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Sunday, September 13, 2009

Dreaming of D&D

Savage Swords talks about dreaming of games - this has been happening to me a lot recently. A lot. I recently reacquired the 1e DMG, and poring over it like I used to do when I was 12. A lot of the setup for the overlord side of the game I'm getting together is coming from the DMG - it's sinking into the subconscious. Last night I dreamt of tables - and like there's not enough in the book (can there ever be enough? uh...yeah, probably so...anyway) - like there weren't enough in the book as is, I found a cache of tables I'd never seen before - somewhere in the random encounter by dungeon level area, which was a sort of uber-table.

This was a dream, remember, and it was vague. I was totally psyched - it was the table to end all tables! I think I was generating a dungeon. And, of course, I can't remember what it was about. I remember rolling on it and generating some information and being really excited, feeling like a thorny problem that had existed for years was solved by this discovery - but yeah, in the waking world, I have no idea what the table was. Ugh. Oh well. Perhaps it'll bubble back up out of the subconscious at some point (like while I'm trapped at work, or fixing dinner or something). Perhaps it will appear in the next Fight On! - stranger things have happened.

Makes me think of something I used to do when I ran games pretty regularly. Provide dreams. When the characters slept, (and when I remembered) there was a chance they'd have a dream (the chance was 10% + Int + Wis I believe...)). So I had about a dozen index cards with some content of some generally random dream-things that had no bearing or symbolic relevance to the characters - of course, I did not tell them that - they were free to 'read into it' as much or as little as they wanted to. There were also 1 or 2 cards for each character that DID contain a clue or a message that was relevant to their character, though couched in obscure terms and such. I'd draw a card at random if they had a dream, and give it to them to keep. Sometimes they'd latch on to something that was suggestive of import and really try to suss it out - and this gave birth to some interesting play!

Dream On!

2 comments:

Timeshadows said...

Cool.

When working on games, I often continue the work in my sleep.

I had two very memorable AD&D dreams:

1). A wizard hosts an adventuring party in his tower. I am his homunculus and I move behind books on shelves until I spy the stout fighter and softly leap onto his pauldron and begin lapping up his blood with my anaesthetising tongue.

2). I am a Crimson Death, working in conjunction with a Will-o-the-Wisp, who lures a party trudging through my pocket of the swamp, at night.
--In one moment, I siphon a great gout of blood from them as I manifest.

I remember both of these clearly to this day, although they happened 20+ years ago.

:D

Gothridge Manor said...

That 1st edition DMG is an amazing chunk of book. I still find new stuff in it today and I'had mine for 25+ years. I can't say I've dreamt about it though.