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[Dread] Jenga beat up my dice! My results from the indie horror RPG.
- Thread starter Piratecat
- Start date
I'm working on a scenario that you can find at:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/260865-dread-isle.html
Tell me what you think!
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/260865-dread-isle.html
Tell me what you think!
Last edited:
Asmor
First Post
Since when does less than a month count as thread necromancy? The post you quoted was posted yesterday (August 19th), and the post before it was July 22nd.
This thread's been moderately active for over two years... I don't think it's ever gone more than a month of two without a new post.
wedgeski
Adventurer
Since it seems traditional to revive this thread every now and then, let me just say... running my first game of Dread tomorrow. Excited and terrified in equal measure, but so much good advice in this thread, more confident than I was an hour ago.
Unlike many RPG's I've run for the first time, I have absolutely *no* idea what to expect from either myself, the game, the scenario, or the players. That's gotta make for a fun session even before we start.
Unlike many RPG's I've run for the first time, I have absolutely *no* idea what to expect from either myself, the game, the scenario, or the players. That's gotta make for a fun session even before we start.
John Crichton
First Post
As long as you have at least decent GM improv skills are comfy with your scenario you'll be fine.Since it seems traditional to revive this thread every now and then, let me just say... running my first game of Dread tomorrow. Excited and terrified in equal measure, but so much good advice in this thread, more confident than I was an hour ago.
Unlike many RPG's I've run for the first time, I have absolutely *no* idea what to expect from either myself, the game, the scenario, or the players. That's gotta make for a fun session even before we start.
Let us know how it goes!
nerfherder
Explorer
wedgeski
Adventurer
We completed a 4-hour rendition of the "Beneath a Metal Sky" scenario from the rule-book last night. Overall, it seemed to go very well.
(There are spoilers for that scenario in the text below, so beware!)
Over the past few days I surreptitiously polled the players on whether they'd enjoy a sci-fi or modern day, earth-bound scenario, and sci-fi won out. This actually lent me a bit more confidence because I have much more exposure to that genre than any of the alternatives, and went into the game reasonably confident I could improv a decent backdrop.
This turned out to be so, and led to one of the first surprises of the evening: how deep and interesting the universe became simply in the course of playing out the scenario. By the end of the night, between the five of us we'd crafted a half-decent corporate-scumbag future that might not have won many prizes for originality, but could easily have been the starting point for a decent sci-fi RPG. And the beauty of the game is that the characters were already at the core of the game world before we'd even begun.
The players, who I had deliberately kept relatively in the dark about how the game worked, bought into the mechanics almost immediately. The questionnaires were a huge hit, their reactions to the questions hilarious, their answers wonderfully imaginative. Although it sucked up a lot of time before the game started, I'm glad I decided that for our first foray into Dread, we wouldn't fill the questionnaires in ahead of time.
Post-questionnaire, I of course had to take a few notes about things I could weave into the game, and I encouraged the players to leave the room and inform each-other secretly about any prior knowledge they might have about each-other. For this one-off, I wasn't afraid of sowing an atmosphere of distrust, because that was one of the themes I was going for.
Being pressed for time and eager to get things moving, I scrambled to build a couple of scenes around the characters, with more or less success. However, I think I'll be giving this absolutely essential part of the process much more forethought next time around.
I'm still digesting the three hours or so we actually spent roleplaying, more so than for any other session I can remember, but here are a few thoughts in no specific order.
1. If there's one thing I shoot for when I DM, almost to a fault, it's a decent pace and dramatic structure to the game. Like any purely free-form RPG, Dread makes this easy on one hand, but then the tower itself makes it very difficult.
The scenario suggested three dramatic spikes (the first attack, the discovery that the "alien" is in fact human, and the escape). The first one worked beautifully as the culmination of a long walk through dark places, but by the time I was considering where to put the second, it was already too late. They were on the bridge, we'd made about 20 pulls, the players were convinced every pull was going to send the tower over (even though as a long-time Jenga player, I knew this probably wasn't the case), the tension was nicely up, and it was time to start thinking about the denouement.
Conclusion: the tower dictates the dramatic footprint of the game, not the scenario. Obvious in hind-sight, but it took me a bit by surprise on the night.
2. The scenario went completely haywire in the last hour, but all in a good way.
I had described the shuttle on which they had arrived ripping itself from the ship, and although in my head it had acted on a command override from the corporate scumbags monitoring the salvage from afar, the players naturally assumed one of the "aliens" had taken it. Instead of considering the shuttle a dead loss and asking about other ways off the ship (which would have led them to PFC King, the escape pods, and a foreshadowed, desperate escape from the alien horde), they actually decided to *attempt an EVA and get the shuttle back*.
How could I say no to that? They'd become very paranoid about suit integrity as I'd played up the radiation much more than the scenario assumed, and indicated that the atmosphere in the research lab was organic, more like a planetary atmosphere than the recycled air of a starship, so getting to the shuttle amidst the debris of its escape, restarting the systems, potentially discovering the remote command and all the paranoia of the Captain that would have brought with it...
All too good to ignore. And they made it too.
Conclusion: As the host of a free-form story-telling RPG, you may think the game is in your hands, but it isn't. It's almost entirely in the players' hands.
3. As the tower got higher and higher, the possibility of a collapse took on more meaning than a "mere" player death. It had survived over two hours of play (and around 35 pulls), and I detected that a collapse had started to imply "game over" as far as the players were concerned.
This was really difficult to deal with at the time, because I think at least one collapse is a natural assumption for most Dread games. The rest of the team then picks up the pieces (literally!) and moves on with life.
Conclusion: Insert more opportunities than I did for heroic deaths, ensure the players expect/are prepared for at least one collapse before the denouement. Fear the tower, but don't let yourselves get paralyzed by it.
Overall, the game for me was exciting, exhausting, and educational all in one package. It's my first serious step into a more free-form RPG world and while I'm a campaign builder at heart, I can see Dread as a go-to game for one-shot horror. Even old-school Cthulhu, with its streamlined mechanics, seems suddenly clunky and intrusive by comparison.
(There are spoilers for that scenario in the text below, so beware!)
Over the past few days I surreptitiously polled the players on whether they'd enjoy a sci-fi or modern day, earth-bound scenario, and sci-fi won out. This actually lent me a bit more confidence because I have much more exposure to that genre than any of the alternatives, and went into the game reasonably confident I could improv a decent backdrop.
This turned out to be so, and led to one of the first surprises of the evening: how deep and interesting the universe became simply in the course of playing out the scenario. By the end of the night, between the five of us we'd crafted a half-decent corporate-scumbag future that might not have won many prizes for originality, but could easily have been the starting point for a decent sci-fi RPG. And the beauty of the game is that the characters were already at the core of the game world before we'd even begun.
The players, who I had deliberately kept relatively in the dark about how the game worked, bought into the mechanics almost immediately. The questionnaires were a huge hit, their reactions to the questions hilarious, their answers wonderfully imaginative. Although it sucked up a lot of time before the game started, I'm glad I decided that for our first foray into Dread, we wouldn't fill the questionnaires in ahead of time.
Post-questionnaire, I of course had to take a few notes about things I could weave into the game, and I encouraged the players to leave the room and inform each-other secretly about any prior knowledge they might have about each-other. For this one-off, I wasn't afraid of sowing an atmosphere of distrust, because that was one of the themes I was going for.
Being pressed for time and eager to get things moving, I scrambled to build a couple of scenes around the characters, with more or less success. However, I think I'll be giving this absolutely essential part of the process much more forethought next time around.
I'm still digesting the three hours or so we actually spent roleplaying, more so than for any other session I can remember, but here are a few thoughts in no specific order.
1. If there's one thing I shoot for when I DM, almost to a fault, it's a decent pace and dramatic structure to the game. Like any purely free-form RPG, Dread makes this easy on one hand, but then the tower itself makes it very difficult.
The scenario suggested three dramatic spikes (the first attack, the discovery that the "alien" is in fact human, and the escape). The first one worked beautifully as the culmination of a long walk through dark places, but by the time I was considering where to put the second, it was already too late. They were on the bridge, we'd made about 20 pulls, the players were convinced every pull was going to send the tower over (even though as a long-time Jenga player, I knew this probably wasn't the case), the tension was nicely up, and it was time to start thinking about the denouement.
Conclusion: the tower dictates the dramatic footprint of the game, not the scenario. Obvious in hind-sight, but it took me a bit by surprise on the night.
2. The scenario went completely haywire in the last hour, but all in a good way.
I had described the shuttle on which they had arrived ripping itself from the ship, and although in my head it had acted on a command override from the corporate scumbags monitoring the salvage from afar, the players naturally assumed one of the "aliens" had taken it. Instead of considering the shuttle a dead loss and asking about other ways off the ship (which would have led them to PFC King, the escape pods, and a foreshadowed, desperate escape from the alien horde), they actually decided to *attempt an EVA and get the shuttle back*.
How could I say no to that? They'd become very paranoid about suit integrity as I'd played up the radiation much more than the scenario assumed, and indicated that the atmosphere in the research lab was organic, more like a planetary atmosphere than the recycled air of a starship, so getting to the shuttle amidst the debris of its escape, restarting the systems, potentially discovering the remote command and all the paranoia of the Captain that would have brought with it...
All too good to ignore. And they made it too.
Conclusion: As the host of a free-form story-telling RPG, you may think the game is in your hands, but it isn't. It's almost entirely in the players' hands.
3. As the tower got higher and higher, the possibility of a collapse took on more meaning than a "mere" player death. It had survived over two hours of play (and around 35 pulls), and I detected that a collapse had started to imply "game over" as far as the players were concerned.
This was really difficult to deal with at the time, because I think at least one collapse is a natural assumption for most Dread games. The rest of the team then picks up the pieces (literally!) and moves on with life.
Conclusion: Insert more opportunities than I did for heroic deaths, ensure the players expect/are prepared for at least one collapse before the denouement. Fear the tower, but don't let yourselves get paralyzed by it.
Overall, the game for me was exciting, exhausting, and educational all in one package. It's my first serious step into a more free-form RPG world and while I'm a campaign builder at heart, I can see Dread as a go-to game for one-shot horror. Even old-school Cthulhu, with its streamlined mechanics, seems suddenly clunky and intrusive by comparison.
Last edited:
malcolypse
First Post
i just discovered dread a few weeks ago.
i ran beneath a metal sky for some friends and it went alarmingly well. everyone seemed to enjoy it, and many of the answers on questionaires actually inspired me to make changes to the story.
i ran it again a week later and it happened again. people were engrossed with the tower mechanic, people had fun filling out their questionaires, and the game went smoothly and a good time was had by all.
i ran beneath a metal sky for some friends and it went alarmingly well. everyone seemed to enjoy it, and many of the answers on questionaires actually inspired me to make changes to the story.
i ran it again a week later and it happened again. people were engrossed with the tower mechanic, people had fun filling out their questionaires, and the game went smoothly and a good time was had by all.
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