Symbolic Godzilla

Okay so I will start off with a dose of ultra-geekiness by discussing two different role playing games as well as psychology.

I have been running a campaign of Ravenloft for Dungeons and Dragons for about three years now and retooling the system as I went. The best thing I did was drop the Ravenloft fear, horror, and madness saves in favor of the sanity meter from Unknown Armies. I have often felt that sanity in role playing games was incredibly inaccurate or incredibly boring resulting in heroes that either don’t respond emotionally to the most difficult and disturbing experiences, have no problem hurting and killing innocent people, or are rendered unable to act in every situation because they are a quivering mess of neurosis.

In Unknown Armies every character has stimuli they react to and each character gets to pick 3:

• Noble Stimulus – this is what makes the character act on his “better self.” Even villains have these. Maybe the psychotic serial killer likes to help people be freed from oppression  but it adds some nice dimension. It comes into play whenever the character is trying to help someone or be their “best self.”
• Rage Stimulus – this is what the character hates and wants to destroy. Maybe he hates the bullies that teased him as a child and this comes into play whenever he is teased or maybe he hates lies and this helps him catch people in them. The key is it is an act of anger and destruction, not a thought out reasoned thing.
• Fear Stimulus – this is what the character fears and needs to get away from. Maybe he’s afraid of spiders or maybe he’s afraid of looking like an idiot in front of his girlfriend but this comes into play when he is trying to avoid something or run away.

Of course, one person’s rage stimulus is another person’s fear stimulus. You might be afraid of spiders but maybe I just like to squish them. What this mechanic does nicely is it allows a dimension of character specific psychology to impact gameplay and promote the character acting like themselves. In other words, by playing in character and responding appropriately to the stimuli the character gets bonuses on his actions.

I’ve messed around a bit with how it functions in D20.

• In the original Unknown Armies rolls are percentage based and a low roll is often better than a high roll. Using your stimuli lets you “flip” a number turning a failing 84 into a succesful 48.
• In D20 I initially used it as a “reroll” so if a character rolls a 1 or fails a roll they can use the stimuli for a second chance provided they are acting in characer.
• Later on in the same campaign I switched it to provide a +10 on any d20 rolls that was applied after the fact. For example, if a character is trying to jump a chasm as he runs from the spiders he is afraid of and he rolls a 10 but needs  a 20 to succeed, he invokes the stimuli, gets the +10, and succeeds.

I don’t particularly care about any specific one though I noticed the last one had the most impact on player interest. Personally I’m more interested in encouraging players to make their characters act “more like themselves.” I like that the cowardly person who is scared of public speaking is encouraged to avoid the things they’re scared of and attack the things they hate. While it may not be the most realistic in terms of a simulation of physical reality (I don’t generally get a bonus to hurt domestic abusers, which would be my rage stimulus) I think it does encourage a psychological reality in which the characters respond more as characters in a story or as real people to events rather than as “video game characters without hearts.”