SO I have played the God Machine Chronicles and I have made some system changes that I think would make it harder. A system for Mortals to add realism and add to the difficulty of the game. This system is called "Stress". If I could get some opinions that would be great.


Stress is a supplement for World of Darkness meant to truly push the idea of the intensity of the setting. Stress is a system that focuses more on Willpower and how the players use it in the World of Darkness. This supplement can only be used by mortal characters using the God Machine Chronicles expansion.

The first major adaptation in Stress is that all skills and attributes have a glass cap of 3 instead of 5. You get the same number of points to distribute in each set but each skill and attribute can only be raised to 3.

The second major change is that when the character spends their last point of willpower it constitutes a breaking point at their current Integrity. This is to represent a character pushing themselves too hard and suffering for it in the long run.

The third major change is with Resources. Most of World of Darkness assumes that an item 2 ranks below your resources can be bought with impunity. But with Stress its different. Resources are now a tangible stat that acts as your fuel stat as a mortal (Vitae, Mana, Etc). A normal person has a maximum starting Resources of 10. Every two weeks a character may draw on a unumber of resource dots equal to twice their resource rating.

A fourth major change is that a character in the Stress system must spend 1 willpower every session or suffer a breaking point (5). Normal people don't do the things in the World of Darkness and by its very nature the world of darkness is scary.

A character may spend a point of willpower at the begining of a session in order to draw on a number of points of Resources equal to his Allies or Status. If a character does they gain the "Leveraged" condition pretaining to that Status or Ally.

A character with the "Safe Place" merit must spend a number of recources every month equal to that Safe Places merit rating. If the character does not they experience a breaking point (4) every month.

Now this may seem like a bit much to force characters to spend all this will power but Stress also comes with new merits to help ease the transition.

Potential (** or ***) – The character has an exceptional amount of potential in a given area. When you gain this merit choose one attribute. You now have the ability to raise that Attribute to 4. This merit does not raise the attribute score, it just allows you to. With the 3 dot version you gain the ability to raise that Attribute to 5.

Skilled (* or **) - When you gain this merit choose one Skill. You now have the ability to raise that skill to 4. This merit does not raise the Skill rating, it just gives your the ability to. With the 2 dot version you gain the ability to raise that Attribute to 5.

Masochism (**) - The character has learned to revel in their own suffering. Pain causes not just pleasure but a great relief of the burdens of the world. Once per session if a character takes a single point of lethal damage, or a point of bashing damage in their rightmost damage tracks they regain one willpower.

Sadism (****) - Pain and suffering cause your character to become more able and centered. Inflicting harm helps them clear their head. Once per session when the character inflicts a single point of lethal damahe, or a number of levels of bashing damage greater than the targets resolve they regain a single point of willpower.

Grace Under Pressure (*****) - The World of Darkness is a terrifying place filled with all sorts of monsterous things that lurk in the night waiting to consume you. You character has embraced the madness of the world of darkness and found a sense of relief in it. When the character experiences a breaking point they may regain a point of willpower.

Momento (**) - IN this world so dark many go mad from stress and decay. Some have adapted to the chaos by using a Momento. As long as the character carries the given momento they may alleviate a single die penalty on Resolve + Composure rolls and Breaking Point.

Comfort Food (***) - The character alleviates a single die penalty to Breaking Point rolls within 8 hours of eating their comfort food.
This message was last updated by a moderator, as it was the wrong forum, at 06:49, Sun 12 Oct 2014.

In reply to Illfirin (msg # 1):

So I like the idea of stress, but I don't think limiting traits is a wise choice. It will make it much harder to fit certain concepts, like someone who is very intelligent but perhaps does not have the best resolve. The merits that allows either your skills or attributes to be higher is just wasted "points" in my opinion. Mortals are already pathetic meat-sacks, all's this would do is irritate me as a player.
Now I'm not that overly familiar with nWOD, and in oWOD at character creation a skills level is already limited to 3 until freebies are spent. So perhaps I'm thinking with oWOD rules in mind.
However everything else in your Stress system is pretty cool, and I'm totally borrowing your idea for my own ST game lol. An idea I had was that Breaking Point checks should be made as a result of the previous sessions actions by players, you know it takes a while for stress to set in sometimes.
Like I said I'm new to nWOD, so I actually had to looks all of these rules up just to understand your post. So I apologize if I have noob complaints.

Agreed.  Not that I'm a major oWoD player, and certainly not a new one, but yeah.  I completely agree with what he said.

First of all, I have no experience with WoD and cannot fairly evaluate your rules in any meaningful way.

From a 'marketing' perspective though, I question naming any kind of a product 'stress' or anything that sounds remotely like 'stress'. Coming into this thread, I expected some sort of a vent about how stressful a time you were having related to WoD. Subconsciously at least, most people have an aversion to including any more 'stress' in their lives, particularly with games.

Perhaps you can "borrow" familiar gaming words like 'sanity'? 'Breaking Point' seems a good point of focus -- perhaps more a along those lines. Even a bit more playful and less common words: 'cracked,' or 'anguish' or the like.

So a thing with WoD is that it is described that an attribute of 1 is below average person, 2 is closer to average person, and 3 is with training or natural talent, rating 4 is a prodigy, 5 is peak human. Essentially think of 3 as Police Training and 4 as Military training. 5.. well 5 is past exceptional. With that in mind I created Stress, which is meant as a system for playing they poor schmuck who got lanced into the world of darkness through no fault of his own. The World of Darkness is trying to drag this poor slob in and they are going kicking and screaming.

These characters are trying to no going into the shadows, so they keep their 9-5 maybe have more than one job, and when the world of darkness forces itself on them they are practically helpless, like you.... any poor schmuck in the world of darkness.

Stress is not for hunters, not for vampires, not for anything awesome.