Dreams/Nightmares in your game

[gandwarf]

Hi, everyone!:smallsmile:
I'm currently running a campaign with lots and lots of dream stuff. I'm planning on introducing the Plane of Dreams, and I was looking for material to read, rules, items that would fit that particular theme. The Dream World will be a huge and important part of the story, and I'm also interested in hearing stories about Dreams/Nightmares and their role in your games. :smallredface:
I did already introduce an item, a drug called Dream Leaves - that induces sleep :smallsigh: and triggers lucid dreaming. It's very addictive and eventually the user cannot fall asleep without it :smalleek: - but the promise is that all their dreams would come true.

[solidork]

We played a campaign where the basic premise was that The Goddess of Dreams was attacked, which caused a many things to change to reflect what people dreamed about them (an abandoned house feared by the local children actually became haunted) or for things that only existed in dreams to become real - from the scale of an individual person to a whole mountain range.

My character was the manifestation of a young man's dream that someone would take him away from his small fishing village to a life of adventure; only, instead of dying in the second act like a good mentor is supposed to, he ended up making a mistake that got his partner killed. The campaign ended while he was just beginning to suspect that he wasn't a "real" person, due to strange magical happenings and some of his memories being provably false.

My current character, a Glamour Bard, learns new spells through strange dreams caused by his awakening fey nature.

In our games, a character's connection to a power greater than themselves (a patron, a deity, nature) is sometimes expressed through portentous dreams.

[Mastikator]

You could look into Dal Quor the plane of dreams from the eberron campaign setting. The plane of dreams is always "remote" so you can never do any kind of planar travel between the planes, however by dreaming you project your consciousness into the plane. AND the natives of the plane can in turn project their consciousness into the prime material plane. The Quori could be used as a template for nightmarish monsters that can be encountered in dreams, or that could take over people and "dreamwalk" while they're awake.

You could also steal the Dust Hag which is a monster that can steal dreams from mortals and kinda sorta use them to tell the future.

[RSP]

Not sure what other abilities cite dreams, but I’d start with the spell Dream, in terms of how one can affect dreams, and, I’d imagine, the Realm of Dreams, with magic.

Change the spell to match your Realm of Dreams, or build your RoD off how the spell works.

For non-D&D inspiration, check out Tel’aran’rhiod from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time; or Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.

[Alcore]

As I recall 3.5 "heroes of horror" delves into dreams (and, fitting the title, Nightmares). Its an older scource but could be of much use.

[Rafaelfras]

Also on 3.5 on the epic level player handbook there is a creature called oniric larva or something like that. Is as the name suggest a dream creature and it's text have some good info about dreams. The monster itself is a good inspiration for enemies (you just have to adjust the number of)

[NecessaryWeevil]

Dreams have actually featured fairly prominently in our Eberron campaign. My Aasimar character is what he is due to the intervention of one of the Dark Six in his birth, and had several prophetic dreams (basically streams of images which my DM sent my via forum message) which occasionally gave him insights into plot developments, and also led him to discover which of the Six it was.
We used the Dream spell to eavesdrop on the dreams of several suspects, in order to identify which one was likely spying on our political patron.
And finally, I used Dream to anonymously convey a message to our our patron via a third party.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder's Planar Adventures is OGL and has info on their cosmology's Dimension of Dreams / Dreamlands plane you might be able to borrow.

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Dreamlands
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/alternative-rule-systems/occult-adventures/occult-rules/esoteric-planes/
https://aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=Dimension%20of%20Dreams&Category=Esoteric%20Planes
https://2e.aonprd.com/Planes.aspx?ID=22