Chapter IX: The Game Master
lives on to fight another day. After enough time to recover, re-equip and recruit new henchmen he reappears at an opportune moment to take a devastating revenge. You should keep this sort of treatment for special occasions, however. It will be easy to demoralize the players if every minor villain they encounter develops the habit of coming back to get them after being “killed” three or four times. However, if you give a few Fate Points to the one leading villain in your campaign, and have him or her pop up a couple of times to get back at the PCs, it can keep them on their toes. Be careful not to let T hrough the course of their lives, adventurers can count on being stabbed, chopped, slashed, burned, shot, impaled, mangled, and mutilated. They can also count on be exposed to hideous mutants, graphic scenes of horror and carnage, torture, unholy rituals, vile creatures, and still other more disturbing images of Chaos. After all that, it’s no wonder that so many of them go insane. Insanity is a tool that GMs can use to invigorate the roleplaying aspect of their WFRP game. The idea is to explore what would happen to the characters’ mental states after suffering through so much stress and trauma over the course of their adventures. There’s only so much punishment an adventurer’s mind and spirit can take. Imagine the brain of a pugilist after a hundred fights—then two hundred. You get the idea. Stress and trauma will, over a period of time, cause a character to develop a serious mental disorder. Is it fun to play someone who goes insane? Well, yes. Losing your mind is part of living in a grim and perilous world of adventure. It’s a dark ride to be sure, full of madness, horror, and maybe even death. But it’s all done in the spirit of the game.
the players cotton onto what’s happening, though, or they will take to dismembering and burning every body they can “just to be sure”, and that isn’t part of WFRP . Be imaginative when GMing the use of Fate Points, as it can add a lot to the tension and enjoyment of the game. And be mean in handing them out. Each Fate Point effectively gives a character an extra life, and that makes them very powerful and very precious things indeed. Spreading too many of them about will lead players to adopt a brawn- over-brains attitude, which devalues both the concept of Fate Points and the game itself. Going insane need not be the end of your character’s life. Consider it a roleplaying challenge. Great drama can be created out of moments when an insane character tries to overcome his madness, or when he succumbs to his disturbing disorder. And GMs should note that adventures or even whole campaigns can be constructed around finding a cure for a party member’s insanity. But if the insanity rules just don’t appeal to the GM or players, you don’t have to use them at all because ultimately it’s your game. I nsanITy p oInTs Insanity Points (IP) are a measure of sanity. The more Insanity Points a character has, the closer he is to mental instability. Insanity points are gained in the following ways: Critical Hits : One Insanity Point is gained each time the character takes a Critical Hit. The point remains even after the resulting injuries have healed. It’s possible for a character to gain a great deal of Insanity Points this way. Terror : One Insanity Point is gained each time the character fails a Terror Test. See page 197. Other : Characters may gain Insanity Points at the GM’s discretion after experiencing some truly terrible event. For example: being tortured, trapped in a dark hole with hungry rats, clawed at by hideous mutants, unable to prevent a friend or loved one from being killed, encountering a zombie or Daemon, stumbling across the disturbing iconography of Chaos, and so on. The GM should determine beforehand how many Insanity Points are at stake, and have the character make a Will Power Test. If the test is passed, the character gains no Insanity Points, but if the test is failed they gain the number of points decided upon by the GM. There are several ways to determine how many points to dispense: • A set number of points (1, 2, 3, and so on, but usually no more than 6, except for a truly rare event—something cosmically frightening like encountering a Daemon Prince of Chaos).
— I nsanITy —
•
A number determined by the result of the Will Power Test, usually 1 Insanity Point per degree of failure. A random number. 1d10 is too many for all but the direst circumstances. 1d10/2 is plenty for most situations.
•
Once a character gains 6 or more points he must immediately make a Will Power Test. If the test is successful, nothing happens, but the character’s Insanity Point total remains the same and he must take the test again when he next gains an additional Insanity Point. When a test is failed, the character develops a disorder, but loses 6 Insanity Points. When a character fails the test described above, his mind has snapped and he becomes afflicted with a disorder. The GM should carefully
200
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online