I Heart Dread (the RPG)

As mentioned earlier, this weekend will mark my return to running a gaming table, and not just once, but twice. So get ready, I'm taking a break from my nerdy Dragon*Con recaps to write about something even nerdier: role-playing games.

The name of the game is Dread, "a game of horror and hope," and I've been kind of obsessed with it for the past few months.

Instead of using stats and dice to determine a character's abilities and skills (which is something I've never really loved), characters are created by answering a unique questionnaire, and any sort of conflict resolution is decided by pulling a block from a Jenga tower. If the tower falls, that character is somehow removed from the game.

As the tower gets closer to collapsing, the game gets very, very tense. I love it.

Tonight's game is a Ghosty Teen Mystery, featuring some of the people who played in an improvised show of the same name. This'll be the first time any of them has played an RPG before, but gaming is basically the same as improvising, so I'm not worried.

Tomorrow's game is an idea I've been obsessed with for the past few weeks: Disney Zombies. I'm very psyched for this, and would like to do a short campaign set in this world. The players will play any animated character from a Disney show or film (within reason - no Hades or Willie the Giant). So far, people have expressed interest in playing Clayton from Tarzan, Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tinker Bell and Darkwing Duck. It's gonna be good.

(Incidentally, I'd love to hear who you would play in a Disney Zombies game, since it'll help me prep for tomorrow. My choice is obvious; he's the greatest Disney hero of all time: Scrooge McDuck.)

I wish I could go into more detail for both games, but some of the players read this blog, so it'll have to wait until the recap.

And so, game on!