# Fear Itself tags: #game/rpg/fear-itself ![[Fear Itself (cover).jpg|600]] **Fear Itself** is the **[[Gumshoe|GUMSHOE]]** game for everyone who ever watched a horror movie and thought, "sure, *I'd* survive that." Written by Robin D. Laws and published by Pelgrane in 2007, it's the engine's "ordinary people" dial: no elite investigators, no training montage, just regular folks — teachers, bartenders, people who look a lot like *you* — getting inexorably pulled into a disturbing contemporary world of madness and violence. It's set in the same reality as the Esoterrorists (the creatures come from the **Outer Black**), but where that game hands you operatives and funding, this one hands you a nervous system and a lease. It's a game built for one-shots where, in the best horror tradition, few if any protagonists are expected to survive the climax — though it can hold an ongoing campaign if you're feeling cruel. ## Setting The Outer Black is an unearthly realm of alien menace bleeding into our world, and ordinary people keep bumping up against the creatures that crawl through it. Fear Itself plays the **personal horror** angle hard: your character is much like yourself, dragged into confrontation with things that should not be, and the game is less about winning than about what it does to a normal person to face the dark. It's the ideal platform for a one-shot — like any self-respecting horror flick, the expectation is that few if any of the protagonists make it to the credits, and the ones who do may not be entirely themselves afterward. ## Mechanics Fear Itself runs the core **GUMSHOE** chassis (see the meta note), tuned for vulnerability: **investigative abilities** find clues without a roll, **general abilities** resolve uncertain outcomes with 1d6 vs a difficulty, and spends fuel the whole thing. Its genre-specific contributions are a **personal-horror** mood that makes every resource feel finite, plus **psychic powers** — the first (and still signature) addition of supernatural abilities to the GUMSHOE engine. The other load-bearing meter is **Stability**, the game's stand-in for holding your mind together in the face of the abyss: it can drop into the negative, and if it ever reaches −12, your character is gone — dead, or permanently lost to madness. **Sources of Stability**, **affinities** and **enmities**, and a set of "what do you want" drives round out the character and give the Keeper hooks to make the horror personal. ## Editions - **2007** — the original *Fear Itself* core book, by Robin D. Laws. *In the library (91-page PDF).* - **Unremitting Horror** and related supplements expand the game (and The Esoterrorists) with more Outer Black creatures and scenarios. - Later **GUMSHOE** re-releases and the wider line keep the "ordinary people vs. the Outer Black" premise in print. ## References - [Fear Itself — Pelgrane Press](https://pelgranepress.com/product-category/gumshoe/fear-itself/) - [Fear Itself — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_Itself_(role-playing_game)) - [GUMSHOE System — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumshoe_System)