Whether you’re a fan of them or not, fear checks and the fear mechanics that accompany them are very much integral to the FFG Star Wars RPG system. The Fear Check adds itself to contextualize situations on a personal level for the player and GM looking to get more out of their roleplaying experience.
Fear isn’t finding an evil clown under your bed, it’s the possibility of that clown being under your bed. Or in Star Wars terms, Fear isn’t the dianoga in the trash compactor, it’s the thought of a dianoga in the trash compactor.
But many of the rules are situational and usually threat based – running into a rancor or Darth Vader for the first time. In my life, the things that scare me the most aren’t the snakes I see, but the snakes I don’t. In the horror fiction I consume, although rare, I’m always titillated more by the evidence of the monster than the monster itself.
When GM’ing the game, use those moments. The roar of the rancor echoing through the jungle. Old clone trooper helmets found bloodied, large gashes where the laminate armor was cut through like it was nothing. The legend of an ice creature that preys on lost explorers on Hoth. These are the spices of all great and small thrillers. It also allows you to use those minimum fear checks to give your party an advantage.
By targeting specific players with these fear checks, you can actually create small, but defining character moments. Resolve is the natural emotional follow up to overcoming your fear. Determination, a byproduct of resolve, is one of the most admirable qualities one can be attributed.
Mechanically, if your mercenary solider succeeds on an Average Fear check roll when your party hears a rancor roar close by, not only does he have that cool moment when he assures the party he can handle it, but if he gains any advantage, as a GM you can apply that as a bonus die when facing the rancor himself. Or perhaps, depending on the advantage, he can assist another weaker character with their own Fear check.
And if he fails – maybe he becomes more erratic leading him to fire his blaster rifle widely attempting to hit the source the of the roar, but leading the rancor right to them. Maybe, on a despair, his actions cause the rest of the party to freak out in turn and they are forced to make increasingly harder Fear checks to quell their own fear as well as the anxiousness from the mercenary.
What the core books also don’t seem to touch on really is the personal nature of fear that cannot be personified by a large creature or evil bad guy. When Luke hears that the stormtroopers may have tracked R2 and 3PO back to the Lars homestead, he probably performed a small Fear check. I would say he failed that Fear check, running off in a reactionary way that could have gotten him killed and led the Empire back to the droids.
Use your players’ Obligation/Duty/Morality to force them into situations where they may have to make a lower difficulty Fear check to overcome a personal moment – they hear the Empire has attacked their home world, or their brother has gone missing, or they’re forced to repeat a situation similar to one where they almost died.
Again, this check will be to create conflict that could turn into resolve in the form of determination to overcome that fear which could lead to bonus dice on checks relating to that fear. Or, upon failure, the conflict generated both mechanically and narratively from such a failure could enrich a game. Did the character who failed steal the ship while the other players were asleep in an attempt to get home to their besieged home world? These types of Fear checks make things personal for the characters, and of course, we all know that when we play our characters we love to see them in the spotlight making critical choices.
If your group understands the nature of roleplaying, and of story, and understands conflict – these small moments could have big personal ramifications in the stories of your characters.
