06-18-2014, 10:29 AM | #11 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
It's certainly a good explanation for why the PCs don't spend all their time between missions on training. 200h/CP can add up real fast, especially if you have the resources of a government espionage agency to back you, keenly interested in improving your ability to fulfil missions.
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06-18-2014, 12:50 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Finland, Lahti
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
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I didn't find original link from internet for whole rules anymore, but here is link for info I've made based on Maz's posts. Stress rules are integral part of my latest high-fantasy Arabesque Ruins and Relics campaign, where they work. Energy cost for all spells is reduced by 2 (expect for Blocking spells), but anything larger reality bending puts a great strain on your psyche. |
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06-18-2014, 01:07 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Dec 2010
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
I used the Stress/Derangement rules from Horror with only minor tweaks in a campaign I ran a couple years ago, and they worked ok. The Derangement, in particular, worked great - it takes so long to wear off that by the end of the story more than one of the characters was developing serious issues. The Stress rules, on the other hand, seemed quite lenient to me. It seemed like day after day of near misses, dead bodies, night-time noises and failed fright checks didn't have any cumulative toll - no one ever got more than a few points of Stress at any one time, and it got wiped clean every day.
In the end, I quite liked the 'death spiral' mechanic of accumulating Stress and Derangement subtracting from future fright checks, and I ended up using that quite a bit: add some Stress, use that penalty to hose the PCs when the sanity-blasting checks showed up and add another point or two of Derangement. Rinse off the Stress overnight, repeat the next day. When we get around to season 2 I'll surely keep the general feel of the mechanic - it works well for horror games - but I'll change the stress rules somehow... not sure how, exactly, but I've got to work in some medium-term consequences. That is to say, something between adding permanent disads to the sheet and being jumpy for a few minutes. I want day/week-scale accumulation - something to model the PCs coming to the end of their rope after a week of nightmare. |
06-18-2014, 03:03 PM | #14 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
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I envision using a fairly coarsegrained system with maybe four mundane steps going from no recovery to supercalm place, and above that comes various subtly magical steps (possibly even an overtly magical one like a magical sleep where you're out for a moon and wake up with a healed mind), but if one wants to use a more fine-grained approach, one can distinguish between such recovery speed stages as being constantly on the road, renting hotel and motel rooms, or couch surfing all the time (which to my mind might actually be less restful than accomodations that you pay for staffed by more-or-less service-minded staff), relative to home-sweet-home where all of your books are and your favourite couch and everything is just nice. As for actual stress rules, how SAN loss happens, I still have very little in that department. |
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06-18-2014, 05:15 PM | #15 | ||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
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06-18-2014, 07:21 PM | #16 |
"Gimme 18 minutes . . ."
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
I also like the Stress and Derangement rules for any game approaching remotely realistic.
Another thing is something a player in my DF game came up with, that new quirks and disadvantages gained from fright checks are treated like crippling wounds. That is, you roll Will after the scary situation is over to see whether it fades immediately, sticks until you get some down-time, or requires professional help and a lot of down time and CP to buy off. Finally, I really liked the horror rules from Nemesis, the horror version of ORE. As you get exposed to mental trauma, you tend to harden. Basically, you can get Fearlessness, but it tends to be counterbalanced by being seen as "odd" by normal people. They break it up into four different types of mental trauma (Violence, The Unnatural, Self, and Helplessness) and you can become more resistant to trauma by succeeding at a Fright Check related to the type of trauma that you're exposed to, but becoming hardened in this way starts to impact your ability to empathize with others. People who are hardened to violence tend to find things funny instead of horrific, or don't see the problem with backhandedly threatening to cripple someone who is annoying them, that kind of thing. |
06-18-2014, 07:50 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
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Personally since hardening shouldn't be automatic I'm inclined to just let the player choose whether to purchase things like Fearlessness to represent developed resistance. |
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06-18-2014, 08:46 PM | #18 | |
Banned
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
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06-18-2014, 10:06 PM | #19 |
"Gimme 18 minutes . . ."
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
Well, the trick is you CAN'T get hardened without losing some of your humanity. Interesting mechanic.
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06-18-2014, 10:38 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Nov 2011
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Re: Psychological Stress House Rules
It is interesting but I'm not sure whether an absolute prohibition is suitable outside of a horror game. Having a certain level of resistance be explainable as intrinsic resistance or side-effect free developed resistance but requiring further levels to come with disadvantages might work as a less extreme option.
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Tags |
brainstorm, derangement, mental fatigue, sanity, stress |
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