An iconic, ground breaking title with a cool new mechanic for creating tension and fascination on the table. Loved the title even though I can hardly narrate a thriller so we ended up playing a comedy horror session.

Love it, it works great. My only tiny gripe is that the only mechanic is drawing from the tower so there is no mechanical difference between riskier and less risky options apart from multiple draws and that once a player dies, they are out for the session unfortunately.

The tension that the not Jenga tower can create is enough to carry a DM though the story. I'm happy that I introduced my friends who enjoy horror more than I do to this game.

As a newbie GM I found this game to be both easy to learn and easy to teach. The mechanics are very intuitive and myself and my friends found our session to be very tense.

I think this is a TTRPG that everyone should try but I particularly think this is a good game for people who are less experienced at RPGs and are looking for a rules light game to gain experience with than this game is a must.

Overall a great experience and I'm already planning out my next campaign in dread.

The best horror game ever made. Easy to learn and fun to play.

Still one of the best games around after all these years. The physical tension of the tower of blocks really adds to the tension of the story.

The absolute best horror one shot system around. The game is very good and easy to run/play and the jenga tower system is very unique, allowing you to make some great moments of tension and atmosphere. My group has a lot of great Halloween memories from this game.

The systems are both very good for quick and easy horror gaming. However. There's nothing in the Dread PDF that expands on the free content unless you're very new to TTRPGs and/or horror - if you like the game (and I do, it decidedly deserves its awards), you waste less time to simply donate what you like on the website. Dead of Night has a ruleset that, whilst sleek and on-point, needs playing to be properly grasped. Its technical writing is also disappointing, with the "this book contains content that may offend some readers" disclaimer used as an "I'm not racist but-" rather than a genuine warning on potentially painful topics seriously discussed ahead. I was expecting something like slasher examples with bikini babes and dead women everywhere, y'know, B-movie stuff people'd copy as parody, not things like "Asian horror, also known as J-horror..." (for the geographically-challenged, imagine attributing the entire genre-focused output of Ireland and the rest of Europe to England) and gendered assumptions about the player group throughout.

Decent systems, purchase regretted.

I've become a huge fan of this system and it has proven to be an excellent game for RPG veterans and first-timers alike thanks to a clear set of mechanics and tangible nature of the tower, and by extension, character actions. Cost of admission is well worth it for the system, campaign construction advice, and story components offered in the pages. Highly recommend.

Awesome game! Very innovative. My first Dread story was a sci-fi horror adventure that featured characters that were a security detail from the Star Trek universe... aptly titled "Red Shirts". I'm sure you get the drift :-) All my players had a great time... next up, a gothic horror story featuring characters from the Scooby-Doo universe... only a lot less silly and funny and a lot more real and gritty!

Dread is a great horror game in how it helps build tension. The tower mechanic lets you bring a physical and visual component to the tension felt in the scenario. Another useful tool which Dread brings are the leading questions which develops the characters and the world. You have to play the game with friends face to face.

Dread is a horror role playing game, designed to be played in single sessions. While you probably can have a character come back for "sequels" it's not a focus of the game. I found this game due to Table Top, and the $3 price point fell into the "what the heck" of impulse purchasing.

The basic mechanic is you use a tower of bricks which Table Top couldn't call Jenga, whenever you would roll dice. If the tower falls, your character is removed from the game, typically via death after it gets going.

Character creation is via a question and answer page you do at the start of the game. There are no stats, it's all very narrative. Over all I like the idea of it, and really want to play it. I even got a new Jenga tower, which of course is a completely unrelated purchase to this game :P

Watch the episode of Table Top on this one, if it is at all intriguing give the whole book a go. Wil did one of the scenarios they give you in the book for his review, but there are two more.

Downloaded without any problems. It cost as much as it said it would (which, for $3, was a great deal). The book has lots of interesting and informative information about running this RPG. Can't wait to play it!

Dread was a very interesting game, and definitely worth checking out. It doesn't really have much campaign potential, but it's great for single games. The mechanics are novel and really do build to the atmosphere of a horror game, and while there are some flaws, the game is absolutely worth the tiny pricetag it currently carries.

This was an easy download with no complications. The instructions could have been a little more clear on saying the site will send you an email, but once i checked my email the link was there and easy to download.

Dread is an innovative horror RPG with (perhaps) the most unusual resolution mechanic out there: a Jenga tower. Although not for everybody, this excellent storytelling game is a tour de force of a rules-light system perfectly matched to its genre – with an exemplary presentation as well.

The system is light and elegant. Whenever a character attempts an action that could fail and/or have consequences, the player must pull a block from the Jenga tower. If the pull succeeds, the action succeeds; if not, the character is removed from the game (either violently or otherwise). This is a great mechanic in that it provides a physical representation of the game action, upon which the entire group can focus. The uncertainty and anxiety that occurs with a crucial pull builds to a much more satisfying crescendo than with a single die roll.

It also sets the pace of the game. Equating failure to character death may seem draconian, but the expectation is that the session’s structure will align the dangerous pulls from a rickety tower with the climactic moments near the end of each session (or at least act). Again, the players can watch this ticking clock and viscerally feel the danger developing.

But this also demonstrates the primary drawback of the system: task resolution depends not on character abilities but player dexterity. Players challenged by such exercises will not enjoy Dread, and accidents can happen early on, derailing a story and eliminating one player (though there are rules to help in these situations). I think a good GM can work around this, but it will require both care and experience, so this can legitimately be a deal-breaker for some.

Of course there are a few more wrinkles to how this works (like “elective” pulls to represent passive perception or a character hoping to succeed beyond the norm), but the engine itself is very straightforward.

The second great aspect of Dread is character creation. There are no statistics, simply background, and Dread builds that and ties it to the current story with a questionnaire. These dozen-ish GM-written (but player-answered) questions allow the GM to plant important story points or background elements but let the players run with them to develop their own character and make them their own. There definitely seems to be an art to constructing these – the book devotes a whole chapter to advice, and the lower margins are full of examples throughout the book – and will take some practice to get right. But the facility of these short sentences to focus on interesting details (“What were you doing when you got that stain?”) or open surprising doors for the story (“In your travels, which three animal languages have you learned?”) while encouraging player creativity and collaborative “setting” development is really impressive. I have already stolen this idea as a tool to draw players into the story in my own campaigns.

The book is extremely well-written, with lots of advice for dealing with these unusual mechanics as well as for tailoring story to the various horror sub-genres – chapters focusing on suspense, the supernatural, madness, morality, mystery, and gore provide general notes on story construction and GM advice as well as more specific recommendations on utilizing (and pacing) the tower effectively and on tailoring the questionnaire to these kinds of games. There is also a long chapter chock full of advice for GMs running Dread (mostly applicable to horror games in general, and some advice even more wide-ranging than that).

The book concludes with three sample scenarios; one highly detailed and two left more free-form (but all contain a full set of questionnaires). I won’t give away any details, but the three hit some of the major tropes of the genre very well.

In summary, Dread is an elegant and impressive horror game with unique mechanics. The central premises – character creation through questionnaires and task resolution through a Jenga tower – are quirky and certainly not for everyone. But, even so, I recommend the game as a great read for its advice and analysis of the GM trade and horror genre.

Note: I received a free review copy (in pdf form) of this title through DriveThruRPG.com.

At times the wording in the book is a bit difficult to understand, but the game rocks and is one of the funnest games I've ever played. The book is very bare bones and sometimes the layout is difficult to follow. But, this is a must have for your game library!