Don’t Rest Your Head
Session breakdown

We are a little gaming group in Lousisana just learning about Indie games through the podosphere. We wanted to try some these new games and picked Don't Rest Your Head. What follows an account of how it went.

The Friday morning group gathered today to take a look at "Don't Rest Your Head" by Fred Hicks. We dug into the meat of the game and talked about the rules and the mechanics, and made up three characters for the game.
The overall premise is that your character can't sleep and has developed a very advanced form of insomnia for strange reasons. This insomnia begins to make you a little crazy and you start noticing holes in your reality that lead to a realm where nightmares live. Your madness and exhaustion allow you to bend reality around you and you take on superhuman and even super-hero-like powers. You explore the issues and nuances of your character while delving into this nightmare realm called "The Mad City".
The characters that were written up are as follows:

1) Clint Davis: Cab driver suffering from insomnia due to becoming a nervous wreck after an accident where he ran over a young girl and in a panic fled the scene of the crime. The girls porcelain doll haunts his nightmares and he is on the verge of a complete breakdown.
He wants to get enough money to leave the country before the police nail him with the killing of the young girl.
Opening Scene: A body just fell from the sky and landed on his cab while in traffic.
Exhaustion Talent: Innate almost superhuman direction sense.
Madness Talent: Can summon porcelain dolls from the darkness to do his bidding.

2) John P. Bishop: Pawn shop owner who recently acquired some strange artifacts that are very old. Ever since obtaining these items he has been plagued by the sense that someone is following him and watching his every move. John hears voices and noises at night that keep him awake and for almost a week has been suffering from insomnia and severe paranoia.
Opening Scene: Someone knocks on John's door and he believes it is whoever has been following him.
Exhaustion Talent: Has an almost 6th sense for finding things that he is looking for.
Madness Talent: Can Paralyze people with his mental power.

3) Lucas: Hacker who electronically spys on his beautiful neighbor.
Opening Scene: Lucas is watching Erin on his computer and sees the shadows in her bedroom attacks her and drag her into her wall where she vanishes.
Exhaustion Power: Superhuman computer hacking skills.
Madness Talent: Levitation

First Play Session
Characters
Clint Davis (Scott)
Opening Scene: Body falls on top of his cab.
Lucas Smith (Larry)
Opening Scene: Witness' an abduction while electronically spying on a pretty female neighbor.
John P. Bishop (West)
Opening Scene: Has been followed and watched for several days. Some one knocks on his door at 2 AM.

- Lucas Smith has installed a video surveillance camera into the wall of a cute neighbor named Erin he is infatuated with. While watching her late at night he sees her drug away into the shadows kicking and screaming by something that isn't visibly there. He goes to help Erin but she is gone. Lucas is tired and scared and doesn't know what to do. He hasn't slept in days and thinks he is going mad.

- John P. Bishop owns a pawn shop and recently came into possession of some century old costume jewelry a ring, brooch, and tiara. He gave some whino $50 for the jewelry and never saw him again. After some research he learned that the jewelry was about 100 years old and the last known complete set is worth over $10,000 and was recovered from the wreckage of the Titanic about 10 years ago. Ever since getting his hand on this valuable piece of history he has had the sense that he is being watched. This has gone on for several days and John has worked himself up into a paranoid wreck. He hasn't slept in days and even in the most private of places he still feels like someone is looking over his shoulder. A knock comes at his door early in the morning at about 2 AM.
  John looks through his peephole to see 4 nice old ladies standing in the hall of his apartment building. They say that they want to make a trade for the jewelry he has. John after some nervous doubt opens the door and lets them in. The ladies are nice enough but something seems a little off about them. They are not quite right and are very adamant about getting the jewelry. They offer him a single wish in trade. The wish can be anything he desires.
Sensing danger John asks them to leave and the 4 old ladies move to corner him. One pulls a yard stick from a basket she carried and slams it into the floor causing a booming sound to explode throughout the building. At once all four sets of eyes go cold black and the ladies attack John.
In the melee John pulls his pistol he had hidden in his belt and double taps the skinny librarian lady twice in the face. He turn and runs out his door into the hallway where he will try to make it to the nearest elevator.
  The other three ladies spill out into the hall behind him their mouths elongating and making growling sounds like wild hyaena's. The heavy set leader of the ladies lays down on her back with her elbows bent backward and spider walks down the hall at an amazing speed, her head bent upward at an awkward angle and she grins at him from over her chest. John turns back to see this sight and also sees that the lady has pulls her dress up revealing a dark void growing between her thighs. John almost makes it to the closer stairwell when the other two ladies grab him. They move twice as fast as he does and are much stronger. John sends another bullet through the face of the lady on his right, and she is blown out of the 13th story window behind her she falls screaming to her death. John rips out of the others grasp just as the spider walking freak closes in on him. He escapes down the stairwell into the streets below.

  -Clint Davis is driving his cab downtown it is about 2 AM and the streets are still busy and people are coming to and from the clubs in the area. He is tired and hasn't slept for days since his accident. Three days ago he accidentally ran over a 6 year old girl killing her. He panicked and fled the scene. He has had nightmares about her and her porcelain doll ever since. Tonight will be no better for him as he stops at a traffic light the top of his cab crushes in and all the windows blow out. Clint stumbles out of his cab and sees the body of an old lady jerking and twitching on the ruined roof. Traffic stops and people are already calling the police. This is not good since Clint desperately wants to avoid the police, but he decides to stay since running would only draw more attention to himself.

  - Lucas goes back to Erins apartment and investigates further. In a back room he finds the floor and every surface covered with the wax of hundreds of burnt candles. There is also a wax alter with a broken tiara on top of it. Lucas takes the tiara and immediately feels like he has just cursed himself by touching it. He also finds evidence on Erin's computer that she might have known he was watching her, and a communication with a mysterious person called the Wax King. The communication is in the form of an audio recording of one Erins late night rants.
Lucas while spying had seen that she was an insomniac like him. She tried her hardest not to sleep and often screamed at her walls cursing someone called the Wax King. Erin finally would break and collapse in tears as exhaustion caught up with her.
Lucas himself hadn't slept in days because he found himself too busy hacking systems or playing MMORPG's. He found watching Erin to be what kept him awake lately.

-John made it to his pawn shop and called his help telling them that he wouldn't be in for a few days. He had plans to hit the road and get out of town after what had just happened. He stopped at a bar first called the "Low Down" and had a few drinks to steady his shakes.

- Clint met with the police and and was upset to learn that his car would be considered part of the crime scene for now and would not be moved. It probably didn't matter since the top of the cab was ruined. Luckily the police did not suspect him of anything and let him go. Clint walked home.
When he got home he immediately started packing to leave the city. in the darkness he saw something move from the corner of his vision, but there was nothing there. He took his suit case into the kitchen and he grabbed a loaf of bread. There on his counter was a porcelain doll that seemed to be looking right at him, its eyes slightly bobbing in their sockets. Clint had had many nightmares about this doll but did not believe that it could be here in his house with him. Now he wondered if he was truly going mad. Clint grabbed the doll and threw it out of his kitchen window into the yard. Behind him he heard tiny footsteps on the linoleum flooring of his hallway. Clint snatched his case and his bread and tore ass out the door to wait on his curb for a cab.
Under a single street light he waited. After a while in the distance he saw a short figure in a red dress limping toward him in the darkness. Believing he was seeing the ghost of the girl he killed he took off down the street for the nearest bus stop. Clint tried to sleep on the city bus that night but couldn't do it.

-That night all 3 characters saw adds in different mediums that seemed to particularly target them. The add was as follows;
Have you stopped sleeping? Are you seeing things that shouldn't be there? Do you need help to make life normal again.
-Clint: Has the girl and her doll come back to haunt you?
-Lucas: Did you see Erin taken by the shadows?
-John: Did the old ones come for you yet?
If so we can help. Call 1-800-929-5464 or come by 1203 Wake Up Drive.
Observant players might notice that the number above can also spell out "Wax King".
All three characters decided to try and make it to 1203 Wake Up Drive before dawn came the next morning.
This was not the end of our game session and I will post more later.

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.

thunderriftv wrote:
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.

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.

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

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? 

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.

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. 

Tarl wrote:
  One felt that spinning exhaustion into the narrative got a little old because he got tired of saying his 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.  :)