Hi! This looks incredibly cool and is blowing me away, but there's a couple questions I have about some mechanics/procedures. Is this the best place to ask them?
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.