What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done at a conference? Operationalizing Dread’s questionnaire mechanic

Dread (Barmore et al. 2005) is an award-winning tabletop horror RPG that emphasizes storytelling. One of its innovative mechanics is the use of a questionnaire for character design that helps players develop a personality and history for their characters. Questionnaires vary for different scenarios and characters, but always include “intrusive” questions such as “why are you married if you aren’t in love?” or “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to a loved one?” In this paper, we discuss work in progress on AutoDread, an implementation of Dread-style questionnaires for video games. The system presents human-authored questions and candidate answers to players to choose between, collecting the implications of those answers in a character model. As implications are accumulated, the system uses a SAT solver to filter questions and answers that are inconsistent with character facts established by previous questions.