Don't Rest Your Head
Don't Rest Your Head is a rules‑lite psychological survival horror about insomniacs who awaken to the Mad City. Using small dice pools, exhaustion and madness fuel risky power at the cost of control. Classless and low‑prep, it excels at high‑tension one‑shots and short arcs.
Horror • Needs GM • 3/5 complexity • One-shot friendly • None prep
You are one of the Awake: desperate, gifted, and hunted. Every hour you survive is a victory bought with fraying sanity.
Theme and Setting
The system runs on opposed d6 pools. You always roll Discipline ; you may add Exhaustion dice to push harder and Madness dice to unleash dangerous talents.
How Play Feels
The highest die (and then majority) determines which pool dominates the outcome—steady Discipline, overtaxing Exhaustion, or chaotic Madness—each with narrative fallout. Two economy tokens, Hope and Despair , pass between players and GM to bend results and heighten stakes.
What Makes It Distinct
You want combat and action to drive most of the session You want low-tension or low-threat play. You want combat and action to drive most of the session You want low-tension or low-threat play.
Where It May Not Fit
You want combat and action to drive most of the session You want low-tension or low-threat play.
What this game is about
A strong fit for groups that want tension, danger, and unease to stay active at the table, with rules Lite helping define the experience.
Structured data and an explicit decision profile JSON document are available for remote agents.