A quick (system neutral) horror idea

[Grod_The_Giant]

Somewhat in the vein of Dread (aka "that game that uses a Jenga tower"), you have a "doom pool." At the start of every scene, the DM puts a die in the pool (a d6? d10?) and rolls all dice currently in said pool. If a natural 1 comes up, something unexpectedly bad happens in the upcoming scene, and the more natural 1's, the worse the event. If three natural 6's come up, someone has to suffer permanent damage-- death, dismemberment, or madness.

At any time during a scene, players can either add a die to the pool to get a bonus to a check, or remove a die and take a penalty.

Thoughts?

[SowZ]

Somewhat in the vein of Dread (aka "that game that uses a Jenga tower"), you have a "doom pool." At the start of every scene, the DM puts a die in the pool (a d6? d10?) and rolls all dice currently in said pool. If a natural 1 comes up, something unexpectedly bad happens in the upcoming scene, and the more natural 1's, the worse the event. If three natural 6's come up, someone has to suffer permanent damage-- death, dismemberment, or madness.

At any time during a scene, players can either add a die to the pool to get a bonus to a check, or remove a die and take a penalty.

Thoughts?

Interesting. Maybe you could put different sizes of dice in corresponding to the benefit gained? A d20 would give a smallish benefit, whereas a d6 would give a big one. I assume the dice reset at the start of each session? This sounds like the basis of a rules lite system, or possibly a horror themed board game, I would be interested in...

[Grod_The_Giant]

Interesting. Maybe you could put different sizes of dice in corresponding to the benefit gained? A d20 would give a smallish benefit, whereas a d6 would give a big one. I assume the dice reset at the start of each session? This sounds like the basis of a rules lite system, or possibly a horror themed board game, I would be interested in...

I'm probably going to use this with STaRS. I'm working on variant rule-sets for different campaign settings...

Another idea: Each character has a Dark SecretTM. You can use Secrets sort of like Aspects in FATE, but for every revealed Secret, you add another die to the pool at the beginning of each scene. But a character who uncovered another's secret gets some kind of bonus themselves...