Neverwake - loss and coping in a surreal dream world.

[Keith]

Hi everyone.  Back in 2006, I came here with an idea for a system called Neverwake, which I was very excited about.  Shortly after, life got in the way, and I wasn't able to get involved in really any RPG gaming, so I sort of lost the spark for creating and playing.  However, now I'm back to gaming every Saturday, and Neverwake came back to mind.  I'm attempting to revise the system, and since it got some great feedback last time, I want to see what kind of ideas I can get bounced around now so maybe I can actually publish this thing.

Here's the concept: the PCs play people who, in the real world, went to sleep one night and had a collective, shared dream.  They dreamt of this magical fantasy world called Neverwake (aptly), and for the night, they're stuck here.  Time flows differently in Neverwake, so one night to us can be decades or even centuries to them in their dreamy, dreamy journey.

This band of people, still garbed in modern clothes and having no idea where they are, discover they all share a common link: they've all recently lost someone very important to them, through death, divorce, or simple distance.  Feeling intense longing and loneliness, they search around and soon discover that the person of their affection actually exists here in Neverwake, though as a fantasy figure that does not remember them.  It soon becomes an adventure of tracking down these people and protecting them from the dangers of the dream world, while simultaneously trying to cope with loss.  The characters have to deal with Neverwake's bizarre dream inhabitants, who seem to want to hurt them and those they love; and also try to stay hidden inside the dream world so they can be with those they love, attempting to never, ever wake up again.

Now, the mechanics: during character generation, the group gets together and actually creates the world of Neverwake as it exists for their group.  No two Neverwakes will be the same.  They'll invent the territories and geography, as well as the inhabitants, the politics, and other strange quirks through a point-based buying system.  This means that the game world will actually symbolically reflect the characters and the missing someone they're trying to find (and the relationship between the two).

Since it's a dream world, symbols and metaphor play a large part, and players get bonuses for creating such devices and exploiting them.  It's also important to survival: if the dream stops becoming symbolic, it turns into random, useless images, and the characters wake up (which is to Neverwake what death is in other games).

Players have a large pool of points in front of them that they all share.  They have to decide how to allocate this finite supply of resources between magic, task resolution, and general utility around Neverwake.  The higher the pool, the more calm and easier things get - however, once the pool gets smaller, disaster strikes all the characters, and even their lost love ones (the death of whom is also a surefire way to wake up from Neverwake).

Health is called Lucidity, and is a measure of how aware you are during your dream.  Low lucidity is good: you deny that this is a dream and consider it real, allowing yourself to become a part of the dream and do fantastic things (over the top stunts, powerful magic) as well as more clearly make an impact on the world.  High Lucidity is bad: max out and you wake up.  The higher your lucidity, the more you can't see the wonderful imagery of the world, and the less meaning and impact you have on things.  Low lucidity characters fight demons and help villages harvest floating gems - high lucidity characters can barely even see these things, and can neither affect nor be affected by them.

These mechanics aren't really completely fleshed out, as I'm starting from scratch pretty much, but there a starting point and I welcome any ideas for the parts I haven't tweaked yet.  I'm trying to make characters mechanically simple to make (10 minutes or less), but make background and depth very, very important and encouraged.  I want the characters to be ripe with metaphor and imagery, and the game world itself to invoke those same images through plot and setting.  Neverwake is a game of loss and coping with it, and I want that to be reflected through the task resolution system - hence the point pool.  Lose too many points and you can't do much of anything, and you have to find a way to recharge those points by doing dreamy, Neverwake-ey things (meet new and interesting people, take part in bizarre rituals, admire the landscape, etc.) which detracts overall from your goal of finding your loved one.  You spend too much time searching and you run out of points, unable to function or do much of anything.  To survive, you have to learn to focus on other things in life and accept what you can't change.

What I'm immediately thinking of is that certain encounters require a certain number of points to be overcome: want to climb this mountain?  12 points.  The player has to plead his case for using those points, which are in short supply and that the other players need, as well.  (There also needs to be some sort of competition, it seems - perhaps task resolution ties almost directly into character advancement, that way these points seem more precious).  A few shortcuts and bonuses might help, but you'll still need a lot of points.  Undertaking minor quests, tasks, and events that heavily reflect the metaphor of the characters and of Neverwake helps charge the point pool - this not only gets the PCs precious resources, but it helps define the setting, provide sidequests, and pace the story.

Possible stats could include bonus dice that you roll, and subtract the result from the necessary point cost of a task.  Or, say you want to regain points by socially interacting with Neverwake residents - you have a social dice you roll which tells you how many points you get back.

It's a game of very high, surreal fantasy - weird, weird D&D.  High magic and powerful imagery.  But the mechanics just serve to highlight the real mechanics of the game, which are finding and mining symbols and metaphors, which serve as a direct conduit for overcoming loss in one's life.  Throughout the adventure, the PCs will learn how they CAN get by in life, and things DO go on, while at the same time respecting the memory of who they lost.

So this what I have right now, a very bare bones idea.  I don't even have any specific problems, really, and a few days of brainstorming will probably deliver a more fleshed out system.  However, I know that creativity is a lot stronger when it comes from multiple sources, so I encourage anyone to chime in with rule ideas (in a very rules-light system!), questions, criticisms, or ideas for the game.  As it evolves, I'll implement, and this game will grow all the stronger because of it.  Thanks for reading, and thanks to those who help!

[Keith]

Actually, it's probably better to raise some system questions, isn't it? (So I forgot the forum rules since I was last here.  Nobody's perfect.  Don't judge me).

Specifically, I think the idea for regaining points needs to be tighter.  The current idea is that you regain them by doing things that relate to your customized dream world - you essentially stop and smell the roses and get the idea of your loss off your mind.  This helps replenish the pool, thus allowing you to do more.  However, I'm noticing a contridiction - you need lots of points so you can go find your lost love one, so you actively push them off your mind to gain more points so that you can jump right back in to going and finding them.  It doesn't make much sense.  I really need some help with this.

I was thinking, maybe the character's lost person of interest becomes an antagonist of sorts.  Not directly evil, but they are a huge distraction and the character can't concentrate whenever they're around: the mission goes to hell, lots of penalties and additional point usage just to survive, and damage to Lucidity.  Though that, too, provides a flaw: why even be concerned about these lost loved ones at all if they're such a damn nuisance?  So, I think a benefit as well as a penalty.  Say, perhaps, your character has to come into contact with them every so often, and the duration between these gaps is based on the power of a stat of some kind.  This helps promote the "subtle rivalry" between the group, because one person wants to blow points and cause point loss from the pool in order to advance their own character (perhaps visiting the loss provides some sort of experience or new abilities.)  The idea is in its infancy, but it's a little too complicated to pin down exactly.

[JoyWriter]

The loss and protection angle is an interesting one, the idea of being a guardian angel to a recently deceased person is an interesting inversion to the classic thing, but I have a slight concern that it may turn into lemmings: "No don't walk there, that paving slab's a _" I might suggest that the job of protecting them might actually not help them come to terms with their loss, as just like over-protective parents, they would always be seconds from losing them again. May I suggest a slightly stranger approach? You have said that this world falls apart as it looses significance, so perhaps they would try to keep it around to prolong the time they could spend with their lost one, the central paradox being the Taoist one that the more tightly you hold something the more it slips away.
In this case every hour spent maintaining the dream world would be time away from their loved one, and they might choose to let it fade in order to spend those moments with their full attention on them. The deeper answer to the paradox is for them to link everything to the object of their love, because if the world needs significance, then who better to supply it than the one they are doing this for. When I say love I'm not just talking romantic of course, but imagine someone trying to spend time with their father by raiding their memories of him for symbolism to link to the world around them. I think perhaps that that is more unified, but I wonder how to make a background dreamscape that matches the elevation of the theme. Parallels could be really silly, but I suppose that's as human as anything. Hmm, adult.

[Falc]

Now, the mechanics: during character generation, the group gets together and actually creates the world of Neverwake as it exists for their group.  No two Neverwakes will be the same.  They'll invent the territories and geography, as well as the inhabitants, the politics, and other strange quirks through a point-based buying system.  This means that the game world will actually symbolically reflect the characters and the missing someone they're trying to find (and the relationship between the two).

This part caught my attention as I skimmed your post. I think this doesn't fit your idea of it being a dream world. I think that, in essence, a dream should be unpredictable: every moment brings new surprises. The elements of a dream are usually familiar to us, but it's in their combinations and sequences that our fantasy just 'lets loose'.

I think that, looking at it like this, it would be better to leave the creation of the world rather superficial, a bit like a brainstorming. Allow the players to add a bunch of stuff to the world but don't let them go into detail. That should be something for the GM to weave and for the players to discover.

[joepub]

One thing you could do is force players to turn conflicts into a microcosm for their personal dilemmas.

So that mountain suddenly becomes Emily Peak, and her house is at the summit. And when you get caught in an avalanche halfway up, it turns out that it's mostly made of crumpled up love letters you sent her.

That way, you can reduce the costs of an obstacle by immersing it in the metaphor of searching for your loved one.