Happy Late New Year! 2025 will be a big year for Dreamland RPG, and I hope to soon have more news about the upcoming game release from Exalted Funeral.

In the meantime, please sign up for the Dreamland Discord server and Facebook group! As incentive, for every 25 new followers on either Discord or Facebook (i.e. 325 on Facebook, then 350; or 275 on Discord, then 300, etc.) I’ll be blogging a new segment of the forthcoming game. Some of these will be playtestable material (new Roles, etc.), while some will be background info, such as this post, “Cultures of Dreamland.” If you’re on the Discord and Facebook, you’ll get the opportunity to vote on what I’ll release next…so please sign up, and spread the word!

The Cultures of Dreamland

Like stars in the sky, the vastness of Dreamland is dotted with human towns and cities. Some thrive through trade and cultural exchange while others struggle in isolation, but most Dreamlanders rarely leave the city of their birth. Surrounded by wild beasts, monsters and abhumans, each city or town clings to its own customs and way of life.

In an infinite world, how can one speak of a common culture? But certain common traits exist. Firstly, the people of Dreamland are human, or at least think of themselves as such. Whether their skin is brown, pink or green, whether they have claws or tails or horns or lizard’s heads, all share a common humanity which separates them from beasts and fairies (or at least, so they believe). As humans, they live somewhat outside nature, using tools and making towns and cities (even if these towns and cities are sometimes mobile). As humans, they can fall in love, marry other humans and have children together. Most importantly, they can make moral decisions—though these are strongly influenced by their culture—and have ambitions, hopes and fears.

Although the average Dreamlander lifespan is short due to infant mortality, disease and violence, a few manage to live to an extraordinary age, with two to three hundred years not unheard of. Such venerable elders are generally respected and may be considered to have magic powers.

Cities and towns tend towards rigid social structure. Social roles and jobs are often segregated by gender, although the exact division varies from place to place. As in feudal Japan or ancient Greece, sexual orientation as a concept is alien to most Dreamlanders. This doesn’t mean they are all pansexual or don’t have preferences, but they rarely have words to describe it as an identity. However, the desire to maintain a family line (patriarchal or matriarchal) provides strong social pressure to form marriage groups and have children.

Roleplaying Dreamlanders

From the dreamers’ perspective, Dreamlanders may sometimes seem like fragile creatures with little individuality, pieces of the collective organism that is their city or town. If it suits their style, the DM might express this by sometimes summarizing Dreamlanders’ actions rather than doing voices and roleplaying each individual (“The people of the town are grateful you killed the dragon and announce a feast in your honor,” rather than roleplaying the mayor inviting them to a feast). This can convey the feeling of the dream stories of Dunsany and Lovecraft, which rarely have dialogue.

However, from the Dreamlanders’ perspective, they are individuals, and their struggles and sorrows are completely real. It’s a good idea to occasionally have the players observe scenes of Dreamland life that don’t directly involve them, such as people flirting, merchants arguing, cooks preparing food for a wedding, or locals gossiping about the inhabitants of a neighboring town. This helps remind the players that the world they’re passing through doesn’t exist just for them: they are the outsiders, hearing fragments of a performance too big for them to fully understand.

Technology

Though past, present and future coexist in Dreamland, the vast majority of cities and towns have technology comparable to the early Iron Age. Some sages believe this era is impressed on the collective human memory in the same way the experiences of childhood are impressed on the memory of an adult.

Some rare cultures possess scientific knowledge of 19th-21st century Earth or greater. If such technology has not spread far and wide, this is only because of the isolation of distance (as in Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast” trilogy where Medieval and futuristic societies exist unaware of one another separated by thousands of miles of forest), or because advanced civilizations tend to succumb to disaster. Prior to collapse (by climate change, nuclear war, social ennui, etc.), these rare advanced societies operate much like those in the waking world, inasmuch as this is possible in a place where the Earth is flat, where spaceflight is prevented by monstrous entities lurking in extraterrestrial space, and where the whims of demons, fairies and even darker forces thwart the ambitions of humankind.

Dreamland also contains duplicates of real-world cities, recreated by dreamers (consciously or unconsciously). In some of these cities, the inhabitants have a mental block making them incapable of perceiving the weirdness around them; in others, they come to some sort of acceptance and hybrid life. Dreamland might even contain multiple duplicates of the same city at different points in its history, separated by distance rather than time.

Religion

Most inhabitants of Dreamland are polytheistic. Each town or city worships its own gods, who are collectively known as the Great Ones or Elder Ones. Scholars hold to a theory of religious syncretism by which the gods worshipped in different cities are really the same Great Ones under different names, but there is no agreement of how many Great Ones really exist or how they should be worshipped. Some of the most widely worshipped gods include Mana-Yood-Sushai, Nath-Horthath, Zo-Kalar, Tamash, Lobon, Mung, Kib and Tyche (the ancient Greek goddess of cities). In some areas it is believed that the Great Ones can take human form and even interbreed with humans.

Beyond the Great Ones, some sages believe in a more distant, more fearful group of gods known as the Other Gods, who are more powerful than the Great Ones and dwell not on the world but in the night sky. Their mysterious ruler is known as the Daemon Sultan Azathoth, whom some say is another name for Mana-Yood-Sushai. Azathoth’s messenger is Nyarlathotep, also known as Skarl.

Religious Expressions

Regardless of what gods are worshipped in a particular city, the most common expression of religion is idol worship. Idols are considered a physical manifestation of the Great One they represent, and idol-carvers (specially trained stonecarvers or woodcarvers) are highly respected. It is known that the most skilled of idol-carvers have the power to bring idols to life. This does not mean that most idol-worshippers see themselves as worshiping manmade things; rather, inspiration is a gift of the Great Ones, and thus the Great Ones work through the sculptor’s hands.

Idols are usually kept in shrines and treated as though they are living beings, presented with animal (or human) sacrifices and offerings of food, fruits, wine and water. (The material form of the food and drink is consumed by the priests after the spiritual form has been invisibly eaten by the god.) Often the idols wear elaborate clothing made of real fabric, which is washed and changed on ceremonial occasions. Sometimes large idols are openly displayed in temples or public squares, but more often they are kept out of public view, in shrines only the priests may visit. On religious festivals some cities take the idols from their shrines and parade them through the streets in palanquins carried by men or beasts for the adoration of worshippers. In contrast to the fine workmanship of humanmade idols, some towns worship anamorphic (shapeless) idols and found natural objects—strangely shaped pieces of wood or chunks of meteorite—which happen to vaguely resemble a human form.

Another relatively common form of worship is that of saints, holy people who were deified after death due to their great deeds—or who were secretly Great Ones walking on the world in disguise, as some worshippers claim. Saint cults revere the physical traces of saints wherever they existed: their footprints, items they owned, places they visited, even their shadows (which the impious claim are merely vaguely human-shaped natural colorations of earth or rock). They also worship the body parts, bones and hair of the sainted dead, usually embalmed but sometimes preserved in reliquaries of holy material like gold or jade. Like idol-worshippers, they believe it brings good fortune to see and pay homage to, and if possible, to touch and rub against, these holy objects.

The third most common form of worship in Dreamland is demon-worship. Demons are not necessarily evil; they are any invisible spirit which can be made to possess a living being, usually with the aid of magic rituals, animal sacrifices or the ingestion of sacred plants and drugs. Those who do not worship demons claim the true forms of demons are monstrous and their true intentions horrible, while demon-worshippers claim otherwise. Some demons may possess any worshipper (or, rarely, a foreign traveler), while others possess only the members of a sacred caste of priests.

Common Knowledge

Dreamlanders sometimes poetically refer to their world as “Dreamland” or “the lands of Dream,” but this does not mean they are aware of the existence of the waking world; instead, it refers to the common belief that the entire world is a dream in the mind of the great god Mana-Yood-Sushai. In places it also refers to the great respect in which dreams are held, as prophecies or divine messages.

Despite the world being apparently infinite in all directions, all Dreamlanders know that the world has an edge and that it is possible to fall off it.

One semi-religious custom most cultures in Dreamland share is the use of the Elder Sign. Though sometimes expressed as a glyph, the most common Elder Sign is a cryptic hand gesture. Dreamlanders use it to ward off evil, like waking-world people crossing themselves. Whether it has any effect is up to the DM.

Cities and Towns

For certain game effects and Role powers, it can be useful to know whether dreamers are in a town or a city. The difference between cities and towns is primarily a matter of size, although a rule of thumb is that in towns everybody knows everybody else. A typical Dreamland town is a settlement of up to 1,000 people; a city may hold 100,000 inhabitants or more.

Towns typically have more informal political systems than cities, since their small size makes governing easier. They may be representative democracies where all things are decided by a town council, religious cults where all decisions are made by the priesthood, or the entire town may be a single clan where everyone is related, and all decisions are made by the family heads. On the other hand, cities are usually ruled by monarchs, whose iron hand keeps feuding factions in check.

Towns are by default tight-knit communities with all the advantages and disadvantages this implies. Townsfolk look out for one another; on the other hand, gossip spreads fast, scapegoats and outcasts are at the mercy of the crowd, and neighbors can inflate small grudges or debts into massive feuds that simmer through generations. In a town, everyone must pitch in for the community to function, whether this means to take care of the sick, to fight a war, or to put down a rebellion. In contrast, cityfolk may be unaware of the existence of the sick, may hear only distant propaganda about the war, and may believe the rebellion was put down bloodlessly…if indeed anyone rebelled at all. Cities are large enough for individuals or small groups to avoid and perhaps even forget one another. Isolation is a privilege of cities.

Major cities are powerful enough to exert influence over the neighboring cities and towns. Empires, colonies and the like exist in Dreamland; though in Dreamland (unlike the waking world) the land itself grows, the new land is not always suitable for human settlement, and kingdoms still vie for conquest or ruin their surroundings through misuse.

The Expanding Universe

Because of the power of Faraway, one of the Five Pillars of Dreamland, the world of Dreamland is constantly growing. New cities, towns and landscape features spring up overnight, summoned into existence by dreamers. Meanwhile, at its own pace, the space between things also increases. Roads lengthen slowly or quickly, so that a castle or city six days’ ride by horse away may have become seven days away in a generation’s—or an hour’s—time.

Except for magicians and the dream-aware few, most inhabitants of Dreamland are unaware of the way their world is changing around them. When the distance between two cities becomes greater, or a new site appears, their memories rewrite themselves as if it were always this way. Only dreamers, a few creatures, and sages know the truth. On those rare occasions when the veil breaks and things change so dramatically that Dreamlanders become aware of it, panic, upheaval and religious revival are the result.

By extrapolating backwards from Dreamland’s continual expansion, some Dreamland sages believe that the entire world was once one great city. No one knows this city’s name, or if it even existed, but some call it Ur, or the City of the Gods, or Hesperia, the Sunset City. Archaeologists look for its scattered fragments.

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