[DF] The Fright Check Table, and How We Hate It

Harald387 · 03-09-2009, 03:26 PM

So something that always bothered me about the Fright Check table (even as a GM) is the way its effects are frequently permanent and un-fun, particularly when there's nothing preventing the GM from dropping the same supernatural Terror attack on the PCs again and again and again (even with bonuses for repeated exposure, 13s fail a lot) until they're all rolling against both Claustrophobia and Agoraphobia every time they move, and they dislike everything in the animal kingdom because the GM ran out of ideas for quirks to give them.

It doesn't make a lot of sense, and is inappropriate for high fantasy adventure games (in ways that it isn't for, say, Cthulhoid horror games where you're SUPPOSED to gradually slip into gibbering insanity).

Proposal: Debilitating Fright Check results are like crippling wounds, and you recover from them in a similar manner. Roll Will after any encounter where you failed a Fright Check and acquired a 'permanent' quirk or disadvantage.

On a success, the disadvantage will fade after the character has a reasonable period of safe rest - a night huddling in camp while Noisy Things move around in the woods outside of your vision probably doesn't count, but a return to a nice safe well-patrolled base camp might, and a week carousing In Town certainly should. ("Bob really had trouble with bugs for a while after that encounter with the slime-spewing tentacled beetle-men, but he got over it once he had a chance to think it through and work out the difference between a mosquito and a Horror from Beyond Time and Space.")

On a failure, the disadvantage will fade after 1d+1 months, assuming similar bad things don't continue happening to the character. Few situations are so terrible that the human mind cracks permanently, and healthy people get over these events as they fade with time. A good therapist can help a lot (GM's judgement). ("It took Jerry a long time to get over the sight of his friends' animated corpses trying to break down the door and eat him; he was suffering terrible nightmares for a long time, and was really easily spooked. He definitely needed that vacation, but Doc Hawkins says he should be okay to return to duty.")

On a critical failure, the disadvantage is truly permanent; therapy and CP expenditure (or magic) will be needed to repair the character's fractured psyche. ("Eric was never the same after watching that Care Bears marathon on Teletoon. I don't think he's sleeping at all, and he'll barely touch food. He keeps muttering about that STARE.")

Thoughts?

Bruno · 03-09-2009, 03:40 PM

There seems room for a modifier on the HT check for either certain kinds of sources of fear, or for particularly bad failures. Full exposure to Cthulhu should cause permanent trauma, or lasting trauma at best. A little ghoul meeping probably shouldn't.

Another alternative, for Heroic Action Cinema Time, is to treat it like someone successfully using a social skill on your PC, and you failing your Will Check - you get a penalty equal to margin of failure to appropriate actions.

In the case of Fear, this would probably be a penalty to attacks, IQ when trying to think clearly, PER for noticing things, that sort of thing. Probably half penalty to defenses vs the Fear source, but not vs other things.

Cowering (all out defense to offset the defense penalty) or retreating from the thing you can't attack successfully and have bad odds of defending against, due to failing badly (All Out Defense Dodge + headlong flight) therefore become Tactically Sound choices, as well as in character.

If you fail by 10, you might indeed run straight into a tree or off a cliff, because you're too panic'd to notice where you're going or what you're doing.

I'm not sure how to resolve how long the penalty should last, yet.

The downside of this is a potential Death Spiral situation, but getting stunned by fear is a -4 to defenses, no attacks, and no fleeing, and that's pretty dang lethal.

jspade · 03-09-2009, 04:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harald387

...dropping the same supernatural Terror attack on the PCs again and again and again (even with bonuses for repeated exposure, 13s fail a lot) until they're all rolling against both Claustrophobia and Agoraphobia every time they move, and they dislike everything in the animal kingdom because the GM ran out of ideas for quirks to give them.

Seems to me like this kind of thinking is your real problem. I use Fright Checks fairly sparingly, am conservative with penalties, and make it clear up front that I consider a high Will to be a defining heroic characteristic. I also expect the players to work with me on their quirks and disadvantages when they come up.

That said, I'm not a fan of anything that permanently cripples a player character without the player's buy-in. I have no problem with people seeking psychological treatment for their mental injuries as well as physical.

SuedodeuS · 03-09-2009, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harald387

Proposal: Debilitating Fright Check results are like crippling wounds, and you recover from them in a similar manner. Roll Will after any encounter where you failed a Fright Check and acquired a 'permanent' quirk or disadvantage.

On a success, the disadvantage will fade after the character has a reasonable period of safe rest - a night huddling in camp while Noisy Things move around in the woods outside of your vision probably doesn't count, but a return to a nice safe well-patrolled base camp might, and a week carousing In Town certainly should. ("Bob really had trouble with bugs for a while after that encounter with the slime-spewing tentacled beetle-men, but he got over it once he had a chance to think it through and work out the difference between a mosquito and a Horror from Beyond Time and Space.")

On a failure, the disadvantage will fade after 1d+1 months, assuming similar bad things don't continue happening to the character. Few situations are so terrible that the human mind cracks permanently, and healthy people get over these events as they fade with time. A good therapist can help a lot (GM's judgement). ("It took Jerry a long time to get over the sight of his friends' animated corpses trying to break down the door and eat him; he was suffering terrible nightmares for a long time, and was really easily spooked. He definitely needed that vacation, but Doc Hawkins says he should be okay to return to duty.")

On a critical failure, the disadvantage is truly permanent; therapy and CP expenditure (or magic) will be needed to repair the character's fractured psyche. ("Eric was never the same after watching that Care Bears marathon on Teletoon. I don't think he's sleeping at all, and he'll barely touch food. He keeps muttering about that STARE.")

Thoughts?

I like it. One idea that you might consider is that, on any case other than a critical failure, the player can choose for the disad/quirk to become permanent. They would get CP for it (just as if they had taken it at character creation), but receipt of the CP for high-value Disadvantages might be staggered (so that you don't get a big heap of CP thrown on your character at once). I can imagine instances where a player might want for his character to be permanently scarred by something like that.

Incidentally, what do you think should happen on a critical success? I'm thinking in that case it would fade even if the character didn't get any safe rest. (Edrick shuddered as he heard the beasts circling the camp. He wasn't certain the seals would hold. He looked at his sword, chipped from the last battle. Never again. Never again would he freeze up like that - he wasn't going to fail his allies again. He looked up, seeing a pair of glowing red eyes in the distance, just outside the sealed radius. "Come then, demon. See what Edrick's blade has in store for you.")

vicky_molokh · 03-09-2009, 04:24 PM

I like the general idea. I once pondered the idea of splitting Fright Checks into temporary, lasting and 'serious', with the former having results like 'run away', 'stunned', 'faint', while the two latter two being similar to the ones you describe. But I never got to actually making it coherent.

Harald387 · 03-09-2009, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jspade

Seems to me like this kind of thinking is your real problem. I use Fright Checks fairly sparingly, am conservative with penalties, and make it clear up front that I consider a high Will to be a defining heroic characteristic. I also expect the players to work with me on their quirks and disadvantages when they come up.

That said, I'm not a fan of anything that permanently cripples a player character without the player's buy-in. I have no problem with people seeking psychological treatment for their mental injuries as well as physical.

High Will is a good start, but your Fright Checks still cap out at 13 - extra levels of Fearlessness or Will simply eats penalties. It's still troubling to have your iron-willed Mage blow it on a roll of 15 - at which point a roll of 11 or 14 gets you a new quirk. Failure by 5 on the Fright Check followed by a *really* bad roll on the table gets you a fresh 10-point disad. Neither of those is terribly fitting as a permanent result in a game that's meant to be heroic fantasy.

trooper6 · 03-09-2009, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harald387

High Will is a good start, but your Fright Checks still cap out at 13 - extra levels of Fearlessness or Will simply eats penalties. It's still troubling to have your iron-willed Mage blow it on a roll of 15 - at which point a roll of 11 or 14 gets you a new quirk. Failure by 5 on the Fright Check followed by a *really* bad roll on the table gets you a fresh 10-point disad. Neither of those is terribly fitting as a permanent result in a game that's meant to be heroic fantasy.

If it isn't part of your game world, don't use the fright check table. Or give all your Heroic Heores Unfazeable.

tanniynim · 03-09-2009, 04:57 PM

In a Fantasy game, at the very least I'd be applying all sorts of positive modifiers to the PCs for "Oh, we've seen this before" or "Well, at least it is recognizable as something that might exist in a dungeon."
Campaigns even says, "And in a fantasy campaign, all these things may be quite normal..." when talking about monsters, dead bodies, and the supernatural.
I don't know why you're rolling enough Fright Checks to make a difference unless you're running a horror game anyway.
Fright Checks in Fantasy are for unspeakable horrors, demons, and **hordes** of undead.

That being said, I'm working on some rules to allow mental disadvantages to be bought off using the skill training rules for a little pdf I'm putting together. It would just take longer than your "a week of carousing in the city."

Furthermore, failing with a 14 only applies a +1 modifier to Fright checks. I don't roll the "Gain a new quirk" result very often. Stunned is the most likely outcome.

SuedodeuS · 03-09-2009, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trooper6

If it isn't part of your game world, don't use the fright check table. Or give all your Heroic Heores Unfazeable.

Fright Checks can still be useful without their effects being permanent. Seeing a mercenary camp being slaughtered single-handedly by a guy you're going to have to fight (or by anyone, really) can be quite traumatic, particularly if a lot of those mercenaries were your friends. It just isn't necessarily going to leave you permanently afraid of mercenary camps.

Wedhro · 03-09-2009, 06:24 PM

Harald387, I like your idea of treating failed Fright Checks as crippling injuries, sounds sensible; I'll give it a try soon. I always felt the need for something more complex and playable than "roll 3d on a table", expecially as I'm running a sci-fi/horror campaign that is causing too much new quirks; not every horror game is meant to be a lovecraftian escalation of madness, and your house-rule could fix that.

03-09-2009, 03:26 PM	#1
Harald387 Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Ottawa, ON, CA	[DF] The Fright Check Table, and How We Hate It So something that always bothered me about the Fright Check table (even as a GM) is the way its effects are frequently permanent and un-fun, particularly when there's nothing preventing the GM from dropping the same supernatural Terror attack on the PCs again and again and again (even with bonuses for repeated exposure, 13s fail a lot) until they're all rolling against both Claustrophobia and Agoraphobia every time they move, and they dislike everything in the animal kingdom because the GM ran out of ideas for quirks to give them. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and is inappropriate for high fantasy adventure games (in ways that it isn't for, say, Cthulhoid horror games where you're SUPPOSED to gradually slip into gibbering insanity). Proposal: Debilitating Fright Check results are like crippling wounds, and you recover from them in a similar manner. Roll Will after any encounter where you failed a Fright Check and acquired a 'permanent' quirk or disadvantage. On a success, the disadvantage will fade after the character has a reasonable period of safe rest - a night huddling in camp while Noisy Things move around in the woods outside of your vision probably doesn't count, but a return to a nice safe well-patrolled base camp might, and a week carousing In Town certainly should. ("Bob really had trouble with bugs for a while after that encounter with the slime-spewing tentacled beetle-men, but he got over it once he had a chance to think it through and work out the difference between a mosquito and a Horror from Beyond Time and Space.") On a failure, the disadvantage will fade after 1d+1 months, assuming similar bad things don't continue happening to the character. Few situations are so terrible that the human mind cracks permanently, and healthy people get over these events as they fade with time. A good therapist can help a lot (GM's judgement). ("It took Jerry a long time to get over the sight of his friends' animated corpses trying to break down the door and eat him; he was suffering terrible nightmares for a long time, and was really easily spooked. He definitely needed that vacation, but Doc Hawkins says he should be okay to return to duty.") On a critical failure, the disadvantage is truly permanent; therapy and CP expenditure (or magic) will be needed to repair the character's fractured psyche. ("Eric was never the same after watching that Care Bears marathon on Teletoon. I don't think he's sleeping at all, and he'll barely touch food. He keeps muttering about that STARE.") Thoughts? Last edited by Harald387; 03-09-2009 at 03:35 PM.

03-09-2009, 03:40 PM	#2
Bruno Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Canada	Re: [DF] The Fright Check Table, and How We Hate It There seems room for a modifier on the HT check for either certain kinds of sources of fear, or for particularly bad failures. Full exposure to Cthulhu should cause permanent trauma, or lasting trauma at best. A little ghoul meeping probably shouldn't. Another alternative, for Heroic Action Cinema Time, is to treat it like someone successfully using a social skill on your PC, and you failing your Will Check - you get a penalty equal to margin of failure to appropriate actions. In the case of Fear, this would probably be a penalty to attacks, IQ when trying to think clearly, PER for noticing things, that sort of thing. Probably half penalty to defenses vs the Fear source, but not vs other things. Cowering (all out defense to offset the defense penalty) or retreating from the thing you can't attack successfully and have bad odds of defending against, due to failing badly (All Out Defense Dodge + headlong flight) therefore become Tactically Sound choices, as well as in character. If you fail by 10, you might indeed run straight into a tree or off a cliff, because you're too panic'd to notice where you're going or what you're doing. I'm not sure how to resolve how long the penalty should last, yet. The downside of this is a potential Death Spiral situation, but getting stunned by fear is a -4 to defenses, no attacks, and no fleeing, and that's pretty dang lethal. __________________ All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog

03-09-2009, 04:24 PM	#5
vicky_molokh GURPS FAQ Keeper Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Kyïv, Ukraine	Re: [DF] The Fright Check Table, and How We Hate It I like the general idea. I once pondered the idea of splitting Fright Checks into temporary, lasting and 'serious', with the former having results like 'run away', 'stunned', 'faint', while the two latter two being similar to the ones you describe. But I never got to actually making it coherent. __________________ Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper

03-09-2009, 04:57 PM	#8
tanniynim Join Date: May 2008	Re: [DF] The Fright Check Table, and How We Hate It In a Fantasy game, at the very least I'd be applying all sorts of positive modifiers to the PCs for "Oh, we've seen this before" or "Well, at least it is recognizable as something that might exist in a dungeon." Campaigns even says, "And in a fantasy campaign, all these things may be quite normal..." when talking about monsters, dead bodies, and the supernatural. I don't know why you're rolling enough Fright Checks to make a difference unless you're running a horror game anyway. Fright Checks in Fantasy are for unspeakable horrors, demons, and hordes of undead. That being said, I'm working on some rules to allow mental disadvantages to be bought off using the skill training rules for a little pdf I'm putting together. It would just take longer than your "a week of carousing in the city." Furthermore, failing with a 14 only applies a +1 modifier to Fright checks. I don't roll the "Gain a new quirk" result very often. Stunned is the most likely outcome.

03-09-2009, 06:24 PM	#10
Wedhro Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Bologna, Italy	Re: [DF] The Fright Check Table, and How We Hate It Harald387, I like your idea of treating failed Fright Checks as crippling injuries, sounds sensible; I'll give it a try soon. I always felt the need for something more complex and playable than "roll 3d on a table", expecially as I'm running a sci-fi/horror campaign that is causing too much new quirks; not every horror game is meant to be a lovecraftian escalation of madness, and your house-rule could fix that. __________________ IMHO, of course [^_°]