About a month or so ago I hosted a Dread game for several friends of mine who hadn’t played yet. Rather than play one of the myriad of Dread stories I had created for the conventions over the years, I wanted to see what sort of story they wanted to play. One of the players said he would like to see how Dread handled a game where the players’ characters were themselves vampires. Another suggested, perhaps in jest, that we set it in Duluth, Minnesota, in the year 1954.

What followed was the story of an all-American family in the heartland who, upon returning from a long weekend at their hunting cabin, discovered that none of them could remember the week and each of them were entertaining sinister cravings.

Oh, and they were all missing an eye.

For me, the key to pulling off a horror game with vampires, is to shift a bit from the modern conception of them. Because we all seem to be a bit too familiar with them, and they’ve lost that edge that comes with being unknown. But I wanted the players to feel like they were playing vampires, and not something completely different.

I went about this a number of ways, starting with the questionnaires. We played the game over the course of two nights. On the first night there were four players who got the first four questionnaires. On the second night a fifth player joined us. I asked if he would mind playing an ordinary cop rather than a vampire. He said he preferred it.

On that first night, I told the players that their characters would begin the game a few days after they have returned from their trip to the cabin. Everyone is missing an eye and parched with an unholy thirst. The rest was up to them and the questionnaires. The first four had the advantage of making the characters together. So they sat around the table and discussed just how the family would be before setting pen to paper.

Once they had the rough details hammered out, the questionnaires coxed a few ties to the community for each of the characters, as well as a few things they were discovering about their new-found vampirism.

For the fifth player, I wanted to tie him closely to the family as well, so he would have a reason to help them. Hence the question with the blank in it, which is meant to be filled with the name of an appropriate family member.

There are a few other tricks tucked into the questions, especially designed to sow dissent. Blatant things, such as who resents who, but a few subtle ones, like the one family member with a different eye missing–just to add an air of mystery.

• Where do you sit in the family tree and how does that make you feel responsible for them?
• How has your relationship with your neighbors been strained this past year or so?
• What do you to to make ends meet?
• How does sunlight affect you differently?
• What hobby are you no longer able to participate in?
• How have you disguised your missing right eye?
• What do you have hidden beneath your bed?
• When the chips are down, where do you find strength?
• What astounding thing have you been able to do since the trip to the cabin?
• What is your name?

• Where do you sit in the family tree and how does that make you resent them?
• What part of your community do you take the most pride in?
• What careers have you had and why can’t you keep one?
• How did you discover blood would sate your appetite?
• Where did you used to hang out when you had free time?
• How have you disguised your missing left eye?
• How do your religious convictions differ from the rest of the family?
• Who do you turn to in a crisis?
• Since the trip to the cabin, what astounding thing have you discovered you can do?
• What is your name?

• Where do you sit in the family tree and how does that affect the way they treat you?
• Why will you never leave Duluth?
• What did you do before the cabin trip that almost cost you your job?
• All animals but which are now disturbed by your presence? Why do you think this is?
• In school you regularly won awards in what?
• How have you disguised your missing left eye?
• What did you do to that girl?
• What do you think you are good at but really aren’t?
• What astounding thing have you discovered about yourself since the cabin trip?
• What is your name?

• Where do you sit in the family tree and how has that helped you in the past?
• Why is it that you feel your best friend might be worse off than you?
• What do you do on the side to make a little extra cash?
• Why are you the only one comfortable feeding in front of the others?
• Who is the last person you want to know about your condition, and why do you fear they already know?
• How have you disguised your missing left eye?
• Why haven’t you dated in a year?
• What have you been wanting to do all your life?
• What astounding feat have you accomplished since the trip to the cabin?
• What is your name?

• How have you kept your job as a state trooper for so long despite your alcoholism?
• Why do you feel you owe __________ your life?
• What part of your job are you particularly good at?
• According to her, where is your wife now? And where do you suspect she really is?
• What do you do to keep entertained when patrolling these back woods?
• Before you saw the children in the woods, what was the strangest thing you’ve encountered?
• What does the way you wear your uniform say about you?
• When was the last time your job put your life in danger and how did you survive?
• What is your name?

Most of my Dread games as of late have been rather straightforward. I’ve been showing the game off to new players, and so I don’t get too experimental with it. The players in these games are usually interested in purchasing or hosting games of their own. So the fundamentals become the focus of my game.

I miss the early days of Dread, when we’d toy with all sorts of wackiness, including a mad dice system for determining how many pulls you should make and a table of 218 standard questions that rolled on to make your initial questionnaire. The core of Dread was there from the beginning, and all the experiments just led me back to it, but that doesn’t me we didn’t have fun along the way.

In the spirit of those salad days, here are some variants on the questionnaire that I’ve been dying to try, but haven’t yet had the opportunity.

Jeopardy-Style

There are two ways to go about this, I believe. The first is to have the host come up with a bunch of facts and phrases about the character, and then have the player fill in the appropriate questions, like the popular game show Jeopardy. The second is to have the players supply the answers first and then have the host give the questions.

Both of these will take a little more work on the part of the host, but the first option seems the easier of the two. And shouldn’t be too difficult to engage the players with. I suspect the key would be to give ambiguous answers, which can allow for a number of interesting questions. And you’ll need players willing to stretch these questions.

Example:

Host Answer: I played college football and almost went pro until I broke my leg.

Player Question 1: Why are you in such good shape?

Player Question 2: Why do you walk with a slight limp?

Player Question 3: Aside from never patching things up with your brother, what is your greatest regret in life?

From each of these answers it should be easy to discern what each player wants out of the character. Some day soon, I’m going to try this one.

The second way seems interesting, but a bit more problematic.

Normally, the host’s work with the questionnaires comes before the night of the game. I can take my time writing them up, bring them to the game, and I know that about a half-hour after I present them to the players, we will be playing. But this style of questionnaire will most likely have to be done entirely before the gaming night. It’s just too much pressure on the host otherwise.

Each player needs to be attentive to how they write their answers. Much like in the first option, the answers should be open enough to lead to a variety of interesting questions. Also, they should cover the sorts of themes and capabilities the host is asked to cover with the questionnaires in a typical Dread game. Players shouldn’t just list a bunch of incredible things they want their characters to have or be able to do. Mix it up with interesting problems they want their characters to deal with and so forth.

Even so, answers like “Because I can punch through a cow,” can be twisted a bit with an interesting question. “Why are you wanted by the police?” “Why did you join the circus rather than finish high school?” And so forth.

Host should be careful not to negate answers, though. If the player offers, “That’s because of all the time I spent as a Marine sniper,” you might squash their character concept with a question like: “Why do you refuse to ever touch another firearm?”

But then again, some players may love that. Know your players, basically.

Amnesia

In this variant, the players again start the questionnaire process off, but they supply all the questions. “Why do I have this scar?” “Why can I recall all of Shakespeare’s King Lear?” “Why does the name Angela repeat itself over and over in my head?”

They hand a dozen or so of these questions to the host, who then fills in the answers. Preferably, this is done well ahead of the night you intend to play on. The questions are returned to the players, but they do not get to see the answers.

The game begins with their characters unable to recall anything about their past except for these burning questions, which will hopefully be answered as the story unfolds.

Over the weekend, I hosted a game for a few friends of mine, and one of them was kind enough to write up an account of their trials, and post it in a couple corners of the Internet. For the curious, I thought I’d provide the questionnaires we used. I had prepared four, but only had three players. The first was to become Darryl Turner; the second, Gavin “Irish” McGrath; and the third, Slim. The fourth went unused that night.

What have you been doing these past six months to make ends meet?

What irrational fear almost kept you from working as a miner?

What have you snuck back to the mine that you don’t want the others to find out about?

Before becoming a miner you showed promise as an amateur at what sport?

When was the closest you have come to death and how has that changed you?

When you have to make the tough choices at work, where do you turn for your strength?

You are never caught without your trusty what?

What part of your appearance are you particularly proud of?

What is your name?

What experiences from the old country still haunts you nightly?

Before landing this job as a miner, what shady things did you do for money?

What is your biggest source of pride?

What health condition are you developing that makes extended periods of physical activity difficult?

What personal affect do you always carry with you?

What makes you uniquely talented for mining?

When are you at your calmest?

What do you consider more precious than your own life?

What is your name?

But you appreciate the work, because of what that you had to do to make ends meet these past five years?

Most people who first meet you are surprised to hear about what line of work you are in. Why is that?

When you were a kid, what hobby did you have that bordered on obsession?

Most people are afraid of the dark, claustrophobic places you work, but you are not. What unusual thing are you terrified of?

What tools do you never go beneath the earth without?

What is the most unusual thing you found in a mine?

How old were you when you started catching glimpses of the near future?

In your opinion what is your best feature? Do others agree?

What is your nickname and how did you get it?

You originally refused to help in this situation, but the government did what to convince you otherwise?

What were you doing when you supposed to be studying the layout and structure of this mine?

What are the tools of your trade that you brought with you?

Times are tough for everyone, but how have they especially been tough on you?

Which childhood memory do you have that often wakes you in cold sweats in the middle of the night?

What distinctive flair in personality or appearance are you known for?

When you are nervous or anxious, what do you tend to do?

When was the last time you were violent? What happened?

What is your name?

For me, the most laborious part of hosting is creating the character questionnaires. Part of this is because I feel a tremendous demand to create new and intriguing questions, which is compounded by the seventy or more questions required by my average game. Fortunately, my average game is a bit extreme. Usually I’m creating questionnaires for games that will be hosted for strangers at conventions. This means I’m writing questions for six people who I don’t know at all and I have an invested interest in impressing.

When playing with friends, things get much easier. I have a more intuitive understanding of what will engage them, and I know they already enjoy the game. Still, there are some tricks from con games that I routinely fall back on.

For instance, I’m an avid recycler. I’ll borrow questions from questionnaires used in earlier games. At times, I’ll copy a whole set of questionnaires and just adjust a few of the more leading questions if they don’t quite make sense for a particular story. This is particularly easy if they games are occuring in the same setting.

I’ll pick a theme or topic that is important to the game I have planned, come up with a related question, and ask the same one, or a slight variant of it, on each of the questionnaires. This can produce some of the more interesting insight into characters and their relationships with each other.

I also have a set of stock questions that I turn to if I felt that I’ve asked all that needs to be asked and still want to pad the questionnaire out a bit. Most of these can be found throughout the book.

As laborous as it is to write them, I love reading them after they are filled out. The questionnaire is a vital and enjoyable part of the game. And I’d like to make it a bit easier for all those hosts out there experiencing questionnaire block. To that end, I intend to slowly post my backlog of questionnaires for you to mine. And I encourage you to do the same.

Let’s begin at the roots. The following six characters were used for the very first public game of Dread which took place at GenCon in 2000. They are from the same zombie apocalypse game as the example questionnaire in the A Question of Character chapter. That questionnaire was cannabalized and refined from several of these. Several of these questions strike me as a bit more clumsy than what I use these days, but we all have to start somewhere.

Who do you stick close to in the group when things get dangerous and why?

You have a very obvious mark on your body, what is it?

Why did you leave the group of survivors you had previously hooked up with?

What is it that you horde from the rest of the group?

Combat gives you an incredible rush. Why do you hide this from the others?

In your dreams you are haunted by what person from your past?

How do you act around the others when you come down from your combat high?

What do you find important now that you would never suspect would be important?

You have won awards in what hobby?

When intimidated, how do you carry yourself?

Why do you think you are indispensable to the group?

What is your name?

When the apocalypse came and the zombies devoured your spouse and children, you were in a local bar. What were you drinking?

What are you most vain about and how have you maintained this aspect since the apocalypse?

Since meeting these survivors, what have you done that you fear the rest of the group would look down upon and how have you kept it a secret?

You are much more physically fit now then you were before the apocalypse and it makes you feel better about yourself. Does this lighten the emotional impact of the apocalypse or do you feel guilty about feeling this way?

What is your most pleasant memory?

Of all the friends and family members you lost in the apocalypse, who do you miss the most and why?

You depend on the others for survival because you lack what vital ability or skill?

Who do you feel the closest to in the group and who don’t you trust yet?

What is in your pockets?

What are you most embarrassed by?

What do you think you are much better at than you really are?

What is your name?

Besides the child, you are the youngest in the group. You were the oldest in your family. How does it feel to be the runt now?

In school you were generally popular. What traits do you have that contributed to that?

It was almost a month after the apocalypse before you found another living soul. How has that isolation affected you?

What injury have you received recently that is slowing you down?

What rituals did you go through before a big game or meet?

Do you still use them, and if so, do they help?

What is it that the group relies on you for?

What object did you leave behind that you miss more than most of the people that were close to you?

Before the apocalypse, you had strong religious (or atheistic) beliefs that have changed dramatically. Why?

What was your part-time job in high school?

What trend do you still cling to?

What did you plan on doing after graduation?

What is your name?

Which one are you least proud of?

Since the apocalypse, your child has been mute. What is your child’s name?

What part of your appearance did you worry about before the apocalypse and do you still worry about it now?

Who do you trust watching your child?

Who don’t you trust?

What disease do you fear most?

How have your parenting habits changed since the apocalypse?

What comfort from before the apocalypse do you miss the most?

In what ways has the stress been affecting you lately and why don’t you want the others to know about it?

Despite the loss of family and friends, the apocalypse has made your life easier in what ways?

What were you studying in college before you dropped out to raise your child?

What habit did you break before the apocalypse that you have started up again?

Since the apocalypse you have discovered that you are particularly good at what?

What is your name?

When are you most nervous?

What did you like to do with your time off before the apocalypse?

What do you miss the most about your former life and what do you miss the least?

What mannerism do you often repeat?

Though you prefer to travel light these days, what do you make sure you always have with you?

What sort of pet do you keep and what is its name?

When the stress of struggling to survive everyday gets to you, what do you do?

How did you fend off your first zombie attack?

What is the worst injury you have ever had and what signs of it do you still have?

What do you prefer to use instead of firearms against the zombies and why?

What scared you most as a child?

What is your name?

Unlike the rest, you had no one to lose in the apocalypse. How does that affect your feelings towards them?

What tattoos did you get when you did time in jail?

Why is it that you feel particularly protective of the child?

What disease do you have that you don’t want the others to know about?

What is your first instinct whenever the dead attack?

On the only occasion when you cracked under the pressure, what did you do?

When the zombies first attacked, who did you sacrifice to save your own skin?

Is this new world a chance for redemption or just life as usual?

What weapon do you carry with you?

Now that department stores are easy-pickings, what sort of clothes do you prefer to wear?

Despite your life of crime, what did you always want to be?

What is your name?