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Both systems have their flaws and both do not use dice. Dread uses a Jenga tower and A Penny for My Thoughts uses pennies.
Both are setting agnostic.
Tips for running Dread
1. Know how many pulls are required for your tower to go down.
My Jenga set typically takes 25 to 35 pulls before the tower goes down. One of my friends custom made an acrylic Jenga tower with led lights beneath the tower, unfortunately took 50 pulls before it would go down since the blocks were too smooth. Another friend of mine had a cheap knock off version with a rough finish and it took 15 to 20 pulls before the tower went down. Another painted his blocks and it made them too tacky. You get the idea, each tower has their own personality and quirks.
But why do you need to know how many pulls before your tower goes down? For pacing your game properly.
2. Continuously gauge the stability of the tower. Try to keep your game's plot in sync with the tower's stability.
As a GM, you must be cognizant that the stability of the Jenga tower and your game plot/tension need to be in sync. When the Jenga tower is stable, it should be lull period in your game. When the Jenga tower is unstable, that is when the tension should be ratcheted up. When they are out of sync, your game will suffer for it.
I played in a game where an inexperienced Dread GM had us meet the Big Bad Climax right after the tower had gone down. Well, of course, we defeated the Big Bad easily since the tower was newly rebuilt. Anti-Climatic? Completely.
3. If the tower is too stable for a climatic scene, throw in pre-set encounters/scenes as filler to destabilize the tower.
Always have several filler scenes or encounters for the players that you can throw in that requires pulls from the tower. Then you can use them to destabilize the tower before a climatic scene.
Pre-set encounters can be monsters or a challenging event like a fire or flood. You can also allow the players to re-equip themselves and make them pull for equipment. An example would be a supply locker underwater that requires pulls to retrieve equipment.
4. When the tower goes down, make the death interesting.
If the character dies during a climatic scene, then describing the character death would be easy, but if during a lull period, when the tower is extremely stable and the tower unexpectedly goes down, having the character die from a paper cut is a bit lame, unless you're going for humor. So, when there's a character death during a lull period, come up with something interesting. For example in the underwater supply locker, instead of just drowning, have something grab them and drag them under.
5. Have replacement characters for a convention game.
Don't tell the players there are replacement characters, but during a convention game, if a player dies early it would just suck to sit out the rest of the game. You can either delay the death til later or give the player a replacement character. The Dread questionnaire can be a bit long, so I'm more of a fan of quick character generation.
6. Plain vanilla Jenga is good, but sprinkles and hot fudge on top is great too.
I have a Throw 'n Go Jenga with colored blocks and a die which limits which blocks you can pull. Some people write numbers on the end of blocks and make people roll dice to determine which blocks can be touched. One of my friends painted his blocks with security clearance colors from Paranoia and the character's security clearance determines which blocks can be pulled. People have also written messages on blocks that can't be read until the block is pulled. Lots of cool things to hack your Jenga tower.
I've written and run two highly customized Dread games:
Dread of Winter Horrible Invitational
The Carnival Magic - A Haunted Cruise Ship (details on the hacks, but unfortunately this was before I had spoiler sections and fully detailed info on the builds of my games, I'll write a separate blog on how to recreate this game).
Tips for Running A Penny for My Thoughts
1. Agree upon a tone for the game.
If some players want a humorous game and others something serious, then it'll be a problem and unsatisfying for all the players. There are questionnaires online which set up a Cthulhu horror story, a secret agent adventure, or a murder mystery, those help in setting the tone of the game.
I like to pick a movie whose trailer has come out, but no one has seen the movie yet. That sets up the tone, the characters, the genre, and ideas for scenes and gets everyone on the same page. I've played our own version John Carter of Mars and Inception before the movies came out.
One great thing about Fiasco is that the tone is baked into the game.
2. Don't force the merging of story lines, let it happen organically.
The individual character story lines always seem to merge and collapse into a cohesive timeline by themselves. There's no reason to force it. I've played in several games where the odd-man-out wound up being the villain at the end of the game.
3. Keep two 2-minute hourglass sand timers handy.
Some people take too long. One way to rein them in is to tell them everyone is limited to two minutes of narration. When the sand runs out, their time is out. Why two timers? It takes a while to reset the sand timer, while one is running, reset the other one. You can use a digital timer, but I like seeing the sand running and having a visual indication as to how much time is left, and how much has been used.4. I dislike the ritualistic phrasing and drop most of it.
I just feel like it's too cult-like. So, I drop most of the phrasing and keep only a few phrases:
- "When I think of ___, I remember..."
- "What did I do or say next?"
- "Or was it?"
5. I use glass beads instead of pennies.
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