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Re: [RPG]: [Horror Week] Fear Itself, reviewed by Graham W (4/4)
I have Fear Itself; though I do like the focus on making investigative scenarios fun, it had a couple mismatches that I found jarring.
Now don't get me wrong, it's still a good game. I had been expecting it for a while; I loved the Book of Unremitting Horror, am a Robin Laws fan (Feng Shui FTW!) and also a Cthulhuite. So all three of these led me to the door of Fear Itself.
The first problem I had was with the character stereotypes. They were Scream style - Jock, Good Girl, Sexy Girl, etc. Very "All Flesh Must Be Eaten." But IMO the type of play that Fear Itself is for (as judging by BoUH and the sample scenario) is not really your standard slasher fare. In fact, the sample scenario deviates from the standard stereotypes immediately, a sign seen in many RPGs that have the same issue. Making this worse is the conceit that only one of the characters will be the "combat/investigative expert" and have all the good skills with the skills of the rest o the party being capped below theirs; that's not going to be popular among my players.
The second was the "unlimited ammo" rule. OK, I wish that this rule was in Feng Shui, but this game is much grittier - most gritty horror movies make a big deal about limited resources. I found it very out of place.
The third is unfortunately some of the aspects of the core mechanic. Two problems here. One, I don't mind the "PCs find the clue" thing - but I strongly feel that this should apply to some "core clue" and that they could find more clues and not simply interpret the provided one(s) with skill rolls/RP/thought. Two, I found the "spending points out of your pool" thing way too deterministic. IMO any mechanic that forces PCs to spend their "usefulness" along the way, it leads to metagaming and foot-dragging with spending them. Something sufficiently random like action points avoid this, but in this case, whole points on a d6, often required to make a roll, will lead to too much worrying about resources, a bad thing.
I thought the Affinities, Risk Factors, and Stability parts were great! And the creatures and sample scenario rocked. I can easily mess with the Stereotypes and the ammo rule, but the core mechanic is a lot harder to fiddle. So I'm left unsure about actually playing/running it...
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