Update (v2.4): The Worms, Core Resolution, and Corrupted Truths

Update Summary:

Addition: The Worms

• Added two new spreads (4 pages) giving more detail on the Worms themselves. What they are, what they want, how they feed, and what they offer to their hosts. I'm trying to thread a needle here between over-explaining or lore-dumping, while also giving enough context that the stakes and constraints of the situation are clear.
  • Designing the Worms is an interesting balancing act. They are, very specifically, not an outside force infesting humanity. They are within us. Our worst tendencies given form. This is, in many ways, an "anti-mythos" game, in that it's not about alien horrors from beyond. It's about us. It's not about our existential meaninglessness before Cthulhu. It's about meaning. About the fact that while, yes, we are tiny dots in an infinite void, our choices matter. It's a game about those choices. The horror of attempting to act ethically, to act with integrity, when the world punishes it, and rewards cruelty. 
  • So the Worms needed to be written in such a way that they do not give an easy ethical escape. They don't control you. And giving into them is always a choice. 
  • The Worms feed not simply on suffering or the causing of harm, but on the act of willfully turning away. I needed to be careful to distinguish the act of giving into the Worms from dissociation as a trauma-response, or protective / involuntary compartmentalization. Giving into the Worms means deciding to shrug your shoulders at suffering you caused. Deciding to cut yourself off from others, and from your own feeling. Because it hurts. Because it's too hard. So you take the easy way out. 
  • I'll probably write another Devlog about this, but essentially, I'm trying to model the conditions under which people become willing participants in evil. How people distance themselves from their own cruelty. Look at the Stanford Prison and Milgram Experiments, for instance. Or Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil," in which evil becomes normalized through thoughtless conformity and emotional distancing. 
     

Update: Core Resolution Mechanics

• A small but important tweak to change Challenges from being focused on "failure" and instead focusing on consequence. If someone thinks that an action might have interesting negative consequences, they can suggest them, and if the GM agrees, they happen... unless the Player instigates a Challenge. Players may also request Challenges if the GM narrates something bad affecting their character, or if they wish to put their character in harm's way to protect someone else. 
  • This, I think, makes Challenges more flexible without over-generalizing them. The GM is still the gatekeeper of whether or not a Challenge occurs, but it encourages more Player participation in the back-and-forth. 
  • It also echoes one of the core themes of the game: do you sit back and let the horrible things happen? What will you risk to stop them? Which battles are you able and willing to fight? Which hills are you willing to die on? 
• Some clarification on the rules surrounding equipment and minutia. Essentially, focus on it if it's interesting. If not, let it go. 
  • I love Resident Evil 4. Problematic? Absolutely. Silly as hell? Yessir. But man, trying to fit all your guns in that tiny attache case was fun. Inventory management can be a great part of a game. But that's simply not what this game is about. The dramatic question in "Before the Worms" isn't "do you have what you need?" it's "what price will you pay?" Verisimilitude needs to be preserved, yes, but as long as everyone buys into the basic premise of the game (you are regular people in a world almost exactly like our own) the GM should be able to adjudicate things fairly. 

• Rules change: Corrupted Truths are crossed out, and may be rewritten as many times as you desire, reflecting the fact that they have changed from core values to *masks* for the Worms. A Corrupted Truth twists into a justification for further harm and corruption. So, in a sense, it doesn't really matter what form it takes. It can become whatever it needs to be to rationalize the descent. 
  • This is meant to reflect the way that people can endlessly revise their internal systems of rationalization to protect their self-image, their innocence, their righteousness, etc. It can take endless forms, but the core purpose is the same. Feeding the Worms. 
• Rules change: A brief ritual is suggested to mark the moment a Truth is corrupted (as well as when one is Burned). 
  • This was actually recommended by my sister. When she read the game, she assumed that there were regular pauses and moments of reflective silence throughout. And while Burning a Truth did have a ritual associated with it, I realized I hadn't included a real "pause," and had also neglected to add a similar ritual for the corruption of a Truth. 
• Rules change: Corrupted Truths cannot be uncorrupted. But they can be Burned. This comes with a cost, and has no reward save the knowledge that you've denied the Worms a foothold. 
  • Though it does make it less likely that your eventual end will be falling to the Worms. That distinction is essentially narrative, though.
  • This was a tricky one. I wanted to always make it possible to come back from being Corrupted, but make it hurt. Make it costly. The easier option is always to ignore it. And it's even easier to lean in.