Editing Don't Rest Your Head (section)

==Mechanics==

Player characters are created with a past, a reason why they've stayed awake longer than ever before, and a goal.  Characters have three abilities:
* an '''Exhaustion talent''', something that anyone can do but the character discovers they have a best-in-the-world level of ability, like running, brawling, driving a car, salesmanship, adding up numbers in their head.  Exhaustion dice are black, and starts at 0.
* a '''Madness talent''', something supernatural they can do because they've been awake too damn long.  This can be something fantastic like cutting things by looking at them, summoning dead army buddies to do battle, causing blood to rain, the more bizarre the better.  Madness dice are red), and they are related to your response points, which you have a total of three, that can be filled with either:
** '''Fight Response''' you will go berserk when you lose one of these.
** '''Flight Response''' you will run away in blind panic when you lose one of these.
* a '''Discipline rating''' which starts at 3.  Discipline dice are white.  These dice are your only true friends, and they will eventually abandon you.
The GM uses only one ability for the difficulty in conflicts:
* '''Pain''' dice are blue (or green, or marbled), and they are not nice to you.  The nightmares and terrors of the awakened city only use Pain dice.

In a conflict, the GM and the player(s) each roll dice pools made from the abilities they will use.  Dice that show 1,2,3 are successes.  If the player has more successes than the GM, they overcome the difficulty, and the player wins ties.  The GM's pool is always Pain dice, but the player will roll their Discipline dice + Exhaustion dice + up to 6 Madness dice.  They can choose to +1 their Exhaustion just before rolling, but every time you increase Exhaustion it is permanent.
* If the GM wins, the player fails.  Ow, shit, fuck. Furthermore, the GM can knock off a Response point or bump up the PC's Exhaustion by 1.
* If the Player wins, yay!
Now check the dice to see what color has the highest number showing (in case of ties, priority is: Discipline, Madness, Exhaustion, Pain).  This is what dominates the conflict, and it taints the success or failure as follows: 
* Discipline dominates: The PC kept their cool, looked confident.  They can decrease Exhaustion by one or get back one of their Response points (can't exceed what they started with in Fight nor Flight).
* Madness dominates: The PC lost their shit, and chaos prevails.  The PC checks off a Fight or Flight response point and narrates an appropriate flip-out scene (which may include reality doing a spit-take, or you could ignore your Madness talent altogether)
* Exhaustion dominates: The PC is wiped out by the effort.  Increase Exhaustion by +1 even if you already did that before you rolled.
* Pain dominates: Ow, shit, fuck.  The player lost something in the exchange, and the GM gains a Despair coin.

'''Despair coins''' can be used by the GM to fuck with players, by either adding a '6' to any pool that was rolled in a conflict, or removing a '6' from one of the pools.  "I failed, but at least I rolled a 6 in my Discipline pool."  "*clink* No you didn't."  "Shit."  GMs can spend as many Despair coins as required to be a dick, but every Despair coin spent turns into a '''Hope coin''' that the players share for spending for their advantage.  Hope coins can be used to undo a point of Exhaustion, get a Response point back, add a '1' to their discipline pool for more successes, or even to undo permanent Madness.

If you gain more than 6 Exhaustion, you fall asleep.  You don't know how long, and while you're asleep, the Nightmares know exactly who and where you are.  Death is probably one of the nicer things that can happen to your character at this point.  

If you lose all of your Reaction points, you go psycho for the rest of the scene. When you recover you have all your Reaction points back, but one of your Discipline dice is replaced by a permanent Madness die.  

If you lose all your Discipline dice, you've gone full-blown psycho -- you ARE one of the Nightmares now, and you know exactly where your "friends" are.

You'll notice that it's easy to add Madness dice to win, but you're probably gonna flip out if you do.  And you actually WANT to be a little bit Exhausted to get those extra dice, and it's if you just spent one more Exhaustion you could probably beat the GM's 10 Pain dice... So the players are really screwing themselves over just as much or more so than the GM.

Nightmare On Elm Street Dream Warriors shit, and the players are dooming themselves by their own actions -- this sandwich is made of win and god.