Fear

[locarno24]

Quick question - how have people modelled Really, Really Scary (TM) stuff in their campaigns?

This isn't "man pulls gun on you" or "really irritated aardvark tries to claw you to death" stuff, I should explain - where something is scary in a rational way, I expect the players to make rational-but-scared decisions (i.e. yell 'cheese it!!!!' and head for the hills/100D limit/exit). This is for really, unnaturally scary, wibble-wibble-pants-on-head-no-longer-thinking-straight fear.

The reason this came up specifically is the players are doing a 'favour' for a patron which involves several tanks of what can (for the sake of simplicity) be considered Scarecrow-style fear gas. The odds of them not cracking open a tank at one point in the adventure is fairly low, so I thought I should have some rules ready to hand...

Wondered (haven't got it yet) if Cthonian Stars might have something?

 

[alex_greene]

Revisit chargen traumas, or make up something from the characters' childhoods, but taking a nightmare twist.

Have the characters roleplay the incident as if it were absolutely real.

 

[Mytholder]

Add a Courage characteristic?

 

[Dark Warden]

Two other places to look could be the stress rules from Scout and the Mental Illness rules from Psion, both could be adapted depending on how bad the effect was (to be honest I'd lean more towards using the Stress rules personally and save Mental Illness rules for meeting Cthulhu but it's your campaign)

 

[locarno24]

Scout & Psion. Check. Will have to investigate this further.

 

[alex_greene]

Running a fear scenario requires a moderate amount of mature roleplaying.

All the characters will have incidents in their past which they wish to hide behind mental blocks. Depending on the nature of the character, these could range from mere phobias (e.g. colurophobia, a fear of clowns) to the tragic ("My father died at the age of 55 - omg what if I inherited his susceptibility to cancer?") to the terrifying (a character who's blocked out the traumatic memories of repeated childhood rape by his uncle sustained over a period of years).

Sometimes, an event in the characters' past during chargen, say an injury or Event, can be the cause of the character's greatest fears ... or suppressed guilt.

Let's say an event turns up where the character had been forced to abandon two of his best friends in a colony being ravaged by a disease ... but they themselves were clean, and even immune to the plague. Nonetheless, the character was forced to seal the hatch on them and doom them to live out their lives among the dead and the dying.

Or let's say an injury was sustained during a fraught action during the character's Marine career. Mortars rained down everywhere in the middle of the night, the character was injured ... but the last thing he saw before lights out was his best friend being killed by shrapnel, just seconds after he'd dissed you and you'd told him to go to hell.

Now picture a fear scenario where the character finds himself confronted by what look like vivid spectres of those friends, marked with plague sores or studded with shrapnel wounds. Imagine the character forced to live through a scenario where he dreams of the doctor turning to him and saying "Sorry, but you've got what your father had. It's already terminal."

Imagine the character imagining himself waking up, and finding himself back in his childhood bedroom. It's 23:30, it's dark, and the door to the bedroom is opening ...

Or the character wakes up, and it's a birthday party - his own - and here comes the clown ...

You, the Referee, have to work out something with the players. Actually, it's best if you work out in advance what it is that frightens the players most, rather than the characters.

Just remember the safewords. and don't go too far down Squick Avenue.

 

[DFW]

Real intense fear (lizard brain type) rules wise, might be modeled by causing skill checks to be made with a shorter time increment mod to simulate a panicked state of mind.

 

[IanBruntlett]

I read about Fear vs Horror in TSR's Ravenloft boxed set.

Fear: you see something scarey. Like a dragon.

Horror: something you see that just isn't right. Like the PCs watching a GMC when suddenly, he pulls his head off and puts it under his arm.

 

[far-trader]

Real intense fear (lizard brain type) rules wise, might be modeled by causing skill checks to be made with a shorter time increment mod to simulate a panicked state of mind.

That's sorta brilliant where it can apply

I've long wanted something to handle this kind of fear in RPGs. Too often players will state a very reasoned and rational response quite out of keeping with what should really happen.

I toyed with making a simple Fight/Flight/Freeze test for such cases. It sucks having to impose actions on characters though. You face the "But my hero of a a hundred battles would never do that! She's fearless!!" complaint.

Still it would fit some cases.

Fight - Meaning not tactically, but all out with the first weapon at hand. If you're holding a gun you empty the clip (with negs, unaimed effectively), and then beat them with it (again with negs) if you don't just keep pulling the trigger and dry firing.

Flight - Meaning not a rational retreat, just a drop everything you're holding (except perhaps a child*) and RUN. Full out until you can't run anymore from exhaustion or by running into a dead end (then check again). Without any real destination in mind or thought to remembering your way back.

* the instinct to preserve the genes plays in both cases so a child may be inlcuded

Freeze - Meaning just that. Paralysis. No defense. No offense. The instinctual strategy that if you don't move they won't see you (or they'll chase something else instead, the chase instinct being pretty strong in predators)

In a game situation this instinct may be overcome. I'd say by a successful roll of some difficulty after the first imposed action (round or whatever), checking repeatedly until successful.

We actually did something like this in one D&D game I seem to recall vaguely. It was kind of fun, definitely different from the usual "OK, fighters to the front, mages give spell cover from the back, thief sneak around and see what you can do, clerics stand by to receive casualties, let's do this people." practiced routine. Instead it was characters running randomly down dungeon hallways. One into a pit trap one all the way back to town. Others frozen with fear or attacking with torches and bows as clubs in a panicky frenzy. I don't recall the what or how it ended, nor even which of them was my character though I seem to think I was lost somewhere in the dungeon with no idea where or how to get out - and I was the one mapping, which work I dropped before running.

The idea is one definitely best used in rare moderation, to preserve the impact.

 

[alex_greene]

Nah, that's just crunch.

Ref: "Okay, you failed your int rolls, and you are now in a state of fear." *rolls dice* "Fred, John, you can't move this turn -"

Fred, John: *colourful metaphor*

Ref: "I'm just saying that's what this table reads."

No flavour to it.

 

[zero]

Chthonian Stars has a rule about Fear. You basically do an End 8+ check and you get a penalty if the thing is scary enough, some more humanoid ones have a bonus. Theres even a table you roll on if you fail the check with things on it like flee, mess pants, scream in terror or stupidly try to fight it.

Insanity points added is another mechanic, but sounds like the basic mechanic above would suit your idea.

As an example, the Metamorphosite is a creature based off The Thing and has a -2 Horror modifier to the Fear roll. The Seethari, a beast based off the Xenomorph has a 0 DM. So, really modifiers should only be for something truly horrific (The Bhole -think Dune sandworm- has the worst at -4 DM).

 

[Ishmael]

this all sounds suspiciously like a good old fashioned morale check to see if anyone routs. Better hope that there is someone handy with 'leader' skill to help with a rally check attempt....

 

[DFW]

That's sorta brilliant where it can apply

I toyed with making a simple Fight/Flight/Freeze test for such cases. It sucks having to impose actions on characters though. You face the "But my hero of a a hundred battles would never do that! She's fearless!!" complaint.

Thanks. I was thinking of it for technically complex tasks such as the Eng Jump-D task.

Your example is what happens in real life. Take a green infantry recruit who is suddenly faced with being overrun by a bunch of MBT's... Does he freeze, break and run, empty his clip rather than use the RPG laying next to him? Or, take the proper action?

I've toyed with a Willpower (Wil) stat as the 3rd mental stat. It would cover the above, plus checks that require more mental determination & "fortitude" than physical (Endurance). Like staying the course on a self training program and the like.

 

[Fovean]

Odd, I've played with a Willpower stat as well, END+INT/2 (round up).

Used it for resisting (and applying) torture, skill and stat improvement, etc. Could see it as a way to handle Fear moments too. Hmmm.....

 

[locarno24]

this all sounds suspiciously like a good old fashioned morale check to see if anyone routs. Better hope that there is someone handy with 'leader' skill to help with a rally check attempt....

Well - there is a 'leadership' skill.

I like the 'panic' skill check idea, too. It also means it affect people less in the area where they're competent - the whole "I was scared to hell but the training just took over" that you always hear.

Fight/Flight/Freeze is a good working set, too. It means I can pick whatever's appropriate to the player.

I toyed with making a simple Fight/Flight/Freeze test for such cases. It sucks having to impose actions on characters though. You face the "But my hero of a a hundred battles would never do that! She's fearless!!" complaint.

"We ain't impunin' yer combat experience, dearie. This is about the unfortunate vagarities of yer neurobiology..."

That's the thing - in this case, we're talking about some nanotech which is literally going to reach into the lower bits of the brain and flip the 'sheer, unadulterated, unreasoning terror' button.

 

[zero]

Yep, I think having someone else with Leadership that makes the check would be a good person to pull the rest of the affected out of their various reactions.