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Old 09-04-2014, 03:58 PM   #10
ericthered
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds

The topology here interests me. The truly important part is how outsiders get in, because all of your PC's are outsiders. You have three requirements:

1) where the dream is entered should not correspond to physical geography.
2) PC's should have fairly simple means to stay in the same area of the dream over the course of the campaign.
3) The dream should have meaningful barriers to travel. In other words, you can't assemble your team from the four corners of the dream world every night through teleportation.

Options:

Random fixed entry points + Starting Luck: every one enters the dream at one point and one point only. This is a basically random topography (though something like time of birth, parentage, or fate may guide it). The PC's start out close to each other, ensuring they are together for adventures in the dream world.

Random Fixed Entry Points + Entry Tricks: everyone can enter the dream at one point that belongs to them. However, a mechanism exists that allows you to enter at someone else's point, or just at a different point. For example, perhaps a spell exists that when both people cast allow them to enter at one of the two people's points, or a sleeper hooked into the access machine can bring a whole crew to his dream entry point.

Save Points: Leaving the dream world does not force you to enter at a different point. You return to the dream world in the place that you left it. Players have to stay together for this to work, but they have to do that in the physical world anyway. other variations on this allow a character to control where he comes into the dream world, but only through actions in the dream world (that require him to get there in the first place).
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