The Strangest Dream

[electricpaladin]

The Strangest Dream

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The Three Questions

What is your game about?

At first, I thought this game was about dreams. But really, The Strangest Dream is about magic. Not stage magic, or even wizard's magic, but the transformative magic of the liminal, of the dreamlike. It's dangerous and it's sexy and it's ephemeral, and it can destroy you. Everyone longs for the experiences that make life more than just life and remind us that we are more than just flesh. Some people take drugs, others fall in love; some people enjoy extreme sports, others read fantasy novels, but really we're all looking for the same thing. For most of us, the real is easy to find and the magical is something we have to look for.

How does your game do this?

The Strangest Dream explores these themes by turning expectations upside down. You play an ordinary person's dreaming self, having strange adventures in the collective human unconscious, which is where we go when we dream. In this dream world, you are not yourself, but a weird amalgam of your waking personality and your subconscious impulses, which manifest as personality traits, special abilities, and items of power. Imagine a combination of H.P. Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, "What Dreams May Come," and "eXisTence."

Your character has to balance their dreaming and waking traits. The dream is magical and wonderful, but also dangerous. If you fall too deeply asleep, you might find yourself at the mercy of the worst the dream can throw at you – and if your adventures have taken you deep enough into the dream, you might find something that can threaten your waking life as well. If you wake up, well, the dream is over... until the next time you sleep.

What behaviors does your game reward and punish?

A player is rewarded for trying to find her character's unique balance between waking and dreaming. A player is rewarded for playing along with the dreamlike feel of the game and punished for resisting it. Narrative control over the dream and a trait called "Lucidity" are the currency of the game – to get narrative control, you usually need to gain Lucidity, but gaining Lucidity puts you closer and closer to waking up and falling out of the game.

Character

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Every character has two sets of Aspects: Waking Aspects and Dreaming Aspects. Both your Waking and your Dreaming Aspects reflect parts of your personality and identity. In the waking world, you wear your Waking Aspects on your sleeve and keep your Dreaming Aspects hidden in your heart. Some good examples of Waking Aspects might be: Good with Numbers, Fiery Temper, Family Mom, or Soccer Dad. Dreaming Aspects are much less coherent and much more dreamlike, but they all have concrete reflections in the character's dream self. A character with the Aspect "Exiled Prince of the Kingdom of Always Raining" might have wet hair and a melancholy demeanor. The bearer of the "Parasol of Summer Sunshine" might carry a glowing ornate parasol everywhere she goes. Your character receives four Dreaming Aspects and four Waking Aspects.

The Strangest Dream kidnaps Aspects from games like Spirit of the Century and Houses of the Blooded. Each of your Dreaming Aspects has an Invoke and a Compel; each of your Waking Aspects has an Invoke and an Imperative.

From a character perspective, an Invoke is a way your character can assert his identity on the mutable dream-world around him. A Compel is a way that his dream-self's nonlinear nature asserts itself over his behavior, and an Imperative is a way your character can wake himself up a little.

In The Strangest Dream, Compels work much like they do in Houses of the Blooded. It is a situation in which the GM or another player might offer you a point of Dreaming to act out a side of one of your Aspects that might be problematic for you. If you accept, you gain a point of Dreaming (or more) and probably land your character in trouble. The only way to refuse is to spend a point of Dreaming and gain a point of Lucidity (more on that later). Imperatives are like wimpy Compels. They can only be activated by the player, intentionally. Each Imperative is a way you can willingly have your character act that converts a point of Dreaming into a point of Lucidity. Even though Lucidity is dangerous and can put you out of the game for a while, it's sometimes nice to have more of it, as you will see shortly.

Invokes work a little differently than they do in the Fate system. The Invoke of a Dreaming Aspect lets you make a roll to influence the world around you in a magical way at the cost of a point of Dreaming and a die roll. The Invoke of a Waking Aspect lets you arbitrarily alter the world – without a roll – but has the cost of adding a point of Lucidity. Waking Aspects are more powerful, but they bring you closer to waking up, while Dreaming Aspects might fail and only cost a little of your energy. On the other hand, there are reasons you might want lots of Lucidity.

To use some of the examples from above, the Dreaming Aspect "Parasol of Summer Sunshine" might have the Invoke "shed light" and the Compel "illogical cheerfulness." The Waking Aspect "Good with Numbers" might have the Invoke "determine the numbers of things" and the Imperative "count things." A character with both of these Aspects could...

Spend a point of Dreaming to add a bonus to any roll that would shed light on the dreaming world. This is intentionally just a little vague. You might decide to use this to cause your parasol to glow with a bright, gentle light, or you might decide that the light of your parasol helps solve a mystery. That's the way dreams work.

Be offered a point of Dreaming to act in an illogically cheerful way, dancing or humming to yourself, even if it gets you in trouble. Refusing this offer costs of one point of Dreaming and causes her to gain one point of Lucidity.

Gain a point of Lucidity to determine how many of anything there is in the world around her, without a roll.

Spend some time counting things to turn a point of Dreaming into a point of Lucidity.

What's up with Dreaming and Lucidity?

Dreaming represents your character's connection to the primordial dream in which the game takes place. It's a simple track of energy your character can use to influence the world around her. When you are out of Dreaming, you can no longer use your Dreaming Aspects to change the dream, and you have to rely on your ordinary traits and quick wits. You get Dreaming points back by going along with the weirdness of the dream, as reflected by your character's Dreaming Aspects' Compels.

Lucidity, on the other hand, represents how awake your character is. Your character starts each night with zero Lucidity, but if your Lucidity ever reaches ten, he wakes up, and that's it until tomorrow night (a good GM will find something else for you to do, like playing NPCs) (also, it's possible to get stuck so deep in the dreaming world that even reaching ten Lucidity can't wake you up – this is very bad and means something very dramatic is about to happen, it also means your character is in danger of dying for real).

On the other hand, every dreamer has a "sweet spot" on the Lucidity track, a place where he feels most comfortable dreaming. There are three such sweet spots: Near Waking, Full Sleeping, and Deep Dreaming. Near Waking is all the way near the end of the Lucidity track. At this stage, you are mere points away from waking up, but the ability to refuse Compels left and right and indulge in your Imperatives whenever you can makes this sweet spot the easiest to intentionally reach. Near Waking is also the smallest of the sweet spots; the easiest to reach, but the hardest to stay in. Deep Dreaming is where every character starts each night, and it's the largest of the sweet spots, but as your character gets Lucidity, you will eventually find yourself no longer in your strongest place. Full Sleeping is right in the middle. This sweet spot is of moderate size, in the middle of the track, and easier to reach that Near Waking, but harder to stay in than Deep Dreaming.

While you are in your sweet spot, you gain a bonus to your Traits (see below) which makes it easier to act without relying on your Aspects. The sweet spots correspond to different personality types. Deep Dreamers are fanciful, imaginative sorts and Near Wakers are more practical and realistic. Full Sleepers are in between. The sweet spots also correspond to the three strata of the dreaming world (but the setting still needs lots of work). If the level of the dream world you are in meshes with your level of Lucidity, you get a bonus to your traits.

Finally, every character has four Traits: Feeling, Knowing, Seeing, and Wanting. Feeling is your character's emotional capacity, and it helps you with social rolls in the dream world. Knowing is your character's intellectual capacity, and it helps you with mental rolls. Seeing is your character's openness to input, and it helps with perceptive rolls. Finally, Wanting is the strength of your character's desires, and it helps with physical rolls, especially violent ones. Whenever your character tries to do something that transforms the dream with sheer imagination, it relies on his Aspects, but if your character wants to do something from inside the rules of the dream, as it is presented to you, you get to use your Traits.

There is no damage in this game, because everyone knows you can't die in your dream. Instead, you get temporary Aspects like "ensorcelled," "trapped in a cage," or "limbs cut off." Sometimes, loosing a die roll can give you these Aspects. If they are bad, temporary Aspects have a Compel, but acting in accordance to the Compel doesn't get you any Dreaming points – it just gives you Lucidity. If they are good, temporary Aspects have an Invoke that works just like normal: "magical flaming sword" or "friendship of the flying goldfish." Some have both. The only way to get rid of these Aspects (if you want to) is to eliminate them within the logic of the dream. Or, of course, wake up and go back to sleep. Assuming you aren't so deep in the dream that waking up is impossible.

System

This is the part that's missing.

Setting

More soon.

[chronoplasm]

I like it so far.

How do players interact in this game?
When you are in your dream, are the other player characters there too, in the dream world? Can player characters interact while they are in the dream world?

What happens if one character is dreaming while another character is awake?