Longterm members might remember one of my older projects, Echoes of Dreams, which is a fantasy setting where players are Dreamers that enter a surreal world of fairies and nightmares when they sleep. I'm interested in ideas, including and especially mechanics to play up the idea of dreams, psychology, and so forth. I know Horse had his old Haveneast setting. Anyone else have any experience with this sort of thing or ideas to make such a game feel really distinct?
Currently the premise is played up by each Dreamer having an Echo, which is a doppelganger version of their id that can run about the world causing trouble, especially while they sleep.
You might take the inception route by grabbing things from real life dreaming that most people are familiar with and explain them in a different way than the supposed scientific facts. Taking things like sleep paralysis, sleep walking, lucid dreaming, vivid dreams, etc and twisting them into strange and arcane new things could give an interesting feel.
I'm not totally familiar with Echoes of Dreams (I do remember it though) but one example might be that lucid dreamers are the dreamers you mentioned and that they run into other dreamers in the realm who aren't lucid and thus act sort of like NPCs in the sense that the dreamers help, fight, or protect them in varying ways.
Quote from: NomadicI'm not totally familiar with Echoes of Dreams (I do remember it though) but one example might be that lucid dreamers are the dreamers you mentioned and that they run into other dreamers in the realm who aren't lucid and thus act sort of like NPCs in the sense that the dreamers help, fight, or protect them in varying ways.
I had to read that twice to understand what you meant. Then I said, "damn that's awesome."
In the brief game I ran it was only the PCs and the fairies in the Dreamworld. (Nightmares are the bad dreams that are conquering the dreamworld, the evil fairies, so to speak, preying on weaker good fairies.) So an introduction of civilians in dream mode could be a really neat idea.
What Nomadic is talking about sounds a bit like the dreaming in the Wheel of Time Series.
I've actually tried to make a whole world just like this.
You should check out dreamviews (http://www.dreamviews.com/forum.php) for some unique lucid dreaming terms like WILDing, dream guides, MILDing, astral projection, and other cool things.
The D&D 3.5 book Heroes of Horror actually has a pretty good chapter on dream adventures.
One of their most interesting points is how to accent the dream-like qualities by keeping everything fairly ordinary, except for one or two things that just makes the entire scene seem slightly off.
Quote from: The_Weave05I've actually tried to make a whole world just like this.
You should check out dreamviews (http://www.dreamviews.com/forum.php) for some unique lucid dreaming terms like WILDing, dream guides, MILDing, astral projection, and other cool things.
I checked out the website. It a few ideas I might be able to borrow. The setting has totems, which is kind of like the idea of dream guides, I guess.
@Light Dragon, it does kind of sound like that, now that you mention it.