Degrees of Fright

[Grave Boy 13]

Hi all.  I had a small bit of info that I felt I would share with the rest and see what everyones opinions were.  Anyway, in my game I had started using a system of varying degrees of fear that each monster inflicted upon the children.  After all, some monsters are just straight up more frightening then others. There is a tremendous difference between, say, The Monster Under the Bed and Lamashtu her self.  Granted, The Monster Under the Bed is quite frightening and it is difficult for children to conquer their fear of it, consequently, conquering it.  Meeting Lamashtu face to face, however, would make The Monster Under the Bed look like a real hugable, loveable guy.  Dealing with the shear terror that she inspires by her very nature would be a far greater feat for any child then dealing with the fright that is The Monster Under the Bed.  To represent this, there are three degrees of fear that the monsters are made from and that they inflict.  They are:

Frightening: These are the most common monsters and are what children commonly think of when they think of monsters.  Filling this rank would be the greatest bulk of Closetlands denizens: Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies, Ghosts, The Monster Under the Bed, The Closet Monster, The Whistle Monster, The Whisperer, etc.

Horrifying: These are the true horrors of Closetland, the ones who have been around for some time, building up mass amounts fear from many children.  These are the ones who are legends, having stories told again and again about them, building up more fear with each telling.  They are the powerful independent monsters or the favored henchmen of the kings.  They come from the ranks that the kings themselves were chosen from, and many might just covet such a position for them selves, attempting to out do the kings in horrors that they inflict upon the innocent.
A child facing a Horrifying monster would have a negative die added to his or her pool.

Terrifying:  These are the worst of the worst, the true terrors Closetland.  This category is reserved for the most freighting of all the monsters that a child might ever meet... the Kings.
A child facing a Terrifying monster would have 2 negative dice added to his or her pool.

So, I was just wondering what everyone thought of this, and possibly if anyone else has a better way of dealing with varying degrees of fright.

[Mike Holmes]

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[Mike Holmes]

The problem with these terms is that there has already been a lot of semantic discussions about the whole horror/terror thing. To whit, the general consensus is that terror should be used to describe a situation in which a person finds something scary because of threat of imminent personal harm. Whereas horror should be used to describe situations that are scary because of a dawning realization of the nature of some scary thing. So, if Lamashtu is coming down on me, I'm terrified. If I realize that Bobby is in the clutches of Lamashtu, and it may be too late to save him, that's horrifying.

Thus it has been said that Little Fears is a gameof horror for the players, who are horrified by the character's terror.

I'd never heard the distinctions previously (the dictionary makes no such differentiation, but puts repugnace in with horror), but they seem to carry some weight here for some reason.

One could simply rate cretures as scary, very scary, and extremely scary.

Mike

[Grave Boy 13]

I think I vaguely remember reading something about the whole horror / terror thing is some article on running horror rpgs, though when I came up with the names of the stages (wow, that sounds a little too technical already... ech) I was trying to describe the general feeling in that would run through the kids when they have to deal with such a monster.  I had originally written it in my note book as simply scary, really scary, and really really scary, but since I had decided to post it to the board to see what others thought, I felt that I should polish the names up some.  I settled on horrifying and terrifying just because of what comes to mind when I think about ones general reaction to each of those.

Terrifying seems to indicate a situation of mind numbing fright, the kind that sends your brain on vacation for a little while.  Its the kind that shuts off your bowl control and you ability and seems to even remove the fight or flight instinct.  Horrifying seems to indicate a situation where you would still might be able to keep your wits about you.  I know in a technical sense that just doesn't hold water.  I wasn't really using the names as the main focus anyway.  They are just used as a way of showing that each level is a different lever from the one that came before it and the one that might come after it.  They are almost incidental, and giving them some name (any name) just sounds better then something like Fright Factor 1, Fright Factor 2, etc.  The meat of the variegated fright thing is not so much what the names each level or stage or rank might be called, but the fact that some monsters are just more freighting by their very nature then others and would require a lot more courage to deal with them (as represented by the additional negative dice).  Consequently, it would be a lot easier for the childs fright to win out in the end, as such, the monster wins.  That was what I was really wanting peoples opinions on and to see if anyone out there has a better way of doing it.

However, as the name thing goes, I guess Scary, Really Scary, and Very Scary is a better choice in the end.  Though, I think I just might be a little partial to Scary, Really Scary, and Really Really Scary... :)