Lost in the Dream.

The characters are trapped or stuck in their dream. They are all sharing a dream and they can’t get out until they unravel the dream and discover what it’s about.

The inspiration comes from how dreams are pictured in literature. In the Sandman graphic novels, Morpheus, Lords of Dreams controls the Dreaming. All dreams happen within the Dreaming. The Dreaming is a fluid place, in which the world is always shifting and growing to meet the needs, wants and desires of the people in the dream.

My rough outlines for the mechanics are as such:

Select a Tone: The players and the GM decide what tone they want to game and dream to have. Is this a funny dream? A light, sunny dream? Or a dark nightmare? The tone is the guideline for what traits you create.

Character Creation: Each play makes a list of (say 5) traits of their character. These are short, simple descriptions of things that are important to the character and that fit with the tone. These are written with impute from other players. You don’t want “I'm scared the floors will all go away” and “Fear of being knifed by my father” in the same game.

Dream Creation: The GM then takes the five traits from each character and secretly selects one from each list. This list is then used to create the dream. This dream is the game world that the characters are going to be exploring.

Resolving the Dream/The Game: The goal of the characters is to get out of the dream. They do this by discovering what the dream is about and unraveling/resolving the dream. The characters do this by figuring out which of their traits the dream world is based on. When they think they have it figured out, they bid that trait. If they are correct, and that trait is being used to create the dream, then that part of the dream is over and doesn’t exist anymore. (They have figured out it’s a dream and thus has no power over them? Not sure about the details yet.) If they’re wrong, and the trait they bid is NOT part of the dream world, they lose the use of that trait for the rest of the game.

End Game: The game and the dream end when all the traits used to describe the dream have been discovered. At this point all the characters wake up.

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So, problems and possible solutions:

There is no real consequence of failure. If you fail, you stay in the dream, but that’s not a consequence, that’s just failing. There is nothing to drive the characters onward.

I’m thinking about making all the character have one trait in common. This shared trait is then automatically part of the dream and it’s the bad thing they need to defeat to get out. All the other traits describing the dream world need to be dealt with before you can get to the shared trait. This shared trait is also why they are all in the same dream. It should also be something bad, that they are scared of or afraid. Not sure how this is actually going to work.

Also, are the conflicts to determine what traits are used to describe the dream the only conflicts? I say no, because otherwise it gets boring pretty quick. What are these conflicts about and what makes them important? How are they resolved? Or characters traits ranked, or are they just there to be called on or used?

One suggestion so far has been to allow characters, when biding their trait and confronting parts of the dream, instead of defeating that part of the dream, they can choose to make peace with it. Instead of just fighting it, it no longer becomes a threat to the character.

Also, as far as color goes, the game is set in a dream. If you wish it, up is down and black is white and it all makes sense. Doors that lead where they shouldn't, people showing up then disappearing , all kinds of random stuff. But because it's a dream, it all makes sense. As I said to a friend, less D&D, more Alice in Wonderland.

More questions about the game, answers to any of the questions I asked and just general impute would all rock very much!

--Victor

Hi Victor,

I'd like to hear a little more on what "bidding" entails.  Describe the process involved -- is it simply a "guess" on the player's part? or is it something else?

Cheers,
Darcy

You could do something GM-free and competitive... players take turns framing weird dream scenes to confound the other players' characters, accumulating Wakeful points (or something) measuring how close they are to waking up... points can be wagered on the outcome of these scenes, and figuring out the other characters' foibles and fears lets you frame scenes that exploit them.

The winner is the one who reaches a certain threshold of Wakefulness.  They wake up, and everyone else vanishes- they were only part of the winner's dream all along.

-Ben

Concept-wise, that's almost identical to my game 'DreamCatcher' except that in my game it's other peoples' dreams that you're tasked with solving.

Ash

Sane wrote:
Concept-wise, that's almost identical to my game 'DreamCatcher' except that in my game it's other peoples' dreams that you're tasked with solving.

Ash

TheLHF wrote: If you feel that it's too close to DreamCatcher, let me know. I definitely don't want to write a game that's already been done.