Homebrew Nightmares

[Satchel]

The fear of fear or stress or having to worry about the world. At least, that's how I see it. As I understand, (and I'm not a psychology major or good at understanding people in general), people sometimes hear or see things that conflicts with how the understand the world. Maybe a movie star did something terrible, and some of the fans will be unable or unwilling to believe it. They will make excuses, or verbally attack whoever brought them the news. Most often though, they will deny that whatever happened actually happened. That reaction, though...I think it's based on fear. Fear that their worldview is wrong, or they were wrong about someone, or that they trusted someone who failed them. And that's a very human thing. The Nightmare works by cultivating that reaction, by forcing the mind to fear and reject fear and discomfort.

I'd argue that is a very frightening state of mind. Not from the perspective of the target, obviously, while they are under the influence anyways. But I think most people would find being forced to be denial about the darker nature of the world until it's in the perfect position to hurt them to be quite frightening. I personally find that quite frightening, as well as finding that I could be heavily in denial about something. Pretending that everything is ok, just because I don't like the truth, is scary, especially because it's not really a conscious decision, in my experience anyways. I mean, it's possible I'm in denial about something right now, and I'd never know.

But all the justifications about how I think it fits don't matter if it doesn't feel right to others. Is there anything I could do to make it better, in your mind?

I don't know if this helps, but the inspirations for this Nightmare was the joke about the monster under the bed saying there is nothing under the bed, and the child believing them and going back to sleep, and what I've heard about We Happy Few. a game in which there are people so high on a happy pill, they don't notice that the piñata they are beating with sticks and eating is actually a rat. I find both of those things creepy.

So here's the big one-two punch of problems with the Nightmare: There is no horror in denial on its own and the common qualities found in Mage's metaphysics that this is playing off of (mostly Quiescence) don't work like this.

A nightmare where you realize right at the end that you were eating a bowl of maggots as though it was breakfast cereal, shook hands with a skinless horror at the bus stop, and sneezed a bunch of teeth into your handkerchief is not a nightmare where everything was Actually Normal and you saw nothing out of the ordinary, nor is a nightmare where you see something so horrible you spend the rest of the day studiously rewriting events in your head to avoid thinking about it the same thing as one where you never saw the horrible thing.

Again, look to You Are Not Alone for an established case of how Nightmares can put things into people's heads but not take them out — it's pretty close to the described example of making the victim so afraid of seeing you that they refuse to look, and it does this by putting the idea that Something Terrible Will Happen If You Look At The Thing in their head. There are ways to paint the Ignorance Is Bliss effect you're evoking with the brush of fear/dread/horror/terror, but the nature of Kinship Nightmares is such that you have to acknowledge that euphoria-induced uncaring, the delayed realizations of a tired child, and crisis/scandal fatigue are all different things.

Do you want this Nightmare to make its victims refuse to acknowledge an event and attack anyone who tries to tell them about it? Make it trigger breaking points whenever they give that version of events credence or neglect to silence its proponents.

Want it to do the happy-pill thing? Lean into the horror of euphorics and maybe have it inflict the Drugged Tilt and/or the Intoxicated Condition.

Want it to make the victims the kind of people the Seers love to see? You Are A Meat Machine is right there.

Want it to replicate the joke about the kid and the monster under the bed? I'd honestly recommend against that one for the simple reason that it's a joke about a tired kid not realizing it's odd for someone to be in their room alone talking with them, and there's Siren's Treacherous Song's base effect right there if a character wants their words to be able to be extra persuasive, but putting something similar to You Are Better Than Them's hold on breaking point rolls into play for rolls to put together facts until the end of the Nightmare may be the way to go.

Nightmares, especially Common Nightmares, can use different symbolism to say the same thing, but they have to say a consistent thing to be able to be the Nightmares that they are — a Kinship Nightmare you derived from a Blood Talon and a Nightmare you derived from a practitioner of the Refinement of Tin should feel different from each other even if they're both Nightmares that whip a target up into a furious rage.

Funnily enough, I actually think that this one is closest to You Can't Dig It Out or They Are All Around You. It's supposed to make the illusory sense that something is wrong with you, that something is manipulating you...which is kind of true, but there is no Mind Reading or Mind Control in the power. Just making someone think that there is. They might go to the grocery store for their tin-foil hat, or they might try to convince their hunter friends to restrain them so they can't hurt anyone.

If the intent is something like You Are Compromised, I'd lean towards effects like intrusive thoughts and doing things without knowing why unless you have specific things in mind for what "the target believes their mind is being probed/tampered with" means mechanically.

I believe those together cover the range of things I want the Nightmare to do. Is there anything that represents jumpscares? Like maybe setting a trigger, like when you look away from something, and looking to something creepy rushing at you look, only for it to be gone when you blink or flinch?

That's the domain of Atavisms or fare like Behold, My True Form! unless you've got a particular mechanical manifestation of that effect in mind.

[TempleBuilder]

Thank you for taking the time and answering in such detail. Even if this one doesn’t quite pan out, I think I’m learning more about Beast, and so the exercise was worth it. I’ll see about trying another one tomorrow, and maybe it’ll be better. Or maybe not.

[Scriptorian]

A common hazard of designing new Nightmares is realizing that an official Nightmare already covers the same mechanical or thematic territory, even if sometimes takes a little re-fluffing. At least once I’ve had a brilliant idea that turned out to already have been written with the exact same name. 😝

Everything is Fine (Seer of the Throne Kinship)

Alternatively, The Void is Waiting explicitly tickles the Abyssal shard the human soul in order to produce its pseudo-Paradox effect, so I think it’s reasonable, based on that precedent, to design a Nightmare that triggers a Quiescence-like effect in a victim when they witness anything supernatural. Though that would be more appropriate to Scelesti kinship than Seer.

I think the fundamental idea of Everything is Fine works as a Nightmare, but mechanically I think it should be based more on aggravating the victims willful ignorance, playing on their fear that their understanding of the world is incorrect, rather than a penalty to perceiving the spooky stuff.

[Scriptorian]

This Is Beyond Your Understanding (Nasnas)

No. This isn’t right. Things like this can’t happen. Your mind must be playing tricks on you. Better to just forget. Oh dear God, let you just forget.
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Satiety vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Normal: The capacity for the human mind to reject things that do not conform to its worldview is exceptional. More than this, however, there are supernatural forces that can strain or even break a mortal’s mind upon witnessing them. This Nightmare stirs up those forces in the human soul, forcing the victim to rationalize or forget such experiences.
At the end of any scene during which the victim witnessed an overtly supernatural occurrence, she suffers a breaking point. In addition to the normal results of a breaking point roll, on a failure or dramatic failure, she completely forgets the supernatural occurrence. On a normal success, she will rationalize or re-contextualize her memory of the event towards the mundane. On an exceptional success the victim will remember the event with clarity.
High Satiety: As normal, except the breaking point is penalized by one-half the Beast’s Satiety, rounded up, and Beast may choose which Condition (if any) the victim acquires as a result of the breaking point.
Satiety Expenditure: In addition to the normal or high satiety effects, the victim’s rejection of the supernatural is so strong it actually reinforces her soul against it (or maybe it’s just that the forces stirred up by this Nightmare are also inimical to other supernatural forces). For the duration of the Nightmare, the victim adds one-half the Beast’s Satiety, rounded up, to her Supernatural Tolerance for the purposes of resisting or contesting other supernatural effects.
Exceptional Success: Each time the victim fails a breaking point as a result of witnessing an overtly supernatural occurrence, it counts as fulfilling the Beast’s Hunger (base Satiety potential 3).

[TempleBuilder]

A common hazard of designing new Nightmares is realizing that an official Nightmare already covers the same mechanical or thematic territory, even if sometimes takes a little re-fluffing. At least once I’ve had a brilliant idea that turned out to already have been written with the exact same name. 😝

Thanks. I'm slightly less embarrassed. You know, I swear I misremembering the effects of Nightmares. I don't know why. I know I've read through them at least once. But the short summery of what those Nightmares do in my head is all wrong. Maybe it's the names, and the weird mix of how simultaneously broad and narrow the effects and concepts are. For example, All Your Teeth Are Falling Out sounds to me like mostly a social debuff, but it's mechanics cover both that and physical impairment. Or maybe I'm just really bad at Beast. You know, one of the two.

Alternatively, The Void is Waiting explicitly tickles the Abyssal shard the human soul in order to produce its pseudo-Paradox effect, so I think it’s reasonable, based on that precedent, to design a Nightmare that triggers a Quiescence-like effect in a victim when they witness anything supernatural. Though that would be more appropriate to Scelesti kinship than Seer.

Well, it's certainly a good Nightmare. I like what you did with it. I feel like it's more direct than what I was going for, but it's pretty cool.

I think the fundamental idea of Everything is Fine works as a Nightmare, but mechanically I think it should be based more on aggravating the victims willful ignorance, playing on their fear that their understanding of the world is incorrect, rather than a penalty to perceiving the spooky stuff.

Yeah, I wasn't sure how to portray the Normal effect. The Actively Oblivious merit is pretty much what I was going for, but I didn't think giving a free, if temporary, merit was a good idea as a basic effect. Do you think a slightly revamped version should instead give the merit as the normal effect, and perhaps remove the willpower cost or give a bonus as the High Satiety effect?

[TempleBuilder]

Trying the happy pill one as practice. I've never experienced drugs outside of melatonin and some medication that I took as a child that I barely remember, so this should be...interesting. Trying not to make this a ranged version of Basilisk's Touch. Pretty sure reducing the number of doors for people by 4 is a bit too much.

You Are Drugged

What was that they shot into your arm? Are the lights too bright? Is that why is your head is so fogged? And what's with this strange feeling welling up from within?

Dice Pool: Presence (?) + Satiety vs. Stamina (?) + Supernatural Tolerance
Normal: The subject suddenly experiences a strange euphoria and gains the Intoxicated condition.
High Satiety: As normal, except the subject find their their senses and inhibitions dulled further, increasing the penalties of the condition to -4 and removing 3 doors from social maneuvering.
Satiety Expenditure: In addition to the Normal or High Satiety effects, the euphoria blurs the mind, causing the subject to only remember a jumbled mess of emotion, which quickly fades even further. The subject can potentially piece together what happened from their remainder of their memories, but all such attempts suffer a -4 penalty. All breaking points suffered while under the influence of this Nightmare are suspended until the subject pieces together what happened.
Exceptional Success: Instead of gaining the Intoxicated condition, the Subject gains the Insensate tilt.

[TempleBuilder]

Weird one time! Let's see if I can make this concept work.

Get Out Of My Head!

What's that strange pressure at the back of my mind? Wait, I don't normally act like this. Something is wrong with me!

Dice Pool: Wits + Satiety vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Normal: The subject feels as if there illusory compulsion towards some set of actions the subject finds supremely repulsive. In reality, there is only the feeling of something else tampering with their mind.. The subject gains the Delusional condition.
High Satiety: The subject find the pressure of whatever malaise grips them to be almost unbearable, coming to the conclusion that they must fight back or be crushed. When a opportunity occurs to indulge in one of the illusionary urges, the subject reflexively spends a point of willpower in order to resist the influence. If the subject has no willpower to spend, they instead stand there, visibly straining against the hostile influence. This only occurs once per opportunity.
Satiety Expenditure: The Beast may spend multiple Satiety on this effect. In addition to the Normal or High Satiety effects, the subject can only put up the most marginal front of resistance to other mental influences, as the Nightmare focuses all of the subjects mental efforts on itself. The subject rolls a chance die to resist mental effects while under the influence of this Nightmare per Satiety spent.
Exceptional Success: The subject immediately loses one point of Willpower.

What do y'all think? Too much?

Edit: fixed the Satiety Expenditure to be in line with the guidelines.

[Scriptorian]

Yeah, I wasn't sure how to portray the Normal effect. The Actively Oblivious merit is pretty much what I was going for, but I didn't think giving a free, if temporary, merit was a good idea as a basic effect. Do you think a slightly revamped version should instead give the merit as the normal effect, and perhaps remove the willpower cost or give a bonus as the High Satiety effect?

I kinda took your original idea and ran off with it...

That’s Not Possible (Seers of the Throne)

Don’t be ridiculous. This is all just some clever makeup and practical effects. An elaborate joke. After all, they can make anything look real with computers these days.

Dice Pool: Intelligence + Satiety vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Normal: The fear of being wrong is a powerful thing, especially when it threatens your entire conception of reality. This Nightmare plays upon that fear, making it so the victim will accept any explanation or rationalization for supernatural activity, no matter how flimsy. He gains the Delusional Condition for the duration of the Nightmare, believing that any and all supernatural occurrences he witnesses are explainable through mundane means.
High Satiety: As normal, except the Beast may broadly redefine what does and doesn’t violate the victim’s conception of reality, and under what worldview he will try to rationalize anything that violates it. For example, the victim can be caused to believe that man-made flight is impossible, and, upon witnessing an airplane in flight, that the infernal device must, in fact, be powered by unclean sorceries.
Satiety Expenditure: The victim’s self-delusion and rationalization become so strong that he is inured against violations of his conception of reality. He temporarily gains the Actively Oblivious merit (Mage: The Awakening pg 302).
Exceptional Success: Whenever the victim witnesses an obviously supernatural occurrence (or something that violates his altered worldview for the High Satiety effect), he suffers a breaking point.


The guidelines for designing Nightmares limit beneficial effects to the Satiety Expenditure, so that's where I put the merit.

[TempleBuilder]

I kinda took your original idea and ran off with it...

That’s Not Possible (Seers of the Throne)

Don’t be ridiculous. This is all just some clever makeup and practical effects. An elaborate joke. After all, they can make anything look real with computers these days.

Dice Pool: Intelligence + Satiety vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Normal: The fear of being wrong is a powerful thing, especially when it threatens your entire conception of reality. This Nightmare plays upon that fear, making it so the victim will accept any explanation or rationalization for supernatural activity, no matter how flimsy. He gains the Delusional Condition for the duration of the Nightmare, believing that any and all supernatural occurrences he witnesses are explainable through mundane means.
High Satiety: As normal, except the Beast may broadly redefine what does and doesn’t violate the victim’s conception of reality, and under what worldview he will try to rationalize anything that violates it. For example, the victim can be caused to believe that man-made flight is impossible, and, upon witnessing an airplane in flight, that the infernal device must, in fact, be powered by unclean sorceries.
Satiety Expenditure: The victim’s self-delusion and rationalization become so strong that he is inured against violations of his conception of reality. He temporarily gains the Actively Oblivious merit (Mage: The Awakening pg 302).
Exceptional Success: Whenever the victim witnesses an obviously supernatural occurrence (or something that violates his altered worldview for the High Satiety effect), he suffers a breaking point.


The guidelines for designing Nightmares limit beneficial effects to the Satiety Expenditure, so that's where I put the merit.

Oh, this is great. I love it. It flows well together too. I admit I didn’t see that positive benefits being Expenditure only. Also I think I need to edit Get Out Of My Head! to be in line with the reduction to a chance die per expenditure.

[GibberingEloquence]

It's Coming Out Of The Screen (Common Nightmare)
That's not possible, it's just a movie. You must be tired and imagining things. But what if it's real? What else could be lurking behind every media you see? There's no way to be sure, and your sense of truth is unraveling as that creature places its hand on your shoulder and smiles at you.

Dice Pool: None, see below.
Action: Reflexive

Normal: The Beast takes a –2 penalty on her roll to invoke another Nightmare, and in return she can infuse a piece of media with her Nightmare. The first person to observe that piece of media being displayed becomes the target of the infused Nightmare, which occurs at the climax of the media's display.

"A piece of media" is defined as any source of information which contains audiovisual elements and an associated narrative, usually one based on the Beast's Family, Hunger and Legend. Most Beasts use digital files for ease of storage and display, but in such cases the Nightmare is contained within the hardware instead of the software (i.e. it does not inhabit every single copy of the digital file). Beasts can also infuse Nightmares within non-digital media, such as books, paintings and songs.

High Satiety: The infused Nightmare can be activated upon the victim taking a specific action in the same scene that they observed the media, like looking into a mirror, eating a snack or answering a phone call. Furthermore, if the Beast wills it, the victim suffers an automatic Failure on his next roll to differentiate between reality and fiction. If he had a preexisting negative Condition that matches the narrative of the media, downgrade his result into a Dramatic Failure.

Satiety Expenditure: The invocation roll for the other Nightmare suffers no penalty and earns an Exceptional Success with three successes rather than five.

Exceptional Success: As per the invoked Nightmare.

[21C Hermit]

It's Coming Out Of The Screen (Common Nightmare)
That's not possible, it's just a movie. You must be tired and imagining things. But what if it's real? What else could be lurking behind every media you see? There's no way to be sure, and your sense of truth is unraveling as that creature places its hand on your shoulder and smiles at you.

Dice Pool: None, see below.
Action: Reflexive

Normal: The Beast takes a –2 penalty on her roll to invoke another Nightmare, and in return she can infuse a piece of media with her Nightmare. The first person to observe that piece of media being displayed becomes the target of the infused Nightmare, which occurs at the climax of the media's display.

"A piece of media" is defined as any source of information which contains audiovisual elements and an associated narrative, usually one based on the Beast's Family, Hunger and Legend. Most Beasts use digital files for ease of storage and display, but in such cases the Nightmare is contained within the hardware instead of the software (i.e. it does not inhabit every single copy of the digital file). Beasts can also infuse Nightmares within non-digital media, such as books, paintings and songs.

High Satiety: The infused Nightmare can be activated upon the victim taking a specific action in the same scene that they observed the media, like looking into a mirror, eating a snack or answering a phone call. Furthermore, if the Beast wills it, the victim suffers an automatic Failure on his next roll to differentiate between reality and fiction. If he had a preexisting negative Condition that matches the narrative of the media, downgrade his result into a Dramatic Failure.

Satiety Expenditure: The invocation roll for the other Nightmare suffers no penalty and earns an Exceptional Success with three successes rather than five.

Exceptional Success: As per the invoked Nightmare.

Well now I finally know where those indie video games that try to knock on the 4th wall came from…