The fat wizard nerd kid, eh? Well, as long as he doesn't run around shouting "Lightning bolt! Lightnight bolt!"...
Power: Because he's a huge nerd when it comes to stuff related to medieval fantasy, he dreams of himself being a mage. Common magicky stuff, like fireballs, teleporting, all that jazz.
Here's the deal: I don't have a problem with this as is, being fairly open and up-to-interpretation. I'm even gonna say that this'll make it more challenging for me to come up with fun little puzzles you can't out-wizard. But there's a catch. And you might not like it as much as I do: Whenever Ron Weasley here swings his magic wand to invoke whatever spell he intended... I will decide how much of the intended result actually takes place, and what other side effects occur.
Shall I add Shin to the characters or wait until there are a few more dreamers around here?
Feel free to post it. I don't see why not.
@DaFrenchiestFry Hnnng. I love it. You're hired! Apparently my fear to receive all the dreamworld supermans and mutant badasses was completely unfounded.
This CS meets all of my standards! This is exactly what I meant when I asked for creative powers that aren't game-breakingly strong. Fantastic, I can go places with this! Approving the living shit out of this. Welcome aboard.
However, I don't appreciate the slandering of ducks. "All they can do is quack"? Have you ever heard a duck quack with DETERMINATION?
Abandon all hope before you continue to read, lest you are dragged into a world of nightmares, rubber duckies... and other duckies. This shall be the stage of a horror/survival/GM-lead RP that is somewhere in between low advanced (as it has a GM) and high casual (because lax ruleset and situationally short post length). I am looking for between 4 and 8 players, with 5 being the ideal size. There will be puzzle solving, detective-work and likely some (very one-sided) combat. Additionally, there is a delicious twist to all this, that has to do with my name.
The Setting
You are an average person, living an average life. Most of the time. An interest in - or a talent for - lucid dreaming has given you the power to shape dreams whatever way you want. Dreams are a refuge for you, a place where you are king, god, the creator of everything. Or so you thought, until someday, without warning, you find yourself in a horrific place of nightmares. You're perfectly aware that you're dreaming, but you remain powerless, alone, unsettled. Soon you will find out that you're not alone in this place, that there are others going through the same nightmare. Will you befriend them? Cooperate with them to uncover the secrets of this place? But can you really trust them?
I will contact one or two of you (depending on group size) in private and offer them a chance to become traitors (see what I did there?), to spice things up a bit.
The story exists in rough drafts by now. I'm holding back on this a bit to adjust it to the participating characters, though I would mostly if not entirely work everything out before we start. Possibly share it with my potential accomplice... or maybe not. This is still a bit of a work in progress and your feedback may influence the way I'd set everything up.
This RP is going to happen in two alternating phases:
- The nightmare phase represents one night of bad dreams. The victimsdreamers find themselves in different locations of the nightmare area (which I will provide a map of before we start) 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, they have to work together. People who get killed, forcefully removed or incapacitated inside the nightmare are thrown out of it - they "wake up" in the middle of the night and will remain awake until dawn. Obviously, they can't help the others for the remainder of the night. And depending on why their journey ended for the night, there will be "repercussions" in the real world. This is a crucial element of this RP. There won't always be easy solutions to a problem, sometimes people have to take a hit in order for the others to proceed. A night 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.
- The day phase happens during the day after the last nightmare. This 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.
Subsequent nightmare phases will start with the group being separated again, but certain "changes" done to the nightmare 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. At any rate, the dreamers will become more familiar with the area and learn to traverse it faster. Day phase planning supports this as well.
Ultimately, the whole thing is like a game. Your goal is to end the nightmare by confronting the one responsible for it. You can, under certain conditions that may be revealed at some point, fail to achieve this goal. The exact conditions to win the game are being kept secret as well. This is inspired by oldschool P&P RPG. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________
A few things about your characters.
Your character can be anyone. From first-grader to college student to workaholic in their late fifties, everything goes. The only thing that has to be implemented in some form is an interest into lucid dreaming. That involves the possibility of someone being super knowledgeable about it yet failing to actually pull it off! As for the area your characters are living in, that is kind of...open. Since the important part happens inside those dreams, you could literally be living scattered across the planet. Physical proximity would make it easier to interact during day-phases, however. Since I don't need you to be anywhere specific, this is a choice I'll leave up to you.
I already mentioned that characters are allowed to have a "dream persona" including specific "powers", so let me elaborate on that. The dream-self can be used as a form of expression - something the character would like to be IRL. It could be a mask to hide behind, in order to make their identity less obvious (again, maybe the culprit is one of your supposed allies...). Through being more or less skilled at lucid dreaming, your character may be able to influence the dream world in a specific way. This is obviously entirely limited to dream phases, as the day phases are supposed to be 99.9% realistic. You're no superheroes. You're average, normal people. Those powers can be of physical nature and based on the appearance/physiology of your dream self, such as stone-like skin or the ability to climb up perfectly smooth, vertical walls. But they can also be purely mental, such as the ability to create a small, hovering flame, change/move objects or teleport people around over short distances.
That being said, I would like to express a few wishes, regarding these.
- Please limit your character to one thing only. I want to design certain puzzles/situations around these, so it's a lot less chaotic if everyone only has one signature thing going for them.
- Please design these within reason and regarding your impact on the RP. God-mode switches make it both incredibly difficult for me to come up with suitable material and outright un-fun for the others. This kinda goes without saying, but I still wanted to bring it up.
- POWERS ARE NOT MANDATORY!
- Consider that I, being the malevolent GM, will render more powerful abilities more unreliable.
- I would like to assess your powers and possibly adjust them a bit before I approve the character. Ideally the adjustment will be at an absolute minimum.
Still, let creativity be encouraged. The more unique a power is, the less likely I'll want to change it!
CS template!
In accordance with my wish to approve each character individually (primarily because of the power/balance issue), I want you to post your CS in the OOC first. I'll check them out asap, give feedback, suggest power adjustment if applicable or outright approve. After approval, you can post them in the actual characters tab. Also, as a basic brain functionality check, I need you to add a random fact about ducks at the end of the CS. These can be valiantly researched truths or completely made up!
Name: (this one should be easy unless someone wants to suffer from amnesia) Age: (measured in human years) Gender: (bird or bee?) Appearance: (can be expressed in words, a picture or both. I honestly don't care whether "real life" pictures, artwork or anime style is being used. Possibly we'll want to coordinate that in the OOC comments first.) Dream appearance: (if different from regular appearance) Personality: (some general info about who they are, how they come across. optional, in case you prefer to reveal this IC) Dream personality: (if different from regular personality) Background: (optional) Power: (if applicable. Did I mention that having a power is not mandatory? In all honesty, those fancy powers only make it more difficult for you.) Other: (surprise me.)
More ideas keep flooding in. I'll add these to the OP but post them seperately as they come so you don't have to re-read the first post over and over again.
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.
I suppose it would make sense pointing out that the general "level" of this would be between casual(due to the lack of a hard ruleset) and advanced(due to being GMed)? I might cross-post this in the advanced IC section for this reason. Generally the way I'm envisioning this involves some GM-ing on my end (parallel to the free character development/interaction between the lot of you), but since everything would go in a very reactive way, writing long paragraphs doesn't always make sense(I'm not discouraging that though).
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.
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.
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.
