Quote from: Cole;459055I'm torn on this - usually I don't like using fear/horror checks, that kind of thing, but I think CoC's sanity mechanic in practice works better; I think of that less as a genre convention as an attempt to address something affecting the brain that description doesn't convey as well as it does most other things likely to come up in an RPG.

To be fair, I think CoC's SAN-loss mechanic works a hell of a lot better than the Fear and Horror checks in Ravenloft.

Either way, I really do like LotFP's emphasis on player character agency.

Quote from: RPGPundit;458689In my experience, not having fear checks or SAN points or something means that the players' "reactions" to "mind-numbing horror" will always be "I stay completely rational within my senses and do exactly that thing which is most strategically sound, be it attacking the creature expertly and fearlessly or retreating in a calm orderly fashion".

Yeah, I see them as a necessary evil in horror games... and most of what I like to play has a horror element to it.

Quote from: misterguignol;459052In my experience, Ravenloft's Fear and Horror checks become banal, just another Saving Throw to make that does nothing to create an atmosphere of actual fear or horror.

At best, they're a Saving or Suck that has less riding on the outcome than a Save vs. Petrification; at worse, they are a way for the DM to force your character to act a certain way in a failed attempt to enforce generic conventions.

Ravenloft's mechanics for this have been pretty poor, I agree. That doesn't mean the concept is wrong.  Other systems (call of cthulhu, Unknown Armies, Palladium) get it right in my opinion ("get it right" for their genre; I don't mean to suggest that D&D characters need to be pissing their pants in fear for 1d10 days if they see a zombie).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;459093Ravenloft's mechanics for this have been pretty poor, I agree. That doesn't mean the concept is wrong.  Other systems (call of cthulhu, Unknown Armies, Palladium) get it right in my opinion ("get it right" for their genre; I don't mean to suggest that D&D characters need to be pissing their pants in fear for 1d10 days if they see a zombie).

I think for a lot of players, going into a horror RPG they look at the point in a horror movie where they're shouting at the screen saying "no, are you crazy don't just cower there, get the axe!" or "no, don't go off alone by yourself, that's stupid!" and then to get the chance to make a better decision that will give them a better chance to get them through the horror alive. I don't see anything wrong with that and so I usually don't want to use Ravenloft style fear checks. Especially if the character you're playing is some kind of grizzled medieval warrior whose world view like as not assumes the woods have always contained werewolves and other such fiends.

CoC's sanity I think works best when reserved for experiences that are world shattering and, especially, that the human mind just can't process; Palladium's horror factor seems a descendent of that but in my opinion tends to cross over too far to the "collapse because you saw a zombie" territory. CoC includes rules for some Sanity hits for mundane, but awful things, but as I run the game I would be disinclined to force a currently sane Investigator to go insane at the sight of a dead body or that kind of thing, though I could see the argument for it gradually chipping away the resolve needed to deal with more extreme supernatural events later. I'm not familiar with what Unknown Armies does.

Unknown Armies' 'madness meter' lets you shift ever closer to insanity... OR slip-slide toward becoming a cold heartless sociopath... which might be argued as just being a different form of crazy.

I'm fine with not losing sanity over seeing a corpse... depending on whose corpse it is and the condition of it... what bugs me is some guy telling me his PC has seen plenty of horror movies so NOTHING is gonna phase him... which is bullshit.

PCs often act insane as it is.

A group of 6 sharing one room at the inn to save money, then running watch shifts even though they're in a comfy room, often hassling townsfolk and threatening them if they don't get their own way...

... Madness is hardwired into PC behavior anyway.

What's brilliant is that such behavior is completely justified. Even if the particular Referee doesn't screw them all the time, the players know that it happens to someone, somewhere.

This sort of metagame thinking fills in the Lovecraftian "'Sanity' is a lie that people wrap around themselves to be able to function in society, and 'insanity' is merely becoming aware of the nature of reality."

Any mechanic for it would be redundant, really, and would take away a player's control of their character.to boot. BOOOOOOOOOOOO

The problem is that, without a mechanic for it, the "insanity" that PCs may express is ultimately pretty "sane" in the sense that it is always what they think is the best course of action for self-preservation.  Like I said, it always amounts to either "let's kill the fuck out of that thing" or "let's make a well-ordered retreat".  There's nothing there that causes the PCs to act in a way that doesn't actually work to their benefit.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;459185The problem is that, without a mechanic for it, the "insanity" that PCs may express is ultimately pretty "sane" in the sense that it is always what they think is the best course of action for self-preservation.  Like I said, it always amounts to either "let's kill the fuck out of that thing" or "let's make a well-ordered retreat".  There's nothing there that causes the PCs to act in a way that doesn't actually work to their benefit.

I don't have a problem with this.

The section on Campaigns actually has some really stellar advice, such as: when you're building a campaign world, it's best to start small, leave things sketchy in places, and fill it in as the game progresses.  There also some nice sections on using real-world history as a basis and how best to deal with the "canon" baggage that comes with published settings.  I also really appreciate the idea of giving each specific area of a campaign world it's own tailored random encounter tables.

One thing I found both funny and noteworthy is that the text in this part of the Referee book slightly discourages the use of "urban" or "civilized" areas as places of adventure.  This is ironic as the Grindhouse Edition came out the same day as Vornheim, a kit published by LotFP specially about urbancrawls.

One final thing I really liked in this section was the idea of keeping the world's cosmology mysterious and unmapped.  This keeps other planes of existence more "fantastic" (and possibly fictious), as well as potentially cosmologically incorrect.  This is a far cry from the silly Great Wheel of AD&D with its horrible maps of the planes.

One thing that some folks may not like in this section: it discourages the whole "at name level you get a fortress and become a ruler" thing.  LotFP is a game about adventurers, not respectable folk who govern kingdoms.  Sorry, but once you settle down, it's time to make another character.

Quote from: misterguignol;459378One thing I found both funny and noteworthy is that the text in this part of the Referee book slightly discourages the use of "urban" or "civilized" areas as places of adventure.  This is ironic as the Grindhouse Edition came out the same day as Vornheim, a kit published by LotFP specially about urbancrawls.

I don't see them as really lining up that closely.

Quote from: Cole;459379I don't see them as really lining up that closely.

They don't, really.  But they easily could.

I get where Raggi is coming from.  The convention of "mundane civilization" vs. "weird wildlands" is a good one.  Very thematic, and reinforces a certain atmosphere.  However, there is some missed opportunity here because cities and civilized places can be deeply weird.  Read, for example, Poe's "The Man of the Crowd," Rodenbach's Brughes-la-Mort, or Huysmans's La-Bas.

Hell, even Mieville does a modern style of weird urban fantasy.

From the podcasts I listened to today, it seems that James Raggi picked Vornheim off a list of things Zak Smith was interested in doing precisely because he wanted to see how a weird city kit could be done right because it was his own "weak spot" when it came to DMing.

Quote from: misterguignol;459381I get where Raggi is coming from.  The convention of "mundane civilization" vs. "weird wildlands" is a good one.  Very thematic, and reinforces a certain atmosphere.  However, there is some missed opportunity here because cities and civilized places can be deeply weird.  Read, for example, Poe's "The Man of the Crowd," Rodenbach's Brughes-la-Mort, or Huysmans's La-Bas.

Yeah, I get where he is coming from but it's not the sensibility with which I like to approach the game. Especially for D&D-and-friends I prefer to have it be more exotic even if it's a cheap kind of exoticism. Incidentally from the other stuff you're listing are you familiar with Michel de Ghelderode...thats another tone I'm reminded of.

Quote from: Cole;459385Yeah, I get where he is coming from but it's not the sensibility with which I like to approach the game. Especially for D&D-and-friends I prefer to have it be more exotic even if it's a cheap kind of exoticism. Incidentally from the other stuff you're listing are you familiar with Michel de Ghelderode...thats another tone I'm reminded of.

I am not familiar with that author, but from the search results I just got I will seek him out!  I'm a 18th-19th century literature scholar, so I'm afraid he's just outside of my useful era-boundaried knowledge.

Quote from: misterguignol;459387I am not familiar with that author, but from the search results I just got I will seek him out!  I'm a 18th-19th century literature scholar, so I'm afraid he's just outside of my useful era-boundaried knowledge.

He's agressively lurid but I like his stuff. "Red Magic," "Hop, Signor," "Chronicles of Hell" come to mind as interesting little stage grotesques.

Just got Vornheim today and HOLY FUCK is it a gorgeous little book. Hardcover to boot, with useful info EVERYWHERE! The jacket and covers inside and out... I am very impressed. With the awesome BRP stuff coming out, SWN, the gorgeous S&W complete book, and now this... the bar is being set very high these days. I'm thinking I really gotta get Grindhouse Edition, really like the vibe it's putting out in this thread Thanks again.