I always found mechanical fear in role-playing games an odd thing, especially because it is often disconnected from actual fear. That emotion the players actually feel and have their characters react accordingly to.

I find (players) and their characters often fear things because they are dangerous, unpredictable, have dire consequences or the GM simply has created an effective spooky atmosphere. They rarely fear something because someone asks them they fail a fear check.

I do not need to ask the players to roll a fear check when some dread dark Jedi appears of which they have heard terrible rumors for some time. The fact alone is enough to make the players scramble and have their faces turn white.

Conversely, when something the players don't actually fear something (because it is not a threat when looking at it from a narrative or game-mechanics) it is really hard to have them act that way.

That is why I find a fear mechanic rather misplaced and ultimately very unsatisfying. The rules sometimes say 'you fear this' while it doesn't make any narrative sense to do so.

If I am a GM, as a consequence, I never have players make fear checks. I find it nonsense. But as a player I have suggested GMs who do use it, to make it an actual choice after failing a fear check: either you give in to the fear, and take the penalty the GM has decided, or you decide to overcome your fear, taking X strain damage (depending on how badly you failed the check) instead. I found this to be a much more interesting use of the mechanic, who gives players more narrative options how to handle mechanical fear.

Actual fear still beats check-induced-fear by a huge margin though.

How do you handle fear checks? And do you find your failed fear checks generate actual fear?

I treat it like any other mechanic and use it. Do you feel unsatisfied when one of your players has an arm blown off by a crit and they don't fall to the floor screaming in pain? If their Strain is near depleted and they aren't sweating and exhausted?

1 minute ago, 2P51 said:

I treat it like any other mechanic and use it. Do you feel unsatisfied when one of your players has an arm blown off by a crit and they don't fall to the floor screaming in pain? If their Strain is near depleted and they aren't sweating and exhausted?

I'm remembering someone in another threat mentioning something about comparisons and apples and oranges....

Obivously, anything that will actually hurt player's is a no-go in a game. But yes, my preference is to have the players be actually deceived when they are being deceived, the players feeling intimidated when they are being coerced, the merchant actually driving a hard bargain when they are negotiating. To me it is much more than just rolling a die and then informing what people should feel. The dice-rolling should only occur when you are at a point that you are at a crossroads, narratively speaking.

Like with fear, I find that is really hard to let players have their characters act as if they are being deceived when the ploy is really transparant but you just gave the NPC a high Deception skill and rolled well. But that is getting off-topic, I asked how you handle fear, and your answer is: "I just roll dice and then explain the players how their characters should feel"?

No, I let them narrate the effect it has on them if they like, or not. The mechanic may impose a cost depending on the dice outcome. The mechanic isn't anymore or less nonsensical than tabulating Strain and Wounds. I don't expect people to have physical/emotional responses to the various scenarios. If they'd like to narrate a reaction that is the intent of the system, but it's not a commandment.

58 minutes ago, Aramur said:

That is why I find a fear mechanic rather misplaced and ultimately very unsatisfying. The rules sometimes say 'you fear this' while it doesn't make any narrative sense to do so.

I find this concern misplaced, maybe you're too hung up on the label of "Fear". It's just a name for a mechanic, but it doesn't mean everybody who fails it is curled in a ball or sweating buckets. They might have only "mild concern"...something worthy of a setback.

I agree that ideally you want a good narrative reason for them to make a Fear check, something where the players go "yeah, that makes sense". This is obvious when Darth Vader shows up, but sometimes it's harder to convey the uncertainty in a situation. If the party crash lands on a jungle planet, and maybe by the rules it's "something they've never done before" or some other adequate criteria. I might describe the scene with creepy critters scuttling away in the undergrowth, the limited vision, the haunting cries of some hunting or hunted animal. If they shrug that off, I might have a mini-encounter, eg: "A lizard-like creature slowly crawls up a dead tree branch. As you descend the ramp to survey the terrain, it c o c k s* its head in your direction -- (roll for Vigilance, say they lose) -- it suddenly screeches, flairs some kind of ruff around it's neck, opens its mouth, and a long sticky tongue slaps against your binocs..." They can kill the thing or not, it doesn't really matter, because it's Fear checks all around. It doesn't mean they are panicking, it's just a representation that they're up against something new and there might be surprises.

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Conversely, when something the players don't actually fear something (because it is not a threat when looking at it from a narrative or game-mechanics) it is really hard to have them act that way.

Meh. I have players who, if it were up to them, would never be surprised, intimidated, or have anything detrimental happen to them ever. Most systems don't even give players a choice when suffering from fear. Every game I played until this one had PCs lose control and do things like "run directly away for the next X rounds". Taking away player agency really sucks, but you can't rely on players to adequately role-play a situation. At least in this game, setback can still be mitigated with anti-setback talents.

*edit see below

I agree with @2P51 here. For starters, many players aren't necessarily going to be scared of a Dark Sider, or a monster, Some get quite excited about facing one. Others try to game the system saying that their character isn't afraid of anything. This is especially true of players of Jedi, who, by their nature are taught to not give in to fear. And, as a player, they seek to play their character as utterly fearless, and "immune to the temptations of fear." the fear mechanic prevents that kind of meta gaming.

Keep in mind the narrative side if it all too.

Say, if the players are caught in a terrible hurricane, they might need to make a fear check to act during it. If a PC fails then get them to explain why. Perhaps as a child they experienced a similar terrible storm.

That way you have added to their back story, and given yourself an opportunity to bring it up again in another game

6 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I agree with @2P51 here. For starters, many players aren't necessarily going to be scared of a Dark Sider, or a monster, Some get quite excited about facing one. Others try to game the system saying that their character isn't afraid of anything. This is especially true of players of Jedi, who, by their nature are taught to not give in to fear. And, as a player, they seek to play their character as utterly fearless, and "immune to the temptations of fear." the fear mechanic prevents that kind of meta gaming.

I would imagine every Player is not afraid of those things, but perhaps the Character would be I don't use any kind of acrophobic reactions in this game cause it seems to have been bred out of people who live in all these crazy vertical places. I also like that the Fear rules are pretty wide open and don't have a lot of realistic but unpopular descriptions that players will complain about.

@Tramp Graphics I agree the F&D Fear mechanic for Force users is very cool .

Now that I think about it, perhaps I adressed the wrong issue. I believe I have issue with a more fundamental aspect of Fear checks: they have the GM dictate to the players how their characters should feel.

In my view the thoughts and feelings of characters are always determined by the player, never by the GM.

How often do you as a GM dictate how a character should feel? I think fear checks break the implicit agreement that players control the emotions of their characters.

If the player choose to have their character to be afraid of darkness, closed spaces, wide spaces, heights etc., it should be there choice.

For a supplementary question: do you allow players to have their characters act afraid even if they made their fear check? Can they choose to be afraid of something even if they dice say they are not?

2 minutes ago, Aramur said:

Now that I think about it, perhaps I adressed the wrong issue. I believe I have issue with a more fundamental aspect of Fear checks: they have the GM dictate to the players how their characters should feel.

In my view the thoughts and feelings of characters are always determined by the player, never by the GM.

How often do you as a GM dictate how a character should feel? I think fear checks break the implicit agreement that players control the emotions of their characters.

If the player choose to have their character to be afraid of darkness, closed spaces, wide spaces, heights etc., it should be there choice.

For a supplementary question: do you allow players to have their characters act afraid even if they made their fear check? Can they choose to be afraid of something even if they dice say they are not?

Yes, but there are situations where the GM has to do this. One of them is in instances where the characters really should be afraid. If left to the player’s device, that character will never be afraid of anything. As such, skills such as Coercion would never work against a PC, for instance, but, for game balance, and for immersion into the story being played out, these need to be effective across the board. This is also true of other situations, such as seduction, negotiation, and deception. Even if the player might know what’s going on, the skill check is necessary to determine the outcomes of these encounters and how they ultimately play out regardless of whether the PC is initiator or the target of the attempt. So, if the PC is the target of a seduction attempt and he or she fails to resist, it is the responsibility of the player to play that out. Otherwise there is no point in having Social skills and skills which are specifically designed to resist them.

3 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Yes, but there are situations where the GM has to do this. One of them is in instances where the characters really should be afraid. If left to the player’s device, that character will never be afraid of anything. As such, skills such as Coercion would never work against a PC, for instance, but, for game balance, and for immersion into the story being played out, these need to be effective across the board. This is also true of other situations, such as seduction, negotiation, and deception. Even if the player might know what’s going on, the skill check is necessary to determine the outcomes of these encounters and how they ultimately play out regardless of whether the PC is initiator or the target of the attempt. So, if the PC is the target of a seduction attempt and he or she fails to resist, it is the responsibility of the player to play that out. Otherwise there is no point in having Social skills and skills which are specifically designed to resist them.

I beg to differ. I never use fear checks and the characters are afraid plenty of times. Fear is useful, it makes a character think twice about taking stupid risks. As far as I am concerned, the GM has the responsibility to make the story so immersive that he doesn't need rolls to force players to have their characters act and feel in a certain way. I would consider it heavy-handed GMing to do otherwise. That is how I feel about fear checks.

Yes, I also never roll coercion checks against characters in that way. I find it completely unneccessary (and detrimental). I have the narrative take care of it. If the Hutt crime lord says he has explosives installed in their ship and will blow their ship up if they don't do the mission for him, the players will choose if they will let themselves be coerced or not by that. If the character has a background story of him never giving in to Hutts again, then it might trigger a beautiful in-character dilemma. If you are a DM which does require players to roll in such a situation, what would you have them do with a success? Can they still choose to be coerced because they fear losing their ship or should they be forced to play not being coerced and then lose their ship, just because they happened to have a high discipline skill?

I find GMs mostly use rolls to dictate what characters should feel as a kind of hack. Situations where they aren't able to sketch the narrative in such a way that the players will choose to have their characters act fearful, coerced or charmed.

I may sometimes use such rolls to inform the players' characters, like 'The Hutt sounds like he is not bluffing about the explosives' but never to dictate their thoughts and emotions. They are the masters of their own fate.

Are your player's characters never afraid of dying, never afraid of looking badly to their peers, never afraid having their reputation tarnished, never afraid of their stuff and their credits being taken, never afraid of their loved ones being hurt, never afraid of their characters goals being opposed, never afraid of the people they owe coming to collect?

1 hour ago, Aramur said:

Now that I think about it, perhaps I adressed the wrong issue. I believe I have issue with a more fundamental aspect of Fear checks: they have the GM dictate to the players how their characters should feel.

In my view the thoughts and feelings of characters are always determined by the player, never by the GM.

How often do you as a GM dictate how a character should feel? I think fear checks break the implicit agreement that players control the emotions of their characters.

If the player choose to have their character to be afraid of darkness, closed spaces, wide spaces, heights etc., it should be there choice.

For a supplementary question: do you allow players to have their characters act afraid even if they made their fear check? Can they choose to be afraid of something even if they dice say they are not?

I would never tell players how to act or feel, it's their performance. The fear check is a mechanic, that's all. People can act tough and be scared shitless, some can look like they're terrified and then be the one that runs out into the minefield to save someone.

6 hours ago, Aramur said:

I beg to differ. I never use fear checks and the characters are afraid plenty of times. Fear is useful, it makes a character think twice about taking stupid risks. As far as I am concerned, the GM has the responsibility to make the story so immersive that he doesn't need rolls to force players to have their characters act and feel in a certain way. I would consider it heavy-handed GMing to do otherwise. That is how I feel about fear checks.

Yes, I also never roll coercion checks against characters in that way. I find it completely unneccessary (and detrimental). I have the narrative take care of it. If the Hutt crime lord says he has explosives installed in their ship and will blow their ship up if they don't do the mission for him, the players will choose if they will let themselves be coerced or not by that. If the character has a background story of him never giving in to Hutts again, then it might trigger a beautiful in-character dilemma. If you are a DM which does require players to roll in such a situation, what would you have them do with a success? Can they still choose to be coerced because they fear losing their ship or should they be forced to play not being coerced and then lose their ship, just because they happened to have a high discipline skill?

I find GMs mostly use rolls to dictate what characters should feel as a kind of hack. Situations where they aren't able to sketch the narrative in such a way that the players will choose to have their characters act fearful, coerced or charmed.

I may sometimes use such rolls to inform the players' characters, like 'The Hutt sounds like he is not bluffing about the explosives' but never to dictate their thoughts and emotions. They are the masters of their own fate.

Are your player's characters never afraid of dying, never afraid of looking badly to their peers, never afraid having their reputation tarnished, never afraid of their stuff and their credits being taken, never afraid of their loved ones being hurt, never afraid of their characters goals being opposed, never afraid of the people they owe coming to collect?

Then what you’re doing is making every social skill and talent, in the game, and every skill and talent designed to resist them, useless . Part of the game balance is that what the PCs can do to the NPCs, the NPCs can also do to the PCs . That means that the skills PCs use against NPCs, also work against the PCs. This is also what makes skills such as Disciplne , and Cool impotent as well, since the primary purpose of those two skills are resisting Coercion , Negotiation , Charm , Deception , Leadership , and Fear. They are the skills that oppose social checks . This also goes for Force powers, such as Influence , which specifically alters a target’s thoughts and emotions. What you propose inherently destroys game balance. What works for one side must work for the other. So, yes, a GM is well within his right to use a Fear, Coercion, Charm, etc. check against a PC, and make that character feel something the player doesn’t, and act accordingly, just as a PC can do to an NPC. That doesn’t necessarily mean the character has to run away if he or she fails the Fear check, it could simply mean (at least in F&D) that the character gains some Conflict, for giving in to fear, for example.

This discussion falls under the RPG truism of " the players are not their characters. "

Players aren't getting shot at, their characters are. Players aren't piloting starships, their characters are. Players aren't as charismatic Lando Calrissian, their characters are. Players aren't afraid of Darth Vader, their characters are.

Playing a character gives a player a freedom of choice defined by the mechanics, the setting, and the outlines of the agreed-upon story. It doesn't give their character a freedom from reactions. Saying "But I'm not actually afraid!" when a player fails a fear checks is the same thing as saying "But I'm not shot!" when an NPC scores a hit on their character. It isn't relevant.

If you want to get all philosophical about it, real life people are biological creatures with hardwired fight-or-flight reflexes that they can't mentally control, no matter how much macho he-men might claim otherwise. This game - and others that use fear mechanics ( Call of Cthulhu , Night's Black Agents , et. all) - are simply modeling a natural and reasonable reaction to danger. If fear mechanics were baked into the DNA of Dungeons & Dragons , this wouldn't even be a discussion.

If a situation is a) new and b) incredibly dangerous, hitting players with a fear check is completely within the bounds of the rules and keeping with the spirit of the game. Statistically speaking, the players are going to overcome the obstacle anyway so complaining about a few added black dice or a lost turn is very petty.

Oh, and to be clear, @Aramur , I am primarily a player , and have yet to GM under this system.

8 hours ago, Aramur said:

Now that I think about it, perhaps I adressed the wrong issue. I believe I have issue with a more fundamental aspect of Fear checks: they have the GM dictate to the players how their characters should feel.

In my view the thoughts and feelings of characters are always determined by the player, never by the GM.

How often do you as a GM dictate how a character should feel? I think fear checks break the implicit agreement that players control the emotions of their characters.

If the player choose to have their character to be afraid of darkness, closed spaces, wide spaces, heights etc., it should be there choice.

For a supplementary question: do you allow players to have their characters act afraid even if they made their fear check? Can they choose to be afraid of something even if they dice say they are not?

You don't have to make them fear the dark, but please, if you see a Rancor first time in your life, and your only weapon is a depleted blaster, then the character should wet itself

The way I see it; fear itself is something I feel that players shouldn't have buy into, but how they respond to that fear is. There have been many descriptions of heroic characters in many books about how they have a moment to comprehend the enormity of who they are fighting, or aren't necessarily battle hardened and thus the prospect of fighting an relentless foe is terrifying, but despite that they jumped in. It might be a slight unsettling feeling, that who they are seeing isn't "right", or powerful. Or too much to comprehend. If their character to be "immune to fear", then they respectfully should invest in ranks the characteristic of Will and Displine. While Fear itself shouldn't be something that wholly side-lines a player, serving as a potent inconvenience fits the narrative and expresses the character's heroic nature by proceeding despite that fear, or acting on that fear. That is good too.

That being said, if your players already respond to events happening in the universe with the respect that those major antagonists deserve? That is awesome. Just as I have already said, the player isn't their character. Sometimes as a player I will do things that would serve as a inconvenience, but it is just the way my character would act. Just because their character might have a deeply unsettling feeling about something, a fear check is just another mechanical representation of what the character might be feeling. If you feel it doesn't work for you? Then don't use it if it would detract from your sessions, if they are already responding in that way then you have a pretty awesome group.

Like I have one player who constantly insists that he is so terrifying that people urinate in his presence; yet the GM has to remind him constantly that "While he is fearsome, just scowling at someone with a 1 Yellow, 2 green and an auto advantage aren't going to induce that levels of fear unless you roll a triumph." and the same is kind of here; we all know that this guy is terrifying and could potentially end our lives; but how terrified do we feel of him? While I am a player, all I would do with the check is to roll it, impose some mechanical consequences (despite yourself, your hand starts to quiver) and allow those players deal with that emotion in a way benefiting of their character.

16 hours ago, whafrog said:

I find this concern misplaced, maybe you're too hung up on the label of "Fear". It's just a name for a mechanic, but it doesn't mean everybody who fails it is curled in a ball or sweating buckets. They might have only "mild concern"...something worthy of a setback.

I agree with Whafrog here. There is a reason why the second most used phrase in Star Wars behind "May the Force be with you" is "I have a bad feeling about this." It's been used in every movie except Solo where they replaced it with "..good feeling about this" to make a point of it being Solo.

As others have said, the players rarely show the fear that the character "should be" feeling and that is where the mechanism comes into play. I don't use it everytime it is listed in adventure books but I do use it to make a point that the characters are into some creepy stuff or the person they are facing is pushing out some seriously negative vibes, man.

I think the GM (or by extension, the checks he requires you to make) should never dictate how characters should feel, think and what choices the character makes. That should always be the sole province of the player.

I do not understand why everyone makes an exception to this principle for the emotion of fear. I have never seen love checks, friendship checks, trust checks, excitement checks, hate checks etc. Perhaps its the same things as alignment in classic D&D: you are alignment X, so your character should do Y. This always felt like nonsense to me. Your character decides to do Y, so his alignment is X, was always my philosophy.

If you see the fear check as an external force acting upon the players and its just a mechanical thing (the setback die takes care of the whole fear thing for example), then I can certainly imagine you using it. If you force the player to make a choice or change his emotions about something, that's a no-go area as far as I'm concerned.

1 hour ago, Rimsen said:

You don't have to make them fear the dark, but please, if you see a Rancor first time in your life, and your only weapon is a depleted blaster, then the character should wet itself

You are playing with characters that don't wet themselves in such cases? You need the players to roll a check for that?

In most cases I see characters that do fear such an encounter, but in some rare cases they don't. A naive character going 'ooooh, Rancor, so cute, never seen one, can I pet it?' Is a perfectly allowable response. And the player should have the freedom to make that response, and not have the GM tell him 'you are not allowed to say or think that because the dice indicate you fear it'.

9 hours ago, Aramur said:

In my view the thoughts and feelings of characters are always determined by the player, never by the GM.

IMHO that's the same issue in your OP. It's only an ideal, but it's rarely a reality, unless your group is comprised of dedicated thespians vying for an Oscar.

I think you're missing the point of the mechanic anyway. Fear is debilitating and causes people to act less effectively. Training (skills, talents, etc) can mitigate some of it. The Fear results are a tool you can use to represent a character's debilitation. If you trust your players to respond reasonably to fearful situations, then you can forego the actual roll and just apply the penalties as you see fit. But I'm sure the players would rather they have a chance to beat the check than you applying a set penalty by default.

If you don't want to apply penalties for Fear, you could just skip it entirely, but I think that's a huge mistake, it removes the point of many talents, and skills like Discipline.

19 minutes ago, Aramur said:

I think the GM (or by extension, the checks he requires you to make) should never dictate how characters should feel, think and what choices the character makes. That should always be the sole province of the player.

I do not understand why everyone makes an exception to this principle for the emotion of fear. I have never seen love checks, friendship checks, trust checks, excitement checks, hate checks etc. Perhaps its the same things as alignment in classic D&D: you are alignment X, so your character should do Y. This always felt like nonsense to me. Your character decides to do Y, so his alignment is X, was always my philosophy.

If you see the fear check as an external force acting upon the players and its just a mechanical thing (the setback die takes care of the whole fear thing for example), then I can certainly imagine you using it. If you force the player to make a choice or change his emotions about something, that's a no-go area as far as I'm concerned.

15 minutes ago, Aramur said:

You are playing with characters that don't wet themselves in such cases? You need the players to roll a check for that?

In most cases I see characters that do fear such an encounter, but in some rare cases they don't. A naive character going 'ooooh, Rancor, so cute, never seen one, can I pet it?' Is a perfectly allowable response. And the player should have the freedom to make that response, and not have the GM tell him 'you are not allowed to say or think that because the dice indicate you fear it'.

We don’t make an exception. Like I said before. It’s not just fear checks, it’s all social checks . This includes Fear checks, Coercion checks, Negotiation checks, Charm checks, Leadership checks, etc. if a PC is on the receiving end of those skills, and fails to resist, then the player is, and, by all rights, should be, required to role-play the appropriate response. So, if the PC is successfully seduced into a tryst by a sultry NPC’s Charm check the player should role play it and expect to wind up the next morning in someone’s bed. If he fails resisting a Deception check against him, he should role play getting appropriately duped. The dice determine the outcome, but the player chooses how he role plays that outcome. No matter what, however, he must abide by the roll of the dice . Oh, and for the record, the Influence power can indeed require rolls for resisting “friendship” checks, “love” checks, “hate red” checks, etc. because that power can indeed force a character to take on any particular emotional response the Force user desires.

16 minutes ago, Aramur said:

A naive character going 'ooooh, Rancor, so cute, never seen one, can I pet it?' Is a perfectly allowable response.

No, it's really not. I mean, sure, it could be allowed, and might be funny once or twice, but if a player was consistently that inane I wouldn't invite them back.

2 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Then what you’re doing is making every social skill and talent, in the game, and every skill and talent designed to resist them, useless . Part of the game balance is that what the PCs can do to the NPCs, the NPCs can also do to the PCs . That means that the skills PCs use against NPCs, also work against the PCs. This is also what makes skills such as Disciplne , and Cool impotent as well, since the primary purpose of those two skills are resisting Coercion , Negotiation , Charm , Deception , Leadership , and Fear. They are the skills that oppose social checks . This also goes for Force powers, such as Influence , which specifically alters a target’s thoughts and emotions. What you propose inherently destroys game balance. What works for one side must work for the other. So, yes, a GM is well within his right to use a Fear, Coercion, Charm, etc. check against a PC, and make that character feel something the player doesn’t, and act accordingly, just as a PC can do to an NPC. That doesn’t necessarily mean the character has to run away if he or she fails the Fear check, it could simply mean (at least in F&D) that the character gains some Conflict, for giving in to fear, for example.

I have never had any issues with game balance. I don't know what that has got to do with it. I can see your point though, that if players count on social encounters being composed primarily of rolling (and mechanics) and not using the narrative as much, that they could feel 'cheated'. Do the dice inform the narrative, or does the narrative call for use of dice? I'm more leaning towards the latter interpretation.

But what would you do with the example of the Hutt threatening to blow up the character's ship, and a character making the opposed check? Do you tell the player something like: "you are not coerced and refuse the Hutt's orders. He signals his underlings to set of the explosives."? Or do you have them make the check, and then decide if they want to be coerced, with only the people making the check having the option of not going along with it, and forcing the rest to abide by the rolled outcome?

If the players fail to see through an enemy's Deception (by doing an opposed check), at my games, they can still choose not to trust someone. Failing the opposed roll just means they can't see any indication that the person is deceiving them. I'm not telling the players how they should play their characters: that is up to them.

How do you feel about PC vs PC social checks?

1 minute ago, whafrog said:

No, it's really not. I mean, sure, it could be allowed, and might be funny once or twice, but if a player was consistently that inane I wouldn't invite them back.

You do not allow characters with odd quirks in your campaign? I honestly think C3PO's responses in some of the Star Wars films are totally unsuitable to what is happening, but they are perfectly in-character for the droid. He would 'tell someone the odds' at an inappropriate time. That is fine. He just has to face the consequences. Same with a character that wants to pet a hungry Rancor: they tend not to live long. The player would be invited back of course, unless he complains that his characters keep being eating by Rancors. ?