Fear Itself
Wanna know how to get your players’ attention? Post this mess into the group forum: “Apropos of nothing, please take a moment to list your character’s greatest fear.” Among my group, the paranoia and speculation were rampant. Were there evil illusionists coming up? Maybe a phantasmal killer trap? Harry Potter style boggarts? How can we buff our Will saves on short notice? Dude, lend me your cloak of resistance!
But as much fun as it was watching my players squirm, their responses were even better.
- Accident-Prone Alchemist: Loss of remaining un-exploded family.
- Unhinged Investigator: Learning I’m farther gone than I realized. (e.g. My familiar is imagined, I’m still trapped on that island, etc.)
- Preening Sorcerer: Obscurity. I left home because I needed to be a special snowflake. Finding out I’m normal and boring would be terrifying.
- Frat Boy Paladin: My friends turning on me, a lack of fellowship, betrayal from within.
- Paranoid Oracle: EVERYTHING!
Most of the time we think about character questionnaires as before-the-campaign type exercises. We jot down our answers, flesh out our dudes, and then let the dice fall where they may from session 1 on. But I’ve found that staggering the questions out and using them as foreshadowing can keep players invested. The variant harpies that my players encountered were almost beside the point. Their nightmare-inducing song may have yielded some cool moments (“I would never betray you, bro! Let’s hug it out.”) but the introspection was the real highlight. My players paused, reflected, and got to know their PCs a little bit better. That can’t help but improve a campaign.
So in the spirit of today’s comic, what do you say we repeat the exercise right here and now? Take a minute and tell us about your character’s greatest fears. Let’s hear it down in the comments!
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure hall will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
I have had several characters over the years, however below are the fears of some of my most recent characters.
My druid character has an irrational fear of skunks, or more accurately being sprayed by one. He believes there is no true defense against them, and swears even magic cannot completely wash out or cover up the smell.
My yuan-ti pureblood character has a fear of R.O.U.S’s (including dire rats). Of course, this stems from a traumatic childhood experience where his own food tried to eat him.
When you live alone in the woods, far from supermarkets and handy cans of tomato sauce, skunk fear is anything but irrational.
First I’ll answer the question asked, then I’ll go on a little rant about a pet peeve of mine that’s relevant to today’s comic.
I am lucky enough to be playing in two campaigns currently.
Heavenly Deer’s greatest fear is that her lover will discover that she is secretly a Solar Exalt, or Anathema as the Dynasty (of which said lover is a member) call them, and that she will lose her.
Bob on the other hand I’m unsure about, because part of his concept is that despite being a big jolly janitor type very far in over his head he is surprisingly fearless.
In many way’s he is too optimistic for even the things that would scare him to classify as his greatest fear, since he doesn’t actually spend time thinking about it, and mostly assumes that everything will work out.
The thing that would probably scare him the most if confronted with it would probably have to be his friends getting hurt out here in the wasteland without him being able to help, or worse them becoming someone that hurts other people without good reason.
Now for the rant:
Phantasmal Killer as a spell annoys me in this context, because people describe things that are far to small for the actual effect.
The spell grants you two saves, first a will save to realize that the vision isn’t real and then, if you fail that, a fortitude save to avoid literally dying of fright.
Now look at that scene with Powerhorse, it is a classic scene that someone might choose as their greatest fear, but if the groups next fight was with a gunslinger that started the fight by critting Fighter twice and he died, do you think Powerhorse’s hypothetical player would be rolling a fortitude save to avoid dying? After all the vision he just defined as “so scary to him he could very well die of fright” happened for real.
Of course he wont, and the player would likely be quite upset if you insisted as the DM that they had to, not without justification.
Therefore Phantasmal Killer gives people the choice of either selecting a non-de-script fear of lovecraftian vagueness, or of instead pick a character revealing fear which then proceeds to be immersion breaking in it’s inconsistent application if you actually stop to think about it.
I choose to believe that phantasmal killer invests your greatest fear with a supernatural sense of dread. In my headcanon it’s not the vision itself, but the magic woven into it.
Spiders. This is based on a real incident in game where a miscast enlarge spell ended up turning an ordinary spider into a giant monstrosity and I, being the paladin, got to face tank the stupid thing while it tried to eat my face.
Im also arachnophobic in real life, so that was not the greatest of sessions for me. Luckily, as a paladin, he has the wonderful class feature of “just getting over it” whenever something scary this way comes, so as long as we didn’t have like a picture or anything I was fine.
I’m fine with spiders. If we were fighting a giant house centipede on the other hand:
http://extension.msstate.edu/sites/default/files/newsletter-images/bugs-eye-view/centipede.jpg
In 5E Spiders are Tiny, so they could grapple a small creature. Many Halfling and Gnome children are abducted in the night by spiders.
So my Paladin’s greatest fear is that he isn’t up to the task and will get people killed.
This manifested (Pre level 10 because it’d be pointless after that) as all of his teammates dead, with their corpses talking aboot various ways he isn’t good enough. His friend who got petrified because he didn’t stare at his feet when instructed to talked aboot how I didn’t keep him in line, the friend who got killed in an ally’s betrayal talked aboot how I didn’t see through the ally’s shit, etc.
I made the save. “I’ll show yez who’z good enough!” and immediately used Wrathful Smite on the Yuan Ti Nightmare Speaker who tried to pull that shit. “I’m not afraid ‘f yez, yez afraid ‘f me!”
Yup. That’s pretty much how it went with the harpies.
“I would never betray you, bro! Let’s hug it out.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMCuJTqkPJI
I must demonstrate these paladin personification techniques to Laurel. For character development.
Go for it bro! Or should I say… “Bro for it!”
Quote from a thing:
Guy 1 (to Guy 2): “You see, we have more than mere friendship. We possess an Eternal Bond of Broness that binds us together.”
Girl 1: “What about me?”
Guy 1: “I haven’t known you as long, but we also possess a strong, though not quite as strong, Bond of Broness.”
Girl 1: “But I’m a girl.”
Guy 1: “BRONESS IS GENDER-NEUTRAL!”
For my Mousefolk Monk that I’m playing in Jade Regent, his greatest fear is, unironically, death. He’s one of those races that live for a max of 40 years or so. He wants to travel the entire world and see everything there is to see in his short lifetime. His whole existence is like a race track, with death chasing after him and pitfall traps all over the ground.
This is the premise of the character at least – I try to base everything on it. Like how he most always goes for nonlethal damage. He’s not a pacifist or a particularly good person, but he’s pretty empathetic. How could he seriously attempt to kill someone when he can see himself in their shoes/paws?
He’s also really good at intimidating people while beating them down, even though he’s an adorable little fluffball. I imagine the reason for that being that he knows the fear of being close to death, so he can remind enemies of it with his blows. Well, that and the whole shadow magic thing he’s got going on, that helps too.
You’ve gotta wonder why most ratfolk don’t feel that way? Maybe your guys has spent too much time around elves or something.
BTW, how are you liking the nonlethal shtick? I’ve been toying with a nonlethal wild rager…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/barbarian/archetypes/paizo-barbarian-archetypes/wild-rager/
…but I worry about being ineffective against half my opponents. Any good solutions so far?
He did have a defining moment early on in his life when one of his neighbors died of old age – that was the trigger, combined with him always being way too energetic and having dreams of travelling the world. It was one of those “what am I even doing with my life” revelation moments, and it stuck with him I guess!
About the nonlethal thing, I like it conceptually, but I’m not 100% mechanically invested into it or anything. It’s mainly the Enforcer feat, combined with some Intimidation synergy.
A few battles come when we’re be fighting Constructs or Undead, or something, and I gotta give up on that plan. But that’s probably okay, in my case? I can still just whack them repeatedly and be effective. I see the problem with that in your case, though… you don’t wanna be reducing enemies to 0 HP, right?
I immediately think of this relatively recent feat that might help when you’re forced to use lethal damage, at least in some cases.
http://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Change%20of%20Heart
Holy shit, that is amazing for the build! It sets up a “Mongo use words, not fists” sort of character, which would be a blast and a half to play. I mean, when was the last time you saw a berserk barbarian act as the party face?
It certainly is one of the most well-designed feats imo – ties mechanics and narrative beautifully. I kinda wish it had an option for Intimidation as well as Diplomacy, to be honest… but anyway.
Probably not suited for just any martial character, but I’m glad I could help with yours!
O shit, you have a Paladin with the Oath of Brotherhood?
https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/aoy72g/paladin_oath_of_brotherhood_aka_the_broath/
I need to show this to Laurel. It’s her paladin. I predict that she will giggle.
And thus ends the life of Fighter #38. We hope his loving brother, Fighter #39, can avenge this injustice! Or justice. Knowing Fighter, it was probably justice.
Actually the next one is 40. I don’t know which fighter this was though since it’s clearly an illusory recreation of Horsepower’s tragic backstory.
When did #39 kick the bucket? Cleric’s dialog when Fighter fell prey to Mordenkainen’s Piranha Cube of Highly Inefficient Demise clearly implied they had access to ressurection magic.
Fighter’s player brings in a new character whenever doing that and inheriting his old loot is easier/cheaper than paying for resurrection.
It’s a sensible cost savings!
It may have been justice but you can be sure that Fighter #39 will want to avenge it anyway.
Nevermind, we’re currently on 40. 39 died here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/altered-bestiary
Earning that title!
Wow. Horsepower/Lumberjack is REALLY afraid of blood staining stone tiles. Or maybe he took Drawback: Afraid of Disorganized Pearls. What? He can’t be afraid of Fighter dying. Fighter dies all the time. ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/send-in-the-clones) He also once tried to sell Lumberjack to a glue factory for a griffin, though I guess they worked that out. ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/loyal-steeds )
I spent some time thinking of what Fighter’s worst fear would be, and I was split between losing all of his loot, the mental image of Cleric’s female armor ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/equal-armortunity ) or this incident ( https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/deniability ), though in his defense, he is 100% confident that that last one absolutely did not happen, regardless of how many pictures Wizard took.
Hey, Lumberjackk Explosion and Fighter are bros!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-05
It’s just that Fighter has exceptionally poor brosmanship.
…I just realized that the alt-text of “Early Detection” (“And believe me brah, you do NOT want to wake up with a case of greenscale.”) actually happened to Fighter in “Deniability.” Lumberjack tried to warn him…
…Whereas Lumberjack Explosion has exceptionally good brosmanship.
And you! You see nothing because your character isn’t well developed!
1:37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8dXuGof7dc
Creating TRPG content is a lot like living in that “Simpsons did it” episode of Soth Park. I guess it’s the price we pay for living in a land of tropes.
Normally GMing now, so it has been a bit since my last character. But I imagine her greatest fear would be giant spiders… with the faces of her parents… criticizing all of her life choices, calling her a failure, saying she has no friends, and saying that her magic is wrong/bad. (Necromancy/Shadow magic)
I think that might be a Stephen King plot.
My Brawler WASN’T afraid of ghosts… then another character who was originally from Ustalav, started talking.
After a few stories of first-hand-accounts they had with people waking up without their skin (or worse), she was terrified to sleep that night… now we are cruising around the open sea on a haunted ship… the ghost is nice though. Hasn’t even flayed anyone’s skin… yet…
On the plus side, she CAN’T WAIT to make landfall 😀
My Kobold Sniper who wants to become a legend is afraid of never leaving his mark on the world.
The unlucky catfolk who is barely able to keep her powers from hurting the wrong people, is afraid of them getting even worse and driving everyone away…
I dig that brawler one. I tend to prefer the fears that rise from play rather than backstory. Plus it takes a bit of a sense of humor to admit that you are a-sacred of spooks. In a world of tough guys, acting like Shaggy in a haunted house is the exception rather than the rule!
Hang on, the Horsepower actually cares about Fighter’s well-being? Talk about a hidden identity. Not sure what the pearls are about though.
My only encounter with the Phantasmal Killer spell was a rather poor experience on account of bad DM-ing. Our DM, who was obsessed with making things ‘dramatic’ (read: difficult by bending the rules and making increasingly hostile and dangerous challenges that we barely scraped by) decided to use the spell on one of our party members during a Adventure Path’s final boss enocounter (for those wondering which one – it involved a smoke-filled tower).
Cue the PC nonchalantly dying instantly due to two failed saves. No fanfare, no RP, just dead, because very little DMing short of a retcon can stop an already-identified spell. Because the the DM fully expected the PC to make the save and wasn’t prepared for the alternative. That PC wasn’t happy, to say the least, and was essentially ejected from the fight and had to be cloned a replacement later – but he dropped out soon afterwards.
The pearls are a Batman reference.
I worried that it might be a little esoteric. The scrollover text was supposed to be the helpful hint. :/
This is why when i Gm, I avoid Death Effects. Nothing kills a Player’s enjoyment of the game like “Well, you failed this roll, you’re dead and nothing you have access to will bring you back.” The most harsh thing isn’t the “Save or Out” mechanics, cause you see those in Sleep, Color Spray and several other disabling spells. Its the “you are dead, and it can’t be fixed by anything short of a 14th level caster.” People tend to forget that.
And yes, before i posted this, I did stop and check Phantasmal Killer and note that in Pathfinder at least, it does not have the Death tag. Still, my argument against Death Effects in general stands.
Saw a Gm kill his story when he hadn’t intended to because he hit us with Circle of Death at 9th level. All three of us failed the save, and the math just worked out to we were at the edge of the spell’s effectiveness. So he dropped the Witch, Inquistor and Summoner with one spell, leaving the Cleric and Swashbuckler to fight the boss. Then this interaction occurred:
Cleric: “I cast Breath of Life on the Witch.”
Me: “No you don’t, cause your character has the skills to know it won’t work. You made your Spellcraft, you know Curse of Death is a Death effect. Breath of Life explicitly doesn’t work if the target was killed by a Death effect.”
GM’s Eyes go Wide.
Cleric: “But…”
Me: “We require…Flips through book No, Raise Dead won’t do it either. We require Resurrection, a Seventh Level Spell.”
GM heavy sweats.
Cleric: “Oh…uh…okay.”
GM: “Well, you can try it?” Hopeful tone
Me: Starts building new character
Looks like we got a lawful good rules lawyer over here: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-high-ground
Let’s see. Current PCs’ greatest fears:
Bint: the top hat hasn’t fooled anyone: everyone knows just how short he really is, and they’re all laughing at him over it.
Melira: having stumbled into betraying her country, she is terrified that she’s going to wind up killing one of her childhood friends.
Teleri: fears that she will be forgotten; that nothing she ever does will be remembered past her own death.
How tall is the top hat?
Why to use fear as backstory? Use it as character development. Your PC is not afraid of anything, then adventure came and he learns to feel fear. Another good strategy is not exploit what players fear but that which they will learn to fear. Like my group, a mini campaign with me as dm and now they can’t stand “Still alive”.
I get flashbacks to “I have no mouth and I must scream” whenever I think about that song too hard. It is suitably terrifying without additional context!
This was a triumph, it’s hard to overstate my satisfaction. So do you understand what my friends suffer thanks to me. But there’s no sense crying over every mistake, at least I DID give them cake 🙂
One thing I was thinking is that many times fear in roleplay needs to be something relevant for the game. Fear of spiders or undead people is dm bait, many players then use their personal fears for their characters or use a common one, spiders, death, fire, darkness, wholemeal bread, snails and that. Still fear itself is irrational, a common fear, a personal one or something a player pluck out from his character backstory is all rational ways of getting something that is irrational on his core. Let’s speak about my very own fears. I don’t like spiders and getting high. Spiders as a fear is common, fear of getting high too. Sometimes I need to go to a building and I need to use the stair or an elevator to get high, it’s something I can’t avoid. This fears are not my main fear still, just aspects of another fear of mine, death, which is not my one a truth fear. That honor goes to nothing, not that I am afraid of nothing but the Nothing itself is what I fear. I am that kind of person that will be relieved if after dying a demon promise me a eternity of suffering, that would mean that my soul and conciencious will live and exist after death. Huge relief. Now, how I can use that existencial fear in a campaign? It’s pretty difficult. That is way I choose to make the fears of my characters come to me. I mean, let’s play and find what my PC fears. In any case I don’t worry may my PC die, but still I am alive
I am roleplaying and I am still alive
I feel fantastic and I am still alive
While there is a TPK I’ll be still alive
And when my PC needs resurrection I’ll be still alive
Still alive.
STILL ALIVE!
Just kidding :p
Also is Fighter’s name Thomas?
Now I’ve got the jibblies. Thanks.
No. His name is “Fighter.”
You are welcome. Sorry for that but that story about my companions and that song is one I really like. The sensation of pride and accomplishment you get when you know you have traumatized you friends for life miserable marvellous 🙂
Does fighter own a last name or is that kind of one-name-only person? What about Fighter’s father? Was he Fighter’s father of name or maybe Pipe-smoker? 🙂
These are mysteries the keep me up at night.
My current gunslinger’s greatest fear is that for all his strength and his preparation to war with the giants, that it’ll be all for nothing. The idea that he sacrificed so much, lost so much, and turned away any chance he had for a peaceful life only to find out it meant nothing. He doesn’t care if he does fivhting giants; he’s prepared for that. What he fears is that somehow he’ll lose in such a way there is no fighting back. Or worse, making peace with the giants. Again e had already sacrificed so much for his battles. How could he live with himself if everyone he lost died for nothing?
I like the “fear of peace” thing. I could picture a bunch of giants coming over for a friendly bbq and throwing halfling kabobs on the grill.
He’d end up the type of dude who’s super racists because of the war and thinks the worse out of even kind gesture they do. Help him gather wood? Obviously they’re thieves. Get him groceries? Bet it’s poisoned. Take him to the doctor when he fell and can’t get up? Bastards must be trying to blackmail him.
I think I’ve seen this movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Torino
Drat I thought you were going to ask if we had any moments of throwing a fear based threat at the players. I do and I’ll tell that one later.
Issac Walberisisi Substitute High school science teacher in a post apocalyptic campaign had a fear of the dark (and to a greater extent the unknown) so in a lot of stealth situations he had to bring light or else he’d become afraid.
Ezekiel Walberisisi who’s ancestor was Issac was a top of his class physicist in outer space who had a crippling fear of being sucked out into space. He could was always wearing a space suit and when the party got a larger ship that could hold our original ship he remained in the smaller one just in case.
Itzli the (basically a kineticist but it’s Savage worlds) had grown up in a village that wasn’t known for building high up and later learned he had a fear of heights. The party quickly got an airship and he was hurling for the most part. He did however dive overboard to save an ally (who had only fallen overboard because he tried to punch me and missed.)
I intend to throw a boogeyman at the party as they go into the sewers to slay him, the boogeyman has adopted the disguise of a long dead serial killer and has been feeding off that fear. His plan of attack is to separate the party and cast “Youthful Appearance” to make the party look like children and then attack because it prefers to hunt kids. I have a system where I let the players detail the killing blow and halfway through I’ll let them deal the “killing blow” only to reveal that the serial killer isn’t real and the boogeyman will turn into their greatest fears.
Wait…. the boogeyman isn’t the encounter you wanted to talk about? What have you done that tops that!?
after surviving one near TPK: another near TPK.
it does come up in game, regularly.
Meta. Do the PCs use the term “TPK” in-game?
no. and luckily our Paladin and support Cleric have designed their chars for survivability. so it’s more a case of „ahhh We Are ALL Going To Dieeee!!
but… not today, apparently.“
I sometimes wonder if the PCs would develop similar terms to the players. “Party balance” and “murderhobo” and “rez plz” all seem like plausible candidates.
Let’s see…Andalus was a bit of a nihilist, I think. Plus I haven’t played him in years, let’s skip forward.
Rhodon’s greatest fear…that he’ll watch his family die because of something that he did. The Inquisition has grasped this fear, producing a nice, smoldering hidden hatred. He’s going to put them into a hidden sanctuary first chance he gets, or a demiplane of his own creation if/when he finds the Creation spell, and they’ll get to be safe from the consequences of Rhodon’s decisions from there. (He won’t stop them from getting themselves into trouble, no child of his will be a greenhouse flower.)
Sullivan in the Big Fish game is a little different than he started. At first, the defining moment of his life was traveling away from his clan who took away all his family’s food for their journey to the larger civilization of The Empire. They had to forage for anything they could eat, tree bark, moss, maybe you can catch an animal, eat bugs if you can’t, until they got there. He almost got killed by a giant wasp, and such giant insects were his greatest fear.
Then after 11 years, he got the opportunity (now a young man with military training and self confidence disproportionate to his ability) to fight the Punishment Elder of the old clan. What wound up happening is that he got a sword stuck all the way through his face.
Cloning and Resurrection are somewhat commonplace in this setting, but they’re still really expensive and there’s no getting the gear back that the Elder claimed as spoils. Sullivan was in debt for about a month of hard fighting to the two warriors that he went to battle with, but giant insects are no longer his greatest concern.
What shakes him up when he thinks about it too long is wondering if he’s still ignorant of his own weakness, whenever he meets something new. Knowing that you aren’t strong enough is a good thing, you can run or hold out for reinforcements or do what you have to do, but not knowing just…turns you into an expensive, inglorious failure of a corpse, and it’s only your fault.
As a side note…thanks, Colin! That -is- a facet that I hadn’t really thought about. This Big Fish game has side skills like ‘Demonologist’ and ‘Monsterologist’ (and one for the undead, dunno what ologist that is…Necrologist?) that let you better understand what you’re fighting. As soon as Sullivan has his basic stats where he feels he needs them, I think that’s going to be his next pursuit. Knowing -is- half of the battle, and the other half is something he’s already fairly good at.
Huzzah! I’m helping! 🙂
Great character exploration on your part. That’s exactly he sort of introspection I hope for with this kind of question. I hope it plays well as a bonus motivation throughout your campaign.
For a lot of my characters that whole “greatest fear” thing already happened to them… and it’s why they are the way they are…
Drunken Bum Elven Sage? He wanted to be the most powerful Mage ever, and completely lost all his magic (which is why he’s a drunken sage bum and not a Wizard). And he has a tremendous Fearlessness ability, he’s probably the least likely to ever fail a fear check in our campaign.
Teenage Troll Wizard? Her fears were losing her tribe, her family, her friends, her mentor, her boyfriend… almost her whole tribe was slaughtered by adventurers, which is why she’s an adventurer… in the same guild as the killers… seeking revenge…
Barbarian Ogress? Losing her tribe, growing old without ever finding a mate… this one, well, she could get her tribe back (she’s literally lost and has no idea where her tribal homelands are), she might find a mate (she has a Red Sonja complex and is literally the Strength-wise strongest warrior in the city our campaign is taking place in)… so if I don’t want to keep playing her, she could get back everything she wants.
Dwarven Holy Warrior? Failing to kill demons and undead… but his abilities all revolve around defeating demons and undead… and he probably has the second strongest Willpower and Fearlessness in the campaign. Literally staring down scary demons and undead and then smiting them is his schtick.
The ogress who fears growing old and ugly? That could be played for laughs in a big way.
It’s been a while since I had a PC. I’m doing some fiction writing though, and protagonists are similar.
Space naval officer Tiffany knows she’s out of her depth and knows lives rely on her making the right decisions. Having recently (barely) survived a battle, she’s also seen the horror first hand and is afraid of dying painfully. Being a wartime volunteer, she’s also not sure she wants to survive because her lover was unwilling to wait and despite a loving family and great education, she doesn’t think she can pick up the pieces of her life and move on.
Commissar Max from the same story is broken. Having been subjected to awful tortures as a spy, she was later put into this position where she feels like a glorified secretary. Because of what has happened, her aristocratic family sees her as damaged goods and has written her off. Having left school early to volunteer, she actually has nowhere to go back to. Her fear is finding out that everything she has been through is meaningless.
In my other story we have Bailecat, a young wizard who is in denial about being a deposed king’s bastard daughter. Which is unfortunate, because her magic 1) marks her as part of that bloodline and 2) is actually dangerous to use, though she doesn’t know that. Other than a well-justified fear of being powerless, she doesn’t fear much. To paraphrase Yoda, she will.
Any plans to turn this into a campaign setting, or are you thinking purely in terms of prose for this one?
For now, they are just prose. But there is no such thing as “this will never be a campaign setting”
That should be a T-shirt.
It would take too much time if selected even just the characters I’m currently playing, so I’ll just pick three I think will have interesting answers. And then you can guess at what’s up with these characters by the answer. Bonus points if you correctly guess the systems.
#1: Either my dad turning out to not love me when I finally find him or uncle Hades changing his mind and dragging me back to the underworld.
#2: Finding out too late there was some way I could have saved my girlfriend from becoming the undead thing she has become and learning that I don’t have what it takes to be a successful hero or villain.
#3: This whole secret criminal career thing going terribly sideways resulting in me losing the bit of status and privilege I have and getting trapped in a life of poverty and drudgery.
Scion
Mutants and Masterminds (themed to my hero academia)
5e (dragon heist)
Not bad considering how little information you had to work with. The second one was especially close and actually what I guessed you’d guess. I actually thought you’d get #3 correct though.
#1) D&D 5e game where we’re playing in a greek mythology setting. My character is the daughter of Orpheus and Eurydice (post death), brought to the land of the living by “aunty” Persephone).
#2) Masks. (Not at all themed to my hero academia btw.) My character (Smoke) is a Reformed villain whose previous partner/girlfriend (Fire) died in an incident and her coming back (as Pyre) was the impetus for my character joining the team.
#3: Blades in the Dark. My character is a Cutter of such minor noble position that they have no real hope of advancement through legitimate means with their lack of useful connections and no likely prospects of marriage due to any potential partner would be having to marry down and anyone below her wouldn’t be of the nobility at all. So they joined a crew of Hawkers so that they could forge connections and/or just have something going on in their life that means they’re at all in control of their own fate.
As a changeling player, having to list my greatest fear is fairly common. Nosy Autumn courts and all that. Some of the most fun ones I’ve heard and played:
Nikki (Fox changeling hunted by the Wild Hunt): Having accepted that the Hunt can only end when her or the Hunter are dead and the Hunter being an immortal Gentry, she has calmly accepted she will die one day. No, causing the death of someone else who wasn’t involved in the Hunt is her greatest fear, as her friends are few and far between.
Brianna (Young mage suddenly thrust into a leadership position for a caravan of people while the world crumbles around her (Banner Saga)): Brianna’s fear is that everyone will find out she doesn’t have a plan that will work and how much she is panicking on the inside. While only 17, she has people twice and three times her age looking up to her because of her history of having good strategies and getting lucky. She fears the one time her strategy doesn’t work and she gets a lot of people killed.
Imposter syndrome, eh? Brianna is relatable.
I haven’t had DMs ask of my characters fears save passing; except for my first. And since this was my first character, he didn’t really have much, just a bit of backstory and simple personality. So when asked what his greatest fear was, I thought quickly and, in a manner similar to the last comic, just started describing some inside out abomination that vomits pus from his chest. Fortunately, the DM had asked us way in advance to prevent us from meta game casting will save buffs etc. (Nice try, I was too dumb back then to know what a will save is). So by the time the frightful day came around, the DM had lost her notes on this, so we re-did our fears, with me now having thought about it and come up with a more well-developed fear of failure. (This may or may not have been because I was entrusted with the mega-powerful artefact, and it was definitely not in the bag that the evil wizard stole, nope not my fault still here, just misplaced)
That’s another reason to space out the whole “character questionnaire” thing right there.
My latest character, Vessyra Trankuthik, is decidedly more complex than my first. She actually has two greatest fears; conscious and unconscious. Consciously, she believes that her greatest fear is discovering her best friend, Melain, to be dead. However, she has never entertained the thought of Melain turning out to be her enemy; unknown to her, that is in truth her greatest fear. I’m not sure which phantasmal killer, fear, or other spells would bring up; whether it would rake your mind and thoughts for your fear, or it would take your entire mind and figure out your greatest fear from the entire collation of experiences.
The former. That latter requires the GM to perform a full psych analysis.
For my Undead Swashbuckler (rogue), it would be dying (again) before finding out what happened to his old crew, specifically his adopted daughter, a Storm Sorceress, even worse finding out that his last victory cruise was possibly the cause of her death (he died piloting his crew out of a storm caused by a Leviathan and an Elder Tempest fighting, which got summoned due to a dimensional rift, also, he’s a pirate).
I need to know: How many Pirates of the Carribean jokes are there on average per session?
Surprisingly, none yet, though his real name is a reference Steam-Powered Girrafe.
You never mentioned the guy’s name. What it is?
Side note: Saw Steam-Powered Giraffe at Dragon Con a few years back. Or at least, I saw half a set. They’d hired a new sound guy that night, and the 1:00 am show started at 3:00 am. I hope I can see ’em properly one day, but that remains the biggest technical SNAFU I’ve ever encountered on a live stage. The poor bastards even ran out of in-character shtick by the end!
His name is Captain Albert Alexander, which was requested my dm, which has furthered my interest in Steam Powered Giraffe so I’m still listening to some of their earlier stuff, but the current name he has chosen for himself is Old Casketguts.
My tabaxi cleric in a CoS game has what he considers to be a very reasonable fear of faeries and witches. Being empowered by the sun gives one a bit more confidence against the undead, but… faeries? What can you do about them? They fly into your tent and steal your teeth at night? Why? He doesn’t know!
And witches! Witches are worse! They make your corn taste like ashes, and can make you tinkle yourself in the middle of the night for no real reason! Madness!
I certainly find them unsettling: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y9_Zyl7CthM/VD6Di1wivZI/AAAAAAAAAbc/mcKQS8I0S_g/s1600/PZO1127_ToothFairy.jpg
For my best PC, Arinen Blayke, it was loss of prestige, and public ridicule. He was a statesman, who balanced an earnest desire to serve the public good, with a secondary desire to be seen serving good. He had been toppled iff his pedestal already and was in the last chance saloon, playing mercenary captain to salvage his name and his “brand”. He basically was using the questing-hero gig as publicity, a springboard from which to relaunch his career, and so he couldn’t afford a single major slip-up.
The DM (a truly superb DM) had never openly asked us for our fears, like you mentioned in the comments, but had discreetly drawn from the players one by one what these were, and thus when – more than a year into the campaign – he dropped the illusory “face your fears” scenario on us, he actually had us fooled for a long time. He worked them all in to a single, shared scenario in subtle ways. In Arinen’s case, the quest we had just returned from turned out to have been bungled, we’d misunderstood instructions, and a guy we had killed had turned out to be a folk hero. We were spat at in the street and such, and I was thrown out of the local lord’s service with a warning not to show my face in the region again. It was only at the end of the session that we realised we had in fact been mind-whacked by an enemy who turned out to be a high-level enchanter, and I think the DM rather prompted that discovery because he saw how upset some of us were!
In short it was an absolutely amazing session.
Let’s see… Here are my PF2 PCs
Arthur Grace, Human Paladin of Iomedae: The capitol of Taldane (where his parents live) in flames.
Darnell Burden, Human Wizard: That the prophecies were always a lie, that there is no truth or logic to the universe.
Scefsa, Gnome Divine Sorceror: Her rabbit familiar, Muffin, dying.
One of my favorite characters I made is named Vesper Silver. He is a Lizardfolk Necromancer. He being rather emotionless, except rage and the occasional pleasure of things being hurt (especially god worshippers), doesn’t fear much. One of the few fears he has is the destruction of necromancy.
Sociopathic characters can be fun. So can inhuman ones. But just make sure that’s what you’re going for. If it were me, a character that had only “angry and schadenfreude” on the old emotional palette could feel a bit confining after a while.