Dread is a game of horror and hope. Those who play will participate in a mutual telling of an original macabre tale. The goal of Dread is to sustain the delicate atmosphere that invokes the hand quivering emotion that lends its name to the game. The thrill of a Dread game lies within the tension between desire and loss. You will take on the role of someone trapped in a story that is only as compelling as it is hostile—someone who will find themselves making decisions we hope never to face in real life. During a Dread game you and your friends will create characters to populate your own brand of horror story. This character creation is done through a questionnaire that is created by the player who is hosting the game.

Each questionnaire provides a skeleton of a character for one of the players to flesh out with their answers, creating the character they want to play. In this way, characters are molded to the story by the host, and shaped to the players’ fancy. As the game begins, the host sets the first scene for the horror tale everyone is about to participate in. The other players interject with questions and explanations of what their characters are doing. When a character attempts a task beyond their capabilities, it’s time to turn to the Tower–a stack of blocks, such as the Jenga game, placed within reach of everyone at the table. Players allow their characters to succeed by pulling a block, or choose to let them fail by not pulling. If, at any time in the game, the tower falls, the character of the player responsible is removed from the game, never to return.

Their fate might be death, insanity, cowardice, imprisonment, possession, or something else, as the story dictates. Players prone to martyrdom can mollify this somewhat by deliberately knocking over the tower, resulting in a heroic or dramatic success which ultimately consumes the character.