Throughout all my time with rpgs I’ve been interested in the effects of psychological pressure on player characters. I personally haven’t enjoyed giving players directives on how their character behaves (e.g. having character panic in combat or gain a phobia), though I get that’s a lot of fun for some folks! I tend to prefer behavioural changes coming from players making their own roleplaying choices.
But… I did want a mechanical framework that encodes how stress takes its toll on characters. So I cooked up [my own take that focuses on the physiological impacts ofstress instead, which just like player directives isn’t going be for everyone but I’m interested in what folks think of it.
I reckon it can be bolted onto pretty much any system, though I wrote it with NSR-y type stuff (Odd-likes and Borgs) in mind and I’d definitely use it with Mork Borg.
I love these kind of mechanics; I think a source of big boringness is when say, taking HP damage is the ONLY thing that changes characters negatively.
design-wise, my fear is of the common sort: player facing negative mechanics tend to be “forgotten” by players, they kinda lean a lil too much on the GM enforcing the mechanic (adds to GM load). yours seem simple enough to avoid that…
I recently did something SIMILAR (below, for an adventure I wanted bespoke melancholy mechanics), that is still undergoing playtesting, but my theory was that the tracking mechanism for the mechanic is a physical die (in the case of my table, I use a set of big heavy stone d6s I got a gem shop) that the GM hands to the player, and the player has to roll that die every time they do a test. a little easier for both players and GMs to remember, since its a physical mnemonic device.
I also fear the ‘it’s get forgotten’ issue! I like the doc you posted, it kinda points to how you can take the concept and make it setting specific (which I really like).