My friends and I are super excited to play this game! I was wondering if there's an actual play of all 3 chapters (instead of a oneshot)? I'd particularly like to see act 3: The Abyss played.
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?
Anyone can perform a ritual when its a dramatically appropriate moment, but the Crafter can call it into being as a strong move. Imagine another game where anyone can go to the bar, but the Barfly has the strong move "let's all go to the bar" — it's a call to action.
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!
Wow, I... that's bonkers! I'm not sure you played it "right" either, but if you had fun (and it sounds like you have been) then you're doing it plenty right.
Hi! I recommend the lindworm player tapping on their mic — it sounds creepy and conveys done-ness. Just make sure your noise filter doesn't goop the knocking noise!
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.
VERY interested in checking this out for my actual play stream, but I generally do full campaigns of 10 episodes. Would that work for Sleepaway or is this made for one-shots?
Hi, Sleepaway was written for shorter campaigns and tends to last around 10 hours total, however 10 episodes of one hour each would be enough to cover all three acts of the game, I think!
So excited to finally run this game with friends, we were thinking of modifying the flavour to run a Percy Jackson themed game. Do you think the game would still work the same if someone started as a strangeness character?
I think so. Remember that your characters can be weird and magical even without the strangeness playbooks! The athlete, the crafter, and the ropeskeeper all are very explicit in that. But also Luke Castellan is absolutely some kind of Found-Again I think
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.
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!
All of my categories have been made public, so feel free to peruse them! I hope you find some utility or entertainment in my efforts, despite their incompleteness
Just a note: you spelled "Indigenous" wrong in a couple of different ways (on pages 15 and 16), and it really ought to be capitalized throughout. Otherwise I'm really enjoying reading so far!
Yes, that's our mistake! We fixed that in the most recent printing but for some reason it slipped through in this PDF copy. I'll make sure the PDF copy is updated ASAP.
Just a follow-up that, as of today, these changes still haven't been published in the itch.io PDF copy: "indiginous" on pg 15 and "indiginuous" on 16! I know the studio has been busy with so many other amazing games, but please update to help fight the Lindworm. :)
Yes, it's corrected now! Thanks for being so fast! I'll also echo Deadlytoque that it's getting more common to capitalize Indigenous as well - I'd keep it in mind for future releases and games. But thank you for addressing this important issue in the game, nonetheless! :)
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!
Wow. Just wow. This game is a work of art. The mix of wonder, melancholy, and horror was unexpected, but it's absolutely perfect! I simply cannot recommend this game enough! Can't wait to add a physical copy to my shelf!
Hey, I'm quite confused. I believe I have access to this through the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, but I can't seem to download it on this page without paying again. Why is that?
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My friends and I are super excited to play this game! I was wondering if there's an actual play of all 3 chapters (instead of a oneshot)? I'd particularly like to see act 3: The Abyss played.
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?
Anyone can perform a ritual when its a dramatically appropriate moment, but the Crafter can call it into being as a strong move. Imagine another game where anyone can go to the bar, but the Barfly has the strong move "let's all go to the bar" — it's a call to action.
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!
Wow, I... that's bonkers! I'm not sure you played it "right" either, but if you had fun (and it sounds like you have been) then you're doing it plenty right.
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.
Hi! I recommend the lindworm player tapping on their mic — it sounds creepy and conveys done-ness. Just make sure your noise filter doesn't goop the knocking noise!
That is actually a great idea, Jay. I will try that!
Thank you so much, Jay!
Truly an incredible TTRPG. I've only played a single oineshot with it, but the tools this system gives you to tell a story are incredible.
It left me with a feeling that very few TTRPG have ever given me. Buy it, you won't regret it.
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:
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.
That’s super helpful, thank you so much!!
VERY interested in checking this out for my actual play stream, but I generally do full campaigns of 10 episodes. Would that work for Sleepaway or is this made for one-shots?
Hi, Sleepaway was written for shorter campaigns and tends to last around 10 hours total, however 10 episodes of one hour each would be enough to cover all three acts of the game, I think!
Question: do aces count as face cards for the purposes of removing/adding to the deck in different acts?
I wrote it intending that aces are face cards, yep!
Thanks!
So excited to finally run this game with friends, we were thinking of modifying the flavour to run a Percy Jackson themed game. Do you think the game would still work the same if someone started as a strangeness character?
I think so. Remember that your characters can be weird and magical even without the strangeness playbooks! The athlete, the crafter, and the ropeskeeper all are very explicit in that. But also Luke Castellan is absolutely some kind of Found-Again I think
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!
No worries, I'd say 3-6! Also hell yeah I'm glad you're doing the hard work
Thanks a ton!
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!
All of my categories have been made public, so feel free to peruse them! I hope you find some utility or entertainment in my efforts, despite their incompleteness
Just a note: you spelled "Indigenous" wrong in a couple of different ways (on pages 15 and 16), and it really ought to be capitalized throughout. Otherwise I'm really enjoying reading so far!
Yes, that's our mistake! We fixed that in the most recent printing but for some reason it slipped through in this PDF copy. I'll make sure the PDF copy is updated ASAP.
Just a follow-up that, as of today, these changes still haven't been published in the itch.io PDF copy: "indiginous" on pg 15 and "indiginuous" on 16! I know the studio has been busy with so many other amazing games, but please update to help fight the Lindworm. :)
Oh no!! That's embarrassing, thank you so much for the update. It should be fixed now?
Yes, it's corrected now! Thanks for being so fast! I'll also echo Deadlytoque that it's getting more common to capitalize Indigenous as well - I'd keep it in mind for future releases and games. But thank you for addressing this important issue in the game, nonetheless! :)
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!
Wow. Just wow. This game is a work of art. The mix of wonder, melancholy, and horror was unexpected, but it's absolutely perfect! I simply cannot recommend this game enough! Can't wait to add a physical copy to my shelf!
Hey, I'm quite confused. I believe I have access to this through the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, but I can't seem to download it on this page without paying again. Why is that?
Thanks for any help you can provide me with.
Update: Sorry, I apologise. I'm not used to itch.io's site still. I figured it out :)