Year: 2019

On the Nature of the Mythos and Sanity

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A fundamental tenet of cosmic horror is that the true nature of reality is incomprehensible to the human mind and that being faced with evidence of this reality damages the psyche. What humans perceive as the real world is only a thin veneer over a much darker truth – and that truth is so alien to our understanding that our human minds cannot even contemplate it without serious risk. This dark reality which is so alien to our perception of existence is the Mythos.

Exposure to the Mythos, even briefly, has a deleterious effect on the human mind. Sometimes we are able to delude ourselves into believing there is a rational explanation for what we have seen and heard, thus insulating ourselves from the horrible truth. At other times a person’s mind may twist and fracture to protect them from really perceiving the nature of reality – those are the lucky ones. Others are far less fortunate, as their very being is transformed to integrate the truth of the Mythos into what was once their understanding of the world around them.

One thing is always true, those that catch even the briefest glimpse of the terrible truth are forever changed.

A character that has faced exposure to the Mythos is fundamentally changed by the experience. Their perception of reality is altered – they literally perceive the world around them differently from those that have not seen what they have seen. They see and hear things which other humans do not; their senses of taste, touch, and smell are no longer the same. They may even begin to experience sensations that do not fit our normal human concepts of the senses. This may start small, bordering on imperceptible, but as a character is repeatedly exposed to greater evidence of the awful truth of the Mythos, this change becomes even more profound. (On the GM/Keeper side of the table, this can be used to provide a player with Clues due to their character being able to perceive things other cannot. Of course, Compels based on seeing or hearing things are also fertile grounds for the Keeper to play around in.)

Of course, different characters may respond to exposure to the Mythos in different ways.

Trail of Cthulhu by Pelgrane Press recognized that there are often two different forms of “insanity” in cosmic horror. The first could be thought of as “stark, raving mad” – yelling, crying, screaming, drooling, catatonic, furious scribbling, fits, (presumably) irrational fears – everything that would cause a casual observer to think “he’s nuts.” On the other hand, there are those that appear outwardly normal, even serene, when they are really anything but. Think of a villain that wants to destroy the world to “protect us from ourselves,” a serial killer who selects victims based on whose voice will make the best addition to the “choir” in his mind, or a woman that believes her spirit must be purified by fire before she can attain godhood.

In Our Terrible Fate, each character’s long-term “mental health” is represented by his or her Sanity Aspect and Sanity Stress Track. Before being exposed to the Mythos or suffering other horrific experiences, their Sanity Stress Track is clear, and their Sanity Aspect describes their overall worldview. That worldview could be as benign as If You Dwell in the Past, You’ll Get Left Behind or as extreme as Forgiveness is Between Them and God; It’s My Job to Arrange the Meeting.

As characters encounter the Mythos and evidence of mankind’s true insignificance in the universe – not to mention other more mundane horrors that can nonetheless cause the mind to reel – they will mark off stress on their Sanity Stress Track. Certain points along the track are marked as Warped, Twisted, and Broken. As a character takes sufficient stress to their Sanity to cross these thresholds, their Sanity Aspect changes to reflect how their worldview has changed in response to all they have seen and done. For example, If You Dwell in the Past, You’ll Get Left Behind can be warped into Those that Dwell in the Past Should Be Left Behind. Later, it may become twisted into Only Those that Look to the Future Are Worth Saving.

When changing Sanity Aspects over time, players should consider how they wish to portray their character’s gradual descent into insanity. Are they fortunate enough to be incapable of grasping the truth of the Mythos, as their mind literally fractures itself, slowly cracking in a desperate attempt to shield itself from the horrible nature of reality? These poor souls may eventually be reduced to gibbering lunatics locked away in an asylum, but at least they retain some of what makes them human.

On the other hand, perhaps they are able to come to grips with mankind’s utterly insignificant place in the cosmos. Rather than protecting itself, their mind adapts and remakes itself to accept the terrible truth of reality. These are those that truly become lost to the Mythos. Though they may appear unchanged, their perceptions are so utterly altered that they no longer have the same concerns or cares as the rest of mankind. Though they may be biologically unchanged, their minds have become so utterly alien that they are, for all intents and purposes, no longer human.

In either case, once a character succumbs to insanity – be that raving madman or shell that was once human – they are no longer a playable character.

(Again, on the GM/Keeper side of things, when describing Consequences it is wise to consider how a character is being portrayed as they struggle to retain some semblance of sanity. That’s not to say that an investigator who has been gradually drifting towards megalomania and delusions of grandeur should never be temporarily reduced to a muttering, quivering lump of flesh with an acute fear of open spaces – feel free to mix things up when it makes for a good story – but a player shouldn’t feel forced down a different path into madness simply because the Keeper kept repeatedly throwing out a particular style of Consequence.)

Investigator Board Mockup

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When I played the Peru Prologue with my family, we used some character sheets I had already developed for OTF. They worked great, but I’ve had a few ideas since then – some purely thematic and some more practical.

One idea was to make a fake passport for each PC – themed based on their nationality – and that when unfolded that passport would be the character sheet. That turned out to be fairly easy to accomplish, and I was pleased with the results.

My kids and I recently played Betrayal Legacy, and I noticed a couple of things. We have no problem writing stuff down at the end of scenarios or sessions, but we don’t like to spend time writing stuff down in the middle of a session – preferring to use cards or counters to quickly note changes to characters. In vanilla Fate, the main stuff that gets written on the character sheet during play are Stress and Consequences. In my implementation, other lasting aspects like Drives might also change frequently. That’s not a lot, but since some of those can get added, erased, or changed quite a bit during play, I figure it would be a good idea to at least look at alternatives.

Recently I came across the Kickstarter for Tainted Grail and found their character boards really cool. Then I started thinking about how I might be able to use something similar to reduce the written record keeping on the character sheet. What I’ve come up with is a board that the character sheet gets inserted into (or under).

Mockup of the Investigator Board with the Character Sheet beneath.

The character’s skills, aspects, ties to other characters, sanity, refresh, and stress boxes all show through the board. This allows the player to see everything they need to during play and even make changes to things that might only change once or twice per session, like sanity or ties. The player can place cubes into slots over stress boxes to mark them, and place cards displaying current consequences in different slots based on the value of the consequence. There’s a place for fate points, and the board indicates where to place cards for stunts and drives to the side of the board.

Styles of Fate

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The Authorship Spectrum

Before I get into what changes I’m making to Fate Core’s rules as written, I think it’s important to look at how I apply those rules to get the style of game I’m going for. The is because I have come to recognize that there are a lot of different styles of gameplay that emerge from Fate’s default rules. I think this is part of the reason that Fate has been so successful – it can accommodate very different game styles without requiring an actual alteration of the rules – you just have to apply the existing rules differently. However, this can also make exposing new players to the game a bit challenging.

There are lot of ways to describe and categorize tabletop roleplaying games, but one key idea that I have found that plays a role in how people approach Fate is the question of authorship. When it comes to authorship, you can think of all games as existing somewhere along a spectrum.

At one end of the spectrum, you have what I think of as the traditional or GM-led style of play, which is characterized by the GM having control over and knowledge of the game world that the players do not. Players only have information which their characters have, and they are only able to influence the game world through the actions of their characters. The GM controls all elements of the game world and possesses knowledge of the game world that is secret until the players uncover it through the actions of their characters. At the most extreme edge of this spectrum you also have GM railroading, where the players only control the moment-to-moment actions of their characters and have little to no say in where the party of PCs goes and what approaches they can take.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have what I tend to describe as a shared authorship style of play. This style is characterized by both the players and the GM being able to control elements of the game world on an equal footing and everyone having access to all information about the game world and the characters that reside within it. There are very few differences between the players and the GM in this style of game, and everyone has to actively distinguish between what they know about the game world and what their characters know.

Default Fate

I’d say that the default rules for Fate fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, though exactly where depends on how you interpret and apply some of the rules in Fate Core. This is most evident in how tables utilize the rules for Game Creation. Some groups start from scratch and create a new game world and setting, create characters and game aspects, create issues and some NPCs, and get straight to playing the game – using only the aspects they’ve created to drive play (more shared authorship). Other groups identify key aspects and issues and create characters during session zero, then take a break so the GM can prep everything else before the next session (more GM-led).

Games that make more use of secret or hidden aspects naturally tend more towards the GM-led end of the spectrum. There is also a lot of flexibility built-in to what players can do with the Create an Advantage action. While this action allows characters to change the circumstances around them to provide some sort of benefit, that still leaves some wiggle room. Some groups allow the CA action to alter those circumstances in ways that go beyond what the characters themselves can directly accomplish – for example, introducing a door to exit to a building or declaring that the ground ahead is a marsh in order to slow a fleeing enemy. This application of the CA action enables players to alter the game world beyond their characters – very shared authorship.

Using aspects and fate points to declare a story detail does not have a lot of defined limitations in the default rules, which provides a lot of potential for your players to influence the game world. Compels can be primarily viewed as a tool of the GM, with players occasionally compelling one another’s PCs if there is conflict within the party, but some groups also allow players to make broader use of compels – including compelling NPCs.

Terrible Fate Default

Since my goal is to play scenarios from Call of Cthulhu and other mythos games, my implementation of Fate will be focused on investigative horror gameplay. This means the game will tend more towards the GM-led end of the spectrum. The GM will have a great deal of information not initially available to the players, and the players will primarily interact with the game world through the actions of their characters. Players will be able to exercise limited narrative authority over the game world, but the limits of that authority will be narrowly defined. The GM will have broad authority over the world – and even some authority over the actions of PCs via compels and similar mechanics – while the players will determine where their PCs go and what they do when they get there. In other words, Our Terrible Fate will probably more closely resemble a traditional tabletop RPG than it will a freeform story game.

Why Fate? – Choosing a System – Part 4

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Why Fate?

Chances are that if you’re reading this (and especially if you’ve read any of my previous posts), you are probably asking at least one of three questions:

  • What’s Fate?
  • I don’t like Fate, why are you using it for a mythos game?
  • I like Fate, but why are you using it for a mythos game?

Again, my overall goal is to be able to use scenarios from existing mythos games like Call of Cthulhu and play with my family.  Understand that Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, and others are in many ways intended to tell stories like those portrayed in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and other mythos authors.  Unlike like many other traditional RPGs, Fate is specifically designed to simulate fiction – books, television, movies.  So if I focus on trying to tell the kinds of stories you see in that fiction – and the kinds of stories told playing these other games – then using Fate to tell stories in the Lovecraft mythos isn’t really all that strange of an idea.

If you’re familiar with Fate, chances are that you’ve read somewhere that it isn’t all the great a system for horror or investigation – which again raises questions about why I would use this system.  While the prevailing attitude towards using Fate for horror has long been that there are better options, there are enough great ideas out there about how to use Fate to run really good horror games that a whole book was released on the subject – The Fate Horror Toolkit.

Update:  It’s also worth noting that another relevant development has arrived on the scene since I wrote the initial draft of this post – it’s even a mythos game!  Fate of Cthulhu is currently on Kickstarter, and it’s coming from Evil Hat, the creators of Fate.  It’s not clear at this point precisely how much investigative horror will play into this game, since it’s billed as “Terminator-style action and adventure” meets the Mythos.  I’m fairly confident that this won’t check all the boxes for what I want to play, so I’m continuing with my efforts, but I’m definitely eager to see what they’ve come up with.  If nothing else it demonstrates clearly that Fate can handle gaming in the mythos, and I’m proud to be a backer of the Kickstarter.

It’s possible that Fate might not work that well for investigative gameplay, and that this ultimately won’t work.  I’m willing to try it any way.  At this point, I actually think that has more to do with how some players approach investigative games than any inherent misalignment between the genre and the system.  The more I explore some of the great ideas on the net about how to build and play investigative scenarios, the more I think that Fate should work just fine.

Narrative First

One idea that’s important to me playing with my family is that we are able to simply go with what makes sense in the story.  I don’t want to have to look up situation-specific rules, and I don’t want players making decisions based solely on stats.  I want to be able to ask what they want to do in the given situation, and be able to easily play out their actions.  I also want a system that rewards planning ahead and considering the consequences of your action, as that’s going to be an important concept in our games.

The Golden Rule of Fate is this:  Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it.  This is often paraphrased as “Fiction First” and has a few implications.  The first is that you should always start with what a character would do in a particular situation.  This should hardly be unusual in a roleplaying game, but in practice with a lot of other games, players get in the habit of taking action based on numbers and what their characters are most likely to succeed at – rather than on how their characters would typically react.  Another consequence of this rule (and its corollary – the Silver Rule) is that what makes logical sense take priority over other rules.  Needless to say this all lines up very well with my desire to focus on what makes logical sense in the story.

Player Choices

Somewhere along the line in the last few years of reading about designing and gamemastering RPGs, I recall reading that the best games involve challenging and interesting choices.  In fact, something I try to consciously assess when I’m considering options for how to apply or tailor a mechanic is to ask if the mechanic forces the player to make an interesting choice.

Fate Core is all about the players making choices.  Deciding whether to concede a conflict early and cut your losses or to press on to achieve your goal despite the toll it will take.  Deciding whether to take your chances on an even-odds roll or expend precious resources to increase your chances of a successful roll.  Spending points to avoid a problematic turn of events or welcoming a new complication in exchange for points you can use later.  All of these are common choices Fate players have to make numerous times in the course of play.

It’s often said that players in Fate can accomplish just about anything if they are willing to pay the price.  A major Fate player and contributor, Rob Hanz, phrased this as “How much do you want this, and what are you willing to give up to get it?” in his well-known collection of musing on Fate, titled the Book of Hanz.  Not only is that very much in line with what I’m going for, it can also make for some excellent stories of dangerous knowledge and tragedy as investigators try to avert disaster in the mythos.

PC Freedom, GM Toolbox

Many games offer a veritable laundry list of options for PCs – how to do X, how to do Y, how to do Z – just about anything a player can think of to try has a rule.  There’s just two problems with that:  First, that’s a lot of rules to remember or look up, so players rarely remember what they have at their disposal.  Second, if there’s not a rule for something, you’re often out of luck.  Fate has a small list of basic actions, but when coupled with the rest of the system they can be leveraged effectively to handle anything the players come up with.

On the other side of the table, the same actions give the GM a comparable array of options.  By default, Fate Core provides GMs with easy ways to present key issues within the game world, simple methods to both quickly generate simple mob-like NPCs and detail more central characters, and plenty of ways to model just about anything the players can imagine.  While Fate Core by default is very setting-agnostic, there are a myriad of mechanics in toolkits available from Evil Hat that provide ways to tailor the system for specific settings and themes.  Throw in more ideas shared by a vibrant community, including those in the Fate Codex e-zine, and there is a massive library of ideas and tools for the GM.

Powerful Flexibility

Part of the reason I believe Fate has been so successful is its flexibility.  The rules as written (often abbreviated as RAW) are powerful enough to handle whatever you throw at them, without being overly complex.  However, a lot of the text can be interpreted in a few different ways, depending on your context and what you’re aiming to get out of the game.  In some games, this openness to differences in interpretation and application could hobble use and acceptance of the system, but this has actually worked to Fate’s advantage.  New players can face some challenges getting comfortable with the system, but that’s usually due to preconceptions from previous RPG experience or issues of interpretation that can easily be addressed when going for a particular style of gameplay in a specific setting.

The other benefit of this flexibility is that there is almost always more than one way to handle any given narrative situation within the system.  This fact enables players and the GM to adopt the approach they find most appealing in light of their preferred play style.  It also makes it easier to stay consistent and keep the variety of different mechanics to a minimum.

Scale is also handled extremely well in Fate, so it can handle interactions between two competing galactic empires as easily as it can between two characters.  The core techniques and mechanics used to represent a character are the same as those used to represent an organization or a location, so you don’t have to learn a whole new approach to scenario prep or play just because characters are affecting things on a larger scale.  The GM can represent a nation-spanning fanatical cult as easily as a single NPC.

Descriptive Aspects

This might seem a bit odd at first, but one element of being a GM that I have long had issues with is describing locations and scenes, especially with investigative games.  I’ve never liked reading scene descriptions in published scenarios, partly because such descriptions usually only exist for certain scenes, and I’m not great at improvising detailed descriptions.  The biggest issue I’ve seen with this in investigative games is that on more than one occasion, I’ve seen players do one of two things:

  1. Completely miss a big hint that was in the description that should have helped point them in the right direction to move the story forward.
  2. Seize upon a mundane detail that was included only for fluff or color, convinced that it is the key to figuring out the mystery.

This plays a big part in how I’m handling clues in the game, but in a more general way I’ve also seen it impact other styles of games.  I don’t like the idea of a GM spending time creating colorful details (which can admittedly aid in immersion), only to have those details ultimately send the players down a rabbit hole and grind the game to a halt.  I also don’t like the idea of a game devoid of atmosphere, where the players feel like they can only make use of the specific details the GM spoon feeds them.

If there is one word that best defines how Fate differs from other system, it’s this: aspects.  At its simplest, an aspect is a short phrase that describes some element of the game world.  Aspects are used to describe important elements of characters, locations, items… everything.  They have mechanical effects on the game, and their importance is determined by how much they are used in play – in other words, it’s up to the players and the GM how much of an impact any particular aspect has on the story.

Aspects provide an advantage when it comes to describing scenes because the system explicitly allows you to make assumptions about a location because of its aspects.  So if a location has an aspect Archaeology Professor’s Artifact-Laden and Disheveled Office, everyone can assume that a lot of things are naturally present in the office – a desk, shelves, lots of books, maps, papers everywhere, journals and notebooks, and plenty of artifacts – and everyone has enough information to have a shared mental image of the scene.  It’s not necessary to detail everything in the office up front.  If it’s logical that something would be present, it is.  And the GM can still provide more detail in response to the PC’s actions.

Hackable

As a final point on why I’m going with Fate as a starting point, as a system it is eminently hackable.  By default, it’s flexibility naturally lends the game to be tailored to your table.  Leveraging the many options and ideas available only expands the ways you can customize the system.  Even more than that, the system has a lot of give to it.  While it is obviously important to understand how changes to one mechanic can affect other parts of the system, Fate is very forgiving.  You can make quite a few changes – even to the point of significantly altering how the game plays from one scene to another – without the system falling apart.

Wrapping Up

This has already taken far longer to finish and post than it should have, but I should mention that there is already a mythos Fate game on the market.  Modiphius released a Fate Core version of Achthung! Cthulhu, which is essentially a pulpy mashup of WWII and the mythos.  Rather than an investigative game involving ordinary people, as is common in mythos games, stories in Acthung! Cthulhu revolve around soldiers and spies in military operations during the war.  It is hyper-focused on that setting, so using it for other types of mythos games would require some adaptation.  It also does not include much in the way of rules – it is meant to be used in conjunction with the Fate Core rulebook.  There are a few rules provided to incorporate horror and mythos elements into the system – and I’m certainly going to look at using them where I can – but it doesn’t offer much in the way of using Fate for investigative gameplay or provide guidance for how to really play Fate in a way that aligns with a mythos theme and setting.