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This game gave me a nightmare. It wasn’t a terrible one, but it goes to show what quality of game this is. Don’t Rest Your Head is a roleplaying game set in the Mad City that only insomniacs with a few deep personal issues can stumble their way into. They are then set out on a path of their own invention to solve the problems that got them there in the first place: Lost children, death of a loved one, on the run from the mob are only a few of the examples in the book. Life in the Mad City is chaotic and dangerous as the PCs are often pursued by their own personalized demons and dogs with needles for heads that can sew you to the spot. The PCs are not defenseless once they hit the place where nightmares become real, they become gifted in the twisting streets of the Mad City and can stretch the once-firm rules of reality or even simply break them completely by teleporting, phasing through walls, or whatever else the players can come up with. The title refers to the fact that if you do end up asleep in the city of fearful dreams, the living nightmares that prowl the streets make an easy meal out of you.

Now, in the first few pages of the book, it cautions that the ruleset is definitely for expert roleplayers and mature readers. Expert roleplayers? I figured if I can remember what THACO stands for and how many hit dice a humanoid Skeleton has I probably qualify, but even after two decades of this hobby I barely have enough dice. As it stands, every player needs a handful of Red d6s, white d6s, and black d6s. A good number is about five or so of each colour. Then the DM needs about ten to twelve assorted d6s and a few coinsbeads severed fingers. Now fetch two bowls; one light and one darker in colour. Only now are you all set up to play Don’t Rest Your Head. Between me and my girlfriend we had enough dice for us both to be players, but no one else. Before I read the ruleset, I was already scratching my head and nodding along with the warning. However, the rules are really easy. Unless of course you put them all together, then it gets a little confusing. The game has a lot of things going on at once and I can imagine the first few hours being a bit of a stumbling block of page flipping for people unfamiliar with the ruleset, but for evoking a sense of desperate people on the run from their personal fears you won’t get anything better than DRYH. Players can throw more dice by voluntarily going slightly crazier or pushing themselves closer to exhaustion to win that crucial success. But players who throw too much of themselves at the city will find that they’ve got nothing left as they turn into monsters or fall asleep as the beasties close in around them. But here’s a quick breakdown of the rules so you can see that they’re not overly intimidating. Basically, you’re trying to roll low on d6s and counting how many times you do so. You do so with your discipline that acts as your ability to keep a cool head and perform basic actions. Then if you want to push your body past its limits, you add an exhaustion dice, or if you want to bend reality slightly, you can huck in a few madness dice. If either madness of exhaustion end up rolling higher (number wise, not success wise) then the appropriate one dominates the outcome and you come closer to passing out or going mad. If exhaustion dominates, you add another exhaustion dice to the next roll until you either lose the dice (We’ll get to that part in a bit. Remember the bowls? I told you this was big-eye small-eye territory) or hit six and end up snoozing. With madness, you either tear off screaming, or fly into a berserker rage whichever is appropriate. But once you get your head around the rules, you can really appreciate how well they work. Not only are they incredibly well-thought out, but they fit the setting, the mood, and the whole theme of the game perfectly. Is grabbing your daughters hand before she slides off the rooftop into the arms of a lady in hating worth the last shred of your sanity? Now you can find out.

Don’t Rest Your Head follows a lot of other books in how they are set up and starts with an intro of an actual play session before launching into the rules. However, in DRYH’s case, it comes off as a bit confusing as the book is talking about things we have no idea about. It may have been easier to grasp if the setting had come before the rules, and the play session after all the rules because as is it does nothing but make the reader get over the already intimidating ruleset before continuing. The book does gift us with an incredibly handy rules summary that makes it much easier to understand the rules and it was frankly a great relief to see its inclusion.

The mood of the book is seriously dark. Even experience is called “Scars” and when the GM wins a conflict you end up dealing with “Pain dice”. The black and white photo-still artwork help draw you into a deep world of fear and hopelessness. With things like using memories as currency, the book 100% evokes that wonderful feeling of inescapable terror that only a well-written horror RPG can. I’d love to run a game roughly based around Silent Hill using this system and I plan on bursting into all the “Which system for…” threads boasting about this game, and the good stuff doesn’t stop at rules or mood either. There are a lot of good ideas in there for running any sort of game. To quote “A game of don’t rest your head should be wholly concerned with how the players protagonists proceed towards, struggle with, and resolve, the goals indicated in their path”. This boils down to “Listen to your players” and honestly, there isn’t enough of that these days.

Don’t Rest Your Head is a great game is you like painstakingly detailed backgrounds leading into a great personal story about the characters and the struggles they’ll face. If you don’t like these sorts of games, the book still has a decent amount to offer you, but not as much. There are a bunch of monsters to get you started and some great rules on how to create custom critters to tailor to your players. All in all, the game provides a great night of character development alongside of fantastical horror that only knights with candles for eyes can provide.

Just keep the lights on while you sleep.