The GM's stance
Atmosphere and staging
Setup
- Minimal lighting: flashlight or candle. The brain panics and produces far more when it's in the dark.
- Creepy soundtrack: a good oppressive drone, a tense ambient pad, a few isolated sounds.
- Timed screamers: audio files with 5-10 seconds of silence at the start. You hit play, you keep narrating, and BAM, it interrupts you. If you're devious, do it WHILE the players are pulling a block.
- 2-3 unsettling images, just enough to feed the imagination without showing everything.
GM positioning
Position yourself so you're not directly visible (in a circle around the table with the tower, GM set back). It freaks the players out. Take notes on a notepad of everything the players say -- it writes bits of scenario for you.
Half-descriptions
Never tell everything. Let the imagination do the work.
"You see a silhouette. It seems to be walking toward you." "What does it look like?" "What does?" "The silhouette!" "You don't see it anymore..."
When players resist
If the players don't want X, several solutions:
- a) You give them EVEN MORE X.
- b) You replace X with Y and try again.
- c) You find a reason Z why X was preferable in the first place.
- d) You ramp up the tension until X becomes desirable.
Concrete examples:
- They barricade themselves in a room? OK. Then noises, creaking, a door that shakes.
- They refuse to separate for an examination? Call for pulls, insist, use the concussion as a pretext. "Are you sure you're feeling alright?"
Golden rule: don't say anything that could help or guide them. The players hand you everything on a silver platter. They'll give you scenario ideas far better than your own.
The GM's right to lie
In Dread, the usual rule of "don't lie to the detriment of the players" transforms:
"I have the right to lie and to pull ad hoc solutions out of thin air with no explanation other than one the players will accept in their panic, AS LONG AS it serves the atmosphere, the fiction, and brings tension and the smooth flow of the scenario."
Example: "You hear a click. You have the impression the lock is sliding back into place." You don't care why the lock works that way. In the players' minds: "Is it a remote-controlled lock?!" "Is there someone on the other side?!" They hand you everything on a silver platter.
Note: the rulebook is more cautious on this point (chapter 4, Pitfalls): "You can have other characters deceive them, and you can mislead them, but you should never do so maliciously. [...] If they can't trust you, the game falls apart." The official position emphasizes trust as the foundation of the game: the GM can mislead, but not cheat. My wording is more direct — an explicit "right to lie" — because in practice, in Dread, the line between "misleading" and "lying for the good of the scenario" is paper-thin. The condition remains the same: it must serve the atmosphere and the fiction, never be gratuitous or punitive.