Roleplaying Fear: I ain't afraid of no ghosts

[Angela Christine]

I think part of the problem I have roleplaying fear is that there are few credible role models for it.  Sure, sometimes people get afraid in horror movies, but they are usually such dildo-heads that it is hard to empathize with them.  Fictional fear feels fake.  But where can you see real fear?   Not on Fear Factor, that's for sure. :roll:  Fear factor is about physical challenges and general disgust, not unreasoning fear.

However, there is a show on TV that _is_ all about fear.  MTV's Fear.    I recomend it as a RP resource for everyone, because you rarely get a chance to witness genuine unreasoning fear while you yourself are not involved.  The send 5 kids aged 18-25 or so to a place that is supposed to be haunted, like an old campground that was supposed to have been used by cultists for human sacrifices, a sanitarium with all the death and torture the medical proffesion could inflict on the chronically ill, a turn of the century factory complete with atrocious working  conditions, child labourers and needless death, etc.  The kids are supposedly alone, no staff, no camera crews, nothing but eachother and a lot of equipment.  They get wired up with cameras and have to go through dares, but they have radios and can quit any time.  They each wear a camera that faces their own face, and another that looks at what they are looking at, plus the locations where the dares take place are pre-wired with a bunch of cameras, so the audience gets a good shot of the contestent's reactions.  The places are old, usually abandoned, dirty, unkempt, creepy and in generally poor repair.  There may be rats, bugs, and other undesireable wildlife, but nothing overtly dangerous.

The dares are not physically taxing.  You might have to go into the woods alone to find a container of pigs blood, then take it to a barn and use it to draw a pentagram on the floor, later your group will hold a seance there.  Spend three minutes lying alone in a corpse drawer of a morgue, in complete radio silence.  Two of you go dig up an empty coffin, then one of you has to get in, close the lid, and stay there in radio silence while the other guy covers the coffin with dirt again, and doesn't dig you out for 30 minutes.  Go sit in a locked hanging cage where a deformed little bastard child spent his whole miserable life.  Go sit in a tiny room of mirrors, stare into the mirror and ask a spirit to show itself to you for an hour.  That sort of thing.  The dares take place between midnight and 6 am of two consecutive nights.  Everyone who stays for the whole time wins $5000.

The beauty of it is that it is a contest almost entirely of pure fear.  Unreasonable fear.  Fear with no obvious, rational cause.  Oh sure, there are the usual "cold spots" and occasional strange noises, but those things could easily be explained as either normal for decrepit old buildings, or simply minor special effects engineered by the producers of the show to scare the kids.  A cold, rational person can easily dismiss the other claims of the participants as simply the products of over-active imaginations, they certainly never capture any hard proof of supernatural activity.

All this from the vague sense that there may be ghosts around, being alone a strange place, a few unexplained noises, and the fear of the unknown.  How much worse would it be to encounter a defiler or other magickal being?  Not just tricks of shadow and echo that probably can not hurt you, but something that you absolutely know can hurt you?

I unequivically recomend everyone watch a few episodes of this show.  It is a particularily helpful roleplaying resource because they show the kids in their hotels before they arrive at the site, so you get to see something of their character when they are in a fairly familiar and safe environment.  It is fun to guess which ones will crumble and run away, and which will stick it out to the bitter end.  As you can guess, the ones that are all bravado and bluster are not always the ones that make it all the way through.  Some have faith that their God or spirituality will bring them through unharmed, but will that faith really sustain them when the shit hits the fan?  Some seem very stable and grounded, at least until they are alone in the dark and run into a cobweb.  This is useful, because it can show you the way various personalities may react in the face of fear.  How long will the confident young men and women keep their cool when faced with unreasonable fear?

I find it interesting that the most common reaction isn't to scream, wet themselves, vomit or do other flashy exhibitions.  Mostly they just breath heavily and express a sincere desire to be somewhere else.  I want my mom.  I've got to get out of here.  I want to be safe and comfortable.

It is played on YTV in Canada, and I assume it is on MTV in the USA.


If you don't have cable, the next best thing might be The Blair Witch Project, which you can probably rent now days for 99 cents.  Since you know it is fake it isn't particularily scary in itself, but I think the actor's reactions are a pretty good example of how a small party might react when they get lost or trapped in a scary place.  Sooner or later, one of your PCs will get trapped in a scary place.  :twisted:



Any other recomendations of resources for roleplaying intense emotions?



Angela Christine

[Bestatte]

I developed a phobia of heights over the past 10 years. I never used to have it, and I have no idea why it showed up. Nothing traumatic has occurred to trigger this phobia. And it isn't just fear of heights - I can still climb a tree without a problem, I can still stand on the roof of my house, and hike up a mountain, no problem.

But when Hubby took me up to the top of that tower thingie in Las Vegas, and we went on the rollercoaster, I new fear. Gut-wrenching, crying my eyes red, oh-my-god-I'm-gonna-die terror. And - I LOVE rollercoasters. Even now.

Then we went on a trip to Wyoming and drove up the mountains, and whenever we drove on the side of the road where the edge drops down a sheer cliff face, I felt it again. Absolute sheer terror. I was so mortified I could barely open my mouth to beg him to turn around and drive back down.

I haven't experienced that yet in Armageddon...nothing has happened to my characters yet to experience THAT level of terror yet. But at least I know what it feels like and can relate to it when I'm giving my character different variants of fear in response to things they encounter.

[Anonymous]

Play Call of Cthulhu by candlelight on a rainy night with a good GM.

[Savak]

I developed a fear of posts that long.  You could try summarising it at the top?  Otherwise, sorry.

[Agent_137]

It's actually pretty well written, and relevant. You should try it.

[Armaddict]

Roleplaying out fear correctly isn't the problem, yet.

Right now, I'd like to see more people -willing- to be scared.  Too many want their character to be the fearless, hardcore bastard.  Some of them have reason to be.  Others just -won't-.  That templar threatens torture to that guilder, and all of a sudden, that frail looking guy just toughens up and won't say a damn thing despite being raped repeatedly with a barb-pointed spear.

Enrich the environment a little, I say, and actually give your character some -faults-, instead of trying to be superman.

Disclaimer:  I'm not attacking anyone personally, as I haven't been in the position to see someone actually scared out of their wits recently.  Well...except one, and she did pretty damn good.  I would just like to see a general movement in the playerbase towards there being some 'weaker' characters, as opposed to everyone having all confidence and no doubts in zalanthan life.

[WarriorPoet]

Good post, AC. Never saw the show, but I like things like that. I like to have my heart pound and my breath quicken. Fun fun.

When my characters get into trouble I usually beg and whine and plead for my miserable little life, truly scared. Afterwards, though, is different. It's like Pinky on Next Friday.

")*sniffle* That nigga had me scared, but I held my own... Shit...."

I will agree that I would like to see more fear from characters. I hate it when I see a weak-ass beggar, filth beneath a Templars boot, goes down defiantly. Beg! Plead! For fucks sake, COWER!



[ramdom] 2 minutes left of my 21st b-day. Is it sad that I blew my friends off, got my girlfriend to drive my drunk ass home, and decided to spend the rest of the night here? Maybe. Do I care? A little, but it's satisfying, nonetheless.

[Dracul]

Dude...AC...Im gonna download episodes of that show now (no cable...)

it sounds awesome.

[Angela Christine]

There is a place between what you are feeling and what you claim you are feeling, and both of those are probably different from what you remember later.  That's one of the things I like about the show showing people who are actually afraid, not acting the way they think a fearfull person would act.  Sometimes they are trying to talk tough, but they are still pale, shaking, and nearly gasping for breath.  

I don't know if I could pull it off, but having someone acting defiant while they are obvioulsy afraid would make a much more complex scene.  Showing fear while also showing that the character is obviously trying to suppress that fear would be be hard to do, it would take a skillfull roleplayer.  That would be cool.


Even shouting "Freedom!" before the PC dies would be less cheesy if you show that the character was _nearly_ broken, and was using his final reserve of strength on a last, futile gesture of defiance.  That would be a lot more powerful than just a robot-man who is incapable of fear or pain, because nobody is sad to see an autistic sociopath die.


AC

[Armaddict]

I'd do well on that show.

I grew up around 'scary' places like that.

I actively seek them out in places within two or so hours.  I like taking friends there and explaining the stories, seeing them get scared shitless.

It's kinda strange, I actually -like- those places.  I grew up on a house that's proclaimed as one of the most haunted houses in the nation.  Slaves were murdered and tortured there, and a man in the early 40's had girls live with him.  When he left, they were nowhere to be found, and when he was asked, he denied having lived with them.

Proably some bodies in that house somewhere, heh.

[jhunter]

Yeah, I find those shows kinda of funny. That stuff doesn't scare me one bit because I -know- there is nothing to be afraid of. I used to go to places that people would call scary, just so I could watch their reactions.

[Angela Christine]

So, you guys are bragging about being abnormal? Oookaay.  


I'm not saying that watching the show is scary for the observer, that would make it less useful.  Observing genuine fear when you yourself are not afraid, or otherwise emotionally involved, is useful because it lets you make dispasionate observations of what fear looks like.  What fear sounds like.  You can be afraid without being passive, being afraid and still continuing on is pretty much the definition of bravery.  Being completely fearless is not bravery, fearlessness is more like a mental illness. Bravery is much more complex than fearlessness, and more interesting.


AC

[jhunter]

There is a difference between knowing what is irrational fear and what is a fear of something real.

My point is, these people should have the brains to -know- nothing is going to happen to them, they're on television. The show wouldn't last long if there was any -real- danger to them.

:roll:

[Angela Christine]

Update, more information:
http://www.warpbreach.com/3/3.html

http://jebzingo.tripod.com/ghosts/fearshmear.html

Too bad it was canceled.
http://www.fridaynightproductions.com/Frameset1.asp

[SanityAssassin]

People react to fear and stress differently.  In the handful of adult crisis/frightening situations I have been in, my adrenaline kicked in and my brain went on autopilot until things were resolved.  It is only afterwards that I get the shakes or otherwise feel the effects of fear.  Was I scared?  Of course.  Did it show or effect my actions during the crisis?  Not really.  I've seen some guys who get aggressive when frightened or stressed.  It's really hard to pigeonhole what people do when scared.

Not everyone is emotionally expressive.  Furthermore, many men are deeply conditioned to hide emotions that imply weakness or effeminacy.  We can be terrified inside and go to our deaths without showing it to another.  Since many Zalanthan women are rather masculine, I would think that conditioning applies to them as well.

That being said, over the top supernatural terror should be RPed.  With the rampant superstition and fear of majick in Armageddon, I can see how role playing piss-your-pants terror might crop up once in a while.

[Visitor]

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!

[Akaramu]

I have absolutely no problem roleplaying fear as the thought of losing a PC scares the heck outta me. I've had actual heartflutters and trembling hands more than once. Normally in jail, with templars.  :wink:

So whoever said you cant make people be afraid in a game was wrong.

[sarahjc]

Good One AC! That is a good show to actually watch fear in motion, I have seen it, it's good. As a child I have been truly afraid a few times and I have found that it often involves a bit of crying, voice cracking, begging and mostly loose knees.  As an adult I felt true fear once, and it involved some crazy nerves and again, shaky knees and shaky just about everything else. I can remember having a hard time trying to dial a phone.

I do think when your PC falls into a situation where the motivation of the PC's around you is to make you fearful, or cause you pain, you as a player need to stop a moment and take stock of your character, put personal pride aside and say.. Should I and or would I be afraid? When something creepy or horrible happens to my Pc's I too get a bit scared, but not personally scared, it's not a pure reaction. I often find that visualization helps a lot, not just reading, but visualizing what is happening to your PC.

I can never understand those PC's who can get their arm pulled off by a Half-giant and not feel pain. Or Emote gritting their teeth and turning red. Your arm is being pulled off!!!  Scream, cry.. Beg for Mercy!

When scary things happen to my PC, much like Akaramu I get nervouse too.

[JollyGreenGiant]

I can never understand those PC's who can get their arm pulled off by a Half-giant and not feel pain.

Mostly, I think I'd pass out in this case.