Fear/ Sanity system for a Survival Horror game

[John Blaz]

I'm looking for a fear system to implement into my modern day survival horror system. The main premise involves creatures from other dimensions appearing in our world, and the players have to fight for survival against the invading threats. This game doesn't involve any supernatural aspects, more science fiction type things. At the moment, I'm using a relatively simple percentile system (roll 1d100 under the character's skill).

Anyway, I'm not sure how to handle fear and insanity effects. I like the system in Unknown Armies, but it's a bit detailed for my system. In UA, there are 4 types of things that can lead to insanity, including Violence, Isolation, Self and the Unnatural. Basically, if a player is exposed to traumatic things, they begin to become hardened and uncaring, but this also leads to insanity.

For my game, I want to concentrate more on the immediate situations the characters find themselves in, and less on the deep emotional stuff, but I still want fear to play a role. Any thoughts how I should go about this? Maybe use temporary insanities? Having a hard time deciding here. Anyway, thanks for any input!

[Anders Larsen]

After CoC there have been this plague of insanity systems. It seems like all games that have something to do with horror has to have a insanity system. So it is one of these things that you risk including in your game, with no other reason than you just has to have such a system because everyone else have.

It is not that a insanity systems is a bad thing, but you should think carefully about what its purpose is in your game. Try to think about the story you want this game to tell. If you was writing a novel based on this story, why would you, as the author, want some of the character to go insane? Is it to escalate the situation by making the character go berserk? Or is it to tell something about the deeper fears of that character? Or something else?

When you have a clear idea of what the purpose insanity has in the fiction, it is much easier to make a mechanic that handle it.

- Anders

[Sentience]

John, your game is a survival horror game. Just because other horror games out there have an insanity system, it doesn't mean yours does too. But, I don't suspect that you're just being a conformist, so let's not worry about what everyone else is doing. We're working with a game that has the central theme of human beings coming in contact with particularly horrific things. Naturally, when human beings are presented with horror, it takes its toll on them in many ways.

I suspect that you're like me, and that you don't really want to, or need to, kill yourself trying to come up with deep, well defined reason for a mechanic in your game. You want it, and it makes sense for the type of game your making, so rather then answering your question with another question, I'll offer some suggestions.

Fear could have both positive and negative effects on a person. Fear is often the emotion that keeps us alive, as it makes us more cautious and alert then we might otherwise be. It can feed us with adrenaline, making us stronger, faster, and even more clever. However, fear can also hinder us, fogging up clear thinking and make our hands shake with nervousness. Ultimately it comes down to the individual person.

For the sakes of simplicity and the game, I would assume that unless the character has taken a specific trait or perk, fear is a bad thing. You could have six basic levels of fear, going from least to greatest:

Normal - Your character is not scared at all.
Startled - Your character is just beginning to feel the effects of fear. causing him to hesitate and fumble his thoughts. -1 to Initiative and -1 to all mental/social skills.
Nervous - Your character is starting to succomb to the effects of fear. -2 to Initiative, -2 to all mental/social skills, -1 physical skills.
Scared - Your character is now very fearful. -3 to Initiative, -3 to all mental/social skills, and -2 to physical skills.
Frightened - Your character is gripped with fear. -4 to Iniative, -4 to all mental/social skills, and -3 to physical skills.
Terrified - Your character is so afraid, he can do little that doesn't involve running and hiding.

Again, those are just examples/suggestions for what you could do.

As far as mechanics are concerned, you could come up with a scale in "fear points" or "fear percentage".

(<= 0%) Normal
(1% - 25%) Startled
(26% - 50%) Nervous
(51% - 75%) Scared
(76% - 99%) Frightened
(>= 100%) Terrified

Each horrific encounter, situation, or monster would then have an associated level of fear. For example, the scariest thing in the whole world, the boogeyman, could have the highest fear level (100%). The players would then roll their "bravery" or something to try to resist the fear. The better they roll, the less fear they feel for the situation. The more crazy shit people see, the braver they get, so their "bravery" attribute would get better as they witness scarier and scarier things.

Once, again, I don't know the intracasies of your game, so the exact details would be up to you. Hope this was of some help.