November Thing of the Month: SleepQuest
Added 2022-11-01 12:01:47 +0000 UTCMore than once I’ve had people suggest doing some kind of solo RPG/journaling game. They’re an interesting medium, and also a way to get around my current difficulties with getting people together. I have a list of about a dozen ideas, and I’ve now finished a one-page journaling game called “SleepQuest.” The primary inspiration for it is the anime/manga Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, where a princess being held captive in the Demon King’s massive castle keeps slipping out to find ways to ensure she can get a good night’s sleep, and wreaking havoc in the process. SleepQuest is essentially that premise but your character can be another kind of captive, and when I tried it out myself, my character wound up being a young dragon.
It’s a simple writing exercise, and my next journaling game will probably have a bit more game to it. You essentially just draw cards for each part of the story and write it out how you want, which for me filled roughly one page. Since I sometimes g et insomnia myself, I’ve read up a little on things that can help a person get to sleep, and one of them is to just go into another room and do something else for a little while. SleepQuest is thus meant to be something you can do just before bed, or when you’re having trouble getting to sleep. I used cards instead of dice partly because they go a little better with bedtime than dice (since they don’t need a hard, flat surface), and hopefully writing a short story where the character ends sleeping contentedly will help players do the same.
