How can I import the natural suspense and tension from a game of Dread into a game of D&D?

Question

In Dread the game naturally lends itself to suspenseful play. As the game progresses the tower gets more wobbly and tension builds naturally due to the game's mechanics. I'd like to somehow bring this same natural tension building technique into a 4e D&D game.

My thought would be to do it as a one off all-day kind of session where the Dread tower is a secondary mechanic that ties to the plot somehow rather than to the lives of the characters. I am certainly open to other suggestions or thoughts.

Answer 1

A few things come to mind when I think of the Jenga tower:

1) When the tower pitches over, that's it. The end result is something catastrophic and final. For a D&D game, you would need to include a powerful and irreversible consequence to reaching the end of the line, whether it be a curse, or one or more PCs' deaths.

2) The worsening situation is obvious. You can see that there aren't many blocks left to remove, and the tower gets a little more wobbly as time goes on.

3) You know things are getting worse in Jenga, but you never know how close to the end you are. The structure might look like it can take three or four more block removals, but the next one just might send everything tumbling due to an unsteady hand.

In 4e, I'd run a modified skill challenge, something like: find the secret counterspell to the curse before the demon awakens (and the party meets a Very Bad Ending). I'd make it complex, with a high DC for most checks. That satisfies the first consideration above.

Instead of the standard three failures, though, have something like six, but every time a skill check is failed, roll a d4 and add that many failures to the count. That way you might have six chances to recover from failure, or only two, but if your first roll is a three, you have no way of knowing whether or not the next mis-step will be your last...and that should give your players reason for worry. Just be sure to give them ample opportunities to use secondary skills, and consider giving automatic successes for clever actions that the players suggest (which goes for regular skill challenges as well, I'd think).

Answer 2

A good way to build tension is to have characters working against a clock (in this case represented by the tower). My first thought is, unlike Dread, where the tower always falls eventually, give the party a chance to "win" the tower (reset) by accomplishing whatever task is at hand. You would need to carefully plan how to set up the encounters to get the balance just right. Consider adjusting the reward they get based on how much they accomplish before the tower falls (if that ends the encounter) or by the height of the tower when they finish the encounter.

Here is a possible example: The party is fighting in an ancient temple, and the disturbance caused by the battle is destabilizing the aging structure. They pull X times every round (have to play with the numbers to make it work), but the number of pulls increases every round. When the tower falls, the debris attacks everybody's reflex and makes some parts of the floor fall through and turns others into difficult terrain. If you pick enemies that float and have high reflex defense, this will turn up the difficulty. Think of other things which may happen as the result of the tower falling, such as the room flooding or enemies' reinforcements finally breaking through the barred door from the next room. If it becomes obvious that the best option for the party after the tower falls is to flee, even better!

You could also spread out the tension over a few encounters and skill challenges, such as a level of a dungeon. Make sure to keep the clock ticking between encounters in this case. Find an excuse to give them back encounter powers, but decide between recovering full HP or not having to pull. For example, make them pull for every healing surge spent (or something similar).

Another possibility is letting successful skill challenges skip a few pulls. If they are trying to outrun the slowly flowing lava which is filling up the rooms behind them, give them an opportunity to figure out a way to slow it by collapsing a room, reinforcing a door or blocking the passage with some water, redirected and frozen into a solid block.

You'll definitely have to play it by ear and adjust the consequences.

Answer 3

I think the 2 ultimate questions are "When do i want the players to pull from the tower, and what impact will a falling tower have?"

Should a player have to pull every time they do a skill roll? Should a player have to pull every time they attack? It really depends on how you want to do it. I think i would have them pull every time they roll the dice. If you go that way i think that, should the tower fall, they are reduced by their bloodied value (ie half their hp). that should make the cleric's heal check more interesting.

another alternative is to have to pull on dice rolls that they fail to meet the dc