Fear and Panic
A downloadable game
Fear and Panic is a roleplaying game that can be used to tell horror stories. The kind of stories that happen to normal people like you and me. Maybe somewhere else, maybe a while ago, or maybe even here and now. There are all kinds of horror stories to tell.
You can tell stories about the fantastic monsters of mythology. A rusted blade that swings in the dark. The depths of human depravity and cruelty. Alien terrors from beyond reality. Thinly-veiled metaphors for the troubling things that keep you up at night. Or those troubling things themselves, raw and bloody, unveiled.
Fear and Panic is a personal labor of love. I designed it to be a focused, frictionless system that plays the way I run horror for my home group. Jaded veterans may find it covers familiar territory with satisfying efficiency, while new players will find it easy to learn.
Character creation is lightning fast. Combat is simple and deadly, with simultaneous resolution, no tactical maps, and no hitpoints. The d100 skill system will be familiar to players of popular horror RPGs and gives just enough crunch for characters to feel mechanically different. Witnessing horrors gives your characters Fear, a useful resource they can spend to push themselves beyond their normal abilities.
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, Dark Heresy, and Mothership.
Fear and Panic is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License. This means anyone can make, distribute, and sell their own hacks of the system or adventures for it without needing permission first! You just have to provide attribution and a link to this page somewhere.
Please, help yourself to a community copy before you buy one! You can pay me later if you think it's worth it. Physical copies are available here.
Page banner background courtesy of Roque Romero's Horror Pack.
You can send feedback to Lymerpg@gmail.com, come talk about it on Discord, or join my mailing list for updates.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
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Community Copy
If you want to check this out without paying for whatever reason, help yourself to a copy here.
Development log
- PDFs Updated to Terminus Edition45 days ago
- Fear and Panic is Live!Aug 18, 2025
Comments
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This is a quick read and really clearly laid out.
Typo p 31 New Skills: “subvervsion”
Shouldn’t the Roan vs Spawn skill roll example end with “a success equal to or higher than 19” because the Spawn’s Athletics skill is higher than Roan’s Make and so wins any plain success ties?
Thanks, and thank you for catching those! I just fixed them.
This system is really, really good! It's clear, concise, and very quick to pick up. I can't wait to run this the next time I'm running a horror adventure.
The fight and flight rules are the exact level of lethal and exciting I want in a horror game, and I can already imagine a lot of situations playing out with them.
Spending Fear for "boons" is a unique take that I really like. Since you're only gaining 1 Fear at a time, you can mitigate taking permanent scars relatively easily—when I run, I might experiment with variable amounts of Fear so it's always a risk to accumulate it. But I'm really impressed with this idea.
Lastly, thank you for the shoutout to Swineheart Motel! I can see this system running the adventure PERFECTLY. I added a bunch of community copies for anyone looking for an adventure to use Fear & Panic with!
Cheers.
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.