[Backwards Lucidity] Dream Time Travel

[Arpie]

I was tossing around the idea of a dream time travel game. Based on feedback from my group, it would meet several criteria for what they're currently looking for:
There would be a sense of exploration (forget the forge term, I mean "exploration" when I say exploration. Rummaging around an imaginary landscape and making discoveries that affect you as much as your arrival affects them.) Some fantasy elements and possibilities for courtly/historical intrigue and romance also seem available.

The idea is that the players are all Special People (they have minor psychic talents or a dimple in the right spot or something - that's not really important) who can create a gestalt lucid dream that actually affects history. But they must affect history in a dream state, so it isn't real history or real time travel, because you're as likely to meet Leonardo da Vinci in a flying machine or a group of neoclassic fairies as you are to meet a brutal thug of the Medicis or, say, Albertus Magnus, despite the huge gap in years which may separate famous or fictional characters.

Here's the game structure, with notes on help I'd like to provide for players like me and my group(s):

1. Recruitment
*Color: Specially-"gifted" people are invited to participate in the local college's dream projection workshop. They may or may not know anything about the timeslip connection.*
Each player thinks of a name for a modern-day schmoe (and one interesting detail about that person that "everybody knows.")
- some sort of quick name generator would help (fortunately, I've got one of those)
- a list of common details (I'm workin' on it.)

2. Bitch Session
*Color: The workshop is housed in the cafeteria for, say, the Humanities building of the State College campus, with some beds set up in the back and cheap refreshments off to the side. Grad students in white coats potter around flashing Zener cards and asking pointed questions while the gifted lounge between tests.* (Or maybe something else would go better, but I kind of like the college project angle.)
Each player, in turn, lists a "woe" for their new persona, going around the table talking in character.

Players can duck out at any time by going for some "coffee and donuts" or "more tests" at any time, but the player who lists the most woes becomes the conduit for this game.

3. Lucidity Training
*Certain of these specially-gifted individuals are called back for a daring experiment in dream travel. They are taught how to control their dreams and told they will experience a past era and will be trying to leave some evidence that archaeological teams can later extract. Each dreamer concentrates on "dreamsigns" - things that wouldn't make sense in the real world, things that could only exist in a dream - that will clue them in when asleep and therefore allow them to take control while in the dream state.*
The conduit chooses the era to be visited (but can tell the others anything he or she likes) and writes it (secretly) on, say, a 3x5 card.

Then, each of the players contributes one "dreamsign" of the era (secret to everyone but the conduit) - it can be anything, but something that the conduit thinks doesn't belong IN THE ERA THEY'LL ACTUALLY BE VISITING creates quantum whatever. Sorry about the capitals.

The conduit chooses a schema (story formula or dream structure or something - a sort of backstory) and makes notes on working in the dreamsigns while the players compare their list of woes to the conduit's own.

Or maybe the dreamsigns get put in a pile to be turned over randomly. Maybe each player contributes more than one dreamsign. I'd like to keep the dreamsign idea.

MATH: Subtract your own number of woes from the number of woes the conduit has. That's how many dream powers you get.
- provide list of possible dream powers and instructions on creating your own
(Dream powers are like super powers or major skill sets, but they require bizarre behavior to active: like kicking your legs real hard to become weightless or pulling modern technology out of thin air that only lasts as long as you hold your breath or wearing a surgical mask in Just The Right Way and made from anything handy to perform medical miracles.)
- provide list of dream structures
(I can modify a couple plot generators)

4. Sleep Mission
The players discuss what kind of archaeological evidence they'd like to leave and how it'll be retreived. Then they pretend to go to sleep.

5. Lucidity Check
The conduit describes the intiial scenery of the dream and the players describe how they manifest in it. They can look any way they want.

If the conduit has been holding information back from them, they may be in for a shock.

6. The Land of Unreason
*Another name for fairyland*
The players try and accomplish their mission.
Actions they take earn them effects tokens to be spent when they awaken, but shifts in history and narratively inconvenient behavior earn the conduit effects tokens which, when spent upon waking, will cause... problems.
Players may invoke each of their woes to introduce elements to the dream, as can the conduit. The conduit can introduce any of the focal points at any time for any reason (for free.)
Each woe can only be invoked once per dream
EXAMPLE: A player invokes his "wronged by my boss who always makes me work overtime" woe to introduce a means of escape from the slave galley: "Hey! That guy pounding the drum over there looks just like my a**hole boss! I know his weak spot!"
Your woes also work like "Movieness" - meaning that if players split up, the dream focuses on the group with the most cumulative woes. The more uninvoked woes you have, the more things go in your favor, etc.
Perhaps some sort of dice mechanic?

Dream powers are used to react to elements in the dream or resolve tasks. They are invoked on a cumulative basis, bringing each dream power into play to add leverage to what you're trying to do.
If you over do it or under do it, the conduit will earn additional effects tokens.
You can roll dice to add an element of chaos. But that earns additional effects tokens for the conduit.
Well, that's the idea right now, anyway. It's not set in stone.

I'm not sure how players can earn effects tokens, yet. Need help with that.
I'd rather not have THAT part up to the conduit. At least, not entirely.

IMPORTANT: During the dream, you can't die. You can wake up whenever you want (but, if you do, you're out of the dream. History is never the same twice.)

7. Waking
Once all the players have decided to wake up, everyone spends their effects tokens to describe changes in the waking world and to their characters.

The conduit can introduce nasty plot twists and new problems, even kill off characters, with his or her effects tokens - but it only takes one effects token (spent by any player) to rescue another player or survive yourself. (important)

Okay, that's it.

PS. Anyone who mentions "Butterfly Effect" or "Donnie Darko" earns 5 demerits.

[Arpie]

What? Too long? Requires too much work? Got the wrong end of the stick? No one is even bringing up how great Dogs in the Vineyard or PrimeTime Adventures or Capes would handle this? No entreaties to use your favourite task resolution mechanic or to list my real name? Come on guys! You're letting the side down, here!

[Colin Fredericks]

Sounds like an interesting game. Rather than mentioning either of those things that will get me demerits, I'm going to mention the time-travel-through-dreams sections of GURPS: Time Travel (the old yellow book with the cyborg fighting a triceratops on the front) and Continuum (the book with the people holding together a clock with bleeding hands). Both may be useful to give some inspiration.

I think a sample of play might be very useful here; this is a little abstract for me right now. Are the "woes" things that are wrong with the characters (if so, mentally or physically?), or just crappy things that happened in their life recently? Tokens seem to affect the real world, but the real world seems to enter into this dream game relatively little - do you intend some alternation in play between dreaming history and real-world interaction?

--Colin Fredericks

[TheTris]

I'm looking forwards to seeing how this works out, but I'm not sure I have any useful comments other than that...

[Nathan P.]

I think this a cool twist on the genre. And I also would like to see an example of how you see play going.

Are you thinking of this as a stand-alone game, or as something that could be attached to another game? I ask because I really dig the idea of what you do in the dream (when you can do anything, basically) giving you currency to spend in the "real world" afterwards. From your writeup, it looks like thats basically a narrative bit at the end (I spend my tokens to make it that FDR is still secretely alive and running the government from an underground complex). Personally, I'd be really interested in exploring the connexions between what happens in the dream and subsequent changes in history/reality. Of course, its your game, but its a thought.

It also looks like the conduit gets the lions share of the mechanical attention, here. Which is fine, but I think I'd be bummed if I wasn't the conduit. Another thought that comes to me is a troupe-style kind of play, where each player plays a conduit with an attendent haze of lesser characters, and he can use the woes of the lesser characters in addition to his own. Or something.

The problem I see here is that there's a wierd combination between adverserial and collaborative play. That is, whoever can list the most woes becomes the conduit, so thats just an imagination contest. Then the conduit is encouraged to hide the details of the mission from the other characters, but then they're expected to cooperate on the mission "just cuz." The conduit also has explicit powers to create plot twists and kill off characters, while the others don't.

I'm not saying you need to be totally one or the other, but if you want to really get into the tensions between the conduit and the other characters, that needs to be something to mindfully focus on. Right now, if the conduit wants to, he has the resources and mechanical powers to walk all over the other characters, is how it looks to me.

I hope that helps.

[Zach]

Or maybe the dreamsigns get put in a pile to be turned over randomly. Maybe each player contributes more than one dreamsign. I'd like to keep the dreamsign idea.

I'm not sure how players can earn effects tokens, yet. Need help with that.
I'd rather not have THAT part up to the conduit. At least, not entirely.

If the players "mess up" history, the conduit gets to wreck havok on the present.
The players get bonuses by dealing with their present issues through sublimation.

How about if the other non-conduit players feel that a player uses his woe in a manner that would actually heal his or her wounded psyche/self-worth in the real world, they can toss him an effect point.

The source of these points would be a pool that each player has at the start of the story. It contains an arbitrary number of effect points that can only be assigned to other players. In this set-up, there's no reason beyond pettiness why the group as a whole wouldn't end up with the same number of effect points awarded each session. The dreamer with the most would fluctuate, however, encouraging everyone to want to be "that guy."

[Arpie]

If the players "mess up" history, the conduit gets to wreck havok on the present.
The players get bonuses by dealing with their present issues through sublimation.

How about if the other non-conduit players feel that a player uses his woe in a manner that would actually heal his or her wounded psyche/self-worth in the real world, they can toss him an effect point.

The source of these points would be a pool that each player has at the start of the story. It contains an arbitrary number of effect points that can only be assigned to other players. In this set-up, there's no reason beyond pettiness why the group as a whole wouldn't end up with the same number of effect points awarded each session. The dreamer with the most would fluctuate, however, encouraging everyone to want to be "that guy."

Oops. I didn't think anyone was interested enough in this to respond. I'm only checking on the forge about one day a week, lately. Well, okay, I'll try to deal with the bulk of the comments in this one statement.

Zach
You've pretty much stated where I'm having the most trouble. Your idea of a shared point pool reminds me most of X-Crawl right now, which isn't a bad idea (and I'm sure it has other sources which escape me at the moment.)

Mostly, I'm trying to find a way to engage players during the set-up. That's why I've got the competitive listing of woes. Which might not be such a good idea, but it's the first thing that came to mind (actually it didn't work out so well in an alpha run this weekend.)

I'm trying to hit on some simple mechanic that acts as an icebreaker (I refuse to use the term "kicker" ) and has enough competition in it to make the players I usually deal with (board gamers and old schoolers who want to try new stuff) sit up and take notice.

Colin
- Yeah. I like GURPS Time Travel. One of the first supplements I ever bought with my own hard-earned cash. The Taduki-inspired scenario, as you may have guessed, inspired the initial outing in this arena, but, then again, so did the movie "VIBES." Inspired is a long way from this presentation, I suspect. Continuum looked so fascinating, but the rather literate group I had at the time simply could not get it to fly.

Specifically WOES are meant to be something like this:
List something that your dreamer is worried about or which is harming you (or has recently harmed you.)
This can be something that left a scar, something that's on-going or even something petty that no one else would ever take seriously. For instance, a favorite woe is the recent violent death of a loved one. An oppressive boss, a dead end job, an addiction or even abusive parents often show up. What kind of problem (in the here and now) does your dreamer need to work through?

Nathan
- Yeah. The Conduit is pretty much the GM.
My hope was that by framing the GM with world building at the outset and the conclusion of the game, I could offset the GM's tremendous power.

Also, by putting shackles on the reality-based parts of the game (the prep phase before the dream begins and the consequences phase after the dream ends) I might be able to give the Conduit free reign to make up interesting encounters (giving the players, in turn, something to explore) while balancing out the unfairness inherent in this style of Roleplaying.

So, it's like, there's a competitive set-up part, then you earn points for the finale by goofing around in the imaginative part.

It's still too loose.