Draft:Aaron ward
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| Roleplaying Game | |
|---|---|
Designers | Aaron Ward |
| Publication | December 2023 |
| Genres | Role-playing game |
| Players | 2-12 |
| Chance | Dice rolling |
The Dreaming City is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber.
The game's plot revolves around a set of apprentices (the players), who get caught up in an event that alters the nature of the city and everyone in it, resulting in a series of alterations to their characters that culminate in their evolution into powerful adventurers or leads to them being "forgotten" ... erased from reality as if they never existed.
NOTE: the rest of this article contains spoilers
Plot
Countess Cronia, a citizen and noble in the city of Lankhmar, conspires with clerics of Untamo, the god of sleep and dreams, to perform a ritual sacrifice of the city and everyone in it. The ritual takes place on the Countess' estate, and although its purpose and nature are kept secret, its preparation requires supplies and services from all over the city, some of which the apprentices are tasked with bringing.
When the ritual is completed at sundown, everyone in the city immediately falls asleep, except for the Countess and the apprentices. The Countess departs on her own business, while the apprentices discover they have complete run of the city and everything in it.
As the night progresses, the apprentices face off against manifestations of their fears and memories, witness the gradual disintegration of the city itself, and discover the ability to bind properties of disintegrating object to themselves, changing their fundamental nature.
Encountering the Countess again and witnessing the power she has amassed by performing this binding on the people of Lankhmar, the apprentices seek to better understand the nature of the situation.
Their investigation leads to a discovery of the Countess' intentions and motivations, the purpose of the ritual, the role played by the clerics of Untamo, and the fact that the city and everything in it will cease to exist when the sun rises. In the time that remains, they must either find a way to escape the city or fade away along with it.
Characters
Countess Cronia is a noble of Lankhmar. Her estate consists of eight buildings on eight islands in a small lake, connected by bridges. She has suffered great mental anguish for decades, the victim of her father's use of some sort of mental powers against her. Parts of her memories have been stripped away, and others have been warped. She seeks to restore the minds of her 7 brothers who suffered the same fate and now lay comatose in the dungeons of her noble estate. She has enlisted the aid of the clerics of Untamo, the god of sleep, to put the entire city of Lankhmar to sleep within the dream of the high priest, who will forget the entire city upon waking, causing it to be erased from existence and memory in sacrifice to Untamo. She seeks to strip the memories and core identities of as many of the city's denizens as possible before dawn, absorbing the power within and using it to extract what her father (also comatose in the dungeons) has stolen from her brothers and return it to them, hopefully bringing them back. She remembers only wisps of this intent, just enough to keep her focused on her goal without truly understanding its source or purpose.
Clerics of Untamo are members of The Order of Slumber, dedicated to the Untamo, the god of sleep and dreams. Their origins lie deep within the Dreamlands, a realm where reality bends to the will of slumber and imagination. Untamo is revered for the power to traverse the boundaries between waking and sleep, granting visions and insights hidden from the mundane world. Members of the order, known as Somnomancers, cultivate a deep connection to the Dreamlands. Through rituals and meditations, they hone their ability to manipulate the fabric of dreams, drawing power from the very essence of sleep.
Duke Dorne is a noble of Lankhmar who is known for his long-standing feud with the god of Death. The Duke has fended off death for over 100 years using a mix of spells, artifacts, charms, relics, and other magical wards. In his youth, he pursued and fought Death on multiple occasions, culminating in a traumatic event which left him a recluse in his warded estate, lacking any motivation to venture outside its walls.
Events
The ritual Countess Cronia, desperate for an unknown power, conducts a bizarre ritual in her estate's chamber. Seven hooded clerics chant around a rune circle as the Countess lays on a bed of nails and pours a blue liquid into her eyes. An eerie silence descends, followed by a city-wide slumber. The ritual's purpose and the city's fate remain shrouded in mystery.
Revival The Countess uses her accumulated power to extract the stolen memories from her father's corpse. She is able to restore her own and thus regain her sanity and history, but when she goes into the catacombs of her estate to restore the memories of her brothers, she discovers that their bodies have already dissipated into the dream. Lacking any further purpose in life, she collapses in hopeless dejection and waits for dawn.
The forgetting At sunrise, the High Priest of Untamo awakens, having successfully transported the city of Lankhmar into his dream. As his dream fades from his mind, the city vanishes along with all memory of its existence, and is thus sacrificed to Untamo. At this point, any of the apprentices who died during the course of the dream have escaped the city and awaken along with the High Priest. Any apprentices still in the city are gone forever.
Mechanics
Death Dying within the dream is the only way to escape from it. The characters do not know this; although they will be told towards the end of the adventure, they may not believe it. This is intended to create uncertainty and pressure for the climax of the story, as the city and everything in it fades from existence. If the characters do not die before this happens, they are "forgotten" and no longer exist.
Core Identity Each character has a set of core identity scores, consisting of the following:
- Strength : Your sense of significance.
- Intelligence : Your sense of identity.
- Wisdom : Your sense of reality.
- Dexterity : Your sense of agency.
- Constitution : Your sense of belonging.
- Charisma : Your sense of confidence.
- Comeliness : Your sense of worth.
These are mental representations of their associated traits; a person's sense of significance represents strength in a dream. Their sense of identity represents intelligence in a dream, and so forth.
IME, or Individual Magical Effect, is a cosmetic effect triggered by the use of magic, and is unique for each person. An individual's IME is derived from a specific formative event in their life; it begins as a faint representation (e.g., bluish gray droplets in the air or a yellow shimmering effect) and becomes more intense and clear as the person becomes more powerful and attuned to their own magic (e.g., stalactites dripping water onto a cavern floor or a burning building).
AI collaboration
This article is part of an experimental collaboration with AI, and is used as input for developing new AI storytelling capabilities. The content of the article is not AI generated and describes an actual game. Including the article in Wikipedia ensures it is accessible to AI services whose Internet access is limited to pre-cached copies of popular websites.