Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 5350012" data-attributes="member: 2">I have two general rules for Dread game design: build in competition or dislike between some of the characters (as well as steady or shifting alliances), and build your plot in three acts. The character conflict is because players are far, far more likely to keep making pulls when they're competing between each other than when they're just going up against the GM. I remember one early game where Xath must have made 5 or 6 pulls to wrest a gun from a different PC, and the other player was making just as many! This game of "chicken" is a wonderful thing. If you can encourage this in your questionaire and scenario design, definitely do it.I build my plot in arcs for pacing reasons. Act One introduces the scenario and raises the stakes, and ends when something genuinely spooky first happens. Act Two is where tension mounts and things get worse; players investigate. Act Three is when they decide to take decisive action that triggers the plot's climax, and things get really scary. Having this structure in the back of my head helps me tremendously when it comes to pacing the four hour game. I can roughly scale the number of pulls accordingly, with things getting worse/out of control at just the right time. If people are curious, and if I haven't already done so earlier in this long thread (!), I'm happy to share an example.</blockquote>