(Don't Rest Your Head) Indie Game Newbs in La

[Tarl Devant]

[Tarl Devant]

Ok I guess I should've looked first but I now see where these forums are not for point by point AP. Im sorry and hope I didn't make anyone mad. I wanted to erase this post and start over with how the game worked out for us but I see the editing option is gone. Hey mods please erase this post so I can do it right. Thanks.

[GreatWolf]

Ok I guess I should've looked first but I now see where these forums are not for point by point AP. Im sorry and hope I didn't make anyone mad. I wanted to erase this post and start over with how the game worked out for us but I see the editing option is gone. Hey mods please erase this post so I can do it right. Thanks.

Welcome to the Forge!

Your post is fine as it is.  Don't sweat it.  I'd love to hear more about how the game worked out for you as players.  Were there any parts that were really cool?  Any bits that were...well...less so?  Any conflicts at the table that you needed to resolve?  Any rules issues come up?  I've heard about this game, but I've never played it.  So, tell me about it!

Also, do you have a real name that we can call you by?  It's tradition around these parts to encourage the use of real names and not just handles.  It helps us deal with each other as human beings.

Looking forward to your response.

[Tarl Devant]

Well let's see.
First of all we are a small renegade band of tabletop roleplayers in north central Louisiana who have played D&D for many years so these new games are a whole new way of thinking for us.
I picked up Don't Rest your head after listening to several podcasts go on and on about it and what I read there absolutley floored me. I mean the idea that you could really focus on a story and not a 5x5 grid was astounding.
I spent a morning showing the others how to play and we got characters written up. During the actual play I noticed that my oldest veteran player was excited by the prospect of shared narrative. He did need to fondel a d20 during character creation though just so he would feel better. By the end of the game he was psyched and ready to play more Indie style games.
The other two didnt seem too excited by it.
   One felt that spinning exhaustion into the narrative got a little old because he got tired of saying his character was tired. Basically in this game you roll dice to determine if your goals succeed or fail. The dice also tell you if your success of failure might backfire on you with a touch of madness or exhaustion both options being bad for your character mechanically. This should be spun into your final narration of the scene as approprite with what dominated your roll.
The other player told me that he didnt like shared narrative too much. At first it bothered me because it just seems like he wants to show up and put as little into it as posible. Im tired of doing 4 hours of prep for D&D games and want my players to take some control of the story. But 2 seem to be resisting this idea.
   I thought DRYH would be a great place to show them this concept because it still had a Game Master directing the story, and dice to solve the worlds problems. Now Im glad I didnt start them with something like PTA.
   I've been listening to all the gaming podcasts out there for about a year now talk about how great these games are and I am jazzed about them. I need to get them jazzed about them so they can stop feeding from the overworked DM teet every week.
   I personally think DRYH did exactly what it was made to do. It entertained me and my players (whether they want to admit it or not). It helped me spin a neat story from their characters sheets by haveing them answer five simple questions. It resolved all the conflicts that came up with its cool dice mechanic. My only complaint would be that it seemed like they slaughtered everything I threw at them. Any one charcter could bring up to 15 dice into a conflict where the toughest nightmare in the game has 12 dice to bear. I think the mechanic where discipline dominating lets you open a response box or knock off an exhaustion die ws a bit much. It seemed like they never were in real danger of snapping or crashing even though by the last game there was a conflict every 10 to 15 minutes. Maybe they just rolled lucky.
   All in all I loved this game and just can't understand why these guys are resisting something that is so cool and obviously less stress on me.

[JC]

I\\\'ll be quick \\\'cause I\\\'ve gotta run

but I wanted to say that story games aren\\\'t for everyone

some of my gaming buddies are stuck in Sim-land too

it sucks, but you can\\\'t _make_ someone like something

[Danny_K]

Sometimes people seem unimpressed at the end of the session, but in retrospect see a lot of coolness.  It takes a change of expectations sometimes.

I'm wondering how players were routinely rolling 15 dice in conflicts.  That seems like an awful lot!  If you're maxing out Madness and Exhaustion dice, you could get close to 15 but then you should be having a lot of exhaustion and madness-dominant outcomes.  Even if you have both other players helping every single time (which is probably not appropriate in this kind of game), that's still only 6 extra Discipline dice.  Did you ever try splitting them up, or throwing multiple challenges such that they can't work together? 

[Tarl Devant]

I didn't split them up. Perhaps I should have done that. They weren't constantly throwing that many dice at me until the last few encounters where they pulled out all the stops and started slinging madness and exhaustion like crazy. It was just frustrating that that darned discipline seemed to dominate almost everytime dice hit the table. I guess those are the breaks. I used the example of staging down pain dice to keep encounters running longer and that did seem to help.
So tell me if this is right. The dice pools have an order of importance and the way I understand it discipline stands at the top as the highest pool to be counted above all the others when determining what dominates right? So if I was doing it right then everytime a 6 landed in the discipline pool it automatically dominates regardless of what lands in the other pools. I saw plenty of high rolls in the other pools but they just seemed to get real lucky with their three dinky discipline dice lol.

[Danny_K]

The biggest block of the highest number dominates, so 5 beats 4 but is beaten by two 5's.  And you're right, a player who's really pushing hard can roll up to 15 dice, but he shouldn't be able to do that consistently without paying a heavy price.

Unless your guys really, really, really hated the experience, I'd encourage you to try some other indie-flavored games.  Don't Rest Your Head is a really neat game, but I think it's out in the deep end of the story-game pool, what with the Five Questions and the surrealistic setting and the somewhat abstract method of conflict resolution.  Perhaps you might get them to try The Shadow of Yesterday or Dogs in the Vineyard, both are somewhat crunchier and maybe more accessible to D&D veterans.  Also, everybody should try TSOY and DitV at least once. 

[Noclue]

   One felt that spinning exhaustion into the narrative got a little old because he got tired of saying his character was tired.

Interesting, I've played DRYH twice and never once said my character was tired.

 

I've been listening to all the gaming podcasts out there for about a year now talk about how great these games are and I am jazzed about them. I need to get them jazzed about them so they can stop feeding from the overworked DM teet every week.

Your fault for spoiling them
Seriously, they may not be the story-game type of player.

My only complaint would be that it seemed like they slaughtered everything I threw at them. Any one character could bring up to 15 dice into a conflict where the toughest nightmare in the game has 12 dice to bear. I think the mechanic where discipline dominating lets you open a response box or knock off an exhaustion die was a bit much.

Discipline won't dominate that much if they're rolling all those madness and exhaustion dice. You're not counting up the pools correct and its skewing it towards discipline dominating. I think someone has already commented but discipline doesn't always win with a 6. If its tied, you go to the next dice in the discipline pool and compare that with the next dice in the tying pool.

Something wacky's going on with the dice. How are they getting to 15 dice? 3 discipline max. 6 Madness max. And they can only add one exhaustion per roll. So at one exhaustion from crashing they'd have 6 exhaustion dice. That's 15 but that's at maximum exhaustion and they had to work the exhaustion up to get there. One more exhaustion and they're done for. They couldn't all have been on the edge like that, could they?

James

[Noclue]

Oh, and helping discipline dice add to Degree but not to Strength. So even if they were together, it would still favor madness or exhaustion.

[Tarl Devant]

Ive heard of the Shadow of Yesterday, but I'm a little confused as to what DitV is.

[Noclue]

Ive heard of the Shadow of Yesterday, but I'm a little confused as to what DitV is.

No problem...

DitV = Dogs in the Vinyard

James

[Tarl Devant]

I will take a look at those two games and see which one might be the best bet. Thanks for the recomendation guys.

[Uruush]

This isn't really the forum for it, but I think you'll want to take a closer look at the rules before you try DRYH again, and maybe solicit some advice from its creator; your play outcomes, mechanically speaking, don't match my actual play experience at all.

I think it's good to at least start the characters separate, so the GM can get some Despair points built up with Pain-dominated conflicts which can be used later to keep Discipline from dominating.  For a one-shot like this, I think it's been recommended elsewhere to start the characters at 1 or 2 Exhaustion, to get to a tense area of play more quickly.

Sorry to hear a couple of your players weren't into it.  That's going to happen sometimes.  Hopefully they'll remain open to some new and different forms of play.  There's a very broad spectrum of "new games" out there for you to give a whirl.