Jon posting. Alright? Here’s an interesting idea. It’s been suggested by a number of people on the ole socials that FiveEvil appeals as a cure for the more generally cosy feel that D&D seems to be headed towards.
And ok, maybe. If you like. Generally speaking, we don’t work in direct opposition or reaction to things like that. It’s not in our nature to be contrarians of that type. And we thoroughly support D&D proposing a wide variety of play styles. That’s all cool with us.
So we aren’t deliberately making our new horror 5e rules, FiveEvil, in direct response to a perceived shift of official D&D towards cosier themes. We’ve been working on it far too long for that!
But the suggestion that FiveEvil can serve as an antidote to happy fantasy is nonetheless an interesting one, because it’s a polarity which had never occurred to us: cosy vs horror.
Of course by definition, horror gaming isn’t about cosy themes. Cosy themes say “yes!”, and that’s the foundation of much of their appeal.
Horror gaming is much more likely to say “no”, thematically: the door is locked, the water is rising, things are getting worse. You can’t get out. (Yikes!) The kettle is not on the stove. The kettle is lying in a puddle. Of blood. Blood? Blood. And bits of sick.
In a horror scenario, you can’t choose to do things you find comforting, and that’s the appeal. It’s a roller coaster ride intended to scare you silly – while ultimately also being very safe – creepy thrills are not the same as being actually hurt – and no, you may not decorate the walls of your frog wizard mushroom house with floral wall paper. FiveEvil is the opposite of that in many ways. (Aww I love frog wizard’s mushroom house! Check out The Silver Road and The Burn if you want some of that good stuff!)
One way in which FiveEvil delivers those delicious discomforting experiences is the introduction of Intensity, and I think it’s a brilliant twist. There’s more about this in the first free FiveEvil Splinter, but let’s talk about that here.
In regular 5e, each task a player character attempts is assigned a Difficulty Class or DC. It’s a target number which the players must roll over on a D20 with various bonuses added to their roll.
In FiveEvil Difficulty Class is not worked out for each task individually. It’s set by the Intensity of the scene. When you are under pressure, everything is more difficult.
Oh my days, this is some indie games technology cunningly grafted into 5e!it’s like background radiation, or the rising soundtrack to a movie. It works brilliantly well for something so deceptively simple.
Intensity generates some really interesting effects. A personal favourite is things like trying to reload weapons under pressure, or pick a lock under pressure. That pressure is built in to the scene, and allows the overall tension within the scenario to ramp upwards, and believe me this really ramps up the tension around the table for the players!
There’s a strong motivation for the players to get away from the source of that intensity, and to be able to do things easily again. I love it when players share their characters’ motivations in this kind of mechanical sense, and FiveEvil is all about that.
If this sounds like your thing, check out the first free FiveEvil splinter for more information on all this, as well as some playable material for your table. We’ll be adding more free Splinters to the title as we draw closer to the launch of the FiveEvil crowdfunding campaign.