Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Deeper into Dreadly Distractions

some of the things that i did for this game involved modification that changed some of the basic fundamentals of dread. the key one that changed was that there was another way to die without the tower collapsing. there were moments that this could actually happen, even though those moments were only a select few. there was a possibility of falling off a cliff into the rough waves below.

the second thing that i had to deal with is the fact that the nomenclature of the module was completely different, and the translation of DC (difficulty?) to number of tower pulls. i generally use a system of five, so a DC 15-20 is one pull, with each increment of five increasing the numbers of pulls. seemed to work real well for the most part. i just had to stick to my guns and tell them to make the pulls consistantly.

the hardest hurdle to deal with was the dealing of damage and the lack of any real hit points. so i decided to utilize something that i hadn't been able to in the past. something that i made out of whim more than anything, waiting for the right moment to use them...Dread Cards.

more to come on the dread cards soon.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Dreadful Distractions

over the past weekend, i was finally able to run dread for one of the group that i tend to run with from time to time. it had been something we had been talking about for a while, so with finally having some time off on a weekend, i decided to push it forward and get the thing going .

the scenario that i ran was "A Night at Seyvoth Manor", the DND4E module that sort of reminds me of the old school Ravenloft setting for DND. now i had decided to run this as a dread game for two reasons; 1) the content is wonderful and engaging with some interesting aspects as if it was a video game, and 2) it was more of an experiment to see if it could actually be done.

so we sat at the table, and i had originally designed the questionnaires loosely so that the party could either be fantasy or modern ( see previous dread posts). the group decided to go out in the fantasy world. ok, no problem, easier for me too.

the party consisted of three characters; a mage, a druid, and a ranger. the three set out to find the two daughters of a prominent noble, and the whereabouts of the previous two search parties. they are locked inside the gates of a large mansion, and have about 4 hours to complete their task.

some great highlights:

each character died twice, proving that this module was indeed designed to be extra lethal. as each player died, they returned a little bit later near the front gates, and i added the extra touch of having a jagged hash-mark etched into their foreheads as they returned to the living.

the mage died pretty nicely, as he opened a book about art and music, and the cursed book let loose a blast of violent sound and blew his head apart. we called it " death by dubstep".

more to come on this, more details, more evisceration, and how i did it.