Epidiah Ravachol
First Post
Excellent advice.Nareau said:Pielorinho and I ran a game this past weekend, and it was a blast. We converted an old horror LARP we ran back in the early 90's.
We had 2 PC deaths in the last half hour of the game. It turned into a total bloodbath after the first PC bit it, as the rest of the PCs decided their survival was worth killing for. I think they offed 4 or 5 NPCs.
Things you might want to know when running Dread:
1) People are a lot more willing to resort to violence after the first guy dies (and the tower is easy to pull from)
2) If you play with smokers, play someplace where they can smoke without leaving the game. Dread will make them want cigarette badly.
3) Figure out how to make people pull early. In our game, the setup didn't really require any pulls before the first murder happened, about an hour and a half into the game.
I like to season the early part of my game with a lot of inconsequential things the players can pull for. The questionnaire can often set some of these up. Got a character who is punctual: traffic is bad, you'll probably have to pull to get to the cabin before sunset. Got a character who is skittish: you hear a scream, pull to keep from spilling coffee all over yourself. Got a ladies' man: she's looking fine, pull to get her attention, jerk.
None of those are important, but as early pulls they are really unlikely to cause a collapse. The just get the blood flowing a bit.
In the future, I think I'm going to houserule that every player must pull 3 times every time the tower falls. I think this will help the endgame tension stay high.
The natural pacing of most horror movies is such that once one character dies, there is usually a bit of a breather before things get tense again. That isn't always the case, and the breather never lets the tension all the way out. I've found that Dread works well in that sort of circumstance. Once the tower has fallen, it is time to restructure the scene so that the players get a chance to makes some pulls, like arguing over what to do next or keeping an extra attentive eye out for the stalking menace.
That said, active pre-pulls are a great way to keep things on pace.
Definitely pull, at least one. Perhaps more, depending on the circumstances, the character's ability and experiences, and what kind of case the player makes.For the designers:
How do you handle "social pulls"? Would you make a player pull in order to convince the mental patient to put down the baseball bat? Or do you recommend just roleplaying it out?
Go ahead and role-play it, and if the role-playing is particularly convincing, you can reduce the number of pulls if you like.
We've noticed that around 45 is when things start to get ridiculous. Obviously it is impossible to predict exactly when the tower will fall. If it were possible, it would be a little boring. But we recommend planning to make a pull about ever five minutes for a four hour game.In the numerous games you've run, have you noticed the tower falling after a certain time or number of pulls? It seems like a 4 hour game would most often see 30 pulls and 1 death (happening around pull #25).
That's an average of a pull every five minutes. In general, when some goes to pull, they are going to be making several at once. So it's okay to go a half hour without a pull and then yank six. Just make sure everything feels on pace.
You certainly can pull more than that, but if you are pulling less, the tension might not be there.
That's a thing of beauty.My favorite scene from our game this weekend:
The cop manages to unlock a door to the abandoned wing of the asylum. His gun drawn, maglite at the ready, he swings the door open--only to see one of the psychiatrists standing there, holding a scalpel, covered in blood. He swings the gun up to point at the doctor's head, shouting, "DROP THE WEAPON!" Without missing a beat, the doctor calmly responds, "Can I help you?"
Nareau