DreamQuest: Lovecraft's Dreamlands as a game of its own: yay or nay?

[smiorgan]

If I'm not mistaken before CoC was a thing Sandy Petersen was working at a RQ Dreamlands supplement which he tried to pitch to Chaosium. They asked him to do CoC instead.

Now, should Chaosium consider developing the Dreamlands as their own thing? This is not necessarily an alternative as having them as an option for CoC adventures.

I've always had the impression that RPG fans (I don't enter the discussion of purely literary appreciacion here) are divided on the Dreamlands issue. Some just dislike them or don't care about them. Those who like them are divided between those that see them as fully integrated in the CoC universe and rpg (e.g. having Dreamlands interludes in regular CoC campaigns (e.g. Spawn of Azathoth) and those who think that they are better seen as their own thing at least to some degree (e.g. as in the campaign "The Dreaming Stone".

Furthermore, people disagree on the portrayal of the Dreamlands and on the kind of scenarios. Is it mostly about symbols, the subconscious, the psyche and the self? Or is it more about escapist adventures in realms beyond imagination? Compare Mark Morrison's scenario about Xura in the earlier editions of the Dreamlands supplement vs. the different portrayal of Zura in the revised supplement, which is based on Brian Lumley.

So, how do you want to play in the Dreamlands? And which dreamlands? 

 

[Baulderstone]

I can see the sense in a stand-alone Dreamlands game. Lovecraft is working with a completely different palette in the Dreamlands stories than he was with "The Whisperer in the Darkness" or "The Mountains of Madness". 

I don't have a problem with it being a pastiche. As the Dreamlands stories are journeys to fantastical places, I think it defeats the purpose a bit if you narrow it down to places that Randolph Carter went to in his dreams. Clark Ashton Smith's and Lord Dunsany's fantasy fits the mood of the Dreamlands well, but I don't find that Lumley's work fits in as well for me. 

[Simlasa]

I'd rather see it for RQ6 (whatever it gets renamed to) and as a mix of Lovecraft/Dunsany/Smith... a weird fantasy setting that stands on its own. (Magic World would have been my first choice but... sigh...)

And yeah... Brian Lumley doesn't fit... the Lovecraftian stories of his I've read felt like they owed more to Edgar Rice Burroughs.

[jux]

Standalone, IF they do it right. I'd like this to be the most gonzo fantasy RPG ever. It should not be about going to Dream world and back and forth - no, just Dreamlands, you as a native. And BRP and not necessarily RQ6.

[K Peterson]

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So, how do you want to play in the Dreamlands? And which dreamlands? 

Tough question. Even though I've played CoC for decades, I've never run it set within the Dreamlands, and I'm not sure if I ever will. There's always been more appeal for me to run it during the Classic era, or Gaslight, or the Modern era - or, really, any historical era rather than in the enigmatic Dreamlands.

If I do get around to running it, I'd prefer to run it in a rather dark and sinister fashion as portrayed by Pagan Publishing's Realm of Shadows and Arc Dream's Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man. Exotic, surreal, dangerous. Not pulp adventures in a fantasy world.

[Baulderstone]

1 hour ago, K Peterson said:

Tough question. Even though I've played CoC for decades, I've never run it set within the Dreamlands, and I'm not sure if I ever will. There's always been more appeal for me to run it during the Classic era, or Gaslight, or the Modern era - or, really, any historical era rather than in the enigmatic Dreamlands.

If I do get around to running it, I'd prefer to run it in a rather dark and sinister fashion as portrayed by Pagan Publishing's Realm of Shadows and Arc Dream's Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man. Exotic, surreal, dangerous. Not pulp adventures in a fantasy world.

It should be noted that the Dreamlands of Realm of Shadows was drawing Clark Ashton Smith's fantasy work.

[Simlasa]

1 hour ago, K Peterson said:

If I do get around to running it, I'd prefer to run it in a rather dark and sinister fashion as portrayed by Pagan Publishing's Realm of Shadows and Arc Dream's Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man. Exotic, surreal, dangerous. Not pulp adventures in a fantasy world.

I prefer it dark and sinister myself... high dark fantasy (if there is such a thing). Dunsany and Smith seem to often have things go badly... or at least strangely for their protagonists so I'd want to retain that sense of danger, rather than the power fantasy of modern D&D. Thief of Baghdad as directed by David Lynch. 

[smiorgan]

20 hours ago, Simlasa said:

I prefer it dark and sinister myself... high dark fantasy (if there is such a thing). Dunsany and Smith seem to often have things go badly... or at least strangely for their protagonists so I'd want to retain that sense of danger, rather than the power fantasy of modern D&D. Thief of Baghdad as directed by David Lynch. 

This. High dark fantasy, exoticism, melancholy, arbitrariness, and a hint of twisted fairy tale. And characters are from the waking world, not natives so that the place is new to them.

I think a lot of work should be put on the dreaming powers (Dreaming skill in CoC) so that the PC can become co-creators of the world while remaining highly vulnerable to it (including the things they have created!).

Indirect literary inspiration on people's dream creations could come from Mythago Wood (the first book is scary as hell!) and Moorcock's Fortress of the Pearl (btw MRQ Elric has rules for MM's Lands of Dream).

[Yronimos_Whateley]

I've always been fond of the Dreamlands setting, and I'd love to see an updated version of it for 7th Edition.

I'm with the folks who like the dark, surreal version of the Dreamlands - I like Simlasa's elevator pitch of "Thief of Bagdad as directed by David Lynch"!

The purist in me tends to go for a "mostly Dunsany/Lovecraft" version of the Dreamlands, but I think different "flavors" of the Dreamlands setting should be options, similar to the way that Pulp Cthulhu and the various eras are a great way to play with the tone, mood and feel of the game, and get in touch with the vast variety of expressions that Weird Fiction has found.  After all, there's as much of Dunsany's original Dreamlands to be found in Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, Lumley, Neil Gaiman, and Clark Ashton Smith as in Lovecraft, and there's quite a broad palette to be found between them while still producing worthy fantasy and horror all around.  (In fact, Lumley and Burroughs could almost be fairly said to correspond exactly to the spirit behind the 7th Edition "Pulp Cthulhu", a "Pulp Cthulhu" for the Dreamlands.)

I've never had a chance to run a campaign of Dreamlands characters, but I also always loved that option; one of these days I'll have to get around to running a game of Dreamlands characters on their own Dream Quest into "the waking world" (Dunsany had hinted in his Dreamlands stories that the people in the land of dream are familiar with the waking world and are as sure that London is a dream, as the story's PoV character was that the Dreamlands were a dream....)  Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and many of his other stories seems like a perfect model for the mood and tone of such a campaign....

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2016 by Yronimos_Whateley
Typo.