How to drive home the dangers of the Sight?

[Haru]

I've finally run a real game of DFRPG last week. It was the group I usually play Shadowrun with. On a whole, the group was pretty happy with it, the rules were well accepted. We had a werewolf, a supernatural style hunter, and an aeromancer going up against a cult of demon summoners in an old bunker in Berlin.

However, whoever played shadowrun before knows of the "astral sight", wizards usually have in the setting. It is basically the Dresden Sight, without the drawbacks. And here lies the problem: the aeromancer used his sight exactly like it. Since he had discipline at +5, he never got any problems defending against or closing the Sight. He used it as a tool on pretty much every crime scene they investigated, but I didn't think anything higher than a +5 strength would be warranted. Now he used his Sight frequently, without any downside, which kind of defeats the whole "What has been seen can't be unseen" thing of the Sight.

Any idea how I can drive that home? I don't really like to just arbitrarily crank up the strength of anything he sees, but at the same time, looking at everything with your sight should have a drawback. Have you had similar problems? How have you solved them?

[Mr. Death]

Ratchet up the difficulty anyway. That's what I tend to do. Violent crime scenes start at 5. Once I compelled a wizard using the Sight to reflexively look up when she was standing in the evidence locker of the LAPD, which nearly KOed her because I set the difficulty at 9.

You have to figure that the really bad stuff has to be high difficulty--Harry was either outright taken out or received a pretty severe consequence from looking at Shagnasty, remember, and by that point in the series his discipline has to be at 4 or 5 or so, meaning unless he just rolled really, really badly, the base difficulty of looking at the Skinwalker must be somewhere around 8 or 9.

[KnightOrbis]

I think the shagnasty sight might have even been an extreme minor cold days spoiler follows:

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as it's still with him in cold days years after the incident

Please mark spoilers, and keep CD spoilers in Spoiler appropriate areas only! ~Blaze

[UmbraLux]

You should usually use a monster's strongest skill as the baseline for how "inhuman" it is.  From there you can invoke any horror or other applicable aspects to increase the difficulty - when appropriate.  Locations and scenes can be approached similarly, just use the scene aspects.

When he does fail you should use any consequences against him and occasionally use past failures as part of a declaration when going up against the same creature or species. 

[JDK002]

Compel him to keep his sight open longer than he intended.  The sight only gves the player as much information as you the GM decides.  Be vague and ambiguious with you descriptions on what he sees.  Doubly so if it's a focused practitioner, I have a player who is a Pyromancer, she sees the "inner light" and "fires of life" within things with her sight.  So I'm very abstract with it.

You can also bait the player into using it on something they don't fully understand and slap them with a higher difficulty.  Or you can compel them to keep the sight open longer than intended, forcing them to defend multiple times.

Lastly there is nothing wrong with arbitrarily raising the difficulty if a player is using the sight as a crutch.  Tell them it represents the characters mind is getting flooded with images the sight gives, making it harder to concentrate.  Also remember to compel his consequences and temp aspects in times when you feel the player is over using the ability.

[Taran]

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[I think the shagnasty sight might have even been an extreme as it's still with him in cold days years after the incident.

No offense, but the book hasn't been out a week yet.  Maybe you haven't said much at all - but maybe you have.  Either way people probably don't really want to hear anything about it.

[Taran]

I think you only need to slap him with a high difficulty once.  Make it something innocuous seeming, then let him have it.  I think he'll be more careful after that...

I also like the compel idea to keep his sight open...

UbraLux, I like your guidline; it makes a lot of sense and it gives a good baseline.

EDIT:  consider also, that things like murders and crime scenes are hard on a person's mental health at the best of times for people who don't have the sight.  You often hear of stories where police/emergency workers come across scenes that even they have a hard time dealing with.  Things like that are going to be brutally hard to defend against if you have the sight open.

EDIT 2:  Also, a successful discipline doesn't get you any information, it just allows you to resist the damage and close the sight.

To be able to interperet what he's seeing, he needs to make a successful Lore role, otherwise he doesn't know the meaning of what he's seeing.  The descriptions should be super vague until he makes his lore, then you can actually give meaningful information.  IF his Lore is as high as his discipline, then I guess it doesn't make a difference...

[fantazero]

you were in BERLIN and he was using the SIGHT and he didn't see any messed up ww2 sh*t?

[Haru]

Hmm...
The compel is definitely something to work with. I had compelled quite a lot, but I didn't think of it in that instant.

He was investigating the apartments of people who were either abducted or killed there. I thought 5 was pretty high for something inactive, though maybe you're right, a crime scene like that should be higher.
Had he looked at the demon or one of the cultists, or opened his sight in the bunker (which would have been ww2 related), I'd have put up a higher number for sure. But I don't really like increasing numbers just to get a point across.
Maybe it would be an idea to create a reference list for the Sight, so it is easier to get ones numbers straight.

Vagueness in what he sees is a good idea, too. Increasing the difficulty here can easily be justified by the fact that as a focused practitioner, he can't see it as clear, thus he needs longer to get what he is seeing. That's certainly a way to go.

[Mr. Death]

Honestly, I've found that the best way to really drive home the difficulty/danger of anything is to crank up the numbers. Descriptions can fall short, compels can be negotiated or bought out of, but when you give them difficulties of 8 or throw a monster at them rolling his attacks from 9, even the most thick-headed player is going to get that they're dealing with something big.

[Belial666]

Don't crank up the difficulty if it isn't warranted. First, it's arbitrary and second, it would cheapen the really bad stuff. You just have to bring in some really bad stuff first;

Guy shot by a gangbanger? Not much of an issue. (3 difficulty)
Guy disemboweled by a ghoul or burned to death by a wizard? Disquieting. (4-5 difficulty)
Guy eaten alive by a nasty fiend, kicking and screaming all the time? Scary. (5-6 difficulty)
Guy drained by a black court, his humanity/soul rotting away as he's turned into an undead? Terrifying. (7-8 difficulty)
Guy tortured by a Naagloshi, mind shattered, soul eaten to add to the thing's power? Nightmare fuel. (9-10 difficulty)
Guy touched by an Outsider from the Void, his mind, soul and entire existence perverted and subsumed by an Emptiness too vast to imagine that seeks to consume all of Creation and has destroyed countless civilizations, that just gained a foothold in this world by the murder? I'm in ur skull eatin' your thoughtz. (12 difficulty)



And once he gets a consequence via The Sight, especially if it is something really nasty, you can tag the consequence for effect once for each scene it remains for him to have another, more limited attack. The more limited attack isn't going to inflict more consequences but it might inflict stress... and having that sort of nastiness stuck to his head again and again will hammer in the point that what The Sight reveals is there to stay.

Plus, if seeing the murder done by something sufficiently nasty like a Naagloshi or Outsider psychically wounds him like that, the player will realize that keeping The Sight open against a shapeshifting or posessing enemy might mean his character gets to see through the enemy's human mask the first time they randomly meet. Which might be bad.

[fantazero]

Don't crank up the difficulty if it isn't warranted. First, it's arbitrary and second, it would cheapen the really bad stuff. You just have to bring in some really bad stuff first;

Guy shot by a gangbanger? Not much of an issue. (3 difficulty)
Guy disemboweled by a ghoul or burned to death by a wizard? Disquieting. (4-5 difficulty)
Guy eaten alive by a nasty fiend, kicking and screaming all the time? Scary. (5-6 difficulty)
Guy drained by a black court, his humanity/soul rotting away as he's turned into an undead? Terrifying. (7-8 difficulty)
Guy tortured by a Naagloshi, mind shattered, soul eaten to add to the thing's power? Nightmare fuel. (9-10 difficulty)
Guy touched by an Outsider from the Void, his mind, soul and entire existence perverted and subsumed by an Emptiness too vast to imagine that seeks to consume all of Creation and has destroyed countless civilizations, that just gained a foothold in this world by the murder? I'm in ur skull eatin' your thoughtz. (12 difficulty)



And once he gets a consequence via The Sight, especially if it is something really nasty, you can tag the consequence for effect once for each scene it remains for him to have another, more limited attack. The more limited attack isn't going to inflict more consequences but it might inflict stress... and having that sort of nastiness stuck to his head again and again will hammer in the point that what The Sight reveals is there to stay.

Plus, if seeing the murder done by something sufficiently nasty like a Naagloshi or Outsider psychically wounds him like that, the player will realize that keeping The Sight open against a shapeshifting or posessing enemy might mean his character gets to see through the enemy's human mask the first time they randomly meet. Which might be bad.

yep.

You can also buy off a player to take a hit

[Haru]

Like I said, I don't like arbitrarily increasing numbers, for pretty much the reasons Belial mentions, too.

Going by your list, even my 5 shifts were too far up there. The people he examined had been stabbed to death, one in his sleep, two after a struggle. One of the latter had been dead for two days when he found him.

How would you stat the difficulty of the home of dark practitioner, who lived there for half a year, studying and learning the dark arts.

Increasing the opposition is easy though, since that's what I plan on doing anyway. Probably the best thing to wham him with the next crime scene he scans. Not sure exactly what I'll do there, but I've got some ideas, there'll be something in there.
He filled his consequences pretty quick the last time, though that was entirely physical (going toe to toe with a troll as an aeromancer is a pretty stupid idea...). He might do so again if he is struggling with the Sight, so that might give me all kinds of new things to play with. *evilgrin*

Thank you all.

[Belial666]

The difficulty for the home of a dark practitioner varies. A lot.

Molly Carpenter is essentially a Lawbreaker and her first few tries at magic were drilling holes through her friends' psyches. While that might be a bit alarming considering her age at the time, it is less than the psychic assaults by some phobophages - and those assaults didn't significantly harm Harry's mind when he Saw them. I'd say Difficulty 3-4.

Someone like a necromancer who learned magic by reading Kemmler's works and his first attempts at it were to steal bodies from a cemetery and make zombies in his basement and then graduated to murder and the animation of fresh corpses when he wanted quick goon squads would be significantly worse. I'd say Difficulty of 6-8, depending on his power and the total number of murders and animations that happened there.

Some demented summoner who learned magic by joining a cult and his first attempt was the summoning of an Outsider that didn't go very well (the other cult members were eaten), followed by his descent into utter insanity and enough summonings of lesser outsiders to fulfill his crazed fantasy of impregnating the ladies of his home village with tentacled horrors because they turned him down at the prom is much worse. I'd say Difficulty 10-12 or even higher if there are some of the girls still imprisoned there.

If you're trying to See the primary residence of Elena Blackcloak in Salem, the scion of an outsider and a mortal who learned magic by making long-distance magical calls to the Void to chat up that side of the family and has been performing magic there for almost three hundred years, including her invention of the Sightblinder spell that calls up dark energy specifically for causing backlash to those looking at something with the Sight, the same house being a major temple to some Old Ones and covered with wards bigger than anything except Edinburg or Demonreach...
What's the Difficulty for major nuclear explosions going off inside someone's head again?

[fantazero]

It's not just BAD things you see, it can be things that change you as a person.
You run across an Angel, or a Fae Queen, or one of those things that hangs out where normal eyes can't see.
or heck, maybe they catch their reflection in the mirror.