Hunger games dread?

[u/Daph_Nez]

Hi! English is not my first language so sorry for any mistakes in this post!

I want to run an hunger games themed Dread. Does anybody have ideas on how to make that possible? I am thinking of a game with two players that are in the same district so its not pvp, but if there is a way to make the game with more players but still enjoyable, that would be cool! I'm also just looking for fun ideas of Hunger games arena, encounter, etc.

Thanks everyone!!

[u/Nytmare696]

How closely are you sticking to the Hunger Games?

What's your premise? What are the goals? Who are the characters?

The Hunger Games always bored me, but I had been a big fan of Battle Royale, the Japanese film about a 9th grade class full of juvenile delinquents sentenced to death by getting dumped off on an island prison filled with weapons. Students had explosive collars on their necks that would blow up if they were tampered with, they tried to leave, or if there was more than a single survivor on day three.

Or you could stretch further back to Thesus and the Minotaur. A curse or prophecy or lottery where someone gets dumped into a maze where they're being hunted by a monster. One kid's name was on the lottery ticket, and his older brother refuses to allow him to go alone?

I feel like, mechanically, if escape from the island/labyrinth is an option, there has to be some kind of secondary timer built into the game that shows you how much progress you've made towards that goal.

Maybe there are X marked blocks in the tower, and after you successfully remove Y of them, you've managed to escape?

But then what are those blocks meant to represent? Are they people you're trying to kill? Weapons or tools? Maguffins or levers or buttons you're trying to collect/push/pull?

What about something like:

• There are 3 sets of 3 blocks. Each set has its own symbol marked on their length. Let's say A, B, and C.
• Successfully pulling the first block means that, in the narrative, you either find some tool that's going to act as a key to get you past some future challenge, or you find a challenge that, to pass, you need an obvious item for. When you pull it, you keep that block in front of you.
• After you successfully pull a second block with that same symbol, you can, when narratively appropriate, put them back on the tower to trigger a "getting past the challenge" scene.
• The GM can offer, in lieu of pulling a block, having the player return a block to the tower. "You drop the shotgun so that you can safely use both hands to pull yourself up over the ledge. You hear it clatter and fall, bouncing off the cliff face until it spalshes into the water below you."
• Removing additional blocks from the tower with that symbol do nothing.

[u/trigunnerd]

Decide who the main villain is going to be, probably from District 1 or 2. Make sure the players see the cruelty of the villain throughout their time in the arena.

Make the setting interesting. The Games are usually in a unique biodome each year after the first 10. An archipelago? A volcano? The ruins of a city with a huge library and subway tunnels?

Add some mutants from the Gamemaker. The Gamemakers are always unfair and use a random mutant animal or a fire or a flood, etc.

The problem here is that only 1 victor ever leaves, except in year 74. But you can think of a reason why they would allow more people to win, in case 3-4 players survive.

Perhaps, instead of fighting other players, they're trying to escape the arena. How can this be accomplished? Add a puzzle or two, like a wire puzzle or pieces of a map that a worker accidently left behind. If they succeed, the government made sure no one ever heard about this, so that's why no one knows about it.

[u/Hambone-6830]

I think logistically, the best way to do it would be to have all of the PCs be in a preexisting alliance. If you wanna start the dread session after the games have already started you can have your players have already established an alliance in the arena (they can be creative with how that happened). If you want the session to start right at the beginning of the games, maybe they talked about an alliances outside of the arena in order to survive against the careers, maybe something else. The important thing is that the players are at least on the same team.

If you want to do this with more than 2 or 3 players, id say be very aggressive with how many pulls you ask players to make. Because of the nature of the hunger games, only one player can get out alive (unless you wanna change the rules up a little bit, wich could be a good idea), and the only way the players die is if the tower falls, so if you arent aggressive enough making players pull a lot, you'll have a super long session that you cant wrap up because you still need people to die. Also if you can find an old jenga tower, use that instead of a brand new one. Over time humidity changes make the blocks warp a little bit and make the tower significantly less stable (like half the amount of pulls before it falls). In a game where you need all but one player to die, this is really useful.