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"Psychological weight" is something I usually leave up to the player. Different things effect people differently after all and it's not really my place as a GM to tell a player how their character deals with stuff.
Sometimes those issues get played up or emphasized and sometimes they don't really come into play at all.
Either way I don't really think it's really within the GM's purview, at least in terms of player-facing issues.
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Yeah, things like trauma and PTSD and mental illness don't generally work as game mechanics - it's been tried many times and has never really worked out.
It generally involves taking away player agency and forcing them to roleplay stuff they might not want to roleplay or have as a theme for their character.
It is better to just leave it up to them. You can put them through the ringer by subjecting them to difficult encounters and various bad stuff happening around them, but how much it affects their character emotionally should be up to the player. If the player wants to roleplay it, they generally will without having it imposed on them.
I've played systems with mechanics for these things (such as Unhallowed Metropolis) and it wasn't fun to play those characters.
You can pretty easily create your war as hell theme just by how you represent NPCs and the environment and encounters and etc.
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Yeah, it's a hard road to trod unless perhaps indulging in dramatic improv, and all at the table are on board. It's not a norm for any but the grimmest fantasy novels, and the only RPGs I know that go there are explicitly horror (i.e. Ravenloft or Deadlands) w/ mechanics to "help". PF2 doesn't grant such warnings or guardrails.
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Example in play
I ran a Worldwound PFS1 scenario where a veteran soldier guides the party through the Worldwound's horrors. He's friendly enough, yet jaded and the unfolding scenes each disturb him further. The GM-facing material makes it clear he's struggling w/ PTSD (even as it avoids that phrasing) and the PCs' interactions with him prove pivotal in determining the finale.
But who's ready for plopping a traumatized hero into one's lap at a con playing a fantasy game?? "Let's rescue innocents from some demons. Yay us!" becomes "Ah, hell (or abyss in this case) our guy's gonna snap because he's seen some crap we never want to."
I ran a large table and maybe three (out of 6 or 7) were ready to adjust to that trauma/drama. There was one older player (Mr. A) that I'd met just prior and we'd clicked. He knew one of my regulars (Mr. B) so they sat together thankfully. Mr B was the first to suss out the situation and began pushing the NPC (in support, like one might do to an honor-bound warrior in fiction, not sure it's best in reality!). Mr. A hadn't caught on so whispered to Mr. B to lay off because he was obviously causing me (the GM, not the NPC) emotional harm. I'd thought he was speaking in character so as the NPC confronted him about his whispering! Tears began streaming down my face as "I" (as NPC) felt them excluding me, talking down to me. Oh boy was that awkward when Mr. A startled and began seriously trying to juggle how to handle this crazed GM. Which is to say thank goodness Mr. B had sat at that table since none of the other players had much (if any) experience with me as a GM; he clarified that all "my" emotional turmoil was the NPC veteran's. Him breaking character alerted me to the misinterpretation.
I burst out laughing, partly to break character, yet also to relieve tension (including mine, since that's some dark headspace to RP). I went around the table to reassure and check in with all the players individually. His face beaming, Mr. A kept shaking his head. After that, he and another player helped Mr. B give succor to the NPC, and quite smoothly at that, leading to the more heroic (albeit tragic) ending.
That was certainly one of those times I'd wished I owned one of those double-billed ballcaps where one side says "GM" and the other says "NPC" so I could spin it as an indicator. And it dawned on me afterward how risky running such a scenario had been with unknown players, perhaps with PTSD themselves.
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So yeah, definitely check in with your players, lay some parameters if you do go into "PCs get psychologically-scarred" territory, maybe even add some safewords, pause to shake it off with breaks. And be ready to back out if necessary, maybe even reset the campaign or at least its tones. I'd be surprised if a whole table was up for more than a one-shot, at least to test out that style. Or talk so abstractedly and in the third-person that it fails to immerse y'all?
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Keep in mind, "good role-playing moments" aren't the goal. The goal is folks enjoying themselves, and good role-playing moments are often a way to achieve that. I bring it up because I've seen a friend burned by getting pushed to continue a good role-playing moment that was painful to them to play out.
This is the kind of thing that needs both GM and player buy-in. When I join a game, I'm not by default expecting an edgy game where the psychological ramifications of polymorphs are considered. That's normally something I'd choose whether or not I want to bake into my character. It's not really a "part" of D&D/Pathfinder, otherwise we would have more druids and wizards NPCs written in a way that shows that. Retired adventurers are usually settled into positions in government, or running taverns/shops.
Now, it seems like it's something you as the GM are interested in running. First of all, make sure your players are also interested and on board. Second of all, consider if you want to narrow the focus. Trying to apply the "gritty reboot" filter to everything can end up a bit of a mess. Do you want to focus on the ramifications of killing, how magic affects people, or humanoidanity's lower place on the food chain? Thirdly, figure out what's needed to sell that. If killing is supposed to have weight, then you probably need to reduce the amount of killing so that it does have weight. If certain types of magic tend to have psychological consequences to their use, then NPCs with magic should reflect that, as should other NPC attitudes regarding them. If the threat of monsters is taken seriously, towns might need to be structured differently, and have evacuation routes or emergency signals at the ready.
And keep in mind, darker isn't necessarily more realistic. For plenty of people, being able to shapeshift like a druid would reduce identity issues, not increase them. If shapeshifting does tend to lead to identity issues, you would expect druidic training to have a pretty strong focus on tools to process that. Maybe that's one of the reasons why a high wisdom score is important to druidic magic. More generally, high mental scores are important to all casters. (Wisdom can accept change in a healthy manner, intelligence can process it rationally, and charisma simply has a strong enough identity that something like changing forms doesn't threaten its stability.)
The grittier games I've played in tend to involve less killing and fighting, more forming relationships with NPCs, and more breaks to interact with the world outside the lens of combat rules. If the world has weight to it, then the consequences start to matter. And I don't mean just "NPC you cared about gets killed off".
I don't think I've ever heard a player (over many decades, hundreds of players) express they want to play a vulnerable PC. It's often the opposite though, with me having to scale down their expectation, i.e. Superman's too powerful for standard superhero RPG builds.
Speaking of which, the Hero System (and some other RPGs) have PC flaws intrinsic to the RPG. And RPG (or novel writing) character-development advice often includes writing down a flaw or three for one's PC. 3.X had some variants where you could buy feats w/ flaws, yet DnD/PF at its heart is about power accumulation so...maybe change that?
What if combat gave zero reward other than how it helps progress the story? This spark could take the game in several directions, yet ultimately I feel you wouldn't be playing Pathfinder as advertised. That's okay, but as stressed by many, should be discussed with all your players who likely play for escapism. If the players are self-inflicting these setbacks, I feel that lessens the need for external conflict (and the emotional labor of players dealing w/ both will naturally lead them to dropping any ruse re: flaws). I'm not sure how I'd go about encouraging such play, since overt rewards backfire (as many educators know!) when it comes to desired behaviors.
Much like PF2 combat could be considered replaceable for combat resolution if one invents a swifter system for mundane moments, you might have to frame Pathfinder itself as secondary to the narrative of these struggling protagonists. So rather than saying "We're playing Pathfinder, yay!" it's "We'll be roleplaying gritty heroes whose very being will be shaken by their experiences. Oh, and Pathfinder will be the mechanical framework, but expect variation as we delve into physical and emotional consequences." I'm not even sure rolling itself works well with such a direction! Deadlands would let players slide on some fear effects if the the player RPed it well enough already, though then we're again getting into the self-inflicted territory that's hard to RP when faced with existential threats to the PCs who need their full faculties.
Anyway, I guess in brief just make sure to advertise what you're selling, to check they're wanting to buy in (without pressure or reward), and to balance obstacles around these extra obstacles.
Pathosfinder? :-)
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Consequences in general seem hard to get right in tabletop role-playing. You don't want to be seem as punishing players but if the world is going to feel alive then actions need consequences.
But I kind of feel there has to be some way to agnowledge the omnipresent horror of most d&d games otherwise it cheapens those dark themes and tropes.
There has to be some way to have the nastiness of the world to effect the pcs besides death or sanity checks. But I am not sure how to achieve that. But then I am not sure how to encourage players to show vulnerability for their characters but I really feel when they do you get some of the best role-playing moments.
Have something dire happen to a NPC the PC cares about ?
I think it would be pretty wonky of a game if HP is a abstract mechanic, and mental damage exists, for healing not to default to be able to heal both physical and emotional injury. In PF2, extenuating physical damage beyond conditions and HP is crossing a line in player autonomy. Doing so with mental or emotional damage feels the same to me.
PF2 is not a gritty, real life game simulator and treating psychological torment as it’s own unique thing has a strong probability of blowing up in a GMs face. It is probably better to use a different system for such fantasies (like CoC), or at least discuss these issues at great length in a session 0 and make sure everyone is on board.
Otherwise, PF2 is set up well to just let this be regular damage with the mental trait with “magic” as effective a means of dealing with it as anything else.
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I would love to see Corruption as a system, and I really loved it in PF1E.
For example, if a player got killed by an Aboleth, I'd give them an Aboleth Corruption if they were resurrected, and the corruption would progress every time you were resurrected.
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This is a somewhat ambiguous OP, but I'll take a stab at the general direction it seems to be aimed towards.
So, Pathfinder is just never going to be the ideal system for horror, drama, mystery or, really, anything except action.
I'm not saying you can't tell alternative narratives with it, and it can be a fascinating contrast to put a Pathfinder character into a mystery and watch them navigate it the way a Pathfinder PC is meant to navigate problems, but violence will always be what the game engine is designed for.
With regards to "lasting consequences", it's good to remember that death isn't really the best stake to lean on a lot of the time. Loss hits harder, in my opinion. Failing at objectives, making the problem worse, losing access to friends or allies--that can be a much more effective consequence than a PC or NPC death. The most gutting moment in LOTR isn't Boromir's death, it's Frodo's mistake at Weathertop, and the way that wound haunts him all the way back home.
The journey can also be more compelling than the destination--sometimes the stakes aren't, "Will we succeed?", they're "How hard will it be to succeed?" What will the PCs have to go through? We know Luke will be successfully trained by Yoda, we know he won't die in the cave, but it still hurts to see the mistakes he makes in the cave and see the pain in his eyes.
It doesn't have to last to hurt, and choosing what to make a permanent consequence is best left to the player, in my opinion.
Those effects are fine to have in a game where that's the expectation, but D20 fantasy games, in general, do a poor job at enabling them. If you want that kind of game, either you're going to want to steal large parts of games that already do this and mash them into PF2 with a hammer or you're just going to play those games. Strictly balanced power fantasy-style games don't tend to mesh well with the kinds of freeform play required to sell horror.
Perpdepog, that's reminiscent of Deadlands. Flaws (which had a different name I forget) first buy you points to build your PC (up to a maximum) plus you can have some inflicted upon you. Or you can choose to gain more even though they don't have an immediate benefit. These don't go away at will, only going away if you buy them off like any other flaw.
Why other than for RPing would one do that? Because one of the main ways to earn Bounty (which resembles hit points, Hero Points, & XP) is to hamper yourself in play and then only if it's tied to a flaw. Essentially the setback pays for itself so you kinda break even, though that's very much subject to the Marshal/GM.
I could see porting over M&M's or Deadlands' subsystems into PF2. Or Ravenloft's or CofC's. It shouldn't take much tuning to suit one's horror goals. I freely mixed and matched Ravenloft, Hero, & Deadlands horror material in one campaign. There's that much synchronicity beneath the numbers.
So if a PC lost a round, or even fled for a round, that might earn them X amount toward Y.
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Separately, a high degree of randomness also can lend itself to horror, undermining the PCs' certainty (and thus the players'). Sure, healing USUALLY works, but maybe every so often something goes wrong. (There'd be various ways to implement that depending on desire, with magic items likely the most variable.)
I think the "nearly always crit on 20" does well to keep minions dangerous in this regard.
Another way to introduce horror would be to remove level proficiency, flattening out the curve so minions remain threats throughout. If sadistic, bosses could keep their bonus for being above the PCs' level so bosses too remained the same level of threat as before.
So essentially all creatures up to the PCs' level would subtract their own level from their equations while those above the PCs' level would only subtract the PCs' level. (And of course you'd have to adjust obstacles' DCs to match.)
LOL, the Marshal for a Deadlands game that ended nearly 3 years ago just contacted me for some old stats. Talk about synchronicity.
Are you here in this thread reminiscing, T.?
PC sheet brought back some old memories, including how easy it was to die or lose limbs. Deadlands used Wounds, so I find it interesting that PF2 uses Wounded. One could mesh the two w/ a bit of patchwork if wanting to play extra rough PF2. There's the potential of losing a limb as well as getting ongoing penalties w/ that slow spiral toward death being one face of horror. Gives the spell Regeneration some purpose. ;-)
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A lot of Pathfinder AP's fall kind of into the horror genre already or at least into the resident evil 4 style campy guns blazing horror.
Pathfinder sometimes has horror themes/aesthetics, but because Pathfinder and D&D are about being powerful, they do a poor job of actually being scary. Horror is about feelings of powerlessness and fear.
For a good look at the difference here - look at the video games based on Aliens and the one video game based on Alien.
Alien Isolation does horror well because you are just a mechanic and a regular frail human - you can't kill the alien, your handgun barely even bothers it, and even other humans are incredibly scary because of the harm they can deal you. You spend the entire game in constant terror of every ceiling vent and every time you use your handgun against other humans you are in dread of attracting the alien.
Contrast this to Alien vs Predator or Aliens: Colonial Marines, where occasionally things are a bit creepy and you get startled by jump scares, but at the end of the day you are a marine who mows down hundreds of aliens.
This isn't too say that you shouldn't try to do horror in Pathfinder, just that actually achieving it is going to be very difficult and rare in a system where characters are so incredibly powerful. The best you can usually hope for is a horror themed game (akin to Alien: Colonial Marines or Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil) rather than a "true" horror (like Alien Isolation or Amnesia or that one recent Resident Evil game that was actually scary because it bore no resemblance to other Resident Evil games)
A lot of Pathfinder AP's fall kind of into the horror genre already or at least into the resident evil 4 style campy guns blazing horror.Pathfinder sometimes has horror themes/aesthetics, but because Pathfinder and D&D are about being powerful, they do a poor job of actually being scary. Horror is about feelings of powerlessness and fear.
For a good look at the difference here - look at the video games based on Aliens and the one video game based on Alien.
Alien Isolation does horror well because you are just a mechanic and a regular frail human - you can't kill the alien, your handgun barely even bothers it, and even other humans are incredibly scary because of the harm they can deal you. You spend the entire game in constant terror of every ceiling vent and every time you use your handgun against other humans you are in dread of attracting the alien.
Contrast this to Alien vs Predator or Aliens: Colonial Marines, where occasionally things are a bit creepy and you get startled by jump scares, but at the end of the day you are a marine who mows down hundreds of aliens.
This isn't too say that you shouldn't try to do horror in Pathfinder, just that actually achieving it is going to be very difficult and rare in a system where characters are so incredibly powerful. The best you can usually hope for is a horror themed game (akin to Alien: Colonial Marines or Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil) rather than a "true" horror (like Alien Isolation or Amnesia or that one recent Resident Evil game that was actually scary because it bore no resemblance to other Resident Evil games)
I'd say having the tools to effectively fight back can still be scary if there's an aspect of resource management and atmosphere is handled correctly. The original dead space still manages to scare me. Walking down that dead end hallway and having that scripted shadow pass by from the adjoining corridor with an audio sting is a memory that still makes me pucker.
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True, but I think it's undeniable that Alien was scarier than Aliens, right? A lot of horror subgenres just flat-out don't play nice with a hypercompetent team of badasses.
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Lasting consequences in Pathfinder are impossible as most everything can be resolved using magic for the right price. The GM has to buckle down a lot from standard expectations to make it work.
I mean, OP's mostly talking about mental effects and outcomes, which both aren't really covered by magic per se and, again, shouldn't really be something the GM is trying to make work on their own to begin with.
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I leave it up to the players to decide how they want their character to react or portray that element.
PF and similar types of games are action fantasy stories. They aren't gritty, realistic war dramas. If someone wants to do that, nothing is stopping them from role-playing that. But the base rule set is built to mirror action fantasy stories. I run the game in that fashion with some expectation that the PCs act within the moral framework of an action fantasy hero.
I'm not sure how fun it would be to play any sort of gritty, realistic war PTSD scenario for very long. People with PTSD and real war injuries suffer pretty badly. I know more than a few.
Since these games are escapism, not there so you can experience some false reality that doesn't come close to mirroring these things for real, I don't see the point in purusing.
If you want to hear about real PTSD or see war injuries, go to a Vet's hospital or read some books. It's unlikely you will ever be able to simulate anything within a game that they feel or experience. I'm not sure why you would want to.
This is action fantasy in an often simple black and white scenario of good versus evil. Play it as such, have fun doing so, and don't look to play in a way to activate someone's real war trauma.
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True, but I think it's undeniable that Alien was scarier than Aliens, right? A lot of horror subgenres just flat-out don't play nice with a hypercompetent team of badasses.
Yea, aliens was definitely more of an action movie.
Lasting consequences in Pathfinder are impossible as most everything can be resolved using magic for the right price. The GM has to buckle down a lot from standard expectations to make it work.I mean, OP's mostly talking about mental effects and outcomes, which both aren't really covered by magic per se and, again, shouldn't really be something the GM is trying to make work on their own to begin with.
Except that PF2 went pretty far into labeling a lot of the scary monster abilities that effect the mind as applying conditions and doing mental damage. I think this was a really strong choice for the base line game. Physical injury and mental injury both mostly interact with HP and healing is not just tied to physical harm.
I am not saying that you as a GM cannot implement some other kind of system, but it is a good idea to understand the base line idea of damage being damage whether it has a physical source or a mental source.
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I think it would be pretty wonky of a game if HP is a abstract mechanic, and mental damage exists, for healing not to default to be able to heal both physical and emotional injury. In PF2, extenuating physical damage beyond conditions and HP is crossing a line in player autonomy. Doing so with mental or emotional damage feels the same to me.
PF2 is not a gritty, real life game simulator and treating psychological torment as it’s own unique thing has a strong probability of blowing up in a GMs face. It is probably better to use a different system for such fantasies (like CoC), or at least discuss these issues at great length in a session 0 and make sure everyone is on board.
Otherwise, PF2 is set up well to just let this be regular damage with the mental trait with “magic” as effective a means of dealing with it as anything else.
With every new post you make, you further convince me that you are the most level-headed roleplayer I never met.
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Both "I have become a monster forever shunned by normal people" and "my left arm is a tentacle- NEAT" are valid modes for a game like this. It's important to set expectations for the game as a group since mixing the two gets weird.
Both "I have become a monster forever shunned by normal people" and "my left arm is a tentacle- NEAT" are valid modes for a game like this. It's important to set expectations for the game as a group since mixing the two gets weird.
Much like the flavor of a comic book can fluctuate greatly depending on the current writer.
This week, Spidey's fighting a crook made of sand! Hijinx ensue at the beach w/ Peter and his pals!Next week, we see Sandman's origin story where his abusive father leads him into a life of crime and learn how dissolving into sand warped his mind, alienated him from his child, and sapped him of all ability to experience taste, smell, or touch.*
There's a big gap between classic Spidey w/ his Spidermobile, moving up to Gwen Stacy's shocking fate, Kraven's Last Hunt, and all that business involving vengeance on the Kingpin re: Aunt May. (This shift being one reason for Miles Morales who could capture some of that earlier flavor.)
Given how little blood PF artwork has, one can see where it falls on the spectrum, and where players' expectations begin.
*Note that I don't know to what extent Flint was abused (though many villains have been), or whether his abilities have dulled his senses. Flint has gone to a pub for drinks, alongside the Thing, IMO two of the least likely possible to feel alcohol's effects.
With every new post you make, you further convince me that you are the most level-headed roleplayer I never met.I think it would be pretty wonky of a game if HP is a abstract mechanic, and mental damage exists, for healing not to default to be able to heal both physical and emotional injury. In PF2, extenuating physical damage beyond conditions and HP is crossing a line in player autonomy. Doing so with mental or emotional damage feels the same to me.
PF2 is not a gritty, real life game simulator and treating psychological torment as it’s own unique thing has a strong probability of blowing up in a GMs face. It is probably better to use a different system for such fantasies (like CoC), or at least discuss these issues at great length in a session 0 and make sure everyone is on board.
Otherwise, PF2 is set up well to just let this be regular damage with the mental trait with “magic” as effective a means of dealing with it as anything else.
Aww, thanks!
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Golarion has plenty of room for horror, but I'm not sure that Pathfinder - either edition - is the game to do it with. There's so many good indie horror games (Mothership and Bluebeard's Bride are my standout favorites) that it feels silly to try and contort the game about monster-slayers who ascend in power to demigod-like levels into the genre.
Now, horror-y fantasy adventure? It can do that in spades, and I'm always keen to see more.
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The very first thing about running a horror game is agreeing with your players that you want to do a horror game. Otherwise, at best it's just going to fizzle and at worst someone's going to get deeply unhappy.
Now, if you're at that point, I think there are plenty of ways to tighten the screws a bit;
- Step away from the normal assumption that every monster can be fought and defeated with straightforward combat. Sure, you can fight a wolf in the woods, but the slasher serial killer? You might knock them down, but as soon as you turn your back the corpse vanished. And the killings don't stop. Defeating the villain isn't about reducing them to 0HP, it's about figuring out who they really REALLY are, and what kind of special thing is needed to put them to rest somehow.
- Put stress on healing mechanisms. It takes effort to secure your area enough that you can get a 10m rest. You could eventually counteract those nasty conditions but it'll take a few days to prepare the spells and the monster isn't giving you that time. Your potions are starting to run out. A key thing here is to distinguish attrition during the adventure, from attrition during the campaign. You don't want to be on an ever descending line and after the second adventure the PCs just can't go on anymore. Eventually a current storyline gets resolved and people can recover, mostly.
- Talk about how just because you mechanically recovered and got all your HP back, that doesn't mean the characters can't have any scars. Ask the players if they got any scars. Important here is to not infringe on their sense of owning their characters. Don't tell them that their characters got this or that scar. When players feel like their characters are out of their hands, they start to just check out. Nobody wants that. But talking over the adventure and asking them what kind of effect it's hard on their characters, that leaves it up to the players to keep owning their characters but to grow them.
- You could consider moving to an automatic bonus progression and/or milestone leveling system, so that beating up random monsters is certainly not the route to getting more powerful. For more story-driven campaigns, I find it good to know that I can't dawdle or circle around to level up before facing a boss; it's the facing the boss that triggers the level up afterwards. (Note that in a sandbox campaign I'd do the opposite: there the party can decide to put off a fight until they're stronger.)
- It can't rain all the time. Unrelenting bad stuff just makes people numb. You need to make people care before you can trigger horror by threatening the things they care about. So you need to invest time in building up NPCs and locations and such before they become a target. Also, don't go around murdering every NPC a player ever mentioned in their background. Really, murdering them is a last resort, threatening them so they can be rescued is much more interesting. And again, don't overdo it. If NPCs only seem to be liabilities, players disinvest. Let the NPC be nice, be useful, come out and help them occasionally and really be helpful, not just a princess that only needs rescuing.