They Feed on Fear
This feature is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #180. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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This series of articles is made possible through the generous sponsorship of Exalted Funeral. While Exalted Funeral puts us in touch with our subjects, they have no input or approval in the final story.
“I don’t understand what we’re supposed to get from this. It’s such an old recording, probably won’t even play,” Jaime mutters to herself.
“Nah man, if we want any chance of making out of this alive, we need to see what’s on this tape!” Douglas insists, adjusting his glasses as he slots the tape in.
The old CRT television flickers to life, revealing a recording from years prior. “Alright, this is… Tape 42 with subject Alexei Vella.” Vella sits idly opposite the camera on the table, oddly comfortable despite the bloodstains. “Let’s take it from the top, shall we, Alexei?” The voice off-screen is noted as “Agent Beahm” in the lower left-hand corner of the video. Beahm proceeds to narrate as he sits down opposite the subject….
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When it comes to horror monsters, audiences tend to be oddly conflicted. As much as Freddy, Jason and their blood-soaked siblings horrify many of us, there are those that find their twisted tales fascinating. When even Killer Klowns from Outer Space gets a tie-in videogame (with positive reviews!), it puts into perspective how much impish, nostalgic joy horror fans can find in grizzly creatures that ruthlessly devastate everything in their wake. Yet in terms of tabletop RPG options, most simply pit you against the monsters. Few have dared to ask the player to stalk the night, out for blood themselves – which is where They Feed on Fear comes in, created by Alexei Vella.
Just as our conversation about the game itself gets started, Alexei stresses one very important point, “To be clear – before I begin, real monsters exist in this world, human monsters. They Feed on Fear is not about those monsters, but fictional ones – the ones from our imaginations.” He’s very deliberate about this, also including content warnings and considerations for players hosting the game. The only horrors he wants explored are those that are fun, not morbidly depressing.
In They Feed on Fear you play as a malleable abomination, with a wide array of inspirations given to pull from, as you slowly whittle down the town’s population. While the system initially suggests ideas befitting a suburban town in the 1980s, Alexei has intentionally built it modular to other settings. “I just settled on that because, while writing it, I was rereading one of my favorite Stephen King books, IT, and was deep into Stranger Things.” He also is already considering future expansions, “specifically a sci-fi (inspired by Alien) or even a historical (inspired by the novel/season one of The Terror) version of They Feed on Fear. Monsters are timeless, and so is They Feed on Fear.”
Why monsters though? It’s not often most tabletop campaigns even delve into true villainy, let alone a game where you’re hunting human prey and playing the bad guy that everyone fights. As Alexei puts it, that grimy, hard-edged challenge is precisely the point. “The inspiration behind playing as monsters is very personal,” he continues. “As a youth with an obvious disability, I found that I did not fit in, and I felt akin to the monsters in pop culture and media, as they were feared and considered outcasts, similar to how I saw myself.”
All the while, the heroes seemed impossibly perfect do-gooders with no risk of winning. The final girl/guy is the one who almost always triumphs, “So I found myself rooting for the monster to succeed. Monsters felt more human, flawed and struggling to attain their despicable goals. So, They Feed on Fear is essentially my love letter to those monsters.” It’s something that Alexei isn’t alone in, particularly among the “Fred-head” community for Nightmare on Elm Street’s fandom. Rather appropriately, like Freddy, the player, as a “Fear-Eater” collaborates directly with the game master – in the role of the Provider, an “unknowable and omniscient observer and creator of all things.”
“They Feed on Fear is a storytelling TTRPG, so narrative is essential.” To this end, Alexei designed the narrative prompts and lore inspirations before the mechanics were devised. “The prompts and questions are for players who might be stuck, as it’s not a very traditional game regarding the roles and the headspace players encompass. It’s not every day that a Game Master takes on the role of a Provider, or players take on the role of an eldritch interdimensional being – it is very inhuman, and you have to think that way.” That inhumanity extends beyond with one of Alexei’s boldest choices – no loot system. This isn’t to say you won’t be able to improvise with what’s available, but you aren’t going to be a walking armory of tools. Creativity is king, and just as crucially, adaptability.
“Fear-Eaters believe themselves to be the protagonists, not the antagonists,” he explains, “Their goal is collecting ‘Essence’ to survive in a dimension that is not theirs while fulfilling a goal. They think they are doing what is right. How is that any different than real protagonists?” Still, it’s fair for players to need a minute to wrap themselves around the idea of being the ghastly creatures in the shadows, rather than the survivors. “One way I tried to make this learning curve less difficult was to explain to the players that they were not monsters, but that they were creating a story about the Community,” a chuckle as he recalls, “This was not a popular notion because many of my playtesters wanted to be the terrible monster – I was lucky!”
As an interdimensional entity merely assuming a ghastly form, as you gain Essence, you evolve over time, while trying to keep the local community’s hysteria and stress levels in check. You don’t simply get stronger, but define your very nature across the game’s attribute wheel. Alexei explains, “I referred to the source material, the monsters of pop culture and media, and created a practical diagram with the Attribute Wheel. [It] defines the types of monsters in media based on a combination of two aspects (forming an attribute pair) or a single one, as in the case of Protean and Singularity Fear-Eaters. For example, a Bestial Fear-Eater combines the Physical and Matter aspects; this type of Fear-Eater would be most similar to Michael Myers of John Carpenter’s Halloween.” And as things magnify in intensity, greater threats are on the horizon, including various NPCs inspired by iconic heroes ranging from Stranger Things to X-Files.
That isn’t to say that Alexei wants players to wholly focus on recreating the classics. If anything, “I also wanted to steer players away from what is listed on the table and encourage them to develop their own qualities for their monsters. Although the tables are extensive, I know that players can come up with fun, unique traits of their own.” While speaking with Alexei, I made a point of workshopping a few build ideas by him, such as a Chupacabra (i.e. focusing exclusively on animal prey), or the Devil in Needful Things (i.e. manipulating the population into doing much of the murder and mayhem for you). While the latter is very viable, he did warn that in the rules as they’re defined, towards the end stages of a campaign, a Chupacabra-esque Fear-Eater would still need to feast on a few humans in order to obtain enough Essence to win.
However, a hivemind Fear-Eater, be that an alien queen or a Puppet Master homage, was specifically made viable with this edition, “It was added to this edition as the “Create Thrall” and “Create Proxy” abilities.”
The Essence gained and your means of progressing are measured against a Doom Clock, inspired by the real-life Doomsday Countdown Timer. The fuller it becomes, the closer you are to victory, and the more desperate the community you’re plaguing becomes. All the while, players still have to make good on their plans. Each excursion requires risking some Essence, and the dice rolls are tight, as you’ll only be using d12s.
“D12s are underappreciated but versatile dice,” Alexei argues, “Think about it. You can roll them as a d2, d3, d4, d6, or d12, making them useful for all sorts of tables!” He grins, continuing, “Mechanically, the d12 allows players to add or subtract a modifier of up to 2 and still not be sure of the outcome – this is essential in creating tension and unpredictability when making challenges.” It also keeps things brisk, a crucial point in Alexei’s mind. “From the get-go, I wanted to create a low-prep game that I could play primarily one-on-one, as a one-shot with my Game Master friend, with me playing the monster role. So, yeah, it was reverse-engineered to what it is now. The restrictions in the one-shot format were removed from the regular format rules, excluding what is explained in the new one-shot section for the second edition.”
Yet nothing could prepare Alexei for something more surprising than a sudden machete through the door or an eldritch entity growling from the shadows – his playtesters finding laughter amid the gloom. “Like, yes, you are a vile monster, draining human essence, but bad rolls happen, and can be hilarious.” Citing a particular perfect-storm of crit-fails, “One playtester had the simple task of entering a house. They tried everything: clawing, smashing, ramming, turning into a vapor to enter from the gap underneath the door, etc., but nothing worked.” He pauses, before concluding, “Then, they tried to open the door using the doorknob. They opened the door and successfully entered the house with no trouble!”
That kind of messy chaos is encouraged. They Feed on Fear isn’t a system about perfecting your run. It’s a living horror story – maybe even one you envisioned as your dream horror movie. You can embody the creature that terrifies you most or something so silly it flips everything around into a bleak comedy, and for intrepid game masters, Alexei is eager to see what else they cook up within the ruleset.
“A big inspiration for me is MORK BÖRG; not the ruleset per se, even though I’ve enjoyed plenty of games, but the community around it and the amount of fan content and third-party content available for it, which continues to be made to this day! I want that for They Feed on Fear. I want to see what players do with the rules, and I’m excited to see what they come up with! I want They Feed on Fear to be a name within the TTRPG gaming community.”
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As he says this, Vella rises from his seat. The agents, vaguely seen in the reflection, rise as well, reaching for their sidearms. “Well what about seeing things from the, uh, ‘prey’s’ perspective, Mr. Vella?” Agent Beahm asks, trying to regain control of the conversation. Vella chuckles before reaching up to his face, ripping off his mask. The entity beneath is censored, pixelated, howling “No Way, NEVER! Humans are boring; why would I want to be one of them? He howls at the camera and leaps at it.
“Well, shit. We’re gonna need more than a ham radio and a baseball bat to make it out of this,” Jaime remarks. Douglas is too busy staring at the now not-pixelated entity rising up behind them to reply. A d12 rolls across the floor to their feet.
Alexei Vella is at large, and no doubt will strike again – with more TTRPG shenanigans in the future. For now, you can check out They Feed on Fear Second Edition in physical and digital formats on Exalted Funeral.
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With over ten of writing years in the industry, Elijah’s your guy for all things strange, obscure, and spooky in gaming. When not writing articles here or elsewhere, he’s tinkering away at indie games and fiction of his own.
