In the Dresden novels, Harry consistently describes using the sight as dangerous, but in the game, it is fairly easy to withstand these dangers. In both running the game, and playing, I have rarely seen any PC take significant mental strain to cause even a minor consequence. Yet we see Harry in the novel having consequences from using the site. (Most of the time, the player accepts a few points of Mental Strain knowing that it will reset at the end of the scene).
The most common remedy I've seen GMs use is to just increase the default intensity of the discipline challenge until the player has to spend fate just to get out of the vision. This can get absurd. I've seen a GM declare that a vision was at +9 just to force the player to use fate points. I really hate artificially inflating the intensity, so I came up with a different way of dealing with the horrors and dangers of the sight.
Most of the time, using the sight shows relative benign scenes, so the intensity is fairly low. Sometimes though, what is revealed is horrific, or just mind blowing (like seeing an Arch-Angels true form). To handle these scenes, there are two system: Weaponized Sight and Tags.
Weaponized Sight: Choose an appropriate intensity for the vision, but then add a +1 or +2 weapon quality to the vision. If the PC fails the discipline roll, they get hit with a harder than expected. This serves two purposes, first it scares the player. They realize that what they have just witnessed is truly horrifying. In running the same scene with two different groups, one with weaponized sight and one without, the group that saw the weaponized vision reacted more strongly to the vision, even though it had the same description as the other group. Just having the stakes raised was enough to convey the depth of what was in the vision.
The second effect of using weaponized sight is that there is a greater chance that the player will have to accept a consequence, usually a minor one, before they can finish the vision. This may sound harsh, but the consequence system is a vital part of the role-playing experience in Dresden (and FATE in general). Having to fight with consequences raises the stakes of the game, and makes conflicts far more interesting (and let's face it, when has Harry even entered the final battle fresh and well rested?).
Less than 20% of the sight challenges have been weaponized. Remember, most of the time the vision is benign; this rule is saved for the horrific (but not mind blowing) scenes).
Tags: Weaponized sight works well when I want to convey the horror of the vision, but to get to the truly mind blowing visions, I decided to switch the attack with tagging the PC. Instead of defending against mental strain, the PC is defending against a tag. This rarely comes up, and is saved for only the most intense visions. In my current campaign (about a year and half now), this has only come up once (the PC opened the sight upon a horrifyingly grizzly scene that involved an outsider). When they failed their discipline role, I placed a sticky tag on them. After the event, we talked about what it would mean for the player, and how they could remove the stage. It fit what was going on so much, that the player turned it into an aspect. (like most good tags, it could be turned to the PCs advantage). FYI, the tag was "Open Door", indicating that the PC had become more prone to possession.
The goal of these two house rules was not to punish players, but to make using the sight more dangerous; to make the players think twice before opening the sight.
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