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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 5183502" data-attributes="member: 172">Well, you already know much of this from our Freeport thread at CM, but I run Freeport using Fantasy Craft*, which has a built-in stress mechanic. I throw in a few mechanics from a Spycraft supplement called Fragile Minds to give it a bit more of a CoC feel.Now I see having some sort of mechanic to reflect dread and madness mechanically as something that facilitates horror play, but certainly not something that can create it. For me, good "entertainment horror" is all about fear of the unknown and shock of revelation of disturbing facts. That's all about adventure design and GMs pacing and handling of situations.As you say, just having the mechanic kill or drive PCs insane is not going to create a good feeling of horror. What does, in a game like D&D, is stripping away PC potency. Though I've yet to have anyone go insane in my Freeport, I think I am having good results simply because by ramping up the use of stress damage, PCs accumulate penalties that soon undermine the players' sense of certainty that they can prevail. They lose that "dominant" feel that they have early in the game before the stress damage erodes the heroic dominance built into the system.* - For those not aware, Fantasy Craft is a d20 spinoff game that is 2 generations removed from D&D by crafty games. For more details about Fantasy Craft and my use of it running freeport, see the link in my sig.</blockquote>

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