Mad Scientist / Tabletop Games

• BattleTech: The Society is a secret group of disgruntled Clan scientists that pursue their own projects and ambitions. Not only do they work in defiance of the ruling Warrior Castes, they also have a complete disregard for even the most basic of human rights or medical ethics.
• Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: Deviant science is a known phenomenon, and its practitioners have a distinct tendency for the eccentric. Main character Leonardo de Montreal practices Nightmare Science, which is like deviant science, except more biological. He also happens to be a megalomaniac who lost his innate sense of right and wrong, and made himself a moral prosthetic to replace it.
• The Dark Eye: The druid Archon Megalon is a mad psychologist. He is fascinated by the effects of fear on the human psyche, particularly on crowds, so he tends to cause panic-spreading disasters and upheavals in order to study the reactions. For Science.
• Deadlands:
  • Mad Science is an arcane background, and the Mad Scientist a standard character archetype. It's caused by demons whispering secrets of future technology into the ears of promising inventors, which is as good a reason as any to go insane.
  • Its sequel, Hell on Earth, is set in a future where Mad Science brought about the Apocalypse. As a result (this was the ultimate goal of the demons who caused mad science in the first place, so they stopped 'helping' when it was achieved), traditional mad science mostly stopped working (old devices still work, but no new ones can be created), and was replaced with techno-shamanism and a more Anvilicious source of insanity: "gun spirits".
• Dungeons & Dragons settings — as a rule — don't have scientists of any sort, but when you do find one in a highly magical world, he or she is probably a mad one.
  • Dragonlance developed the concept of tinker gnomes, and Spelljammer imported some as they spread from Krynn in their insane space-steamboats. Mad science is their principal business, religion, and means of defense. They're the creators of such creatures as the giant space hamster, the carnivorous giant space hamster, the fire-breathing phase doppelganger giant space hamster or the miniature giant space hamster. And Al-mi'raj ("experiment 72"), known for non-tinker gnomes as "Blink bunny". They tend to build overcomplicated contraptions prone to slapstick malfunction.
  • Forgotten Realms has Lantan, the land full of followers of Gond, the patron of invention. A good example is Tinkersdam of Gond, an alchemist who, after far too many accidents involving explosions, was exiled from several cities and ended up in a cave in Tethyr. He made high explosives just for fun, and directed charges at that... but sucked at making time-fuses. He also made pre-ordered weird stuff, like a mask that allowed a sleeping half-elf to pose as an elf in reverie because it did flawlessly fit over his client's face and has quite convincing open and blinking eyes (no magic). He also got some sort of hyper-awareness in his lab — he not only never knocked over anything by accident, but didn't even let a kettle he didn't see boil out. Which may be the main reason why he lived that long. Another example is Nadul DaRoni, gnomish DaVinci expy whose ads appeared in Aurora's Catalogue with a comment "Madman, perhaps; genius, perhaps; annoying, most definitely".
  • Greyhawk had some pretty crazy mechanical and semi-magical Schizo Tech made by humans and gnomes alike, the craziest of which—along with wacky stories of the inventors—was collected in 'The Book of Wondrous Inventions' sourcebook (once trampled by Something Awful). Most of it hardly has a place in a sane game, but is sort of funny—that is, as long as The Loonie in your party didn't read it too.
  • Ravenloft, being a "Gothic horror" game-setting, makes regular use of this trope, with golem-crafters (Victor Mordenheim, Emil Bollenbach), Mix-and-Match Critter-makers (Frantisek Markov, Vjorn Horstman), Mind-Raping psychiatrists (Daclaud Heinforth, Celeste d'Honaire-Levode), and Woobie-ish crackpots trying to reconstruct their dead loved ones (too many to list). (It also abounds in mad wizards, but that's a different trope.)
  • I13 Adventure Pack I, adventure "The Circus of Gandolfo". Gandolfo experiments with bringing dead bodies and body parts to life.
  • 3.5 includes a variety of classes or prestige classes that play this straight, mix this with mad wizardry, or are a stand-alone mad wizard.
  • Eberron:
    • Being mad isn't technically a prerequisite for the Artificer class, but try finding someone with an Artificer character playing it any other way.
    • Mordain the Fleshweaver is a rogue transmuter wizard who spends his time digging into the lore of the daelkyr. He lives in Droaam, the kingdom of monsters, where the locals carefully avoid his tower — and note that Droaam's locals include a sizeable population of ogres and the heads of state are night hags.
• Exalted:
  • The entire setting is a playground for some of these. Combine the sorcerer-engineer castes, such as the Twilights, with the Great Curse, and every so often you'll get things like the Beasts of Resplendent Liquid.
  • And then we have their Green Sun Prince counterparts, the Defilers. Mad Science is practically a divine domain of their patron, and they combine it with Psychic Powers. Their Abyssal versions, the Daybreaks, tend to fit under here if they're nice.
  • Given some of the requirements for creating a Liminal Exalt (someone obsessed with bringing back the dead, or creating life from death, who puts their obsession into practice), it's quite likely a Liminal's creator was one of these.
• The fan made Genius: The Transgression, which is all about Mad Scientists so crazy that they can create stuff that bends the laws of physics. The Catalysts of Geniuses even relate to five mad scientist stereotypes and quotes:
  • Grimm; anger and vengeance: "You will pay for what you've done."
  • Hoffnung; vision and hope: "We won't have these problems when I Take Over the World!"
  • Klagen; loss and sorrow: "No, you fools! You'll doom us all!"
  • Neid; banishment and jealousy: "They scoffed at me, they laughed at me, They Called Me Mad!!"
  • Staunen; curiosity and amazement: "Oh, the things I have seen..."
• Mage: The Ascension has the Sons/Society of Ether, a Tradition of technomantic mad scientists who see their magick as the ultimate form of True Science (what's really scary is that the Etherites have a faction they call Mad Scientists because of their disregard for ethics). Virtual Adepts and Iteration X also fit this mold. As do the Progenitors. Approaching from the other direction, there are several mages (most common among The Order of Hermes, but it can pop up in any of the more mystic-minded Traditions or Crafts) that approach researching magic with the same level of intensity and lack of ethics.
• In Nomine: Vapula, Prince of Technology, is the archetypal amoral and obsessive tinkerer with things best left alone. Lacking Archangel Jean's Heavenly access to the secrets of the physical universe, he instead works to catch up by experimenting on every soul in sight — literally. He has an excellent relationship with Baal, Prince of the War, who has little trouble finding uses for the endless stream of experimental weapons that comes out of Vapulan laboratories.
• Paranoia: These turn up fairly regularly; many are employed by Friend Computer to invent exciting new weapons and devices for the the player-character Troubleshooters to test. Meanwhile, the Pro Tech secret society is made up of enthusiastic amateurs.
• Pathfinder:
  • The Alchemist class are bomb-chucking, drug-swilling expies of Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, Herbert West, and Doctor Moreau.
  • Of individual note is the nosferatu wizard/alchemist Ramoska Arkminos, met in both the Curse of the Crimson Throne and Carrion Crown adventure paths. He's studying the curse of vampirism in hopes of curing himself, but is perfectly willing to conduct experiments of questionable ethical standing in that pursuit. He's actually a fairly friendly character, perfectly willing to help the PCs out if they can come to an agreement. Rolth Lamm in the former adventure path also qualifies, although he's almost impossible to deal with peacefully.
  • The second edition Game Mastery guide includes a gallery of premade NPCs. The "Villains" section includes a "Reckless Scientist" stat block, which is largely inspired by the alchemist class. They can attack with bombs, (and has the special ability to mix the many potions they have on them together, which potentially backfires, but can also allow them to create more powerful potions with both effects) or swig a special mutagen to transform into another creature of the same level.
• Promethean: The Created eventually reveals that most Demiurges are this; overwhelmed by the force of the Divine Fire, they decide it's a perfectly logical course of action to make something new out of a corpse or parts of corpses.
• Pugmire: The White Mice of the Cult of Labo Tor search for Man's 100 Theories by kidnapping people and performing horrific experiments on them. Even other rats want nothing to do with them.
• Rifts: Dr. Desmond Bradford, head of Lone Star, is notable in that his madness doesn't manifest in cackling insanity or hideous cruelty. He conducts his experiments like a good scientist, with controls and careful measures. The problem is that he literally believes he is a god, and as such is above such petty things as "laws" and "morals". Given that Lone Star is a genetics lab, this results in experiments and creations that would utterly horrify the Coalition States if they were ever exposed.
• Given its comic book theming, its only natural that Sentinels of the Multiverse would have quite a few of these:
  • Baron Blade. He becomes even madder in his promo card form "Mad Bomber," which takes place after he's had a Villainous Breakdown. He's no longer the collected aristocrat with minions and a grand plan, he's a lunatic with a gear loose, blowing things up and blasting people with a death ray. His flipped side is even called "Maniacal Death Ray Wielder".
  • Biomancer is a magical one of these; he dabbles heavily in alchemy and strange technomagical contraptions during his early days, and though his biological experiments are done using magic, they still resemble Evilutionary Biology in the end results.
  • The 1950's Greatest Legacy Radio Play episode of the Letters Page podcast gives us Doctor Devlin Dour, a one-time antagonist whose plan is to mutate and mind control the citizens of the city of Megalopolis using his special poisonous concoctions.
  • Writhe got his powers by playing around using shadow energy in inventions. He then later turns into an eldritch one of these when he takes an OblivAeon shard with the rest of the Void Guard. He spends his time almost obsessively creating horrific cosmic-powered inventions that are just wrong in various ways.
  • Pike Industries is essentially an entire company full of mad chemists, constantly trying to find new drugs both to sell to an unsuspecting public and to help The Chairman fuel his longevity.
  • In turn Project Cocoon is this to trying to create and study superhumans, including plenty of dodgy experiments on people both mundane and superhuman.
  • There's also Fort Adamant, which was specifically a military organization trying to find ways to incorporate superpowers and supertech into military applications. At first it was a mostly upright (or at least as upright as the US military usually is, anyway) organization under General Armstrong which had mostly reasonable experiments including the Bunker suit Tyler Vance wears and training the Southwest Sentinels into the Void Guard. But then Doctor Demikahv came along and turned the Fort into a madhouse of unethical and awful experiments to the point where Armstrong and the Void Guard found themselves forced to try to destroy it.
  • Then there's Idealist's mother who was playing around with life energy while trying to resurrect her dead husband. To the point Idealist isn't even her daughter, but her clone, made to be sacrificed as part of her experiments. Miranda only survived because, when her "mother" activated the machine, the psychic noise it made caught Dr. Medico and Mainstay's attention, and they interrupted the experiment to rescue her.
• Spirit of the Century: While it would require all of a normal starting character's available stunts, being one of these from the word go or, failing that, growing into it later is within reach for players in the interwar pulp setting. (Being merely a "weird" scientist capable of creating plausible inventions that are merely ahead of their time by a few decades is slightly cheaper.) Unsurprisingly, this is also a common villain archetype; between the sample characters and the example adventure there are at least two obvious ones...and then there's Doctor Methuselah with his mastery of equation-based "mathematical magic", who may well be something more sinister altogether.
• The Ordo Dracul of Vampire: The Requiem are vampire mad scientists, prone to extremely unethical experimentation to circumvent the weaknesses of their kind. A favorite initiation ritual of theirs is for a new member of the covenant to select a human at random, brutually murder them, and then study all the different ways in which that person's death has changed the world around them; this neatly encapsulates both their methodology and their complete lack of a conscience.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Fabius Bile. His lab coat is made out of human flesh. That about sums up his state of mind.
  • Magnus the Red, Daemon Primarch of the Thousand Sons, arguably qualifies for this trope, though he's more of a mad wizard. He's got the reckless pursuit of knowledge, megalomania, production of the odd superweapon, and lead a legion of super soldiers into daemonic corruption.
  • Every Mekboy ever. When they aren't building big stompy idols of Gork and Mork, they're building chaotic field artillery or welding big guns onto bigger guns. Its because being the devolved descendants of living weapons made to fight autonomously in the War in Heaven gives them visions and innate understanding of technology that they do this. One shudders to imagine what a full Krork Mekanik was capable of.
  • The Ork equivalent to a doctor is a Painboy, who perform all sorts of experiments on their subjects such as replacing damaged limbs with bionics(sometimes they replace the wrong one), or a squig brain transplant. They at least use anesthesia on them in which case they give them a concussion. Orks look at painboyz and decide that their injuries aren't really that bad.
    • Mad Doks are nuts even by painboy standards, as they have a large disinterest in anything that doesn't help them in perfecting the art of "serjery" and other Orks legitimately fear (which is an impressive feat) them, except for Meks who are all to happy to have fellow scientists interested in brain-wiring willing (or unwilling) subjects to big stompy walkers.
  • Vashtorr the Arkifane is a Greater Daemon born from the desire to innovate. In other words, he's a god of mad science.
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus tend to get like this as you get further up the chain of command, especially with Masters of the Forge- part Space Marine, part Techno Wizard, all trouble. The Dark Mechanicus are even worse, doing anything in the pursuit of knowledge, the only thing keeping them from being completely corrupted by the Warp in which they reside is the fact that almost all of their bodies have been converted into machines. If building a robotic dinosaur with a plasma cannon for a head and using an ensnared daemon to power it doesn't make you this trope, really, what will?
    • Belisarius Cawl is a different type of crazy in comparison to the rest of the Ad-Mech, but it's enough that the organization itself considers him a borderline Heretic due to his relentless focus on innovation and invention rather than salvaging and preservation. The lines he's crossed include salvaging Xenos tech, creating artificial intelligence based on his own mind to back himself up (which alone should have long gotten him torn apart by the Inquisition) and, while assisting Guilliman in creating the Primaris Marines, proposing the use of salvaged Traitor Legion and Lost Legion geneseed to create some more, which he was forbidden to do and got him yelled at quite extensively. Guilliman only continued to work with him because he's the only one radical and crazy enough to work (and pull off) what he wants to do, but he still thinks he's gonna try it anyways. In short, Cawl replaces the usual dogmatic insanity of the Adeptus Mechanicus with pure desire for discovery and innovation no matter the cost, morality or risk, which is more familiar yet terribly rare in the Imperium.
  • Dark Eldar Haemonculi, except their "science" is killing and torturing people in all kinds of ridiculously violent, cruel and painful ways, and turning members of their own race (sometimes willingly, sometimes not) into horrid testaments to Body Horror like Wracks and Grotesques. Even the otherwise Always Chaotic Evil Dark Eldar are slightly creeped out by them. When Fabius Bile ended up in their clutches, he impressed them so much with his own twisted genius that they shared notes and let him go.
  • The species of Jokaero are basically this trope mixed with monkeys. They are aliens that look orangutans, if orangutans could make just about anything human beings could except impossibly better by magnitudes. This makes them the only source of "digital weapons" in the universe, tiny rings which are actually also one-shot short-range versions of high-powered pistols normally used by military forces among the galaxy. The mad part comes from how they aren't really sentient and all of their creations are created by their need and/or whim so anyone hoping to benefit from their craftsmanship will have to deal with how they can't be ordered around and they'll probably manage to escape no matter how hard you try to pen them in.
• Warhammer: Any Skaven from Clans Skyre, Moulder or Pestilens. They nicely cover all three of the main Mad Scientist archetypes: Moulder are the Frankenstein types, creating a variety of ratlike monsters through breeding, alchemical mutation and stitching subjects with random body parts, weapons and metal plating. Pestilens are the disease merchants, mixing together various toxic goops with the eventual goal of making the perfect plague to unleash on the Overworld. Skyre are the engineers, making Warpstone-shooting gatling guns, cannons that fire green lasers, and giant armoured hamster wheels that throw off green lightning indiscriminately. These three clans then sell their services to all the myriad Warlord ("normal") clans, to aid them in their conquests. For the record, the other "technologically advanced" races have only just invented gunpowder, and most are still on bows and arrows. Although the Dwarfs do have this weird steam-powered gyrocopter. But Dwarfs tend towards sane engineering, in that they have this really conservative engineering guild keeping them from going Skaven. While you do get the occasional young maverick, most of those tend to stop being mavericks as soon as they lose their first limb to an explosion. It's standard for aspiring Dwarf engineers to get kicked out of the guild when they try to invent something new; they usually join the human guild for a while until they refine their prototype to something more reliable and trustworthy. Dwarfs like to maintain their reputation for machines that run like a Swiss watch.