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Dread is an occult horror game in a modern setting. The mechanics are very simple, and well-written fiction adds a lot to conveying the mood and feel of the setting. Beware if strong language or graphic descriptions aren't to your liking, however.

I first heard about Dread early this year (2003), and went to check out the website at Malignant Games. I was intrigued by their description of demons. Instead of conjured creatures intent on rampaging about, the demons of Dread are much more subtle. For example - that guy known for beating his wife who finally killed her, then went around and killed everyone else he could find - did he have a mental breakdown? Or was he possessed by an Aspinaba demon? The demons of Dread feed on the dark side of humanity. They don't usually corrupt the innocent. Instead, they find the guilty and empower them. They often have various hideous forms they can assume when driven forth, but usually they are invisible. Finding them involves investigation, experimentation and confrontation. I find this approach to demons a lot more challenging and thought provoking than the typical horror game.

I recommended several times to various people online that they should check out Dread if they were looking for a modern horror game. I hadn't yet gotten around to purchasing my own copy. In response to those public recommendations, though, Rafael Chandler contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in getting a free copy in exchange for a review. A good review or a bad review. Since I had intended to buy a copy anyway, I took him up on his offer. That's how this review was born, albeit somewhat belatedly. I wanted it to be a playtest review, which for various reasons I won't go into here took several months to accomplish.

Setting and Concept

I'm including the design notes verbatim, because they do an excellent job at summing up the designer's intentions.

"DESIGN NOTES:

Dread is a game of dark heroism and modern violence in which you portray Disciples, desperate men and women with nothing to lose. In this game, you drive hard, think fast, and take a bullet for the innocent, if that's what the situation calls for.

The system facilitates cinematic gameplay, assuming that you think "cinematic" means that shit explodes and people dive off of rooftops with a revolver in each fist.

The rules don't require much in the way of charts and tables, and they're not terribly realistic. Realism just wasn't a goal during the design of this game. It's hard to simulate exorcism, really; don't think that we didn't try. The best we could come up with was hiding the whiskey from Pfahlert to see what he'd do. Nothing much, really, he just screamed in German and threw things. It was a start.

At any rate, the rules (described in an overview on the following page) should be fairly easy to learn.

The setting isn't that foreign, either. It's set on Earth, in the present-day. The world of Dread isn't terribly unlike the world we live in now - though there are some notable differences. They'll be fairly obvious. Demons, for instance. The world of Dread teems with a legion of merciless demons that must be destroyed."

Characters started life as normal people. Then something horrible happened to them. Maybe they lost a loved one in some gruesome manner, or their life fell apart through no fault of their own. Or maybe it was their fault. Maybe they saw one too many atrocities on the street. For whatever reason, they have lost any reason to continue. Then things got worse. One day, a horrible event occurred in a small town in Kansas. The media came up with any number of hypotheses, but nobody really knew the answer. The answer was that the Demons had arrived. The character, at the lowest ebb of fortune, is recruited by a Mentor. The Mentor tells them the truth of the world and about what really happened in Kansas. He trains him to be a soldier in a war and introduces him to the team he will be working with, known as a Cabal. This will be the group of PCs. The Mentor is a GM character used to help and direct the PCs as necessary. He can be present as much or as little as necessary depending on the needs of the players.

The System and Mechanics

The system is simple and geared toward the concept of keeping the action flowing. You have stats, skills, secondary skills and spells.

Stats consist of Body, Mind and Spirit. A 2 is considered average. PCs (called Disciples) aren't average. The process of becoming a Disciple makes them something special - it enhances their natural gifts. So a starting PC gets to allocate 9 points to the three stats. One of those stats must be a 5 or a 6. This means the other two stats will be at or near average. They far outstrip any normal people in their area of expertise, however.

There are three Secondary Skills to choose from. To me, "Secondary Skill" seems somewhat inaccurate. It actually seems to represent the primary thrust of the character concept. Selections are Combat, Occult Lore and Perception. Only characters with 'Combat' can increase their combat ability. Characters with 'Occult Lore' get bonuses to research. Characters with 'Perception' will be given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to noticing things - either physical, behavioral, etc. Usually these will reflect the attribute selections made above. This is unclear, though, and is one area that shows Dread sometimes suffers from being too familiar to the designers. Something obvious to them, but confusing to a newcomer where further discussion would have been very helpful. For instance, 'Combat' is a Body-related skill, naturally enough. However, no attribute is listed for 'Perception' - I would have expected it to be 'Mind', but 'Mind' is associated with 'Occult Lore', which I would have expected to be associated with 'Spirit'. This was really the only area where the rules are confusing, though. The rest seems pretty straightforward.

Regular skills are rather broadly defined, and are well thought out in their selection. 'Athlete', for example, covers any type of physical activity apart from combat, be it running, climbing, swimming, lifting, etc. Whether these are generally gymnastic-type abilities or brute force type abilities are up to the player. Although the skill doesn't specify you probably shouldn't expect to get away with a character that can do both triple back flips and lift trucks. 'Criminal' means a character knows about crime. Possibly he's an ex-cop, or a car-thief. It also gives him access to any skills or knowledge associated with such a background. There are thirteen such skills, including 'Professional', a catch-all category which covers a variety of technical or knowledge related professions and related abilities.

Every character gets spells as well. How many depends on their Spirit attribute. There are 53 spells, and they cover a wide variety of powers - everything from combat to coercion to manipulation. You can make strangers confess their deepest secrets, convince them you're their best friend, or you can have your abdomen rip open and attack them with your viscera. Yeah, some of the spells are pretty odd and decidedly graphic. There are only a few that are particularly graphic in description, though. Some people love that kind of thing. I thought it a bit over-the-top, myself. Still, the spells are very powerful and very effective. I can't think of any spells that wouldn't be tremendously useful in the right situation. None of them are useless.

Characters also get Contacts. People they can go to for information or help. You can either describe three contacts in detail, or trade two of them in for an Undeclared Contact to be decided upon later as the need arises.

Characters earn Redemption Points. As in many games, these points can be used either to improve the character through raising skills and attributes, or they can be used in play. Increasing attributes, skills or selecting a new spell is very expensive and will have to be saved up for over many sessions. Otherwise, they can be spent to re-roll, recover Injury Points, activate an Undeclared Contact, name a new Contact, etc.

Now, the actual mechanics. To attempt a skill use, the GM will decide on a difficulty number. The player will roll a number of d12s equal to the appropriate skill plus attribute. Skills are not definitively linked to any specific attribute, although the appropriate one will usually be obvious. The highest number rolled is what you're looking for. If it beats the difficulty number, you succeed. Now, the tricky part. You also look at multiple numbers. You add the number of times they occurred to the number itself. So, if you rolled [2, 5, 10, 10, 10, 12] then your highest number is a 13 (10+3).

Combat is simple. For initiative, you roll a d12 and subtract your Body attribute. Lowest number goes first. To attack, you roll your Body attribute and your opponent rolls his. If you have the Combat secondary skill, you get to add your skill. Since someone who took Combat will likely have also taken Body as their highest attribute, they will usually far outstrip any other PC in fights - but that's okay, it's their specialty. Other characters' specialties make them just as vital in their areas of expertise - and both Occult Lore and Perception are at least as important as Combat.

Back to combat. If the defender wins, the attack fails. If the attacker wins, you look at the high rolls. Subtract the loser's high roll from the winner's high roll. That's how much damage is done. Weapons and armor don't matter a lot. A switchblade or lead pipe will add +1 damage. A rifle or grenade will add +4. Armor might subtract 1 or 2 points of damage. The important thing is how well the attacker did vs. the defender. The tools used are almost incidental. Since at 13 injury points you are dead, it's obvious that combat is fast and lethal. You start losing dice from your rolls as damage increases. Demons tend to have about twice as many injury points, and don't start suffering penalties nearly as quickly.

The Rest of the Book

There is a short section of advice to the GM on running Dread. I found it concise and useful. A lot of it is obvious stuff, but different parts may be useful to different people, and it served as a useful reminder to me even for things that I've done in the past.

There is a large section covering 27 different Demons. Most get a full-page write-up, along with a full-page illustration (where appropriate). There are also guidelines on Demons in general and effective ways to portray them in the game. This section was what originally attracted me to Dread, and I fully plan to use Demons such as these in any campaign where Demons exist.

There are fiction pieces at the beginning of each chapter. Normally I skim fiction pieces, but these actually caught my attention. They are very well done and do a lot to convey the nature of the game. Some of them are available at the website, and I recommend checking them out.

There is another short section on the background of Dread. It's only 13 pages, so you can take it or leave it. It's stuff the characters may or may not ever discover. I found the overall history to be interesting, and will probably just toss out or alter some of the details. Use it, don't use it, modify it, or mine it for ideas. At this point, there's really no sign of a metaplot in the core book. This is good, because it makes it easy to ignore if an unpleasant metaplot is unveiled in a later supplement.

Finally, there is an introductory scenario. I think it was too brief, personally. They could have easily removed a few pages of artwork and put in a more detailed scenario. I think a couple of the scenarios on the website actually make better introductory scenarios, and one of those was what I used.

Artwork and Layout

Probably the most mixed bag of any product I've ever seen. There's a lot of it, and I get the impression that keeping the page count down wasn't an issue. Well-spaced lines, white space, leisurely formatting, and lots of artwork - all combine to make it very readable. At 184 pages, the actual verbiage could probably have been done in half the space. My biggest quibble is that full-page artwork sometimes comes at an awkward location in the text. For instance, there are three pages dealing with skills, followed by two full pages of artwork, followed by the last page dealing with skills. A lot of the artwork consists of retouched black and white photographs, and these are very effective and evocative of the mood of Dread. Then you have the actual drawn artwork, which ranges in quality from 'okay' (even 'good'), to embarrassingly bad. I love the cover, though - a dreary, washed-out landscape apparently in late twilight. I find myself pulling the book out just to look at the cover.

Playtest Results

It took a bit of convincing to get my group to give Dread a try. Unfortunately, I enjoy trying new systems a lot more than they do. Once they started creating characters, though, their interest picked up. I explained the rules as the game began, and everyone grasped them with no trouble. There was a bit of confusion over the Secondary Skills, as I mentioned above. They immediately got into the right frame of mind for the game, investigating, poking around, cautiously using spells to get access to people and asking questions. They researched local police records and made use of their Contacts. They formulated a theory and proceeded to test it. Their confrontation didn't go off as planned and they spent several days in a pocket hell dimension being hunted by the Demon they were trying to kill. The eventual showdown was cinematic and satisfying. One of the PCs died in the final conflict. Well - maybe died. That depends on what happens next.

All in all, it was better received than I expected. Although they're ready for me to go back to my regular campaign, they all agreed that they wouldn't mind playing Dread again in the future, either as a backup game or a regular campaign once my current one is completed. One player was uncomfortable with the more graphic spells, so I allowed him to modify the descriptions as necessary for his character.

Soundtrack and Followup

There is actually a soundtrack available for the game. 13 tracks totalling about 45 minutes, written by Rafael Chandler. The music tends towards the metal end of the spectrum. Some of it is harder than I prefer, but a lot was very good. I kept it playing quietly in the background during the sessions I ran. You can actually download them all at Rafael Chandler's website .

From that website, which is where the Malignant Games link is now re-directed, it appears that any future publications may be free downloadable PDFs only, and he may offer a free revised version of Dread for download at some point. It's a shame that he doesn't plan on continuing the line for profit, but I will eagerly look forward to anything else he produces in the future.

Conclusion

I enjoyed Dread, as did my players, and definitely recommend it to anyone interested in modern horror RPGs. There's a lot of potential in that the Demons can and do recruit followers and form cults. Between cultists and the possessed, there is a lot of opportunity to explore conspiracies and evil plots that may not even involve Demons directly. So, while the game is ideally suited to episodic style adventures, there is the ability to have long-term campaigns.

The main improvements I can think of are that they should remove most of the drawn artwork from the book and use the space for a more detailed introductory scenario or two. There are a few areas in the rules where more detail or clarification is needed, particularly in the area of the 'Secondary Skills'. The authorial voice is entertaining and fits the atmosphere of the book. The fiction pieces are excellent and provide a great feel for how the game should be approached. My own preference would be to dial down the graphic language and imagery a few notches. The mechanics are simple and genre-appropriate, emphasizing stunts and the cinematic over gritty realism, while remaining deadly to the careless.

The hand-drawn artwork capped out the Style rating at 3, as did some of the layout decisions. Otherwise, due to the fiction and photographic artwork alone it could have easily achieved a 4.

A Request

If you've read this far, thank you for your indulgence. This is the first review I've written in many years, and I would greatly appreciate any advice you have to offer. I know what areas I feel are weak, and would like to compare notes with those who have the time to offer.