Epidiah Ravachol
First Post
Fortunately for all that are involved, the GM should never touch the tower. When I'm running the game, I usually put some serious distance between myself and the tower, because I have the crazy legs.Thornir Alekeg said:This sounds really cool.
When mentioning the struggle over the gun, two players were making opposed pulls. Does the GM make pulls for NPCs to counter the player's action, or is it soley based upon the player at that point? I would think GM pulls could heighten the tension, but it also might discourage the players from trying things, because they don't want to end up in a Jenga duel.
In fact, I've noticed that most players do, too, because the rules don't care why the tower fell, just who caused it. A player standing up to go to the bathroom and bumping the table could just as easily lose a character as a player making one of those heart-pounding end game pulls. I like to think of it as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Effect. If you've seen the original, then you remember that horrific moment when Kirk is inside the house looking for help for their engine problems, the door behind him slides open and within a breath Kirk drops, twitches, and is dragged behind the door as it slams shut. And the audience is left with the most unsettling case of WTF in the history of audiences.
That's Kirk's player knocking the tower over while reaching for a bag of Cheetos. There one moment, not even really trying to do anything, and then gone before anyone even has a chance to witness the events.*
The Jenga duel only comes up when the PCs are in conflict with each other and willing to risk the tower for what they are fighting over. It is a special case that runs slightly different than the rest of the game. It is a game of chicken in which each pull does not necessarily have to mean something is happening. Normally, if you pull from the tower, you absolute succeed or get something for each pull. So an action that takes more than one pull has significant steps that you accomplish with each pull. But while the PCs are duking it out, the tower becomes more abstract, and pulls just represent each character's willingness to escalate the conflict and see it through to its inevitable end.
* To be fair, I've probably run Dread games for hundreds of players over the years, taking into account all the cons and store demos, and I've only seen this sort of unfortunate demise twice, and it happened so early in the game for one of them that I used the dead man walking option on him. The game is about the threat of this happening and not so much about tricking the players into killing their own characters off.