Fear Itself 2nd Edition introduces the concept of an Escape Pool (p. 70), a set of rules for fleeing a horrific situation instead of following the trail of clues into the darkness. It’s a simple idea – the player characters build up a pool of points by discovering clues, spending investigative ability points, and passing […]
Category Archives: Fear Itself
We might get Gar to write about the GUMSHOE and Fear Itself implications of the great Netflix series "Stranger Things" soon. Before that happens I’d like to sneak in to highlight one particular moment. Without delving too far into spoilers for those who have yet to binge, a point comes where rumpled police chief Jim […]
Dwellers break through the membrane separating us from the Outer Dark as solitary predators. They live in lakes and ponds in underpopulated areas. Dwellers find their most fruitful hunting grounds in or near parks and camp sites. They often select spots connected to a murder, tragic accident, or other dark urban legend. When such legends […]
Mario Bava’s final film, 1977’s Shock, offers up exactly the dreamlike take on the psi-horror cycle of the period you’d hope for from him. Ultimately it goes in a more supernatural direction than more pseudoscience-oriented titles like Carrie, The Fury, Firestarter, or Scanners. That’s just one of the ways in which it prefigures Kubrick’s The […]
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 of combat-and-running (brainless, or braaaaiiins-full fun, so to speak), so let’s tackle the more interesting question […]
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 […]
If your town is anything like mine, escape rooms are springing up all over. This new fad gives us a ready-made reason for a group of ordinary people to be thrown together into a horror situation. Here are five Fear Itself scenario hooks that all start with the characters working their way out of an […]
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A Fear Itself Scenario Premise Start by designing high school age characters. Confine the Worst Thing You Ever Did to the sorts of transgressions ordinary teenagers might get up to. You all hang out together, regarding yourselves as semi-outsiders. You aren’t bullied, nor are you bullies. But neither are you the insider kids. A random […]
Sometimes the difference between an urban legend and a hoax can come down to the cluefulness of those propagating it. Take for example the ineradicable 21st century viral urban legend claiming that Mars will on an August night loom as large in the sky as the moon. This comes up every August, thanks to a […]