[woodelf]

Originally Posted by tetsujin28

But certainly there's nothing unique whatsoever about defining characters in terms of words.

Unique? No. Unusual? Yes. Most that go that route still mate them at some stage with numbers that do the work, mechanically (OtE and Hero Wars/ Hero Quest come immediately to mind). And, unlike several other games i'm aware of that use the all-words route, there is really no mechanical currency to these descriptions. You don't boil things down to keywords like Hero Quest (much less ration or rate the keywords), or count 'traits' like Story Engine or Primetime Adventures, or choose from lists like Castle Falkenstein, or ration how many important bits you get like Risus or the Mind's Eye Theater LARP rules.

But then, we don't claim to be unique or innovative in this regard. We claim to have chosen the right tool for the job. Oh, and in case it matters to your analysis of how unique this is or isn't: the rules have been around, unchanged, since at least '99. I think that means it predates all the commercial words-only RPGs [but that's without sitting down and doing any research to double-check my vague recollection] except Engel Matrix Games. But, like i said, i consider that a non-issue: it's not about uniqueness, it's about appropriateness.

Originally Posted by tetsujin28

And the jenga thing just seems incredibly gimmicky, like the roulette wheel in Fast Lane. Except this is worse: players with poor hand-eye coordination and/or depth perception end up with characters who are less likely to survive.

That was one of our biggest concerns. We've since had 2 players with medically-diagnosed palsies of the hands, and at least 4 others that i can recall with visible shakes, play the game. None of them seemed to suffer at all in terms of game play, and none of them complained of any sense of unfairness or extra difficulty. In fact, one of the guys with a palsy said afterwards that he considered it a non-issue, and possibly even an enhancement to game play.

There are probably two contributing factors to this. First of all, the relationship between Jenga-playing ability and Dread-playing ability is loose, at best. After all, the whole *point* is for pulling a block from the tower to be terrifying. If anybody suffers, IME, it's the excellent Jenga-player, who thus feels less tension when required to pull. The relationship between block-pulling and character accomplishment is also loose enough that the host can easily adjust things to accommodate a less-physically-skilled player without being unfair to the other players.

Secondly, the tension the mechanism provides is shared. We'll often find that the whole table, not just the affected player, is holding its breath while a pull occurs. It doesn't matter if all players pull equally-frequently. The nature of the game is such that there is plenty ofthreat and tension regardless of how frequently you pull--if nothing else, limiting yourself to actions clearly within the character's capabilities can be just as tricky and dangerous as making pulls. And we address in the rules how to deal with players who won't pull--that is much more of a problem than those who have difficulty pulling.

Finally, if it should come to that, of course an accommodation could be made. A designated puller for the player in question is the most-obvious solution. And since, as i've already mentioned, one of the virtues of the single tower for the whole group is the shared tension, who is physically touching the tower is not nearly as important as the facts that (1) someone is and (2) someone's character is on the line.

Originally Posted by Wood

As for the hand-eye co-ordination thing. Well, I think that, judging by the description of chargen and stuff, gamist and simulationist players Need Not Apply. This is not a game you play for character advancement. This is a game you play in order to see how you're going to die horribly, just as you watch a slasher flick in order to see how the kids are going to die. So what if you're crap at Jenga?

If you care about being crap at Jenga, I suspect that this game isn't going to be for you, and it's refreshing to see that the designers appear - if the review is accurate - to have said as much in their intro.

See above: i'm sure that, at some point, the disparity of players' abilities at Jenga could become an issue. But we've seen some pretty wide disparities that failed to negatively impact the enjoyment of the game for anyone at the table.

Originally Posted by Wood

Having said all that, it's not something I'd imagine being easy to run for any length of time. It'd be great for a one-shot, though. Big, gory fun.

The only accommodation you need to make for campaign-style play is deciding how you're going to bring in replacement characters. Because you *will* have heavy attrition. But is this really any more of an issue than for, say, a Call of Cthulhu campaign?