Window People Don’t think of it as a window. Call it a frame of reference. A portal. A discontinuity. We are not you. The Window People are seen only tangentially. You’ve seen them from a moving train, glimpsed them while driving, out of the corner of your eye. Strange almost-people, ungainly and spindly, doing strange […]
Search Results for: fear itself
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Apr
Apr
This edition of Fear Itself has been supplanted by the new 2nd Edition
The Roleplaying Game of Personal Horror
Fear Itself plunges ordinary people into a disturbing contemporary world of madness and violence — and inexorably draws them into confrontation with creatures of the Outer Black, a realm of alien menace. GMs can re-create all the shudders and shocks of the horror genre at their table, whether they use the game’s distinctive mythology or one of their own choosing.
Powered by the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system, Fear Itself is ideal for one-shot horror games (where few, if any, of the protagonists are expected to survive) or ongoing campaigns in which the characters gradually discover more about the disturbing supernatural reality that hides in the shadows of the ordinary world. Will they learn how to combat the darkness? Or spiral tragically into insanity and death?
Read what reviewers are saying about Fear Itself.
“I have given this product 5 stars: 4 because it delivers everything it promises; is written to a standard that I, as an ordinary gamer, cannot find fault with; and the 5th star because it brings truly new and innovative content to the industry. If you want scary and investigative – get this.”
– William G., DriveThruRPG
“This is very much a game of personal horror — so be prepared to be even more creeped out than usual here. …If you want to go off the well-beaten path and want to try something different, then this game is for you. It emulates the cinematic horrors of everything from Scream to Twenty Eight Days Later. You could even recreate the classic ghost stories of literature or the J-Horror of The Ring or horror Manga like the Lovecraft-esque Uzamaki if you so wished.”
– Dave Lai, RPGnet
GUMSHOE is the groundbreaking investigative roleplaying system by Robin D. Laws that shifts the focus of play away from finding clues (or worse, not finding them), and toward interpreting clues, solving mysteries and moving the action forward. GUMSHOE powers many Pelgrane Press games, including Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents, Esoterrorists, Ashen Stars, Mutant City Blues and Fear Itself. Learn more about how to run GUMSHOE games, and download the GUMSHOE System Reference Document to make your own GUMSHOE products under the Open Gaming License or the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Unported License.
Fear Itself and most other GUMSHOE games use a Stability system that’s inspired by the classic Call of Cthulhu ‘mental hit points’ approach – your character has a big pool of Stability that gets ablated over time by horrific encounters, until you’re eventually forced to ‘heal’ or get taken out. This approach works well for […]
So, you’ve been bitten by the werewolf. Infected by the zombie virus. Snacked on by Dracula. Discovered that your grandmother came from Innsmouth, or that you were conceived in the Outer Dark. You’re a monster, and soon you’re going to succumb to the darkness in you and turn on your comrades. Up until then, though, […]
It’s rarely a good idea to mix immediate real-world awfulness with supernatural threats. Killer clowns are funny, but we’re not going to argue the Esoterrorists are behind QANON, even though it’s an obvious set-up. Hitler wasn’t mind-controlled by vampires or the Cthulhu Mythos. So, the existence of these pandemic-themed monsters for Fear Itself or The […]
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Apr
Apr
The Roleplaying Game of Personal Horror
Fear Itself 2nd Edition plunges ordinary people into a disturbing contemporary world of madness and violence —and inexorably draws them into confrontation with creatures of the Outer Dark, a realm of alien menace. GMs can re-create all the shudders and shocks of the horror genre at their table, whether they use the game’s distinctive mythology or one of their own choosing.
Powered by the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system, Fear Itself 2nd Edition is ideal for one-shot horror games (where few, if any, of the protagonists are expected to survive), or ongoing campaigns in which the characters gradually discover more about the disturbing supernatural reality that hides in the shadows of the ordinary world. Will they learn how to combat the darkness? Or spiral tragically into insanity and death?
This edition features:
- Support for multiple different types of play, from bloody one-shots to mini-series and extended investigative campaigns
- Extensive advice for GMs on designing and running mystery games
- Revised psychic powers
- More monsters, plus detailed monster design rules
- Updated rules that draw from more than ten years of GUMSHOE development and play experience, to deliver the ultimate in personal horror roleplaying.
Fear Itself 2nd Edition also includes three sample scenarios—a one-night adventure, a mini-series, and a full campaign:
- The Circle: An experimental drug trial goes horribly wrong when one of your fellow participants disappears. Figure out what happened to him, or you’re next.
- Glass Beach Summer: The storm changed everything. We went home, one by one. And then we started to see them. We saw the monsters. At first, we thought the storm had brought them. It was only later that we learned the truth. The storm changed only us. The monsters were always there.
- The Dispatchers: No backup. No assistance. Just a voice on the radio in the night, asking you for help. In this campaign, unlikely monster hunters are drawn together by the mysterious signal. Can they survive their missions long enough to save themselves?
Read Gareth’s designer’s notes here.
People who bought this also bought The Book of Unremitting Horror, Invasive Procedures and The Seventh Circle.
You may also be interested in The Esoterrorists 2nd Edition, The Yellow King RPG and GUMSHOE Starter Kit Bundle.
A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When the original Fear Itself came out in 2007, horror was in the depths of its torture phase, typified by the Saw and Hostel franchises. Always the most reliable indicator of the zeitgeist, horror cinema reflected America’s anxieties about its place in the world under the shadow […]
One day, the mystery of the Ocean Game will be revealed. Until then, hints and fragments skitter at the edge of perception in articles like this. Art and setting text by Dave Allsop. The Phantom Birds bear a strong resemblance to Earth’s Marabou Storks – spindly, ugly, carrion creatures with bald, scab-encrusted heads. Phantom Birds […]
The revised edition of Fear Itself offers a toolkit approach to building campaigns. Let’s use that toolkit to build that hoary staple of the horror roleplaying genre – a zombie apocalypse. One-shot zombie games tend to be extended exercises combat-and-running (brainless, or braaaaiiins-full fun, so to speak), so let’s tackle the more interesting question of […]
Many years ago – the fabled year of 2003, or so – I wrote a largely forgotten book called OGL Horror for Mongoose Publishing. It was designed to be a toolkit for running modern-day horror games, using (somewhat awkwardly) the d20 system. As it was based on the Open Gaming Licence, Pelgrane was able to […]