09-06-2014, 11:13 AM | #21 |
Evil Game Master For Hire
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Jacksonville, FL
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Re: Dream Worlds
Didn't see if anyone else had added this thought, yet...
For personalized entry into dream-space, I like using an idea (from "In Nomine" I believe, as well as from Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series) -- a dreamer enters their own personal dream-space, first, and then from there emerges into the greater, overall dream-space. Most people never leave their personal dream-spaces (except by rare accident); it takes a skilled or otherwise "enabled" dreamer to deliberately leave their personal dream-space and enter the shared unconscious "cosmic" dream-space. I'd love to hear more about this idea of yours, as you work out your details. Good luck! ;-) Franklin
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09-06-2014, 12:30 PM | #22 |
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Athens, GA
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Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds
First, this, do NOT attempt to model this with pocket dimensions. It's not that - use the Astral Travel rules.
Here's where I went on about this...thread The end result was a very odd cosmology for my world. The Land of the Dead, the Heaven, the Earth and the Underworld are physically connected. You can walk to the Land of the Dead (or, climb a tree or catch a lift with a spider). This is the Cloth of Being, because it is seen as being folded. When a person dies, you bury then and their spirit goes to the underworld. If you *really* miss them, you can crawl in a grave and go look for them. It is the task of spirits on the Underworld to find their way to the Land of the Dead - their people hold a ceremony nine months after the dead to celebrate their ascension as an Ancestor. This is where it gets weird. Ancestors have new bodies in the Land of the Dead. If they want to look in on the living, they Astrally Project, which is merely a form of Insubstantial where the ranges are based on familiarity instead of distance. Ghosts are spirit that hang around - very dangerous. Now dreams - Dreams are one of the ways people use their latent psychic abilities, including Clairvoyant vision and Astral Travels. Dreaming *is* Astral Travel, only you just go into your Dream World, a "place" carved out by your subconscious. It *should* be totally private.... Each and every sapient being has a Dreamworld, constructed from Mana and hidden away in their Spirit. These Dreamworlds are layered atop one-another, like 'beads sewn into the Cloth of Being', and thus at times there are connections, both to real places and to other Dreamworlds. For the most part, dreamers sit in their Dreamworlds and see bits of other places using Clairvoyance. Some, however, do wander, just as some people sleepwalk. In these travels, they use Astral Projection to visit other parts of the Cloth of Being, be it in the Land of the Living or Kuzimu or the Underworld, or they can visit other Dreamworlds. The Dreamworld bit is essential for my campaign because the 'evil' of the world is witchcraft, which is a kind of malign psychic parasite.Witches are the undisputed masters of the Dreamworlds, because it is their native domain. They are literally nightmares. Each witch has its own Dreamworld from which it projects into the Land of the Living and it is their final retreat. While it is true that witches are born as parasites in the bodies of normal people, they use their powers to create their own Dreamworld and then physically move into it. Or, perhaps more truthfully, become it as the mutant gland in their host atrophies. Once mature, the witch can detach from its host and create new connections to the Dreamworlds of new hosts. Part of the pattern of development in this campaign is spiritual. Most people don't learn to use their psychic powers until they die, but by no means does a character go out of play simple because he *died* - that idea is fundamentally un-Bantu. Thus as the adventures go on, they should become more and more spiritual, taking place in the Underworld and World of Dreams. Probably TMI. Last edited by tantric; 09-06-2014 at 02:01 PM. |
09-07-2014, 02:43 AM | #23 | ||||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds
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They said it won't fly! They said I'm crazy. But I'll go and make a game world the way I want to, even if I'll have to suffer through it, and damn the consequences! A couple years of GMing passed, and people seem to mostly like it. So I'll probably take the risk. I just want to do it in a way that will be consistent. I'm with the hobgoblins - I like consistency. |
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09-07-2014, 02:46 AM | #24 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Dream Worlds
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09-07-2014, 08:23 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds
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09-07-2014, 10:26 AM | #26 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds
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Yeah, I specifically had dream realms in mind when I built the advantage. Quote:
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11-24-2014, 02:36 AM | #27 | ||||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds
So, turns out that 'a year or more later' turned up to be planned for next Saturday or the one after it instead. Adventurers.
So I'm revisiting this topic. Quote:
Places in the dreamworld have RW-hazard classes. One's personal dream bubble is normally harmless (death results in waking up at -1FP as from Nightmares), as are some other 'sanctuary' places. Other places have a RW-hazard rating, ranging from slightly above zero, up to 1. This is the fraction of real HP that will be lost upon taking damage in the dreamworld. Failing a Death Check in the dreamworld means that damage is recalculated, with succeeded-in-dreams death checks being successful automatically in the real world, but in case if the damage was so big that it bleeds over into the real world demanding a new death check above and beyond those already successful ones, the new checks are to be rolled normally. Finally, some places are marked as non-returning. That means that dying in dreams there will not take you back to the waking world - your dream-self has to be carried by someone else, while your real-world body is borderline-comatose. Oh, and I think that I should let the PC immediately choose whether to be pulled back into the real world or not at the moment of failing a consciousness check. Opting to stay in means more risk, but also an opportunity to regain consciousness in the dreamworld; opting to wake up is a safety cord, with all that entails. Quote:
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I vaguely recall scenes of defending fortresses in Changeling . . . somewhere. What this means is that while it's nice to have some places (e.g. ancient libraries) stretch out to accommodate infinite crowds, it's also nice to have some types of dream estate be quite limited. Having doorsteps of some nodes actually blockable/defensible, but not others, seems like an opportunity for some adventurous moments. Such as spirits asking riddles to let people pass or whatever, which people can nonetheless get around using longer roads (but don't want to). It sort of takes the best of both worlds - the gateway network and the free hyperspace method. Note: I'm thinking that in some cases Node A connects strands 1,2,3,4 purely on the outside, so you can go from 1 to 4 without needing to get inside A, while in some other cases Node B connects strands {5,6} and {7,8}, so you can go from 5 to 6 without going through the inside of B, but you need to cross B in order to get from 6 to 7. Quote:
------ Oh, and now I can start making up the geography. I'm thinking of only letting PCs open up new nodes gradually. Not sure how to justify this in-game. I don't want a flat check penalty per node travelled beyond the first. I want some sort of access-granting process, like finding passwords but more metaphorical, and something so that I could delay the process at will, while thinking up the places that exist in the dreamweb. |
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11-24-2014, 02:55 AM | #28 | ||||||
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds
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11-24-2014, 03:56 AM | #29 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Cosmology and game mechanics for Dream Worlds
Now I need to think up those places, the more the better. And inhabitants.
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Tags |
dream, dream projection, dream world, dreaming, dreamworld |
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