Thousand Year Dream

I'm a big fan of Michael Moorcock's older work. I saw that his new book came out recently, The White Wolf's Son, and picked it up, finally motivating me to finish the Skraeling Tree.

One of the bits used that as a reader I completely hate from a fiction point, is Elric's use of something he referes to as a Thousand Year Dream. In essence, the Melniboneans are such potent sorcerers that they can have dreams that interact with other realities as if the person was really there.

I think it lame as fiction use because it now opens up all sorts of doors that were usually covered by Moorcock through the simple use of his Multiverse set up. Now dreams become reality and time gets even more bent out of shape? Ugh.

On the other hand, it seemed an interesting game mechanic. Perhaps at some deathly encounter, the players of an old campaign can 'dream' themselves into another reality and attempt to fix the issues of the old home, knowing that they can't directly interfer with it. Maybe too many days of playing Planescape and Spelljammer, but I can see some potential with that.

JoeGKushner said:

One of the bits used that as a reader I completely hate from a fiction point, is Elric's use of something he referes to as a Thousand Year Dream. In essence, the Melniboneans are such potent sorcerers that they can have dreams that interact with other realities as if the person was really there.

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That bastard stole my campaign!

Seriously. My BBEG brings things back from "dream" realms into the real world to aid his takeover. For the longest time, my players thought he was just using his imagination to find these places, and that the things were literally dreams made real. They just recently found out that no, those things ARE real, that the "dreams" the BBEG was visiting are real planes.

There's more to it, which will be revealed next session, but man, Moorcock shouldn't crouch outside my window during games.

Isn't this kind of the basis of the Hunt:Rise of Evil campaign setting? That, the world of dreams (or rather nightmares) often overlaps with the real world, and things from the world of dreams can sometimes affect things in the real world.

fredramsey said:

Seriously. My BBEG brings things back from "dream" realms into the real world to aid his takeover. .... There's more to it, which will be revealed next session, but man, Moorcock shouldn't crouch outside my window during games.

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He'll have to fight me for the space. I am so using that idea next time I do fantasy.

Moorcock & Lovecraft are 2 of the biggest influences on my D&D world (aside from the d20 system itself).

I was reading a bunch of the Chaosium Mthyos Books & White Wolf's Eternal Champion Omnibus when I actually commited my World to paper.

Thus the Multiverse of Moorcock & Ethos of Lovecraft both play heavily into my setting.

I'm currently reading Life & Times of Jerry Cornelious, and just finished Gloriana. Liked Gloriana (though the plot is a bit, ummm, different), but I'm finding JC more a bunch of 60's counter-culture stuff that seems very dated.

GACK! I've not even read "The Skraeling Tree", and there's a new novel???????

WayneLigon said:

He'll have to fight me for the space. I am so using that idea next time I do fantasy.

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Cool!

For inspiration, watch: Nightmare on Elm Street (1 & 3 - especially when she brings back Freddie's hat), Dreamscape, The Cell.

The characters have an artifact (the Orb of Morpheus) that allows them to "lucid dream". The kicker is, sometimes they are just in someone's dream other times they are on another plane. Either way, they can attempt to alter things in the "dream" through force of will. The "wilder" their request is, the more difficult it is to make it happen. The more the request follows the "rules" of the dream, the more likely it is to happen.

And it allows you to go wild on things you can bring in to the fantasy world. Here are just a few of mine (prepare for weirdness):

Nazi Mind Flayer
Cybernetic Beholder (they crapped their pants)
Robots (of course)
etc.

WayneLigon said:

He'll have to fight me for the space. I am so using that idea next time I do fantasy.

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It's going to become cramped very quickly, since it is the basis of my next campaign, too. Fortunately for me, it's not intended as a commercial supplement, and fortunately for you very few of it has been written down.

Basically there is the Shadow world that overlaps the real world. It's a realm of magic and chaos, totally unstable and shaped by the desires of the creatures that inhabit it. Then, because of necromancers and demonologists it became increasingly turned into a nightmarish world. In any case, most horrid monsters that exist on the material plane come are drawn from the Shadow world (which is a cool way to circumvent to have to come up with a rationale ecology for the setting. Aka "where do all these monsters come from? What do they eat normally?"). And of course, there will be rules for being attracted into the Shadow world when using too much magic. So the basic peasant has few chances to be ever drawn into it, and is relatively safe to not encounter natives from this world, but the more you use spells and own magic items, the closer you get to the Shadow world...

An interesting bit in The Skraeling Tree is that Elric, in his Dream of a Thousand Years, meets a Native American called White Crow
The whole Dream takes place while he's passed out strapped to the mast of the Chaos Lord's galley, sailing towards the end of the world, in the first book that Moorcock wrote in the saga. Elric chose to draw on a thousand years' worth of XP in the course of a few hours to prepare himself for the final confrontation. Or something.

Starglim said:

An interesting bit in The Skraeling Tree is that Elric, in his Dream of a Thousand Years, meets a Native American called White Crow.

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Moorcock is co-writing a comic book miniseries about the history of Melnibone' that tells the origins of Stormbringer. The primary character is named White Crow, as I recall.