Review: Dread by Epidiah Ravachol and woodelf

Dread - The Impossible Dream

I'm a huge fan of the horror genre in gaming. Call of Cthulhu is a staple. But one thing that is hard to do in a horror game is get a consistent sense of tension. Dread does this brilliantly. Using a Jenga® tower (or reasonable facsimile) every risky move carries a huge amount of tension, and this tension builds with every twist and turn in the story.

I've had a chance to not only play the game, but to run a few games. Using the 13 scenario as well as one I've developed myself (Madame LouLou's Haunted Wax Museum) I've sent a couple different groups on terror romps. When running 13 I was amazed at how much fun the group of teens playing the game had being brutally slaughtered.

The character is all narrative, you simply answer up to 13 questions about yourself (the character self you want to play). Based on these questions, read by you and the GM, you have the parameters for engagement and integration into the story experience. The last question is always, what is your name? This approach should give you a hint that this is not a statistics based system. It runs more like a scripted Fiasco.

The game is broken into several acts. Each act contains its own set of dangers (where the players need to make pulls on the tower) and clues that move the story along. While there is a happy ending possible, it is not likely to happen for the bulk of your players. But that is what makes this game charming. Each act has scenes, basically set-ups for little story happenings. For example one of the scenes in the Madame LouLou's involves a description of a room (enough to make them want to look around) and then an event that can happen which puts one or more of them at risk. The final act usually has some sort of showdown with lots of danger but also a possible resolution.

The one drawback to this system is that it eliminates players. When you topple the tower your character is eliminated from the game in some way. A good storyteller will find ways to keep them engaged in the story until the end (especially whoever dies first). But this requires imagination and confidence. The book though is a veritable smorgasbord of tips to help run a great game - definitely worth the purchase even if you just steal the ideas for other games.

Likes: Best horror role playing experience ever. 

Dislikes: There are a lot of ways an inexperienced GM could create a less than satisfying game experience, this is probably not the game for every group. 

Fun: This is story telling indie role playing at its finest. With the right group the game is hugely fun and satisfying.
Quality: The rulebook is excellent, the game itself is simple and contained on a four page cheat sheet downloadable from the Dread site, but the rulebook gives you 92 more pages of pure role playing gold.
(re)Playability: The scenarios are not easily replay-able. There are only four official scenarios available. I've found a few online so they are out there, but this means creating your own scenarios. Fortunately, this is not that difficult. It requires a bit of work though - I aim for three hour one-shot sessions which is basically three acts. I wrote the bulk of Madam LouLou's in a day, but a full day. This game is not really conducive to campaign play.