(EDIT: This is a post from Summer 2022. Please check out this page for the latest in upcoming games!) Summer means conventions and I’m excited to announce some more public Dreamland playtest/demos! I’ll be running Dreamland at GenCon Online, as well as at NecronomiCon PVD (also online for me this…
Design Blog
What Dreamland is Like
Dreamland is infinite, and one of the things I wanted to do in Dreamland RPG was have a world which doesn’t depend on “canon” or on a small important landmass where everyone lives and everything happens. Almost anything can exist in Dreamland, and the intention is that DMs and players…
Dreamland: Example of Play
This “example of play” is loosely based on events that happened during a game of the first playtest adventure, “The Paradise of the Unchanging.” Unfortunately the color formatting which differentiated the different Pillar Words from one another was lost when transferring it from MSWord to WordPress, but hopefully the gist…
200 Random Memories
What says “RPG” more than random tables? The quickest and easiest way to create a Dreamland character is to begin with your three Memories and work your way backward, fleshing your waking self’s character out from there. The suggested method, particularly for new players, is to randomly roll your Memories…
Dreamland Bestiary: Zoogs
I haven’t posted in awhile (tho I’m writing behind the scenes, honest!), but I wanted to share a little information about the world of Dreamland RPG. Today’s topic is one of my favorite Dream-Quest creatures: zoogs. In Dreamland, most monsters (or rather, beasts) are divided into families of creatures. For…
Dreamland Books & Stories
It’s been awhile! There’s actually been a ton of Dreamland work and development in the last few months, I’ve just been bad at posting about it. For now, here’s something to chisel into the eternal granite of WordPress: a list of “core” Dreamland books and stories. Essential Works Obviously, I…
Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe Movie
Just a quick update, but there is Dreamlands news too exciting not to share: Kij Johnson’s amazing Dreamlands novel “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe” has been optioned as a movie! Details are available at the Magnesium Films website. No cast or crew are announced, and it’s possibly too soon to…
On Lord Dunsany
(This post was originally written way back around 2012 on my other website, mockman.com. The context then was Dunsany’s influence on Lovecraft, but Dunsany is so important to the Dreamlands, I thought it was worth reposting here, with a few minor edits.) What inspired H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands stories? You could…
Paths to Dreamland: Cities of Never
Happy New Year! This article was previously printed in 2012 on mockman.com and is shamelessly reprinted here, with some revisions. It will be part of a series about the inspirations for Dreamland RPG. “When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city.”—Italo…
Dreamland Movies and TV, Part 2
The 1990s brought a huge pop-cultural discovery that has shaped visions of Dreamland ever since: virtual reality. The Matrix, Star Trek: TNG‘s holodeck, cyberpunk RPGs and other media popularized the idea of passing between reality and a persistent imaginary world. Ideas like “what happens if you abandon your real life…