Hey guys, long time no see.

Submitted by alderneyvamp on Tue, 2007-09-18 01:46.

Well I've been out of the loom for a couple of months, my mind for games just went kapoot. Perhaps it was the summer heator something else that sapped my inspiration, but it's back now (I hope) and ready to start working again.

Most of my presummer ideas are too vague in my head now and I think I'll return to those projects after I've done something to sharpen up my mind.

So later today I'm going to be putting up my next game idea for a game I'm thinking of calling Dreamers. Not sure yet, but I'll let you decide what you think once I've put the rough rules/settings page up.

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Welcome Back

Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Tue, 2007-09-18 11:48.

Its been a little slow around here - a few times where a day or two would pass without a post. However, its rather picking up again. Jeff Moore's "Super Brawl" comic book war game and ErrinF's "Crime Fighters" have been the hot projects as of lately. I hope to get something worthwhile done by the end of October, but I'm also pretty lousy at meeting deadlines.

You Dreamer idea looks interesting. I'm picturing it a little like the Matrix - each person has their own segment of reality and can bend the rules to some extent. There might be some difficulty in casting all the NPCs as clueless as the players are initially, but there is probably some factor that lets people see time differently or enter at a different point and establish a realm. A galaxy of pocket universes.

Generally, I'd avoid die pools but I could see a sort of shift in mechanics. Perhaps it begins as a die pool with a relatively low variability/number of outcomes possible. But as people gain more knowledge of the dream scape and thus power, the mechanic shifts to a roll and add which allows for a much greater degree of variability and success. (Ie roll 5d vs 3 = 0-5 pass, 5d6 = 5-30 outcome...)

Of course, do you see this as a sort of existential horror of the unknown/secrets in each mind - or could PCS begin to take over with force of will and do heroic things? Unconscious fears or Lucid desires?

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

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Dreamers.

Submitted by alderneyvamp on Tue, 2007-09-18 13:14.

I wanted the game to present countless opportunities with fairly simple rules so I might not go in for a mechanics shift, but I think I agree that dice pools as such may not be the way to go. I'm thinking that perhaps the Form number could actually equal the amount of things a character can do from that skill group at once. For example one of the Forms is Barrier (yet to come up with a better name) in which represents the mental 'bubble' that characters can draw with them out of their own sanctury. This bubble can be manipulated in order to create armour for example as well as to envelop an opponent and hold them in place. A character with Barrier 5 might want to invest 3 points into maintaining their mental shield with Armour whilst holding an opposition with 2 points in Holding. Whether this means the character's gains three dice in armour, or that is armour skill bonus is tripiled I'm not sure.

Now to deal with the conception of the Matrix esq pockets. Each player, I invision, has a sanctuary of the mind which in astrogeopgraphic terms originates from their real world body. The Sanctuary Form represents the strength of your sanctuary. A character could stumble into someone else's sanctuary in which the owner is very powerful (I don't want to say control because control and power are inversely proportional in a sanctuary) and marks of his chosen 'metaphor' exist. It's difficult to explain but I'll put it like this, less sane and stable character's exhibit stronger sanctuarys as their mind cannot contain itself and thus leaks into the enviroment, this strength however means that the character has less control because he doesn't have a sane stranglehold upon. Thus I want character's to be trapped in asylums in which the Dreamer is haunted by his fellow inmates (which will manifest as Nightmares) but he ultimately also has the ability to warp his surroundings. conversely a highly sane/low imagination character would have a relatively weak sanctuary with few dangers to himself, but without the ability to affect their own sanctuary in any serious way.

Finally I've decided your right about how NPC's shouldn't all be clueless. I've decided to include at least some classes of NPC's who have been their for a long time, two of these will be Deep Sleepers or real world long term coma patients who have hugely powerful sanctuaries, but are confined to them, and psychics who have able to commune with the dream realm their whole lives, thus having weaker sanctuarys (they are not used to having a part of the realm to themselves) but all round stronger capabilities.

I'll put a page up with the Five Forms before the end of the night, hopefully sparking more discussion and clearing somethings up.

Hope I can help with some of your stuff soon.
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Don't steal... The Government hates competition.

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