Copying a YouTube comment on how to "play" compulsions from cursed items.

[brooksmoses]

In comments on this video by Ginny Di on cursed items in D&D and similar games -- specifically, the video is on why they often end up being annoying to players and detract from the game, rather than being something interesting and fun.

In the comments, someone mentioned that they'd like to do more with compulsions and fear and charm spells and such in their game, but any time they do that to the PCs, the players always try to talk their way out of it with things like, "But I'd notice this wasn't something I normally would do, so I'd recognize that I was cursed and ignore the compulsion" and such. To which I replied:

There's a certain amount of "if the players don't like playing with mental-compulsion effects, find some different kinds of tools to play with" that applies here, but I think you could also do some useful things with pulling from how ADHD and OCD and depression and other sorts of real-world compulsions and altered mental states affect people. Instead of simply saying "you can't" or "you must", give them some mechanical consequences.

One option, drawing somewhat from depression, is "you believe that this line of thinking is entirely in character." When the character is compelled to act a certain way, what happens is that the reasons they would do that thing feel very important and easy to imagine, and all the reasons that they would not do that thing feel very unimportant (if not entirely false) and difficult to imagine. The world to you looks like a world in which doing the thing is something you would completely-in-character choose to do. (But I'd notice that something has changed? Maybe, but this affects how you perceive the past as well as the present. Roll a wisdom check to see if you actually can tell something's up. And even if you pass, the world still looks very wrong so it's quite difficult to figure out what's real and what's compulsion, especially since it's mostly in gradiations of things.)

Another, drawing somewhat from OCD, is sure, you can avoid the compulsion. Roll a willpower check to do anything else. Difficulty increases each time you do. Fail the willpower check, and you don't do anything. Take disadvantage to intelligence and perception, because you're distracted, and that gets worse the longer you avoid the compulsion. Soon you're also taking constitution hits, because the stress levels are making you physically ill. If you successfully avoid it long enough, you're a shaking immobile lump. But, sure, you can avoid it if you want to.

Or, drawing somewhat from ADHD, doing anything else requires fighting distraction constantly, and fighting minor physical discomforts, and those distractions always lead back around to thinking about the thing you're being compelled to do. Alternately, if you are thinking about that thing, there's a penalty to perceiving anything that would be related to doing something else. Your party member is yelling at you not to put the chalice on the altar? Yes, they're right next to you -- but you still have to succeed on a difficult perception check to notice that it's not just some random unimportant noise. Waving hands in front of your face, or holding you back? Perception check to notice that there is some meaning attached to the gesture rather than just an annoying impediment with no more meaning than mud on your glasses or a stuck boot.

Hypnosis and mind-altering drugs of various sorts could also be relevant here, as sources to pull from. Can you ignore the hallucination? Sure you could -- but would you, in character, actually ignore a ten-foot-tall fire-breathing evil paladin bearing down on you with a greatsword and screaming "die" in ways that are causing rocks to literally fall from the ceiling? And, if you do, are you then able to ignore the feeling that your arm has been cut off, with consequent gushing of blood and feelings of faintness? Maybe if you crit on a perception check to tell that this is a hallucination, and also crit on a willpower check to believe it, but even so, that hallucinated paladin is still going to be remarkably distracting and affect your other rolls.

But, yeah, if the players just want to argue their way out of the hallucinated paladins and warped perceptions rather than having fun with the consequences, maybe for that group of players it's better to stick to the real paladins attacking them.

I'd be curious about thoughts and expansions on this. (I know the "somewhat"s in "drawing somewhat from" are doing a lot there to cover for broad-brush and simplistic interpretations, especially for the things I haven't experienced firsthand.)