Tag: Dread

Trail of Cthulhu: First Impressions & Campaign Journal

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I had a chance to join an online game of Trail of Cthulhu (on the local Discord tabletop RPG server), and we had our first session last night. I though I’d record my thoughts here, and then follow up with a brief journal entry in-character. If you’re not interested in RPGs, you may want to skip this. If you are interested in RPGs, then your mileage with this post will vary depending on how experienced you are with Gumshoe, whether the spoilers in the campaign log will ruin anything for you. Beneath the cut, the post is marked up periodically to …

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Back from the Grave (#RPGaDay 2017, Day 11)

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August is RPGaDay month. Yep, a month solid of RPG-related posts, answering these questions: Today’s question is this: Which ‘dead game’ would you like to see reborn? This is an interesting question, and, for me, an odd one. I’ll try provide some answers I think are helpful for thinking about this. 

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Gone… in 120 Minutes? And an Alternate Question… (#RPGaDay 2017, Day 8)

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August is RPGaDay month. Yep, a month solid of RPG-related posts, answering these questions: Today’s question is this: What is a good RPG to play for sessions of 2 hours or less? Hm, good question, though I’m afraid I don’t hae a lot of answers to offer: I find the optimal time for a session is more like 3-4 hours. I haven’t played many that work at 2 hours, actually. I think Dread can be good and punchy in under two hours. If you have a small group of players who can focus and stay on task, Fiasco can also work. …

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Dread: Saigon Falls

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So, the other night we played through my new scenario for Dread, titled “Saigon Falls,” with my housemates here in Vietnam. It was an interesting experience for a few reasons. For one thing: we were playing imaginary characters living in our real (shared) house. That was odd, because a lot of the story took place inside the house, and the geography of the house played a part in a lot of scenes. It was interesting secondarily because the characters were modeled on the previous occupants of the house we’re staying in, a group of frathouse morons who apparently had huge, …

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Talent Night, Part 4: The Dread Scenario

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This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Talent Night: My First Time Running a Game of Dread

UPDATE (20 Feb 2022): I’ve very slightly revised this scenario and made it available on my itch.io page.  ORIGINAL POST (8 November 2012): I figured I’d share the scenario documents I prepared for Talent Night–the game scenario I’ve been discussing throughout this series of posts–just in case anyone else out there might want to try run the game and liked the idea of our setup. I’m also very interested in comments from anyone who knows the game, as far as feedback regarding scenario design is concerned. I’m happy to learn more or have missteps or goofs pointed out to me. …

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Talent Night, Part 3: What I Learned Hosting a Dread Game

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This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Talent Night: My First Time Running a Game of Dread

Note: this is the second third post in a series. In the previous post, I discussed my long, long hiatus from RPG gaming, why I chose the game Dread for my first game in a decade and a half, and a bit about the game mechanics. You might want to start there. Alright, so I learned a lot of things playing this game: some about Dread as a game system, some about character motivation, some (mostly re-learned, to be honest) about dealing with newbie players. And some stuff not related to any of those things. Some of these may be obvious …

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Talent Night, Part 2: How the Game Played Out (NSFW)

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This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Talent Night: My First Time Running a Game of Dread

Note: this is the second post in a series. In the previous post, I discussed my long, long hiatus from RPG gaming, why I chose the game Dread for my first game in a decade and a half, and a bit about the game mechanics. You might want to start there. So… we played our first session of Dread on Sunday night. I hosted a Dread game session with Miss Jiwaku, and our friends Nick, Katrina, and Ian. (Information about who played which character withheld to protect the preciously twisted minds among us, ha…) The scenario was one of mine, …

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Talent Night, Part 1: In Which I Pick Up RPG Gaming After Years Away

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This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Talent Night: My First Time Running a Game of Dread

Well, it seems like a month of returns: I picked up my saxophones for the first time in a long time, just out of curiosity regarding their condition. (I’ve not played them since 2005, and, well, it shows in the condition of the horns.) I also decided to try get and run an RPG game for an evening, and see if I enjoyed it. I’d long resisted the idea of trying out a role-playing game because they’re kind of a time-sink, or they used to be back when I last was an avid player. That was back in 1998–fifteen years …

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