest, for an RPG character? Do you really need a mental handicap? If you're doing it just to stand out or do something different, there are much better roads you can take. If it were something more serious, like a story you were aiming to publish, I could sympathize, but just a character you're taking on and will probably drop a couple months down the road? It seems unnecessary to me.

I remember there was one RPG here, all of whose characters had to have some mental dissability. I never looked into it much myself, though it was interesting that the RP was made for these characters, not just meant for one or two. *shrugs*


Honestly, though they can be absolutely fascinating characters (see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon), I don't think that they are necessary for RPs, and you'd just be best off with something you know and can handle. That's my two cents, anyway.

~Psychic