Don't Rest Your Head

Alright, this beautiful little RPG Don't Rest Your Head from Evil Hat Productions is my latest look into the various systems, and boy, does this one rock!

Set in the dark and frankly non-euclidian world of the Mad City, you are a person who has gone without sleep for so long that you LITERALLY are able to walk into a world of insanity with superpowers. The Mad City is completely nuts, with horrible bad guys that steal memories, souls, body parts (Suck as the horrific "Tacts man" who taxes the city) paper boys made of actual paper, and more. All of this doing it's best to destroy you and leave you totally decimated, And whatever you do, DON'T Stick around for the 13th hour, where everything is out to kill you and there even stronger than ever. Unless of course you want to visit the Bizarre Bazaar.

Characters are incredibly flexible, allowing you to create just about anyone you want. In the current campaign i'm playing, we have a MMA fighter, a Computer geek college girl, and a junk artist. The first one creates bone spikes to fight with, the second can tap into the internet WITH HER BRAIN, and the third can change the world to be as he sees it. If that's not variety, i don't know what is. The supplement, Don't Lose Your Mind, also looks promising with a list of madness powers and nightmares to use.

First off, we have a very simple d6 system, where 3 and lower are "Successes" and higher are failures. More successes you have, the better you do. Simple enough right? It does get a liiiitttle more complicated, but not much so. Depending on which die is the highest, madness, exhaustion, or discipline, different things will happen. Short hand is discipline orderly, Madness bad and crazy, and Exhaustion makes you more powerful, but also can lead to your death. Just be prepared to have a lot of D6s, as i at one point have rolled 15, with 6 more merely as placeholders for auto successes that you get for special moves.

Beautiful original setting with a perfect horror vibe, and incredibly flexible rules systems really do something special. The content is primarily player generated, and that really adds something. Unfortunately, it's also what keeps this game from being perfect as it really is meant to only be played by people who really know how to roleplay already. This game is NOT for beginners, and will leave people who haven't played before in the dust as the wealth of options leaves them whirling in confusion. Also, combat seems to be more house ruled than anything, and leaves one feeling a bit confused as to how exactly your suppose to fight one of the big scary baddies that roam this world.

Finally, the price is reasonable, 20 dollars for a softback bound copy and 11 dollars for an electronic one, certainly not bad overall.

Overall, I say that Don't Rest Your Head rolls a 7 out of D10.

The Geek Guardian Angel
Matthais777