Champions had a disadvantage called "Dependent." The idea was that someone was dependent on you, and in a superhero game you know full well what that means: whoever is dependent upon you will routinely be threatened, kidnapped, or even murdered by the bad guys in a warped act of revenge. Dependents, in short, are a form of vulnerability.

Of course, for dependents to actually matter, the player has to be willing to role-play the consequences of such actions. It's not surprising that the majority of players create characters who have no spouses, no children, and nobody who depends on them – no Aunt Mays, no kids in day care, nobody who would miss them if they disappeared for weeks at a time. Not even a pet.

In Call of Cthulhu, threatening relatives is so common that it's a known trope. In fact, the majority of the time the relative is already dead and leaving behind some deep, dark secret for the investigators to follow. One of the reasons this is such a tired trope is that the scenarios in question introduce the notion cavalierly, when in reality relationship with a relative (and their sudden death) should be a major part of the character. It's fine to kill said dependent off, but it should be a big deal and not just an excuse to run another scenario.

The problem is that it's virtually impossible to force dependents on players who don't want them. In modern games, having a relative who would at least be concerned by a character's absence should be much more common than it is. On the other hand, not every game master wants to spend hours role-playing concerned calls to mom explaining why there are bullet holes in the front door.

The key is to make the relationship feel natural. Dependents should be somebody introduced early, and ideally as part of the character's creation. Agent Hammer has a grandmother whom he visits when in New York City. Agent Caprice has an older brother who is always overshadowing him. Agent Guppy had a girlfriend whom he broke up with ten years ago but still pines for.

All of these dependents are going to die.

Mind you, I don't plan to actually off them so callously. Agent Guppy's girlfriend, for example, disappeared in a haze of drug psychotherapy, rekindled their relationship, only to be murdered by a cult intent on making Guppy their leader by "severing old ties." That took several sessions.

Agent Caprice's brother has his own complicated back story involving his wife (Caprice's sister-in-law) and their illegitimate child. In fact, agents aren't allowed to have children for precisely the reasons listed above.

And Hammer's poor grandma? Well, that's the subject of another article.

In an action horror game, heroes are often more capable of defending themselves. But they can't be everywhere at once, and dependents provide a gateway to other forms of horror that the character himself wouldn't normally experience. They are a vulnerability, a weakness.

The challenge is that, in threatening them, the player feels threatened. If characters are introduced naturally and are important parts of the ongoing game, their loss will be experienced that much more keenly.

Your Turn: Threaten puppies and kittens much?

Michael "Talien" Tresca is the National RPG Examiner