Some people say that the Dreamlands reflect Jung's "Collective Unconsciousness". If that is true then it is no surprise how much it changed in the last century. Just the two world wars changed how we think about combat, fighting, and evil itself. Perhaps an even greater change in the dreamlands was brought about by the new forms of media, like television and video games. It is said that after black and white television was commonplace, people started dreaming in black and white. It is logical, then, that now that people control the character they are watching, they can control their dreams more often as well. Maybe that is the reason for all the new dreamers. But some feel that this isn't right. They feel something big is coming....
You are a Dreamer yourself. One day, through practice or accident, you found out you could control your dreams. You played in this world whenever you got the chance, bending the reality to your will. And one day, you found something that wouldn't bend, a door, a gate, a manhole cover. Something in your own mind that you couldn't control. You felt drawn into it.
So you opened it. You found a downward facing stairway, an elevator, a ladder, with only darkness below. And you walked/rode/stepped a dozen floors down, deep into the darkness. You found yourself greeted by a medieval drawbridge, an airport checkpoint, a club gate, each with two guards who fit the scene perfectly. The one on the right looked at you, shook his head, and stated "You are not yet ready."
You woke up with no memory of the dream you just had.
But you kept dreaming. More frequently, more vividly, with the playground in your head getting more impressive as you learn how to dream. You would find the door again, and once again brave its steps, with still no memory of last time. The guards would pause for moments, before the one on the left began shaking his head. "You are not yet worthy."
You kept dreaming. Every night now, just as vivid as real life, if not more so. One night, you felt the call once again. You now knew its exact location. As soon as you touched the doorknob, lifted the manhole, pushed the down button, you remembered your last two attempts and felt emboldened by them. You entered the darkness with confidence, stepping out in front of the gate proudly. The guards both looked at you. "You are ready." Their eyes began to glow a bright light, as if they had been replaced with headlights. The gate opened, and you where allowed through...
You had become a Dreamer.
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Dreamlands is a roleplaying game where you play a Dreamer, someone who has limited control over the dreamlands. This game is very, very, loosely based on "The Dreamquest of an Unknown Kadith" combined with the idea of "Lucid Dreaming". It is part fantasy, part modern, part horror....really, whatever, you're the Dreamer remember?
In this game, you will explore this land to unlock secrets, aid the troubled inhabitants, carve out a paradise for yourself, or just take down evil Dreamers, at first at least. I plan to have an overarching plot that will start when I start College in a few weeks. That is why this is "The Calm Before the Storm", Part I. If I find some people who want to stick with it within that time, and I don't get bored/overworked (My new phone helps me at least check up on this while working), we will start Part II "Dreamquest". Having multiple parts like this allows me to find the right feel for the game before starting, as well as working out the right mechanics. I pretty much just made the rules up arbitrarily while working, with no testing, so giving me a period to work things out better should help.
Without explaining too much of what the Dreamlands is or how it works (because it is more fun if you figure those out in character!) here are the rules you need to play.
This game has three character stats: Imagination, Focus, and Willpower.
Imagination is perhaps the most important stat here, as it allows you to manifest things. Think of it kind of like Magic Points in other games. Imagination is written X/Y, with X being how many you have left out of the total Y. You take points out of the total X to manifest things. The more points you take out, the more powerful, plentiful, or higher quality the final product is. One point of imagination is enough to manifest a weapon with a Damage of 1. Two points manifests a weapon with Damage of 2. Three is three and so on. Remember, however, that items made this way are temporary!
Example: Bob the Dreamer has an imagination of 7. He hasn't used any since he went to bed, so he has an imagination written down as 7/7. Bob is then attacked by a random zombie, and chooses to defend himself. He chooses to spend three imagination to manifest a rifle with Damage 3. His imagination is now 4/7 and he is using a rifle with Damage of 3. (This will look much more impressive when you do it, don't worry too much.)
Remember when I said this is temporary? Well, the idea manifested, but it is part of your Dream, not the Dreamland. If you ever lose Focus of it, or one of the many other rules I haven't covered yet, the weapon vanishes. It is important to note here that to manifest weapons with a Damage higher than 3, it takes Focus to keep for even one turn. More will be covered under the Focus section.
You can also build armor, which can take effect either of some kind of actual armor, you blocking anything coming to you, or anything else you can think of (Dreams are unlimited, after all.) This also takes one Imagination per point of damage, but can only stick around multiple turns if you burn an equal amount of Focus.
Example: Bob is in big trouble. The zombie was a lot stronger then it looked, and nearly has him dead. He thinks the next turn it will kill him, so he decides to hit his rifle butt to the ground and create a wall of dirt as armor using the last 4 of his 4/7 imagination. If the zombie's next attack does 4 or less, then Bob is unharmed. If it does 5 or more, then the difference hits Bob. If it does 3 or less, then he wasted at least one point of imagination, so be careful!
Of course, weapons and stuff aren't the only thing that you can manifest. Perhaps you want to try to manifest another person? This can go down in three ways. You can create a group of mindless grunts just as easily as you could make a weapon, who can attack your opponents while you do other, non attack action. They have a Damage Rating the same way a weapon does (1 damage=1 imagination), which is equal to their Willpower as well (Which will be covered later). They have some advantages over a normal weapon, such as the Dreamer being able to do other actions as his me are attacking as long as he can keep his focus, and they can soak up Damage for him, but can be killed and only have half the accuracy of a Dreamer. The second kind is essentially decoration, like a random butler or maid for your mansion. They basically follow the rules for normal item creation (detailed below) and can't fight, mostly just doing their job. You should probably make them permanent if you want to get its full effects.
The third, possibly most useful, is the Companion. Companions are part of the Dreamer's dream, but are able to act independently even when he isn't there. Companions always do what the Dreamer has asked, and have actual intelligence and emotions, acting like an actual human in every way. Companions can attack separately from the Dreamer in a single turn, and can be empowered temporarily like a weapon, with one Imagination adding one point to their Damage (But not Willpower). You need to burn focus if you empower it by more than 3, much like a weapon. You can use armor to protect your companion much like yourself. If a companion is injured, they can be healed by the Dreamer who manifested them, using one point of imagination to heal one point of damage. If they are killed, they teleport back to the Dreamer's home until he can heal them. If the dreamer's home is cut off (By the Dreamer being woken up), then they will start to vanish, slowly becoming translucent, and get desperate to reach the Dreamer. If the Dreamer returns within 24 Dreamland hours, it may be saved and will teleport to his home as soon as possible. If the Dreamer is ever killed or loses his ability to dream, it collapses to the ground in a fit of powerful emotion (Which depends on the personality of the Companion.) and starts to disappear slowly. Other Dreamers may funnel Imagination to it, in which case it will use its energy to act on its emotions, trying to find the Dreamer or avenge his death. To manifest a companion, you must invest twice as much Damage/Willpower you want it to have in your own Imagination/Focus/ AND Willpower. That is, if you want it to have 1 Damage/ 1 Willpower, you must invest 2 imagination/2 Focus/ 2 Willpower to have it permanently manifest. They can later be upgraded, for what it would cost to manifest it at its new stats. You currently can't go over 3 Damage/ 3 Willpower for balance reasons, but this rule may change.
Manifesting buildings is probably the only other odd thing to make. If you want to make something large like a castle, it is probably going to take a few nights worth of Imagination. An arbitrary number I just made up is that 1 Imagination= about square feet of construction material. You can invest more points to make the object more detailed, stronger, etc. You can stretch it to be more, but it will generally be weaker, and if you actually focus on any part of it it will look "Pixalated". You can move your "Home" to connect to any place where you have control, control being anywhere you have done permanent construction. With this you can make anything from a mansion to a fort to a cave to whatever. Remember, it is your dream!
For everything else: As I said before, it is generally based on quality and quantity of what you want. One Imagination point is enough to get either a whole cart of decent-quality bread, one loaf of incredibly high quality bread, or a whole room full of wormbait bread. You can create any item you want, even if you don't know how the object is made. Any object you make works like you expect it to, not necessarily like it does, if it even works at all. For the bread example, the bread tastes different for whoever eats it, with each person tasting what they think "Bread" tastes like. If someone never tasted high quality bread before, then they just imagine what they think it would taste like. For another example, a Dreamer decided to make a radio. The radio plays songs just as he remembers them, even if he remembers them wrong. If someone opens it up, they would find dozens of wires and other random parts that don't connect anywhere.
The final note on manifesting is that it doesn't seem to work as well near civilians of the Dreamlands. While you may be able to move mountains and level forests alone or when fighting monsters, when near civilians the best you can hope for is a weapon they would use there. There are many theories to this, but I already have written too much.
Focus: Your characters ability to keep his mind pointed at all the right things. While Imagination lets you manifest things, Focus keeps them manifested. As stated before, Focus can be used to keep shields up in combat, as well as to keep powerful weapons manifested. I think this would be best shown in an example:
Bob survived the zombie attack a long time ago, and is now much more powerful. Now he is facing a monster of all the zombies he has ever killed sewn together. His Imagination is 15/15 and his focus is 10/10. He decides he wants to manifest a Damage 5 Anti-materiel rifle, and promptly does so. This takes 5 Imagination, of course, making it 10/15. But he has to focus to make something so powerful stay in this world. The rifle does 5 damage, which is 2 more than 3. This means he must use 2 focus for each turn he wants to keep the rifle manifested, including the turn he manifested it. So he now has 8/10 Focus. Next turn, he keeps it manifested. He now has 10/15 Imagination, because he didn't need to manifest a new sword, but has 6/10 Focus, because he still needs to keep focused.
Focus is also needed to keep items manifested under difficult situations, but isn't used up. Your current focus is calculated every time your character is hit, and if the Damage you are hit with is greater than your current Focus, than you lose every temporary manifested item that you have, including weapons and armor.
Example:
Bob is still fighting the Zombie Frankenstien, and is now hit! His focus is 6/10. If he is hit for 7 or more damage, the rifle he is holding will vanish spectacularly.
Finally, Focus can be used to make things part of Dreamland. Most things you manifest are part of the Dreamer's Dream, vanishing if he loses focus or wakes up. If you use Focus, they will stay forever. Focus can be used to keep normal items, house parts, and weapons permanently. A general rule is that for every 1 Imagination you spent to manifest it, it takes 1 Focus to keep it permanently manifested. Weapons can only become permanent if they are 3 Damage or less, higher than that is simply to powerful for you to bring into the world. For now, at least.
Willpower: The strength of your character's will. If Imagination is your characters MP, than this is your characters HP. As everything, it is shown with X/Y, going down as you spend it.
Its main focus is of course, keeping you from dieing. When you hit 0/Y willpower, you wake up, simply unable to keep yourself dreaming under all the damage. As a Dreamer, this is basically your character "dieing", except he can come back the in-game next day when you return to sleep. This does, however, kick you out of the Dreamland long enough for your enemies or opponents to accomplish their goals, and should be avoided at all costs.
Your character can permanently die, however, if they reach 0 willpower in a "Nightmare" situation. "Nightmare" situations are created at dramatically appropriate moments, either by the sheer will of hatred between two Dreamers or a naturally occurring phenomena in the Dreamlands or from a Monster's ability. Everything looks monstrous, fluffy trees becoming thorny bushes, the sky goes dark, attacks have a viscose tint to them that wasn't there before. When you reach 0 willpower here, you lose your ability to dream. You wake up, sitting up with a start, while breathing deeply as your heart tries to retreat from your chest. You don't remember what happened in the Dreamlands, losing all the memories you had gained there, and sleep uneasily from that day out.
That is about all it for the three stats. I might need to add more, and I will need to balance these three. But how better to do that then trying them out?
Finally, about your "Home". This is basically your "Spawn Point" to the dreamlands. It is a place, connected too but separate from the dreamlands, where you do your normal dreaming. While you are here you functionally have unlimited stats, but are unable to use it to effect the dreamworld. Nothing permanent can be made here. You can't use these stats to heal your Companion or anything else you brought in from the dreamlands.
Every time you enter the dreamlands, you come in through your "home" through some kind of door or gate, which is the same every time. This always leads to something that goes downwards, and ends in a gate with two guards. These guards will wordlessly give you any permanent weapon you have made here and allow you to enter. You will end up at a random place in the non-hostile part of the dreamlands if you haven't linked your home to a place in the dreamlands. To move your home to a fixed place, you simply have to claim it by building some form of base, then desire to link it. Generally you put it to some kind of door you can walk through, or a gate, or a garage door. Nobody else can enter your Home under any circumstances, they would simply find a random door with a wall on the other side if they tried following you.
Every time you wake up, you go about your business in the Waking World. If you where forced awake, then life goes on without you. If you woke up naturally, then the world "Pauses", as it does for everyone. Not a lot goes on while you go about your business. Then, when you return to sleep, you will be fully healed and returned to the general area you left, if you desire. Nobody remembers waking up in the Dreamlands, but you do remember what happened there. You only seem to naturally awaken during relaxing times, like after a big fight, rather than at random.
The rest, you might have to find out yourself, or I will have to right more. I am sorry for any poor quality writing, and for my many spelling/grammar issues. I am getting rather tired near the end of this, and will probably have to rewrite/update pieces later. Stick with me people! I only reread it once or twice.
And with that, here is the character sheet. Remember, Dreams are unlimited! You can manifest anything you want, as long as you can imagine it. You get twenty points (For now) to distribute through the three stats.
Character Sheet:
Name:
Imagination:
Focus:
Willpower:
Any information about this character: Mainly so you can tell the back story of your character, his personalty, and anything else that makes him interesting. This isn't really part of the character sheet, but is an important part of the character. So who wants to try it? Feel free to ask any questions, I am sure I was unclear with many things, and left out things I shouldn't have.
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Topic: Dreamlands: Masters of Sleep RPG. Maybe Might Revive? (Read 5644 times)