Jason Thompson's Dreamland RPG

Summary: Jason Thompson's Dreamland RPG is easy to learn and fun to playtest. You should give it a try if you're interested in fantasy RPGs, dreams vs. the waking world, and storytelling, and if you like the thought of stringing words together quickly into sentences in response to prompts.

Cover art by Jason Thompson

I met artist/writer/game designer Jason Thompson remotely a couple of years ago via the SFFaudio Podcast. I think the only episode we've actually been on together was a discussion of The Cats of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft, but I've listened with interest to several other episodes he's been on, and I was really struck by his gorgeous and often very moving cartoon version of HPL's The Doom That Came to Sarnath, that was linked from the podcast notes when I discussed that story (my take: The Sarnath invaders deserved what they got.).

H.P. Lovecraft was undoubtedly a racist, not just as "a man of his time" -- but he had an incredibly rich imagination, inspiring generations of writers, filmmakers and showmakers, artists, and gamers who continue the conversations and, at least more recently, often subvert his problematic themes. 

Many people refer to the Lovecraft mythos, but he is far from the only, or even the first, author to write about cosmic horror. Moreover, Lord Dunsany wrote earlier about the concept of fantasy lands that could be visited via dreams (or drugs). However, Lovecraft's connected stories mapped out a Dreamland that is weirdly approachable, but still wondrous, if sometimes intimidating, and his continuing popularity means that extensions and reinterpretations keep arising from his work. 

The Call of Cthulhu RPG system is originally based on Lovecraft's mythos, of course, although it has progressively updated its ethos and expanded far beyond its inspiration. CoC, now in its 7th edition, has a Dreamlands extension. The Eldritch Horror boardgame has a Dreamlands expansion, and there are probably plenty of other Dreamlands-inspired indie games that I haven't heard about.

Moreover, there are other options if you want to play alternating Dreamer/Waking characters. Girl by Moonlight, an Evil Hat RPG based on the Forged in the Dark engine, is one game that facilitates this; I've seen a really great 11-video actual play campaign done by Speculate!, originally broadcast on Arvan Eleron's Twitch stream and now available on YouTube.

But you can never have too many options. Each new game brings something different to the metaphorical gaming table. 

Thus, I was really excited when I heard that Jason Thompson was working on a Dreamland RPG. As noted above, his artwork is gorgeous, sometimes stark and sometimes lush, but it also shows the artist's deep thinking about Lovecraft's stories, especially those set explicitly in fantasy lands.  I've been wondering what his particular focus would bring to an RPG.

His Dreamland RPG is currently in playtesting and slated for full release in 2025. I've been trying to get in on this playtesting for quite a while, but most of those games had been starting around 8 p.m. Pacific, or 11 p.m. my time, which didn't work for me. However, I finally got to play in a recent afternoon session, and I enjoyed it very much.

The original plan was for Jason to GM this private playtest, but he ended up stepping back and asked one of the Dreamland RPG writers, Aaron V., to run it instead. He put us through his short scenario, Band on the Run, with some elements inspired by the Paul McCartney/Wings song. We used Discord to talk with each other and Roll20 for the virtual tabletop (Steam is another option).

Dreamland is much simpler to pick up than the above-named RPGs. The free Quickstart Guide is 52 pages, but probably about half of those are tables, cartoons, maps, and character sheets. Aaron took me and two other newbie players, Alastríona Órfhlaith and Stuart, through character creation and the basic rules in about 45 minutes (including waiting for tech issues to be resolved), but he said Jason usually gets that down to half an hour.

Some details will almost certainly change before the final release. But for now, players get to choose or roll a Dreamlands type from 25 Roles (occupations that come with different advantages, skills bonuses, and special powers), and to choose whatever Waking Self they want. Each player also chooses or rolls for 3 Memories that their Dream self carries from the Waking world; these Memories can be spent to create Marvels, which can help Dreamers in difficult situations, and help Dreamers advance in levels. However, if all their Memories are spent, their Dream self may detach from their Waking self. 

However, the 300 Word cards provide the main mechanic for playing the game. The GM provides a limited pool of Words that the players can either take into their own "hands" or draw later. When they come up against a challenge, from climbing a wall to negotiating with a vendor, or whatever, they'll decide how many Words to spend as bonuses (1 point per word) to the dice rolls associated with their skills. The player spends those words by creating a little narrative from them that explains how they'll prevail. But if they spend a lot of Words, there's a higher chance that they'll break one of the Dreamland Pillars.

The five Pillars of Dreamland are Passion, Loathing, Mystery, Faraway, and Wonder. Each Word is associated (color-coded) with one of those Pillars (e.g. "heart" for Passion, "hell" for Loathing, "fate" for Mystery, "Yann" [a place name] for Faraway, or "radiant" for Wonder), plus there's a sixth suit of neutral (color-coded gray) words (and using them doesn't risk breaking Pillars). Most Dreamland Roles have an advantage associated with one of the Pillars (for instance, getting double bonuses from that Pillar's Word cards).

That's the majority of what's needful to know for a Dreamland one-shot playtest. There's a Waking phase at the end of each session, which Aaron used to help us wrap things up, but that's mainly important for longer campaigns. You can also acquire Impairments and have to deal with them later. Furthermore, Dreamland mishaps can even kill Waking selves.

But you're probably asking, aside from the mechanics, what was it like to actually play Dreamland? Well, I don't want to give away too many details from Aaron's scenario, but after we created our characters, we entered the game to find our characters running from a scary pursuer. We all passed our skill-and-word-narration challenges to escape, found ourselves wandering through a wilderness, got some advice from an enigmatic stranger doing a questionable job, and found ourselves entering a town. My Dream character was a painter, so in exchange for room and board at an inn, I painted a new sign for the business, with peacocks and elephants. Then our scary pursuer caught up with us. The other players and I resolved the situation by combining our characters' aspects to create a Marvel, so an elephant came to life from the new painting (with a peacock perched on its back) and went after our antagonist. And then we all woke up! We spent a little time narrating what our Waking characters did after the dream, and how it affected their lives. My Waking character was an accountant; she didn't quit her job, but she did start painting every weekend, all the spare time she could take, gaining a new Passion Memory.

Fellow player Alastríona Órfhlaith enjoyed the game so much that she sketched art of the elephant breakout scene and posted it on Bluesky!

I very much enjoyed my adventure in the Dreamland RPG and hope I'll get more chances to play. I think a longer campaign could be very rewarding, with the right companions and Dream Master. I can see huge potential for different styles of Dreamland play, leaning toward humorous, pulpy, noir, horror, etc. Currently, the Roles are slanted toward playing in a mostly agrarian type of fantasy world, but I can imagine making adjustments for an alt-universe or SF dream setting instead.

If you'd like to try playtesting this Dreamland RPG yourself, you can join the Dreamland Discord server, follow on Facebook, or download the free Quickstart guide and other materials, or watch a video of some other people playtesting it, at https://www.dreamrpg.com/upcoming-playtests/ -- enjoy!