As a relevant (probably) side note, I'm running Ubuntu 12.04LTS. I killed gnome-screensaver and installed x, because I like pretty flying toasters (and I'm that old).
When I am playing a character who actually survives long enough for me to hit the threshold I have set in x for the screensaver to activate, the screen blanks, I get the "no signal" message as if gnome-screensaver were still installed, and the monitor goes to sleep. No combination of mouse and keyboard will restore the monitor; I have to hard-boot the system.
Another relevant (probably) side note: Brightness and Lock settings are "turn screen off when inactive for Never, Lock is off, so it's not (hopefully) popping me up a password screen while the monitor is inactive.
If I knew LUA I'd throw in a keep-alive line somewhere and see if that fixed the problem. Hey, maybe this is the gods telling me it's time to learn LUA.

Current workaround is setting x to never fire while playing ToME, but I remember to do that about as often as I remember to turn off twilight surge when an escort pops up...
(And if I'm the only one having this problem then it's not a bug and I'll shut up. Thanks for listening! Any extra relevant info I left out let me know and I will edit this.)