Fear and loathing in CRPG

[Azael]

One of my favorite shows at the moment is Rome. Yes, I'm aware that it's basically a violence and sex filled soap opera with semi-historical background, but it's a damn entertaining soap in my eyes. In the last episode I saw, Titus Pullo and his crew faced down the members of the rival collegia. Just as Memmio thinks he's succesfully brokered a deal with Pullo, good old Titus headbutts him and then proceeds to bite out his tongue. Finally, he goes berserk and leads his crew to take down the opposition. What's so great about this scene, beyond the obvious brutality, is the way the enemies react to Pullo. They're stricken by fear and a lot of them flee. Not only is Pullo a superior fighter, but they know this and combined with his display of brutality and sheer ferocity they lose the battle despite advantage in numbers.

What I'm thinking about is how this could be translated to a CRPG. I'm not suggesting "seeing the fear in the orc's eyes", but more along the lines on how morale can be integrated in a game system and used in a way that's fun and reflects on your chosen style of character and his actions in the gameworld. Think the morale system of Close Combat, only transferred to a CRPG enviroment where things such as stats, reputations and history matters as much as the tide of battle. Basically, I want fear to mean more than a slight adjustment to your chance to hit or defend, but I'm not exactly sure on how the game mechanics should work out. Suggestions and comments are welcome.

 

[Cthulhugoat]

I like the idea. Suicidal level one enemies are still ridiculous. If memory serves, kobolds used to run away from your character after some of them get killed in Baldur's Gate. Even better, in some other game whose name I can't recall, low-level creatures flee instantly and you gain no experience from killing them.

Other examples?

 

[Surgey]

Uhh.... some enemies run when at low health in MMOG's... that's the first example I can think of.

 

[Azael]

Implementation is the key here. Weak enemies running away from you, only to later attack again or gathering at the corners of the map "forcing" you to hunt them down to kill them is bad design. Sadly, that seems to be the only way I've seen in CRPGs so far.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Morrowind HAS a fleeing system for opponents, but for some reason, they only actually flee if you... er... jump really high.

 

[kingcomrade]

Diablo and Diablo 2's Fallen One has a similar AI thing, if something died near them they would all scatter, however they would return after a few seconds.

 

[JarlFrank]

Call of Cthulhu, although it was a shooter and not an RPG, had a nice twist there. If you saw the monsters they would drive you to insanity and fear at the same time making your vision blur and even having a risk of shooting yourself if you hold a loaded gun in your hand because you can't handle the fear.

I like the idea of the character acting himself because of fear, without the player doing anything. Depending on your character it could either be going into an uncontrollable berserker frenzym fleeing in panic or just standing there in shock not really able to do anything.

 

[Vault Dweller]

One of my favorite shows at the moment is Rome.

Awesome show. Sex, violence, and great characters that make absolutely no effort to be better than they really are. What's not to like? Gotta love Mark Antony and Titus Pullo. Octavian is a dick though.

Yes, I'm aware that it's basically a violence and sex filled soap opera with semi-historical background, but it's a damn entertaining soap in my eyes. In the last episode I saw, Titus Pullo and his crew faced down the members of the rival collegia. Just as Memmio thinks he's succesfully brokered a deal with Pullo, good old Titus headbutts him and then proceeds to bite out his tongue. Finally, he goes berserk and leads his crew to take down the opposition. What's so great about this scene, beyond the obvious brutality, is the way the enemies react to Pullo. They're stricken by fear and a lot of them flee. Not only is Pullo a superior fighter, but they know this and combined with his display of brutality and sheer ferocity they lose the battle despite advantage in numbers.

That scene was great. As good or better than fights in Gangs of New York.

What I'm thinking about is how this could be translated to a CRPG.

I played with this concept in AoD a bit. When you intimidate someone (single opponent or even a group of people), their reaction is based on your reputation (body count) and your weapon skills. The way I see it your weapon skills would affect your confidence, your stance, etc, and your potential opponents should be able to see it, estimate your abilities, and either give you what you want or run/surrender.

 

[Texas Red]

I enjoyed the incest scene. Dont lie, you did too!

 

[Azael]

I played with this concept in AoD a bit. When you intimidate someone (single opponent or even a group of people), their reaction is based on your reputation (body count) and your weapon skills. The way I see it your weapon skills would affect your confidence, your stance, etc, and your potential opponents should be able to see it, estimate your abilities, and either give you what you want or run/surrender.

This is along the lines I was thinking of, but I'd prefer if it went even further than this. It should be present in dialogue, encounters as well as combat. I'm not sure I like the idea of taking away control from the player, at least not too much, but there should be some serious consequences to the PC getting scared shitless as well. I'd love it if there was an option to choose personality traits as well as physical traits at character creation that had an effect on morale, as well as traits that you could gain during the course of the game.

 

[The Dude]

I used to play this Swedish fantasy pnp rpg when I was younger. It was a pretty ok system influenced by the large US systems at the time. Among the mechanics were stuff for handling fear. If the PCs encountered something that the DM or the rules considered as fear inducing they had to roll on a table, modified by the WIS-equivalent stat and how fearful the source was. Among the effects were different skill and stat penalties, panic freeze, fleeing, and even heart attacks.

IMO, such a system could be pretty nicely adapted to a CRPG, affecting both PCs and NPCs. Maybe removing some of the worse effects as it wouldn't be much fun if PCs started having sudden heart attacks when encountering some random foozles. Also, it would probably make sense to throw in some stat bonuses in the low end of the fear table since it actually can sharpen your senses and such.

 

[Azael]

I used to play this Swedish fantasy pnp rpg when I was younger. It was a pretty ok system influenced by the large US systems at the time. Among the mechanics were stuff for handling fear. If the PCs encountered something that the DM or the rules considered as fear inducing they had to roll on a table, modified by the WIS-equivalent stat and how fearful the source was. Among the effects were different skill and stat penalties, panic freeze, fleeing, and even heart attacks.

IMO, such a system could be pretty nicely adapted to a CRPG, affecting both PCs and NPCs. Maybe removing some of the worse effects as it wouldn't be much fun if PCs started having sudden heart attacks when encountering some random foozles. Also, it would probably make sense to throw in some stat bonuses in the low end of the fear table since it actually can sharpen your senses and such.

Drakar & Demoner? I played that as well, had some fun effects such as making your character puke for four rounds, or something like that. Could also give you phobias if the terror was extreme, which I think would be cool. Imagine just barely surviving an encounter with undead and then as a result having your character developing a phobia against zombies. The reverse would also work, easily beating a certain kind of enemy might give you a morale boost in the future even in situations where you should be prone to morale penalties.

 

[Timur]

Yeah, the only scene to rival the Titus biting someone's tongue out scene from a HBO series is the “big man fight” from the third season of Deadwood.

But regardless, I think the only was one could necessarily do effective intimidation on a cinematic level in a game is to have it scripted with the dialogue. Something along the lines of

“Agreed”*grab hold of arm, head butt, and bit out tongue*

And then based on your character’s reputation/intimidation skill this would either spark outrage or fear.

 

[JrK]

I used to play this Swedish fantasy pnp rpg when I was younger. It was a pretty ok system influenced by the large US systems at the time. Among the mechanics were stuff for handling fear. If the PCs encountered something that the DM or the rules considered as fear inducing they had to roll on a table, modified by the WIS-equivalent stat and how fearful the source was. Among the effects were different skill and stat penalties, panic freeze, fleeing, and even heart attacks.

The Ravenloft campaign setting for DnD has this system as well. Three different kinds of saves are Madness, Fear and Horror saves. Fear is for things that incite fear in your char, like the approach of a horde of orcs. Horror is for gore, rotting undead, realizing you just ate man-flesh, that sort of thing. Madness is a save to avoid the effects of the previous two (failed) saves. It could make you experience something from being blacked out about what happend to developing multiple personality syndrome, complete with it's own alignment and that sort of thing.

 

[Mr Happy]

Hah, I was just saying in another thread how a lot of the stuff going on in Rome would be great in an RPG.

Anyway, I was thinking about what the fleers would do upon running away. Would they try to hide? Would they tend their wounds? Play dead? Try to help others injured? React to you chasing after them? Get help (da police/friends) or “bigger guns”? This is of course assuming that, unlike fallout, there is no boundary to the next area they can reach and get off free.

I think it would be interesting if the fugitives, if not wounded, could try to reconvene and take you on again, this time stronger than evar. Or maybe they would lead you, the pursuer, into a trap, where more are waiting. If they were good sneakers, they could try to come around from behind and get tactical on your ass, create diversions, all that. This is getting a bit of topic, but still, interesting to consider.

Another thing to consider is what consequences the escape (and how you reacted to it) would have. Maybe if you manage to kill all the fugitives no one (friends, law) would be able to place as much blame on you, but then again, if you went after them and killed everyone insight, but somebody escaped to alert someone higher up, you got a bigger problem than if you had just let them free. I think this would be great in when dealing with authorities. If no one lives to tell the tale, no blame can be placed on you, at least initially, before evidence comes out.

And of course, this all could work the other way as well. You might find yourself suddenly without a crew in the face of danger if the enemy is to intimidating, or your friends have no morale. A bit of a “you and what army” moment.

This also brings up the question of how an NPC should react should you meet them again. In fallout, people who ran away initially would always been running away if you came near them. It would be nice if this could change over time though. Maybe he’s trained himself up and is ready to kick some ass when you see him limping around back in town. Maybe he’s still scared, and it’s just a bit awkward.

If you saw the monsters they would drive you to insanity and fear at the same time making your vision blur and even having a risk of shooting yourself if you hold a loaded gun in your hand because you can't handle the fear.

I like the idea of the character acting himself because of fear, without the player doing anything. Depending on your character it could either be going into an uncontrollable berserker frenzym fleeing in panic or just standing there in shock not really able to do anything.

I think taking control out of the players hands could be very interesting in some cases. Obviously, you can’t force the player to feel afraid, and a simple stat penalty wont always make sense. I think it would be great as an enemy spell effect or modeling a murderous rampage. I’m thinking a frenzy, mind control, or calming spell that takes away or minimizes player control. It would be fun, if nothing else. There might be some balancing issues, but even so.

 

[Timur]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeS6y6mbUzY

just for the fuck of it

 

[Mr Happy]

lawl, you're in luck: Pullo vs. world

http://youtube.com/watch?v=35nrS59Dxg4

edit: for reference sake of course

 

[sabishii]

I like the Total War system for morale. Troops would rout (flee) under certain circumstances, for example if most of their group had been killed, their general had been killed, several other groups have just routed, or perhaps just an outnumbering force was coming after them. The majority of the time they will flee past the boundaries of the map and be gone for the rest of the battle, or sometimes they could regain morale if the general is still alive and is trying to gather them together, or if they run a far distance and change their mind.

 

[Fez]

I think the Warhammer games had something similar too. Cavalry charges at the sides and behind a group of units were effective for that.

 

[The Dude]

Drakar & Demoner? I played that as well, had some fun effects such as making your character puke for four rounds, or something like that. Could also give you phobias if the terror was extreme, which I think would be cool. Imagine just barely surviving an encounter with undead and then as a result having your character developing a phobia against zombies. The reverse would also work, easily beating a certain kind of enemy might give you a morale boost in the future even in situations where you should be prone to morale penalties.

Yeah, it sure was the good ol' Drakar & Demoner. Dunno how I forgot about the phobia stuff since a lot of my characters had one silly phobia or another (Our GM hated me). And I do agree that those could fit pretty well into CRPGs aswell. The morale boosting is also an excellent idea.

The Ravenloft campaign setting for DnD has this system as well. Three different kinds of saves are Madness, Fear and Horror saves. Fear is for things that incite fear in your char, like the approach of a horde of orcs. Horror is for gore, rotting undead, realizing you just ate man-flesh, that sort of thing. Madness is a save to avoid the effects of the previous two (failed) saves. It could make you experience something from being blacked out about what happend to developing multiple personality syndrome, complete with it's own alignment and that sort of thing.

That's also sounds like a good system. The only thing is that maybe a system this complex with far reaching psychological effects might be a tad too hard to use in a CRPG. Any game incorporating stuff like this would probably have to be designed from the ground up with this in mind as a *significant* feature unless it simply stated "GAME OVER" when the PC went crazy.

OTOH it could perhaps be part of some quest to regain sanity but it would be hard justifying this from a non metagaming perspective. If the PC goes truly barmy from fear, what would motivate him to try to get. In a party based system it would probably work though, and it could become a pretty memorable quest if executed right.

Anyway, I was thinking about what the fleers would do upon running away. Would they try to hide? Would they tend their wounds? Play dead? Try to help others injured? React to you chasing after them? Get help (da police/friends) or “bigger guns”? This is of course assuming that, unlike fallout, there is no boundary to the next area they can reach and get off free.

I seem to remember some action rpg where mobs that fled from you ran until they encountered an ally, then they came back with backup, can't remember what game it was though.

When it comes to what the fugitivies would do, wouldn't a Gearhead-like system of personality traits work pretty well for this? In Gearhead all NPC's and the PC possess one or two personality traits, stuff like: easygoing, lawful, outgoing, etc. These influence the interaction between the NPCs and the PCs and some other things too I think.

For example: a lawful person might run and get the law, while an outgoing chaotic person might get some buddies to help kick your ass. A introvert melacholic character might just hide in fear or just stand there waiting for the killing blow. These traits are of course only an example and would not work in all systems, but you get the general idea

 

[JrK]

That's also sounds like a good system. The only thing is that maybe a system this complex with far reaching psychological effects might be a tad too hard to use in a CRPG. Any game incorporating stuff like this would probably have to be designed from the ground up with this in mind as a *significant* feature unless it simply stated "GAME OVER" when the PC went crazy.

OTOH it could perhaps be part of some quest to regain sanity but it would be hard justifying this from a non metagaming perspective. If the PC goes truly barmy from fear, what would motivate him to try to get. In a party based system it would probably work though, and it could become a pretty memorable quest if executed right.

This all depends on how good your DM is of course. I have the luck of being in a RP group with a serious and decent DM with 10 years of experience in three different campaign settings and three different gaming settings. Last Ravenloft adventure involved our party travelling to a little town, and joining in on the feast there. The next day when we woke up, the inn we were sleeping in suddenly looked deserted and old. As the characters went downstairs, they discovered that the feast consisted of various dishes of human flesh. Ofcourse this triggered some Horror and Madness saves, and all of the characters suffered from blackouts or even memory loss. So now we were trapped in this village, with the only source of transportation, some gypsies with a wagon, long gone (winters in Ravenloft are usually deadly cold and all kinds of dangerous critters roam the countryside). This was as good a reason as any to go and find out what the hell was going on here.

Ofcourse, the party decided to throw a party at the local church, attracting all the ghouls habiting this peaceful village, and died.

 

[Azael]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeS6y6mbUzY

just for the fuck of it

Now that was a brutal fight between two big men who don't really know how to fight. Pullo would kill both of them in a jiffy, unless they shot him first of course.

 

[The Dude]

This all depends on how good your DM is of course. I have the luck of being in a RP group with a serious and decent DM [...]

I really didn't question wether i would work in PnP or not. What I wrote was:

The only thing is that maybe a system this complex with far reaching psychological effects might be a tad too hard to use in a CRPG.

 

[JrK]

Redding are teh hard. :D