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Writing
«Dread» might be the sanest RPG manual I've ever read. It doesn't seem to be a reaction to anything. The writer doesn't have a chip on his shoulder, something to prove, all those things that make for neurotic art. It's just a game that he's published once, played a lot, improved, revised and now published in a new edition.
I'm going to start with my favorite part: The rules text. After many, many frustrated hours reading indie RPG manuals that were hiding precious gems somewhere, hidden behind unedited, incomplete and sometimes even incoherent rules, it's a pleasure to read «Dread». The prose bits, the fiction pieces I usually skip in a role-playing book, are entertainingly written and convey the feel of the game very well. The rules are presented in a straightforward manner, with just the right amount of repeating and summarizing important points. And, a great point: Magic spells, demons and skills are each presented with examples of how they can be used in play.
Now, of course, Dread – contrary to many indie RPGs – has the advantage of being a traditional RPG. There's all the stuff we used to take for granted – there's one GM, the players control a character each, the scenarios are pre-written, and the game has a clear focus on fighting bad guys – in this case, demons. So all the basic concepts are known to us – the writer doesn't actually need to teach us a new style of play.
Still, though: Good writing, good editing – they're a rare thing in our hobby.
Rulez
The rules are pretty much a perfect fit for the setting. They're easy to understand, yet they give the players a lot of choices that affect play – specifically, combat.
Characters are defined by three traits: Strength, Sense and Soul. While the average person will have a value of 1 or 2 in these traits, Disciples have one trait at 5 or 6. These traits show how many d12s the player rolls in a conflict, or to fulfil some task; the GM sets a target value, the player rolls dice, and if one or more of them matches the target value, yay! - success. Rolls are open-ended in a way I haven't seen before: If you roll doubles, triples etc, add the number of equal rolls to that die. (Rolling three 6'es, for example, means that 6 becomes a 9).
Having superhuman traits gives a disciple a specific Discipline. Choosing a high Strength gives the discipline of Combat, which allows the player to split dice in combat (which means the character can attack several opponents at once). Choosing a high Sense gives the Lore discipline, which lets the character find out the nature of a demon from different clues – very useful, as each demon has different modes of operation, and knowing what sort of thing the disciples are up against can help them save lives and defeat their opponent faster. And, finally, a high Soul gives the Magic discipline; though all disciples know some magic, only those with this discipline can actually exorcise demons.
Combat is straightforward. If a disciple attacks someone, the player rolls dice for his Strength, and the GM for the opponent's Strength. If the player gets higher, it's a hit; damage is equal to the difference in rolls, plus a damage modifier for the weapon used. Now, damage modifiers aren't very high – a knife gets a 1, and a machine gun gets 4
Rules for armor, vehicle combat etc are equally straightforward and sensible. They're not necessarily very realistic, but they work very well in a game with a focus on resource management and tactical choices. Armor, for example, gets used up gradually as it soaks up damage – it's a resource that needs to be renewed.
Many of the actual choices the players will take revolve around the use of magic. The different spells mostly have combat effects, and choosing the right spell at the right moment is crucial. A character can cast a number of spells equal to their Soul daily, and knows double that amount – so a character without the Magic discipline will be able to cast 1-2 spells a day from a repertoire of 2-4, while a maxed-out Magic-using disciple can cast 6 a day from a repertoire of 12. It's possible to cast more spells, but that will soon have adverse effects on the character.
As in all spell-list-based magic systems, it can be a hassle to remember what each spell does. Handy reference lists and suggested spell packages help a lot during character generation; however, if I were to run the game again, I would make a deck of cards with the different spells on them, so that the players could have easy access to them at all times.
One thing I did print out for reference was how to use Fury. Each character starts with 12 Fury points, which are used for special maneuvers and effects in combat. They can't go above 12, and they're replenished if the characters reach certain objectives during a scenario, which encourages players to use Fury – not hoard it. There are several ways of using Fury – some good for all purposes (get one extra die for your next roll), others useful in more specific cases (when rolling against your opponent, only count his/her lowest die – which is especially good when fighting someone who rolls a lot of dice).
The book encourages the group to play the first scenario with no holds barred: Expect the characters to die, take risks, see what happens. As it turns out, this is excellent advice. We played with two characters, and got to understand both how strong they were – and how weak. In a fight against three shotgun-toting terrorists, the Magic-using disciple took a serious hit – but she used Fury to avoid too serious damage, and ended up using magic mostly as supporting fire. The Combat-using disciple wasted the three terrorists, and emerged more or less unscathed. Later, facing the demon, the spellcaster was able to use her exorcisms to bind it in an invisible cage while dealing some serious damage; however, when it finally escaped, she was alone against it, and soon... dead.
After playing one scenario, we felt we'd understood the use of the system much better: What to do, what not to do, how to build characters, what to focus on. I greatly recommend running a test scenario before starting a campaign in «Dread».
GM stuff
Now, this is a game with GM secrets. Not only are all the demons secret – their names, abilities, modes of operation, even the rules they use in combat and magic are unknown to the players – but there are important parts of the setting that the players aren't supposed to know at start. There are also hints that there is setting information not covered in the book, but thankfully, the author promises that one won't have to buy supplements to follow some overarching Meta-Plot.
The scenarios are... well, they're very, very American, and so is the focus of the setting. The issues are American (Traitors vs. Patriots, Christian terrorists), the NPCs are typical of American TV/action movies – it's all smooth politicians, military cover-ups and... hip-hop groups. Which is okay, since it's primarily for an American audience; however, it does pose some problems for me as a European. I have three choices: Playing it American style, which means copying U.S. TV; trying to use the setting in Norway, which feels weird, since Norwegian action movies/TV aren't really the same as their U.S. Counterparts; or trying to emulate Norwegian movies/TV, which the game doesn't really support that well. Of course, this isn't going to be a problem if you're from Over There.
But back to the scenarios. Dread uses a semi-open-ended structure called the «death spiral», which is basically a set of locations all connected to a central node: The Demon in question. The locations are classified as either battlegrounds or investigation sites, which is a good way to keep the game focused – it's always clear what's supposed to happen where. However, it's not always clear when things should happen. The scenarios in the book don't have a specific starting point, nor a set of events that follow each other; the GM is supposed to find a way to connect the PCs with the start of the scenario, and the flow of events is supposed to come out of the characters' actions. I'm still left with the impression that the scenarios are semi-linear in structure, though – find clue A, go to site B, fight bad guys C, find clue D, etc. It might have been better to write them that way, rather than let the GM guess at the intended structure – either that, or provide tools the GM can use to handle a plot based on strong player influence.
All in all
Dread is one of the best traditional RPGs I've seen. It's rock solid entertainment with rules that are easy to grasp, cool to play with, and make play fun.
A note on how I rate: I reserve a Substance score of 5 for games that push the limits of role-playing, change the way I think about our hobby, or bring significant innovation. However, if your tastes are different, consider the Substance rating for Dread to be 5.
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