Roleplaying

Roleplaying Haunt

AX.GHW.06.03.02

The Thing That Changed

Every Haunt has something that is different now. Not worse, necessarily, different. A sense that has been expanded into territory it wasn't designed for. An absence where something used to be, or a presence where there didn't used to be one. Players should identify this early, because it shapes everything else: the Haunt's relationship to sleep, to silence, to crowded rooms, to the particular quality of stillness in a space where someone died.

This doesn't need to be dramatic. It can be as quiet as always knowing which direction is toward the nearest cemetery, or never dreaming, or always waking at 3 AM and knowing why. The detail should be specific and personal, not a general atmospheric note.

The Dead

Haunts have a relationship with the restless dead that other lineages don't share. This can be a source of information, of complicated emotional weight or of outright danger depending on what the dead in question want. GMs and players should establish early what the Haunt's personal history with this is. Have they spoken to the dead before? Do they seek it out or avoid it? Have they encountered something dead that they knew when it was alive?

The answer to that last question, if it exists, is almost certainly a story worth telling at the table.

The Resolve

The Cultural Talent here is Resolve, not Courage or Stoicism. Resolve in AxiomRPG governs mental resilience, resistance to fear, manipulation, mental influence and concentration under pressure. For Haunts, this is experiential rather than trained. They are not unafraid. They simply have a reference point that recalibrates the scale. Players who lean into this will find their Haunt most useful in scenes where other characters are rattled, not because the Haunt is invulnerable to horror, but because they've already met the bottom and know it isn't the end.