One of my favorite game mechanics in videogames in Insight from Bloodborne. You increase your character’s Insight by encountering weird alien shit for the first time, or by consuming the Madman’s Knowledge item. As your Insight increases, you gain the ability to see more supernatural stuff happening around you that would otherwise be invisible. But as you are pulled into the world of eldritch beings, you also become more vulnerable to their strange powers.
For a campaign in which the player character’s are on a journey to visit sacred shrines of supernatural power to gain greater wisdom and enlightenment from personal encounters with cosmic forces, an Insight mechanic would be just perfect.
In Dragonbane, this is a perfect case for introducing a secondary skill. That is, simply a skill that isn’t in the main rulebook for the game. Assuming the campaign begins with the PCs already having done a circuit of the regular pilgrim’s path but still craving for greater understanding from more out of the way and controversial sites of power, all PCs would start with Insight as a trained skill in addition to the starting skills of a new character. Which means it starts at a rank of 1 to 7, based on the character’s Willpower attribute, corresponding to a 5 to 35% chance at making a successful skill check.
Insight checks are rolled when touching a supernatural object, entering a supernatural area, or first interacting with a supernatural creature to gain a first impression of what’s going on. It might also be rolled in secret by the GM to become aware of a hidden presence. And in turn, an Insight roll might need to be failed or otherwise supernatural beings take notice of the PCs entering their vicinity and come to investigate. (That part is admittedly still very vague at this point.)
As with all skills, a roll of a 1 or a 20 marks the Insight skill for advancement at the end of the game. Once the game ends, players make a skill check, and if the check fails, the skill advances by one rank. The sacred shrines that the characters are seeking and visiting count as a teacher for for the Insight skill. Spending a full shift in a sacred shrine and contemplating the experience lets players make a skill advancement roll with a boon (roll twice, take the better result).
There is a special creepiness in Bloodborne when you start to notice the Amygdala have been there the entire time. Only now they are atleast a fraction comprehensible to you. What I find very interesting is how to take the format of Bloodborne as a video game and turn it into a roleplaying game. Translating these ideas to a player becomes an interesting challenge, where perhaps a player’s perception check allows them to see not just things at face value but they begin to see ‘what can’t be seen’. And I think in the cosmic sense, the players become aware that they too are being watched, observed and no longer within the privacy of their travelling party. To paraphrase a random table I saw in Mork Borg… The skies are torn open and they see what is behind it, and what they see is actively aware of them and staring back. To me, ‘Insight’ is its own double edged sword and what strange rewards or punishment follows its pursuit changes what the mundane world means to players.