I'm doing a comparative review of Don't Rest Your Head and JAGS: Wonderland as they are quite similar, and I can probably explain both of them better by comparing them to each other. I won't be making reference to the Book of Knots expansion to JAGS: Wonderland.
Spoiler Warning: If you're thinking you might want to play Wonderland I'd recommend against reading further. The way it is set up makes me think that it would be most enjoyable for players if they don't understand what's going on. Don't Rest Your Head doesn't have this characteristic, as it explains what's going on from the very beginning. From this point on, you're going to have some of Wonderland spoiled.
Both Don't Rest Your Head and Wonderland have a very weird setting. Don't Rest Your Head is based around the premise that you're suffering from insomnia to the point that you actually become aware of the Mad City, it's a city in a sort of pocket dimension that only insomniacs can access. Wonderland has a very similar weird setting, although with more complexity, you become infected by wonderland through any number of means (including insomnia – in fact you can do anything you want from Don't Rest Your Head and fit it into JAGS: Wonderland, as Don't Rest Your Head is more contained, I don't think the reverse is true), and once infected you start getting periodically sucked into different levels of reality, referred to as chess boards. Wonderland, from the title is quite evidently inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Don't Rest Your Head will also have some familiar points to people who have read the Alice stories.
The big difference between Don't Rest Your Head and JAGS: Wonderland is the presentation and game pacing. Don't Rest Your Head explains to you in the first chapter exactly what is going on, and you design your character with full knowledge of what's happening, and your character has a fairly good understanding of what's going on, or at least will very quickly. In terms of empowerment (which Wonderland discusses a fair bit), Don't Rest Your Head is very empowering from the beginning. Wonderland is quite the opposite. It is built on top of a point based system similar to GURPS, Hero System, EABA or any other “realistic” RPG system. In the beginning you don't even really know what the setting of Wonderland is. The first hundred pages are filled with disinformation intended for the players, presenting wonderland infection as a disorder with entirely the wrong information on how to deal with it, and it has a lot of fleshing out of the setting. Pacing wise, Don't Rest Your Head is a game that gets straight to the action, like a movie that gives the back story in scrolling text. Wonderland is a game where you play the back story for a while, have progressive stages of dis-empowerment (Call of Cthulhu players will probably enjoy this, others might freak out and want to stop playing), and at least the way I would run it, you would be playing for a couple months at a 1/week rate before you start getting to the action point that leads up to where you jump straight in with Don't Rest Your Head. Don't Rest Your Head I think could be run as a one shot, and can very easily be done without too much prep work. I wouldn't want to run Wonderland without having some extensive preparation, and I would also want an entirely separate plot to run for the first couple of months as I slowly introduce wonderland infection. I would pick a dark investigative theme for it, although entirely mundane so as to get the best effect and also so as not to get the players feeling betrayed by doing a complete 180 on them with the theme of the game. Mundane investigation, particularly with players who have done supernatural investigation games before would be more of a 90 degree turn than a full 180 and would probably be enjoyable. This also makes the price interesting, while Wonderland can be downloaded for free it would take a lot of time investment to get it working. With Don't Rest Your Head you can buy it, quickly read through it and then the same day have a game up and running. Ideally I'd like to do a beautifully detailed Wonderland campaign, it would certainly be quite satisfying, but that's not very realistic. I didn't even manage to carry out my plan to playtest Don't Rest Your Head, and that's quite realistic given that I could get some people together in a 4-6 hour time slot.
As far as mechanics go, Don't Rest Your Head and JAGS: Wonderland are quite innovative although in very different ways. Wonderland is clearly built on top of JAGS but it can easily be divorced from it and put on top of another system, or for that matter be run with a completely free-form LARP with no rules whatsoever. Don't Rest Your Head uses different coloured dice to represent different things in your state of awakeness. You have discipline dice, exhaustion dice and madness dice. The number of dice you have in each category goes up or down based on what you do, what happens to you and whether you succeed or fail. The more dice you have, the better chance you have at succeeding, but it also puts you more at risk of crashing (falling asleep finally, and becoming vulnerable to all the nasties in the Mad City) and snapping (going off the deep end, as it sounds). It's very cool, straight forward and I think should appeal to people who like the mechanical aspects of managing dice and character stats, and those who prefer to use rolling dice as a means to enable the story telling. The dice system would also handle Wonderland very well, but I would only use it for players who already know what's going on. If you use it the first time through it will probably give away what's going on, unless you find a way to modify it somewhat.
Wonderland is quite different, all the interesting stuff doesn't depend on mechanics at all. I find it quite brilliant in that it has created a magic system that makes sense and you don't run into any problems of not being able to do something you think you should be able to. Once the players figure out how it works, it will be very consistent and they'll be able to do any number of crazy things. Here's how it works: Chessboard 0 is where we are. This place is normal. Chessboard 1 starts getting a little weird, chessboard 2 moreso, and it keeps getting worse until it's completely unrecognisable around chessboard 6. You have a shadow that is reflected onto lower chessboards and the shadow roughly approximates what you do, but it does things in a way that's weirdly appropriate for the weird setting that it is in. Your shadows at different levels can also get mutated and changed to have unusual powers. For instance a shadow on a lower level could have incredible strength, while you have very normal strength. The effect of wonderland infection is that you get sucked into one of the lower chessboards and your shadow from that level gets reflected up to chessboard 0. Your shadow now does roughly what you do, if possible, but will do it in the weird way it is used to doing things. If you have wings, and start flying, then your shadow can't copy you, and it disassociates from you, going completely crazy, and likely embarassing you (this is where the empowerment comes in, because when you snap back to chessboard 0 you find out about all the crazy things you did, but as a player you have no control over it). Once you start being able to control the changes better, and control your reflection better (where your empowerment starts going up), you can start making “magic” happen by doing something that's quite reasonable no the chessboard you are currently on and given the mutations you have, but would be quite impossible on chessboard 0. So if you have the ability to breathe fire on a lower chessboard, you could make someone spontaneously combust on chessboard 0. If you can fly, then you could pick their shadow up on a lower chessboard and on chessboard 0 it would look like telekinesis. Basically anything you can think of based on the differences between you and your shadow and the different chessboards, you can do as magic as long as you have sufficient control over your shadow on chessboard 0. I won't go into more detail as it's free and you can just download it and find out exactly how it works, probably explained better than I did.
Setting wise, Don't Rest Your Head gives you a lot of things to work with. There is a nice selection of very weird monsters, and villains with different power levels. Once you're in the city for a bit you'll start figuring these things out. As a GM/narrator things are easy because the villains and characters are all well detailed for you, they're ready to go as is. Some examples are bloodhounds with needles as heads, and a police officer with a clock face instead of a real face. Wonderland gives you ideas for types of monsters, but it's much more of a toolkit than a ready to play game. It's also very flexible, and the entire setting of Pirates of the Caribbean could be done with Wonderland as could pretty much everything of HP Lovecraft's. In fact I think Wonderland does Call of Cthulhu much better than Call of Cthulhu does itself. That is the strength of Wonderland you can take anything you want and explain it in Wonderland terms. I think given some time I could probably do Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter with a Wonderland twist. Don't Rest Your Head could definitely bring some Lovecraftian monsters in as well, but it's more limited and wouldn't give you the flexibility to do Pirates of the Caribbean.
In terms of style and layout, both have some interesting approaches. Wonderland is good, but there are some jarring moments. These jarring moments (particularly the CGI generated pictures) aren't inappropriate for the game, but I would have preferred more consistency. Don't Rest Your Head is very consistent. It has easily readable but slightly ragged text that fits the theme of the book, and the images are all photographs that have been manipulated to look like something out of a Frank Miller graphic novel. I quite liked the polish that Don't Rest Your Head exhibited all the way through. Aside from the CGI drawings, I found Wonderland had the same level of polish. The border is quite weird, unobtrusive, interesting and very fitting. The hand drawings are also very nice and I quite enjoyed them.
Substance wise, I have to give both Don't Rest Your Head and JAGS: Wonderland a 5. But they are quite different 5s. Don't Rest Your Head is a game where all the preparation work has already been done for you, so you can just play it (I hope that's different enough to not be violating a Nike trademark). It also gives me the impression that it would be quite enjoyable, especially if you're playing it when everyone's tired enough that they're on the edge of falling asleep. Unlike other games which take a lot of work to really get an immersive setting, with Don't Rest Your Head it's as easy as scheduling it a bit later than your regular games. The reading is also quite enjoyable, although not on the level of JAGS: Wonderland. I think Don't Rest Your Head is really a game for playing. JAGS: Wonderland gets a 5 simply for having so much detail and such a flexible toolkit to work with. Practically everything that Don't Rest Your Head is good for Wonderland has a hard time doing (except the weird horror vibe, obviously), and vice versa. Wonderland is also very enjoyable simply as a read, so if you know you'll never get to play it, you'll still get some enjoyment out of reading it.
Style wise, I give both a 4. JAGS: Wonderland would get a 5 if it weren't for the CGI images that I found detracted from the overall presentation. Don't Rest Your Head doesn't have anything detracting, but there just wasn't enough in there to make me feel it was a 5.
