Author Topic: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]  (Read 14164 times)

Offline Amechra

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Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« on: September 16, 2012, 06:09:17 PM »
Sorry, thought I'd start this thread for you; you can edit the OP any way you want, I don't mind.

But... yeah.

We need to discuss this, and to supply suggestions for the greater glory of Homebrewing!
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Offline Bozwevial

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2012, 12:14:00 AM »
I have had a dream/memory focused martial discipline on the back burner for a while now which you're welcome to incorporate, provided that you want to and that I ever get it finished.
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2012, 12:34:46 AM »
Thanks guys. Glad to see I'm not the only one who is enthusiastic about this. :D Now... to find the time to actually do something with it... :P
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Offline Amechra

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2012, 02:20:22 AM »
The description of your "door and windows locking" dream scares the fucking pants off of me.
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Offline Merchant

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2012, 05:15:17 AM »
Just incase this is where we will discuss this, then I'll just paste what I put on the main thread.
___________________________________________________

I'm not sure how Lucid Dreaming works in DnD, but I'd like to help. I  tried to help someone on GITP with their Psychonaut but seemed either life got in the way, and it got put on the back burner.

Question. Seeing as how, I'm guessing, people will be entering people's minds what do you think about the items they carry. Your Mind Pirate for example has his powers based off of the Styx-dipped weapon, right?

It was mentioned about each mental stat should play a specific role in the creation of the Mindscape. I can't remember what was suggested about which does what but I was thinking that ones intelligence(mindscape owner) determines the the strength of the monsters.

For example The mindscape performs a knowledge check. The information that the mindscape 'knows' what the strengths of the creatures. Meaning a peasant might not know about the cold resistance of a skeleton or the DR/slashing. If that is the case then the 'mental' skeleton is effected by cold and piercing and bludgeoning weapons normally.

It points out the lack of imagination and risk from a commoner. Personal experience will play a role in case the individual has had personally seen undead or aberrations.

I also had the thought that every mind should have a pseudo layout for those that have experience in traveling in mindscapes.

For example. "Hopes/Dreams" could be located in a general place in relation to ones' "Secrets" location

Just thought that there could be two kinds of combat as well. One is the normal kind (incase it is possible for the average non-Mindscape class can be brought inside.  And for the Mindscape-related classes they have the ability to ... battle with their wills.

I think that maybe class-type, race-type/sub-type,HD(life experience?) and alignment  should also play a part in what the mindscape looks like inside. (kind of like a way to quickly create mindscapes incase someone dives inside the mind of an assassin.

I was thinking that the 'people' created by the mindscape should have a  X% chance to have 1/2 levels in levels of the mindscape Owner has. Rogue 6 would mean that there could be level 3 rogues.

Just some thoughts.

Offline sirpercival

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2012, 08:19:10 AM »
Just incase this is where we will discuss this, then I'll just paste what I put on the main thread.

Good idea!

Phae did you ever read or play Dream Park or Amber?  It seems like you could incorporate some elements from those in this.

For example, control of dreams could be like walking through Shadows, in terms of adding and subtracting things....
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #6 on: September 17, 2012, 10:22:34 AM »
Never played Amber, but had some friends who were crazy about it. I just never got around to playing it with them. :P

What I'm thinking I'll do as far as Mindscape combat is have it work like normal combat for most people (after all, if they wind up there, they probably don't even know they're dreaming/in someone else's dream). The Lucid Dreaming skill offers a lot of other options IIRC, and I'll probably give some classes/creatures extra options like being able to modify the "environment" with some kind of a check, reproduce certain SLAs, etc. (Some of this is IIRC covered by Lucid Dreaming, though... I really need to go reread that...).
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Offline Amechra

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2012, 11:01:36 AM »
Look up the Dreamtelling feat.

It lets you use dreams to tell the future.

That should be possible inside dreams; at least to tell how the dream is going to end, as it were.

Also, there should be skill tricks you can take that let you use Lucid Dreaming to replace other skills, like using it for physical checks (maybe even mental checks; dreams don't have to make sense.)

Also, may I suggest that you need rules for if someone's dreams become nightmares?

Or at least the weird stuff that my dreams come up with, like mind controlling movies on pirate ships (I caught a glimpse of the screen on that one, and it was a pair of women in bride's dresses talking), or an Irish family capturing a rocket ship, or robots ranting about their imperfections, or cakes that turn people evil?

THERE NEEDS TO BE RULES FOR AD-LIBBING MAGIC ITEMS THAT MAKE NO SENSE!

Oh, and thanks for using the Resider-in-Dreams.

Man, it seems that the only PrCs that I feel totally comfortable making are crazy Warlock hybrids...
« Last Edit: September 17, 2012, 11:04:13 AM by Amechra »
"There is happiness for those who accept their fate, there is glory for those that defy it."

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Offline Merchant

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2012, 01:55:10 PM »
What if you create an ability to change a dream into a nightmare. I see a nightmare specialist that infects one of the character's mental manifestations buy having it turn into a werewolf or vampire and program it to attack the main form of owner of the mindscape. That way its target's fear against himself.

I think we need to know how one fights ones own nightmare. Also need to figure what determines number of layer one mindscape has.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2012, 02:18:12 PM »
The description of your "door and windows locking" dream scares the fucking pants off of me.
Yeah... it's pretty fucking scary... It's also a recurring dream nightmare that I had for years...

I also used to have night terrors back when I was in my early 20s... but I don't even think I want to talk about those in detail... I'd basically have nightmares where I'd be partially awake but paralyzed, and would open my eyes and still be seeing and feeling the lingering images from the nightmare...

I've also had dreams where I was "the monster"... running people down, ripping them to shreds, etc... So yeah, I've had an interesting dream-life, to say the least. :P

And we definitely need to have a way to allow PCs to play out the way things can be completely unrealistic and bizzarre in dreams, like stretching your arm across a football field and back like plastic man, etc.
I don't pee messages into the snow often , but when I do , it's in Cyrillic with Fake Viagra.  Stay frosty my friends.

Offline Amechra

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2012, 02:33:11 PM »
At least your dreams have the grace to be honest about how horrific they are.

I've had a dream (and if I have a dream that I remember things about, I remember every detail of it), wherein one of my friends had a nice long talk with me about how love was a horrible thing that would end with me alone, dead in a gutter.

You know how dreams make perfect sense when you are in them? Yeah.

But, more on topic!

I would suggest giving dreams a sort of "planar traits toolkit", you know, so that you could have people do weird things that are consistent with the dream. Manipulating these traits could be a prestige class or a feat tree, depending.
"There is happiness for those who accept their fate, there is glory for those that defy it."

"Now that everyone's so happy, this is probably a good time to tell you I ate your parents."

Offline sirpercival

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #11 on: September 17, 2012, 03:06:44 PM »
And we definitely need to have a way to allow PCs to play out the way things can be completely unrealistic and bizzarre in dreams, like stretching your arm across a football field and back like plastic man, etc.

OK, how about this.  Each char gets a pool of Dream Points based on their ranks in Lucid Dreaming.  Then they can spend those DP to achieve various effects in the Dreamscape.

How they gain access to different categories of effects could be done a few different ways:
(1) different LD skills like different knowledges
(2) LD skill tricks
(3) LD feats
(4) some other mechanic

(and any of those could be tied to a class.)

For the form-changing thing, feel free to use a variation on the Morphling's Morph ability, spending DP instead of Morph points.
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #12 on: September 17, 2012, 03:09:00 PM »
OK, I'm going to try and give this forum a bit more structure. First, I think we need to outline design goals: just what is the purpose of this game subsystem (which is basically how I'm envisioning it), what do we want to be able to do with/in it, and how can we achieve those goals using existing rules, tweaking/cannibalizing existing rules, or homebrewing from scratch where necessary.

I also definitely want a "brainstorming"/"data collection" thread where people post things that they've experienced in dreams, heard about from the dreams of others, or seen in movies about dreams (Inception, Altered States, Flatliners), so we can adjust our design goals include interesting dream elements that get brought up there. I'm going to go ahead and start those, and maybe move some posts around into them.
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #13 on: September 17, 2012, 11:54:54 PM »
Any comments on my suggestion?
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Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #14 on: September 18, 2012, 12:01:39 AM »
Not sure you should tie major mechanics to skills unless you're going whole hog like Truenaming. It tends to make skills that don't act like skills, and encourages a larger gulf between the haves and have-nots.

If you want that dream-shfting DP thing, I'd suggest a class or feat chain that can also be used to some extent outside of dreams.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #15 on: September 18, 2012, 02:03:33 PM »
@SirP: I'm not sure. I think this stuff should be useable more or less at will. In the dreams I've experienced, there didn't really seem to be any limit to how often I could do things. However, I might be interested in using a "concentration-based" resource mechanic like the one in your Aetherforge class (I call it concentration-based because basically it amounts to you can only "concentrate" on so many effects at once, but there is no limit on how many "per day" you can use). That seems to lend itself perfectly to this, and I really like that mechanic. I might want to make a class that uses it myself at some point. I remember seeing something like that before, but can't remember where. Did you get the idea from another homebrew class?

I don't think I'd want to have the Dream Points determined solely by ranks in Lucid Dreaming, though, as I certainly don't want the effects achievable via Lucid Dreaming to be for "trained" users only. Perhaps your Dream Points are equal to your highest mental ability modifier (minimum 1), or your ranks in Lucid Dreaming, whichever is higher? (With a bonus based on whether it is your dream or not?)

@SirP and Garryl: I do plan on having Skill Tricks, Feats, and Classes based on the things in this subsystem, which will represent more and more of an investment in the mechanics. I'll also give the most highly invested ones the ability to bring their dream-based abilities into the "real world" in some way, as Amechra's PrC does, and as one of the PCs in SirP's "Evil is our game" PbP can (although perhaps not to the extent that she can  :lmao ).
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #16 on: September 18, 2012, 04:00:33 PM »
@SirP: I'm not sure. I think this stuff should be useable more or less at will. In the dreams I've experienced, there didn't really seem to be any limit to how often I could do things. However, I might be interested in using a "concentration-based" resource mechanic like the one in your Aetherforge class (I call it concentration-based because basically it amounts to you can only "concentrate" on so many effects at once, but there is no limit on how many "per day" you can use). That seems to lend itself perfectly to this, and I really like that mechanic. I might want to make a class that uses it myself at some point. I remember seeing something like that before, but can't remember where. Did you get the idea from another homebrew class?
Kinda.  The Dementist gets warp points which he can use and then reuse when the warping/summoning is over.  It takes on an entirely new dynamic when used on spell effects, though.

Quote
@SirP and Garryl: I do plan on having Skill Tricks, Feats, and Classes based on the things in this subsystem, which will represent more and more of an investment in the mechanics. I'll also give the most highly invested ones the ability to bring their dream-based abilities into the "real world" in some way, as Amechra's PrC does, and as one of the PCs in SirP's "Evil is our game" PbP can (although perhaps not to the extent that she can  :lmao ).
Well yeah... she's pretty nutso lol.  But custom DM-fiat items will do that for you ;)
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #17 on: September 18, 2012, 10:56:17 PM »
Awakened Dreamer pic:

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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #18 on: September 18, 2012, 11:00:26 PM »
Nice. :D
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Offline Garryl

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Re: Discussions [Insert Inception Musical Sting Here]
« Reply #19 on: September 19, 2012, 12:47:33 AM »
Well, what is the Matrix but the highly controlled dreamscape of a supercomputer into which all human minds are forced? It's a lovely fit.