Judge Dredd V

Just as we wave goodbye to one roleplaying based on the Judge Dredd comic strip from the pages of 2000 AD, En Publishing’s Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD, we are surprised by the arrival of another—and this one is almost entirely different to all four of the Judge Dredd roleplaying games which have come before it. Announced at The Galaxy’s Greatest: 2000 AD at 45, the event to celebrate the long running comic’s sapphire anniversary, Dread: Dredd is a storytelling game rather than a traditional roleplaying game. Dread: Dredd is a storytelling game in which you do not take the roles of Judges enforcing the harsh laws of Mega-City One, but of those opposed to both the Judges and their strident legal enforcement. Previous roleplaying games based on Judge Dredd have presented options to play Perps and citizens rather than  Judges, but in Dread: Dredd players take the roles of activists and subversives campaigning for the restoration of democracy to Mega-City One. Dread: Dredd is a storytelling game with a physical component to its play requiring a Jenga Tower to play, and this is because it is based upon Dread, the roleplaying game of existential, psychological horror that was the Winner of the 2006 Gold ENNIE for Innovation.

Dread: Dredd is a one-shot storytelling game in which events of the scenario, ‘The Power of the Crowd’, are narrated and played out. In ‘The Power of the Crowd’, pro-democracy agitators have the direct chance to strike a blow for self-governance. They have gained possession of Walter, a former Justice Department droid and somewhat reluctant co-conspirator who has damaging information about the judges. This is information the public must hear. Working together, the democracy activists will ensure that the public hears it today at the opening game of the first Aeroball season in decades. This is such a big event that all of Mega-City One will be watching, and the judges will be unable to pre-emptively shutdown the broadcast for fear of citywide riots. It is the perfect opportunity. There is no better time like now, but there is one judge whose intervention will stop their efforts—Judge Dredd. He is inbound, there is forty-eight minutes until he arrives, and he is the law!

At the heart of Dread: Dredd—and the centre of the table—is the tower of blocks. In a standard game of Jenga this is stacked into one block, but in Dread: Dredd, it is divided into two. The taller of the two is the Justice Tower, the shorter the Liberty Tower. As the game proceeds, whenever a player wants his Democrat to undertake a task, he pulls out a block and adds it to the top of the tower it was pulled from. If he wants the action to be inspiring, dignified, go unnoticed, showy, done safely, or done quickly, he can pull out another block for each. If the block is removed and added to the top of the tower, he succeeds. However, if the player decides not to pull a block or begins to pull a block and then stops halfway through, the action fails. Worse, if the tower is knocked over as a result of the block being pulled, whether the Justice Tower or the Liberty Tower, the Democrat not only fails, but dies.

The Host—as the Game Master in Dread: Dredd is known—narrates the outcome of the pull of the block. If the attempt is a failure, especially if the tower falls and the Democrat dies, the Host has the scope for no little invention. If a Judge is present, then he executes the Democrat, if not, he dies in some other fashion. The setting of Judge Dredd is darkly satirical and the death of a Democrat should reflect that. When a tower falls, it is rebuilt and play continues. Even if a Democrat dies, he can continue to inspire his fellow subversives from beyond the Resyk Center (which also keeps a player in the game even if his Democrat is dead).

In Dread: Dredd, the players and their Democrats have three objectives. The first is get Walter the Wobot to spill the beans on-air before an audience of millions. The second is to build the Liberty Tower is taller than the Justice Tower. The third is to do both before the arrival of Judge Dredd.

The Democrats lose in Dread: Dredd and ‘The Power of the Crowd’ if they fail to achieve all three of their objectives before the arrival of Dredd. They also lose if they all die in the attempt, though as martyrs, they might inspire others to make an attempt to expose damaging information about the Judges.

Getting Walter the Wobot to reveal all is a storytelling objective and it is up to the Host to determine when exactly this happens. When a player pulls a block, it is added to the top of the tower it is pulled from, but the Democrats need to shift the blocks from the Justice Tower to the Liberty Tower to succeed and in this, they have several advantages in their elbow pads here. One is that they have Democratic and personal abilities that will help the players shift blocks. One is making their actions Inspiring and pulling out blocks and adding them to the Liberty Tower. Each Democratic has three abilities, a Dodge, Spend, and Stash ability, each different in flavour for the various Democrats. A Dodge ability enables a free pull, a Spend to use blocks from a player’s Reserve—each player begins with three—and place them on a tower, and Stash to store a newly pulled block in a player’s Reserve. Lastly, Dredd arrives in forty-eight minutes of game time, with every three minutes of actual time representing one of game time (so ‘The Power of the Crowd’ is actually intended to be played in two hours and twenty-four minutes), and the Host has a ‘Countdown And Encounter Track’ with which to tick off time and throw some challenges in the Democrats’ paths.

The five Democrats include ‘The Perp From The Judge’s Tree’, ‘The Psychic Celebrity With A Grudge’, ‘The Dilettante On A Mission’, ‘The Wheel-Ape’, and ‘The Gearhead With A Secret’. Each of the quintet includes their own Dodge, Spend, and Stash Abilities, and a set of questions about the Democrat’s background and subversively democratic actions. One issue here is that some of the Democrats do share the same questions. So they may not necessarily be quite as personal or individual as perhaps the designer intended.

For the Host, there is advice for running ‘The Power of the Crowd’ and Dread: Dredd, which is primarily to follow the players’ lead, how to handle the countdown, and roleplaying Walter the Wobot. There is a complete description of the Hellcat Memorial Stadium, inside and out (though no map), plus excerpts from 2000 AD depicting the Harlem Heroes and their power gear, Harlem Heroes Super Liner, and blueprints of Walter the Wobot to add extra detail and flavour.

Physically, Dread: Dredd is cleanly laid out, easy to read, and illustrated with a range of artwork taken from 2000 AD. This is drawn from all eras of the Judge Dredd comic strip as well as the Harlem Heroes, so it includes both black and white, and colour artwork, all crisply presented and showcasing just how good the artwork has been in the pages of 2000 AD over the course of forty-five years.

Dread: Dredd and ‘The Power of the Crowd’ works as both a one-shot and a convention scenario, though for the traditional four-hour slot for a convention, it does need extending in terms of time, and advice is included to that end. Dread: Dredd and ‘The Power of the Crowd’ provides a different perspective upon roleplaying in the world of Judge Dredd and the setting of Mega-City One, operating under the threat of arrest or even execution by the fascistic Judges, rather than being the bully boys handing out the justice. It makes for a tense, desperate situation, all exacerbated by the pulling blocks from the towers, which together gives Dread: Dredd a nervous physicality and a sense of Dredd/Dread.