Making Dreams a Reality (Campaign Idea)

[atemu1234]

I have a really interesting idea for a D20 modern campaign.

In this campaign, people have gained the ability to dreamwalk (as in Manual of the Planes) and sleepers (people with low ranks in lucid dreaming, usually) have been known to die suddenly and without cause. This enables military assassinations without much difficulty (a la Inception + Matrix) but recently, civilians have been dying. Why, no one knows. All people know is that it's up to the PCs (crack government agents) to find out what's causing this and stop it.

Anyone have any ideas to make this a good campaign?

[Slipperychicken]

Maybe a secret society of dreamwalkers is trying to politically destabilize the Prime Material plane. That way, everyone's too busy with their own problems to notice that they're using their power over the dream-world to crash it into the prime material. If the lands of the waking and dreaming merge, the dreamwalkers believe they can control reality itself through Lucid Dreaming and gain godlike power. The dreamwalker cult sees that event as an apocalypse to herald their eternal reward as rulers of this gestalt realm.

As the worlds of dream and reality begin to merge, it can become harder to tell them apart: Ordinary people find themselves in sleepwalking-like states where they shamble about like zombies unable to think clearly, or even tell whether they're sleeping or waking. Seemingly-impossible creatures and objects start sprouting up when people have powerful dreams (this could even justify magic entering the world). Right before the final merging ritual is complete, chaos spreads as sleepwalkers' surroundings are not-so-subtly shaped by the content of their dreams.

I'd imagine the PCs might try to deal with the dream-cult in the real world, but to stop the dream-world from colliding with the real one, eventually have to take special pills and enter the lands of dream, gradually fighting their way to the dreamheart for a final showdown with the cult's leader and his henchmen.

If the PCs win, they wake up in a cold sweat, in their beds, with only a hazy, quickly-fading recollection of the campaign's events. They check the news, their contacts, and nothing strange at all is going on, the country never faced such a mental health crisis as they describe. Maybe the Dreamheart's collapse knocked out their memory. Maybe it was a government cover-up. Or maybe all just a dream.


EDIT: And I know exactly what a squad of dreamwalkers would be called: Sleeper Cells.

[atemu1234]

And I know exactly what a squad of dreamwalkers would be called: Sleeper Cells.

Well played, sir. Well played.

I like your idea, though. Maybe with some CoCd20 thrown in for flavor?

[Phelix-Mu]

I actually can Lucid Dream. Beware mixing the extremely limitless nature of the dream realm with the RAI of the Lucid Dreaming skill, which was supposed to be somewhat limited, but has such vague language that one can read almost anything into it. I'd advise rewriting it or expanding it with more, clear language on just what is possible.

One interesting device you might want to explore is a reversible time-flow for dreamscapes. In my dreams, I usually can undo recent undesirable events by simply rewinding the script a few seconds, or by considering what I just saw to have been a prediction of outcomes, as opposed to the reality of the dreamscape. This allows me to explore the nature of causality and perceive an even larger slice of the limitless possibilities of a given situation than is normally possible.

If you wanted to do that for some dreamscapes (I'd avoid using it all of the time, as mind-bending time phenomena tend to become headaches if used too often), I'd allow for a variable time reset, based on a Lucid Dreaming rolls, allowing time to be rewound up to five rounds or so, with the rewinder retaining memories of the potential future after the rewinding.

This kind of thing also can help drive home the bizarre and alien nature of the dreamscapes.

As a sidenote, I leveled my personal dream character up to level 50 not too long ago. Recent points of interest involved giving birth to a planet (and later a galaxy) by splitting a black hole with epic magic, and gaining practical immortality by splitting myself into two infinite, but equally opposed facets, one creative/prolific, the other destructive/entropic. Hehe. Good times.