Dread, Hands-Down
Since I don't know many of these, you guys mind telling me why you think the one you vote for is so good? It might make me interested in checking one or two out.
I think Dread is the best because of its core mechanic: the Tower. You don't roll dice to determine the outcome of a particular challenge or action--instead, you pull one or more blocks out of a Jenga stack. As the story progresses the tower gets taller and less stable, and eventually it will collapse. And when it does, someone's character usually dies. The tower gets rebuilt, the story continues, until the bitter end. Like any good horror story, the tension
literally builds over time.
The character creation is also pretty awesome, which uses a special questionnaire prepared by the GM. These are usually 10 or more leading questions that help the player get into the role for the evening and decide what he or she is good at. It also let's the GM give hits about the evening's story.
It's kind of awesome. I recommend it to anyone who wants to run a Halloween horror game.
Tabletop did a two-part episode on it with Wil Wheaton, Laura Bailey, Molly Lewis, and Ivan Van Norman. Check it out:
Dread Part 1
Dread Part 2
And it's
cheap, too. Unfortunately the game book is out of print, so the printed books are hard to find and expensive when you find them. But a
watermarked PDF is available at Drive Thru RPG for just $12. That PDF and a $10 Jenga set from any toy store are all you need to play, for any number of people and any genre of action/horror.
