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Sticks
2017-12-08, 06:28 AM
I am lying awake after finishing a dream that might be some kind of spiritual journey for myself. Of course, being a true GM at heart, I immediately thought ‘how can I use this in a game setting’? I intend this thread to be a place where we can post our dreams, at least the ones that might make for a good game session. Also, yes, I had a cold at the time, took Nicholas, and yes, the fever broke during the dream.

For at least a decade, I have had a reoccurring nightmare. I travel down a long corridor, an earthen passageway that has always been below somewhere important in my life. It has existed below my parent’s house, my dorm in college, my work, and the home I have with my Girlfriend today. The passage is narrow, but level. After a time, long enough that if I look back, I cannot see stairs or the last bend, just more passage going on to darkness, it turns right. I follow the turn, and about a dozen feet ahead, there is an opening on my left, and a dozen feet beyond that, another wall, and a left-turn. I feel a sense of dread about the first opening. I am terrified to approach, but I must. I reach the opening and can’t help but look in. About ten feet from me, the opening, as wide as the passage, widens further into a room. In that room is a raised mound of earth or stone, and on it is a narrow stone sarcophagus. The feeling of dread intensifies as I look at it, for there is an overwhelming sense of malice coming from that sarcophagus.

I turn and walk, if I run, I will be caught, by what I do not know, and follow the further left turn. This passage is identical to the one I followed to get here, save that on the left wall is a single window-like opening into the sarcophagus room. If I look at the sarcophagus, I will be caught, but on one occasion, I looked past it, and saw another opening, on the other side of where I knew the sarcophagus to be. I walk ahead, find a door and open it. It opens onto whatever the dream might be about, a maze-like library, a sunny day, a boring day at work, whatever it is, I had to pass through the passage to get there. I have had that nightmare almost every other night for a decade.

EccentricCircle
2017-12-08, 06:37 AM
I once had a series of dreams during the same night. It involved trying to find a weird, spiky, amulet. There was a distinct map of the branches of a jungle river, which I was able to scrawl in my notebook before going to sleep again. I then had visions of a huge obsidian obelisk towering over the jungle, and trying to assemble a strange seven part key which would guide the way to some long lost ruin. I was certain that I had to get there before someone else did, and awakened *something* in the jungle's heart.

I probably should have grabbed my exploring hat and rushed off to the amazon immediately... but since I'm a GM, and not Indiana Jones, or the protagonist of an HP Lovecraft story, I instead wrote it all down and will use the sketches and ideas when I finally get around to running the game about the Yuan Ti trying to find the lost city of gold from whence they game...

Sticks
2017-12-08, 06:43 AM
Tonight, I had a new dream. A body had been found in a river. I did not know the river, but it seemed familiar. I walked to its banks. There were some dumpsters behind a cinder lock building. The police had come and gone. The body belonged to a young boy, about fourteen years old. His name, history and cause of death were known. It was a wrongful death, and the police were looking for his killer. She was a girl not much older than him, it had been an accident, but she had run after trying to hide his body. That isn’t important to the dream though.

By that river, behind the dumpsters, I find his body. He is wrapped in plastic sheeting like a funeral shroud, but his face is visible. His skin is naturally pale, he has red hair and freckles. I feel it is wrong for him to lie here, alone, so I pick him up and carry him (for those who don’t know me, dead bodies are probably my biggest fear). I carry him along the river, only thinking what a shame it is that he ended up like this. I don’t know him, but he seems familiar, like I know all about him so intimately that I don’t need to recall specific details. I find a wide part of the creek, and walk down to it with him. Somehow in this time, he has decayed in my arms. I am covered in the stench of death, black grease is running down my arms. I take the skeleton into the water, and the skull begins to slough off. I catch it before it sinks, and spot a coin in the water. I put the coin in the skull’s mouth, place it back on the body, and find a floating board. I lay the body on the board, and give it a gentle push before turning away. I glance back, and turn to look, because the sarcophagus is there, on the board. I am not afraid. This time. I watch it float down the river, before it fades away. A hot rain begins to fall, washing away the grease. I wake up.

I expect next time, the sarcophagus will not be there in the passage.

tensai_oni
2017-12-08, 08:51 PM
I used many of my dreams as inspiration for games. Either as a concept to run as a GM, or just for a character.

Keyword here being "inspiration". Dreams show me an interesting character, plot point, sometimes even a scene with a specific mood, that I want to recreate. But recreating the whole dream without major changes would be a bad idea, not only because dreams often have bizarre moon logic that doesn't make sense.

I found that my mind is much more emotional when asleep, and easily finds dream scenes to be awesome and/or emotionally touching when they seem much less so after waking up and recalling what happened.

JBPuffin
2017-12-09, 02:24 PM
I’ve had some interesting dreams in my day, but nothing fitting for a tabletop game. There was one I managed to turn into a Monsters and Other Childish Things character, with the monster being a woman with a cannon-arm. Fun times.