Fear in D&D
Midjourney, doing its best old-school imitation.
From OSE SRD:
Reversed: Cause Fear
Will cause a target within 120’ to flee for the duration unless it saves versus spells.
Fear in old school D&D is a very simple spell effect. The creature runs away. This works great for players casting a fear spell on creatures. The issues arise when the PC is the target of a fear effect. Nothing is more frustrating than losing total control of your characters actions. When your character is the target of cause fear, they will flee for 2 rounds (20 minutes). If this was cast during a combat, they are effectively sidelined for the rest of the combat.
Modern board games have culled the ‘skip your turn’ mechanic, and unfortunately not all RPGs have followed this trend. Luckily, 5th edition does a little bit better.
Frightened
A frightened creature has disadvantage on Ability Checks and Attack rolls while the source of its fear is within Line of Sight.
The creature can’t willingly move closer to the source of its fear.
5th edition imposes a mechanical penalty when your character is frightened. Both of these effects encourage the player to move away from the source of the PC’s fear. It results in the character acting in accordance with a fear effect, without fully taking away the agency of the player. This is a vast improvement.
But the ‘Frightened’ status in 5e is still lacking in one key way. This mechanic presents merely a puzzle to solve during combat for the player. It doesn’t, however, increase tension in the way that actual fear does. Of course we can’t tell players to feel fear. If we want that, we must invoke it. In OSE, a magical fear effect that causes your player to run blindely through the dungeon corridors can invoke a real sense of fear in the player themself. Their character charging off into the unknown, potentially exposing themselves to more danger.
From The Monster Overhaul by Skerples:
A GM is free to tell a player that their PC has died, lost a limb, become a vampire, collapsed from exhaustion, or remembered a detail about a rare herb, but telling a player that their PC is experiencing an emotional state is something most GMs avoid. Supernatural spell-like fear is permissible; regular emotional fear never occurs unless a player decides it occurs.
Invoking Fear
So how do we both narratively and mechanically invoke fear in both the player and character? I believe we can raise the tension and keep player agency in-tact.
From Goblin Punch Blog:
I think chokers can be cool and scary if they bungee down off the ceiling, grab a hireling, and then bungee back up into the darkness, where they strangle the dude 20' above your head. Which is weird because normally chokers are pretty lame.
This snippet from the Goblin Punch blog inspired my thinking on fear. A choker pulling hirelings up into the ceiling to strangle them to death is pretty awesome. I’m going to try this in an upcoming campaign. But we need to think of this from a game-play standpoint. If, as the GM, I just grab and choke a player to death out of nowhere… sure the rest of the players will feel frightened. But the owner of the dead PC will rightfully call bullshit on my ‘rocks fall you die’ situation. We could telegraph the danger… but this can be difficult as well. If you telegraph too much information, they players will bypass the challenge easily. If you don’t telegraph enough information, you’re back in bullshit GM territory.
So how do we pull off a scene like this in our games fairly? I think FEAR is the answer.
New PC status: Frightened - Your PC is frightened. Frightened creatures are seen as easy prey by monsters, and may have tactics that can make a quick meal of a panicked PC. Frightened creatures, when confronted with a stressful situation may flee, panic, go catatonic, or otherwise react rashly - roll an appropriate save to counteract such effects.
That’s it. That’s the rule. Frightened is not a mechanical imposition, it doesn’t take away player agency. It’s a THREAT. PC’s who become frightened will be targeted first by stalking monsters. The monsters may gain bonuses against frightened creatures. PC’s may suffer penalties or unpredictable effects later if they choose to keep marching toward fearful situations.
In the choker scene described on the Goblin Punch blog, when the PC’s enter the dark cavern, you ask for a saving throw against fear. Any characters who fail are frightened. In this case, one of the hirelings fails his save and begins to panic.
“I don’t like the look of this place”, he says, stepping in some sludge on the cavern floor. The hireling sniffs at his boot, “there’s something in here with us.”
One PC asks if they know what the droppings are and the GM rolls behind the screen: they fail. “It’s just bat droppings”.
Then, the chokers, targeting any frightened characters first, drop from the ceiling. Each getting advantage on their attacks against frightened characters, and doing bonus damage during their strangulation. The PC’s dodge the tentacled hands, but the NPC is pulled into the darkness of the cavern above.
GM: “Everyone roll initiative, and roll to resist fear.”