Advice/Help Advice on running a horror-survival RP without stats?

[Squad141]

Hey all. I've been really thinking of running a winter/holiday-themed horror adventure in the style of Krampus with a larger cast ala Until Dawn, and I think something in that vein would be fun. The issue though, is that I want to run it as rules-light as possible, but I'm unsure of how to have player who can fight back without full-on scripting encounters with the scary beasts.

Any advice on something like that?

 

[Chiester]

Where do you plan to run this? Here on RPN? Because RPNs dice system is very simple iirc. Only d6 dice.

 

[AaronMk]

Adapt horror literary rules.

The beast is not known
It shall not be known (at least up until the end, and then implied incomplete)
The characters should always be on the knife's edge of survival; or using GM privilege you can select participants to die

 

[Squad141]

Where do you plan to run this? Here on RPN? Because RPNs dice system is very simple iirc. Only d6 dice.

On here, yes, and I suppose that would be easy.

I'm just worried that going too dicey will make it feel too much like a DiceRP wheras I want it more in the genre of general Group, but making it too literary may make it feel like deaths are just chosen and won't hold as much weight. I'm leaning towards the latter, but other opinions would be helpful.

 

[Chiester]

I dont th8nk there is any way around it. If you want it to have stakes, youbare gonna have to add some sort of resource management. If not literal HP, why don't you go with an injury system? For every proper hit you take you get an injury, and if you get a certain amount of injuries you die. Thats easier to rp too, since its easier to understand when you break an arm or hurt your knee than just sating "you lose 4 hp."

You can use RPNs d6 rolls for the rolls. You just have to let the player know which roll (challenge rating?) they need to beat, and they roll during their post.

Mm... it would be a little strange, but if you make a thread for it I can show you during a test run.

 

[Beckoncall]

I have an idea that would be easy to interpret, and maybe even fun to implement. Every Participant has a certain amount of FOCUS, which would be modified by their relative resolve/courage (for bonuses) and injury/fear (for minuses) -- Focus has a starting base of 10 and you recover focus at the start of every post you make.

Focus works like this:

If you are actively trying to do something that would normally use dice, it costs an amount of that posts focus to do it right. If you don't spend focus doing things that take focus/chance, the focus is instead used to protect the player -- they are either focusing on doing things successfully, or using that focus to be aware of themselves, their surroundings, and threats. So you could use 10 focus in a post and hope to get a headshot on the baddie, but it would leave you vulnerable because you have no focus/awareness for threats or surprises. If you are just running or dodging or hiding, focus will protect you from a series of attacks/threats relative to their strength but if they in aggregate overcome your focus you start getting hit anyway. Likewise, if you're attacking everything that focus is divvied up between all those different actions.

Get my drift? we can talk about it more if you're intrigued, but it gives you the GM all the power to interpret how things shake out, is not complicated for the players (they might know how much focus they have but not how it's spent exactly in a post) or you could leave it entirely to you "behind the screen" to use this mechanic to see how things work out.

 

[Squad141]

I have an idea that would be easy to interpret, and maybe even fun to implement. Every Participant has a certain amount of FOCUS, which would be modified by their relative resolve/courage (for bonuses) and injury/fear (for minuses) -- Focus has a starting base of 10 and you recover focus at the start of every post you make.

Focus works like this:

If you are actively trying to do something that would normally use dice, it costs an amount of that posts focus to do it right. If you don't spend focus doing things that take focus/chance, the focus is instead used to protect the player -- they are either focusing on doing things successfully, or using that focus to be aware of themselves, their surroundings, and threats. So you could use 10 focus in a post and hope to get a headshot on the baddie, but it would leave you vulnerable because you have no focus/awareness for threats or surprises. If you are just running or dodging or hiding, focus will protect you from a series of attacks/threats relative to their strength but if they in aggregate overcome your focus you start getting hit anyway. Likewise, if you're attacking everything that focus is divvied up between all those different actions.

Get my drift? we can talk about it more if you're intrigued, but it gives you the GM all the power to interpret how things shake out, is not complicated for the players (they might know how much focus they have but not how it's spent exactly in a post) or you could leave it entirely to you "behind the screen" to use this mechanic to see how things work out.

This is actually an incredibly nice system! It only uses one 'stat', and like you said, it's implications are 'behind the screen' so I can make things fair without the players knowing exactly what a certain Focus might give. I might actually use this!

 

[nerdy tangents]

Alternatively building on the above in a even more simple way - tell the players themselves whose gonna die at the beginning.

I had a murder mystery roleplay once which used a similar dynamic. The main plot was people trying to figure out who killed the NPC, we were all given a motive/alibi by the GM when our character was approved. Now this was known only to us and the GM so we had to try to uncover other people’s alibi/motive and figure out who did it (or for the person who was playing the killer, keep everyone off their back).

I think if when people sign up you randomize their fate (like your character gets killed by X on day Y.)

Then they know kinda what to aim for, and for the ones who get taken out early maybe they can be turned into some kind of beasts? Or make new characters? Dunno if that part would work but you can workshop it to fit the narrative.