Sleeping Gods rules: how to play and how to win

Sleeping Gods quick rules

The goal

You are the crew of the Manticore, lost in 1929 on the Wandering Sea. You sail from page to page of the atlas to find as many totems as you can and return home. A final campaign score measures your success.

The campaign

A campaign lasts 10 to 20 hours. At the end of each session, you save it on the journey log. The storybook reads like a choose-your-path novel: never read ahead before choosing.

A turn

The active player also controls the Captain. They move the ship action figure to another room of the ship and apply its effect, draw and resolve an event card, then take two actions, before passing the captain token to the left.

The four actions

Travel, a Craft challenge that moves the ship; Explore a location in the storybook; visit a Market in a region with a market location; and the Port action to heal, repair and spend experience. You may skip an action to gain one command.

Challenges

Add up the required skill of the crew members taking part, each taking a fatigue token, then draw fate, an ability card, and add its number. Each card discarded from your hand adds one point. Value reached: success; otherwise, the failure, often damage.

Command and cards

Command equips ability cards, activates abilities and adventure cards, and lets you help others. Three ability cards in hand at most, two equipped per crew member.

Combat

Four combat action cubes to share. To attack: fate plus the weapon’s accuracy against the enemy’s defense, then damage tokens on adjacent spaces of its card. The enemy strikes back, and all of them attack at the end of the round.

Damage, fatigue and defeat

Two fatigue: no more challenges. Defeat if the whole crew drops to zero or the ship has eleven damage. In normal mode, you restart from the nearest port with a defeat recorded; in brutal mode, the campaign ends.

The end and the score

The event deck is played through three times; the third time leads to the finale. The score is worked out at the end of the campaign, from adventure cards, totems, quests, level cards, coins and artifacts, endings reached and defeats.

Beginner pitfalls

Rotate crew members in challenges and cook to recover, keep some command free, and watch the ship’s damage.

How to win Sleeping Gods

A team score

Sleeping Gods is cooperative: the whole table shares a final campaign score, worked out line by line.

Adventure cards

2 points per adventure card you own, totems included.

Totems

2 extra points per totem adventure card.

Quest cards

1 point per quest card, including those in the used quest box.

Level cards

2 points per level card in play.

Coins and artifacts

1 point per 2 coins, 1 point per artifact.

Ending, defeats and brutal mode

10 points for reaching a campaign ending; minus 10 per defeat in normal mode; 25 extra points in brutal mode.

Example ending

At the end of the campaign, the crew of Emma, Jake and Mia has 24 adventure cards, 5 of them totems: 48 + 10 = 58 points. Add 30 quest cards (30), 9 level cards (18), 7 coins (3) and 2 artifacts (2). They reached an ending (10) with 2 defeats in normal mode (minus 20): 58 + 30 + 18 + 3 + 2 + 10 − 20 = 101 points.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting the totem bonus: a totem scores 4 points, 2 as an adventure card and 2 more.
• Scoring one point per coin: it is one point per two coins.
• Forgetting the quest cards in the used quest box.
• Forgetting normal mode defeats: minus ten each.

How to set up Sleeping Gods

For your first campaign, the quick start guide introduces the story; a campaign in progress is restored from the journey log. Here is the setup for a new campaign.