Any tips for running a FEAR inspired campaign?

That's a pretty common horror element. Moments where the protagonist is forced to question if what really happened, happened.

Think the best example is in The Evil Dead, where all of Ash's friends suddenly and seemingly apropos of nothing, revert from their possessed forms and start telling him it's okay. It's easily the most tense moment in the movie.

Other examples happen way earlier in the movie or story, where they witness something weird, and shake it off as a trick of the light or not getting enough sleep.

Yeah, I know, it's just the intensity of the fight combined with the fact you get neither warning, nor explanation.
Everything else seemed like a walk in the park compared to that particular moment. Like, all the scenes with Alma were mildly amusing at most and never actually truly scary, not even the final sequence with the black hole shadow spirits trying to eat you in the warehouse.

No one ever tells you that you have to play FEAR with no prior knowledge and in a darkened room.

It's a shame you can only play this game once.

If I had to run a FEAR campaign or one shot, I'd probably use my modified Cyberpunk 2020 system, since I feel it works very good for those visceral combat scenes. Also, Cyberpunk 2020 has just enough crunch, so you can model every FEAR gun. Now for the horror. I don't feel that a CoC/Delta Green style sanity fits Japanese horror particularly well. The stress rules for Cyberpunk 2020 would suit it better IMO (link: irc.liber-mundi.org/pages_html.php?html=stress&lng=us).

The main change I did to CP2020 is that I got rid of character classes, though in this setting, I don't find it necessary. Specially for FEAR, I'd re-use the old initiative hack I now stopped using - but it's pretty much required for bullet time effect. It works like this: Characters roll for initiative (REF + Combat Sense + Bonus - Penalty/Encumbrance + 1d10). For every five points of initiative, the character can perform one action (e.g. a initiative score of 21 would give you one action at 21, one action at 16, one action at 11, one action at 6, and one action at 1). Actions are then resolved by decreasing initiative score.

...

...

Or you can just kill them with a jump kick, which isn't too difficult because they charge into melee range anyway.

Jump kick and shotgun, those 2 can easily take down like 90% of enemies in F.E.A.R.

>sequel was supposed to be a F.E.A.R team going Rainbow 6 on some supernaturals' asses
Chupacabra, wasn't it? Oh well, at least in the sequel we get to get raped by a ghost

it's not even a particularly attractive ghost

honestly, the alma stroyline should've ended in Extraction Point, which had a perfect downer ending

I was 12 when it came out, but it was the jumpscares and atmosphere that got to me. I had to set it down for a few years before I could finish it, since I got nightmares whenever I tried. The combat however was entirely tolerable to my shitty teenager psyche.

I'm planning and encounter where my players have to deal with a ghost-like entity, but I'm still I'm trying to figure out how to make interesting how to fight something that they can't shoot.

Well, in the game, Alma constantly takes you to another dimension (or gives you hallucination) so make those kinda puzzle encounters, touch the wrong thing, get hurt etc. Final encounter can be kinda gimmicky. The players have to reach the location of Almas body but she keeps trapping the players in these puzzle worlds that are slowly killing them. You could even be super satistic and have Alma hurting them in the real world at the same time or something along those lines. To make it the ultimate assclencher you could forgo all battle and instead put down a timer. The whole bunker is about to explode and they need to stop Alma and get out before the time runs out.
Do you plan to steal the setting wholesale or just lift the basic idea?

I've never played the games, but from what I've seen in this thread is more or less similar of what I'm trying to do for this encounter.

A bump because i like you.

youtube.com/watch?v=XlgsmZHVXt4

>Extraction Point
NOT CANON
O
T

C
A
N
O
N

That's my point, the plot of Extraction Point was better than the plot of FEAR 2 (if marginally).
They should've just stuck with it and dropped the Alma storyline entirely, instead opting for a different traditional horror badnik, like, I dunno, Jason Voorhees knockoff or something.

I fukken loved F.E.A.R.

Make them see shit on random, out of the corner of their eyes or while passing by one specific spot that when they try to get a closer look, it's gone. Put them in areas that are completely abandoned but look like people have been squatting there recently, only to disappear without a trace. Also, of course, the BBEG needs to appear in the form of a little child. Don't matter if male or female, as long as it's spooky and unnerving.

>tfw they castrated gameplay in the sequel

Eclipse Phase, although not at all alike in terms of setting, has a nice rules system for speed-focused combat and shit.

Shadowrun also has nice, detailed gunplay.

Both feel very F.E.A.R.ish when playing, in terms of gameplay.

...

Re-fluffed WoD? It's fast and simple with rules for the supernatural.

>sequels

There are no sequels to F.E.A.R. only pretenders

>wanting two games of ALMAAAAAAAAAAA

Something Lynchian would have been a good direction for the series to go.

Or hell, can you imagine the original FEAR team doing the game with Clive Barker doing the writing

I didn't mind 2. 3 is really where it fell apart.

2 was decent but it had plenty of problems.
>basically all weapons felt underpowered
>gameplay was noticeably slower and less intense than in the first one

Mech segments were pretty noise though.

>Mech segments were pretty noise though.
On THIS point in particular, I agree!

The rest, though? Highly meh. Though for some reason the whole "I think I got shot in the aorta!" made me giggle. Still don't know why, but it did.

Maybe I'm too much of a shooter-novice to have picked up on the mechanical problems. 2 did a lot of stuff I liked in terms of writing, visual design... there's some really, really good environmental storytelling throughout. That hospital where you go through all of the operating rooms, and then you get behind the walls and see all of the hidden viewing rooms spying on all of the places you've been, all of the worst experiments... The school is haunting, too, as the sinister implications of what are normal-on-the-surface grade school structures emerge. There's good stuff there.

The best way to describe it imo is "consolized." They replaced leaning with a half-assed cover tossing system. The guns feel notably more sluggish and imprecise than the first.

>No one ever tells you that you have to play FEAR with no prior knowledge and in a darkened room.
It was 2005 and I recall the game specifically advised me to turn the lights down for the full experience.

The first time I played it, alma was the scary part, I didnt think much about the replica forces, I recently did a second playtrough of it, now I just get sad for alma and think those fuckers with the guns are terrifying