As the express train raced beside us in the sudrop cap bway tunnels, I was relieved. If they waited for us at the next station, I still might be able to get to work on time. I glanced through the windows passing by, wondering if I would find a seat on the train. The lights flickered and in a moment the express was empty.
Even above the metallic screech of wheel on curved track, I could hear the sickening sound of human screaming.
Another flicker, and the express was once again full of passengers. I thought I might have just nodded off, dreamt the incident, until we pulled into the next station, and the express train was there waiting for us.
Before you can start any Dread game, you will need to know the fundamental story that you and the other players will be participating in. In the following chapters you will learn some tips and guidelines on making interesting and hopefully scaring stories that work well with Dread, but before we get to that, it may be helpful to understand a little of what you will physically need on hand when running a game.
Most hosts will want to have a collection of notes on hand to remind them of the important elements in their game. What form these notes take and what is in these notes is ultimately up to the individual host. Here are some suggestions for beginning hosts.
For many stories, the character questionnaires will have a few leading questions that will help the host determine how to flavor the events of the game. One player may indicate his character has an overpowering fear of wild dogs, while another may indicate her character has a stalker. These sorts of details are great to work with during the game, even if you hadn’t included them in the basic plot of the story.
Through the course of the game, characters may incur injuries, new fears, enemies, anxieties, or abilities they may not have indicated on the questionnaire. Because of all this, it is a good idea to keep your own notes on the characters. For each character, you should keep a list of important details on hand. Leave room in each list for additional notes to explain changes during the game. If your writing is neat and small enough, you could fit each character on his or her own note card. The size really doesn’t matter as long as you can reference the notes quickly. Notebooks of course have the advantage of easy portability, but some hosts find note cards easier to organize.
The players’ characters aren’t the only characters for whom you will need notes. For the majority of other characters you won’t need many details at all. These are the characters with whom the players’ characters are likely to interact, but who don’t hold any particularly strong sway over the course of events in the game. You should have the character’s name, relationship to the players’ characters, a few immediately evident physical details about the character, their motivations, and any unique or important abilities or disadvantages they may have. For most of these characters, their relationship is directly related to what they do for a living, because it is through their job that they interact with the other characters. If this isn’t the case, you may also want to write down their day jobs.
In many games the players’ characters may be asking these people various sorts of questions. It is a good idea to determine what each character does and doesn’t know about the main plot beforehand. You will also want to note if a character has information but isn’t willing to reveal it, and why. Keep in mind that these notes should be sparse enough that you could sum up the character after a swift scan.
For instance, you may have the following written up about a hotel manager who is unaware of the fact that her hotel is haunted:
Ms. Ferguson
Hotel Manager. Gaunt woman who has aged past her years and yet always has a crooked smile that can be disarming or plastic depending on her mood. To the rest of the staff, she often seems a harsh taskmistress, but this is only because she genuinely cares about her guests and demands the best service for them.
Knowledge:
Motivation:
She will be reluctant to call the authorities if anything the players’ characters do will reflect poorly on the hotel.
If something happens during the game that should change or add to the details of this character, go ahead and add to these notes. Perhaps Ms. Ferguson is pushed down the stairs during the adventure and breaks her arm, or perhaps Ms. Ferguson ends up being possessed by the spirit of a newborn child who was left to die in the hotel seven years ago. This will definitely change the nature of the character and it is a detail you wouldn’t want to forget about later on.
Brevity is key when writing these notes. You want enough information to make the character seem real to the other players, but you don’t want to slow the game down by pausing to read a couple pages of character summary.
When the players start electing not to pull blocks for actions, their characters will start to suffer the consequences. The most obvious consequences are physical injuries, but they can also include psychological damage, changes in social relationships, loss of personal possessions, etc. In fact, if the player wanted to see if their character had studied a certain subject in school or learned about a particular criminal while on the streets, a failure to pull can result in the character lacking important information. In all of these cases, the players are encouraged to make note of these changes on their questionnaires. You, as the host, will want to do the same in your own notes. That way you will be less likely to forget a certain character has twisted his or her ankle when it comes time for them to flee into the night.
It may be easiest to think of the story as a series of events strung together to make up the overall plot. How these events lead into one another is entirely up to you, your players, and the story you’re telling. Some hosts prefer to set a timeline of events that will occur in order if they are not interfered with by the players’ characters. Others prefer to lay their events out like a flow chart, with the cause and effect of the most likely interactions from the players’ characters thought out ahead of time. Still others find harmony in a compromise of the two methods, or develop their own independent methods. There is a right way and a wrong way to do this, but which is which depends on what you, as the host, are more comfortable with.
Whichever way you plot your game out, you will want to keep notes on the important events of the story. Take a look at the adventures in the last portion of this book for examples of how these can be organized.
Try to answer as many of the basic “Who?”, “What?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “How?”, and “Why?” questions as you can for each event. These will not only help you organize your thoughts for use during the game, but may also inspire different aspects of an event you hadn’t considered before. For example, if the players’ characters are staying at Ms. Ferguson’s hotel (from the Notes on the Characters example) and you planned to have the guest that is staying next door murdered during the night, you may write it up as so:
Guest in Room 23 Murdered
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
How?
Why?
These events are not set in stone. During the game, the players’ characters may hear the shattering mirror or pounding and end up restraining the possessed Mrs. Morgan. The notes should not be exactly what happens, but rather what would happen if no one interfered. By answering each question, you have all the details you need to run this scene at any point during or even after it plays out—such as when the players’ characters run next door to see what the cleaning lady is screaming about the next morning.
Writing these notes out beforehand not only provides you with reminders during the game, but it lets you anticipate some questions that may come up during the game. Obviously most of the above example will happen out of the view of the players’ characters. But you still want to hint that something is going on. Otherwise they won’t be involved, which is bad for the game. In this example, the murder makes a lot of noise, but it may not make enough noise. Pounding on hotel walls is not unheard of. While writing these notes, you may consider what happens if the other characters choose to ignore the sounds. Can Shelia still scream for help while possessed? What other hints can you give that would indicate foul play?
In addition to the events you expect to happen—those events that are driven by the plot and the characters’ actions—you may want to create a few back-up or extra events. These are events that are not necessary for the plot, but can get things moving again if the pacing has begun to drag a bit. They do not advance the plot, but they add flavor in the form of danger, eeriness, fear, or perhaps even a touch of humor.
For the haunted hotel game we have been building with our examples, we could use these extra events:
The television in the players’ characters’ room keeps turning itself on or switching to a channel with children’s programming on it.
The players’ characters keep running into the man who is staying across the hall from them. He is young, angry looking, and has an intimidating habit of standing inside your personal space when he talks to you. He will only talk to the players’ characters if he wants something from them. This could be:
If the game is turning out to be a mystery, extra events like the second example may become a red herring. While there is nothing wrong with this, it may overly confuse the players. Use those with caution.
In the heat of a game, it can be difficult for a host to pay attention to every detail. If the host doesn’t mention certain details, the players may not think to ask about them. One thing you can do to alleviate this problem is to create a list of words for each of our five senses that applies to each event and location. This shouldn’t require whole thoughts or sentences, just a word or two for each sense. Then these can serve as a reminder when you are describing a particular scene or event.
Here is an example for the event described to the left. While the players’ characters will be in their own room when the action starts, the host hopes they will try to investigate the sounds. So, with the exception of the sound detail, this list obviously applies to details inside the bathroom in room 23.
Sight—Flickering fluorescents, blood red, shining slivers
Sound—Shattering, muffled pounding
Smell—Mint toothpaste, deodorizer
Taste—Salty, soapy
Touch—Sticky, filmy
The players’ characters will obviously not experience every taste or scent during each event, but having them all handy will help paint a more complete picture.
It is difficult to judge just how many extra events you will need. It all depends on how long it will take to tell the story and how often your players get sidetracked. Generally you will only need about two or three of these events for a four-hour game, but make as many as you feel comfortable with.
You may want to treat your extra events like these sidebars. They exist to help when needed, but aren’t really necessary to your story. They are there to inspire you when you need a little help keeping the game moving. Your notes on extra events don’t have to be as comprehensive as your notes on the planned events. In fact, less may be more in this case; a sentence or so for each of them should work just fine.
Many extra events can work for different stories, and there is no reason to let a good event go to waste. You may want to keep them separate from your regular notes. Then you can draw on this list each time you start a new story. Select the ones you want ahead of time, so you know they are appropriate for your current story. After the game is done, cross out the ones you used to prevent repetition.
Because of the open nature of the game, your players will not always stick to the events you have planned. There will be a considerable amount of wandering around and to be prepared for this, you will want to have notes on the locations that the players’ characters may visit.
Much like the notes on characters, these should give you a decent understanding of the world around the characters, but shouldn’t be so detailed and excessive that important information would be lost in the noise.
The form these notes take is up to you. Some hosts prefer maps, with a key denoting interesting and important locations within the map. Maybe a brief description will be all that you need. Perhaps you would like more than just the geography of the area; after all, the history of an old windmill or drafty castle can lend as much character to it as its location on an inhospitable cliff or sunken moor.
You will, however, want to consider how the characters will perceive these locations. Take the time to think through the most significant and telling features. Write down one or two ideas about how the characters experience the location and these details can enhance the mood.
It will also be beneficial to list things located within the area that would be of the most use to the characters. Does the gas station attendant keep a shotgun behind the counter? Where is the nearest hospital? What implements in the barn could be used to lop the heads off of the walking dead? Would the water still be running in the abandoned asylum?
To continue with the examples above, here is one way to write up the room in which the characters will be staying:
Room 21
Second floor room with an out-of-order soda machine and ice maker on one side and the haunted room 23 on the other. Inside the room characters will note:
The first five items (up to and including the Bible) in the list deal mainly with the mundane objects in the room that the players are likely to ask about. The last five items (starting with the Bible) are included to set the mood and hint that something isn’t quite right next door.
A little later in this chapter we will discuss the importance of isolation and deception to a Dread story. These are two themes that will reoccur in almost every game you play. Because of this, you will want to have a couple notes on hand, just to remind you of the presence of these themes. These won’t be nearly as involved as the sorts of notes we discussed earlier, perhaps just a sentence or two. But they are just as important. Forgetting how you planned to keep the players’ characters isolated or forgetting to keep up an important deception can derail a story, or even ruin it. So, refer to these a few times during the game to keep them in mind.
In the haunted hotel example, their physical distance and their dependence on the hotel manager for contact with the outside world, keeps the characters isolated from any town, city, or authority. To represent this, the host may write:
Isolation
The host planned for one of the players’ characters or one of their friends who are staying with them to become possessed with the malevolent child. This should bring about the need for an exorcism. Luckily there is a priest staying at the hotel as well. However, the priest is not a true priest, but the leader of a fanatic cult. The host writes this deception like this:
Deception: Priest thinks an ancient, pre-Christian god who has come to claim the world for its worshipers possesses the character. Under the guise of an exorcism, the priest intends to sacrifice the other players’ characters to bring about the full manifestation of this god.
Isolation and deception are not the only themes that can be visited during the game; they are just the two most likely. Chapters 6 through 11 in this book examine more closely some of the more common themes in horror stories. Some hosts may find that spelling out all the themes they intend to handle beforehand is more useful than plotting the actual events. If this is the case for you, approach the themes with the same level of detail as for events. You may wish to answer the same sort of questions, or you may find other questions more useful. What is the theme? How should it make the characters feel? When should the theme be introduced into the story? What event, character, or location can exemplify this theme? And so forth.
In the stories we have provided at the end of this book, we offer examples of how to run a story from a theme point-of-view and from an event point-ofview.
The game tends to be dynamic, and often things will change in a drastic manner. For a short game – a story that takes one night to tell – you probably won’t have to take many notes about these changes. The more dramatic they are, the less likely you are to forget. But, as we have stated before, it is always a good idea to mark down at least the more important things that have changed, just in case.
When you do this, you may want to cross out previous notes you have that are no longer pertinent or have been contradicted by a newer note. Don’t completely obliterate them, however—having a history of the previous notes may become important at the oddest times, so it is best to be prepared.
How will you know if it is important to take a note? Well, if you aren’t sure, don’t fret about it – just jot it down. Obviously, the more notes you take, the more time it takes away from the story, so you don’t want to overdo it. So there is no need to write everything down, but if you think it will be important, go ahead.
If you are hosting a story that will take several nights to finish, you will want to be more extensive with your note taking. Not only will you have more time to pause to make a quick note, but it will also be harder to recall details when days of not playing have passed, rather than just hours of play.
In the previous chapter, we suggested basing your characters on people you were familiar with in order to add a little depth to them. If you do the same with locations, you’ll find it much easier to handle those moments when the players surprise you and find their own path through your world. Instead of taking the time to write out all of the terrain and scenery surrounding an isolated cabin in the woods, think back to the last time you went camping, and recreate that forest in your head.
Even if your memory isn’t perfect, you will be able to envision a believable location—and one that is far easier to explore than anything mapped out or written down ahead of time.
However, just like using familiar bases for the characters, you may run the risk of your players recognizing your location. This won’t necessarily be a bad thing—especially if their characters are supposed to be familiar with the area—but it is something to keep in mind.
What makes a Dread story? The answer is deceptively simple: A Dread story is a type of horror story. But what is a horror story, or rather, what separates a horror story from any other sort of story? There are plenty of genre trappings that one can refer to when answering this question. Werewolves, serial killers, ghosts, alien invaders, possession, spiders, foggy graveyards, lonesome space arks, ghastly caverns, vast antediluvian ruins where the angles don’t seem quite right, cannibals, clowns, vampires, ghouls, gibbering and unspeakable horrors, etc. The list is nearly endless. Almost anything can provoke fear when painted in the right light. And it is this right light, this method of inducing fear, which is at the heart of a Dread game. The goal of any Dread story is to create the atmosphere where the fear of anything is allowed to flourish. There are a multitude of examples on how to do this in the media, and plenty has been written on how to do this well. What we are concerned with here is specifically how to do this in the context of the Dread game. To this end, we have to consider several things. The first is your audience, the other players.
Through the use of the character questionnaire, you should be able to draw out of your players the sorts of ideas and encounters which hit them just right for creating a horrific environment, but you will have to be a little sneaky about it. You can be both forthright and underhanded with the questions you employ in your questionnaires. When being forthright, simply ask what gives the character nightmares, what disease they are most afraid of, or what animal attacked them as a child that they are terrified of to this day. Cooperative players should jump at the chance to fill in these answers with just the sort of details that make them deliciously uneasy. However, there will be times when you don’t want to telegraph your punch before the story even begins. In this case, deception and misdirection must be used.
Try asking the players questions they may believe are related to one angle of the story and use the answers for another angle. For example, if you ask which disease they are most afraid of, the nature of the answer could help determine the nature of the nemesis you are basing a plot on. A character afraid of Alzheimer’s is going to be more profoundly affected by a nemesis who is able to make them question their grip on reality, while a character who fears a flesh-eating disease will find a more viscerally gruesome villain more compelling. A little amateur psychoanalysis on the characters can go a long way in producing a memorable tale.
When designing a story, try to leave gaps that will be filled in by the details you can distill from the character questionnaires. And likewise, when designing questionnaires, try to keep your scenario in mind. If you want your players to fill in these gaps, consider asking the same question of several different or even all of the characters. The answers to these questions will not only provide you with a direction to take the story, but will also have the players thinking about this direction. Asking the players’ characters what their parents taught them about dealing with bullies may present ways to resolve a story where children are being terrorized by a monster of their own making. If you had decided ahead of time the characters just have to ignore the monster, the players might never come across that answer on their own. But, if you based it on their answers, then you know that they have already considered the answer.
Perhaps one of the most important and delicate elements of a Dread story is isolation. Without isolation, there is the possibility for too much hope in the story. If the players believe their characters can turn to the rest of society or the authorities for help at any time, then there is little reason to fear. Conversely, if the characters are too isolated, with no hope of contact, despair may set in; there may be little reason to go on. Isolation is a razor’s edge upon which the game is balanced.
Isolation is a common factor in horror stories for a very good reason. Behind the scenes, it forces the characters into choices they would not otherwise make. It reduces the number of overall options that the characters have available, and for the host this is good news. This allows the host a certain degree of control over the direction of the story. Do not abuse this. It is a great tool for limiting options, but it should not be a bludgeon by which the host forces the characters down a predestined path. A Dread story is a cooperative story, and the other players shouldn’t feel as if they are unnecessary. If you use isolation to force them through a series of events they have no control over, they will not enjoy the game.
It may be a good idea to add notes on any dramatic changes to the character in a different color than the rest of your notes. As the game progresses, a lot can happen, and important details can easily be forgotten. If you use an eyecatching color, such as red, you are not likely to miss the note. Of course, if too many notes are in a different color, it won’t stand out, so use your colored pen wisely.
Obviously you could use different color pens on more than just character notes, but Dread stories by their nature are about the characters and their changes, so these notes are probably the most significant.
There are many ways for isolation to exist in a story, and it is wise to vary these from game to game, so as not to become monotonous. It is also recommended to avoid using too many types of isolation at once. This can easily lead to the sort of bludgeoning abuse described above. A good rule of thumb is to only focus on one source of isolation, and use that as one of the themes for your story. A few other isolation elements sprinkled throughout are fine, but it is neither necessary nor advisable to lay it on too thick.
As mentioned to the left, it is highly recommended that you use the questionnaire to create situations where the characters are willing to risk their lives. The characters need not be brave in all situations, but there has to be at least one way to draw the character into the heat of the story. After all, if you created your story right, any sensible person will want to run screaming from it.
If you don’t have such a question, you will have to draw upon other methods. Children and the childlike are perfect for this. Most human beings, no matter how hardened or world-weary they may be, find children in danger a compelling motive—especially in a fantasy where the players have the opportunity to be a hero. Use this to your advantage. But don’t overuse it. Eventually the players – though not necessarily the characters – will see a child in the game as just another trap.
Somewhere in most questionnaires, you should be able to find motives to keep the characters in the game (at least until the tower crumbles on them). You just need to study them beforehand and make notes of these, just in case you need to use them.
And, as described below, you could always trick the characters.
Occasionally, the characters may be not nearly as isolated as they first thought. A town full of angry villagers could just be misunderstanding the characters’ intentions, a group of characters could have fallen under the paranoia-inducing spell of some demon that feeds off of the confusion, or they could have been circling the ranger station the whole night while lost in a hostile forest. This false isolation can feel rather gimmicky and should be used sparingly, because it loses its impact if the players begin to suspect it every time. It can be very effective, however, if used sparingly.
Deprivation of one of the characters’ senses can also provide the isolation you need. If, while in the presence of devilish children brandishing cruel, stained knives, the characters suddenly find that they are unable to hear and be heard, they will be alone at the worst possible moment, unable to even call to one another for aid. Most people don’t really understand what needs to be done to survive without their sight or hearing, and removing such senses from them will effective remove them from the world around them long enough to get the point across.
Short reprieves from the isolation can also help break the oppressiveness of some of its more severe instances, and can offer everyone a breather before delving back into the more harrowing parts of the tale. However, for this to work, characters need a reason for abandoning the safety they have found. Sometimes this is forced upon them by new events in the story, but not always. To avoid complications involving characters absolutely unwilling to put themselves at risk again, you should always include one question on the questionnaire that would explain why such a character would brave the danger and isolation.
Deception is another element in Dread that should be used, but sparingly. For the most part, treat it as if it were the seasoning and not the entrée. You will want to include deception in every game to keep the players guessing, but it is necessary to alter exactly how it manifests each time. Players can swiftly become too distrustful of anything if you overuse deception in your games. While it can be quite effective if the little girl the characters have sworn to protect turns out to be the mastermind of their demise, it loses its effectiveness next week when the little boy that the characters have sworn to protect turns out to be the mastermind of their demise.
Anything can be deceptive. A bridge can lose its structural integrity once the weight of all of the characters is upon it. The sun rising at dawn to chase the hordes of undead back to their graves can turn out to be a gas station exploding on the horizon. The crucifix thrust into the path of an advancing vampire can reveal its power to be nothing more than legend. A meal offered by a merry crowd of local folk could bewitch those who eat it. Each of these and more can lure the characters into traps and hazards. The deception need not necessarily be of intelligent design.
There are a few guidelines that you may want to follow when flavoring your game with deception. Separate in-character deception from out-of-character trust. If the players suspect one of your characters of plotting against them, you should never step out-of-character and lie to them. It is okay to not answer direct questions and you can even send the wrong hints, but never directly lie. For example, if a player asks you directly if her character can tell if your character is lying, you have a few options. You can simply tell the player that her character doesn’t know one way or another. Or, if you feel your lying character has a particularly silver tongue—or if the player’s character questionnaire indicates a certain amount of naïveté—you can even tell the player her character isn’t sure, but feels like your character is trustworthy. You can even ask the player to pull to see if her character is perceptive enough to detect the lie (even if there wasn’t a lie to detect). But you should never flat out say that a lying character is telling the truth. And if the player does manage to pull a block, you should at least offer a hint to the truth of the matter. In the end, though it may be the character’s job to deceive the players, and it may be your job to play that character, you should never sacrifice the trust the players have in you as a host, for that deception.
Keep deception to a minimum. While it is perfectly fine to run a few stories in which lies and deceit are common themes, you don’t want to let that get out of hand. Deception depends on the players trusting someone or something. That trust cannot be built if your players learn to question absolutely everything you present to them. Additionally, if nothing is ever as it seems, the players will stop taking note of what is happening in the story, knowing full well that it can change at any time. For most stories, one or two well thought out deceptions should be enough to keep the players on edge without overexposing them. There are exceptions, however, and occasionally you may want to play a game wherein everything is a lie. Tread lightly in those games.
When you deceive the characters, it doesn’t necessarily have to be to their detriment. Suspected murderers are quite often innocent. The scratching they hear at the door could be an adorable kitten. The children screaming and being dragged beneath the waves could be playing a make-believe game of “Shark”. These sorts of misdirections and red herrings can set the players at ease, setting them up for the real danger. Or, they could happen at just the right moment to inject a little hope into what is otherwise a hopeless story. They perk up the suspense without overpowering the tone of the game.
Never let the deception trump logic. It is said that the best endings are always the ones that the audience never suspected, but made sense all along. A well-crafted deception should work the same way. If you just pull the rug out from underneath the characters without reason or warning, the players are likely to object. But, if they have that moment—right when you reveal that they had been dining on human flesh with the real cannibal—where they realize that they should have known all along, then you have done your job. This delectable moment may not occur every time, but you can prepare so that the opposite doesn’t happen. Plan on dropping the slightest of hints along the way. These do not have to be the sorts of clues one studies to unravel a murder mystery, because it is not essential that the players uncover the plot or hazard before it is too late. Instead, these hints can be tiny enough so that only the magnifying power of hindsight can reveal them.
We cannot tell you what is scary. For this, you must draw your inspiration from your own experiences as well as those of your players. We can’t tell you the best way to keep your players off balance and rolling with the story. This you will have to learn by trial and error. But we can offer some tips from our own experience about what a story needs ahead of time.
Like always, this is only one of many ways, and you should feel free to come up with your own. First off, most events take about 5 to 15 minutes to resolve. When you add in all of the action that takes place in-between, including in-game distractions and the events the players create by surprising you with clever new ways to deal with things, you can safely assume that you will need four or five events for every hour you intend to play.
You can conveniently divide all of your events into three acts, with each act representing a large theme or course of action. If you plan on playing for four hours, then three acts with an hour’s worth of events should be perfect—leaving an extra hour to deal with out of game events, such as ordering Chinese food, and preparations such as filling out character questionnaires.
Now decide how much of the story you wish to reveal in each act and then figure out which four or five events would best bring that about.
Typically, you will want the most dramatic action to occur in the final act, but that doesn’t mean the first two can’t be fraught with danger. For examples of how we tend to divide up our acts, take a look at the stories provided at the end of this book. In the end, the acts exist as an artificial structure to help you organize your story. There is absolutely no reason why you have to stick to them.
Once you have your themes figured out, and have prepared whatever events you expect to use, write up your questionnaires, keeping in mind what sort of questions would best tie the characters to the story, and call your friends over for a game.