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Originally Posted by Nihtgenga
Well for one I don't have, or know anyone who has, a Jenga tower.
Two: I have never purchased dice. All the dice I use came with the boxed rpgs I got in the 80's. Admittedly it is more common to have to get dice separately these days, but is it easier to lug a dice bag around or the Jenga game?
Three: I have MS. I actually lost the ability to type for several months. I still don't have much sensitivty or coordination in the fingers. Dice require little coordination.
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And your (3) is a very real concern. As i said, we've had people in similar, but milder, circumstances, manage just fine. Were you to play, it could well be time to figure out a "designated puller" rule, or something similar. Or allow you to use a pencil. Or whatever. Really, some of the benefits of the shared tower are that the tension works for all the participants, not just the puller, and it doesn't matter much if some people pull more than others, so i don't see any major problem with one participant not personally pulling.
(2) is an interesting situation for a gamer. For most people, i would point out that a Jenga set can be had for $11-$13 at any of a number of big-box retailers, and that's all you need for a half-a-dozen players or more; vs. a "set" of dice per player as the default expectation for most RPGs (said set usually consisting of 6-10 dice, or roughly $6-$10 each). But, obviously, nothing is cheaper than zero. Or, at least, we're not going to pay you to buy a Jenga.
As for lugging it around: yep, bulkier than most people's dicebags. Though, conveniently book-sized, so it stacks well in a bookbag.
(1) occasions a funny story. We came up with the Dread core mechanic before we had Jenga, either. In fact, when we decided to give it a try, none of us had ever even
played Jenga. So, i went out and bought a set so we could give it a try. I stopped at every KMart, Shopko, Target, and Toys-R-Us in town trying to find a set (after ascertaining that the FLGS didn't carry it), and everyone was out at the moment. It was literally the last possible store that finally had some in stock.
This also reminds me of one other thing I wanted to mention, for those who're concerned about Jenga-playing ability:
Theoretically, it is possible to pull about 98 blocks before there are simply no pulls left. That would exceed the world record by a significant margin. In [
much] practice, we've found that it is realistically possible to pull 40 to 50 blocks before the tower falls, and it seems to only have a weak dependency on skill. So that's the "real" limit we're working with. But here's the interesting part: it's a
lot harder to do when your character is on the line, than otherwise. We've frequently had a group, after the game is over, continue to play with the tower. In particular, not all convention games end with a fallen tower. I've watched people who were terrified of pulling near the end of the game, successfully pull another dozen blocks once the game is over and their character isn't on the line. What seems like a really tricky pull, worth avoiding, when it could mean the end of your character--even when you know there's only 10min of a convention game left and you'd have to sit out that long at most--suddenly becomes easy when it's just Jenga.
Also, we have, not surprisingly, had a number of people play Dread at conventions who've never played Jenga. We've also had a few people who were self-professed Jenga maniacs. I can't speak for the other GMs, but i've never noticed a significant difference in their performance at Dread, based on their ability at Jenga in other circumstances. With one exception: we did have one player who was "too good" at Jenga, but the real problem was that he didn't really get into the game--he had no investment in his character, and didn't seem to be into supporting the horror mood. We've since had equally-Jenga-skilled players who weren't the slightest problem, because the pulling mattered to them, and thus (1) they didn't go out of their way to take pulls and (2) the above-mentioned effect, where the whole operation gets trickier when your character is on the line, came into play.