Ok, I've been thinking for quite a while that sleep in all three IRE realms is really poorly implemented. In Lusternia we have a lot of emphasis on dreams for inspiration, dreams for events, dreams to communicate with Spirits (Hart's aspects) and even a class based around sleep. So why is it just a waste of time that you have to put up with until level 80, when you never use it again?

I think Lusternia has a real chance to be daring and lead the way with a new mechanic (which seems to be our thing) and particularly because dreams are so interwoven with the story here. What if the next area that is released can't be visited normally, but can only be entered when your character is asleep? In it you can find miniature puzzles and rewards, a way to interact with other sleepers anonymously, and if need be a refuge from your usual routine for some fun.

Example Changes:

# New item: Sandman's Dust - a vial of sand produced by enchanters that allows you to sleep as long as you like without automatically awakening. Also deepens sleep enough to visit the dreamrealm consciously.

# While sleeping, if sufficient deep asleep (either by using sandman dust or with the help of a dreamweaver) you can DREAM DEEP to enter at a random room in the dreamrealm. Your body will be changed to an NPC that is still targettable (so damage will still wake you up), but your sensory 'control' will be shifted to the new area.

# Normal (ie, light) sleeping will still function as it does now, although I think you should have the symptoms of blindness while asleep.

# When you appear in the dreamworld, you will randomly be in a mini-area that corresponds to different types of dreams. For example, there might be a little section that corresponds to a nightmare of drowning. So there are quite a few underwater rooms that shift around in a maze fashion, and your task is to find the way to the surface before you run out of air. 'Dying' in the dreamrealm doesn't mean you lose any experience, you would just wake up.

# You would see other dreamers in the dreamworld as ephemeral, featureless figures, but that you can communicate with. So I might run into someone who appears as "a humanoid-shaped swirling green mist", and I could then chat with them ("A humanoid-shaped swirling green mist says, 'Is this my nightmare or yours?'").

# If you succeeded in the mini-puzzle that you find yourself in, not only will you gain experience but you might have the option of either travelling to a kind of general, happy dream where you can run around and play in, or fading into another dream-puzzle. In the general, happy dream, you might be able to 'influence' phantasmic entities in some way to gain small pieces of insight which you can sell on to oracular mobs when you awake.

# Dreamweaving could possibly be reworked to be less like a duplicate runes (and maybe runes improved by using some of the mote abilities), and more actual dream-based. At the moment, there isn't really a lot of -dreaming- involved, the only real dreamstuff you do is sending a hallucination, a room-wide illusion, or an unchanging nightmare. Maybe you would have the ability to move around the dreamworld at will, and cause some mischief in the waking body unbeknownst to your target. Or whatever.

# When a new event is up, you might find yourself in an entirely unfamiliar dreamscape with a mob who actually converses with you, giving each person slightly different details. A whole new mechanism of dream-insight could be obtained for when mortals wish to learn more about details they probably can't access facts on directly. And the whole time there is admin deniability! "We didn't -say- that exactly, you just dreamed it... dreams can be misleading!"

Obviously there are lots of different implementation variations, but I think its an interesting and unique mechanic that could really distinguish Lusternia from the rest. Thoughts?




Edit: And yes, you thought you'd escaped from my 'weekly posts on druids, aetherspace and RP' as someone put it. You thought wrong!

Not to Hijaak the thread but.

Yay! Avaer is still alive!

I certainly like the general idea.
Not sure if it's better the way you described it, or having a new massive area of Dreamworld where people could meet and... do something.

I'd prefer that you could lose exp if you "die" (wake up).... you can gain exp and esteem but you can't lose it? that's kinda unfair.... also it would be cool to be able to attack other players while you're on happydream and that would wake them up and give them some incurable insomnia so they don't go back to dreamworld for... let's say about ten minutes... also the attacking on dreamworld could be a dreamish ghostly form of the real attack.... like ghostlyfire instead of cosmicfire.... of course, all the syntax and effects the same... just cosmetics rp... but only mob attacks, no inflicting on dreamworld....

that's my idea....

That works too, and you're probably right about a risk being involved to balance a reward.

I like it. Sounds very interesting.

We'd need some new Dreamweaving skills.
Dreamrealm
Syntax: DREAMWEAVE DREAMREALM
DREAMWEAVE TRUEREALM
DREAMREALM VISIBILITY
While in your dreambody, you can enter or exit the strange Dreamrealm at will. While in the dreamrealm, you will not constantly lose willpower, and you will be able to see the true identities of other dreamers. You can also use DREAMREALM VISIBILITY to control whether or not non-dreamweavers in the Dreamworld will be able to see your form.

I thought of something similar, but rather it is a plane of existence. I had an idea for a mental plane, perhaps the remnants of the Akashaic Memory or what it eventually became after being destroyed. Call it the "Deep Dream-realm", or the "Collective Spirit Realm".

The idea I had would that it would be a malleable area. I was thinking either Dreamweavers, or Illusionists (Phantasms), Psionisists, or all, had this mental plane. Unlike the Lusternian Astral Plane, old Astral Projection tales talked about a realm of the mind you projected yourself into.

Now, the idea I had was that in this reality, you might have the ability to create or shape the realm. You could alter rooms like if you had an orb of creation, or create creatures. This would cost Willpower to achieve, and such changes would be temporary and gradually fade. The more willpower you exerted the more you could focus your will.

Maybe there's a room or set of rooms for every character and Dreamweavers, Psychics, and others could manipulate these realms, spinning dreams, using it to have secret communications, etc.

Maybe there are special areas of the dreaming that contain power for organizations. Dreamweavers, Illusionists (Phantasms), or Psionists have to take over these areas. Maybe the mental energies of Kethuru and other Soulless seep in on the borders, and dreamweavers have to fight manifestations of these creatures or possibly insanity.

A great storyline, if you can find it, that would show what I'm thinking of would be the original appearance of the Legion character in New Mutants back in the 80s--Professor X and a few of his students got sucked into the astral plane into a weird landscape his son created. I could think of a dreamweaver creating his own little mindscape.

That would be so awesome.

Awesome, indeed. This sounds incredibly cool. I like the idea of different little puzzles for nightmares. How about:

Being chased - a maze area with a mob who runs around after you, if you wake up without him catching you, you win.

Buried alive - you have to figure out how to escape before you run out of air.

Being eaten - you have to defeat some kind of large beasty.

Being able to in some sense create your own dreamscape is very awesome indeed, although I'm not sure how much would be done by everyone, and how much by dreamweavers. Maybe Astrologers and Runists can have a special connection to the dreamworld as well, due to their reliance on insight and augury.

Psionicists can go find some other place to apply their I-can-do-everything magic.

Edit: And nifty nightmares, that's the idea!

I really like this idea. It would add an entirely new dimension to roleplay and also add a new "semi" bashing area, at the least. It would give Dreamweavers something to work with and a plot to base role play off of. If nothing else, it could be a good addition to an already growing plot line.

I like it. Though one thing: if you don't lose exp for "dying" (or anything else) but you can gain experience, that seems a little imbalanced. Maybe dying in a dream should have some penalty -- either a low exp loss, like conglutination or losing an influence, or some other penalty.

I like this idea. It could be along the same lines as losing an influencing battle, or you could lose entrance into the Dreamworld for X amount of time.

But besides all the technicalities, I'm interested to see how one would get there and what exactly would be there. Plot line and roleplay wise.

Interesting in concept, but I think it's too ambitious to be implemented.

And why do you think dreamweaving is a clone of runes? O.o Not at all the case.

However, there are several things I'd like to see, dreamweaving-wise. We know that there are creatures in the dreamrealm - we summon 'parasites of the dreaming' with the void skill, and the Manifestations are obvious. I'd like it if there were a few rarish dreambeasts that wandered around, if only for flavour or to give me an excuse to use burst.

Several psuedo-major dreamweaving bugs need to be addressed, mainly involving not being able to do things when your physical body is afflicted with vines or other restrictions.

Dreamweavers need to have a skill that gives a sleeping target a created dream - like a power-less Hallucination, but with a longer length limit.

Not a bad idea, but I'd rather see actual areas.