The Walking Eye podcast have a special spooky edition in which they play some Dread for Halloween (or near Halloween).

Unfortunately, I’ve not had time to listen to the whole thing yet, but that shouldn’t stop you! Nothing should stop you! Nothing can! Go forth and find your destiny!

Speaking of Dread and Halloween, folks over at Gnome Stew have some tremendously nice things to say about Dread and the holiday.

I’m a little slow on the draw with these links, but it’s never too early to start planning for next Halloween.

NJ.com has an interview with Leslie Scott the inventor of Jenga. The interview might be of particular interest to aspiring independent game designers. Though I have to say this last bit stings:

Q. There are now new versions of the game, like the New York Yankees edition and the Xtreme edition. What are your thoughts on these?

A. I have to confess I’m more of a purist. Jenga worked from the outset because it’s a very simple idea. What people liked about it was there were only two rules: that you use only one hand, and that you put the bricks on top. I don’t personally think the game needs additions to it, but I can understand once you’ve got a path or brand name, that you might want to have extensions to that brand.

Clearly she’s never seen Dread.

Want to see what Dread would look like if you replaced horror with time travel and Jenga with sudoku?

Over at Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing I’ve got several copies of my new game, Time & Temp: Unbound Edition for sale. It’s a game in which you play temp workers hire to travel through time and make sure history happened the way it happened. This time if you fail, it’s not just your characters who die, but all of reality goes with them, too.

Well, turns out that good judges over at the ENnies thought it might be worth an award.

And now you can vote for it, right here, in the Best Free Product Category.

That’s right, free product. Go ahead, download some yourself, over here, and while you’re at it, check out the other free project I’m involved with: MonkeyDome.

Some of my friends have products on the ballot as well. So if you’re at a lost as to what to vote for, you might want to check out the Summer Revolution.

At long last Dread is back in stock. So if you’ve been patiently waiting to pick up a copy, here’s your chance.

In New York City and curious about Dread, but you don’t have the cash at the moment to pick up a copy (or, perhaps, can’t find it in the stores because it’s momentarily out-of-print)? How would you like to enjoy a few quality hours with the game book and your favorite hot beverage? Look no further than Café Game Exchange, and in particular the Dread page, where you can find just which coffee shops have a copy for your perusal.

In other news, I recently participated in an experiment over at the Imagination Sweatshop in which we made an entire game, from concept to printing, in just under a week. The game is called Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit, a Law & Order-styled crime drama set in a world where humans and the monsters of classic movies cohabit in an very unease peace. It’s free,* so head on over there and check it out.

* Well, the PDF version is free. The print copy was free, too, but you had to have been at this past JiffyCon to receive one.

Cooperation between the players’ characters in Dread usually takes the form of the players divvying up the pulls, sharing the responsibility and the risk. And this works largely because it lets each individual player experience a little ease in their burden without tampering with the pacing of the game.

But recently, in Piratecat’s ever-growing ENworld thread on Dread, there was a request for a mechanic that helped to focus the game on trust between the characters, and this inspired the following optional rules.

Trust

When hosting a game that focuses on trust, you will want to create situations in which the players’ characters need to rely on each other. A situation where at least two pulls will be needed to complete the task at hand safely, and at least one of the pulls can be shared with another player’s character. A situation that would require trust for the two characters to work together. Perhaps one character is keeping watch while another breaks into a building (one pull for breaking in and one pull for doing without being seen). Or one character is applying pressure a bleeding leg wound of a victim of a car accident while the other tries to treat the slightly more pressing sucking chest wound (one pull for each wound).

The players can then decide that they trust each other. If this happens, then one of the pulls does not have to occur. This is the bonus you get for trusting each other. The host should decide which one of the players will have to make the remaining pulls (or the host may be a little mischievous and leave it up to the players to decide). In many cases this will be obvious. When in doubt you can just go with the player whose character’s actions provoked the need for pulling in the first place.

However, if the tower should fall while the remaining pulls are being made, both the characters share the gruesome fate. This is the price for trusting each other. By putting your trust in someone or allowing someone to trust you, you agree to share this risk.

Betrayal

The Betrayal system is a twist in the Trust system described above, giving one of the players has the option to betray the other for a little bonus down the road. Once the players have established their characters’ trust in one another and the remaining pulls have started, the player not pulling may declare after a pull is made but before the block is placed on top of the tower that they are breaking the bonds of trust.

In the fiction of the game this does not have to be something big. Simply an indication that they aren’t doing what they were trusted to do to the best of their abilities. A teenager trusted to keep watch might spend his whole time on his cellphone chatting up his girlfriend, or someone trusted to keep pressure on a wound while the medic administers to more pressing injuries might become momentarily overwhelmed by the gore and freeze up. That sort of thing.

If a player decides to break this bond of trust, then the block that was going to go on top of the tower is handed to that player. It may be used later on as a free pull–simply place it on top of the tower instead of pulling another block. That’s the reward for being a jackass.

And the player who was betrayed must now also make the pull that their trust had originally eliminated. Whatever the betrayer was trusted to do has now failed–just as it would have failed if the player simply elected not to pull. That’s the penalty for trusting a jackass. (Thanks to Asmor over at ENworld for making this suggestion.)

If the tower falls after this point, the characters no longer share a fate.

When to Use Them

If your game doesn’t focus on issues of trust or betrayal, you probably shouldn’t use these systems. They are specifically designed to change the feel of the game and focus more closely on how the characters interact with one another. They can lead to a lot of conflict between the players’ characters, which can be fun for some types of stories (especially things like survival horror), but disruptive for other sorts of stories.

Not all games that use the Trust rules need to use the Betrayal rules either. Trust by itself lends more hope to the game, and can be used on its own in games where the players’ characters need to work together to overcome incredible odds. The Betrayal rules definitely put a darker, more self-serving twist on things.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

When someone deliberately knocks the tower over while someone else is trusting them, be sure to honor the greater sacrifice with greater results.

While it seems possible to create more than one bond of trust for any given situation, simulating a well coordinated team working towards a common goal, I’d highly recommend against it. One slip-up could end the scenario entirely by wiping out everyone involved in the web of trust.

If using the Trust mechanic without the Betrayal, you could add even more hope to the game by allowing one character to trust another without lending anything more than an encouraging word or a reassuring peck on the cheek. “I’m so confident you can land this plane, even with a burnt-out engine, that I’m not even going to bother to bail out like all the others.”

At the moment, the Betrayal mechanic can be gamed in a serious way. Players who have assessed the situation and decided that they’re not going to make all of their pulls, can call for another player to trust and then betray them. The end result in the fiction is very similar to pulling for some things and electing not to pull for others. But mechanically, a player has earned a free pull for later. The only thing that might prevent this from happening all the time is that in the fiction the character getting the free pull ends up looking a bit like a jackass. There might be a need for a stronger mechanic deterrent to such tactics.

Be sure to let your players know upfront if you’re going to be using either one of these sets of rules.

Invasion of the podcasts here. In the past few months I’ve had the opportunity to chat it up with some prominent podcasters out there. For your enjoyment, I offer my Independent Insurgency interview with Rob Bohl. And the wonderful folks over at The Game Master Show were kind enough to record a Dread game (starting with the character creation at episode 36 and ending with the review session at episode 40) and then talk to me about it afterwards (episode 41).

The folks over at Flames Rising are having a contest in which you describe your favorite horror game. I know what mine is, but you should tell them about yours. There are even prizes involved.