Adventuring in dreamland...

[Coplantor]

Well, as none of you might recall, I sometimes get inspiration for DnD stuff fro songs, anyway, I was listening to the Heart song that goes "These dreams go on, when I close my eyes, every second of the night, I live another life". That part activated the imagination process, this is probably an overly used and abused idea, unoriginal, but probably fun to play. I thought, "maybe I could tell my players to roll two different characters each, one with NPC class, and a regular character". The characters with NPC classes live in a low magic, pseudo realistic world, but they have the power to enter into other people's dreams, and once they go through the barrier of reality and get into a dream, they become the other characters. That's pretty much the basic idea, I would like to flesh it out a little bit more in order to have an actual campaign out of this.

Ideas? Recomendations?

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I did something very much like this once. I had everyone roll up a college student (a 1st level character) in d20 Modern, and then sent them on a sort of supernatural mystery.

Dream sequences played a large part...and were run in normal D&D. The dream characters began at level 10, and had been premade by me to what I felt fit each character's personality and outlook on life.

The game went over quite well. :smallbiggrin:

[Coplantor]

Well, once I thought of something similar to that, I was reading about the planescape setting and I thought that maybe, each person could have a different persona in each world they visit, and each world would use different RPGs, that idea camed to me actually, as a way to play the different games our gaming group wants to test, we have a guy who wants to run a vampire the masquerade game, aother one wants to run a cyberpunk game, some like DnD and I wanted to play GURPS.

[Fishy]

Heroes of Horror has a section on adventuring in the dreamscape- some stat things and spell things, and some more useful advice for DMs.

The key is 'disassociation.' Cause and effect don't line up the way they should. People and places don't seem like what they are. Touching a doorknob instantly places you in the middle of the next room with a closed door behind you. The world reacts in a limited way to the thoughts and emotions of whoever is currently having the dream. Staircases that are endless, until you reach the top. Time doesn't flow right. Light switches don't work.

One fun trick- When the dream starts, mention that they are in a house or building they've been in before, in the real world: "You find yourselves back in Stormguard Manor." Wait how long it takes before they realize they're in a building with a completely different layout, that doesn't even vaguely resemble the manor.

[Coplantor]

...One fun trick- When the dream starts, mention that they are in a house or building they've been in before, in the real world: "You find yourselves back in Stormguard Manor." Wait how long it takes before they realize they're in a building with a completely different layout, that doesn't even vaguely resemble the manor.

Loved the idea, must use it!
I'll check heroes of horror as soon as I can.

By the way, ideas regarding the way reality and dreams relate to each other in a campaign? Possible ideas for plots?

[Fishy]

My instinct would be to start by nailing down exactly how dream travel works. It's possible to leave it mysterious, or have multiple conflicting and incomplete explanations, but that's just how I roll. And some of the physics and metaphysics will generate plot hooks all by themselves.

Are dreams specifically in the mind? Are your PCs going into an individual's head each time they travel? What does it do to a person if someone jumps in and starts smashing their dream-furniture?

What do you need in order to enter a dream? Can you enter someone's dream without their knowledge or consent? Do you need to be physically close, do you need to know their real name, do you need nail clippings? If human beings on earth can do it, is there anything that prevents something else from jumping in from somewhere else?

Are dreams things? Can you create a chunk of dreamland that isn't specifically anyone's dream, and have everyone jump in? What do you need to nagivate the spaces between dreams and enter the one you're looking for? Are all dream-spaces connected? Can you create a dream and then project it onto someone else?

What happens when someone wakes up?

[hamishspence]

Manual of the Planes goes into this in detail- its 3.0 but updated online for 3.5.

[Lappy9000]

Your lack of Kirby,
Has shattered my hopes and dreams,
Into broken shards.
~Haiku

[hamishspence]

Maybe draw heavily from Lovecraft? A Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath might be a good source to get ideas from.

[Coplantor]

Maybe draw heavily from Lovecraft? A Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath might be a good source to get ideas from.

Nice, I like lovecraft, and it would be an intresting surprise for the players to, all of a sudden, have them roll for SAN:smallamused:

[hamishspence]

Randolph Carter didn't seem to have much of problems with the ghouls, nightgaunts, shantaks, and the Priest of He Who Is Not To Be Named. Maybe SAN rules wouldn't apply inside the dreamscape.

the quest to meet the gods is an interesting one. and being told to make them return to Earth by telling them how fun it is. And the one asking Carter to send the gods back:

"Pray you never meet me in any one of my thousand other forms. Farewell, Randolph Carter, and beware, for I am Nyarlathothep, the Crawling Chaos!"

[Wafflecart]

I have recently stolen your idea [sorry] and can not for the life of me figure out how to keep the players interested during the d20 modern portion. They are college students [also stolen, sorry], and will not be under attack by any real sort of monsters.

[Glyde]

I have recently stolen your idea [sorry] and can not for the life of me figure out how to keep the players interested during the d20 modern portion. They are college students [also stolen, sorry], and will not be under attack by any real sort of monsters.

If the character starts getting 'addicted' to the dream world, there are real world consequences. Maybe they miss a *lot* of classes. Maybe the wall between real and make-believe starts to come down for them. Then they start to go nuts and get arrested! Yaaaay

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Remember to feed milk to the cats of Ulther!

[Ravens_cry]

Any discussion of Dreamland requires mention of this haunting little number (http://xkcd.com/390/).
Good night.

[Dark Herald]

Yes, dreamland MUST have real world consequences.

Saving some braindead or comatose person.

Stopping someone's prophetic visions.

Finding out about the future.

Recovering lost memories.

Reviewing a recurring dream to unlock a secret message.

My first inclination would be to look at the wikipedia article about dreams, then follow the links. TV tropes or a Google image search are bound to help, albeit in different ways. This all reminds me of Psychonauts.

[bosssmiley]

Maybe draw heavily from Lovecraft? A Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath might be a good source to get ideas from.

Lovecraft
Neil Gaiman's Sandman series
In Nomine's Dreamlands (where the dead gods go)
Clive Barker's Abarat
That should be sufficient brainfodder to be getting on with...

[Tyrmatt]

Dreams are always fun to mess around with, as things can work any way you like. Read some of the accounts of lucid dreaming over at ld4all.com to crib some cool ideas.

And it is true. Lightswitches never work in dreams.

[JellyPooga]

Yes, dreamland MUST have real world consequences.

An interesting quirk could be that some of the antangonists in the dream-world are actually some of the protagonists of the real-world.

It'd be a fun twist to find that killing the Dreaded Beast of Bar'gleth, Scourge of the Nine Kingdoms in the dreamscape actually translated into sending your physics professor into a catatonic state and the only way to revive him is to go on a quest to the nether worlds to recover the Beasts soul and bring it to redemption...