Replacing Jenga in Dread

[Mishihari Lord]

Also, a card deck mechanic might work, but may not have quite the same ambiance:
1. shuffle a deck.
2. split in half and shuffle a joker into the lower half.
3. object: if the desk runs out, you lose (die, fail, etc.)
4. if you pull a jack, pull one extra card.
5. if you pull a queen, pull two extra cards
6. if you pull a king, pull 4 extra cards
7. (the above can either be secret pulls (just discarded) or live pulls that stack.)
8. if you pull the joker, discard remainder of the deck. (i.e. you lose)

I like this approach quite a lot, but it's missing one thing from the Jenga approach: player skill. Here's a cards variation that mixes chance with a bit of memorization skill.

1. Take a standard 52 card deck, discard the clubs and add a joker.
2. Shuffle
3. Before each draw, the drawer makes a guess about the next card, either the suit, "odd", "even", "face" or "joker". (An ace is "odd", not "face")
4. If the player guesses right he's done.
5. If the player guesses wrong, he has to keep drawing until he gets a guess right.
6. If the player draws a joker and didn't call "joker" he loses.
7. If the player calls "joker" and is right, he doesn't lose, and the deck is reshuffled and restarted.
8. If the player calls "joker" and is wrong turn over the next four cards. If any of those is the joker he loses. Then the player has to draw again.

I chose to use 3 suits so that if you just pick suits without the benefits of memory there's about a 5/9 chance you take two or fewer cards per time drawing. That seems about the right pace to me.

This is hopefully complicated enough that it's not trivial to remember the draws and figure the probabilities. If your players are really sharp you can complicate it more.

Oh, and no fair writing down the cards drawn. You have to go from memory.

 

[Janx]

I like this approach quite a lot, but it's missing one thing from the Jenga approach: player skill.

this reminds me of a concept James Ernest of CheapAss Games made about his designs.

his games were made to be very random, but they granted a slight advantage to players who applied brains/skill. But not overmuch. In this way, the game outcome was still up in the air.

Jenga is sort of like that. As explained upthread, players underestimate their ability and over-estimate the difficulty of the game. Players who have the confidence and steady hand have an easier time making pulls.

When I play jenga, I always attack the bottom side pairs as often as I can, in order to make as many 1 block rows stacked as possible. Just to increase the instability.

I have also caught the tower as it was toppling and put it back right with 1 hand and then successfully made my pull.

I have pulled a 1 block row by lifting the entire tower and kicking the piece I wanted out with my pinky, rotated the tower and reset it on the stack.

But you don't need all that to play jenga and beat me. While I am the least likely to knock the tower over, I bet statistically, my actual failure rate is maybe half what regular players have.

and in Dread, it is in players advantage to work together to only pull center blocks and bring the tower to a dead end (26.333 rows = (54 blocks - 3 for top row)/2) +1.333)

I like Jenga. Hence dread's appeal to me. I will know tonight how Giant Jenga plays out. Just finished the set I built today, and gifting it tonight at the birthday party.

I will reply later with difficulty level comparison. My theory is, giant jenga is easier. If so, it might be a sufficient alternative.

Question about the muscle tremor problem person. Is the problem such that the hands shake with actual force (meaning if he rested them on a table or against a steady object would they transfer that energy) or is it a low power unsteadiness when the hands are suspended in the air?

If the latter, once the person's hands make contact with the tower, that might be a steadying force, enough to make the pull. if the former, then obviously that spasm is going to transfer in to the tower and make it knock over simply by trying to touch it.

On regular jenga, some things to stabilize the arm/hand:
anchor your elbow on the table, this reduces the about of arm that is likely to spasm. Having your whole arm suspended in air is going to amplify any tremor caused by muscles firing.

next, anchor your pinky against a lower part of the tower, this againt gives your hand something relative to move against, further isolating spasms and giving you a better base to work from with your thumb and index finger to make the pull.

This pinky anchoring technique is also used by guitarists when they do lead work. They put their pinky on their picking hand on the guitar (usually by a pickup), which steadies their hand as they play notes, rather than strum chords.

 

[Janx]

We spent 4 hours playing Giant Jenga last night.

Overall, it was a lot easier. The dangerous range (where the tower would topple) was between 29 and 33 levels.

In normal Jenga, I'd seen maybe 2 times where all the viable blocks had been drawn.

last night, every game required us to use the Lift & Twist maneuver to take single block rows in order to make a pull at the end. All the other viable moves had been taken each time.

Since you can use two hands, you can stabilze the tower with one, while pulling with the other. Thus, though pulling a block might take more effort, you can get away with more risky pulls.