Fear¶

While PCs gain Hope as a metacurrency during the game, you gain Fear.

Gaining Fear¶

When you start a campaign, you begin with an amount of Fear equal to the number of PCs. Whenever a PC rolls with Fear, you gain a Fear. You can also gain Fear from the players taking downtime, certain PC abilities or spells, and specific adversary features.

You can hold up to a maximum of 12 Fear.

Tracking Fear¶

You can track Fear with tokens, a die, or any other counting method, and you should keep this pool visible to players during the game. Fear carries between sessions, so take note of how many Fear you have at the end of each session and begin the next time with that same pool.

Spending Fear¶

Whenever you spend Fear, describe how fate changes the world against the characters. What interrupts or counters the PCs? How does an adversary prepare for a powerful attack? What barrages the PCs' senses as the raging avalanche reaches them?

When you spend a Fear, you can:

• Interrupt the players to make a move.
• Make an additional GM move.
• Use an adversary's Fear Feature.
• Use an environment's Fear Feature.
• Add an adversary's Experience to a roll.

Tip: As with any GM move, spending Fear shouldn't undermine the players' fun. Fear is a tool for you to enhance the scene, create dramatic tension, and raise the stakes, not to shut down a PC's heroic actions.

Interrupt the Players to Make a Move¶

You can spend a Fear to make a GM move as if the PCs had failed an action or rolled with Fear, allowing you to interrupt between the players' moves. This tactic is most useful when you want to make a move during a lew of successes—for example, if the PCs roll a success with Hope four times in a row during combat and you want to give your adversaries a chance to fight back, you can spend a Fear to interrupt the action and spotlight an adversary.

Make an Additional GM Move¶

After making a GM move, you can spend a Fear to make an additional move this GM turn. For example, when a player rolls a failure or rolls with Fear, you might spotlight an adversary to show them stealing the party's carriage and starting to ride away, then spend a Fear to have the archer in the tree shoot at the PCs as cover fire for the carriage heist.

Use an Adversary's Fear Feature¶

In addition to each adversary's standard features, some adversaries have powerful Fear Features. You can use an adversary's Fear Features by spending the indicated number of Fear.

You can always improvise a Fear Feature for an adversary, even if they already have predetermined Fear Features. Just spend a Fear and come up with a big adversary move that might otherwise feel overpowered or arbitrary (see the upcoming "Improvising Fear Moves" section).

If you've spent Fear to make an additional GM move to activate an adversary, you must additionally spend the required amount to activate a Fear Feature. For example, once the thief steals the party's carriage and you've spent a Fear to have the archer rain down a hail of arrows, you could spend an additional Fear to activate a third thief in the scene. If this thief has a Fear Feature you want to activate, you would spend a fourth Fear to utilise it.

Use an Environment's Fear Feature¶

Environments can have their own features that require spending Fear to activate. You can use an environment's Fear Feature by spending the indicated number of Fear.

Even if an environment has predetermined Fear Features, you can also spend Fear to improvise a big environment move that might otherwise feel overpowered or arbitrary.

Add an Adversary's Experience to a Roll¶

When making a roll for an adversary, if their Experience would apply to the situation at hand, you can spend a Fear and add the Experience's modifier to the roll. When you do, showcase how their Experience enhances the action to help ground this mechanic in the narrative.

How Much Fear Should I Spend in a Scene?¶

Spending Fear is one of the GM's strongest tools for inflicting consequences and enhancing the stakes of a scene. Each scene plays a specific role in the story, and not all scenes need the same level of drama and danger. The more important a scene is to the story, the more likely a GM is to want to use Fear to complicate the PCs' lives and add to the danger of the fiction.

The GM adjusts the stakes by increasing or decreasing the amount of Fear they spend in a scene—more Fear to heighten the tension, fewer Fear to ease off. You might surprise the PCs by spending Fear to add twists to a scene to keep the players on their toes, turning what the PCs thought was an incidental or minor scene into one with major stakes. You might spend a few Fear at the beginning of a scene to establish the danger of a story beat and force the PCs to dig deep and overcome it, then either spend additional Fear as you gain it or store it for a future scene.

Here is a rough guide of how much Fear you might want to spend in a given scene depending on its role in the story:

What Do I Do with All This Fear?¶

If you find yourself coming into a battle with a large amount of Fear (especially over 10), consider the following approaches:

Act First¶

Spend a Fear immediately to interrupt the PCs and spotlight an adversary to begin the fight.

Spend Consistently¶

Each time your turn comes around, make a GM move, then spend a Fear to make an additional move. If you gained Fear from a PC's roll, consider spending that one as well, either on an additional GM move or a Fear Feature. Your pool of Fear will slowly deplete, but this method will provide significant power every time play returns to you.

Come Out Strong¶

You might choose to spend enough Fear to spotlight a majority of the adversaries during your first GM turn. This is a big move that can put the PCs on the back foot at the beginning of the fight, giving them the opportunity to feel like they're turning the tables.

Draw Blood¶

Every time an adversary misses an attack, you might spend a Fear to spotlight additional adversaries until one of them successfully strikes a PC. This can help make your GM turn feel dynamic even when your first attack misses.

Improvising Fear Moves¶

Whether you're improvising adversaries and environments or using existing ones, you might find a moment where you want to put your thumb on the scale to make something dramatic happen or to escalate the scene. You can always improvise a GM move, but there might be situations where you want to make an especially hard move. By spending Fear when you declare the move, you communicate and respect the scale of the action you're taking.

A Fear move should redefine a scene, change the terms, raise the stakes, modify or move the location, or accomplish another pivotal action.

Fear moves commonly include one or more of these elements:

• Introducing new adversaries to a scene when their appearance hasn't been foreshadowed or lacks context.
• An adversary activating a powerful spell or transformation to deal massive amounts of boost damage.
• An environment exerting a strong negative effect on the party.

For additional guidance on creating Fear moves, reference the existing Fear moves included in the "Adversary Features" and "Environment Features" sections and stat blocks of chapter 4.

Examples of Improvised Fear Moves¶

Example 1: The party has confronted a corrupt noble who the GM, Stella, planned to use as a recurring villain, but most of the noble's HP are already marked and the party is close to dispatching them before their plans can be revealed. Deciding that they don't want to change plans and let the PCs claim this unexpected victory, Stella improvises a Fear move to allow the noble to escape using a method that makes sense for the adversary but hasn't been set up in the fiction yet. The noble, not previously shown to use magic, produces a token that allows them to teleport away. The GM has spent a Fear on an improvised "Take away an opportunity" move, and the villain survives to fight another day.

Example 2: In a battle with the party, a Solo adversary's damage output isn't proving as much of a threat as Stella would have liked. She might decide to spend Fear and improvise an adversary feature where the enemy flies into a rage, increasing their damage for the remainder of the scene. Stella leads with the fiction, describing the enemy's increasing desperation due to their significant wounds, then signals the mechanical escalation to the PCs—the enemy's damage output will be much higher from here on out.

Example 3: During a scene where Quinn's druid is tracking a kidnapper, Shepherd rolls a success with Fear. Stella invites Quinn to describe how their action allows the PCs to gain ground, then spends a Fear and describes a huge shadow passing over the group as they spot the kidnapper on the horizon—a Wyvern is on the hunt for flesh. Stella hadn't mentioned anything about Wyvern being active in this area, so she decides it's appropriate to spend a Fear rather than introduce the new threat with a normal GM move in response to the player's roll.

Example 4: The party is facing off with a group of bandits trying to steal a treasure chest the group is transporting. Tabby, the warrior, just succeeded on an attack roll with Fear against one of their adversaries. Because Tabby rolled with Fear, play passes to the GM after Tabby deals damage.

Stella has 10 Fear in her pool and decides to spend three to start the battle off strong. On the battlefield, there are two robber Bandits and a group of five Bandit Minions.

Stella uses her move to spotlight the first Bandit, describing her leaping down from a tree to slide beneath the party's wagon and break some of the wooden floorboards to get at the treasure inside.

Stella then spends a Fear to spotlight the second Bandit, a large, bullfrog-like figure with heavy armour. They leap down to put themselves between a few members of the party and swing a massive hammer, using their "Better Surrounded" action to hit all targets in range of their weapon. Stella rolls against the PCs' Evasion and succeeds. They then roll the adversary's damage dice and deal 12 physical damage to each target.

Finally, Stella spends 2 Fear, the first to shift the spotlight to one of the Bandit Minions, and the second to use their "Group Attack" action (which costs a Fear to activate). This puts the spotlight on all five Minions, who move into Melee range of Tabby. Stella makes an attack, describing the scene and rolling against Tabby's Evasion. Stella succeeds, so the bandits deals 3 damage each for a total of 15 damage to Tabby. Tabby has no Armour Slots left, so she takes Major damage—marking 2 Hit Points.

Stella has 7 Fear left but no more adversaries to spotlight, so Stella returns play to the PCs.