Horror Game

[halohand]

I'm working on a horror game and would like all of your input.  The game will mainly be a narrative but with some rolling.  The game is meant to a series of one-shots in between the regular D&D(no I don't like it but it's like Windows - everyone has it and knows it) game sessions.

The characters will be made up of Attributes, Traits, Gifts and Skills. There are 6 attributes, 3 concrete and 3 abstract.  They are:

 Vigor/Heart, Intellect/Empathy, Prowess/Reflexes.

The Traits are a series of positive and negative values(much like Gurps) but they would be the nearest to a class in D20. For instance there would be the Charismatic who is a Substance Abuser or The Leader who is Unsure.

The Gifts range from Clairvoyance and Precognition to Being Rich or a Natural at something.  Rolls based on Gifts are based on Abstract Attributes.

The skills will be made up of Familiarities and Proficiencies.  If a character is familiar with a skill then they may use the relevant Concrete Attribute.  If the character is proficient in a skill then the player would have a bonus added to the roll.

Combat is resolved by using a number of dice equal to the players Prowess plus a number of die equal to the proficiency.  The rolls to hit are the opponents Reflex Attribute.  Now if you have noticed I have not yet mentioned any for of hit points or health.  The reason is that I don't think there needs to be another device for this.  Most games either ignore the attributes when the character is damaged or tries to compensate for it by providing negatives to attributes based on how much damage the player has taken.  My take is that there are different types of damage.  There is Trauma when is physical damage, Stress or Fatigue, which attacks the character mentally or stun, which affects a characters prowess. Each form of attack will have a rating and a type.  The rating will be the target to shrug off the damage and the type being which attribute the damage will effect.  Damage is always taken by Concrete Attributes and the ability to shrug off the damage is always dependent on the Abstract Attribute.  The amount of damage is reflected by the number of sucesses the attacker gains against the opponent.  For instance - a handgun would have a damage rating of V6, meaning it would be an attack on the opponents Vigor and a target of 5 to shrug off damage based on the characters Heart.  The amount of damage would be dependant on the attackers successes.  

Example -

Jon is attacking a bear with a rifle(V6).  Jons Familiar with rifles(no additional dice) and has a Prowess of 3.  He rolls 3 dice - 3, 5, & 6.  The Bear has a Reflexes of 2, Vigor of 5 and a Heart of 4.  Jon has scored 2 successes.  The bear then rolls his Heart number of dice 4 - 1, 4, 3, & 6.  The target number to shrug the damage is 6, so the bear only shrugs 1 success resulting it his Vigor dropping by 1.

This is just a rough draft so I am open to critism.  

Thanks,
James

[failrate]

Seems good enough to me.  Without really analyzing the system to see if I can break it, it seems like it's pretty easy to play...  my only question is what makes this a Horror game?

It seems like it's a pretty good Universal Template game...  a better suggestion, I think, would be to make the core rules that will work for a general game.  Then, you can make different campaign style rules.  For instance, you obviously like Horror movies, or else you wouldn't want to make a Horror movie game.  So, for the Horror campaign rules, you would definitely have different Traits than an Action movie campaign.

So, you can just make these very nice core rules and a nice Horror supplement...  then, if anyone else gets a wild hair up themselves, they can make a supplement for their favorite genre...  or whatever.

Have fun!

[halohand]

Thanks for the reply.  I haven't play tested this system much yet.  I plan on giving it a good test this weekend with my group.  Although they just don't know it yet.  I've found it's better to surprise them anyway.  

Well the intent is to run a horror game using these rules. Most of the 'Horror' aspect was going to be story.  The rules are something I've been pulling together to a little while now.  If you look closely you will see that a lot of it is pulled from other sources.  I tried to incorporate all the good parts of systems I like.  So in the end I guess this is just an open system.  Right now I am trying to add the horror aspects to the system and not a horror game.  Also, I did not add any sanity or fear rules on purpose.  I think that takes a little from the game when you are recording how scared or insane you are becoming.

Maybe I'll just take your advice and make this vanilla and have a horror module for it.  Thanks again for your time.

-James

[Mike Holmes]

Well, if it isn't particularly supposed to deliver horror, what is it supposed to do? That is, it's hard to critique the game when we don't know what your actual goals for it are. If you've pulled together the things that you need to play, then isn't it complete? What do you see as potential problems? What do you need help with?

If you need a generic game, then why not GURPS? Answering that may help define what your goals are.

BTW, damaging attributes instead of Hit Points originated with games like TFT (GURPS predecessor) and Traveller back in the 70's, and are actually pretty common. See Dust Devils from Chimera here for a more modern version of this.

What are the ranges on the attributes, etc?

Mike

[halohand]

Thanks,  this is just the kind of stuff I needed.  I'm not sure what I forsee as flaws(I'll be play testing this weekend).  And no it is not complete.  My intention for this is to be a system used to deliver my horror game setting.  The system was originally supposed to be just for the horror setting (I've been tinkering with it  more and more just for fun though).  

 Like I said though this is was my take on combining parts I liked from other systems.  It was not really meant to be inventive or show off anything new.  It was my intent to make an easy to use and learn system based on my gaming experience.  The reason I'm hear is to get the opinions of others.  What I'm looking for is  - 'Yeah it looks solid, but you might wanna check...' or 'No I don't think this is going to work because you will run into problems when...'.  

 Now that said the 'horror' aspect will be story, this will just resolve the situations encountered in the game.  The attribute range will be from 1 - 4, with D6 used for resolution (rolling a number of dice based on the attribute + skill - situational modifiers).

 Oh as for the GURPS thing,  I'm in the group that likes the idea of GURPS but never really enjoyed the game mechanics.  Maybe it was just the feel of the rules.

[failrate]

Well, assuming this is a standard one-GM with a group of players in traditional roles, then you could always keep the Fear/Sanity attribute secretly in the hands of the GM.  I mean, very few people who've had a nervous breakdown *know* they've just had a nervous breakdown.  So, the GM could secretly tally Sanity scores and make all of his Sanity checks in secret, too.  When he fails his checks and gains some kind of mental illness, then it will come as a pleasantly nasty surprise later when it interferes with something he wants his character to do (like if he gains Claustrophobia while in the crypt of some unnameable thing;  then when he tries to get into his automobile, he may suddenly find himself paralyzed with terror).

This could work well in any number of settings.  For example, in a Zombie setting, the GM could secretly monitor zombie-virus levels (and when they max out, Zombie-madness!).  I'm sure it could work in other, non-Horror settings, but you probably do need the focus.

[halohand]

Well, that's an interesting thought.  It could make for some good roleplaying but it could cause a lot of players to feel like they are not in control but that's part of  a horror setting (IMO).  

At this point I am stumbling over the basic mechanics.  This weekend I put it through a lot of play-testing and found many, many problems with it.  Also in trying to address them, the mechanics began looking too much like Shadowrn or WOD.  Which goes back to the question of 'Why' make a system if it has already been done.  

So at this point I guess it's back to the drawing board.  Thanks for the input.

[Marhault]

Halohand, don't give up on your game just because it is similar to other games you've played.  It's hard (nearly impossible, really) to build an entire game without someone being able to step back a bit and say, "oh yeah, that looks like --whatever--"  The game system is not the only thing your game has going for it, so focus on some of the other things that you like better, setting, character ideas, etc. and maybe new mechanics will develop from them.

Failrate, the idea of hidden sanity is great!  I vaguely recall reading a review of a game called "Psychosis: Ship of Fools" a long time ago (Like 80s long time ago) that used a similar idea.  If I recall correctly, the GM tracked the characters sanity secretly, and as they descended further and further into madness, altered his descriptions of the game situations based on their mental state.  Since the players don't know how crazy their characters are, they can't tell between madness induced situations and "real" ones.

Keep in mind that description is based on a review of a game I never played.  If anyone knows more about it (Like where I can get a copy) let me know.

[Lxndr]

I found my copy only after a long, hard search.

The basic idea in Psychosis is that the player-characters are unstable, and have their own way of filtering the data in their brain.  To be short, they're constantly dancing back and forth between various deranged hallucinations, where all their sensory input is interpreted through the hallucination.

There are various rules for when sanity "levels" change, as well as individual hallucinations (and the majority of the book is taken up with thirty or forty different views of the reality of the game)... and rules for how two different players can "synchronize" the hallucinations of their caracters temporarily.

Ship of Fools is just one adventure, though, with a beginning and an end and a coherent system in the middle.  It looks like they were obviously planning on publishing more adventures, which may or may not have had the same sanity web.

(Notice I'm not telling WHAT the real hallucination is, just in case you ever have a chance to play the game.  It's more fun the first time through if you don't know.)

[halohand]

no I'm not going to give up on it. I'm just going to take a good look at those systems.  I haven't played them in a long time and I think that I've been mistaking ideas for rememberings.  Hopefully by looking at those systems I can get them out of my head and move on.  I find that if I put something down for a little while, I am more refreshed to tackle challenges.  

 I think you are right, Marhault.  I am going to flesh the setting and background more.  This should make everything else fall in place.

 On the other topic of hidden insanity.  This has given me many ideas.  Suppose the group begins having some of these hallucinations to reveal that someone is responsible for a terrible act.  Like a childs death for instance.  Then the PCs take revenge on the person only to have the truth revealed that the person was not guilty and the PCs were actually the evil in the game.  I think it would be good in a one-shot, which is what the plan for this would be.  Well, several connected one-shots.

[failrate]

I still don't have a clear idea of what "flavor" of horror you're going for.  If I was making a horror game, it would probably be splatterhouse, with zombies and deadites getting chopped up, so the immediately tactical Fear effects would play in more than any deep psychological terror.  Characters could be paralyzed, forced to flee, hallucinate friends as enemies, and descriptions of enemies could be made that gave the impression that the enemy was much tougher than it really was.

However, you could be going more into the twisted, questioning reality type horror.  This would require emulation of degrees of schizophrenia, paranoia, phobia, compulsion, etc that would be far too subtle in a game based primarily on combat.  A game based on going mad could be composed of nothing but rules dealing with madness.

So, where do you want to take this?

[halohand]

Well, I've been working on the 'Flavor' all this week and should be posting a complete copy this weekend.  I've pretty much gotten the kinks out of the rules.  I've just got a couple things left to work out.  This will essentially be my first real complete draft of the system, so things will still need to be ironed out.  I currently have a Fear and a Sanity mechanic. The Fear mechanic will be player monitored  and will have a Fight or Flight effect.  The sanity mechanic will be GM monitored (per your suggestion above) and will have a direct effect on how the game is described. For instance - 'Did that guy just give me a dirty look?'.

 As for the 'Flavor', I would like to have a mix, but mostly the twisted reality type.  But since I am a huge zombie fan that will be there too.  I don't want to do too much though so at the moment I cam focusing on the the Twisted portion.  

 Anyway,  thanks for the inspiration and comments.  They have helped me, a alot.

BTW, I've decided the name will be - the small hours.