DREAD: “The Detour”

• Stay on the Road

The plan was simple. Spring break, open road, just you and your people. Four hours of highway and you’d be there – music up, windows down, the whole stupid beautiful summer ahead of you.

Then the highway stopped moving: massive traffic jam.

The detour sign was hand-painted. County Road 9 was two lanes and no shoulder, trees pressing right up to the edge of the asphalt like they’d been waiting for an excuse. Your phones dropped to one bar, then zero. The music cut out.

And then your car made a sound it never had before as it rolled to a stop in the middle of nowhere…

• What to Expect

“The Detour” is a one-shot horror scenario. The player characters are modern-day college students on a spring break road trip who take one wrong turn. Everything else unfolds at the table.

The scenario is inspired by the tradition of rural road horror: isolation, darkness, something in the treeline which doesn’t move the way things should move, and the outside help which exists but cannot reach you in time.

The tone is tense and atmospheric rather than gory. The horror here is the kind which gets under your skin and stays there; the sound of a snapping twig before you see anything, the flashlight pointing at something which isn’t there anymore.

• What is DREAD?

DREAD is a tabletop roleplaying game built on a simple, elegant premise: instead of rolling dice to determine what happens to your character, you pull blocks from a Jenga Tower with a single hand.

Every time your character attempts something dangerous – something which could go wrong, something which costs something – you pull. The Tower gets taller. The pulls get harder. The game table gets uneasier.

There are no character sheets. No hit points. No levels. Just the Tower and the question of how far you’re willing to go before you stop pulling.

If the tower falls, your character’s story ends. Not because the rules say so, but because you felt it coming, pull by pull, and you pulled anyway.

DREAD works especially well with players who have never touched a tabletop RPG before, because the mechanic is physical, immediate, and honest. You don’t need to know any rules. You just need to know when to pull. And when to stop.

• A Question of Character

Characters in DREAD are built through a short questionnaire answered live at the table in about fifteen minutes.

There are no stats, no classes, no backstory: just five questions, answered in your own words, which tell us (and you) exactly who your character is before – and after – the night goes sideways.

The questions are not published in advance, because half of what makes them work is answering them at the table, with the other players listening.

The questions are designed to be answered quickly and honestly. While there are no wrong answers, there are, however, answers which will matter more than you expect once the tower is on the table and the woods are dark.

By the time you’ve answered the fifth question you’ll know your character well enough to play them, so come ready to answer honestly. Come ready to be surprised by what you say.

• A Thank You for Your Interest in our One-Shot Event at Big Ugly Brewing in Chesapeake, VA!

Every player receives a 10% discount at the Big Ugly Brewing bar for the duration of the session. (I recommend saving the stronger ones for later: you’re going to want to think clearly, at least for a while first!)

• Incidentals

Feel free to contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions!

For more info on DREAD, check out the site HERE.