What does your character fear? What anxieties keep them up at night, staring in to the dancing campfire? What insecurities do they have? What are they worried about? And how do they exhibit this in play?
If you’re like most D&D players, you probably haven’t dwelt much on the idea of your character’s fears and anxieties. After all, the characters are bold heroes, adventurers who brave the unknown for wealth and glory! What could they possibly worry about?
It’s true that this dimension of a PC is not strictly a necessary one. Certainly enough of our inspirational material consists of characters who are not very wrapped up in their own heads. Pulp heroes are men (almost always men) of action, brave and bold, with a reckless bravery as one of their defining features!
Certainly there’s nothing in the mechanics that rewards this, either. You don’t get extra XP for facing your fears, you don’t get a magic items for naval-gazing, and speculating on your tortured character history is a better way to get pelted with dice than to help your party slay the dragon.
But the genres we pull from also exhibit some incredible examples of fear, anxiety, and trepidation. The granddaddy of all D&D references, The Lord of the Rings is arguably at its most interesting when dealing with the internal conflict of Frodo – the doubt, the fear, the selfishness. Sure, there’s armies battling on a landscape leagues away, but the fate of the world depends on the internal struggle in one small hobbit, a long way from home.
There’s a difference between a narrative and a game, of course, but of the three great types of conflict that are possible in this world, internal conflict remains sadly un-explored in our dungeon-crawling. Sure, indie games can be lousy with the stuff, but there’s precious little that’s accessible.
So let us take a step toward adding that.
WHAT SCARES THE DRAGON-SLAYERS?
Perhaps one of the most elemental kinds of internal conflict is fear. It’s a deep-seated, lizard-brain kind of emotion, one that has its roots in childhood and in the survival instinct we all possess.
It’s also one that’s already present in a lot of our D&D archetypes. Consider the typical barbarian hatred of arcane magic, or the nervousness of a dwarf in a thick forest, or our fighter with a vendetta against orcs for ravaging his hometown. All of these dimensions of the character arise through the use of fear as a driving element.
There’s endless potential for fear in your own PC. You can be afraid of dragons, afraid of the dark, afraid of the government, afraid of forests, the ocean, the undead, other people, clowns…it’s not hard to find a potential answer to the question: “What is your character afraid of?”
What makes this facet of your character interesting is the question that comes next: “Why?”
What Have They Done To You?
Fears can be a little random and disconnected, but a fear that can also be something that is a learned trait. If you have a fear, an insecurity , an anxiety, there may have been an event, or a series of events, that put that fear in your head.
Answering this question gives your character a quick historical event that happened to them to create this fear. If you’re afraid of the ocean, why might that be, what might have happened to put that fear in you? Did you almost drown as a child? Did someone close to you die at sea? Were you the child of a sailor…who was also an abusive father? If your tribe has a taboo against arcane magic, why is that? Were wizards like a tribal bogeyman in your family, taking disobedient children in the night? Were the stories told to frighten children perhaps terrifyingly true for you?
It’s not just a backstory – it’s something that informs how you play your character now.
What Has It Done To You?
A character-defining fear is something you live with. It doesn’t just come and go when the source is around, but remains in your thoughts, in your deep subconscious, in your most horrible dreams. Clearly, the adventurous type that is your character isn’t going to sit around paralyzed with fear, so there’s something your character has done to cope with this terror that lies beneath their skin.
Perhaps you surround yourself in a veil of denial: you’re not that scared, it’s nothing to be afraid of, there’s nothing to fear now, that was long ago…
Perhaps you dull yourself with hedonistic habits: if the horror won’t go away, you’ll drown it in ale, drinking until you can’t feel feelings anymore.
Perhaps you use some sort of security blanket: with your father’s sword, you feel like you can face the orcs that killed him.
Perhaps you lash out, violently or otherwise: the only way to stop the wizards from taking you again is to punch them into a pulp before they get a chance to.
This coping mechanism, though it protects you from your fear, is a flaw. It is something that enables you to avoid confronting your fear, something you use as an easy expedience, something you rely upon instead of coming to terms with your past and your fear and taming it. It’s a crutch.
USE THE DICE, LUKE
So, if you’re the DM, and you’re looking to inject a bit more internal conflict into your games, you take the idea of giving them a fear, and a coping mechanism, as laid out here. And a role-playing character quirk or two is all well and good and perhaps all many DM’s need.
But the other conflicts in D&D involve mechanics, and if this inner conflict is to become an important part of your games – as important as surviving the dungeon and killing the dragon – it’s going to need a mechanical underpinning, too.
So how do you use it?
Ready-Made Plot Bait
As a DM, one of the most interesting features of giving your characters a fear like this is that you can add some internal conflict to any scene simply by sprinkling the fear into the adventure you already have planned. You also have an inkling of how the PC is going to react in the face of their fear, with their particular coping mechanism in place, and a character history to mine for plot potential. This is especially true if you let the elements of this help define your setting as it evolves. Part of defining the -fears of your PC party is going to be buying into the idea that these fears are going to be relevant at some point.
If the party barbarian is scared of wizards kidnapping children…was there once a wizard who did such things? Or is there now a cabal that does such things? What nefarious purpose do they serve? Even if there wasn’t anything like this before the barbarian player defined their fear, now you’ve got a potentially interesting villain, or villainous organization, and a ready-made hook for the barbarian character, who will certainly be interested in the rumors of children being abducted off the streets (even if it doesn’t turn out to have anything to do with their fear).
This works fine in a sandbox game, where you can drop hooks for the characters, but in some ways it works even better in a more linear game, where you can set up the battle with the kidnapping wizards to be the climax of the barbarian’s adventuring days, the mission which, when completed, will begin to allow the player to build a hoarde of their own, or to retire in security and wealth.
XP/GP for Character Growth
If XP incentivizes your PC’s to perform actions, consider incentivizing them to resolve their inner conflict by awarding XP for overcoming a fear without using their coping mechanism. You might not want to enable this reward immediately (lest the fears become completely irrelevant in the rush to cash in on the XP for them), but enable it only after the fear comes up, or perhaps allow a percentage chance (or a Wisdom check!) to be able to overcome the fear, or enable it only in a moment of desperation (such as when they’re at less than 1/10th hp, or when their coping mechanism is unavailable). Essentially, you’re placing a barrier of having to experience the fear a few times in play, before the character can be rid of it.
Once that flag is raised, and the character is capable of overcoming their fear and dismissing their coping mechanism, put it to the test. Introduce things that provoke the fear as above, and allow the player to finally put their fear to bed, and cash in on that XP reward.
Of course, when using this mechanic, the harder the fear is to get rid of, the more XP it should net the player. A fear that can be dismissed easily the first time it crops up might only be worth a pittance, but a fear you cling to until you’re only one hit away from being destroyed might be worth a bit more.
If your group uses fairly uniform XP, but awards treasure differentially, you can employ that method, too. Perhaps the moment this hero confronts and overcomes their fear, their coping mechanism becomes a token of their power over their fear: your father’s sword becomes a +1 weapon, or your copious drinking gives you increased Constitution.
Inner Conflict Saves and Skill Checks
The third major way to employ fears and coping mechanisms might be to translate it directly to how the game already models conflict: as a d20+modifiers roll vs. a DC, possibly also involving a “damage” roll to reduce a point total.
That is, perhaps when your character is created, their fear has a certain amount of…Fear Points. Their fear also has a certain DC, perhaps one that scales with level, perhaps one that simply reflects the depth of the fear. Each time the PC is confronted with their fear, they can make a saving throw or an ability check (typically Wisdom or Charisma), or you could even create a Courage skill and make it a standard skill check. This roll is against the fear’s DC, and, if successful, the PC can subtract a certain number of Fear Points. You could even formalize this at the table, with the PC’s each having a pile of tokens that represent the Fear Points of their fears.
If the PC makes the save, they can act without fear for a limited amount of time (perhaps determined by the check, perhaps for one encounter or one day) before the fear comes roaring back. However, once the player has eliminated all the Fear Points from their fear, they are free of it forever.
If the PC fails the save, they must give in to their coping mechanism in order to act normally. Without it, they’re simply paralyzed with fear, unable to take any action (though to avoid locking the player down, perhaps they’re allowed a new save each round to act without their coping mechanism for that round).
You could even imagine events or particular plot points or villains giving the PC’s new fears, or replenishing the fear points of their existing fears, or working on the initial saving throw. Feats and spells and powers could all act on this mechanic as well, hypothetically.
But since this word count is a little out of control, that’s going to have to be a post for a later time.
Tell me what you think – and how you might want to use this idea in your own games! -- down in the comments!
I'll leave you with an example of how one might do a mechanical kind of fear in 4e.
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EXAMPLE COMPLEX 4e FEAR:
Fear of the Dark
Your fear rears its head when the lights are out – or are in imminent danger of going out. As long as even a candle flickers, you have some hope, but the moment light dies on you is the moment you feel the cold claws of your fear clenching your beating sparrow’s heart.
History: You’ve had this fear ever since goblins ransacked your house at night. They killed your parents while they slept, and stole your sister from her crib, but they didn’t seem to notice you as you huddled beneath a quilt sewn by your mother.
Talisman: You keep a square of that quilt on you, even to this day, hidden in your money pouch. When the darkness grows thick around you, a hand placed on this square will help you keep a cool head.
Fear Effects (8 points): Make a saving throw whenever your fear is provoked – whenever darkness enfolds around you, with no source of light visible.
If you succeed, you have a small moment of courage. You can act normally for the duration of an encounter (or up to 5 minutes), and your fear loses 1 Fear Point. You can only make one saving throw against your fear in a day: you must take an extended rest in order to make another save.
Once that duration of courage ends, or if you fail the save, as long as you have your talisman, you are considered dazed as long as the condition of your fear remains in place (ie: as long as there is no source of illumination visible to you). While dazed, you can make a saving throw each round at the end of your turn to act normally on your next turn. Once the condition of your fear is lifted, these effects end.
If you fail the save or the duration of courage ends and do not have your talisman, you are considered helpless as long as the condition of your fear remains in place. While helpless, you can make a saving throw each round at the end of your turn to become dazed on your next turn. Once the condition of your fear is lifted, these effects end.
Once your fear loses all of its Fear Points, you gain XP as if your party had slain a monster equal to your level.
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