Indie play: Dread

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I ran Rafael Chandler's Dread this weekend for my normal group of players (Chris Chinn, James Cunningham, and Dan Root) + Zak Arntson. It's a modern horror game, kind of a cross between Call of Cthulhu and Buffy/Angel. The setting is quite dark, and player characters are supposed to be flawed. We ended up with the following characters:

Chris: an ex-football player who quit after being arrested for cocaine possession.

Zak: an entymologist who had tried to discover a sentient ant colony. (This character was a little too bizarre for the setting, but worked well in the game.)

James: a "certificate-by-mail" reverend.

Dan: a chef who'd been in a shipwreck and got stranded on an island with one other person for a year. It was never made certain what happened to that other person.

I used a sample scenario that was in the playtest version of the rules, although I heavily altered it. What struck me as interesting about Dread was the descriptions of the demons in it - they all played well on very human scenarios (lying, abuse, hate). This goes well with the Buffy/Angel-type drama, as the trick in these shows is to use the supernatural as a metaphor for very human problems. However, the sample scenario didn't really do this: it was about a sexually abused teenage boy who kills his abuser, who happens to be an associate of one of the PC's. However, it threw a crooked cop and a magic-eating demon into the scenario, which seemed incongruous. Instead, I used a demon known as the "weaver of lies," who had taken the abused boy into his confidence and convinced him that he should murder the people who had hurt him.

The game was moderately fun. It wasn't as good as I'd expected, but the problems were easily identifiable:

- The system is very generic. There's nothing in the system that really supports the kind of horror the game aims for. That's ok - it doesn't have to be a narrativist game, where the system heavily supports the premise. However, the system is set up in such a way that the characters are vastly overpowered by any opposition they may have. That's the conceit of the game, but it doesn't work in practice: players were very cautious as they had no real ability to deal with danger. This was partially due to my players, who tend to be very cautious, but also due to the system proving early on that failure is common.

- Character creation really needs to be done as a group. Again, I'm going to split the onus here. The group created four wildly different characters, which they could have done differently. With a generic one-player-creates-one-PC character creation system, though, there was no impetus to do anything different. The PCs are all members of a Cabal, with a supernatural Mentor that has put them together to kick evil ass - so why isn't the group created as a group?

- The last problem was a group problem and not a system one. I warned everyone before-hand that the game was going to be disturbing, but I think the topic of sexual abuse, especially as perpetrated by one of their friends, was a little too much. I didn't realize that at the time, but it's good to know now.

What this game could do to kick ass:

- Group character creation.
- Fix a new things, like Backgrounds (no mechanical benefit) and Contacts (at present, very specific - name, occupation, and what not. If made generic - a character has a police contact and an academic contact, for example - they would rock.)
- There's already a space on the character sheet for Drive - something the character cares deeply about. Make rules for using that Drive - doing better when it really matters to you. I like the idea that these characters will be demon-lunch if they don't give a shit. As it stands though, they're demon lunch anyway.

Things that did go great, though:
- The simplicity of the system does work well. For instance, there's only one score for combat - the Combat Score. Since combat is just opposed Combat Score rolls, you can do just about anything. I had no problem adjucating Zak's character trying to shoot down a ceiling fan onto a demon's head. (On the other hand - the rules should be expanded a little. Chris tried to tackle a demon - standard ex-football player stuff. Bonuses would have been in order.)

- We had a kick-ass car chase scene. Again, the simplicity of the rules made it pretty easy to figure out how to do vehicle combat - roll Combat Score versus your opponent's Driving Skill to shoot out a tire.

[Zak Arntson]

Woot! I had a great time, and wanted to comment on the experience from beginning to end:

Mature Subject Matter - It didn't bother me. Abuse is a real issue, and if everyone's okay with tackling it, that's fine. Sure my PC was horrified, and I was disturbed (but then, I'd be just as disturbed if we had killed a human in a somewhat realistic, modern day game), but the end result was great: Both Player and PC being very, very angry with the demon & human abusers.

Character Creation - It's funny, because I thought the Ex-football player and my entymologist were perfect for the setting. It boiled down to a bruiser and a scientist. We probably have different ideas of the setting. There was also a kick-boxing cook and an accordian-playing new-age priest. I thought these were strange for the game.

As I understood it, the Mentor grabs all the PCs individually, and teaches them to fight as a team. So it made the whole disparate PC thing pretty easy to swallow.

I have an issue with the Skills. Reading through the skill list, it read like half were things you do in-game, and half were background-type skills.

Play
Skill Lists - The Skill list did little for gameplay. At least half of everyone's skills went unused during play. My suggestion would be to narrow the skill list to cover broader application, or nix it altogether and a skill roll is modified by your occupation, history and/or hobbies.

Scenario Pacing - The pacing of the sample adventure didn't fit the feel of taking action against the forces of darkness. It started out with vague clues, a crooked cop, and no action. As Players, we had to be proactive to force things to happen (sick of the slow pace, my PC finally gave up on caution and just tased the concierge after our bluffing fell through). Thing is, the rules and setting don't reward this kind of action. Rules-wise, I don't feel tough enough to get in a fight (2 combat dice compared to a good skill of 5 dice -- leads me to use skills far more than combat).

Setting-wise, there was a big disincentive to get into any action. In the modern day, these things have consequences. Our PCs tased a concierge, broke into a crime scene, tampered with the evidence (taking samples) and disposed of a pound of coke down a storm drain. We also got involved in a high speed chase, trapped a crooked cop in a car billowing with coke, called the media and fled the crime scene. These things have consequences in real life, and we were worried we'd suffer the same in-game.

What do we do? - There was a general feeling of "what do we do now?" Part of it was the clue-driven scenario (never count on Players following clues!), and the other part was the System. We were always nervous to try anything outside of our own PC background. I wanted to study insects. The ex-con football guy wanted to stay out of trouble. The cook wanted to cook. The priest wanted to play accordian. There was no sense of, "Yeah, so you were a cook before, but NOW you're a Demon Hunter!" It was more, "You are a cook, who happens to hunt demons."

Suggested Changes
Simplify Skill List - I suggested this above: Get rid of a skill list and just use occupation, history, natural abilities and hobbies.

Encourage Demon Hunting - There was no incentive to fight demons. The System discourages it (by giving you a Combat Score small compared to your best scores in the Skills and Body/Mind/Spirit sections). Clinton's description of the text encourages it, "You are regular people who have to deal with demons."

Here're different ways to handle this:
- Make PCs kick more ass. We wouldn't have been as wary if we had felt tough.
- Force PCs into game-appropriate situations. If we were Demon Hunters, where were the Demons? Half of the PCs fought _one_. There was also a crooked cop red-herring. Unless I'm getting the game's intent wrong, and the PCs are supposed to deal with plausible situations until a demon pops up at the climax.
- Greater incentive, by allowing the Drive or Redemption scores/traits to have more in-game effect. None of us used our Drive (Clinton was running a predesigned scenario, and we made PCs just before, so not much tailoring of scenario to PCs) or Redemption.

Twelve-sides!?
My final gripe was the twelve-sided dice. Why? Clinton had a tub of 12-siders. I own two of them. I've never expected to own more. I'd prefer to see it use d10's or d6's. I've got oodles of d6's, and since the difficulties tended to jump by 2 (we rolled against 6, 8 and I think 10), why not just have 6-siders. Difficulties jump by 1?

Simple Resolution
Okay, I'll end this with being highly supportive of the abstract Combat, Mind, Body and Spirit traits. These went a long way towards allowing cool actions. Bluff the concierge? Mind. Punch the demon? Shoot it? Throw something at it? Combat. The car chase scene was similarly simple to run and produced great results.

[Bankuei]

I have to concur with a lot of the points above.  I definitely think some sort  of reality immunity should be added, since obviously much of the stuff you'd be doing would either put you in jail or get you dead real quick.  It felt like UA minus the desperation.

Major things that would go great in the game:

•Pacing and Pressure
  The "get a clue" trail to big showdown is a fairly standard sort of play, but it's very necessary to push the players into action and get that momentum rolling.  Playing with normal folks without the standard rpg "heroes kick ass" stats, did everything to discourage risk taking.  Need a lot in the GM's advice section on pushing folks along.

•Minor levels of directorial power for the players
  Fighting demons isn't easy, and most action adventure movies get away with "lucky" situations("Hey,  he's standing right next to the explosive oil drums!") to even the odds.  Although Clinton allowed some of it in the game("Is there a ceiling fan?", "Sure!"), it's not specifically in the rules, and that would go a long way towards making the fights kick ass.

•Combat bonuses
 As Clinton said, my ex-football player with a body of 5 couldn't do too much rushing and tackling with only 2 in Combat.  Perhaps a related skills bonus?  Also, for inventive combat, such as lifting up the demon so its head gets caught in the ceiling fan, or shooting it down on the demon, should get bonuses, because it's pretty clear that no demonhunter is going to get very far without serious tactics.

That said, it also seemed that the system was very generic.  Both Dan and I commented that this would have run perfectly with OTE rules, and probably would have been a little easier to predict odds.

Chris

[rafael]

Gentlemen,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the feedback.  I'm very grateful.

Obviously, I've got my work cut out for me.  The example scenario is the result of the first game of Dread ever played.  It was spontaneous, and a result of player interaction (as well as some player-authoring).  I tried to transcribe it without including a lot of plot points ("After the players talk to Jimmy, have the Satanic Ninja Girl slash their tires.  Then, after they call the cops...").  Obviously, the scenario requires some revision, though.  Clinton's use of the Pelogris Demon (the weaver of lies) was a stroke of genius.

Zak, I wound up using the d12 because the d6 and d8 just didn't allow for  much range.  The first incarnation of the game used d6s, but if you have two characters clashing with one another, there's too great a likelihood of repeated ties.  For instance, if you have a character with a Body of 4, struggling to hold a door shut, but a character with a Body of 5 is trying to push it open, you're going to wind up with nine dice, at least two of which will probably be sixes.  It happened way too much during playtesting.  So I went with the d12.  Doesn’t work?

I see what you mean about Drive, Clinton and Zak.  In one case, it's not really related to the game mechanically, and in the other, it's hard to relate it to the scenario at all.  A mechanic for Drive is definitely in order.

Redemption's another issue altogether.  I guess that the idea behind Redemption is that if characters confront danger headlong, whether from humans or demons or Satanic Ninja Girls, they are awarded Redemption at the end of the game.  Perhaps characters should start with some, maybe ten points, to get the ball rolling.  But the point of Redemption is that it allows for customization/ improvement of a character (points can be spent to raise Attributes or Skills), or it can be used to roll an extra die (such as in combat, when the player wants to improve the odds a bit).  Obviously, I need to rework Redemption a bit, too.

Chris, I really like the idea of authorial power for players.  It's a relatively new concept for me, but something I need to look into when revising Dread.

Again, thank all of you for the comments and feedback.  I'm already making a list of all the things you've brought up as areas for improvement.  Appreciate it.

-- Rafael

[Zak Arntson]

You can use d12's, it's just frustrating to show up to game with a mountain of d6's, a pile of d10's and two d12's :) It's not a die the typical gamer expects.

Why not d10s, by the way? Oh, and ties weren't a big deal during play. We just drop the highest die and grab the next highest.

I suggest that Redemption be granted during play, rather than at the end. There's less incentive to get a reward after a few sessions of play. You'll get people more involved if they get immediate benefits.

And you should think hard about Redemption: Do you want PCs to improve over time? Does this support your game's style? I don't have a good grasp on the setting/style, so I can't help much here. But it's an important question.

[rafael]

Zak,

Ultimately, I arrived at the d12 by process of elimination.  The d20 allowed for far too radical a gap when rolling during combat, and the d6, as noted before, resulted in far too much re-rolling.

There were, however, 12 Disciples (coincidence?).

As far as Redemption is concerned, I really like the idea of awarding it during a game.  I need to look into this.

But I think that characters should definitely improve over time.  Their Occult Lore scores, for instance, begin at 1, but should increase over time.  Unless, of course, the Disciple in question is more interested in becoming the group's "heavy hitter" -- an expert in combat.  Or, perhaps the character wants to be the lucky one, the one who keeps using Redemption to roll extra dice.

The Redemption mechanic allows the players to improve (though the improvement is quite gradual -- after a year of weekly game sessions, a character could improve a few skills, or boost his/her Occult Lore by a few points), and this sort of fits the idea that Disciples are soldiers, learning from experience (and each other).

But you're right -- I need to work on getting the idea/setting/theme behind the game into the rules somehow... hmm.

[rafael]

However, it threw a crooked cop and a magic-eating demon into the scenario, which seemed incongruous. Instead, I used a demon known as the "weaver of lies," who had taken the abused boy into his confidence and convinced him that he should murder the people who had hurt him.

Hmm.  I just realized something.

In the scenario, there were three antagonists.  Detective Denunzio was looking for a patsy, the Khevorim demon was fixated on one of the members of the Cabal, and Hendrickson was killing his abuser's friends and family one by one, which also included one of the Cabal.  That way, at least two of the people in the Cabal were directly threatened by external forces.  Therefore, the situation could manifest itself into very real violence at any moment.  The first time I ran the game, this kept things moving pretty fast pretty much the whole time.

My question is, with the Pelogris Demon instead of the Khevorim, and without Denunzio the crooked cop, did the players feel like the sword was dangling overhead?  Did they think that they were being watched/stalked/pursued?

[Lance D. Allen]

Stick with the d12s, deadguy. It appears to be working for CAH!

Actually, this is another game I can tell Eric about, and he'll jump on, just because it uses the (as someone on... RPGnet, I think, so picturesquely put it) Bad News Bears of dice. Give the d12 their chance to shine!


...as sometimes happens, this post has little merit to stand on, so please return to your regularly scheduled serious critiques.

[Zak Arntson]

My question is, with the Pelogris Demon instead of the Khevorim, and without Denunzio the crooked cop, did the players feel like the sword was dangling overhead?  Did they think that they were being watched/stalked/pursued?

We did have a crooked cop, though without an ex-con PC I don't know how it would've made us feel pressured.

There was actually a lack of apprehension. We got a weird postcard with goo on it. And that was it. No follow-up. There wasn't any sense of being watched or followed, especially because we didn't know who the postcard was for.

If we had followed the law and _not_ busted into a crime scene, well we probably would've been harrassed by the police and possibly arrested (especially with an ex-con with a history of drug-use and a crooked cop looking to pin the blame on someone). No sense of impending stalking there, just arrest & imprisonment.

There wasn't a sense that we could use our Occult Lore for anything. For a game with an occult background, it seemed incongruous. Having it improve over time (or even during-play, again, I believe in-game rewards are better than post-session when everyone's eating pizza and chatting and half-thinking about their PC) would be great. Having a sense that anything will improve would be fine. The problem with such small Skill/Attribute numbers is that you don't get the feeling that they can improve. You have a Skill of 3, bumping it up to 4 would be a major achievement. You can get away with constant upgrading in a game like CoC (with one percentage point per skill per scenario), but less so when it would take just a few sessions to bring someone up to uber-character levels.

Lastly, if you want to go the "heroes take risks most people wouldn't" without scaring the Players with modern day law (which seems to scare Players, myself included, more than PC death) you could add a "Cinematic Immunity." Basically they don't have to worry so much about pulling out the stops and shooting down a demon in an occupied building or tampering with a crime scene. You won't get caught, and if you do and run off, chances are you won't be recognized. That kind of thing. We would've been paralyzed for much longer if we hadn't said, "Screw PC safety, we're going to break a lot of laws."

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I did use the DeNunzio - he was actually the most fun part of the adventure.

Lastly, if you want to go the "heroes take risks most people wouldn't" without scaring the Players with modern day law (which seems to scare Players, myself included, more than PC death) you could add a "Cinematic Immunity." Basically they don't have to worry so much about pulling out the stops and shooting down a demon in an occupied building or tampering with a crime scene. You won't get caught, and if you do and run off, chances are you won't be recognized. That kind of thing. We would've been paralyzed for much longer if we hadn't said, "Screw PC safety, we're going to break a lot of laws."

Does this need to be written into the game, or can each group decide? I think different groups might enjoy each side of it more - some groups might like the idea that if they're not smart, they could get arrested, while others just want to kick ass. I'm actually chuckling that you would have thought I'd actually do something like put PC's in jail, but I guess you aren't totally familiar with my GMing style. Something like imprisonment is de-protagonizing, to say the least.

[rafael]

Clinton,

I agree that arresting the PCs could be deprotagonizing, but I also agree that some players might get a kick out of that particular challenge.  It certainly makes the job a little harder if you can't just open fire in an alley when you see the demon lurching out of someone's corpse.  If you're worried about being arrested, you've got to be cautious about what you do, and to whom.

I also agree that this is something that groups need to discuss before play.  The final, published version of the game will discuss very different ways to play Dread.  There will be a very scooby-gang method of play in which character death isn't even an option, and there will be a fairly unpleasant version in which it's not only an option, it's a statistical likelihood.  Different strokes for different folks.

The thing is, cramming all of these "how to play" rules into a forty-page pdf just wasn't working, so i cut out everything except the bare necessities.  Maybe I should put them back in.

I'd love for the Disciples to view themselves as the Last Badasses.  Wielding horrific magic, toting shotguns, risking life and limb every night... I need to revise the document to convey this idea.

This has all been very educational for me.  It's interesting that the players worried about arrest, which is something that didn't even occur to my girlfriend during play (she had no problem tampering with evidence or lying to the authorities -- when her character was asked what to do if the cop found out, she shrugged and said "kill him").

Another thing I'm intrigued by is the Occult Lore usage.  I'm glad you mentioned it; that, too, will have to be amended.  But no one used any of the Lore skills to find out about the demon(s)?  Another area to focus on during revision, I think.

I've got to admit, I like everything I've heard so far, even the parts where it's pointed out that things need to be redone or clarified (especially those parts, to be honest).

What about magic?  Any interesting spell use?

[Zak Arntson]

Re: Occult Lore

With an Occult Lore of Necromancy and no real direction on how to use it (I picked up on, "You know about raising the dead") and no dead bodies, I was a little lost.

In hindsight, I could've used my Necromancy to possibly use the blood of a victim to mabye contact the victim?

I would suggest putting Occult Lore at the very top of your sheet in big bold letters if you want people to use it more. As it stands, Drive and Occult Lore look more like footnotes on the sheet, and all of us ignored them. We didn't even know what some of the Lore specialties were.

[rafael]

hot damn, two really good ideas in one post.

the idea of using necromancy to glean information from a corpse is a seriously good one.

the idea of stressing occult lore on the character sheet is also a really good one.

thanks for both.

maybe occult lore needs more discussion, more explanation?  different ways it can be used?

[Bankuei]

My question is, with the Pelogris Demon instead of the Khevorim, and without Denunzio the crooked cop, did the players feel like the sword was dangling overhead? Did they think that they were being watched/stalked/pursued?

We definitely weren't really sure what was going on, it felt dead in the water, not pressured for quite a bit of time.  The reason the cop and the police worried us was that they were active, identifible forces in the game, whereas we didn't identify the demon and the kid(or that they were involved) until the very end.

I like to think of the nemesis idea out of Draconic.  It should be stressed that whatever evil is out there, is out to get you, or else frame it with suffcient information from the Mentor so that the players can take an active role.

I think the attitude that we played with was "Everyman" ala Inspectres, turned Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It was hard to be magical badass when the mechanics gave such a harsh whiff factor.

Chris

[rafael]

i think that the scenario was not a good introduction to the game.

the whiff factor thing i had to look up.  if it means what i think it means, then i agree.  it's too easy for characters to fail, in combat, in skill checks.

i like the nemesis idea.  thanks.