Greetings, all ye who enter here.
This is a place where I want to probe wether this neat little idea I had today would attract some audience, and whether it would be worth finishing the train of thought. Keep in mind that this is rough. It's not fully thought through yet.
Here's the setting.
A bunch of completely random people (this is you!) ends up either being very talented at lucid dreaming, or trains themselves to be. They all have a "dream persona" that may or may not be completely different from their real world appearance, and may or may not have specific "super powers". Everything is fine and dandy and you (mostly) don't know one another yet.
Then suddenly, this very group of people (still you!) starts having a recurring nightmare about waking up in what appears to be an abandonned/broken down industrial area, partially or entirely robbed of their respective dream powers. In other words: helpless. And alone. The group would eventually begin meeting up inside the dream, realize they're all real, different people, and begin cooperating to find out whatever the hell is going on. They may choose to approach one another in the real world or not. Whether they trust one another or not is yours to decide. Eventually it will become clear that some kind of "entity"(for a lack of better word) is directing this nightmare. Some kind of malicious game master (you guessed it, that's me) who is robbing you of your powers and pitting you in this nightmarish scenery against your will. Whether the nightmare is caused by a real person that exists in real life or not and how to stop it is yours to find out.
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Structure:
Here's how I want to structure things:
- nightmare session
The victimsdreamers find themselves in different locations of the nightmare area (which I'll provide a map of) and attempt to find one another. There will be a semi-obvious goal to "work towards" which I will not disclose just yet.
In order to reach said goal, you have to work together. People who get killed, forcefully removed or incapacitated inside the nightmare are thrown out of it - they "wake up" early, can't help the others for the remainder of the "session" and suffer... and suffering severe damage in the nightmare will have "repercussions" in the real world. This is a crucial element of what I have in mind. There won't always be an easy solution to a problem, sometimes people have to take a hit in order for the others to proceed. A "session" ends when either nobody is left, when a significant amount of time has passed or when I feel that a significant amount of progress is achieved.
- day phase
Is all about dealing with the repercussions, potentially interacting outside of the nightmare and making plans for the next nightmare phase. The length of this can vary depending on whether you choose to interact in the real world.
- next nightmare phase
You will find yourself in random locations of the nightmare again, but a certain, varying amount of "changes" you've made to it will be persistent, making it easier to meet up and/or progress past the point you reached last time. Depending on what you did, it could get more difficult as well.
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A lot of this is, as I said, not worked out yet. I'm quite fond of the idea of having people "spawn in" into the nightmare at different locations, so besties don't always get to team up and different kinds of interaction can ensue. I'm also thinking about inconsistently removing powers, so that the dreamers are not exactly "helpless", but rather that their powers are screwing them over and failing at the worst possible situations. I am also considering to inofficially recruit one or two of you (depending on group size) to become traitors (see what I did there?), to spice things up a bit. The story, I would mostly if not entirely work out before we start. Possibly share it with my potential accomplice. Maybe not. This is a work in progress, so your feedback may heavily influence the way I'd set everything up.
So there it is. Hit me.
Also, the motivation for this idea does NOT come from Silent Hill, NOR from Nightmare on Elm Street. It actually comes from a super old video game boss that frightened me when I played a certain, actually incredibly bright/colorful/happy game at the age of...7 or so.
