Don’t Rest Your Head

First off, if you’re not familiar with Don’t Rest Your Head, fix that. Really. Picture Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere mixed with Dark City and some really interesting mechanics. The characters in DRYH are insomniacs who have powers rooted in exhaustion and madness.

I’ll confess to being a little hazy on where, exactly, the line between the two lies. I read it as: If the action pushes the limits of credibility but is close enough to mundane that someone could explain it away as very improbable or not really what it looked like–even if they have to avoid thinking about it too much–it’s an exhaustion power. If it crosses the line into “can’t lie to yourself well enough to make what you saw possible” territory, it’s a madness power. (I’d love to hear how others have delineated these two.)

I find that gray area between the improbable and the impossible, and people’s twisting of their memory of what they saw to try to explain it, really compelling. Wanted has lots of examples to draw upon. The setting and premise of the movie are totally different from Don’t Rest Your Head, but the characters do things that I think are like DRYH exhaustion powers–implausible but which an observer might be able to rationalize away.

Demonstrations of Exhaustion Powers

There are plenty of trailers for Wanted, but here’s one that has a fair number of demonstrations of Don’t Rest Your Head “exhaustion powers”.

Points of Interest

0:10 The Pickup

Picking up a passenger in mid-spin. Followed by other driving feats. Beyond belief, but so rooted in the mundane—driving—that an observer would accept it as rational.

0:45 The Curve

Curving bullets around one target to hit another: The key to making this an exhaustion power rather than a madness power is that the character makes a show of trying to put spin on the bullet, like a pitcher throwing a curve ball. Between that and the fact that the bullet doesn’t go very far off course, an observer could talk himself into saying, “Well, maybe the spin really does help….” or “His arm was way out to the side when he pulled the trigger—that’s why the bullet seemed to go around the obstacle.”

1:20 The Block

Blocking bullets with bullets—unbelievable…but just very good and very lucky, right? Nothing unexplainable here….

1:32 The Jump

An impossibly long jump from one building to another. It’s not just the standard jump from rooftop to rooftop across an alley. This is across a wide street. Clearly impossible…but someone observing it could tell himself, “It must be closer than it looks” or “He did drop a couple floors by the time he reached the other building.”

1:52 The Flip

Flipping a car sideways over a police barricade. This drive power stays an exhaustion power, rather than a madness power, by virtue of its mundane, rational context. A lucky stunt, the perfect conditions….

Taken on its own merits, Wanted might be brilliant or might be ridiculous, I don’t know. But as inspiration and illustration of exhaustion powers for Don’t Rest Your Head, it’s a goldmine.

For more info, check out my earlier post on Don’t Rest Your Head.

Premise

In Don’t Rest Your Head, you play one of the Awake, insomniacs who have stopped sleeping entirely (they hope) and who have become able to traverse the portals from our world to the Mad City. Your character tries to achieve his goals (tied to what’s keeping him awake) before he falls asleep and becomes meat for the Nightmares of the Mad City.

I have to admit that I haven’t actually gotten a chance to play Don’t Rest Your Head yet, but it’s a bit of a perfect storm for me due to my love of…

• Dark City (think The Matrix with less philosophy and more Clive Barker)
• Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (The series is good; the book phenomenal.)
• the notion that exhaustion can make you supernaturally better at something (I’m rolling black dice most nights working on EpicTable. That might make more sense in a bit….)

Dice Mechanic

The dice mechanic used for conflict resolution in Don’t Rest Your Head fits the theme perfectly. The player rolls a combination of white, black, and red dice.

• White discipline dice reflect the character’s skill and are safe to roll.
• Black exhaustion dice let the player tap into his exhaustion to call upon extraordinary abilities; but it comes at a cost.
• Red madness dice allow the character to exercise overtly supernatural powers, but carry significant risk of the situation spiraling out of control.

The GM rolls pain dice, and when these dice dominate, win or lose, there’s no sunny outcome for the character.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is along two axes:

1. The person with the highest number of successes (1s, 2s, and 3s) wins the conflict.
2. The pool (discipline, exhaustion, madness, or pain) with the high die value is dominant and shapes the outcome, regardless of whether the character won or lost.

The player has some choice in how many of each color dice are brought to bear in the conflict. More dice means more chances to win the conflict, but more chance of the exhaustion or madness pool dominating the outcome. This creates a really interesting range of outcomes.

Character Creation, Hope, and Despair

The character creation process is also really engaging. Its questionnaire seems inspired by Spirit of the Century, but the result is wholly appropriate to the theme. There’s also an economy of Hope and Despair coins, which seems interesting and somewhat akin to fanmail or action points, but again, done in very thematically appropriate way.

Impact on EpicTable

From an EpicTable perspective, supporting Don’t Rest Your Head means support for mixed-color dice rolls and yet another reason to implement success counting. You can read more about this in my post on EpicTable’s Dice Cup Designer. It also means support for token pools (though my recent foray into Primetime Adventures had already planted that seed).

Closing Thoughts

The first nine pages of Don’t Rest Your Head are available on Evil Hat’s site, and they’re quite possibly the best nine pages of game material I’ve ever read. I can’t wait to play this game, and I’m sure I’ll have more to say once I get the chance. In the meantime, I’m going to grab some black dice and get back to implementing that success counting mechanic for EpicTable….