Rather than dice or other randomizers, the game uses a Jenga tower (or any stacking block game, but most people use Jenga). The tower is stacked in the middle of the table and represents the only real game mechanics.
The game is intended for horror and survival type games. The rules are simple. When your character wants to do something risky or uncertain, the GM will have you pull one or more blocks. If you pull and set the blocks back on top, you succeed. If you refuse to pull or change your mind, you fail. If you knock the tower over, game over for you. Your character will be stabbed in the face as the killer jumps out of nowhere, or collapse from a fatal heart attack from the fright, or go running off screaming into the night. The details are up to the GM to come up with, but the end result is the same. You're out of the game. The tower is rebuilt (with some blocks removed), and the game continues.
This is interesting mechanically because it is essentially resource management. There are a number of blocks that can be safely pulled, and after that doing a pull becomes more and more risky. Further, this is a shared resource. Everyone pulls from the same tower. Early in the game, pulls are easy so most players are willing to take risks. As the game goes on, the pulls become more intense as everyone waits to see if someone will finally bite the dust. Essentially you are rewarded for acting early in the game, and punished for acting later. Our first game of Dread ended with the killer knocked down and the tower ready to fall. They wanted to tie him up and walk back to town, and I told them I needed a pull to get close enough to do it. One by one each player poked and prodded at the tower, deciding that they couldn't make a pull. In game, this translated to the group of college students standing around the killer, none of them able to get up the nerve to tie him up. Ultimately, they chose to murder him in cold blood rather than get close enough to do what they all agreed was 'the right thing.'
The tower gets all the attention, but there's a second part to the game I feel is almost as important. The Questionnaire. Character generation in Dread is pretty simple. The GM will have prepared some archetypes with a list of questions. In a game where a group of college kids is spending the weekend at a remote cabin, you might be able to choose from The Fratboy, The Computer Nerd, The Cheerleader, and so on. Each will have 13 questions to be answered essay style. The questions can be straightforward but the ones that work best are leading, such as "Why did you tell (other character) that you couldn't study last week, even though you had nothing going on?", "Are you going to tell (other character), your boyfriend, that you cheated on him?", or "Even though everyone heard you tell (NPC that is now dead) that you wanted to kill them, why should they believe that you're innocent?"
The Questionnaire serves a couple of purposes. First, it allows the GM to set up a situation for story. He can put in questions that will drive conflict between characters, or ones that will get the character invested in the scenario. He can even mine them for ideas. I ran a Christmas game about a dysfunctional family's Christmas dinner, and while I liked the concept I didn't have an idea for an antagonist. So I asked everyone "Who do you think is trying to kill you?" and took the best one.
The other purpose is that it quickly get the player invested in the character. The Questionnaire helps bring a character to life, even if its one that you're only going to be playing for a few hours. The times I've played it certainly felt like a character I've had for a lot longer, and can often set up relationships between characters.
If you want to try Dread you can buy it here. You might be thinking that if the rules are so simple you don't need a book. Truthfully, its not a game you refer to the book a lot. But I recommend it to everyone. It has three good premade episodes in it, as well as great advice for running a horror game of any kind.
Dread is a great game in general, and for running one-shot or con games, it is the Greatest Game.
Next post, I'll be talking about what Dread has to do with 4th Edition D&D. :)
I'm still wanting to give this game a try. I do like the sound of dice clattering on the table, but I think the crash of the blocks might be a nice substitute. I know that someone's running Dread at one of the Meetups or another almost every time, but weekends are so tight as far as time goes for me. It's almost too bad that there couldn't be a game or two run in the mornings. I'd have all the time in the world for that while the kids are off at school.
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