11-21-2017, 07:31 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Fear and Madness
I'm starting a GURPS Horror game dealing with nameless horrors from beyond. I need to know how to model fear and sanity for the characters. I've got the main books, and Horror, but can't find what I need. Admittedly I may just be missing it.
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11-21-2017, 07:37 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Re: Fear and Madness
Have you checked out the rules for Fright Checks (pp. B360-361 and expanded in Horror, p. 139-141)? I'd start with those. There are also rules in Horror for more long-term fright and madness, under "Stress and Derangement" (pp. 141-142) and "Insanity" (pp. 142-146).
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11-22-2017, 12:41 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Re: Fear and Madness
Thanks, I'm away from my books right now, but I'll check out the pages.
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11-22-2017, 12:47 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Fear and Madness
And once you will be used to Fright Check rules, you may want to look at Horror options. It gives rules which allow to make a difference between ordinary frights and deeper sanity disorder.
But Fright Check rules are still sufficient to begin with. I played a lot of Call of Cthulhu adventures with them only and it perfectly worked. |
04-13-2018, 12:53 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Re: Fear and Madness
By "perfectly worked" you mean it's good enough for "in the moment" sanity checks where the characters might freeze and get killed as a result, but did you not miss any of the "accumulating" effects of the original CoC SAN system?
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04-13-2018, 01:24 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Fear and Madness
Fright checks have that. All it takes is a fumble or a big enough modifier and you start to accumulate quirks, delusions, phobias...
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04-13-2018, 01:50 PM | #7 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Fear and Madness
Quote:
I'd expect to find that fight check penalties big enough to have the kind of lasting effects you'd want in that genre will cause characters to fail fright checks so often that it becomes unfun. A GM ,ight want to change the 3d + margin of failure roll on the fight check table to 3d + margin +5, or something like that.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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04-14-2018, 03:03 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Re: Fear and Madness
Am I missing something? Getting any quirks or disadvantages requires mostly a 20-or-higher margin of failure. That probably means a -15 penalty to the Fright Check roll. This only happens in extreme situations, if any (I don't think I ever gave anything worse than -9 to my players except for when encountering a Great Old One).
By "accumulating" I mean having Fright Checks get worse and worse for a character, which is a typical mechanic of CoC -- basic Fright Checks would always be the same. Even if a Fright Check gave you multiple mental disadvantages, you'd still be passing/failing them at the same rate (unless you somehow got Fearfulness), so there wouldn't be any accumulation of anything, aka "downward spiral". |
04-14-2018, 03:11 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Fear and Madness
I don't have 4e Horror, so I don't know if these rules have been updated and already suggested, but in 3e Horror, it was suggested that every failed fright check gives a -1 cumulative penalty on all future fright checks. This was specifically to model the downward spiral you are talking about.
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04-14-2018, 03:14 PM | #10 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Fear and Madness
Quote:
Note that all the -10 point mental disadvantages could be ruled to be Fearfulness, loss of Will points, and so on, if you felt like that. Edit: Horror has a bunch more variations for Fright Checks on pp143-45.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. Last edited by johndallman; 04-14-2018 at 03:19 PM. |
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Tags |
fear, horror, sanity |
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