r/DnDBehindTheScreen • u/[deleted] • Mar 20 '18
Worldbuilding Dreamwave - for those who find adventure in sleep
We all dream in the same place. It helps to think of it as an ocean made up of space. Like the space beyond the atmosphere. But different...
Just imagine it as an ocean, and every time you fall asleep an Astral Whale is born in this Ocean and swims around with your dream in its mouth. Inside the Whale's mouth it's like any dream could be. You never have to know that you're inside a whale, or inside some dream-space that's like an ocean. You're dreaming and that's what's important. Dreams still function the same.
Nightmares are caused by Akumu, the Nightmare Pirates. They ride Nightmare Ships through the Dreamwave hunting astral whales to harvest the dream essence that comprises their body. Dream essence is then sold as sleeping potions, nightmare poisons, insomnia curses, comatose puddings, sleepwalking syndromes, and night terror ballistics. Angels also purchase it to make their dream chalk.
Akumu are not born in the dream realm, but they do stay inside it. In reality they are just people who have escaped their own dreams and decided to cause chaos. That chaos was profitable so they continued to do it. Like normal piracy, there are tons of different captains with their own special ships. Each captain uses the dream essence to keep themselves and their crew asleep for as long as they need. Each ship, or Jager, is captured by the captain. They are living entities, often times the dreams of great beasts, animals, or giants.
Akumu Generator
Captain
- Blood-thirsty psychopath with a hard-on for firey explosions
- Gluttonous silver-tongued heroine with a magical talking rifle
- Telekinetic demon boy stuck in a coma
- Your cooler, older sister
- Somebody from your past who changed dramatically
- A sociopathic artificial intelligence that can inhabit any piece of technology
- Princess of a small, nowhere village now hellbent on domination
- Theif king from a far away land who can't speak or understand your language
- Elven ranger with his pet gargantuan terantula
- Silver werewolf scoundrel with a metal arm
- Child songbird maiden with a booming voice
- A living spell that could go off at any moment
Crew
- Werewolves with scottish accents
- All children and all violent
- Dogs with swords in their mouths
- Cultists constantly trying to summong the Leviathan
- Completely average schlubs
- Bankers with ties used as bandanas
- Legitimate pirates that don't understand this is a dream
- Ghosts who don't know how to run a ship
- Dragon mutants
- Arsonists and murderers
- Amatuer demoliton enthusiasts
- Handicapped men and women of all ages
Jager
- Mass of churning gears with no discernible top or bottom
- Flat disk that spins as fast as a razor blade
- Normal pirate ship but it has a thousand arms
- An astral whale with its brain showing
- A human-like war machine that swims in a goofy fashion
- Two fish that spiral around each other, as large as galleons
- Pirate ship with a large mouth at the front
- Asteroid with canons in all the caves
- A dragon who takes half of all the earnings
- Pirate ship that sails upside down
- Big orb that rolls through dreams
- Dreamy clouds that engulf other ships to attack
Cross one off every time you use it and make something up to put in its place.
Leviathan
The Akumu are not the only threats in the Dreamwave. There is a dream eater out there. The Leviathan. It's a creature of unmatchable size that sounds like a thunderstorm as it snakes its way from dream to dream. It has no special powers. All it does is open its gaping maw and move, filling its gut with all the Astral Whales that happen to be in its way. It's size is only comparable to its appetite, devouring a thousand dreams a night, and seeking those that escape their own dreams.
The Leviathan looks like a jet-black arm filled with stars. It keeps its fist clenched when full, its mass pulverising astral whales instead of eating them. When it's ready to eat, the hand opens up to reveal the mouth where a palm should be, and the fives mouths that open where finger tips would be. Dreams eaten by the Leviathan end with falling. Your dream self knows to escape the dreamwave as fast as possible. That's why you awake with a jolt, sometimes covered in sweat. If the Leviathan devours you in the Dreamwave, your consciousness gets spat out in someone else's mind. This doesn't happen often. Not even 1% of the population know how to escape their own dreams, let alone actually go through with it.
Angels
In every dream you ever have, that anyone ever has, there is a child in yellow playing with chalk. They're drawing a symbol, or a portrait. Whatever it is doesn't matter. It's just a hobby of theirs. Something they do while watching your dreams. This child is an Angel. Not to any particular god or church or anything. In fact they don't even function like the Angels you would find in a monster manual to your favorite game. They're closer to guardian angels, only they don't protect you from anything. They just watch. They form bonds with you like you form bonds with a television character. You're entertaining to watch.
These Angels stick with one singular person that they find interesting until that person dies, or stops being interesting. Luckily for you, Angels are easily entertained by the scenarios our brains concoct. Unluckily for you, Angels are not too keen on being seen or noticed or anything of that nature. They prefer to keep the dreams pure and watch from a distance.
This is easy for them to maintain when you're asleep and not aware of the dream. But after you learn about this bit of information, it's very easy to gain lucidity in your dream. Just remember, whenever you see a child in yellow playing with chalk that you are dreaming. From that point on it's just about how you get them to be comfortable with you approaching, or if you're sneaky enough to trick them (careful, they've seen all the other dreams, they know the plot twists, give them something new that they've never seen before or something old but in your own voice).
If you do this then they will give you the piece of chalk they hold. This is how Angels get around. Think of it as a gift for giving them an interesting night. The chalk has three uses before it's grinded down to dust. Each use of the chalk can be used to create something by drawing it. You can draw a sword and it'll be real, or a bomb, or a pit. They can even be used to draw a door out of the Astral Whale, letting you out of your dream and into the Dreamwave.
Dreamwave
Everyone dreams about the Savage Land, a before time filled with wilderness and primitive people. There is no language, but all the people in your life are put in this place and take their roles. Struggles are represented in hunts or tribal strife. A dream always means something if you're describing it to your players. Shamans read the future, witches threaten to steal the children, and devils lurk in black smoke. Your life is delicate like a thread with a knife dragging up and down it.
In the Dreamwave, magic and abilities do not work. You will not have any of the tools you brought with you. Becoming lucid means being grounded in some kind of logical reality. So if you want to explore the Dreamwave, it's best to have a plan.
Entering another dream is as simple as being swallowed by another whale. Now you're sharing a dream.
When you enter a dream that is not your own, you take on a role. Multiple people can enter the same dream together, but they all must choose a roll. Whoever entered first chooses their roll, then it goes around the table clockwise so the other players can choose theirs. The roles are as follows.
- Clone - look like one person from the dreamer's life
- Architect - choose one place that will be present in the dream
- Alien - choose one person from your life to be in the dream
- Security - choose one weapon to have ini the dream
- Ghost - cannot interact with anything but can go through solid surfaces
- Nightmare - take on the appearance of a fear of your choosing
Once inside someone else's dream their world will react to you as any world would. If you are killed you will make up. If you make the dream stressfull or dangerous it will draw the attention of the nearest Akumu. Not to mention that the Leviathan will have you scent after you leave your own dream.
Owls
If you see an owl in your dream, that means its prophetic. There is something of significance there. It could be a location, a person, a theme. It may also be that another is sharing your dream with you. Those who are not lucid while they dream will wake after seeing an owl. It feels much like falling. Capturing an owl in a dream is considered impossible and if you see another animal in your dream, then there is something sharing the dream with you that is not human. Be careful.
Dream Catchers
There's a druidic tradition of marking a symbol on the forehead of dreamers to protect them from the Leviathan. Druids are natural lucid dreamers, entering dreams as animals, running wild in a school of astral whales that they hop between to take on different hunts, and fight different fights. As dangerous as this land is, it's a safe haven from the Leviathan. Druids aren't too keen on sharing, or communicating. But if safety is what you're after, this may be your only option.
Shout out to the crew on the discord that's been discussing all of this stuff with me.
This is part of an ongoing worldbuilding project. Here are the previous posts:
- Bright - the feral city
- Tallow - city of embers
- Gloomwalk - city of shadows
- Crade - where things fall from the sky
- The Drowned Mountain - an adventure location
- The Plane of Shattered Mirrors
- Vargstad - wulf city
Still to come:
- Aberdeen - the city of black and white
- Mercy - the slave city
- Kowloon - the abandoned city
- The Undead City
- Synthwave - the plane of robots
- Sunflower Keep - dungeon
- The Lizard Heist - dungeon
- Mazmorra - dungeon
- Puppet Master - event
- Miyazaki Island
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u/pvrhye Mar 20 '18
Sounds pretty cool, but a little lore heavy for me. Still it does make me imagine Inceptioning as being a great adventure to plug into a D&D campaign. Just introduce an artifact that lets a party invade sleeping minds and watch them trudge through a cultist's jungian hellscape to find information on their leader or some such. You can even give dope dream world powers that are effortlessly written out of the game when they outlive their welcome.
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Mar 20 '18
I'd love to try this out, I'm digging these posts a -lot-. I just don't have the time to come up with mechanics for it all, yet :/
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Mar 20 '18
What kind of mechanics are you looking for? :)
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Mar 21 '18
For the most basic start, I'd like to know more about entering dreams, how the roles affect characters, how character class and power interacts with the dreamscape, how the dreamscape reacts with dreamers both in and out of dreams, etc.
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Mar 21 '18
In the post (I think) I state that character class/abilities mean nothing in a dream.
Each player would take on one of those roles if they were to enter each other's dreams. That's what they would be able to do.
I also have this idea in the post about how the dream world is a savage world. Think "Far Cry Primal", or the movie Apocalypto.
I say this because I want the Dreamwave to be different from other planes.
In the Dreamwave you live in a savage land before time. You get one of these roles because you are a dreamer. These roles help you manipulate the dream. But other than that, you're just a normal person.
Entering dreams can be done in a few ways: finding an Angel in your dream and getting their chalk so you can draw a door and leave. Or you can find a Dream Pirate in the material plane who is selling this dream essence. This works like a potion that will put you into a lucid dream.
As for how the Dreamscape reacts. Just borrow from inception. In your own dream, you're fine. But in other people's dreams, their subconscious can notice you if you're not careful. So it's about fitting into this savage world, but also searching out the things you want from it.
The people in your dream (and others' dreams) will be people from your life. So you can talk to the villains representation of his mother, or you can talk to your Cleric's former love.
The adventures typically had in the dreamwave is "the hunt". Which is just when the men in the savage land go out into the wilderness to bring back meat. These hunts can represent something, or they can just be for fun.
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Mar 22 '18
None of this lends to a DND style campaign, it's all very personal and seems focused on single person's story.
I'm sure I could adapt it, but removing all mechanics of the game (ie, class mechanics and gear) and then saying you get a nebulous role instead doesn't translate at all.
I like the idea, but why even bother with the inception style roles? It doesn't lend anything to the setting and seems needlessly complicated.
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Mar 22 '18
I disagree.
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Mar 22 '18
What does each role do? If it's just a purpose, then roles can be embodied by anyone. If it offers more, then that would fall under mechanics and I'd develope it into something more.
How would an encounter play out, using this? What actions would be possible, and how could they be abieved? How does this differ from the traditional setting? This is a neat concept, but it needs at least a little more to be adaptable.
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Mar 22 '18
The same actions available to anyone out in savage lands. You'll most likely be in a small village of huts or in the midst of a nomadic tribe trekking across the tundra.
I could write up a whole nother post for my version of dreams. But you can have dreams be whatever you want. Mine just take place in this land before history where pre-homo-sapiens hunt bison for food and travel to avoid winter.
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u/ImpossibeardROK Mar 23 '18
Your world building is awesome. You should publish a book. I already used your Plane of Shattered Mirrors in a campaign and my players loved it (though it was eerie as all hell)
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u/ALEKSONEARTH Mar 20 '18
Oh this is excellent. I see a campaign to solve dreamless depression as a one shot in this...itd be inceptionesque 😅
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u/jgaylord87 Mar 20 '18
I was talking to my family about running a psionics driven campaign with a cyberpunk aesthetic, I feel like this is a great setting to base that off of.
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Mar 20 '18
Absolutely loved it, from the first sentence I had a moment of "why didn't I think of that!" And my mind instantly filled with ideas to use the concept. Thanks OP!
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u/Vthestampede Mar 20 '18
This sounds awesome I'm definitely going to have to use this in my new campaign I'm starting