Dread - The BlockTower Driven Horror One-Shot RPG

In this thread, discussions of Dread.

Don't know what Dread is? Check it out here

I'm starting to work up a Halloween Dread scenario. A classic haunted house affair, but the hook? I want to play with creeping darkness. As the game progresses we'll turn out more lights in the room... first we go down to a few lamps, and then a spot light, and then each player gets a flashlight (a couple will have very weak batteries), and finally candles (well, electric candles because safety).

What are your Dread stories? Dread plans?

I played in a game at Gen Con last year with a friend. Two parties (human hunters & Monsters) for a warped version of Survivor Reality shows. We played monsters (The Grey Alien from Outerspace, me, and Dracula, my friend) cus they're obviously the good guys. Oddly enough out show was canceled due to the session finale us winning, and an explosion going off killing us. He wake up in an alley five years after the event, monsters seeing it as an act of terrorism or extreme racism take over the world (oddly enough the show producer is not world ruler). Other team had the exact opposite for humans.

Best moment needing to talk down a female blind samurai girl in this dystopian future who was going to try and kill the party. Who does it? Dracula with his powers of charm? Nope, that didn't work plus she had powers of BS detection I think. It was the Grey big headed alien from Outerspace who sang to her to calm her down... or it just surprised her since there was really no singing or music in the city after the event five years prior, it was more of a warzone (since he had the hobby of going to karaoke he was actually pretty good) and had the soothing conversational voice of a late night DJ. "You might be blind and you look cute... But I'm more interesting in your brain". Plus she wasn't freaked out that my massive big black eyes rarely blinked.

Granted I think breaking out into actual song mid conversation with the GM had her off her game plus my pull went well.

I heard it was on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop show recently too.

For theme for your game you should use a bowl of candy on the table close to the center where everyone can get at it, or the tower...They'll eventually stop with the candy if it wobbles the tower. If you want to mess with people set some alarms on your phone, people screaming, tapping on a window, sudden screech, hiss, bark, howl of an animal, etc.

Good idea with the phone sounds, and also the candy. I'm thinking I'll scatter some treats on the table *around* the tower.

Jay Draper of the Mad Adventurers Society recently did an article on Dread, which, I will now share with you.
http://www.madadventurers.com/finding-the-fun-dread/

I use Dread for any games which involve a lot of tension and danger, not just horror. So Disaster survival games, and games with a lot of over-the-top action. I've set up a game of people escaping a failing space station (inspired in part by the TV series "Blake's Seven," in which the first several episodes featured people suffering gruesome deaths because space is inherently hazardous), but I could see doing a martial arts tournament, terrorist incursion, prison break, or dogfight using the Dread system.