The
single most
important trait in the
role-playing game Call
of Cthulhu. It measures your
character's
mental stability, the
higher the better and is a product of your character's
POW. Every
time you
experience something
traumatic,
terrifying, or learn
about
the true nature of the universe your sanity score goes down.
Read those
Pnakotic Manuscripts you found during you last adventure
and it goes down. Have your brain removed and stored in a jar by the
foul
Funghi from Yuggoth and it goes down. See
Cthulhu in all his
naked,
tentacled glory it it goes
way down. And when the score
reaches
zero, your character goes
stark raving mad.
There are some ways to recover lost sanity points (although spending
time in a mental institution tends to do more harm than good), but
you tend to lose them faster than you recover them. Call of Cthulhu
is probably the only game where you're more likely to end your career
in a padded cell than actually die. This tends to encourage
extreme caution among players and discourage hoarding of ancient,
mystical, manuscripts and artifacts.