Don't Lose Your Mind

I picked up a copy of "Don't Lose Your Mind" at DexCon. This is a supplement for the very cool indie game "Don't Rest Your Head". I've finally had a chance to finish reading it, and there is some very worthwhile material there.

I was actually running a DRYH event at DexCon based on the initial book, and the supplement leaves me feeling as though I'd missed some key points from the original. On the bright side, it means that the supplement is a very worthwhile purchase. On the other hand, I really wish that at least some of the ideas from it were in the core book. I would highly recommend that anyone who bought the first book buys the second.

The most important element is that the original book explains how a player character can potentially go from being Awakened to becoming a Nightmare once certain things happen, and that's really as much as it says. There are examples of Nightmares in the core book, but what DLYM does is illustrate that transition and what it means in practice, and that makes all of the difference. Character is everything to me, and a lot of DRYH is so abstract as to be difficult to get a grip on. DLYM brings it all home, giving examples of how a character can descend into madness. One or two examples of this in the core book would've made a huge difference in my approach.

I'll have to take a fresh look at DRYH to see if I can improve the scenario I've already written for it with ideas from DLYM. I think I'm going to have to run it at home a few times before I write another convention scenario for it, though, as I still don't quite feel I have the grip I need to give it the impact it should have.

My first main problem in running the game is that there are an awful lot of abstract things made material. It's very cool reading, but difficult to bring across cohesively. It's hard to give the players a sense of what they can and/or should do while they're in the Mad City. When anything can happen, who cares what happens? It seems better to keep the characters in the real world for the most part (weirded up because they're Awakened and see things others don't) and occasionally sidestep into the Mad City, but the game as written seems as though player characters are supposed to spend more time the other way around.

My second main problem in running the game has been bringing enough Pain. When I was initially looking over the Nightmares they seemed plenty powerful to me, but in actual play, they seemed underpowered compared to player characters bringing their full resources to bear. I could just up the Pain values, but I assume that the power levels as written were done that way for a reason, so there must be something I'm not getting here. As I said, I'll have to read it again, then try it again sometime at home and see if I can do better.