Sleepaway
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Hi! Apologies for the dumb question, but I was wondering if there was any way to get a discounted or similar copy as I purchased Sleepaway physically before knowing it was available in PDF and I find PDF forms to be easier to run games with. Just curious! Love this RPG's concept and cannot wait to be able to purchase more from this group!
About to play for the first time this Sunday, but as resident rules lawyer, I do have some mechanics questions, specifically:
How does Dead cricket work? It is a game we physically play in the space or just rp? When it it initiated? What does the "sole survivor" mean in the greater context of the game?
We're so excited to get to play this game!! Tragic t4t lesbian romances have already been put in motion. :D
Hi! I've been playing this game online with 2 of my friends and having a lot of fun! I have a mechanics question on the Spellcrafting ritual though. On the Crafter playbook, it says that they can "Perform the Spellcrafting Ritual" as a strong move. But in the Spellcrafting ritual description it says "Anyone can craft a spell" - does this make the Crafter's strong move redundant then? Or did I misunderstood something?
Hi! So two of my online friends and I have been playing Sleepaway, and it's been extremely fun, but we're all pretty sure that we played the game completely and utterly wrong (admittedly, it doesn't help that we played the game entirely through text online). For one thing, I'm pretty sure that between the three of us, we weren't supposed to draw 30 Lindworm cards over the course of the Surface and Descent. (If you could clarify whether that's normal or not, that would be helpful.) For another thing, uh...we have exactly two items (and by we, I mean my character found/created the two items), we never did any rituals, and like, at least 12 minor characters have died, ten of which have been campers because I keep using the Bones move and once again, we have created two items the entire game, so I went with killing minor characters when I used that move. I am pretty sure our characters are going to die, because yeah. It's been a mess. But at least it's been a fun mess!
Sleepaway is a really good read. Cool game, Jay.
Jay, folks, i'm trying to set up an online game of Sleepaway but i meet a quite nifty obstacle here.
How should the Lindworm player notify their end of turn during an online play without revealing themselves? Do you guys have any tips for this?
Thank you so much, Jay. Have a good one, everyone.
Just finished my second oneshot and even thinking about it again leaves me close to tears. I have a character sheet torn apart with my mouth laying on my bed that I need to tape up and tweak a tiny bit because they came back, sort of.
The combination of ritual, of exceptional writing, and of how quickly you get a sense of the bonds between characters means this game gets emotional and intense quick, and the GMless nature means it plays into my favourite part of roleplaying games - bouncing ideas off your friends and watching them spiral and blossom into something far beyond either of your reaches.
Buy this game, and then go check out everything else Jay Dragon and Possum Creek Games have done, I promise you will not regret it. Even if the sky turns to sand tomorrow, the tyranny of organisation grants you no respite, and you only ever get to read them, that will be enough - scrolling through this pdf left me weeping and feeling seen in a way few other experiences have, and playing it broke beyond the chains of my expectations into something new and impossible
This game looks absolutely incredible, I can’t wait to play it! Just a question— I'm a bit stumped on HOW to. I'm new to GM-less games and the BOB system, and couldn't find the rules text for Dream Askew/Dream Apart. I'm just not quite sure how the settings elements and the rituals function, and the purpose of the corkboard and how/when you make minor characters (do you start with them? Or only make them when instructed?). Sorry if I'm being dense, I just really want to play this game the way you intended, because I'm already in love with it!
No worries at all! I'm gonna try to answer stuff to the best of my ability:
- Setting Elements are picked up by anyone and are like .... little fragments of the GM? Like imagine if you could put on the GM hat but only for one part of the setting.
- Rituals can be done whenever, and basically change the rules of the game for the duration they're going on. It's like shifting to a montage or something, and you go around and each person does one of the ritual moves, until you want the ritual to end.
- The corkboard is a big map of what's going on in the game. It connects people and places together. At the start it doesn't matter much but towards the end of the game (if you're playing a 3 act game) it comes up.
- Setting elements can make them whenever they want.
If you have any more questions about what it's like to play Sleepaway, check out this amazing podcast featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan, Molly Ostertag, and Noelle Stevenson (among others):Part 1,Part 2,Part 3,Part 4.
This game looks very cool! I have a question, and I hope it's not silly or clearly stated somewhere: I'm going through the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality and categorizing all the TTRPGs based on various criteria, and I was wondering if this game has a suggested number of players (e.g., 2-5, 5-8, etc.) Apologies again if that's been answered elsewhere!
I dunno if you're even still active on here or if this ended up going anywhere; but I've started hyperfixating on ttrpgs and was hoping to play some - I also got the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality and wanted to sort through it to find the ttrpgs but it's proving to be a difficult task. I was wondering if you ever got around to listing them and if so may I see it? If not that's okay too, thank you so much!
So I did continue to categorize TTRPGs from the bundle, and like you, I started to hyperfixate on TTRPGs, but it led me down a path that might not be very useful for you; I continued to buy these big charity bundles, and bought individual games as well, and then as I went through the games I started inventing more and more narrow and specific categories to describe the patterns I began to notice (for example, I started with broad categories like "Sci-fi" and "Games that don't use dice" and now also sort games by categories like "Games where you play as multiple creatures stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat" and "games centered around bears.")
And because I've invented so many categories and currently have 3,517 TTRPG games or supplements in my library (the Racial Justice and Equality Bundle had 457), I've ended up with a lot of unfinished categories and uncategorized games that I'm just working my way through whenever the mood strikes me.
All of that being the case, I made my many collections private because I felt a bit silly that a project meant to make it easier to find games has become a sort of eternal hobby. I'd be happy to make them public again so you can look through them, but I foolishly didn't organize them by bundle, so there would be no way for you to differentiate by what games were or weren't in the Bundle for Racial Justice and equality.
I did find a website that might do some of what you want to search through the bundle's TTRPGs, linked here https://randombundlegame.com/. It doesn't let you sort games as specifically as I tried to do, but maybe that's for the best. Sorry for the long post, and sorry if it's not very helpful; I wish you luck as a fellow explorer of the TTRPG space.
Oh wow!
If you're comfortable with it, I certainly wouldn't mind you unprivating them! I actually have a similar 'problem' in general where I have a habit of "organising" things into extremely narrow or overly specific categories lol. For example in my Gmail, I created labels for different emails and have... way too many, some of which include but are not limited to "past purchases", "writing prompts", "reminders i emailed myself", "people i don't talk to anymore", and "discussions with online sellers" lol. I can get pretty out there!
That said, the link you did share should be really helpful! I appreciate you extending the offer and being down to help out! Keep on going with your hobby if it still is fun for you - I think it's super cool!
Thank you for this game! I found it overall satisfying and as a non-gender-conforming queer person I loved the queer touch. Here is some feedback from my group's recent game of Sleepaway (played over six sessions, three hours per session). I hope this is taken in a constructive way, because I truly enjoyed the game and I think it is an incredibly strong concept that could become a huge hit.
Suggestions:
- Having a GM would have made pacing better (lots of lulls in gameplay)--although on the flipside, having no GM made it more possible for individual players to declare what was in the game world. Overall, some help with pacing would be welcome.
- The randomly-chosen Lindworm channeler could have more responsibility to settle details and push things along
- Moves should be less vague; item card creation and movement between scenes should be better-defined and connected to moves
- scene elements and strangeness elements should be one deck, not two separate ones; there should be clearer rules for how you pick one of those cards (rather than "whenever you feel like it"). Overall there were too many modular moving parts for new players to keep track of: scene elements, strangeness elements, character moves, Lindworm cards, corkboard, map, item cards, character cards, rituals, three-act structure...
- there should be a clearer mechanic for how NPCs respond to the characters, e.g. in dialogue (similar to camper "sparks" or Lindworm cards)
- Character traits (fears, etc.) do not connect with the game mechanics; for example "fear of bugs in ears" never became relevant or seemed like it could become relevant
- one player who does not identify as queer felt like it was voyeuristic for them specifically to role-play as a queer youth, with experiences and hardships that they did not experience personally
- Some mechanics of the game were never described in the rulebook: for example, "motifs." (How are they generated--just from the Murder of Crows move? How do motifs come into play during the "moving along the strings" portion before the Lindworm showdown: are they treated in the same way as items and scenes?)
Strengths:
- Once we got into the groove, free-form role play felt liberating
- the ending mechanic for facing down the Lindworm made things feel cohesive and complete
- strong/normal/weak moves were intuitive
- a large map was easy to use for online play (maybe simplify the rulebook's suggestions about having both a corkboard and a map?)
- for me, the queer outsider setting clicked in a way that few other games do
I'm the facilitator of the tabletop group that went ham on AO3, and we just finished up our campaign yesterday. All the writing in the game is so evocative--we wound up using two Strangenesses as well as both Lindworm Elements, and choosing motivations and aesthetic elements for those, especially, wound up setting the tone and helping the less visual players (me) figure out how to describe scenes. Deciding highlights at the start of the game was also SO helpful in helping us figure out what kind of story we wanted to tell. (As it turned out, we told a story about cyclical time and liminal spaces and memory and identity horror.) There were also so many tasty hooks in the playbooks for us to dig into as well (we had a Fresh Blood who was scared of transforming into a wolf and an Athlete who was scared of their family being tortured by wolves, which led to some EXCELLENT sequences). Thank you for writing this gorgeous game, which fully seized all our creative output for like five months!
Kickstarted this and didn't regret it. After only a few sessions my table formed profound bonds between our characters and the campers they protected, and felt genuine fear with each reveal. The book itself is beautiful and well presented.
I've only played online, but crave the in person experience it offers.
We used Roll20, and it was fairly clumsy, but mostly because half the table wasn't really computer savvy and the interface confused them. We had to rebuild the deck more than once after we saw some duplicates pop up, but eventually we got the hang of it and it worked out pretty well. (I mean, as well as any game where you're being hunted by a horrible creature doing horrible things to children.)
Here, just choose to make a copy to your google drive. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wWpqFL-9xPNsDuSNLgVXtz_lUHhRTwglJVTC6F5u...
Hi! You're gonna want a group of friends (in person or online) to start, and then you want to make characters and pretend to be them for a few hours, following the instructions as they're laid out in Part 1 of the book. Please let me know if you have any more specific questions and I'd be happy to help.
Hi!I would like to run some sessions of Sleepaway with friends this summer. We are new to Belonging Outside Belonging games, and we mostly play with the Fate Core System.
I’ve read the book but can’t exactly figure how to play (probably because I always played with more hierarchized systems). Do you have ressources to help learning how to play? Also, what advices would you give to help us learn smoothly this system and this RPG in particular?
Hi! If the Sleepaway rules text is a particular challenge, I also recommend the rules text for Dream Askew/Dream Apart, which is built for people new to GMless games and approaches the entire topic really compassionately and helps guide you through. Because BOB is so new, it can often be hard to find guides floating around online. If you have any more specific questions I'd be happy to help!
Inventive, deeply unsettling GMless horror TTRPG about trying to survive a summer camp stalked by a nightmarish monster. The prompts strike an impressive balance between strong characterisation, poetic worldbuilding, eerie rituals and terrifying incidents. It also has a fun approach to describing gender, and a real commitment to using safety tools to maximise enjoyment of the game. 5/5 stars - outstanding.
I'm continually amazed and in awe reading this book. I had read BoB games before but none captured such a grasp of the genre like this. It's an amazing game in every way a game can be, emulating counseullor playbooks both in the realistic versions of them and how they would apply to a fantasy world.
I cannot wait to play this awesome game!
hello! i downloaded this and the offseason pdf today, and am very eager to dig into it with some friends soon - no complaints there! i did, however, have a question regarding some strange playbooks that were mentioned, specifically the moth maiden and cataract squire ones that were suggested to bring back a dead player character. they're not part of either pdf, so where can i find these, if anywhere?
its not an urgent issue since we will most likely play a oneshot first. thank you in advance either way!!
Hey Jay, I don’t have twitter so didn’t know how else to get in touch. Quick question on Sleepaway. I was looking to pick up a physical copy but not in a hurry as I likely won’t get it to the table for a while anyway. I’m really interested in the mechanics of the game and wondered if the physical copy’s came with a PDF I could start reading.
Hi, so! Here's how I handled both of those:
1. Give everyone a facedown card from the roll20 deck. Everyone adds theirs to their hand, looks at their own personally, and then puts it back in the deck.
2. Everyone closes their eyes in REAL LIFE, someone moves the card around, then taps on their mic to indicate they're done.
I'm gonna try to write up an online guide soon!
Jay is a game design luminary who expertly layers emotional insight, real occult ritual, human nature, dreamy mythology, and traumatic existential horror into a play experience that somehow manages to be both more ethereal and more tactical than any other tabletop game out there.
It's also, y'know, literally haunted by its own monster, so there's that, too.
Unlike most indie story games, this is a chonky book with a lot to digest, with a gorgeous, easy-to-read layout, and evocative art that matches the lonely, tortured tone of the game. It's easy enough to jump into for a one shot without much prep other than gathering materials, but I think it really shines in the format of a short campaign of 1-3 sessions.
Hey! Sorry for the wait - I found a way to schedule a game of Sleepaway with some friends so I thought I'd try it first! Btw, we had a blast and I'm in love with the game. A couple questions:
- When rituals ask you to destroy a Minor Character card, we assumed that the character dies in the process. Is this correct, or could poor Maximilian have survived?
- On that note, the progession of NPC deaths (animals > adults > campers)only applied to the lindworm's cards, right? or must it be respected in all other circumstances as well? For example, in our Crossing the Waves ritual it made sense for one of the campers to be a stowaway on our boat, so his was the card we sacrificed. No animals or adult npc had been killed so far. Was this correct?
- During the rituals, we kept roleplaying as normal, but we were only using the ritual's available moves, and we were driving play towards those. Is this the correct way to play them? (I initially thought they may play a bit more turn-based, like a minigame in The King Is Dead, but we found a more natural flow)
Other questions I had became clearer in play.
I also spotted a couple typos/oversights, would it be helpful to flag them?
Also, there's a handout/ref sheet that we prepared on the fly (with pen and paper) that would be useful to play the game - would a suggestion on that be welcome?
Hi, that's so great to hear! Thank you for your patience from my reply. In order:
- It's entirely your call as to whether the minor character lived or died. I've performed rituals where it meant death, but I've also performed rituals where it meant that the individual in question was disconnected from the camp spirit, or in one case it turned out they were the vessel of the Lindworm!
- Yeah, that was correct. When in doubt, trust your own gut over the book.
- Yeah, that's sick! I've played it both ways. Whatever feels more natural for your group.
And you're welcome to send me typos/oversights (preferably in private messages) and I'll see what can be done, but I'm actively working on distributing physical copies, so they might not get corrected. I'd love to see what sheet you made.
Hi Jay! Sorry for the long wait for a reply. Thanks for the answers, all very useful. Re:typos, I see the game is getting printed already, but if you think you may, for example, want to update the pdf I can send you a list of what i found via DM.
Re: the play aids we made, it was a sheet helping us remember the available rituals. It gave us the ritual's name, what is it meant to do/feel/convey, and the starting ritual phrase. Given this was a oneshot, it helped us remember that rituals were a part of the game, and remember what specific rituals may serve the scene and how to start them - otherwise we feared we may forget.
In hindsight, I think having the exact same thing for the Setting Elements (maybe 4 columns with name, themes, "pick up when" and "put down when) would have been very useful, too.
Ours was a sheet scribbled in pencil, nothing nice I'm afraid - but I'd definitely say it helped us play and made the game more approachable/accessible.