Here is Miasma of Fear 2.0, taking all of the advice from my previous post (https://plus.google.com/101824580455031797035/posts/PWUe59Cr5Tv) into account.
Miasma of Fear
The forest’s dark magic causes fear to seep into your very being. Even those who are normally immune to such feelings recognize a growing sense of dread.
When you enter The Dark Forest or have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep there, hold Courage equal to your WIS. Whenever you narrate an action and roll 6-, in addition to whatever the GM says, lose 1 Courage.
While you’re in The Dark Forest, before rolling for an action you narrated you must Defy Danger with Courage.
On 10+ Your companions are heartened by your steadfastness and they each gain 1 Courage. You may roll for the action you narrated as normal.
On 7-9 You’re rattled but are otherwise fine. You may roll for the action you narrated as normal.
On 6- Your fear has gotten the better of you. Narrate how you flinch or hesitate, causing your action to fail. Do not roll for the action.
Note: Courage is a resource. You may use it up with the terrifying tag, or let a player add to it when healed, or in the presence of a courageous or pure act.You’ll also notice that rolling 6- when you Defy Danger with Courage does not decrease your Courage, because your are not narrating the Defy Danger, it’s compulsory.
Yochai Gal, Colin Kierans, Jeremy Strandberg, David Perry
I’m actually still not satisfied with this. I don’t like the thought of failing the roll on the first attempt. MAYBE it doesn’t even need to be mechanical and can be purely fictional. “The miasma causes fear and every time you fail a roll you have to narrate how your fear caused that”… IDK
Still needs more work LOL.
I like the idea. I feel like rolling twice is asking for trouble, though.
Perhaps the miasma causes a -1 ongoing and you can spend 1 courage to overcome it for an action, if you narrate it right.
I think it’s getting somewhere interesting, although there’s a problem with your specific implementation.
Edit: Oh, never mind, ignore the below – I just re-read your post and Courage equals WIS, not Wisdom. Derp 🙂
Everyone will start with at least 8 Courage, because a 1st level character’s lowest stat is 8. That means that every time they “Defy Danger with Courage”, even rolling snake-eyes still gets a 10+, giving everyone else in the party more Courage, pushing them all even further above 8. Unless they make a lot of 6- rolls or you make a lot of GM moves taking away courage, they’ll probably be gaining more Courage than they’re losing, which I don’t believe is the feeling you’re going for.
My feeling is that the courage check should probably happen only in certain circumstances, such as “when you need to act decisively”. It thus wouldn’t come up on every roll, so you might be able to get your “slow burn” effect even if Courage started at WIS rather than Wisdom (because they’re not rolling it as often), which avoids rolling with +(very big number). Also, not needing to check Courage on every action would stop it becoming a chore.
Another way to do it would be to never actually roll +Courage, but instead use it as a threshold in the move trigger: “When you need to act decisively and your Courage is less than (whatever), describe how you try to overcome your fear and Defy Danger against the Miasma of Fear”. That way, a high Courage means you don’t even need to roll, but when it drops below the threshold people have to start rolling DD (and they can use whatever stat they can justify, depending on what they describe).
Now there’s something I hadn’t thought of Aaron Griffin! The Miasma is constant but you can spend Courage to overcome its effect.
I can get rid of the “lose courage when you roll” bit, but still keep it as a resource, meaning you can increase or decrease it during play. That eliminates the extra roll entirely but still adds to the fiction. It would be much easier to port into another setting as well: Fear is “you start with X Courage and -1 ongoing. You can spend 1 Courage during an action and narrate how that negates the minus 1”
I’m going to work on this again but I won’t post it tonight. I don’t want to be spammy and I have been posting a lot here lately. Thanks Aaron!!
Robert Rendell hey I just saw your comment (sorry, I wasn’t ignoring you LOL).
I am reworking this again and I really like what Aaron added to the conversation. I think it cleans up a LOT of the problems I was having with it (and others too).
Miasma of Fear 3.1
3.0The forest’s dark magic causes fear to seep into your very being. Even those who are normally immune to such feelings recognize a
growingstrong sense of dread.When you enter The Dark Forest or have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep there, hold Courage equal to your WIS. While you’re in the Dark Forest you have -1 ongoing to all rolls.You may spend 1 Courage during an action to narrate how you courageously overcome the -1.
Note: Courage is a resource. You may use it up with the terrifying tag, or let a player add to it when healed, or in the presence of a courageous or pure act.
As a side note, while I don’t plan to do this, something occurred to me that I hadn’t considered when the idea of “spending Courage” came up. Issue 3 is inspired by Harry Potter, and Courage is a Gryffindor trait. Something I may work on in the future is similar moves based on Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw traits.
Okay, so here’s a thought to move this in a totally different direction.
What if Courage isn’t a thing you roll at all, but rather a counter (sort of like HP). Initially, you set Courage equal to Wisdom (not WIS) or maybe something like Level + WIS or even Level +WIS/CHA/CON (your choice). Whatever… figure out a starting point.
Any time you roll a miss, you lose 1d4 Courage. Any time you roll a 7-9, lose 1 Courage. Roll a 12+, you and everyone who sees you do it gets +1 Courage.
Then…
When your Courage is less than X, the GM gets access to the following moves:
* Make things look worse than they are
* Present a false threat
* Overwhelm them with fear
When your Courage is less than Y, you must Defy Danger in order to remain calm, think clearly, or do anything other than hide or flee (the danger being your own panic).
If I was going to do this, I’d give everyone little name-tent things with a color-coded counter across the top to represent their Courage, (yellow for X and below, red for Y and below) and a paperclip or something to indicate their current Courage.
Jeremy Strandberg my only qualm with that is the GM facing moves don’t really have oomph from a player perspective. It doesn’t feel like something a player would care a lot about.
I had thought about altering version 2.0 to be “When courage reaches X start defying danger before each roll”…, but I still didn’t like the extra roll (in the 1.0 OR the 2.0 version), and those things are really just additional hard moves, or maybe the authority to do hard moves at times other than on a 6-.
I like Aaron’s idea of -1 ongoing and spending Courage to overcome it, because it feels appropriate (although it does cause it act more like a Fate Aspect, which I don’t have a problem with). My initial pass was to make it like a slow burn where fear grows over time and only matters late game, but I really like the fact that it’s ever present and if you don’t have enough Courage (Fate Points lol) you can’t overcome the fear (Invoke your Courage).
Miasma of Fear 3.2
The forest’s dark magic causes fear to seep into your very being. Even those who are normally immune to such feelings recognize a strong sense of dread.
When you enter The Dark Forest or have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep there, hold 3 Courage. While you’re in the Dark Forest you have -1 ongoing to all rolls.You may spend 1 Courage during an action to narrate how you courageously overcome the -1.
For consideration, although I’m not 100% sure about going this route. I like it because the Fear tag is more modular
Miasma of Fear 3.2.1
The forest’s dark magic causes fear to seep into your very being. Even those who are normally immune to such feelings recognize a strong sense of dread.
NEW TAG: Fear
Fear is a distressing emotion provoked by impending danger or evil, real or imagined, that causes -1 ongoing to all rolls.
The Dark Forest causes Fear in anyone present.
When you enter The Dark Forest or have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep there, hold 3 Courage.
When you show courage when taking action despite your fear, spend 1 Courage to ignore Fear on your narrated action.
I like it because it forces you to “be courageous” before you roll, so that you can’t say “Whoops, missed it by 1. I want to spend a Courage to be courageous and change it to a 7”. If you rolled a 12 anyway and “wasted” a Courage, well, you still role played courage LOL, and your GM may be more apt to award you more Courage later because of it.
Thoughts? Again, NOT sure I want to go this route.
Perhaps you could get a mix of version 3.2.1 and version 2… make it that if you show courage (by spending Courage) and get a 10+, you can give more courage to those around you. Maybe not everyone gets +1 Courage though; perhaps you can choose one of your companions who feels inspired and gains 1 Courage.
That way, even if you rolled well and “wasted” the Courage, it might still give a benefit to someone else.
(You could also flip it around – if you spend Courage and roll 6-, in addition to your own consequences your show of courage is demonstrated to be foolish and someone else in the group needs to Defy the Danger of their fear. Not sure if that’s getting too complex though.)
Robert Rendell I like that!
3.2.2
…spend 1 Courage to ignore Fear on your narrated action, and roll for your move.
On 10+, in addition to the normal outcome, your companions are heartened by your steadfastness and they each gain 1 Courage.