Don't Rest Your Head vs Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game

Compare Don't Rest Your Head and Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Don't Rest Your Head	Old Gods of Appalachia Roleplaying Game
Genre	Horror, Modern	Horror, Historical
Tags	Urban Fantasy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Superpowers, Corruption, Resource Management, Weird, Narrative, Character-Driven, Rules-Light, Atmospheric	Fear & Stress Mechanics, Player-Only Rolls, Theater of the Mind, Character Building, Character-Driven, Narrative, Resource Management, Low-Prep, Weird, Licensed IP
Core Mechanic	Players roll their current discipline and exhaustion dice, any permanent madness dice, and up to six optional temporary madness dice against the GM's pain dice. They may voluntarily add one exhaustion die before rolling. Each d6 showing 1–3 is a success, and the protagonist wins ties in total successes. Separately, the pool with the highest die dominates regardless of success; tied pools compare their remaining dice from highest to lowest, with exact ties favoring discipline, then madness, exhaustion, and pain. Discipline dominance can reduce exhaustion or clear a response, exhaustion dominance raises exhaustion, madness dominance triggers a fight or flight response, and pain dominance adds a despair coin to the GM's coffer.	The GM sets a task difficulty from 0 to 10, with a target number equal to three times the difficulty. Players roll a d20 for tasks, attacks and defenses and succeed by meeting that target. Skills, assets and Effort ease the difficulty; a task reduced to 0 succeeds automatically. Effort costs points from Might, Speed or Intellect Pools, with Edge reducing the cost.
Dice	d6 dice pool	d20
Complexity	Low	Medium
Availability	Free quickstart	Paid
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	5 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Evil Hat Productions	Monte Cook Games
Year	2006	2023
Languages	English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish	English
Best For	Groups who want short, personal urban-horror campaigns driven by each protagonist's insomnia, secrets, and goals, with powers that risk exhaustion and psychological breakdown.	Groups seeking community-centered folk horror in an alternate Appalachia of the 1920s and 1930s. It suits tables comfortable with personal goals driving advancement, spending health resources on tasks and discussing horror boundaries together.
Highlights	Dominance is decided separately from success, so a protagonist can win a conflict while exhaustion, madness, or pain still exacts a cost. Despair spent to alter dominance becomes shared hope after the conflict, funding recovery or extra successes. The five-question questionnaire structures personal scenes and gives players authority over their opening scene and the resolution of their path.	Personal character arcs award XP for completed steps and climaxes, making chosen goals part of advancement. Single-use cyphers frequently replace spent charms and strange objects, encouraging players to use unusual tools. What Wakes Mode widens the natural-roll range for GM intrusions until a ten-hour recovery normally resets it, turning supernatural attention into escalating pressure.
Considerations	Helping offers limited benefit: assistants contribute only discipline successes, cannot use talents, and remain vulnerable to dominance effects. Injury and equipment have no separate statistics and are handled through conflict outcomes. There is no XP-point or skill-growth system; advancement uses scars for rerolls or consumable transformations, including temporary or permanent talent changes.	Stat Pools pay for Effort and abilities as well as absorb harm, so spending them can reduce a character’s resilience. The GM chooses task difficulties and introduces complications, making consistent adjudication a substantial responsibility. The core centers on alternate Appalachia in the 1920s and 1930s, so a different setting requires adapting its lore and character connections.