D&D 5E Fear & Horror Checks in Curse of Strahd (or beyond)

[I'm A Banana]

The DMG presents these optional rules - is anyone using them? If so, why and how's it going? If not, why not?

I'm mulling it over myself. I like some measure of mechanical fear / horror, but I don't know that these mechanics really do what I'm looking for. They read more like a way to force your PC to act like they are afraid/horrified, and less like a way to make the player feel that creeping sensation, and roleplay accordingly. Though perhaps my suspicions are unfounded!

 

[Ahglock]

Outside the just because of magic I have very rarely seen a story reason where this makes sense. Last week you just pile drived a dragon off a cliff this week you scream in horror because a dude wears a cape and has a bad accent. If you do it you kind of have to do it all the time otherwise it just feels arbitrary IMO and that generally just feels like a die roll and not the story.

Side note I just am okay if the pcs never are naturally afraid. If they want to play a fearless adventurer good for them. I feel no need to force the character to feel fear, that's up to the PC. Even gothic horror has a few fearless types in the stories. So take my opinion with a grain of salt as I just don't share your concern. It's not a issue for me so I may see arbitrary where it's not.

auto corrupt.

 

[Quickleaf]

The DMG presents these optional rules - is anyone using them? If so, why and how's it going? If not, why not?

I'm mulling it over myself. I like some measure of mechanical fear / horror, but I don't know that these mechanics really do what I'm looking for. They read more like a way to force your PC to act like they are afraid/horrified, and less like a way to make the player feel that creeping sensation, and roleplay accordingly. Though perhaps my suspicions are unfounded!

IME there's two "mechanics" to build fear and suspense, and neither are in the DMG.

The first is the prop method, like the Jenga tower from Dread or a "count-down" die that represents steps toward some terrible climax or horrific reveal. It works, but you need to have the other trappings of horror (i.e. player buy-in, atmosphere, etc) in play as well, otherwise it risks becoming a gamist focus at the table.

The second is the mystery method, where the DM leaves the nature of a threat unknown or ambiguously described. I've never seen a true mechanic for this, but I brainstormed one that I would like to try out... Basically you have certain unknown horrors in the adventure, and when encountering them (or clues about them), the players can bid ideas about the true nature of the unknown horror. Whoever's idea the DM selects, their PC might gain Inspiration or some other bonus... Or the DM might have a set idea in mind, and the unknown horror grows more powerful with each incorrect guess at its nature. This "mechanic" takes advantage of players with wild imaginations trying to anticipate what the DM is thinking — the essence of horror in RPGs.

 

[marcelvdpol]

If you take a look at the stories written by HP Lovecraft (for example) you will note that he rarely describes the thing/monster/object that makes people "scared out of their mind". The theme of Fear and resulting Madness due to people's imagination running away with them is a recurring theme of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos; people are more likely to go mad than they are to die from arrows.

Remember: the threat you can't see is always more scary than the threat you can see.

 

[Imaculata]

If you are going to use horror/sanity checks, you have to be consistent about it. Call of Cthulhu gives a pretty good overview of the sorts of things that require such a check. And depending on the degree of awfulness, the sanity damage is also greater.

Examples of unnerving situations:
-Finding a mangled animal corpse
-Finding a human body part
-Finding a human corpse
-Hearing a frightening sound

Examples of shocking situations:
-Finding a stream flowing with blood
-Finding a mangled human corpse
-Finding a corpse dangling from a rope
-Finding a wall covered in writing made in blood

Examples of horrifying situations:
-Awakening trapped in a coffin
-Witnessing the violent death of a friend/someone you know
-Seeing a ghoul or ghost
-Meeting someone you know to be dead
-Witnessing it literally raining blood
-Being attacked by a horrible monster

Examples of traumatic situations:
-Undergoing severe torture
-Seeing a corpse rise from its grave
-Seeing a gigantic severed head fall from the sky
-Being pulled into another dimension

Examples of even worse situations:
-Coming face to face with a cosmic horror. For example, Great Cthulhu.



But understand that people also get used to awfulness. So if a player finds a human hand, that would trigger a check. But if the same person then finds the other hand as well, or a finger, the game master could rule that this does not trigger a second check. After all, you've already had the shock of finding a human body part. So finding a second one isn't as much of a big deal. If you find a human corpse, that is a big shock. But you shouldn't have to roll a sanity or horror check every time you look at the same corpse, or other corpses for that matter.
A second check for the same thing would have to be justified narratively. For example, the game master could make a difference between just a human corpse, and a mangled human corpse, or a human corpse that is crawling with maggots.

I think the goal of horror/sanity checks is not to force players into behaving a certain way. Instead, they are there to give motivation for role playing, and also to encourage players to avoid traumatic situations. In a normal role playing game, a player might not be afraid to check out a basement to look for a corpse. But in a game with sanity checks, the player knows that there's a penalty for looking at horrible things. This encourages more realistic behavior from characters in a horror game. But it is important for the game master to understand that it's not the mechanics of the horror checks that should be doing all the legwork. They also still need to describe the emotions that the player feels. For example:

"Lucy discovers a weak wall in the basement, and decides to break it open with a shovel. She uncovers a hidden room, where the corpse of the owner of the house is dangling from the wooden beams. A horror check is made, and Lucy receives sanity damage. The game master now describes the shock of seeing the old lady dangling from the beams, and hearing the rope softly creaking. He tells her how it conjures up memories from the last time Lucy saw a dead relative as a child, and how she can't even bring herself to look at the corpse. Her hands are shaking, and her feet feel like lead. The game master also describes there's a suitcase on the other side of the room, but Lucy hears the creaking of the rope, and feels terrible just being in the same room with the corpse. Being a good role player, the player who plays Lucy decides to ask another party member to check out the room, while she stays outside."

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] I finally put down my ideas for an alternative horror/fear mechanic that doesn't rely on ability checks nor imposing frightened or madness conditions. It works off the following premises:

• The scariest thing is whatever lurks in the players' own imaginations. All the DM can do is fuel that.
• Threats presented by the DM should begin as unknown/undefined to the players. They're not "goblins wielding torches riding worgs", rather they're "hideous shadows with blazing eyes moving between the trees like slavering wolves."
• Inspiration should be an incentive for players to guess at the nature of the threat.
• The threat accumulating terrors should be disincentive for players making haphazard or uneducated guesses.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

I'm mulling it over myself. I like some measure of mechanical fear / horror, but I don't know that these mechanics really do what I'm looking for. They read more like a way to force your PC to act like they are afraid/horrified, and less like a way to make the player feel that creeping sensation, and roleplay accordingly.

I guess you could homebrew stuff to fit your need to "horrify the players". The horror rules probably need:
- Mechanics to Build Suspense for the Players
- An In-Game Element to Reflect the Threat Level
- Secrecy. Use "fair" mechanics, but don't explain to players until they leave Barovia
- Consequences. If they players ignore the signs, then suddenly zombies! Suddenly Wolves! Suddenly Tiamat!

Classic example is from "Silent Hill - The Room" game. You should protect an NPC the entire game. As you fail, the NPC's condition worsens and the NPC becomes "more possessed by ghosts". If you keep ignoring the NPC, you will have a bad time. Of course, first-time players have no clue, and will always get the Bad End

 

[Imaculata]

The goal I think of any fear/sanity system, is to have situations like the example I gave earlier. There's a corpse in the room, and instead of the characters just shrugging it off, it actually affects them. So there should be some sort of a mechanic that embodies this concept.

I think D20 Call of Cthulhu had the right idea by simply giving you sanity damage. They made a difference between default sanity damage (a minimum sanity loss that you take regardless), and sanity loss which you can save against. You make a horror check, and if you make the check, then you take only the minimum amount of sanity damage. If you lose too much sanity in one check, then you roll for a sanity effect or trauma.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

The goal I think of any fear/sanity system, is to have situations like the example I gave earlier. There's a corpse in the room, and instead of the characters just shrugging it off, it actually affects them.

That system is good for a structured approach to terrifying PCs. Thanks for posting the explanation. Still, some gamers want more terror to themselves and not just the characters.

For example, see Five Nights at Freddy's and Sophie's Curse. The games are examples that terrify people (and even knock them out of their seats at the 15:00 mark), and it works even when the player expects to be terrified. Even if some Let's Player-ers fake it, I get frightened just watching let's plays of those games.

Though TTRPGs can't match those games, there is still room to frighten RPG players. The above games use a general formula (1) Secrecy: the players don't know all the rules, or even the scope of rules (2) put the players in a scary situation (3) telegraph the threat in-game (4) give the players in-game ways to discover rules and to partially alleviate threats (5) escalate the threats (6) this gets players to buy-in to their hopeful methods (7) players may or may-not discover everything needed for survival (8) add a little bit of randomness (9) then the players' actions either worked, or they missed things and PCs start dropping (or worse).

The sanity rules may fall short because the rules system / sanity points are known to the player, It kinda removes the fear factor for me. To truely terrify players, the players need to invest themselves into a horror game / system where they are playing blind, but they think that they are in control.

Any other people watched FnaF or Sophie's curse LPs?

EDIT: wording, typos, etc...

 

[Imaculata]

That system is good for a structured approach to terrifying PCs. Thanks for posting the explanation. Still, some gamers want more terror to themselves and not just the characters.

For example, see Five Nights at Freddy's and Sophie's Curse. The games are examples that terrify people (and even knock them out of their seats at the 15:00 mark), and it works even when the player expects to be terrified. Even if some Let's Player-ers fake it, I get frightened just watching let's plays of those games.

Though TTRPGs can't match those games, there is still room to frighten RPG players. The above games use a general formula (1) Secrecy: the players don't know all the rules, or even the scope of rules (2) put the players in a scary situation (3) telegraph the threat in-game (4) give the players in-game ways to discover rules and to partially alleviate threats (5) escalate the threats (6) this gets players to buy-in to their hopeful methods (7) players may or may-not discover everything needed for survival (8) add a little bit of randomness (9) then the players' actions either worked, or they missed things and PCs start dropping (or worse).

The sanity rules may fall short because the rules system / sanity points are known to the player, It kinda removes the fear factor for me. To truely terrify players, the players need to invest themselves into a horror game / system where they are playing blind, but they think that they are in control.

Any other people watched FnaF or Sophie's curse LPs?

I'm familiar with the Five Nights at Freddies series, but I think you are confusing a sanity system with suspenseful story telling. The sanity system is not going to to provide scary situations or suspense for you. That is not what it is meant to do. It is just there for role playing purposes, to add a mechanical effect along side the suspense that is already in the story.

But I do understand what you are talking about in terms of loss of control, and I actually made a pretty detailed study of this phenomenon for a video game that I'm designing. Fear in a game is often a combination of not knowing all the rules and feeling a bit out of control, and yet feeling completely responsible for the outcome. Its a paradox in a way. You are in control, and yet you are not. And the more familiar the setting of the story, and the more familiar the situations, the more likely it is to creep you out. For example, a creepy old house or forest is a familiar and relatable setting. A massive space station, full of horrible monsters, less so. That doesn't mean that you can't make a space station scary, but you have to draw on other relatable fears to do it.

I often refer to this as "estrangement". You can easily lose suspense if you confront your players with situations that they cannot identify with, or which seem to be trying too hard to be scary. Suspense has to build gradually, and cannot be forced through sheer shock and gimmicks. That is why a video game that has blood covered walls and piles of dead bodies is not all that scary. But on the other hand, one where you are wandering around in a relatable location, and know that you might not be alone, IS scary.

Take for example the game Slender. You are totally in control of your character, as you wander through a relatable environment (a forest), and yet you are being chased by an invisible entity (invisible because you are not allowed to look at it, and because most of the time you don't know where it is), and you have no control where this entity may show up. There's the anticipation of the shock of running into him, but there's also the terror of feeling hunted by something you cannot see. Not everyone will be scared by this, but you have a relatable environment and situation.

There are many kinds of fear that you can aim for in a table top role playing game. The idea of being chased is but one of many options, but there's also the fear of exploring a dangerous area, dealing with an unknown threat, or pure horror of awful things. One of the things Call of Cthulhu tries to do, is to take away the idea that you can simply fight these threats. Sure, there are weapon rules, and monsters can take damage. But an encounter with any monster always costs you sanity, plus you will very likely lose. So running is usually the better option.

I'll provide an example from one of my D20 Call of Cthulhu games, to give you a better idea of how this works. And like I said, its not the sanity system that creates the fear. Its all in the storytelling.

So two players had just interviewed a rather suspicious priest called Robert Blake, who welcomed them into his house next to the old church. They asked him what he knew of a missing Seismologist, who had disappeared a few weeks ago. While they asked him various questions, they noticed all of the pictures of him and his lovely wife Angela. It was creeping them out.

Angela was in the kitchen, dressed in black. Her face was hidden behind a black veil. According to Blake, they had been trying to have a child for a long while, but their latest child had died and Angela was mourning their loss. He offered them coffee, which Robert would then ask Angela to prepare. But they never saw Angela actually making the coffee, and they didn't speak a word with her.

All of this was pretty fishy. The players had plenty of reason to suspect that Blake was involved in some evil cult plot. So at night, while he was away from home, they broke into his house. I played suspenseful music to set the mood.

They came in through the back, and explored the kitchen first. Here they found some latex gloves covered in blood in a trash bin. This was reason for a minor sanity check, with no sanity damage if they passed it. Because bloody gloves are nasty, but not terribly traumatic.

In the living room, they noticed there was a small door underneath the stairs to the basement. There was also still the unexplored second floor. One of the players decided to check out the basement first. Damn, the light wasn't working. But something about the cellar didn't smell right, and there were lots of flies buzzing around. The players knew that if they went down there, and found something awful, it would severely damage their sanity. But they were also just scared to go down there. So they hesitated, but eventually one of them descended into the cellar with a flash light. It is here that they discovered the mangled corpse of the missing seismologist. It looked like he had been partially eaten. And of course they took some serious sanity damage for this find.

As they rushed back up the stairs, half tripping over their own feet, they were ready to get the hell out of there. But then they heard a soft scuff sound of moving furniture upstairs. As if someone was pushing the leg of a table across the bare wooden boards. And they heard a soft female voice whimper "help me....". But they were terrified what else they might find upstairs. Besides, they were in the house of some crazy cultist in the middle of the night!

Slowly they made their way up the stairs. Suddenly I played the loud sound of a chiming grandfather clock, which genuinely startled all the players. And again they had to make a sanity check. -Perhaps the most legit sanity check of the evening, in my opinion. They arrived on the second floor. There was a baby room, with a little crib that looked like there was something in it. They did NOT want to check that out, they were mortified what they might find in there.

And then there was the bedroom. As they carefully pushed open the doors, they found poor Angela tied to the bed with metal wire, dressed in her bridal gown. Both her hands were tied, and she looked terrified, and like she had been crying a lot. Immediately they ran over to her, and freed one of her hands.... and then they looked up, and noticed that Angela had already freed her other hand.... Her claws grew long, her eyes looked as pale as death, and her mouth opened up much wider than any human mouth should be capable of. Angela immediately sank her huge razor sharp teeth into the shoulder of one of the players, as he cried out in horror and pain. Sanity checks for everyone, and a modest amount of minimum sanity damage regardless, for coming face to face with a ghoul.

They ran from the house as fast as they could. They tried blocking the door, but Angela's claws went straight through the flimsy wood. One of the players jumped through the second floor window, figuring the damage from the fall would be the least of his concern right now. He landed in the garden with minor injuries. The other player hurried down the stairs, as Angela shattered the door of the bed room, and instantly jumped down to the first floor, thus skipping the stairs entirely. He ran out the front door, and both players leaped on their motorcycle and burned some rubber. They could see Angela chasing them for a while, until the creature gave up.

So as you can see, in this example the suspense comes purely from the story telling, the music, and sound effects. The sanity system is there to remind the players that their characters are not emotionless beings, and that there is a reason not to expose their characters to hideous things, unless it is really important. My players often describe ways in which they try to avoid sanity damage. By for example looking the other way as they move through a room. So that is what I as a DM want out of a good sanity system.