[Dread] Jenga beat up my dice! My results from the indie horror RPG.

[Piratecat]

I'm thinking you don't. That's why it's so nerve-wracking both in and out of character when you yank (sorry, 'draw') a jenga block. The player is basically done, unless the referee wants to have the player run NPCs.

This is really powerful. I hate the "lonely player" syndrome as well, but knowing that they would be out kept the group REALLY focused.

That being said, the best way to hedge it is to turn that character into "the guy everyone knows is gonna get killed." They become the Mean Janitor In The Basement, or the Girl With No Bra; the characters who you know are going to die, but you're just not sure when. This allows them to still play, but they don't catch any lucky breaks. they won't see the clue, they will be the one to get blamed when something happens, and they KNOW that sooner or later they have an appointment with death. Wondering when it's going to occur is equally nerve-wracking.

In game terms, this is referred to as "Dead Man Walking." The character is no longer allowed to make any pulls for any reason. Thus, he can't successfully do anything beyond his own capabilities, and he won't be able to avoid trouble easily. Sooner or later, when the story demands it, he'll go down screaming.

This seems to work really well for me. It keeps things stressed, doesn't invalidate the importance of the tower, gives the GM an easy target when they do want to ace someone for story purposes, and best of all keeps the player playing! But the penalty of not being able to pull is a huge deterrent, and so doesn't make this an enviable condition.

 

[diaglo]

i have to say there is a reason this was nominated for an ENnie last year.

it totally rocks.

but it suffered from a small print run.

 

[Jim Hague]

This is really powerful. I hate the "lonely player" syndrome as well, but knowing that they would be out kept the group REALLY focused.

That being said, the best way to hedge it is to turn that character into "the guy everyone knows is gonna get killed." They become the Mean Janitor In The Basement, or the Girl With No Bra; the characters who you know are going to die, but you're just not sure when. This allows them to still play, but they don't catch any lucky breaks. they won't see the clue, they will be the one to get blamed when something happens, and they KNOW that sooner or later they have an appointment with death. Wondering when it's going to occur is equally nerve-wracking.

In game terms, this is referred to as "Dead Man Walking." The character is no longer allowed to make any pulls for any reason. Thus, he can't successfully do anything beyond his own capabilities, and he won't be able to avoid trouble easily. Sooner or later, when the story demands it, he'll go down screaming.

This seems to work really well for me. It keeps things stressed, doesn't invalidate the importance of the tower, gives the GM an easy target when they do want to ace someone for story purposes, and best of all keeps the player playing! But the penalty of not being able to pull is a huge deterrent, and so doesn't make this an enviable condition.

Thank you. That's exactly what has me worried - the lonely player. Not only is someone like that bored, but they would, IME, tend to draw focus from the game...which leads to big, big mistakes and other people knocking over the tower for reasons other than the character failing; a vicious cycle that could be extremely not fun. And fun, above all else, is my big concern when I run a game.

I'm still a bit on the fence, though - the argument that someone is just 'out' a la CoC doesn't hold water for me, since Dread has a completely different (and more immersive) character generation process. A CoC classic character takes maybe 5 minutes to create; a good Dread questionaire takes about half an hour to fill out, assuming the GM had time to prep spares. The 'Dead Man Walking' idea has me intrigued, though...

 

[Epidiah Ravachol]

but it suffered from a small print run.

Hopefully we have solved that problem. It'll probably never have a big print run, but with a little luck, it should always be in print and available (online, at least).

Concerning playing Dread campaign-style, I had about a yearlong run of it back in the early days. It was your typical post-zombie-apocalypse situation and after 30 some games, I think we had a dozen deaths or so. The mortality rate was certainly higher than the Midnight game I was playing concurrently, but not as brutal as you would suspect.

It is all about the threat of losing a character. This doesn't have to happen every session, it just has to come close to happening. And the trick is, a mile off is still close enough as far as the players are concerned.

To ensure a tad bit more longevity in the characters in my game, I let my players use the Beyond the Night rules to the fullest extent. Essentially, I let them get away with quite a bit when answering the three questions:

What did you learn last time?
I learned the secret to a head shot is a steady hand.
What long-term harm did you still have from last time?
Some cracked ribs, but they are healing nicely.
What have you done since last time?
We uncovered a some militia's stash of military-grade weaponry.

This player has obviously used the questions to indicate that his player is much better at shooting, is no longer all that bothered by his injuries, and has armed himself to the teeth. As a host, I might balk at that third one, but not always, perhaps not if several of the players agree to answer their third question the same way. Besides, pulling to toss a grenade into a mass of oncoming zombies is still pulling.

The host has a lot of leniency here and can work with his or her players to make sure everyone is reasonably ready for what lies ahead. Of course, no one is every really ready...

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Regarding the Dead Man Walking scenario, is this done for all deaths or only those who die early or accidentally? If the latter, I was thinking that part of the scenario could be that the clumsy player doesn't die yet, but instead will be in play waiting to take the hit for the next person who legitimately, in a challenge, knocks over the tower. Once that happens, the saved person becomes the next Dead Man, and so forth.

Really, in horror movies, we always seem to know who's going to get it anyway. And the survivors often do seem to survive simply because they're off scene for a while, and playing it safe. Sure, people like Kolchack constantly dived into dangerous situations, but then Carl also ran away an awful lot.

Another possibility for recycling characters is based on setting campaign. Delta Green, for example, began as an attempt to get a framework for CoC to explain why all these people kept dropping out of their normal lives, investigating the Mythos, and dying nasty deaths. Sure, it still gets sort of improbable after the third or fourth replacement shows up in a session, but from what I'm reading about the Jenga mechanic it doesn't sound like there'd be more deaths than that.

The other possibility, best for a one-shot, is to just have people coming in and getting killed with little regard for anything except the body count. This works best in settings like summer camps, island retreats, isolated mansions owned by Vincent Price, etc. Here, the main characters are the ones that actually survive the story, and everyone else turns out to have just been an extra (or, in the case of some players, several extras).

Oh, about the marble or other alt mechanics: A google result for "Jenga Probabilities" got me the page below. The numbers make no sense to me, but I thought someone might find it useful:

http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~icecube/maths/a-jenga-probability-distribution/

 

[Hypersmurf]

You know, talk of the 'Mean Janitor in the Basement' makes me want to try a high-lethality Scooby-Doo game.

What happens when the Headless Horseman isn't Old Man Withers? Mystery Inc. die, that's what...

-Hyp.

 

[Kafkonia]

You know, talk of the 'Mean Janitor in the Basement' makes me want to try a high-lethality Scooby-Doo game.

What happens when the Headless Horseman isn't Old Man Withers? Mystery Inc. die, that's what...

-Hyp.

Didn't somebody here run a Scooby and the Gang Call of Cthulhu game?

The more I read about Dread the more inclined I am to buy it....

 

[Epidiah Ravachol]

Regarding the Dead Man Walking scenario, is this done for all deaths or only those who die early or accidentally? If the latter, I was thinking that part of the scenario could be that the clumsy player doesn't die yet, but instead will be in play waiting to take the hit for the next person who legitimately, in a challenge, knocks over the tower. Once that happens, the saved person becomes the next Dead Man, and so forth.

Really, in horror movies, we always seem to know who's going to get it anyway. And the survivors often do seem to survive simply because they're off scene for a while, and playing it safe. Sure, people like Kolchack constantly dived into dangerous situations, but then Carl also ran away an awful lot.

I rather like that.

You honestly will not be encountering a Dead Man Walking scenario that often, but when it does, this might add a rather interesting twist. Since the Dead Man's player can't interact with the tower anymore, it should also set up an interesting dynamic in the group.

Just make sure that the sacrifice rules work as they always did. If someone deliberately knocked over the tower to do something heroic, it should be their character that pays the price and gets the glory, not the Dead Man.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Didn't somebody here run a Scooby and the Gang Call of Cthulhu game?

The more I read about Dread the more inclined I am to buy it....

Piratecat ran a Gilligan's Island CoC game at GenCon last year. It was wonderful.

 

[Nareau]

I'm reluctant to correct Piratecat because of all the wonderful things he's saying about the game, but the number of pulls you make after rebuilding the tower is based on the number of players you've lost so far in the game, and not the number remaining.

It is, however, a very loose rule, and either way will achieve the objective, which is to jump start the tension again. A few folks have also suggested doubling the number of pulls required for actions after the tower is rebuild. I think this sort of happens naturally, because more dangerous situations tend to generate more pulls, and flat out doubling them might be overkill. But if you're using the mechanic in another game to represent something else, that might also be a solution.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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