Fear and Panic - Early Access
A downloadable game
This is a role-playing game you can use to tell horror stories. The rules of this game work about as well for any kind of horror tale, whether it's survival horror, investigative horror, liminal horror, or just a good old ghost story. It's a lot like other horror games you might have played. A GM unfolds the plot and everyone else plays a character. The characters have skills so you know what they're good at. But the characters don't freeze up or pass out when they get scared - fear gives them the motivation to act more forcefully, more frantically, more recklessly. And there's none of that business with hit points and tactical maps - combat is fast, lethal, and decisive.
If you're looking for adventures to play with this system, I've put together a list of system-neutral horror adventures you can find on Itch here. I particularly recommend Swineheart Motel and No Security.
It should also be easy to convert adventures from other horror systems, especially d100 ones like Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, and Mothership.
This game is only about half built. It's still in early access. If you play it, let me know how it goes! It's completely playable as it is, but it's my attempt to build a well-tuned horror game, so I expect I'll be tinkering with it for quite some time.
You can send feedback to Lymerpg@gmail.com, come talk about it on Discord, or join my mailing list for updates.
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This. This is (almost) exactly what I was looking for! A simple, flexible horror game, easily adaptable horror system for my games. Easy to teach, easy to run.
I do have few things to point out, though:
I really don't get the logic of weapons. Why does a sword makes you more menacing (and durable in combat) and helps you in Fight Rolls, but a bow doesn't? Also, there are no rules explaining what should be done if the contestants have the same value of Menace/Escape (which might be common, supposing that these Stats usually have pretty close numbers).
Also, since you can get straight up killed in a fight, and not fall dying on the floor, I don't see much reason for getting First Aid..
About Stress and Panicking: I like the idea of you getting better at something because you are panicking (adrenaline can make miracles), but if characters spend stress to do so, they might never gain a scar at all, unless they witness some real lovecarftian horror to immediately get a scar. MAYBE another interesting approach would be if they could GAIN stress in order to panic and get benefits. This way stress wouldn't be missinterpreted as a simple stat that you can spend to get bonuses, but a risky resource that you only should rely on in moments of despairing, life-or-death situations.
These are great questions!
For weapons, I tried to keep it pretty simple and keep all of the numbers low. Weapons that hit harder than an unarmed strike give a bonus to Menace. Weapons that are easy to use give a bonus to Fight rolls, but weapons that are difficult to use or require specialized training don't. Holding a sword or any other weapon that gives some reach does make it easier to hold off an attacker and land blows, giving a bonus to the Fight roll. I can definitely play a little with which weapons fall into which category.
First Aid can be used to remove the conditions Injured and Slowed. I should probably put in some more explicit rules about that.
Panicking and scars are the most experimental part of the game and the part I'm most likely to change. It would be interesting to do a playtest running it that way and see how it plays. It could also make for a nice alternate rule to adjust depending on the type of horror game.
Hmm gonna have to disagree about a handgun being easies to use than a sword in a fight. It's definitely much easier to threat, hold off and hurt someone with a pistol than with a sword, since you just have to move your finger and get a chance to severely injure or kill someone (I say that as someone who already fought in a sword fight. They are tough to even move!)
Otherwise, yeah. Thosr uses for First Aid make sense. It's just my CoC head thinking something else.