Darkest dungeon campaign? The stress test!


Homebrew and House Rules


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Greetings everyone as of late I've been playing a game that just left the steam early access the games called darkest dungeon being inspired I decided to start making a campaign out of the game more of less, now the first big hurtle I've come across is that in the game they use a stress system which causes your party to become stress with the effects go from a minor chat dialog to your character having a heart attack, so I want to implement something similar to this with a point system so I'm looking for advice on a few points:
1 what gives stress points
2 how many stress points do those things give
3 at what break points do the stress points start to cause problems for the character (s)
4 what would the stress points cap out at, (aka heart attack status)


I'd start by taking a look at Call of Cthulhu's sanity system.


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Funny, I was just thinking about this a few days ago.

Some potential ideas:

1. Getting knocked unconscious by lethal damage, failing a save against a mind-affecting effect, seeing something particularly awful, losing a party member, when a combat gets particularly hopeless (be wary of this one—you don't want to just pile on bad stuff, so you might consider making inflicting this one group decision rather than a GM decision), another party member's stress getting the better of them.

2 (and 3-4). The exact numbers don't matter, but they should give an amount that works proportionately to the maximum. Say they give 1d4 each (or particularly bad events, like a death, give 2d4 or 3d4). Then you decide when stress gets the better of them. You could base it on their Wisdom and/or Con scores, or perhaps just base it on their Hit Dice. Perhaps make it a flat 1d6 per hit die for everyone, to avoid favoring certain classes. If you want stress to be especially prevalent, make the threshold lower.

3. The question is, how forceful do you want these problems to be? Forcing them to say things like they do in Darkest Dungeons obviously wouldn't work. They could acquire traits and be expected to roleplay them, and when they go into circumstances where those stress points trigger, prompt them about it. Perhaps allow them to reduce stress slightly when they do this, to incentivize them to look for places to trigger their characters in dangerous ways. Do they develop a reckless streak? If they rush into battle unwisely one time, perhaps they become a little bit less stressed out. Or perhaps it simply raises the threshold for a heart attack—their stress stays the same, but they're in less danger of immediately dying.

4. Be very careful with heart attacks. It's a sucky way to lose your PC if you aren't expecting it. I would prefer to go with less lethal measures—have them faint or black out, or perhaps enter the good old "Heroic Blue Screen of Death". If it happens more than once, then bring death into the equation.

Exact numbers aren't important. What's important is the proportions you're shooting for.

Also, this belongs in the House Rules section.


Pirate Rob wrote:
I'd start by taking a look at Call of Cthulhu's sanity system.

I'd actually favor Darkest Dungeon's stress mechanics, as DD seems to be more aware of how complicated mental health actually is and doesn't try to simplify this sort of thing into "going insane". That said, examining how CoC makes a stress-like mechanic work in game balance could be useful.


I really like the adding of con and wisdom to get your total, also I'm thinking of the cap just being going unconscious, also I plan for this to be a low Lvl campaign with a lot of class balancing and adding/removing some spells for example there will probably be a spell to remove stress


But atm I'm only looking for advice on the stress mechanic, so with adding the wisdom and con scores to calculate your stress cap, I'm think of making it so when you hit 50% of your stree you become shaken untill your stress gets reduced


Also banish Paladins cuz they are stupid good for what I'm going for lol


Don't forget that SOMETIMES, the heroes react to too much stress by becoming heroic instead of cracking up. (Nowhere nearly often enough...)

Also remember that some characters should have ways to mitigate or remove stress - anything that gives bravery or morale bonuses might have that as an extra effect, for example.


yea was planing too, also planing on them being able to reduce stress by getting crits or something similar


Perhaps base it on the lowest or average of your mental scores? I suspect that you'll see a lot of characters with high wisdom scores otherwise. If that's something you're okay with though then go for it!


First, decide whether you really love the idea of a campaign where the PCs are fragile (as in, normal, not superheroic) mentally and to an extent physically, or if you just are really into Darkest Dungeon. Trust me, I've been at both places at varying times. If you're not super taken by Darkest Dungeon specifically, just go ahead and yank Call of Cthulhu's systems and adapt them.

If you do specifically want DD's system, I'd recommend keeping it as close to DD as you can.

Triggers: enemy crits, seeing an ally go down, time spent in the dungeon, scary enemy attacks, seeing horrible things, getting bonked by a trap, and so forth.

Point values: anywhere from 1d6 to like, 5d4 depending on awfulness.

Break points: 100 and 200 would be traditional, but I might also introduce a smaller effect at 50 and 150. Something minor, like a DC 10+level will save or act as if confused for one round.

Cap: 200. Just keep it the same unless you have reason to want otherwise.

As a sidebar, I'd say CoC does a better job representing real mental health. First of all, in DD you get afflictions like "abusive" or "hopeless" from becoming too stressed. The cure? Spend a week praying or gambling. It also cures the stress. How do you get the actual insanities like hagiomania or kleptomania? You start with some, and it's a random chance on finishing a dungeon later on. With some good luck, good planning, and the use of several camp skills that decrease stress, you could walk out of a dungeon less stressed than you began it, and still bring a dose of crazy out with you. Also, the cure for any of these insanities is a week in the asylum.

In CoC, spending time in the sanitarium is a much longer term affair, and even modern psychiatric drugs do little to get you out the door in a hurry. CoC investigators aren't Dungeon Bowl players who go crazy and have to spend a week on the bench before going back into the game, they're real people who, when something terrible happens to them, it doesn't just ruin their week, but months or years. They're real people whose real lives get destroyed by merely brushing against the ineffable terror of the Great Old Ones. The Cthulhu Mythos stat also, admittedly imperfectly, stands for the idea that some things you can't fully come back from. That you'll never be as strong as you were, or as someone who hasn't been through what you have. In DD, a week in the sanitarium and a week of drinking is enough to fix any dungeon's worth of issues.


It's nothing like Darkest Dungeon's, but Unknown Armies has a really good sanity system, too. (To sum up: PCs can take different types of mental trauma, which are tracked separately. Either they get Failed notches, which means they're hypersensitive to that kind of trauma, or Hardened, which makes them ignore weaker traumas of that type. The bad news is that too many Hardened notches make you lose connection to your own emotions, which penalizes you in-game.)


That's great advice jaunt, but I don't want it to be as punishing as it can be in coc

So what I'm thinking is a setting the cap at 20 points
1 point for most minor things: taking damage, failing a skill check, walking into creepy room etc...

1d4 +1 points for more advanced things: seeing an ally go down, seeing a particularly creepy monster, etc...

1d6+2 for the worst of the worst


Have you thought about ways to allow stress relief?


I really like that idea that you can harden yourself but lose your self hmm I'll have to take a look at that unknown armies thing


Well a night at the tavern/church will relieve some stress I'm thinking of making a 1-2 Lvl spell that'll remove 1d4 stress btw this campaign I'm planing is gonna go from 1 to 5 so I'm gonna be making a lot of changes to classes especially casters


Is going to be an extremely slow exp progression so expect a Lvl 1 character to hit Lvl 2 after several dungeons (3 minimum I think)


It might be interesting if hardening yourself protected you short-term but had worse effects long-term, like making you more vulnerable to "heart attacks" or leading to more severe stress points over time. It therefore becomes a very difficult choice: Do you go into your "shell", and have a better chance of escaping the dungeon in one piece, or do you stay vulnerable but healthier?


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This is probably entirely unhelpful to you, but I feel like it's obligatory that I suggest you take a look at the RPG Torchbearer, since Darkest Dungeon is basically that.

If that piques your interest, have a look at this recent series, that was hosted on the Roll20 Twitch channel.

Hope you find what you're looking for.

-Nearyn


3.5 Heroes of Horror had a Taint system for both mental and physical exposition to supernatural tain. The mental side was very similar to how DD handles stress.


So what I'm thinking is at 10 stress you become shaken until you are reduced below 10 but you can become hardened doing so will remove the shakened and cause you to not gain stress from anything unless it gives more then 1 stress, but after you rest you loss the hardened and you max stress points will be reduced by 2, now I m also thinking fr when you hit max stress you make a series of fort saves that determin what happens so like 3 saves pass all 3 you are staggered unless your stress is reduced, pass 2 you are frightened and must flee, pass only 1 you are unconscious, pass all 3 (these saves won't be the hardest thing in the world) death instant heart attack or automatically at -1 hp unconscious and bleeding out


Since Horror Adventures just came out, this seems like a good time for a bump.

Here's a summary of the Stress mechanic in Darkest Dungeons.

Quote:
The stress bar is a gauge from 0 to 200, with a threshold at 100 stress points: once this level of stress is reached, the hero will gain an affliction, with a chance of becoming virtuous. Afflicted heroes will often disobey the player's commands and will hinder the mission by inflicting additional stress damage on themselves and the party, potentially dragging their comrades along in their path to madness. Upon reaching 200 stress, a character will suffer from a heart attack, and will either enter Death's Door or die on the spot.

Instead of 0 to 200, the "Stress Bar" could use a similar system to Horror Adventures—a combination of ability scores and/or Base Attack Bonus. Damage to the Stress Bar would therefore be acquired just like it is in HA (by being exposed to horrific or stressful events), and the Threshold in Horror Adventurers could be handed as normal.

Honestly, a lot of it could be kept the same. The main change would be the consequences of going past your Threshold. Instead of real-life mental illnesses like Schizophrenia, PCs could take on afflictions like Hopelessness, or perhaps one of the many Quirks Darkest Dungeons presents.

I actually feel like these two systems can be really easily merged together. And all without mangling the definition of Dissociative Identity Disorder!

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