Ideas for Plane of Dreams?

[fyida]

Hi guys!

I am a kinda new DM and I am looking for some ideas on the Plane of Dreams.

Context (homebrew content alert:)
My team of 4 characters has just purged a cursed house and they touched an odd, many-faced wooden statue in the dungeon. Technically, 2 characters knocked the statue over that broke into pieces and suddenly a rune appeared on their forehead.
Next day they woke up to that all of their stuff is gone (except their clothes and their main weapon) and they are in a strange land, where trees are bleeding, golem-like intelligent creatures are roaming freely, mental traps are trying to convince them to do things, the perspectives are different (what is far away, seems huge, what is close to them, seems small), etc.
They found out that they are on the Plane of Dreams, and those 2 players who got a mark on their head are "blessed" by the god of this plane (god of prophecies, left-handed people, fortune-telling, lucid dreaming, orphans and outcasts) and they are sent here to cleanse the land of the dreams.

Quest:
The Plane of Dreams is corrupted because a powerful creature from another plane is trying to invade it and feast on the minds and dreams of the sleeping humans. As long as the plane is corrupted, people can't wake up normally, they are stuck here (and their body is in coma). The creature needs 3 things to materialize fully on the plane: 1 host, 1 sacrifice, 1 altar. The players need to find these things and neutralize them (for example find and wake up the mage that the host wants to sacrifice, so she/he disappears from the plane)

If you have already played/designed a similar game, how did you do it? I have some ideas but as I said, I am a beginner so I am thankful for every piece of advice :)

[DeadMech]

Not dnd but I did make a campaign set predominately in the dreams of the characters.

Dreams can have varying levels of strangeness to them often time and space are twisted. People see familiar locations that just blend into one another in unnatural ways, that are perfectly acceptable to a typical unconscious dreamer. A coffee shop might have 2 walls missing opening out into the bottom of a canyon with a haunted house built into a cliff wall. Time will pass inexplicably. You might get into a vehicle and immediately get out again someplace else entirely.

You might have the cursed party members unable to wake up but their close friends, the other party members joining into their shared dreamscape temporarily when they too go to bed.

You might pull locations from individual party member's backstories or from previous adventures. Good times, bad, depending what sort of atmosphere you are going for. My game was set in a mental hospital who's patients were pulled into a shared dream every night by a psychic being treated for severe hallucinations who thought she was becoming a vessal for an lovecrafting eldergod. So mine was skewing a bit more dark and edgy than my typical games.

Nice thing about dreams is that mostly you wake up from them when they get awful enough, so there is not real consequence for failure or for running into a challenge that's too tough, you just have to try to accomplish your goal in the dreamscape again the next night. Your uncursed players might simply wake up when they die. Or if you are using sanity rules they would also wake up if anything disturbing enough were to occur. The comatose players once abandoned by the rest of the party in those fashions would just get stuck in the dreamscape.

But perhaps clues can be discovered in the dreamscape that the awakening half of the party can use to track down things in the real world. Meeting a dreaming npc in the dreamscape might reveal the hiding location of their spare keys to their office in reality or a password you need to get into their stuff. Or the existance of a hidden passageway, completely exposed in the dreamscape but hidden behind a bookshelf or a tapestry in the waking world.

The cursed players being stuck there means when they "die" or go insane it's probably a fine time to just pop them somewhere and somewhen else. Time and space seperating them from the uncursed dreamers until the next night. Perhaps stuck in some particular personal memories until their friends come and get them again. Normally I'd try not to split the party like this but it's already happened so might as well make the best of it. Maybe give them 5-10 minutes to relive some personal history after the remaining party has dealt with whatever combat or puzzles or the like you are putting them through. Maybe give them a suggestion like "You're 5 years old and it's your birthday, what happened." You know so you can get some characterization out of it. Feel free when it's time to move on to the rest of the party to interrupt them and have some event they described loop and begin again as you fade back to the other players.

[Wildarm]

I did a short stint in the plane of dreams for my campaign recently. Modeled it a bit on Tel'aran'rhiod from Wheel of Time series.

https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Tel%27aran%27rhiod

Most people only reach the plane very shallowly but some are true dreamers or specially trained and can be conscious of their actions there and actively manipulate the dream world. Real dangers exist if you do that and there are powerful entities that are drawn to people like that. Magic items and spells can force people deeper into the plane of dreams. Sometimes without being aware. Look at spells like Dream for ideas and build on that.

Mechanically, once there were in the plane of dreams and aware, I had people made a Wis/Int/Cha check to try and manipulate the world. Small changes such as appearance or scenery were easy. Affecting others or attacking others was harder. Changing your form into something more powerful was also harder. A player did manage to hold onto the form of a dragon for a turn or two though which was pretty cool. Another player made slayer arrows keyed to the monster they were fighting. Treat the effect just like concentration and have fun with it.

[Composer99]

I can't speak for anyone else, but my dreams start off with lots of vivid, concrete detail, and get increasingly vague and... fuzzy, for lack of a better term, as they go on.

That's something you can play off of: a contrast between sharply defined detail and a sort of indistinct, hazy almost forgetfulness.

Also, the hazards and hostile creatures the PCs encounter should reflect things the characters are afraid of - if you know what those are. Deep down fears.

[Bohandas]

Recommended reading

Weird Forest Encounters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511604-quot-Weird-forest-quot-encounters)
Weird Races and Strange Places (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545888-Weird-Races-and-Strange-Places)
Ideas for a Non-Euclidean Dungeon (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?538845-Ideas-for-a-non-Euclidean-dungeon)
Non-Euclidean Maps (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?535793-Non-Euclidean-maps)
Making A Scenario Dreamlike (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?557039-Making-a-scenario-dreamlike)
Modern Ravenloft Brainstormig (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?500902-Modern-Ravenloft-Brainstorming)
1001 Strange Plot Hooks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?195437-1001-Strange-Plot-Hooks)
Surreal Worlds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?524558-Surreal-Worlds)
Bizarre Encounters Needed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?587305-Bizarre-Encounters-Needed)
Looking For Cool Ideas of Surreal Imagery (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560799-Looking-for-cool-ideas-of-surreal-imagery)
Weird Other Dimensions and Planes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?531234-Weird-other-dimensions-and-planes)

[fyida]

Thanks guys, everything was really helpful! :)

By the way the party is not split, all of them share a common dreamscape, just the 2 cursed characters get hints from the God, who sent the whole team here.

I use just the same mechanics you described here :) I set DCs for certain changes (the spectrum ranges from conjuring a bread to changing into a dragon) and they players have to roll Wis or Int if they are able to imagine the object/event. So the characters need to have exact details of the object they want to create and they roll for Int, or they need to have memories about the object and know how did it feel like in their hand, how did they use it, etc. and they roll for Wis.
And to spice things up, I introduced a wild magic surge-like system: when they change something, they roll a d20 and if the result is 1, 10 or 20, then I roll for the "side-effect". Just like when weird stuff happens in your dreams and you don't understand what is going on and why :)

[Bohandas]

A couple things common in dreams that could happen:

*The floorplan of buildings is unnecessarily sprawling and labyrinthine. Every building is far bigger than it needs to and the layout makes no sense and is east to get lost in. Basically something like Winchester Manor but with less dead ends.

*There's a mismatch between how things/people/animals act, what they appear to be, and/or what they are called.

*Objects go missing without explanation and turn up just as inexplicably