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Picture this: You can't sleep. Perhaps you've been up studying for finals because this time you know your father is serious about cutting off the trust fund. Perhaps you are worried sick because your mom never called you after the flight got diverted. Maybe your are stressing over the fact that your husband has been having an affair. Or, perhaps, you are just a garden variety insomniac. For whatever reason you can't sleep ... and then things clicked into place.
You noticed things that others either didn't, wouldn't or couldn't notice. Like that ornate doorway in the alley on the side of the old furniture place. Or that the reason the library at school is so cold is that one of the windows never got upgraded to the fancy new double pane style. Not to mention that the window in question always shows a night sky regardless of the time of day.
You are one of the Awake and can travel to the Mad City leaving the City Slumbering (read - our piece of reality) behind as you do. Thing is, that "click" where you started noticing things ... um, yeah ... that wasn't reality clicking into place for just another romp through urban fantasy-land. That was the Nightmares who live in the Mad City taking notice of your Awake status, sighting in on your head and flipping off the safety.
Nightmares are pretty much what the name implies. Scary ... things that can make your new status as one of the Awake terrifying. The Tacks Man isn't after your money but is happy to take installments of your memories. The Paper Boys aren't tough in a one on one situation but in groups they are dangerous. Seems that in the Mad City they make the news by any means necessary. And if they can't make it themselves, they print it anyway as things that the denizens of the Mad City read tend to come true anyway. (The normal relationship between cause and effect doesn't apply here.) Breaking the law gets you a visit from the clockwork policemen or perhaps their boss - Officer Tock. Under no circumstances do you want to go to school as the head mistress, Mother When, might (or might not) be the latest incarnation of Death.
The cool factor of the setting is excellent. Whenever I tell anyone about this game they are immediately attracted to it. Lamentably, they don't often stay around. My wife was my latest [s]victim[/s] guinea pig and she backed out after character creation. I have had only one friend sit down and play the game.
Character creation is pretty simple: Name Why are you not sleeping? What just happened to you? (As in, immediately before starting play.) What is on the surface? What lies beneath? What is your path?
That's it. If you haven't guessed, this is a very narrative game. If you are craving crunch, turn back as you will be disappointed. If you like FATE and similar games, read on.
The core resolution mechanic is pretty straight forward. The player rolls his dice pool and tries to get more successes than the GM gets in her dice pool. You always roll d6's and a successes is always a 1, 2 or 3. The player starts with a pool of 3 Discipline dice representing his ability to remain calm. He may add Exhaustion dice to the pool but they don't go away. He can also add up to 6 Madness dice for truly freaky things. The GM rolls Pain dice to represent the strength of the opposition, the challenge before the character, the width of the chasm, etc.
If this were it, the game would be trivially easy but here's where the brilliance of this system is shown. The highest die colors the result. If the player wins but one of the GM's Pain dice shows a 6 then Pain colors the outcome. Mechanically the GM also gets a counter added to the Despair pot for future nastiness. If Exhaustion colors the result the PC gets more tired, reflected by adding another die of Exhaustion to the pool. Get more than 6 Exhaustion and your character drops into a coma. This is very bad and a sleeping member of the Awake draws Nightmares like candy draws children. If Madness colors the result, then the PC must either Fight of Flee. If he has this happen too often, he will Snap and lose a Discipline die, gaining a permanent Madness die in its place. Snap too often and you become a monster yourself, taking your place among the Nightmares.
However, there is a saving grace, if Discipline colors the result the PC has managed to pull of the unthinkable, they have kept calm in an increasingly crazy place and can undo some of the accumulated damage done to themselves. For truly powerful repairs, you need Hope. (When the GM spends one of her Despair counters, it turns into a Hope counter.)
The game plays smoothly but you need a decent bond with your players to make sure everyone is on the same page. My wife bowed out when I explained how I was going to come after her character. She said she didn't want the nightmares from playing a character like that. My buddy did much better but I still managed to rattle him by playing on some of his (the player's fears). You don't need any props or dimmed lights, though those things might help but you do need an active imagination.
I gave it a Style of 4. The lack of much art was noted but what's there works well. The setting, which I only touched on, is great and leaves itself open to absolutely amazing role play.
I gave it a Substance of 4. Despite the simple approach to conflict resolution, the system has a depth that makes it all the more interesting to play. I would have gone for the 5 except that it isn't really portable to another type of play. Even traditional Horror which on the surface would seem like a slam dunk just doesn't work with this system.
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