The Sleeper

Your past is obscured by flawed memories, and you try not to think about the future. You focus on the here and now, living through your TV’s infinite offerings, Internet forums, and the apps on your phone. Your life and job are fine, but you make sure to only share the best snippets, where everything seems amazing. Everyone else has nice homes and great jobs, and you wouldn’t want people to think you’re worse off than them. After work, you usually watch TV until it’s time to go to bed. You work out in the morning, during lunch, or on the way home. Everyone else seems so perfect, so you’ll motivate yourself to push through your routine on the treadmill while listening to the latest podcast, drinking low-fat shakes, and eating pre-packaged foods. People feel best when they don’t focus on negative thoughts. One of the blogs you read told you that. Above your bed hangs a pretty piece of calligraphy, which reads, “I am in charge of how I feel, and today I am choosing happiness.” That’s nice to think about. You live your life in a bubble, filtering out all shadows and shades of grey in the world.
You are one of the Sleepers.

Playing Sleepers

Sleeping PCs are weaker than Aware PCs. They lack Advantages and have repressed their Dark Secrets. When Sleepers use Experience to advance, they start to recall their Dark Secrets.
Upon their sixth advance, they wake up and switch Archetypes.
If the GM wishes to include sleeping PCs, the game works best if all the player characters begin as Sleepers and develop into Aware Archetypes together.

OCCUPATION

Choose your Sleeper’s occupation. It could be anything you wish.

DARK SECRETS

Choose any 1 Dark Secret. You get to pick the Dark Secret, but for as long as they’re asleep the PC will not remember anything about it.

DISADVANTAGES

Choose 2 Disadvantages from any Archetype.

ADVANTAGES

You start with no Advantages.

ATTRIBUTES

Assign the modifiers +2, +1, and +0 to the three passive attributes:
Fortitude, Reflexes, and Willpower.
Assign the modifiers +3, +2, +1, +1, +0, −1, and −2 to the seven
active attributes: Charisma, Coolness, Intuition, Perception,
Reason, Soul, and Violence.

LOOKS

Select or come up with your own distinguishing features for your
character.

Clothes:
Mainstream, hipster, proper, athletic wear, jeans, suit,
trendy, bohemian, gangsta, anonymous, all black, nerdy, chic,
handsome, provocative, flattering, normcore, or alternative
clothes.

Face:
Cute, tired, forced smile, rosy, hard, doughy, swollen, emaciated,
pale, non-expressive, pretty, masculine, soft, grim, long,
round, square, bearded, or tanned face.

Eyes:
Avoidant, large, contemptuous, flirtatious, cheerful,
innocent, intense, drowsy, dominant, demanding, dark, bright,
confused, or bored eyes.

Body:
Thin, muscular, chubby, skinny, tall, short, big, heavy-set,
lean, strong, hearty, bent over, straight-backed, bouncy, serene,
expressive, frantic, jittery, or gray body.

NAME

Choose a name for your character, suitable to the locale in which the campaign is set.

DISTRACTIONS

There is something you use to distract yourself from the world
around you, enabling you to remain asleep.

Choose 1 or several:

  • Dating services.
  • Discussion forums
  • Exercise and fitness
  • Fashion
  • Interior decorating
  • Online games
  • Pornography
  • Reality television
  • Shopping
  • Social media/apps, e.g. Instagram, Facebook, or similar.
  • TV-series
  • Distraction of your own design

When you engage in your Distraction for several hours, you recover +1 stability. When you are unable to engage in your distraction for a few days, you must make a Keep it Together Move to not give in to it – even to your detriment. When you have been forced to interrupt your distraction, you
take −1 to your next roll.

RELATIONS

Everyone introduces their character by name, looks, and personality. Take your turn. Write down the other player characters’ names. Go around the table again to establish your Relations.

If you know any of the other player characters from before, choose one of these options to establish the relationship between the two of you.

  • One of the characters is an associate from work.
  • One of the characters is a lover or a friend. Take +1 Relation with each other
  • One of the characters is connected to your Dark Secret.
  • You secretly follow the character on Instagram, their blog, or similar social media. Take +1 Relation with them
  • One of the characters has something you’re jealous of.

Decide the nature of three additional Relations: One neutral (0), one meaningful (+1), and one vital (+2).

Sleepers and Advancement

A sleeping PC advances in the following steps:
[1] They remember something about their Dark Secret.
[2] They remember something about their Dark Secret.
[3] They remember something about their Dark Secret.
[4] They remember something about their Dark Secret.
[5] They remember something about their Dark Secret.
[6] They awaken. The player chooses an Aware Archetype.

The PC keeps their Dark Secret and their Disadvantages, but the player picks three Advantages from their new Archetype. Depending on how the group wants to play it out, the Sleeper’s memories of their Dark Secret can:

  • Be prepared and delivered by the GM (suitable for prepared scenarios)
  • Be authored by the player
  • Be authored collaboratively by the group
  • Be authored by the other players, but not the person affected.

In those cases where the players author the details, they should limit their contributions to vague memory fragments the GM can expand and build on later. Each advancement should not reveal the Dark Secret’s true nature, but should work more like clues the PC can investigate.