Here's another public post from my Patreon about the development of Dream-Quest. Because it's potentially a big change in my approach to the game, I thought it'd be worthwhile to share it more widely. I'm actively soliciting comments on what I've written here and whether or not it's a fruitful way forward. Whether you leave your comments over at Patreon or below, they will be much appreciated.
The Dreamborn should be as transient as the Earthborn: sometimes the dream calls them, and when their players cannot play, they do not attend the dream. To put it plainly: When the Earthborn PC Michael Moorcock appeared in your dream, his player joined the scenario, and sought his goal of gathering the other PCs at the table in his castle, so that he could glimpse beyond the material, commercial aspects of his legacy, and relinquish control over his pending end-of-life. The players of any Dreamborn PCs - the whispering shadows who came to occupy your place at the table, seeking substance and whatever tethers to Earth you may have left when you sought Moorcock himself - have conjured themselves.
ReplyDeleteIn the next session, if Moorcock's player cannot play, then Moorcock is not asleep. If the whispering shadows' players cannot play, then they are not awake.
If they CAN play in the following session, then they pick up their goals where they left off: they can pursue them in any setting or locale. The adventure, for them, has neither changed, interrupted, nor completed.
That's the other cool aspect about your design: PCs can achieve satisfactory retirement mid-game once they have learned what the dreamlands means to them, but they don't have to stop playing. They can roll up the next inhabitant to discover something entirely else.
These rules create a game where the players can collaborate in settings like novels 19Q4 or A Secret History or Brian Catling's Hollow, or the movie They Might Be Giants.
Hollow, especially, seems especially suited to adaptation into the game, sort of the mirror in the mirror.
I hope this survives to playtest. I'd love to read its reflection.
I love the in-game explanation for player scheduling issues.
ReplyDeleteAnd the vague nature of geography in a dream. I don't know if PCs get a map. They decide they need to go to Ulthar and there is a journey and an arrival, just like in a real dream.
Keeping track of rations and supplies goes out the window.
Interesting, unique ideas. I hope you are soon able to dream about designing this game, and awaken with additional concepts.
Superb explanation! Your approach is precisely how this material should be presented - as a true dreamscape!
ReplyDeleteDo you remember the AD&D module where the party goes to a Greek -like island to explore the dreams of Oceanus in his temple?
ReplyDeleteI only played it as a PC, and didn't own it, and worse, we only played it during one session, so didn't finish it. I don't remember ever coming across it again, but it was really fun, because things progressed in weird ways and the environment would change but also had a dreamlike consistency. The tone was not dreamlands like, though nor Lovecraftian. We were basically trying to kill dream monsters and loot the god's dreams for "dream weapons and treasure" in the name of achieving a revelation that we could take back to the king (for "real weapons and treasure" presumably, but we never got that far!) It was a really different adventure though, and might be worth looking at.
The big thing I liked about it was that you actually got to come across real gods and godesses without dealing with their stats, or having to have high level characters. I think it was 4th-7th level or thereabouts. Contextually, it was everything that Deities and Demigods was not.