A Weekend of Games

[demonground]

So last week I headed to Auckland to catch up with friends and family. I'd been promising to head up that way for a good six months, and after a few false starts (mainly due to work comittments) I was able to fly up early on Thursday.

While I won't bore you with the details of the trip, suffice to say I was alone in in the City with no wife and no

Comments

[valentine_beach]

I actually played a one-off of Dread last night and found that while I agreed with you about the whole 'nothing to do with skill, all to do with a steady hand', considering that in our game we were just a bunch of normal kids, it made complete sense for it to be totally arbitrary.

But the thing I really liked about the Jenga mechanic was that, no matter how silly or ridiculous the thing you were doing was, it automatically introduced tension into the game. We went from laughing about how one of the characters was ridiculously weird to on the edge of our seats, and pretty much stayed there as the tower got higher and higher. So while the Jenga mechanic is bad if you're playing characters who are vastly different skill levels, if you're all Average Joes and the only interest is to introduce tension, it's excellent.

And the GM can always make life difficult for the person by asking them to make multiple pulls and then straighten the tower.

[grandexperiment]

Which does make Dread particularly well suited to horror movie one off games as most have protagonists such as that.

[grandexperiment]

I enjoyed Dominion too but it did not hold my interest after one play. Too generic and abstract in tone, though gameplay was pretty cool

I haven't played Mr Jack for years but I thought it was a fun idea but it had problems in play. IIRC it seemed very one sided against Jack.

Interesting to hear your review on John Carter. Its taking a lot of flak at the moment, but I hoped it would be cool.

[mashugenah]

and relied more on a steady hand than actual roleplaying

You sir, are wrong. Inasmuch as this comment could equally apply to every game system ever - CoC would be great, but it relies on dice more than actual roleplaying, etc etc.

And/or: your GM was doing it wrong.

[grandexperiment]

Strangely, I have been thinking about RPGs that rely on player skill as much as PC skill. Dread's unusual, I guess, as this is normally a tactical skill and not a hand eye coordination one.