DREAD: Convention game, Notes and Observations (and Pics!)

[Andy Kitkowski]

(pardon the formatiing, I'm copying from Notepad)

It was a Con game.  I've known Rafael for a couple months (since Steve D came to town on his tour of America), knew of his Dread project less than that, and although Dread didn't sound like my cup of tea, I wanted to show my support (I mean, it takes stones to try to publish your own game) by trying the game out at Trinoc-Con at one of his demo sessions.

Long story short: Dread IS my cup of tea.

I was actually signed up for the 3rd of three Dread adventures (going down that very night), but I instead decided to go for the 2nd slot instead so that I could go home and get some sleep.

The session began at 2:00PM. For about 15 minutes, only Raf and I were at the table, so we just chatted about his game, the themes in it, and why he did some of the things that he did in making the game.  About 5 minutes later, we looked around and figured that no one else was coming, so I suggested he grab the dude at the other table with no players (he was running something called "CadavEarth") or the three dejected-looking players without a GM sitting at another table. I started working on my character sheet while he went hunting.

Two minutes later, Raf returns with three no longer dejected players, and we start to make up characters.  We were given the option of pregens, but since we were pretty laid back and since the system didn't look too complicated, we opted to make our own folks.

Character generation for the first time ever, from start to finish, including explanations for everything nixing the time that it took to get the new folks into the game and introductions, a total of about six minutes. Add a few more to look through the plethora of spells.

Here was the written Con-booklet description of the adventure:

Small Town Gravity
You've been sent to Serenity, a small town in North Carolina. Word has it there's a Demon on the loose, but nobody seems to know what kind. You need to find it, isolate it, and bring it down before any of the Chrulidiam show up. Bring a shotgun and a bad attitude. This scenario is an excellent introduction to Dread, a rules-light game of dark heroism and supernatural action. There will be pre-generated characters available.

Upon hearing a little bit about the background of the game, I immediately came up with an idea: A day-to-day accountant/office manager named "Tom", pushing 40, balding, overweight, the kind of guy who goes to work, comes home, eats with his wife, watches TV, goes to sleep, repeat.

So one day he came home to find his wife in pieces all over the floor, with a living shadow hovering over her.  It lurched for me, I fainted... and woke up with The Mentor, covered in (not my own) blood.  From that point, I began my training as a Disciple, as did the rest of the characters.

A few months later, and we are a rough, tough gang of demonic ass-kickers.  The Mentor leaves to found another Cabal (a Cell in the anti-demon underground network), and we wait for a message from him.

The other players were a cop named Lucas (ex military) who worked in the roughest parts of town, and on top of that was framed for crimes he didn't commit.  I just now realized that I forgot the background of the other characters, save that Dante Gutierrez was hispanic and into the occult (and acted a little like Woody Allen), and Megan was a very smart woman (sorry, been a week and I already forgot the reasons they left their old lives behind).

Back to my character:
*****NOTE: This section contains background rules and the like. If you want to just read the adventure, please skip to the next asterisk-ed line******

So you divide nine points between your three stats: Body, Mind and Spirit. One of the three scores has to be a five or a six. I didn't understand why until a little later (basically, it perfectly fits the "superhero troupe" style of play that way). I chose 2 for Body and Mind and a 5 for Spirit.

On the second run through these attributes, it was explained how this was basically a supers game: Most folks score about a 1 or possibly a 2 for these attributes.  A Mind of 3 would be PhD level. 4 would be like an ancient dervish or a learned qabbalist. The fact that one of our abilites starts out HIGHER than even that is a testament to the treatment of the players as supers.

Skills are your Mind plus three.  I ended up taking three points of athletics (my dude, while flabby and generally out of shape, had TREMENDOUS physical energy based on adrenaline, rage and the like) and spread the rest over Intimidate and Empath.

We skipped Contacts since it was a one-shot, but I already got my mind whirring on cool contacts to use; Old co-workers, friends of the dead wife, golfing buddies, etc.

Next, I chose my weapons and equipment: Actually, I was simply asked what I wanted to have with me- I said "How about a revolver and a 20 lb sledge?".  Got them both. Nothing else special (phone, PC, etc) needed for my guy.

I had to then choose a Drive (roleplay your Drive on an action, toss in an extra die): I chose Anger.  I emphasized it by grabbing the pen like a kindergartener draws with cryaon and writing it in funky, crude letters.

Next, I chose spells.  I basically took the spells that weren't flashy, but necessery to pull demons out of hosts, freeze hem, whack at them, and find them. I just ran through the spell section, picking out (from the description) everything that looked cool and writing it down on my sheet, stopping at 5 (my Spirit score).  This was a demo, though- In the game itself you get more spells.

Then we all got 12 (10?) "Redemption Points". These are a combination of XP and "Reroll Points". You use them to get automatic 12s on the dice, roll another die to the pile, etc.

Finally, RIGHT before we began, the GM (Raf) told us that we need something called "secondary skills". Basically, they're these aptitudes: Combat, Perception (AKA "The Eye") and one other.  I was kind of confused why these popped in seemingly out of nowhere, and why they weren't represented by normal skills.  Then I realized that this was what the game was meant to be- A team of highly specialized individuals, each with their own unique talents, that work together as a whole.  I, like the police officer, ended up taking Combat.  The other two characters chose the other abilities.

********************

Anyway, the adventure began with a brief description of how Dimitrius (imagine Blade with... well... no fangs.  And half asian) gathered and trained us together. Then there was a quick Q&A with Dimitrius about The State of Things. Dimitrius was vague on some background issues, explicit in others (What happened to Heaven, where are our souls, etc). But Dimitrius was hesitant on teaching us more until we knew for ouselves, so he left to Dayton to start a new Cabal.

About a week later, we get a package in the mail to our clubhouse sent Pirority Mail, with a news clipping and a map of NC, with a town circled in red, with one word written on the map: "Now".

So Megan (the driver) loads up the Chevy, grab our guns, and peel out (doing 5 over, of course... don't wanna get caught while we've got a car full of sledgehammers, knives, pistols and shotguns). On the way, Dante and Lucas use their laptops and wireless phones (connected together ala Vaio) to get the latest on Serenity.  Small town, not a lot of folks (under 2K), a small town paper's obituaries listed, among the "regulars", about 3 children, ageds about 10-11. No cause of death listed (as its just the obits). No newspaper updates since a day or two after that (about a week ago).  Of course, we're getting bad feelings, so Dante looks up the town phone book and calls the first person on it. Gets a live person on the other line, fakes a wrong number.

We pull off of the main highway and book it up to the town.  On the outskirts there was a Sunoco gas station, deserted. We pull off and try to get our bearings. Tom stands and watch the road, a small dirty thing leading further through woods into, eventually, a town. The others explore the gas station- the filthy Men's room, the convenience store, etc. Exentually, a scrawled, handwritten note appears in the bathroom talking about the typical Evil, Death, and Hell. In the meantime, the convenience store folks (broke into the store via lockpicks) scope out the food and drinks in their unpowered coolers to get an idea of how long it's been deserted.  They check the register, and find the key to the office. Opening that up, they find a desk belonging to the manager, "Mark", with a girl's picture and a report card, all 'A's. Mark's number is unlisted in the local phone books.

By this time, we've got TONS of leads, most of them generated by our fertile imaginations. We could get hints if we went to the Morgue, the Police Station, the office of the town newspaper, the houses of the dead children to talk to the parents, the elementary school they went to, etc.

At that point, Tom notices someone walking down the road towards us.  Police officer. Shit. He gives a word to the others- We *try* to act nonchelant, I puncture the tire with a knife and go about changing it with a spare. The officer walks up, and we notice that his uniform is kinda tore up. In fact, he looks more like just some guy, talking like (and with the mannerisms of) an officer, but wearing some clothes that look only remotely like a real officer's.  We didn't know what to make of that, nor what to make of how he talked to us.  He told us (real "officer like") that it's not safe after dark, and that we'd best go to a hotel or something (in fact, at one point his eyes glazed over and he said "The Star Motel, Room 110", which kinda freaked us).  Turns out, even though this guy seemed like your average confident highway patrolman or officer, it turns out that he couldn't remember who he was, where he lived, what's happening or anything.  He only knows that he's trying to leave the town, but he ends up being drawn back to it.  Weird. We move on, wishing him luck.

"Thanks.  You be careful.  Oh, and Tell Hitler I said Hello."  He continues walking.  Oh Kayeeee.

Next incident finds us a mile down the road, in the center of town.  It's nearing 8:00, but downtown is a misty ghost town. We stop at another abandoned gas station at the corner and look around (Megan breaks in with the baseball-bat-to-glass-door method and grabs us some drinks and snacks. "Pretzels", I said over my shoulder as I (Tom) kept my eye on that fog).  All the shops are closed. Power in the town is off, too; no lights, not even flashing traffic lights (they're not on either).

The sound of hard leather boots, at a fast march coming straight towards us, brings us back to our senses. We call out, the marching stops for a second, then picks up again.  A gruff old geyzer (Geyzer?) with leathey skin and an eyepatch comes out of the fog, holding a rifle.

"Uh.. Hello.  Sir."
"What de f*ck are you doin' here, boy?"

The geezer- turns out his name is Shelton- tells us that he's been "Killin' Nazis" for the past few days. He's gruff, he's crass, he's a little crazy, but he's the only thing in the town that's been making at least a little sense. He told us a little bit about Mark (the Sunaco owner); just that he'd probably missed his payments and they closed that stand. He didn't know much about his little girl in the picture ("Jennifer"?). Upon asking about it, he tells us to watch out for that hotel, just about 300 years away from us, and bids us farewell. We watch him march off, a little more confused now.

Hitler. Nazis.  At this point, we're expecting Hitler's Ghost Returned or something at this hotel.

Well, we decide to leave our bitchin' ride here and "borrow" a van (something we could drive through a wall if needed) to go to the motel.  Ride it up, lights off (it's only about 8:00 at night or so), and make our way to the Star Motel, room 110.

We get ready, Tom sledges the door open and we pour in... to find a room with the walls covered in feces, blood and reeking of urine and sweat. In the middle of the room is a giant wooden cross.  On the cross is staked a man. Metal spikes running into his wrists, arms, throat, ankles, legs, and groin.  His eyes are torn out, and where his mouth should be is a gaping maw filled with jagged, broken shards of green glass. A nasty friggin' image.

Then he raises his head and says, "Well Sheeat!" (Just like that. Like he was more concerned about our barging in than his own condition). Turns out that this guy is Mark, the Sunaco (ex)owner.  He tells us that he's died over and over again, but he keeps coming back because he hasn't yet "made things right".  Suddenly, this void opens behind him, against the back wall of the motel. He gets sucked out into it, and Lucas, feeling sorry for the guy and not wanting him to suffer any more, pumps him with the shotgun as he flies out the back of the motel. The cross falls to the ground and slides out the back of the motel. The void disappears.

Then the Nazis came.

We heard a grinding noise from outside, and Megan and Dante turned just in time to see the van go up in flames as a Sherman tank and about 6 Nazi soldiers in full gear come running at us with rifles. Caught halfway between incredulouness and Dumb shock, we stumble our way to the back of the motel. Dante, basically the flashy spellcaster of the group, uses this incantation to throw up essentially a wall of force in front of our motel room.

As Tom fled, running around the side of the motel, Lucas had some last words with Mark- He said "Next time, next time I'll make things right with Jenny." and died. Lucas closed his... uh... gaping eyeless eyelids, and turned around to plug Nazis with the others.  Tom ran around to the front of the motel, and, with his adrenaline boiling, sprints even harder back to the area where we were before. Four Nazis left, two down, the one in the mini-tank slumped over. I (Tom)basiaclly dove into the tank, and with what little knowledge I picked up from Dante and some flashbacks to some good WW2 movies, I manage to point the turret and blast wall next to the Nazis. All Nazis down. No more screaming in German, the last echoes of gunfire fade into the night.

Then the Nazis, the tank and all of their equipment turned into banana pudding. (sorry about the one-sentence paragraphs, I personally dig them)

OK. Children. Pudding. Nazis.  It's gotta be the school. We decide to head there next.

I get confused for the next 10 minutes of real time- I beleieve this encounter happens now, but it might have happened after the school.

We hear screaming from down the road. We run a little bit to see a yellow schoolbus, hear ear-piching screams from the back of it, and see a HUGE shark swimming around In The Air around the bus. When we approach, it turns around and comes after us, swimming by and trying to bite us. We're all firing at it (I'm swinging my sledge from the hood of a parked car when it "swims" by). It takes a hit, backs up (which sharks can't do- as if we could somehow get over the fact that it was flying around), and charges again, swimming even more frantically. It leaves a trail of blood in the air.  I swipe my hand at the blood, smell and even taste it, and it's not pudding.  It is, in fact, REAL BLOOD.  This kinda freaks me out, but right about that time the police officer charges the shark, then right before it bites at him he slides under it, pumping it with lead from underneath. It falls to the ground beside him, and Dante and Megan jump on the back of the bus to attend to the screaming child (a girl).  It's not the same girl in the picture (Mark's dughter, Jenny).

Now, at this point, in the actual convention where we were playing, one of my friends (also a member of my gaming group, who also knows the GM here) Alan stops by- He was wandering around at the SF part of the convention and decided to stop by to see what kind of gaming was going on.  Raf asks him if he wants to play.  I was kinda holding my breath, because I thought it would be kind of sudden (and maybe rude) to have a new player join in the middle of the adventure just because he knew some of us.  But the other folks were fine with it, so I agreed, and we took a 5 minute (needed) water and bathroom break.  In those five minutes we had Alan's character ("Evan") written from scratch, and Alan briefed on the rules of the game.  A generally weak but smart hacker-type (also a competent mechanic), Evan's drive was Recognition.

Evan was unconscious in the back of the bus. We woke him up, and he explained that he was sent by another Mentor, Lucas, and that his entire team was wiped out by "things in the woods". Dante holds the little girl, trying to calm her (she stopped screaming, but was basically ashen and catatonic). Megan drives us, in the schoolbus, to the school, a short distance away. We split up into two teams: Evan and Everyone Else. Evan, after realizing the power doesn't work, checks out the generator room.  There's no power in town, it seems, and even though the generators look like they should be working fine, they're not operable. Evan wanders over to the school field, which borders on a forest, looking for clues.

The rest of us are in the school office and counsellor's office.  Turns out that Jenny, while getting good grades, had several incidents where she was bruised from playing on the playground. We suspected that maybe her classmates/schoolmates (all the children in the obituaries were in a class older than her) were abusing her on the playground, and thus somehow that explained the connection to their deaths.  It turns out the marks/bruises were also caused by soemthing else (explained in a bit, but I'm sure you can guess at this point). We, of course, grab Jenny's home address. Oh, and the cafeteria had no banana pudding.

At that point, Evan runs in saying that he heard something coming from the forest. We go outside to explore, shining our lights in the forest.  That's when we hear a plodding, loud "Thud. Thud. THUD. THUD." moving around back there, slowly coming towards us. Without a second of hesitation, we all run to the school bus (Dante's still holding the catatonic girl) and peel the f*ck out of there, just as the sound was nearing the edge of the forest.

About 10 minutes later we're at Mark's house. On the way to the house, we noticed that the bus... well... was odd. No gum under the seats. No fire extinguisher or safety cert papers. We know that something is definitely "up", but the bus is running, so we don't question it.  On the way, Megan sits and thinks about everything that we've encountered up to this point, and tries to make a "Lore" roll to guess what the demon was.  The player ended up succeding spectacularly (the difficulty was "13", which is impossible to roll on 1d12.  In Dread, though, one of the conventions is that, if you roll doubles or more, you add the number of Same Dice to the number on that die. So the player rolled a 12, two 11s, and other numbers.  The 12 couldn't beat it, but 11+2 dice=13, so he made it there. He also burned some redemption points for extra dice), and recalled reading (or overhearing) about an extremely rare and obscure sort of demon called a "Caulicac". This demon inhabits innocent people and causes gives them the power to make their nightmares come alive.  That explained the catatonia, insanity, and shell shock of the characters we met up until this point.

We stop in front of the house. It's easy to recognize for the fact that the entire house is painted Pitch Black- Doors, walls, windows, everything. The door is hanging open, though, and we step off the bus (Dante leaves the child on it) and ready our weapons. This is it.  Looking up, we see down the hallway inside the house is Jennifer, Mark's daughter, the small girl in the picture.

Dante pushes in front of us, points at her and says, "You're getting a Time Out, little girl".

The door slams. As we step towards it, we hear a grinding noise coming from the schoolbus.  We turn around just in time to see it bending and reshaping around the frame of the small girl. Now, though, the girl's not quite catatonic. In fact, she's floating in the air above the morphing bus, with eyes that are completely red. She, and the bus around her, were the Caulicac. The reshape into this hideous half-blob, half monstorous dust mite-looking thing. We, of course, open up on it with all the firepower and magic we can muster.  Tom managed (through blowing almost all his Redemption points) to brace the demon, freezing it in a field of spiritual energy.

Then we went to town on it. It fell down, went boom.

We head into the house just in time to see the little girl collapse. The blackness of the house, not paint so much as an inky mass, dissipates. The clouds overhead part, finally, and the stars shine though. The girl dies in our arms (just as we got an image, right before her posession, of her dropping a bowl of banana pudding on the kitchen floor, her father (Mark) screaming at her and raising his belt above his head to strike at her- Raf later admitted that this was in part lifted from a Lynch movie).

The epilogue was quick but powerful. We weren't able to "save" the girl's body, but we saved her spirit, and freed the survivors of the town from their nightmares.  We spent the next few days looking for survivors, helping them come to terms with what happened and beginning the healing process. It's a long road ahead, but we'll get them started on their new future. Yadda yadda yadda.

NOTE: Right before we went into the house, Evan used a spell to give him the gift of foresight.  We expected there to be another battle, or something, ahead of us.  He ended up getting this weird vision of two yuppies (right down to the dockers and A&F sweaters) with pistols running down the street shooting at each other. They run into a YMCA and one yuppie kills the other. Then he jumps off the high diving board into the empty pool below, blowing his brains out before he lands. We were all like "What. The. F***."  Turns out that this vision was a scene from the next adventure slot (since there was really nothing more in this adventure).  It made us stop for about two minutes wondering what the vision was and how it related to our experience.  I'm just writing this because it shows how the game can "run itself" if the GM uses some tools, which I'll get to in the "Style" write up, below.

Significant Parts of the System

The system is extremely simple to use, and is based on all the old conceptions fo RPG: Stat plus Skill. You roll that number of 12 sided dice against a set difficulty (or opponent's roll, and see which is higher). Now, there's a lot of systems bitching about attributes are too powerful and skills make no difference and the like (like old Star Wars).  Thing is, with this game, it's kind of a moot point. The characters are basically superheroes, and are going to succeed at a lot of things, especially things that fall in their specialties (knowledge, combat, etc). In fact, unlike many games I have, the game isn't a constant struggle to Do things, it's actually harder to Not do things (unless you go for complicated, insane stunts): When I roll my 5th "under 10" die roll in D&D, I curse because I'm trying to do some pretty basic (but nifty) stuff and failing miserably. In Dread, I've noticed that (even with the other players who seemed like "rules monsters"... heck they said they pretty much stick to RIFTS and D&D) when you fail at a task, it's not such a big deal.  Even if you fail at a monumntal task that's important to the game (like an attack roll on a demon, a driving roll when dodging things, etc), there's almost a sense of resignation that "It's just not my fate to succeed this time", knowing that on another similar roll, or a roll on your "specialty", that you'd succeed. I'd never seen this kind of thing before with other games, usually it's such a struggle to succeed that failure at a task is "bad".

Extra dice: You get to roll an extra die if you 1) Effectively make use of your Drive or 2) Do Something Cool (The Cool Rule). It's not like many games, where they emphasize bonuses every once in a while for something particularly interesting. Nope, if you so anything descriptively, or in a "cool way", you toss in an extra die.  I really dig that, especially because the other players can get involved- "Yeah, give 'im a Cool Die for that one" and the like. It really enhances the "Movielike" quality of the game, which is one of the things that the game was written to emulate.

Combat: Combat is excruciatingly simple.
It uses initiative: Roll 1d12, subtract body (to a minimum of 1). Lowest roll goes first.
Combat roll: Target and defender roll their body scores (adding bonus for Combat secondary skill, Drive and Coolness).  High roll wins. In case of a tie, use the next highest die.
The difference between the high die rolls, +1, 2 or 3 for the weapon, is the total damage taken.
When you take 13 (!) damage, you die.

Since there's not a lot of constant die rolling, or seperate charts/tables, it really reflects the cinematic qualities of the game, and makes combat a breeze.

Magic: A Breeze. Choose your spells, use a number of spells equalt to your Spirit score every day.

Also, I might add that while this seems like another typical Forge froofroo rules-light RPG - heh, here of course I'm just appealing to the rules-heavy folks that are reading (^.^) - It's got enough rules substance to it to even appeal to rules grognards. The other three folks who joined our game, again they were thinking originally in the paradigm of "Memorize all aspects of the rules for best effect".  After reading through the sections of the core book that pertained to their characters, they were more familiar with the effects of certain spells than Rafael was! This isn't so much saying something bad about Raf's attitude towards his own game as it is saying that this game has something even for the more crunchy persuasion of players out there.

Significant parts of the style

This is a little harder to pin down.  Rafael wrote this game for himself, and it shows in the play. He's an excellent GM, so much of my raving about this game probably comes more from his play style than the game itself. Hopefully it won't turn out to be a game like Everway, which, according to Tynes, "Would be a Great game- If each box set contained a Johnathan Tweet to run it". Dread was to be run as Raf runs it (he gives some tips, with more forthcoming as free PDF downloads), it'd have some interesting qualities.

*Namely, Jump on Opportunities, and Let the Players do the Work. I've never seen it as evident in the way that Raf ran this game. Maybe it was the way everything was new to us or something, but we ended up generating all of our own leads.

For example, the bathroom/gas station scene near the beginning of the bathroom. The players earnestly rooted around for a clue that they knew Had to be there. So it was. Some of the other things that happened in that encounter gave me the idea that Raf had envisioned them happening somewhere else, but saw an opportnity and he went for it- Things that would have been found elsewhere were found in the gas station. We ended up tossing off leads, and were a hair away from going to the morgue, or even the local church (and we had NO leads on that, just a general feeling), and I bet if we went to either of those we would have found the same information, just presented in a different way. We basically did all the work, and Rafael just rolled with it.

Funny thing: When it was all done, Rafael told me about his adventure notes (again, for this CONVENTION game, not a "living room adventure")- A piece of paper with three words:
wal-mart
parking lot
dinosaur

Funny thing was, NONE of them came into play in the adventure (well, the dinosaur ALMOST did, but we ran away before it emerged). I'm sure Raf had an idea of some of the other things that would come into play, like the nightmares-made-flesh, the little girl, and the name of the Demon.  Still, though. Man.

This, of course, requires the GM to be resourceful and spontaneous (this type of thing may change the layout of the adventure). It can't be taught, but I'm hoping that future Dread PDFs give at least some simple pointers that novice GMs could use to polish up their Mad Skillz, at least in the Dread universe.

*Another point: The game is all about cinematic action, horror and redemption.  The system is totally tricked out so that all three come into play at the core of the game.  Nice work on the style.

Anyway, that's it.  Comments?

[Andy Kitkowski]

Crap.  When I try to attach pics directly it makes the forum colum so wide that you have to keep scrolling left-to-right to read, and it's annoying.  Here's the pics:


http://www.z-builder.com/rpg/review/dread1.jpg
From the left, Clockwise: Rafael, the GM and Dread's creator; "Lucas"; "Dante"; "Megan"

http://www.z-builder.com/rpg/review/me.jpg
"Tom" (a blurry pic of me)


http://www.z-builder.com/rpg/review/alan.jpg
"Evan", AKA Alan, and his spiffy "dice shirt" he got for $8.00 at Wal-Mart.


http://www.z-builder.com/rpg/review/d12.jpg
This is the most 12-sided dice you will ever see in one place. Ever.


http://www.z-builder.com/rpg/review/diemf.jpg
Pretty Self-Explanatory, right?

[S.Lonergan]

If i hadn't already ordered the game, this would have sold me.

Your post over at RPGnet even got one of my more skeptical players jumping for joy.

- Appreciated, Seamus