Dreamland RPG: Looking for Testers!

[mockman]

Hi all,

The week before last I finished the Quickstart PDF for my game system, Dreamland... on Friday I finished writing up an adventure which I've been using for playtests. The game is out there and I'm looking for folks to test, read and run it!

48-page Dreamland RPG Quickstart PDF - https://www.dropbox.com/s/zyowl4rt6ojamll/Dreamland-Quickstart-3-13-23.pdf?dl=0
30-page adventure "The Paradise of the Unchanging" - https://www.dropbox.com/s/4lww3y0xsh0ye0a/Dreamland-The Paradise of the Unchanging 3-25-23.pdf?dl=0

Dreamland is a card-based RPG inspired by HP Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany's Dreamlands stories, as well as by other fantasy authors like Italo Calvino and Michael Ende. Beyond time and space lies Dreamland, an ancient world formed from the hopes and fears of humanity; and you are a dreamer, one of the rare few who can enter Dreamland with consciousness intact. Spending Memories of your waking life to create Marvels, fighting Nightmares and monsters, you journey on perilous roads through deserts and jungles, to the lairs of strange peoples, beasts, and dragons…or perhaps even further than this, east of the sun and west of the moon.

Dreamland cards are set up on Tabletop Simulator and playingcards.io; links are in the Quickstart. The Quickstart PDF contains rules, 24 character Roles, and how-to-play comics (see images). "The Paradise of the Unchanging" is a Dreamland sandbox adventure with wilderness rules and a mini-bestiary of monsters.

I've been working on this game on and off since 2014 and it's exciting to get it out there in a Quickstart. I'd be grateful if you check it out, and love to hear feedback and questions!

Many thanks,

Jason Bradley Thompson
dreamrpg.com

 

[mockman]

In more shameless self-promotion: we finally did a Dreamland RPG actual-play video!! 3 hours of character creation (which takes the first 30 minutes) plus an adventure, "Dreamland: The Island of Devils". Please check it out!

 

[Fenris-77]

Hi all,

The week before last I finished the Quickstart PDF for my game system, Dreamland... on Friday I finished writing up an adventure which I've been using for playtests. The game is out there and I'm looking for folks to test, read and run it!

48-page Dreamland RPG Quickstart PDF - https://www.dropbox.com/s/zyowl4rt6ojamll/Dreamland-Quickstart-3-13-23.pdf?dl=0
30-page adventure "The Paradise of the Unchanging" - https://www.dropbox.com/s/4lww3y0xsh0ye0a/Dreamland-The Paradise of the Unchanging 3-25-23.pdf?dl=0

Dreamland is a card-based RPG inspired by HP Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany's Dreamlands stories, as well as by other fantasy authors like Italo Calvino and Michael Ende. Beyond time and space lies Dreamland, an ancient world formed from the hopes and fears of humanity; and you are a dreamer, one of the rare few who can enter Dreamland with consciousness intact. Spending Memories of your waking life to create Marvels, fighting Nightmares and monsters, you journey on perilous roads through deserts and jungles, to the lairs of strange peoples, beasts, and dragons…or perhaps even further than this, east of the sun and west of the moon.

Dreamland cards are set up on Tabletop Simulator and playingcards.io; links are in the Quickstart. The Quickstart PDF contains rules, 24 character Roles, and how-to-play comics (see images). "The Paradise of the Unchanging" is a Dreamland sandbox adventure with wilderness rules and a mini-bestiary of monsters.

I've been working on this game on and off since 2014 and it's exciting to get it out there in a Quickstart. I'd be grateful if you check it out, and love to hear feedback and questions!

Many thanks,

Jason Bradley Thompson
dreamrpg.com

This sounds fantastic, but seriously dude, get out of my head. I have bits and pieces of a game in development that sounds very similar to yours, right down to me reading Italo Calvino. I will certainly give yours a read.

 

[Silverlion]

It sounds awesome. Will there be a print?

 

[mockman]

It sounds awesome. Will there be a print?

It depends. I'm actually looking for a publisher right now! (fingers crossed)

 

[mockman]

This sounds fantastic, but seriously dude, get out of my head. I have bits and pieces of a game in development that sounds very similar to yours, right down to me reading Italo Calvino. I will certainly give yours a read.

Thanks! Well if your game is also inspired by Italo Calvino, I'm sure it will also be awesome! ;) You should post about it!! (You probably already have been and I missed it > _ < )

Personally the one game that I've recently(-ish) read and thought "Agggggggghhh I wish I had written that myself, it feels like it's channeling my interests" was Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands. It also has that exotic travel feel. I've even been working on a "journey to the end of the world" adventure for Dreamland. Hopefully the end of the world is a big enough place that multiple people can write about it.

 

[WillPhillips]

Really love the concept and the worldbuilding you described in your post!

Can we get a quick TL;DR on the core mechanics? I'm curious about it being card driven!

 

[mockman]

Really love the concept and the worldbuilding you described in your post!

Can we get a quick TL;DR on the core mechanics? I'm curious about it being card driven!

Sorry it took me literally weeks to respond to you! I was out of the country in a place with (unexpectedly) very, very bad internet. And I wanted to share some images to show how the game works, so I needed decent bandwidth to upload them!

Dreamland is set in the world of stories and myths, so dreamers perform most major actions by telling stories and using flowery fairytale language: by using Word Cards. Basically, players can draw Word Cards from a pool that the DM replenishes, and by using them to describe their actions (in-character or out), they get bonus points for skills, powers, etc.

The risk of using Word Cards is: most of them belong to one of the Five Pillars of Dreamland (Wonder, Loathing, Mystery, Faraway and Passion). Whenever you use a Pillar Word, you have a risk of Breaking the Pillars of Reality and causing some bizarre and dangerous effect. So the more Pillar Words you dare use, the greater the danger. You can of course succeed at your chosen action, while also triggering some deadly side effect.

At the same time, though, different Roles (character classes) are drawn to different Pillars and get bonuses for using Pillar Words in certain ways. So a Soldier will want to use Loathing, a Guide Faraway, and a Painter Wonder. The question is how many Pillar Words to gamble in pursuit of whatever your goal is... and also, what weird fairytale narration the players will come up with while using the Words and describing what they do.

There's more, about Memories and Marvels, but this is the core mechanic! Now that I'm back from overseas, I hope to do drop-in games every 2 weeks on the Discord if anyone's interested in an invite.