[Basic] Disadvatage of the Week: Phobias and Squeamish

[johndallman]

Phobias [-5* to -15*] are mundane mental disadvantages with self-control rolls. You have an unreasoning fear of some kind of circumstance, creature, or object. There are many, many possible phobias, but they all use the same basic rules, which go back to GURPS 1e. The point cost of a phobia depends on how commonly it occurs.

When you are exposed to the subject of your phobia, make a self-control roll. If you succeed, you’re still in control of yourself, but you have a DX, IQ and skill penalty of -1 to -4, depending on your self-control number, while you remain exposed, and must re-roll every 10 minutes. If you fail your self-control roll, treat it as a failed Fright Check: roll 3d, add your margin of failure, look up that number on the fright check table, and apply the results immediately. Note that it’s possible to acquire Phobias or worsen their self-control rolls with unfortunate rolls on this table: a severe, commonly-encountered Phobia can gradually drive you insane.

A threat of being exposed to your Phobia uses the same rules, but your self-control roll is at +4. Using Phobias in interrogation is unreliable: people don’t necessarily talk after failing self-control rolls. They do produce stressful situations reliably, which might trigger Epilepsy, or other stress-related disadvantages. Phobias are incompatible with Unfazeable.

Anything that it’s reasonable or wise to be afraid of isn’t a valid Phobia, which can require using the Social Engineering concept of a reference society. For example, fear of spiders is a lot more reasonable in Australia than Iceland. The cost of Phobias can also vary by TL, such as fear of advanced machines, and by the presence or absence of things such as magic or psi powers in the setting.

Squeamish [-10*] is a slightly odd case: effectively a phobia, but less specific than most, as a generalised aversion to mundane insects, worms, blood, rotting things, slime and so on.

There’s a fine selection of Phobias in the Basic Set, and many more in GURPS supplements. Quirk-level phobias are dislikes: you avoid whatever you dislike, and object to its presence, but it doesn’t penalise you or require self-control rolls. Some of the odder Phobias in GURPS include Apocalypse (Millenniphobia), Being Buried Alive (Taphephobia), Government (Cratiphobia, price varies by Control Rating), Machinery, Number 8 (Octophobia), Palindromes (Aibohphobia), Poisoning (Toxicophobia), Ionizing Radiation (Radiophobia), The Sun (Heliophobia), Time Travel (Chronophobia), Entering Water, White (the colour), and Words (Logophobia).

Bio-Tech treats Phobias as mental instability and can prevent serious ones with genetic engineering. Blocking or creating specific ones via genetics isn’t possible. Horror has lots on phobias, including fears of things that don’t exist; Madness Dossier has more, including wetware implants to cause specific phobias. Power-Ups 6 has more quirk-level versions, and Steampunk has Phobia (Social Disorder), with its own table for failed self-control rolls. Zombies trigger several Phobias, and the concept of the Zombie plague has similar roots.

I haven’t made much use of Phobias on my own characters or NPCs, nor seen many other GURPS players do so. Have they amused in your games?

[Michele]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I haven’t made much use of Phobias on my own characters or NPCs, nor seen many other GURPS players do so. Have they amused in your games?

Yes, but I always thought there is a difficult balance to be kept in managing them.

There was one player, I wouldn't call him a min-maxer, but he was definitely interested in the game-within-the-game that is point expenditure. He'd always pick a phobia, trying to guess which one was the least likely to come up in the campaign or setting or adventure. If he knew it would all be about dungeon-delving in a man-made dungeon, he'd take, of course, agoraphobia.

This created a situation where I, the GM, felt I should introduce some very vast, featureless underground cave, so that the player wouldn't just get those points with no downside to what is, after all, a Disadvantage. A Disadvantage should come into play, even if only rarely. But OTOH, the big cave might be really not needed in the plot, and it would also be very obvious why I introduced it.

Naturally, you can cut the point value of Phobias that are unlikely to show up, or, as it is always the right of a GM, forbid them. I could do that - but that would mean telling the group that indeed they'd spend all the time in cramped corridors and small rooms, which maybe wasn't intel I wanted to share with them straight away!

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by Michele

If he knew it would all be about dungeon-delving in a man-made dungeon, he'd take, of course, agoraphobia.

In this specific case I'd rule that the character would be uneasy while not in a dungeon and something like a town square might require a roll. At least if going with the default value in that type of campaign.

[The Colonel]

Did anyone ever create an official points cost for a phobia of the undead? Fear of the dead dead is in the basic rules, but I don't recall even Horror having fear of the undead - does DF, for example, have it?

[coronatiger]

My wife played a character with reptile phobia. We discovered a magic sword that glowed when reptiles were near (among other effects against reptiles) that she of course started wielding. I believe the GM made her roll self control as soon as the blade started glowing, even if we saw no other signs of reptiles.

In an earlier campaign, I played a former slave with an irrational fear of ropes. Actually, I think it was a quirk-level dislike for ropes in general, but a full-blown phobia of being bound/restrained. I also had nightmares. One session, we camped near an enemy compound, and the other PCs feared I would scream in the night and be discovered, so they bound and gagged me while I slept. That didn't turn out very well.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Did anyone ever create an official points cost for a phobia of the undead? Fear of the dead dead is in the basic rules, but I don't recall even Horror having fear of the undead - does DF, for example, have it?

I don't recall one OTTOMH. If you really must distinguish it from Necrophobia, it would have to be less disadvantageous than that, so I suppose you'd just call it -5 points (but you'd probably adjust that for a zombie apocalypse game).

[Þorkell]

I played a knight in a fantasy game a while back. On the character sheet was Arachnophobia for -5 pts iirc. It didn't come up for a while. Then one time we were exploring somewhere near a lake if memory serves, and got attacked by huge spiders about 1m in size. I ahem-ed and showed the GM the character sheet pointing out the disad. He mentioned that he'd totally forgotten about that and spent the next few minutes laughing his ass off. When he was finally able to say something he asked me to roll whatever you roll for Phobias. The roll(s) failed with the result being that the brave knight fainted. Cue more helpless laughing.

[jason taylor]

On Churchill's Secret Agents: The New Recruits (Netflix of a reality show based on a declassified spy school) several of the contestants had minor phobias. One of the first to go down was one who was afraid to crawl under barbed wire lest her hair was caught and of course she was eliminated. This is probably less absurd than it sounds: she was just not a good role player and wasn't thinking of herself as actually having to go into occupied France. She should have braided it though. Another had trouble handling a gun because she was a doctor and trained to save lives. This would be more a species of Pacifism. It was not without precedent, for Fairbairn was hard put to it to teach people used to unarmed fighting as status-sorting to use it to kill (and of course that does require some rather-unaesthetic-moves by comparison with the Manly Art of Fisticuffs). Another was afraid of water and another was afraid of heights. There were other real life psychological problems. Noor Inayet Khan was a Suffee and reacted badly to deception training (that could be called Truthfulness, but in France she was able to play her cover well enough).

Despite all that the characters on the whole do look like they could have done a fair job as state sponsored thugs. Of course the training was a rush job to be compatible with a week long miniseries. But they look like a fair sample of some of the descriptions of the real life people that did it and might have if given a real course, done a fair job.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Note that it’s possible to acquire Phobias or worsen their self-control rolls with unfortunate rolls on this table: a severe, commonly-encountered Phobia can gradually drive you insane.

This has prevented me from putting phobias on my characters, and I strongly discourage players from putting it on their character sheets. Last time I had a player take phobia, I reduced the disad from [-10] to [-5] and said we weren't using the fright table.

I have strong ... dislike ... of traits that change character's point values in play.

[khorboth]

The acquisition of extra disadvantages from fright is one of the things I dislike most about GURPS and has largely prevented the use of phobias in my games.

I have developed a house rule that I like, however, that I think strikes a decent balance between the realism and the punishment of that table:

Use the table normally except the disadvantages gained are considered temporary. After a night's sleep, roll self control/will again as if exposed to the same conditions. On success, the disadvantage is now gone. If not, it persists. Additional rolls are made after one week, one month, and one year. If all those rolls are failed, then it's permanent.

I developed this initially when trying to figure out dragon fear for my Dragonlance conversion, but I feel it makes Phobias much more playable.