I should probably be focusing more on the 1.3 Chronomutants update. It’s a big rewrite/reordering of the rulebook. It’s slowly coming together. One of the largest pieces is a more concise description of the core resolution mechanic the Narrative Dice Pool. So of course while working on this I got side-tracked in a new creative endeavor. Namely, could the players as narrative storytellers core mechanic of Chronomutants work with a very different genre? What surrounding fiction support systems could be warped to support a different kind of fiction? Specifically what tools would you need to run a Horror story with the Narrative Dice Pool System?

Chronomutants supports action stories, the player characters have near limitless powers, and can take on armies. Horror stories offer the opposite roleplaying experience of disempowerment, being confronted with something more dangerous than your players, and winning means surviving.

The weird dice and other quirks withstanding, the Narrative Dice Pool System is a skill check system at its heart. So how do you use skill checks to survive Horror without creating a game where players are encouraged or empowered to confront the antagonist(s)?

My first ideas were:

• Make a game about escaping before a timer runs out
• Make a game about solving a mystery

I already have a countdown to bad stuff mechanic (The Doomsday Clock) so that’s the game, race the clock, escape or stop the Horror before the timer runs out. That seems to meet the expectations of pretty much every horror novel/movie. So there is the framework, escalating bad things while trying to solve a mystery and escape with your life.

I looked at Call of Cthulhu and Gumshoe and a few small PbtA horror/mystery games, and started writing a list of skills. Immediate roadblock was that if Players Characters are normal people the skills needed to be narrow so that I didn’t have a “Science” skill that let players be multidisciplinary super geniuses. Maybe that would be fine for a superhero game, but I find it silly in this context. So I was drawn to the CoC huge list of skills.

Long story short, is that writing a comprehensive list of skills is a fool’s errand. I didn’t like broad skills and I didn’t like having a sprawling list of narrow but finite skills either. So I came back around to a design I used in homebrew DnD games for many years. Write-In-Skills. Players pick whatever they want, and the GM then comes up with challenges that match those skills.

I prototyped that out, and it became a game of shoehorning in what your character was good at to succeed/win. Unfortunately it felt like empowerment instead of disempowerment, it still felt like an action game.

I thought a lot about Horror movies I liked, and how characters act in them. It’s not about what more skilled/powerful characters use prowess to overcome, it’s about their emotional reactions. How do you survive a horror movie? Luck and plot armor.

Here is my solution, Player Character skills will be facets of their personality. Still write in, but not practical stuff. If you play to your personality you are more likely to succeed. Rewards roleplaying and fits the narrative. I prototyped this, and I found that sometimes player’s would want to do pragmatic things. Solution, write in narrow practical skills, and write in personality facets. Having both feel good, and that easily mirrors Chronomutants separation of Physical/Intellectual skills to use two defenses. This two defense system has already been play-tested, and just feels good.

• Experience (= to total practical skills) resists emotional damage.
• Escape (= to number of total personality facets) resists physical damage.

So, consequences. Write-in skills make character creation much more intensive. Player Characters come out great, and fully formed, but just takes way longer than random generation.

Added a couple more character background things and here we go.

I came up with some random tables to give examples, inspire, or give a generic answer for if a Player gets stumped during character creation.

Player Character prototypes are ready. I then came up with an adventure outline for a bit of structure:

• Players are tasked with finding out the secrets of the Horror
• They investigate as the clock counts down. Each secret they uncover about the threat gives them a big mechanical advantage when they use the secret as leverage (Yellow d12 die) during the final confrontation.
• They gather secrets before the clock runs out and the Horror escalates.
• Big finish climax.

A small race the clock game, hopefully able to support players creating a horror story.

I’m adding two new rules to support the fiction:

1. A Player can choose to succeed on any roll by revealing secret information “I actually already knew where the cult meeting is, because I was asked to go…” at the cost of causing Emotional Harm to the party. (I’m thinking 2 Harm per Failure rolled, but playtesting could change this). To keep the plot moving forward.
2. A player that dies is replaced by their connected NPC who is defined during character creation.

The last (and most fun bit) is the GM prep. Coming up with Evil Secrets, an antagonistic force, a mystery, an escalating threat. I created a d20 table of secrets, seems to work best if you roll 2 and write in or pick a 3rd to connect the 1st two. I also included inspiration tables for Evil Lairs and Physical Trails, as well as some generic NPC obstacles and physical obstacles.

That’s it. Prototype ready. I’m going to try it out and see if it needs any real changes. I may staple an intro and the rules for resolving a narrative dice pool, and put it out as a parallel release. 

Stay horrifying,

-g