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

[Epidiah Ravachol]

We've been talking about Dread all week over here. Even have a few variants...c'mon over and take a gander.

I don't know if the Pundit is getting bored or what, but he seems to be resurrecting a bunch of old news. I had this discussion with him a year ago, when I tried to disabuse him of some of the misconceptions in the review.

In a effort to please him and his crowd over at theRPGSite, I'm feverishly working on a game of cannibalistic desperation and horror using a revolutionary Hungry, Hungry Hippo resolution system. In this one the GM will be able to arbitrarily compel player character death.

 

[WizarDru]

We've been talking about Dread all week over here. Even have a few variants...c'mon over and take a gander.

I can't say that I find a lot of value in a review of a game where the reviewer never actually PLAYS the game. Of course, it also doesn't help when the reviewer enters into the review with a bias, as this one does. While I haven't played Dread, I do own it...and the best DM I know (that would the bloke who started this thread, btw) highly recommends it. I think that says something for it, right there.

 

[ghrezdd]

Dread Adventures

I have run Dread once using Pirate Cat's adventure The Curious Merder of Artemis Hume as a foundation and it was a blast. I also played it for the first time at Origins.

I want to run it again, but I am a bit intimidated on coming up with the questionnaire for the pcs. I would like to see more examples of adventures/questionnaires to get a better feel on how to develop them. But I am unable to find any on the web.

Any advice or examples would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

PS I also hope that an official adventure compilation will be released some day

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I have run Dread once using Pirate Cat's adventure The Curious Merder of Artemis Hume as a foundation and it was a blast. I also played it for the first time at Origins.

I want to run it again, but I am a bit intimidated on coming up with the questionnaire for the pcs. I would like to see more examples of adventures/questionnaires to get a better feel on how to develop them. But I am unable to find any on the web.

Any advice or examples would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

PS I also hope that an official adventure compilation will be released some day

Try here, for starters:

http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showthread.php?t=48153

 

[zen_hydra]

Dread is absolutely brilliant

I ran Dread this last weekend for the first time and had an absolute blast.

I have owned it for a couple of months, read through it several times, and listened to some game play podcasts of Dread games, but I just didn't appreciate how much the Jenga mechanics influenced the atmosphere of the game until we actually played it.

Half of our group had never played a tabletop rpg before, and they turned out to be great players, who had a lot of fun. Because of the simplicity of the mechanics, my new players weren't intimidated by an abundance of rules. They could just enjoy playing their characters.

I can't endorse this game enough. A++

 

[Psion]

Just as an aside, it is certainly possible to simulate the jenga tower using dice. Not perfectly, mind you, but you get the same end result: early rolls are easy, later rolls are harder.

Start a dread counter at 1. People roll d% when they'd take a pull. Whenever someone makes a roll, increment the dread counter by 1. If someone rolls equal or under the dread counter, they just toppled the tower and it resets at 1.

There are some pros and cons to this. Big pros are that it's not dependent on manual dexterity, and it's a lot more convenient (no need to worry about bumping table, no need for "specialized equipment" since most gamers should have the dice already, no need to set up the tower).

FWIW, your method sounds vastly superior than using a Jenga tower to me. The whole manual dexterity thing aside, I've always found that any mechanic needing to apply strategy in a manner entirely tangential to a game pulls me out of the game.

Most of the people who have posted here about their positive experiences and who you have seen pictures of are people I know well. Trust me when I say that while they are obviously having a blast, I know I wouldn't.

Feel free to be the guy who doesn't get it.

That's a bit insulting Hyp. Just because someone enjoys something you do doesn't mean that they have some rift of understanding. It just means that they don't enjoy the same things you do.

 

[Hypersmurf]

That's a bit insulting Hyp. Just because someone enjoys something you do doesn't mean that they have some rift of understanding. It just means that they don't enjoy the same things you do.

I'm not making the claim that anyone with differing tastes is clueless

But there are two points I'm getting at:

1. Reading something and experiencing it do not always give the same results. Consider all the claims that the Monk or Mystic Theurge were broken... until people actually used them in game.

2. If someone approaches a game with the preconception that they will not enjoy it, or with an agenda to demonstrate that it is not fun, it usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone related an anecdote about a player in his new 4E game who deliberately generated a character to be as poorly-optimised as possible, and then played that character in a fashion diametrically opposed to the class's role, and used this as 'evidence' that 4E doesn't work.

"Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
"... then stop doing it."

If you've tried the game and it's not for you, great! We have different tastes. It happens.

If you've read the rules, and say "Hey, if someone approaches the game like this, it will suck!", then my advice is don't approach the game like that. And maybe it won't suck... because I haven't seen it suck yet.

-Hyp.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

One of the things you lose using a dice mechanic is the 'blink' -- when the player approaches the tower, hems and haws and stares death in the face, and blinks, walking away and accepting failure. That's been a big part of the games I've been in, and there's no way a die roll can recreate that.

 

[Hypersmurf]

One of the things you lose using a dice mechanic is the 'blink' -- when the player approaches the tower, hems and haws and stares death in the face, and blinks, walking away and accepting failure. That's been a big part of the games I've been in, and there's no way a die roll can recreate that.

Or, as happened in DG!'s first session at GenCon, where Rel approached the tower, tested a few blocks, hemmed and hawwed and stared death in the face... and then looked Liz in the eye, reached out, and shoved the tower over

-Hyp.

 

[Festivus]

I have owned it for a couple of months, read through it several times, and listened to some game play podcasts of Dread games, but I just didn't appreciate how much the Jenga mechanics influenced the atmosphere of the game until we actually played it.

Gameplay podcasts? Really? Where? I would love to listen to one since I haven't had a chance to play it yet.