Well the idea for this game popped into my head while I was at work today so I jotted it down. The idea for this game probably has influences from the short story The Silver Key as well as various other similar stories.

In this game characters have 2 primary statistics Imagination and Reality. In the world of this game children are all born with the ability to "imagine" or pretend. They have dreams of being knights, soldiers, chefs, astronauts, and many other things. But somewhere along the line the reality of the world sunk in and they lost the ability to dream. Many years later something has triggered the "Dreaming Mechanism" in the adult form of the child. Through these dreams the characters can explore the dream world, a world that parallels the normal world but has many differences. The world is inhabited by the fantastic and occasionally disturbing dreams of everyone in the normal world. Everything in the world is a reflection of reality in more simplistic terms. It represents the dreams, hopes, and fears of everyone. For example in this world people with vices have their vices visually represented as well as their dreams. Someone who dreams of being an astronaut will be an astronaut. Using this dream world characters are able to learn more about their real world acquaintances without them even knowing, and in some circumstances actually change the physical world. The dream world is inhabited by everyones counterpart; however only children are able to affect the physical world and remember the dreaming world. Except for the Dreamers few adults are even aware of this world. The dream world is not without its dangers; the bleak nightmares roam the dream world and may be encountered at anytime. Nightmares, much like dreams, are reflections of the physical world, unlike dreams, they reflect every lost hope, every feeling of despair, and all the other evils of life. It is the goal of the players/characters to purge the dreaming world of the nightmares (which most children avoid) in an attempt to bring peace to the waking world. Unfortunately Dream traveling can take its toll on a person in the real world, and can cause problems in daily life (As well as solve it). It is here that the Imagination and Reality statistics take effect. Real world events, such as being fired or having a close friend die, cause reality to kick in. Other events can increase reality as well, such as learning a new skill (Hard work spent tends to make people forget their dreams). The higher reality gets the better a character interacts with the real world; however if at any time reality exceeds imagination the dream world is lost forever to the dreamer and they again return to the daily routine and drudgery of adults. Likewise for every dream fulfilled or miracle that occurs in the real world the imagination score is increased.

At this point I am pretty fond of the idea of the game; however I unsure what I should do system wise. I want to include the Imagination/Reality mechanic which leads me to believe I will most likely have to build a system around that mechanic. I dont really have an ideas towards a resolution system yet but I have a ghost of a thought about using a Characters Imagination as a governing stat for various "Imagination Generes" which would get bigger the more they are used. Reality would govern real world "skills" in the same way. I also just had a thought of using a bidding type system, though I'm not sure if that would make the game a little too competitive between players or not.

What I need help with is basically the resolution system as well as tweaking/creating the Imagination/Reality mechanic into something a little more concrete than what it is right now. That's a pretty tall order, I know, so I really just want some basic Ideas on how I might do this. Of course I am happy to hear everything else you might have to say as well.

Thanks,
-Dan

You talk about Reality and Imagination increasing, but what about them falling?
Here's an idea, have a pool of Reality+Imagination, this means that once one of them goes up the other goes down, or vice versa.

I don't have much to say since there isn't much to go off from. I'd just add that I personally support Bidding Mechanics and Competition between players.

Well my original thought was to have to separate stats/pools for both imagination and Reality and when one increased the other decreased by the same amount (Much like you suggested).

I think that bidding to control what happens in a certain "scene" would work best with the idea that I had in mind. The problem I see with this is that the idea of the game is to basically solve real life issues through dreams via "dreamwalking" or whatever you want to call it. Negative issues in life would occur in the form of nightmares and the more someone entered and participated in the dream world the more they lose touch with reality (and vice versa). The issue is that if players are to collectively try and solve problems what are they competing for? Scene control is not really worth anything if you don't really earn anything from it. I suppose one way to fix this is to make one group or team of players controlling the "Nightmare" team and the other controlling the "Dream" team but this in turn leads to a problem as to why the Nightmare team is trying to create, well, nightmares.

I would like to pursue a bidding type Imagination/Reality system but I don't really know how to work competition into the setting.

You can work competition into the mechanics alone.

Also, what does winning the Narration/Scene Framing give you? That is its own reward, you get to create more of the story.

Hmmmm... yes I suppose you are right. I think I will go with bidding mechanics and try and work out something concrete. Thanks for the help.

Dan, what does your resolution system need to resolve?

The primary likely PC goal I found in your description was "eliminating nightmares".  I assume this is intended to be a central part of the gaming experience.  If so, it might be cool to find a way to compare the powers of a nightmare to strengths and weaknesses of different characters.  A nightmare of Despair might defeat a PC with high Ambition and low Faith, while it would be conquered by a PC with high Resolve or some such...  I'm not proposing a giant number of PC stats, but maybe players could choose a few Strengths and Weaknesses...

If the PCs are not spending most of their time wandering around in dreams and fighting Nightmares when they see them, what are they doing?

What type of play do you envision in the Real world?  At the moment, the relevance of the real world seems to me to be limited to expressing fallout from being a dream-adventurer...

"Eliminating Nightmares" may not be the best way to put it. The reason I say that is because that infers some kind of combat. Nightmares in this game are not sentient they are merely distorted reflections of real life. To defeat them players will need to act upon what they know from both reality and the dream world.

For Example: John's boss, Alfonse, has been acting strange lately. He is slowly withdrawing from his friends and coworkers and has not been showing up for work frequently. Since John is a dreamer he finds Alfonse in the dream world and finds him represented as a man being sucked into nothing (or whatever symbol for suicide you may choose). Now knowing, or at least suspecting what has been affecting Alfonse, John decides to do some detective work in the real world. John soon finds out that Alfonse's wife has recently left him and... etc.

So yes the real world and dream world have a kind of "Butterfly effect" going on through fallout; but it is my goal to make both worlds relevant to play.

The role of the resolution system was (when I originally posted) to address the relation between players and dream manipulation. Things like how much of a dream a character controlled, what happened when they changed a certain aspect, etc.. However I think that my design goals have changed since I have begun thinking more about the game. I have started leaning more and more towards a bidding style system so that symbolic aspects of the dream become more central to the game. I also believe that the reason I was having problems with system in beginning was because I was addressing the game from the wrong angle (via resolution) when the game really needed to be looked at in a more story driven way.

At this point I have not really put much thought into character statistics. Though your ideas have given me the idea of using "modifiers" that limit the number of tokens a character/player may bid in certain circumstances.

Another thought I have recently had was splitting a character between to different players. One who controls Reality and another Dream. I am unsure if this would become a time management issue or not though.

Thanks for your Input, it has forced me to broaden my thoughts on the game.

-Dan

Hi Dan,

Your prologue sounds very similar to the game I've been working on. Outside is about children who still have their powers of imagination. I've split things up similarly to what you are talking about also between reality and imagination, including losing imagination by the gaining of too much reality. I'm not trying to claim any turf here, this isn't an unusual way to look at this type of material. I am just explaining my interest. You are doing many things in the same way but you are focusing on a different part of life than I am. This is probably my worst whoring, but you should look at it. You can find it by following the link in my signature. Take anything you can use. If anything doesn't make sense since it's a work in progress feel free to PM me about it.

I also wonder if you have ever read the comic Nightmask? It was part of Marvels, "New Universe" setting, which they printed around 1985-86 to like 1988. None of those comics were very popular (I think only I liked them) so they would be cheap to acquire, but hard to find. Anyway to get to the point, Nightmask had the power to enter Dreams much like what you use in your example, and there maybe some interesting things to use from that series that not a lot of people are familiar with. Also the movie Dreamscape would be another one that treads similar territory.

You might find Keith Blockers two games as useful inspiration; Chimera,  Neverwake, and Neverwake.

Also since I'm sending you into some old threads you don't want to post in them as that is considered bad form here. If you already knew that-- then just overlook these last two sentences.

Thanks for the links, I will be sure to check them out; especially your game as it seems we have some pretty similar ideas.

I have never even heard of Nightmask, my inspirations come from H.P. Lovecraft's short story The Silver Key, which is about an adult reclaiming his childhood dreams, and a japanese comic called Homunculus which is about a man who is trepanned and begins to see manifistations of peoples fears and hopes.

-Dan