I'm having problems understanding Fear, Terror and Insanity. I understand stress and fatigue and it's impact during combat but I don't understand how it ties into Insanity. Could someone please clarify? What would be really helpful is a example paragraph. Thanks!

If a PC has 1 physical characteristic < current fatigue and 1 mental characteristic < current stress, the PC is in a condition called Strained. This condition inflicts temporary insanities the more fatigue/stress that gets accumulated. Temporary insanities last a short time, but have a chance of becoming permanent.

You can gain a temporary insanity two ways.

1. Your Willpower is distressed (you have more stress than willpower) and you take another stress.

You then deal 1 insanity card. If one of the two traits is applicable to the situation, then it goes into effect. Otherwise it's discarded. Any more stress gained adds tokens to that insanity rather than drawing a new one.

2. You are strained – which means you have a physical stat fatigued (more fatigue than any physical stat) AND a mental stat distressed (more stress than any mental stat) – and you take another fatigue or stress.

In this case you deal an insanity (regardless of the traits listed on the card) and place a token on it. Any further fatigue or stress adds a token rather than a new card.

Note that if you can end up with 2 temporary insanities by getting one from a distressed will and then becoming strained.

Here's an example.

Klaus has a Willpower of 4, a Agility of 3, and Strength and Toughness of 4. He starts off with 3 fatigue and 4 stress.

• Round 1 he gains 1 stress. Although his willpower is now distressed, nothing happens as his will has to be distressed for the stress to trigger the insanity,

• Round 2 he gains another stress. Now since his Will is already distressed, he draws an insanity card. The GM determines that the situation is Violent and Traumatic. The insanity traits are Chaos and Supernatural, so the insanity is ignored. Were one of the traits Violence or Trauma, the character would now have the insanity with no tokens on it.

• Round 3 he gains 1 fatigue (which makes his Agility fatigued). Since he has a stat fatigued and other distressed, he is now strained. Later this round he gains another stress. Now he draws an insanity card (it doesn't matter which traits it has), and places a token on it.

• Round 4 he gains 2 fatigue and 1 stress . He now adds 3 tokens to the insanity card.

At the end of the encounter, you have to make a discipline check against each temp insanity you have. You need to get a number of successes equal to the number of tokens on each or they become permanent.

You may notice it is not easy to become insane from stress alone. The card traits have to match, and the card comes out without any tokens on it, making the roll later easier.

Insanity from being strained is much less forgiving, since you always take the insanity and it comes out with a token to start. Plus you add a token for both fatigue and stress.

Hope that helps.

Side point of note on that last explanation by Doc - when you are strained (both distressed and physical stat fatigued) you draw from the insanity deck UNTIL you get matching characteristics. So the characteristics do still matter a little (and it helps that the insanity will more often match the cause).

Otherwise - excelent example!

Actually, as per the FAQ, when you are strained, you get an insanity card each time you recieve stress and/or fatigue and you place a number of tokens onto the card equal to the number of stress/fatigue gained.

Here's the section, emphasis, mine

FAQ, P4:

When a character is strained (the precarious state during which a
PC is both distressed and fatigued at the same time), an insanity
card is drawn each time the character suffers one or more fatigue or
stress from the same source.
Then, a number of tracking tokens (equal to the amount of fatigue/
stress that triggered the insanity) are placed on the just acquired
insanity card. These tracking tokens will later be used to determine
whether the temporary insanity becomes permanent after the
encounter.

So to clarify in the example, in round 4 the PC would have drawn a new insanity (for a total of 3) rather than adding tokens to an existing one