Sleeping Gods and the Open World Campaign That Lets You Explore However You Want

Sleeping Gods At A Glance

I have finished Sleeping Gods twice. Each campaign lasted 16 sessions for a combined 32 total sessions played. My first campaign lasted fourteen sessions spread out over eight months. My second campaign took eighteen sessions stretched over ten months because I took far fewer shortcuts and chased down every rumour that I could find.

I keep extensive logs of every port I’ve visited, every failed quest I’ve attempted, and what skills every crewmember has taken. I have maps plotted out with every totem location that we discovered. I have charts cross referencing event styles with which paragraph they’re mentioned in and sprawling cause and effect branches for every major story decision we came across.

I love Sleeping Gods. It solves my primary issue with every other campaign game out there. There’s a constant tension in that style of game between railroading and total freedom. Most campaign games give you the illusion of choice but still carefully guide you through experiencing the world they’ve created.

I absolutely love board games that lean hard into allowing me to tell my own story. Sleeping Gods lets you sail wherever you want and do pretty much everything you want. It is literally an open world story driven (Wikipedia) board game that assumes you want to play around in the world they created instead of pursuing set paths.

This is a campaign game for players that want to pick their own adventure. Literally. It designs the entire experience around trusting you to direct your crew where they want to go and allows you to do just that.

What Sleeping Gods Really Is

Sleeping Gods is an atlas you use to sail between locations on a map while pursuing quests in an open world style narrative experience (Red Raven Games). You play as the captain of a crew aboard a steamship that has washed up in a strange land somewhere (Red Raven Games). The crew explores the world through sailing from location to location, experiencing events at those locations, managing crew member skills and health, and uncovering what you need to do to find your way home.

The core gameplay revolves around moving your ship to different locations, reading events based on that location, and managing the crew and resources on your ship board. Each turn is essentially sailing to a location on the map, reading the text on that location, and experiencing the event there. Some locations let you trade at a port. Other locations have random encounters that could hurt crew members or damage your ship. Others still will hint at where you can find totems needed to complete your quest.

Your goal is to collect these totems and acquire enough points to sail away and go home (Sleeping Gods Rulebook PDF). But that is not done under any sort of time constraint or via some magical process of uncovering every lore book in the world. If you want to spend half a session pursuing a rumour that has nothing to do with progress, you can do that. If you backtrack to a location you’ve already visited because you have new abilities that can impact different results there, you can do that too.

You can even spend entire sessions pursuing side quests for crewmembers that have caught your interest. Everything branches back into this larger world and serves the purpose of allowing you to experience everything you can discover.

The beauty of this system is that it never feels obtuse or like you are wasting your time. Every location on the map has meaningful tie backs to the rest of the world. Every side quest you pursue teaches you more about the world or provides you with resources that can help you elsewhere. There are never any negative consequences for pursuing your curiosity or rewards for finding the most optimal path forward. Sleeping Gods simply asks you: where do you want to go?

The Freedom To Sail Anywhere You Want And Chase Rumours

The biggest strength of Sleeping Gods is how it lets you sail anywhere you want and support chasing down every rumour you discover (Shut Up and Sit Down). This isn’t a half dozen choice illusion that most campaign games beg you to follow. This is actually having control over where you want your crew to go next.

One of my first actions in my initial playthrough was devoting an entire session to sailing back and forth across half the world map because I overheard some crewmembers talking about a floating market. I obsessed over this for three sessions until I found it. Turns out there was nothing special about that location outside of unique trading opportunities, but feeling like I unlocked a secret my entire crew was talking about just didn’t realise was relevant to me mattered more than any in game reward.

The game empowers this by carefully designing each location to only give you small glimpses into what’s there. A port may let you know that there have been strange lights sighted to the west. A trader may mention hearing of exotic goods that originate to the south. It plants seeds without forcing your hand. You’re given the tools to discover what you want, when you want.

Feel Like You Are Discovering A New World Through Atlas And Paragraph Book

The core discovery mechanic of the game creates a sense of wonder through their brilliant implementation of the atlas and paragraph book game mechanic (Shut Up and Sit Down). Each location you sail to has a number posted next to it. When you arrive you look up that location in the paragraph book which contains hundreds of numbered paragraphs. Each paragraph represents a location or event within the game world.

Some of these locations branch off into additional choices that you make. Others are informative and tell you to go read another paragraph. This naturally creates an atmosphere of discovery because you have no easy way of knowing what you’ll find when you arrive at a location. Sure you can open up the book to that paragraph to find out, but the entry level rule of “do not read ahead” keeps everyone engaged without ruining surprises.

Checking “Go to paragraph 247” is exciting because you have absolutely no idea what you’ll find there. Is it treasure? Is it danger? Will it advance the story in a meaningful way? There is no way for you to know until you do it.

This system even allows for interesting comebacks. Just because a location wasn’t important when you first found it three sessions ago doesn’t mean it can’t be relevant now that you unlocked new abilities. I’ve returned to the same port three, sometimes four times across a single campaign because I developed new abilities that could impact the results there.

The sense that the world isn’t magically populating with locations as you become more capable is strongly enforced by the atlas. Every location is meaningful in distance to your home base. Every island across the open ocean was hard to get to back when you only had one special ability. As you learn new abilities you are just extending your reach further from that origin point.

This core mechanic of the game rewards curiosity in a way few others do. There are subtle details hidden all across the world in the form of nested mention rituals. Crewmembers being talked about in one paragraph that you later learn the backstory of. Maps drawn on the margins that point to mystery locations. Rumours of giant squids that turn out to be literal giant squids.

I could not recommend this game enough if you want to explore at your own pace. Truly pursue whatever interests you and the game will support you in that goal.

Campaign Structure Built Around Multi Session Play

The other nuance of Sleeping Gods that absolutely kills me is how it embraces multiple session play. Too many games make resuming incredibly difficult and at the pace we play games it hurts my desire to jump back into long form storytelling.

Sleeping Gods does this by having you save the game with a log sheet and map state (Sleeping Gods Rulebook PDF). At the end of each session you spend about ten minutes tracking everything you did and where you currently are in the world. It logs your crewmembers current health and stats, condition of your ship, what you currently have in your inventory, which locations you’ve discovered, and active quests you’re pursuing.

This save system is incredible because it allows you to pause a campaign literally midway through a sentence and pick right back up there months later. Nothing is lost between sessions. You never forget some minor detail about a crewmembers skill set or what direction you sailed that made landing on that island possible.

The beauty of this game’s campaign structure is how it supports multiple sessions of play however you want them (UltraBoardGames). A session can be 90 minutes if you want it to or 4 hours if you don’t mind spending your whole day playing a single game. Natural breaks tend to happen when you complete a quest line, return to port to restock on supplies, or reach a major story point that you want to pause while discussing as a group.

This was so well made for adult gaming groups who struggle to schedule anything. I’ve played sessions that were six weeks apart and never felt like I was losing momentum. The preservation of game state is so robust that when you open up the book to continue it is almost exactly where you left off with save sheets guiding you through any edge cases that might have occurred.

Even better is how it handles people missing sessions. If you forget to mark that a crewmember gained an ability from the previous event nothing game breaking is spoiled by their absence. The crew fights as a team with special abilities but no one person is solely capable of one specific action. Everyone chips in where they are able but no person is required to continue forward.

Action Selection Fighting Means No Dice Rolling Combat

The final game mechanism I want to touch on is how Sleeping Gods handles fights. Instead of relying on dice to resolve combats you and the enemy take turns picking actions you can perform (UltraBoardGames). During your turn you and your crew draw action cards that let you perform specific actions that your crew is capable of doing.

Since every character on your crew board has their own abilities you’ll have multiple crewmembers competing for the same actions during your turn. Do you want to move your captain into position so they can attack from a better angle next turn? Or should your gunner use their action to shoot at the enemies instead? These exciting choices are on you to manage while also allocating resources wisely during fights.

Each action card can only be used a certain number of times before they run out. You are encouraged to rest your crew between fights to regain maximum usage on these cards. Managing your crew and these action cards creates compelling resource management decisions. Should you burn all your best actions in the first round to win the fight quickly or take your punishment and outlast the enemy?

This creates fantastic tension during fights because there is no easy way to win a combat. You are presented with a tactical puzzle and must make the best decisions with the information you have. Nobody gets hurt forever if you lose a fight, but running away prevents you from acquiring valuable experience and items that your crew will thrive off of.

Combat elegantly ties into the greater narrative of the campaign through crew growth and resource gathering. Every victory earns your crew experience that they can use to improve their skills. Every defeat leaves your crew with injuries that will hamper them until properly treated.

Verdict

I gave Sleeping Gods a 9/10 only because there is nothing in the game to improve upon. It is my new singular vision of what I want out of campaign games.

I’ve now played two full campaigns and am gearing up for my third as I know there are quests I didn’t fully finish and locations I didn’t completely explore.

I love games that let me tell my own story. Sleeping Gods is for everyone who wants to explore at their own pace. It assumes you want to pursue your own distractions and hides amazing narrative gems inside of those moments.

Take the time to dive into this world. Sail around. Get lost. Learn something new. I promise you will not regret it.

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Nicholas

Nicholas teaches secondary school history by day and campaigns through fantasy worlds by night. He writes about legacy and campaign games—the epic, months-long sagas that build friendships, stories, and the occasional scheduling nightmare.