Sammael99
First Post
[Review] Rêve the Dream Ouroboros (Long)
Since this is General RPG I figured a non d20 review wouldn't be OT. I posted this review on RPG.NET as well, just FYI.
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Note : This Fantasy RPG comes in 3 Core Books available in PDF Format through Malcontent Games (http://www.malcontentgames.com). Book 1 is free and describes the game system, Book 2 and Book 3 are bundled together for $13.00 and describe respectively the Magic and the World. See below for more details. Please note that the game is split in 3 books and that all three are necessary for a full experience of the game.
I'm in no way affiliated with Malcontent Games and have not reviewed this based on a free review copy.
I decided to review Rêve : the Dream Ouroboros (hereafter R :tDO) because I like the French version of the game and feel that despite being an « old » game, it is unusual enough to deserve better attention. Also, I have GMed a homebrew translation of the game to English people when I lived in the UK very successfully so I was interested in evaluating the English version.
Unlike how other reviews are organised, I won’t run you through a chapter by chapter evaluation, since that would be tedious. Rather, I’ll give an overview of the game and then get into specifics like mechanics, the magic system, setting and finally a general evaluation. I will point out however that the rules are spread over three books, “Journeyers” which covers character creation, the game system and how to resolve actions, “In the Dreamtime” which covers the magic system and it’s implications, and “Worlds” which covers the possibilities of the R :tDO gaming universe, races, monsters and related stuff. All are available through Malcontent Games (http://www.malcontentgames.com) in PDF format, the first one is free and the other two are bundled for $13. The complete game includes all three books.
A short additional note before I get going : Although the R :tDO system could be used generically for fantasy or modern roleplaying (and I have indeed used it for several such adaptations in the past), many of its aspects are intrinsically linked to the universe, so I will evaluate it within that context, not based on its own merits only.
Overview of the game
The premise of the R:tDO universe is as follows : The world is a Dragon’s Dream. Each living being is but a figment of a Dragon’s imagination. Dragons are actually a metaphor for these creatures that have the power of life and death over each and every living being, but the sages call them the Great Dreamers. No one knows who they are and what the look like.
When a Dragon wakes up, or shifts in his slumber, sometimes, the characters in his dream die. One would expect whole chunks of reality to disappear when that happens, but the dreams of the various dragons actually interact enough that even when one of them wakes up the fabric of reality remains relatively stable. If large numbers of Dragons were to wake up, of course, things would be very different… It has happened in the past and hopefully will never happen again…
The universe of R:tDO can be said to be cosmological but not necessarily material. In other words, once you’ve integrated the above premise, you can potentially apply it to any region, people, setting you can imagine. However, this premise affects many things : character progression, magic, dreams (of course) and various interesting game mechanics.
The Game System :
Although the system may seem overly complex at first (many characteristics and skills), it has one great redeeming feature : there is one single table that handles each and every action in the game, and it’s printed on each character sheet so you always have it right under your nose. On this table you find the characteristic value as the vertical axis and the total difficulty of the action as a horizontal axis. The resulting number is a % chance of success. Degrees of success are expressed in another table but are fairly easy to work out with a bit of practice. The difficulty of an action is a straight addition of a skill, a difficulty modifier expressed by the Dream Master and various personal modifiers due to armour, fatigue, wounds, etc.
Just to give a quick example, Ben’s character Weasel wants to pick a lock. His Dexterity is 14 and his Locksmithing skill is +3. The Dream Master says the lock has a –4 penalty. Ben checks the table where 14 and -1 cross, and finds out that he has a 63% chance of success. If Weasel had suffered a Severe Wound previously, he would subtract an additional –2 from the difficulty for a roll of 14 at -3 ie. 49%.
One thing to point out is that although most of the characteristics are straightforward, R:tDO features a “Dream” characteristic that you most likely won’t see in any other game. It’s a vital stat for magicians but is also very important for other characters since it determines how potent your dreams are. Considering the title of the game, I’m sure you’ve figured by now that dreams play an important part…
Character Generation is either random or point-buy for characteristics and point-buy for skills. There are about 40 skills if you don’t count the different weapon skills which makes it fairly detailed. Character generation is fairly simple in the sense that there are few determining choices apart from where to allocate your points. Basically, the game assumes you will play a human although playing other races (mainly gnomes and ogres) is technically possible if the Dream Master allows it. Other races are described in Book 3 : “Worlds”.
The main thing the player needs to decide upon is whether he wants to play a True Dreamer or a High Dreamer. High Dreamers are wizards : they master the intricacies of the Dreaming and can “whisper to the ears of the Dragons” to subtly (or not so subtly) alter reality. In game terms, being a High Dreamer gives you access to the four “Draconic” skills and allows you to purchase a limited number of spells at character creation. On the other hand, True Dreamers, being more naïve about the Dreaming and the Dragons have truer, more potent dreams. The effect of this will be made more evident later on.
Another important part of character creation is your archetype. You see, when a Dragon wakes up and you die, he may fall back asleep and dream about you again, or at least someone who looks a lot like you and may share a lot of similarities. In effect, your character is the last in a long string of reincarnations. Your archetype is the ideal, the paragon of all these incarnations in terms of skills. What this means is that when you create your archetype you will allocate insanely high skill scores to it (compared to a created character anyway).
In game terms the archetype has two important effects : the most commonly used is that when you have a stressful day, you have more potent dreams at night, and you may dream of past incarnations. When you do that, you gain experience from your past selves. However, you can only progress in this fashion up to the level of your archetype. Beyond that, you’ve got to do it the hard way : adventuring and learning. The archetype is also useful when your character dies. You can then decide to play the next incarnation of your character. Basically you keep the appearance and the characteristics of the old character and reallocate skills as per a normal character creation. You again have the option of being a True or a High Dreamer. You keep the archetype (of course) and usually fortuitously bump into your old party mates who recognise you even though you may not …
Oh, about True Dreamers : one of the main bonuses of being a True Dreamer is in the above system : when you dream of past incarnations, you glean more experience from them than High Dreamers do. At character creation the trade off in power may seem minute, but in the long run it really does make a big difference .
Character creation ends up with buying your equipment, and that’s usually when new players coming from D&D and other high fantasy systems start weeping. A beginning character usually doesn’t have enough money to buy a sword, let alone armour. It takes some getting used to, but it’s a nice touch that pervades the game : you’re not adventuring to get rich or to collect the loot. You’re doing it for the thrill cause that’s all there is !
The Combat System is smooth, fairly straightforward, and very deadly. The great thing about it, is that the player is really involved in the sense that he decides how difficult his attacks are going to be. Do I want to risk failing but be pretty sure I’ll pass through my opponent’s defenses (dodge or parry) if I don’t fail or do I want to hope he’s lousy at dodging? It’s my call. Whatever difficulty I deliberately apply to my attack will be applied to my opponent’s defense and vice-versa. There are also a few maneuvers that can be picked, like charge or feint. With each of these, you’re trading something for something else (efficiency for damage, speed for efficiency, etc.) Critical successes open more options (do I want to do more damage, attack again, make my attack near impossible to dodge). Overall, it’s balanced and very involving for the players.
Someone reading this may think that combat could potentially last for ever if everyone’s playing it safe. While that’s true in theory, the combination of the fatigue and endurance rules and the lethality of the wound system mean that in actual fact most combats are quickly finished. Endurance is a variable that doesn’t affect your rolls per se, but if you drop to 0, you faint. Also, every Endurance point you sustain is knocked off your Fatigue total as well. The Fatigue rules imply that the more you exert the more you get fatigued to the point that you get serious penalties after a while. There are four levels of wounds : scratches only take a few Endurance points off. Light wounds take a little more Endurance off and you can only sustain 5, any light wound beyond that is considered serious. Serious wounds imply penalties of –2 per wound on all rolls and you can only sustain two of these. Critical wounds bring your endurance to 0 immediately (meaning you faint) and you run the risk of dying each round until healed or dead.
One of my group of players used to have a saying for this game : “When things go wrong, they can only get worse…” Now you know why !
Healing in R:tDO is mostly realistic, which means it’s long and painful (in the sense that you have many lingering penalties until you’re healed.) It can be sped up dramatically with herbs and magic, although there’s always of chance of these failing. It also means that when your High Dreamer is knocked out, you can forget the speedy getaway !
One last comment on the combat system : I would describe it as realistic, in the sense that even a very powerful character can go down in one blow if that blow is exceptional, but it’s not simulationist. In other words, once you’ve understood the basic mechanics of the system, it’s a breeze to run. You don’t have to know dozens of options or roll on multiple tables. It’s all fairly straightforward.
Other game mechanics are presented in Book 1, like expending luck points to re-roll failed rolls (True Dreamers regain the points, High Dreamers don’t) and destiny points that allow you to stabilise automatically when you’re dying and various other “life-saving” options. The rules obviously present how to use skills and in particular which characteristics to use with which skills. One thing that may need emphasising at this point is that the system is very detailed in terms of mundane actions : how to cook a meal, to forage for food or herbs, to hunt for game, how to perform a nice ode, how to compose a poem, etc. The reason for this is that the default assumption in the game world is that you will often be broke. So essentially, a min-maxed character that has no mundane skills might very well end-up begging or leading the dangerous life of a criminal just to have food and decent clothes.
Magic : The High-Dreaming
R:tDO’s magic system is one of the most strikingly unique in role-playing games. I’m not saying it’s better than others, and I certainly don’t think that it could be exported into any other game, but it makes magic fun and very different from what gamers are usually used to.
First of all, magic is completely integrated into the gaming universe as presented in the premise above. What High Dreamers are, essentially, is dreamed creatures who have mastered a technique to affect the dream that they are part of and modify its outcome. You know how when you dream sometimes you have the uneasy feeling that you’re not in control. Well that’s what the Dragons must feel when the High Dreamers start pulling the strings.
However, and this cannot be stressed enough, the High Dreamers are playing a dangerous game. At the very basic level, they risk mental derangements. If they push things too far, they risk ripping the dream with major effects either to themselves or even at large. Many games out there have integrated elements of risk in spellcasting, but R:tDO is the one which, to my knowledge, best exemplifies the mage as a semi-lunatic yet powerful character who can’t fit in society if only because he’s such a kook…
Let me explain how things work. First of all, you have four draconic skills: Oneiros, Hypnos, Narcos and Thanatos. There is a mythical explanation for these and the role they play in the structure of the Dreaming but let us just say at this stage that Thanatos is fundamentally different from the others in that it’s the path of non-dreaming, the instinct of awakening. As such, it is theoretically not open to beginning characters and has a lot of in-game effects on the character. If you think High Dreamers are weird at the end of this section of the review, well the ones who dabble in Thanatos are so much more so…
The kind of spells available in each skill (also called paths or Ways) are very different in nature. Oneiros includes mostly area spells and elemental transmutations, Hypnos includes illusion spells and summonings, Narcos includes exclusively spells designed to enchant objects, and Thanatos includes the closest to what could be called “black magic”.
Calling the spells by that name is actually kind of a misnomer (and an inheritance from the 1st edition, I suspect) because there is nothing written about them. High Dreaming is an instinct, and you learn it by observing nature and how it works. There are two ways to learn or invent a new “spell” : you either need to meditate following a number of techniques, or you can observe “draconic signs”, natural configurations that spark understanding in your mind. These signs can be temporary, in which case you have to interpret them really quickly, or more permanent in which case you can take your time. Mechanically, once you have accumulated a sufficient number of points in a given skill or path through meditation or observation, you can attempt to synthesise a spell of that path.
Now how does the magic work mechanically ? All the High Dreamer players have a special map of the Dreamlands. These aren’t actual locations but rather a mental representation of the mind of the Dragons. The map features hills, mountains, plains, sanctuaries and various other terrain types, each specifically named. In order to trigger a spell, you need to “travel” mentally to the correct location, which can be just a generic type for simple spells (The Oneiros “Earth to Water” transmutation is cast from a Forest) or specific (The Hypnos “Sordid Warrior” invocation is cast from the Sordid City specifically). When a player wants his character to cast a spell, he lets his conscience drift in the Dreamlands and travels to the location he needs to cast the spell from. He can make encounters as he travels which are not actual confrontations but rather fighting against the mind of the Dragon who resists his attempt to meddle in the Dream. Some of these encounters can end beneficially, some can be extremely dangerous.
Once the character has reached the proper location, he rolls to cast his spell and spends the relevant dream points (a variable based on the Dream characteristic) et voilà. Familiarity with a given location can enhance spellcasting, so the High Dreamers are encouraged to stay in a given part of the map, but that’s not always possible since bad magical effects can shift them around or even modify the map to some extent !
So you’ve heard me babbling about how magic was dangerous and now you’re wondering how. Fair enough. Well, first of all, the encounters mentioned above can really screw you up. Basically, they can suck your dream points and even sometimes some of your lifeforce. That’s bad enough. But the real fun begins at night. When characters who have spent dream points fall asleep, they dream in the higher parts of the Dreaming, closer to the consciousness of the Dragons. That’s potentially risky, since they can either regain dream points or, if they’re unlucky, confront the Dragon.
In the latter option, they have a small chance of winning the confrontation in which case they are rewarded by a Dragon Gift, a boon that can be linked to their high dreaming capability or not. Dragon Gifts range from a 6th sense to an animal affinity to favoured locations in the Dreamlands. However, they are rare…
Most of the time, the character will be defeated in the confrontation, and incur one or several Dragon Tails or even worse, a Dragon Breaths. Tails and Breaths are always negative effects, usually mental, and can have different repercussions depending on the circumstances of the game. For example, you could wake up and decide that you don’t want to walk, or that you’d feel good naked today. You could also wake up and unknowingly want to kill the next stranger you meet, or want to fight to the death the next time you’re in combat… Now you see why High Dreamers are considered weirdoes : these behaviour quirks happen most every day…
The Setting
As I mentioned above, R:tDO is essentially a cosmological setting rather than a geographical one. Various incarnations of the game and various supplements have presented various settings over the game history, but there is no default setting as such. Furthermore, there is a notion of multiverse (or multidream) that comes from a phenomenon called dream rifts. Dream rifts sometimes occur naturally, but mostly occur when magic is misused. What a dream rift does essentially is either carry you elsewhere or open a gate elsewhere to where you are. They are essentially one-way portals between locations. Their destination or origin cannot be known before hand and there is no way to control these rifts.
Now in theory a dream rift can carry you anywhere, either in the same Dream or in another. So this phenomenon (and a couple of other, similar ones) introduces an essential instability to the game world. You could be role-playing in a fairy castle straight out of Dunsany one day and in a gritty city inspired by Moorcock the next. The 1st edition of the game presented a fairly stable world with a map and all the adventures published happened somewhere in that world but not so with the second edition. However, the “Worlds” book also presents various other dream mechanisms that can enhance your setting and make it more specific.
In the cosmology’s history, however, these passages between Dreams did not always exist. The Age the game takes place in is the Third Age but there was a mythical First Age, also called the Age of Dragons when dragons allegedly dreamt themselves amongst the living creatures they considered their servants. At the end of the First Age, the gnomes discovered gems and hence, high dreaming (gems are potent vessels for magic) and that disturbed the Dragons so much that they woke up en masse. Huge cataclysms ensued until the Dragons fell asleep again and very little remained.
The Second Age started, called the Age of Magicians. The Dragons no longer dreamt themselves alongside mortals and magic was relatively commonplace. In the end though, it was overused and the Dragons woke up again, causing yet more mayhem. However, they woke up in different patterns and less massively which caused some locales to remain amidst the madness. This has prompted the common man’s tendency to avoid travel in the Third Age, called the Age of Journeyers. The Journeyers are the exception, those who feel the call of adventure and are willing to leave their world behind (often literally) in pursuit of discovery. The PCs are assumed to be Journeyers. In that sense, they have an inherent motivation to go forward and be curious about stuff. Making money and finding stuff is a nice aside, but it isn’t their main drive.
The third book of the game also presents all the sciences and their game use, from Zoology to Astrology to Medicine and Alchemy. Some of them have specific rules, others are just described in a general manner. Furthermore, it includes fauna, flora and many creatures and monsters to play with. When I say many, we’re nowhere near your average D&D monster book. Monsters and races in R:tDO are unusual and quirky, so you don’t need many to build up a sense of wonder in your adventures. Denis Gerfaud, the author of the game is a huge Lewis Carroll fan so a number of creatures presented (including the Jabberwock) are more or less straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
Also, it should be pointed that many creatures are potentially lethal in head to head combat however experienced the characters are. That’s what the setting is all about though ! Finally, there are a number of creatures and races which are more fundamentally linked to the R:tDO universe, like Dream and Nightmare entities. These are opponents that not only endanger you physically but also assault your connection to the Dreaming, to potentially devastating effects.
One final comment. R:tDO has one more fundamental difference with most if not all other fantasy games I know : there are no gods in R:tDO. The Dragons are not gods because they don’t care one iota about the creatures that they dream (do you care about the inhabitants of your dreams ?) and worshipping a Dragon will not make a little bit of difference in the end. That doesn’t stop you from having cults or churches, etc. but they are essentially fallacies as far as the game universe is concerned.
General Evaluation
As you may have worked out from this looooooooooong review, I have been playing R:tDO for nearly 20 years now and I feel I know the game inside and out. So take this as a bias if you think it is one. However, I genuinely feel that the game is original, excellent, and still up to date despite having been written in the early 80s.
R:tDO presents the GM and the players with a very original and somewhat poetic low-fantasy role-playing experience. However, unlike other games that go down this path, it is also grounded with solid rules and a system that players familiar with D&D, Rolemaster or most classic fantasy games will quickly feel at ease with. To me, this is the game’s biggest success. In addition to that, the quirky and unusual cosmology makes it very endearing without needing any heavy “world” appropriation by players or GMs.
The variety of adventures that can be run in R:tDO is nearly endless, from classic dungeon crawls to weird dream-experiences. In fact, the string of adventures released during the two editions of the game in France have ranged from odd dreamquests to piraty treasure-hunts and even a not so classic “destroy the artefact” campaign.
However, I don’t think R:tDO is the game for everyone. First of all, it’s so low-fantasy that some players will just never get it. I had a couple of players over the years dropping out after a few sessions because they didn’t like the idea of risking your character’s life every time you climb a small cliff or face a town guard in combat. The game also encourages the Dream Master to be light-handed with monetary rewards (which has the interesting side effect of having the characters blow off any large sum of money they earn on futile stuff…) Some players might be really annoyed with that too.
On another level that some may enjoy and others not, R:tDO is essentially an a-moral game. There is no in-game incentive to do good, and in fact, “good” or “evil” do not exist in game-terms anymore than they exist as absolutes in our real world. It makes a nice change of pace from D&D, but some players, and indeed some GMs may have trouble with that. To sum these points up, I’d say that R:tDO is essentially un-heroic. It’s not an inherent flaw of the game though, but the fact is it won’t necessarily be tasty to every palate.
There is a more fundamental flaw that I have noticed over the years, and that is the essential instability of the game world. The fact that it’s all a dream, and that you can just go through a rift and never know if you’ll ever come back to where you came from induces an indolence in players. They start to not care very much about your finely crafted cities and locations, your interesting NPCs, etc. Just because they assume they’ll be gone the next day. What this means is that if you or your players are fans of long-winded word-exploring campaigns where the characters make friends, ascend socially or discover world shattering mysteries, you’re gonna have a hard time doing that in R:tDO.
Now this can be worked around. In fact, the last release in the French game-line was an attempt at having a stable setting that still allowed you to move around in other dreams but that you could also come back to. My latest campaign worked on a similar principle with a “core” dream that most rifts were likely to point to. However, it’s additional work for the GM and not the way the game is supposed to work.
In that sense, and even though I understand it was additional work, I think it was a mistake not to include the three adventures that were in the original French version in the English translation. Trying to think up of some adventures as a new GM to this game can be daunting. I understand that Malcontent Games will release these scenarios for free to purchasers of the complete rulebooks in the coming months, so that’s not so much an issue, but it can be a slow learning process finding out exactly what a R:tDO adventure is supposed to feel like.
Conclusion
All in all, I strongly recommend this most excellent game and I praise Malcontent for translating it (it must have been a hell of a job…) If you like D&D and other classic fantasy RPGs but are looking for something different, then you should definitely give this a try. If you’re just out for something different, then chances are you’ll like it too. If you’re looking for a different way to do D&Desque dungeon crawls and heroics, chances are this isn’t the game for you…
Since this is General RPG I figured a non d20 review wouldn't be OT. I posted this review on RPG.NET as well, just FYI.
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Note : This Fantasy RPG comes in 3 Core Books available in PDF Format through Malcontent Games (http://www.malcontentgames.com). Book 1 is free and describes the game system, Book 2 and Book 3 are bundled together for $13.00 and describe respectively the Magic and the World. See below for more details. Please note that the game is split in 3 books and that all three are necessary for a full experience of the game.
I'm in no way affiliated with Malcontent Games and have not reviewed this based on a free review copy.
I decided to review Rêve : the Dream Ouroboros (hereafter R :tDO) because I like the French version of the game and feel that despite being an « old » game, it is unusual enough to deserve better attention. Also, I have GMed a homebrew translation of the game to English people when I lived in the UK very successfully so I was interested in evaluating the English version.
Unlike how other reviews are organised, I won’t run you through a chapter by chapter evaluation, since that would be tedious. Rather, I’ll give an overview of the game and then get into specifics like mechanics, the magic system, setting and finally a general evaluation. I will point out however that the rules are spread over three books, “Journeyers” which covers character creation, the game system and how to resolve actions, “In the Dreamtime” which covers the magic system and it’s implications, and “Worlds” which covers the possibilities of the R :tDO gaming universe, races, monsters and related stuff. All are available through Malcontent Games (http://www.malcontentgames.com) in PDF format, the first one is free and the other two are bundled for $13. The complete game includes all three books.
A short additional note before I get going : Although the R :tDO system could be used generically for fantasy or modern roleplaying (and I have indeed used it for several such adaptations in the past), many of its aspects are intrinsically linked to the universe, so I will evaluate it within that context, not based on its own merits only.
Overview of the game
The premise of the R:tDO universe is as follows : The world is a Dragon’s Dream. Each living being is but a figment of a Dragon’s imagination. Dragons are actually a metaphor for these creatures that have the power of life and death over each and every living being, but the sages call them the Great Dreamers. No one knows who they are and what the look like.
When a Dragon wakes up, or shifts in his slumber, sometimes, the characters in his dream die. One would expect whole chunks of reality to disappear when that happens, but the dreams of the various dragons actually interact enough that even when one of them wakes up the fabric of reality remains relatively stable. If large numbers of Dragons were to wake up, of course, things would be very different… It has happened in the past and hopefully will never happen again…
The universe of R:tDO can be said to be cosmological but not necessarily material. In other words, once you’ve integrated the above premise, you can potentially apply it to any region, people, setting you can imagine. However, this premise affects many things : character progression, magic, dreams (of course) and various interesting game mechanics.
The Game System :
Although the system may seem overly complex at first (many characteristics and skills), it has one great redeeming feature : there is one single table that handles each and every action in the game, and it’s printed on each character sheet so you always have it right under your nose. On this table you find the characteristic value as the vertical axis and the total difficulty of the action as a horizontal axis. The resulting number is a % chance of success. Degrees of success are expressed in another table but are fairly easy to work out with a bit of practice. The difficulty of an action is a straight addition of a skill, a difficulty modifier expressed by the Dream Master and various personal modifiers due to armour, fatigue, wounds, etc.
Just to give a quick example, Ben’s character Weasel wants to pick a lock. His Dexterity is 14 and his Locksmithing skill is +3. The Dream Master says the lock has a –4 penalty. Ben checks the table where 14 and -1 cross, and finds out that he has a 63% chance of success. If Weasel had suffered a Severe Wound previously, he would subtract an additional –2 from the difficulty for a roll of 14 at -3 ie. 49%.
One thing to point out is that although most of the characteristics are straightforward, R:tDO features a “Dream” characteristic that you most likely won’t see in any other game. It’s a vital stat for magicians but is also very important for other characters since it determines how potent your dreams are. Considering the title of the game, I’m sure you’ve figured by now that dreams play an important part…
Character Generation is either random or point-buy for characteristics and point-buy for skills. There are about 40 skills if you don’t count the different weapon skills which makes it fairly detailed. Character generation is fairly simple in the sense that there are few determining choices apart from where to allocate your points. Basically, the game assumes you will play a human although playing other races (mainly gnomes and ogres) is technically possible if the Dream Master allows it. Other races are described in Book 3 : “Worlds”.
The main thing the player needs to decide upon is whether he wants to play a True Dreamer or a High Dreamer. High Dreamers are wizards : they master the intricacies of the Dreaming and can “whisper to the ears of the Dragons” to subtly (or not so subtly) alter reality. In game terms, being a High Dreamer gives you access to the four “Draconic” skills and allows you to purchase a limited number of spells at character creation. On the other hand, True Dreamers, being more naïve about the Dreaming and the Dragons have truer, more potent dreams. The effect of this will be made more evident later on.
Another important part of character creation is your archetype. You see, when a Dragon wakes up and you die, he may fall back asleep and dream about you again, or at least someone who looks a lot like you and may share a lot of similarities. In effect, your character is the last in a long string of reincarnations. Your archetype is the ideal, the paragon of all these incarnations in terms of skills. What this means is that when you create your archetype you will allocate insanely high skill scores to it (compared to a created character anyway).
In game terms the archetype has two important effects : the most commonly used is that when you have a stressful day, you have more potent dreams at night, and you may dream of past incarnations. When you do that, you gain experience from your past selves. However, you can only progress in this fashion up to the level of your archetype. Beyond that, you’ve got to do it the hard way : adventuring and learning. The archetype is also useful when your character dies. You can then decide to play the next incarnation of your character. Basically you keep the appearance and the characteristics of the old character and reallocate skills as per a normal character creation. You again have the option of being a True or a High Dreamer. You keep the archetype (of course) and usually fortuitously bump into your old party mates who recognise you even though you may not …
Oh, about True Dreamers : one of the main bonuses of being a True Dreamer is in the above system : when you dream of past incarnations, you glean more experience from them than High Dreamers do. At character creation the trade off in power may seem minute, but in the long run it really does make a big difference .
Character creation ends up with buying your equipment, and that’s usually when new players coming from D&D and other high fantasy systems start weeping. A beginning character usually doesn’t have enough money to buy a sword, let alone armour. It takes some getting used to, but it’s a nice touch that pervades the game : you’re not adventuring to get rich or to collect the loot. You’re doing it for the thrill cause that’s all there is !
The Combat System is smooth, fairly straightforward, and very deadly. The great thing about it, is that the player is really involved in the sense that he decides how difficult his attacks are going to be. Do I want to risk failing but be pretty sure I’ll pass through my opponent’s defenses (dodge or parry) if I don’t fail or do I want to hope he’s lousy at dodging? It’s my call. Whatever difficulty I deliberately apply to my attack will be applied to my opponent’s defense and vice-versa. There are also a few maneuvers that can be picked, like charge or feint. With each of these, you’re trading something for something else (efficiency for damage, speed for efficiency, etc.) Critical successes open more options (do I want to do more damage, attack again, make my attack near impossible to dodge). Overall, it’s balanced and very involving for the players.
Someone reading this may think that combat could potentially last for ever if everyone’s playing it safe. While that’s true in theory, the combination of the fatigue and endurance rules and the lethality of the wound system mean that in actual fact most combats are quickly finished. Endurance is a variable that doesn’t affect your rolls per se, but if you drop to 0, you faint. Also, every Endurance point you sustain is knocked off your Fatigue total as well. The Fatigue rules imply that the more you exert the more you get fatigued to the point that you get serious penalties after a while. There are four levels of wounds : scratches only take a few Endurance points off. Light wounds take a little more Endurance off and you can only sustain 5, any light wound beyond that is considered serious. Serious wounds imply penalties of –2 per wound on all rolls and you can only sustain two of these. Critical wounds bring your endurance to 0 immediately (meaning you faint) and you run the risk of dying each round until healed or dead.
One of my group of players used to have a saying for this game : “When things go wrong, they can only get worse…” Now you know why !
Healing in R:tDO is mostly realistic, which means it’s long and painful (in the sense that you have many lingering penalties until you’re healed.) It can be sped up dramatically with herbs and magic, although there’s always of chance of these failing. It also means that when your High Dreamer is knocked out, you can forget the speedy getaway !
One last comment on the combat system : I would describe it as realistic, in the sense that even a very powerful character can go down in one blow if that blow is exceptional, but it’s not simulationist. In other words, once you’ve understood the basic mechanics of the system, it’s a breeze to run. You don’t have to know dozens of options or roll on multiple tables. It’s all fairly straightforward.
Other game mechanics are presented in Book 1, like expending luck points to re-roll failed rolls (True Dreamers regain the points, High Dreamers don’t) and destiny points that allow you to stabilise automatically when you’re dying and various other “life-saving” options. The rules obviously present how to use skills and in particular which characteristics to use with which skills. One thing that may need emphasising at this point is that the system is very detailed in terms of mundane actions : how to cook a meal, to forage for food or herbs, to hunt for game, how to perform a nice ode, how to compose a poem, etc. The reason for this is that the default assumption in the game world is that you will often be broke. So essentially, a min-maxed character that has no mundane skills might very well end-up begging or leading the dangerous life of a criminal just to have food and decent clothes.
Magic : The High-Dreaming
R:tDO’s magic system is one of the most strikingly unique in role-playing games. I’m not saying it’s better than others, and I certainly don’t think that it could be exported into any other game, but it makes magic fun and very different from what gamers are usually used to.
First of all, magic is completely integrated into the gaming universe as presented in the premise above. What High Dreamers are, essentially, is dreamed creatures who have mastered a technique to affect the dream that they are part of and modify its outcome. You know how when you dream sometimes you have the uneasy feeling that you’re not in control. Well that’s what the Dragons must feel when the High Dreamers start pulling the strings.
However, and this cannot be stressed enough, the High Dreamers are playing a dangerous game. At the very basic level, they risk mental derangements. If they push things too far, they risk ripping the dream with major effects either to themselves or even at large. Many games out there have integrated elements of risk in spellcasting, but R:tDO is the one which, to my knowledge, best exemplifies the mage as a semi-lunatic yet powerful character who can’t fit in society if only because he’s such a kook…
Let me explain how things work. First of all, you have four draconic skills: Oneiros, Hypnos, Narcos and Thanatos. There is a mythical explanation for these and the role they play in the structure of the Dreaming but let us just say at this stage that Thanatos is fundamentally different from the others in that it’s the path of non-dreaming, the instinct of awakening. As such, it is theoretically not open to beginning characters and has a lot of in-game effects on the character. If you think High Dreamers are weird at the end of this section of the review, well the ones who dabble in Thanatos are so much more so…
The kind of spells available in each skill (also called paths or Ways) are very different in nature. Oneiros includes mostly area spells and elemental transmutations, Hypnos includes illusion spells and summonings, Narcos includes exclusively spells designed to enchant objects, and Thanatos includes the closest to what could be called “black magic”.
Calling the spells by that name is actually kind of a misnomer (and an inheritance from the 1st edition, I suspect) because there is nothing written about them. High Dreaming is an instinct, and you learn it by observing nature and how it works. There are two ways to learn or invent a new “spell” : you either need to meditate following a number of techniques, or you can observe “draconic signs”, natural configurations that spark understanding in your mind. These signs can be temporary, in which case you have to interpret them really quickly, or more permanent in which case you can take your time. Mechanically, once you have accumulated a sufficient number of points in a given skill or path through meditation or observation, you can attempt to synthesise a spell of that path.
Now how does the magic work mechanically ? All the High Dreamer players have a special map of the Dreamlands. These aren’t actual locations but rather a mental representation of the mind of the Dragons. The map features hills, mountains, plains, sanctuaries and various other terrain types, each specifically named. In order to trigger a spell, you need to “travel” mentally to the correct location, which can be just a generic type for simple spells (The Oneiros “Earth to Water” transmutation is cast from a Forest) or specific (The Hypnos “Sordid Warrior” invocation is cast from the Sordid City specifically). When a player wants his character to cast a spell, he lets his conscience drift in the Dreamlands and travels to the location he needs to cast the spell from. He can make encounters as he travels which are not actual confrontations but rather fighting against the mind of the Dragon who resists his attempt to meddle in the Dream. Some of these encounters can end beneficially, some can be extremely dangerous.
Once the character has reached the proper location, he rolls to cast his spell and spends the relevant dream points (a variable based on the Dream characteristic) et voilà. Familiarity with a given location can enhance spellcasting, so the High Dreamers are encouraged to stay in a given part of the map, but that’s not always possible since bad magical effects can shift them around or even modify the map to some extent !
So you’ve heard me babbling about how magic was dangerous and now you’re wondering how. Fair enough. Well, first of all, the encounters mentioned above can really screw you up. Basically, they can suck your dream points and even sometimes some of your lifeforce. That’s bad enough. But the real fun begins at night. When characters who have spent dream points fall asleep, they dream in the higher parts of the Dreaming, closer to the consciousness of the Dragons. That’s potentially risky, since they can either regain dream points or, if they’re unlucky, confront the Dragon.
In the latter option, they have a small chance of winning the confrontation in which case they are rewarded by a Dragon Gift, a boon that can be linked to their high dreaming capability or not. Dragon Gifts range from a 6th sense to an animal affinity to favoured locations in the Dreamlands. However, they are rare…
Most of the time, the character will be defeated in the confrontation, and incur one or several Dragon Tails or even worse, a Dragon Breaths. Tails and Breaths are always negative effects, usually mental, and can have different repercussions depending on the circumstances of the game. For example, you could wake up and decide that you don’t want to walk, or that you’d feel good naked today. You could also wake up and unknowingly want to kill the next stranger you meet, or want to fight to the death the next time you’re in combat… Now you see why High Dreamers are considered weirdoes : these behaviour quirks happen most every day…
The Setting
As I mentioned above, R:tDO is essentially a cosmological setting rather than a geographical one. Various incarnations of the game and various supplements have presented various settings over the game history, but there is no default setting as such. Furthermore, there is a notion of multiverse (or multidream) that comes from a phenomenon called dream rifts. Dream rifts sometimes occur naturally, but mostly occur when magic is misused. What a dream rift does essentially is either carry you elsewhere or open a gate elsewhere to where you are. They are essentially one-way portals between locations. Their destination or origin cannot be known before hand and there is no way to control these rifts.
Now in theory a dream rift can carry you anywhere, either in the same Dream or in another. So this phenomenon (and a couple of other, similar ones) introduces an essential instability to the game world. You could be role-playing in a fairy castle straight out of Dunsany one day and in a gritty city inspired by Moorcock the next. The 1st edition of the game presented a fairly stable world with a map and all the adventures published happened somewhere in that world but not so with the second edition. However, the “Worlds” book also presents various other dream mechanisms that can enhance your setting and make it more specific.
In the cosmology’s history, however, these passages between Dreams did not always exist. The Age the game takes place in is the Third Age but there was a mythical First Age, also called the Age of Dragons when dragons allegedly dreamt themselves amongst the living creatures they considered their servants. At the end of the First Age, the gnomes discovered gems and hence, high dreaming (gems are potent vessels for magic) and that disturbed the Dragons so much that they woke up en masse. Huge cataclysms ensued until the Dragons fell asleep again and very little remained.
The Second Age started, called the Age of Magicians. The Dragons no longer dreamt themselves alongside mortals and magic was relatively commonplace. In the end though, it was overused and the Dragons woke up again, causing yet more mayhem. However, they woke up in different patterns and less massively which caused some locales to remain amidst the madness. This has prompted the common man’s tendency to avoid travel in the Third Age, called the Age of Journeyers. The Journeyers are the exception, those who feel the call of adventure and are willing to leave their world behind (often literally) in pursuit of discovery. The PCs are assumed to be Journeyers. In that sense, they have an inherent motivation to go forward and be curious about stuff. Making money and finding stuff is a nice aside, but it isn’t their main drive.
The third book of the game also presents all the sciences and their game use, from Zoology to Astrology to Medicine and Alchemy. Some of them have specific rules, others are just described in a general manner. Furthermore, it includes fauna, flora and many creatures and monsters to play with. When I say many, we’re nowhere near your average D&D monster book. Monsters and races in R:tDO are unusual and quirky, so you don’t need many to build up a sense of wonder in your adventures. Denis Gerfaud, the author of the game is a huge Lewis Carroll fan so a number of creatures presented (including the Jabberwock) are more or less straight out of Alice in Wonderland.
Also, it should be pointed that many creatures are potentially lethal in head to head combat however experienced the characters are. That’s what the setting is all about though ! Finally, there are a number of creatures and races which are more fundamentally linked to the R:tDO universe, like Dream and Nightmare entities. These are opponents that not only endanger you physically but also assault your connection to the Dreaming, to potentially devastating effects.
One final comment. R:tDO has one more fundamental difference with most if not all other fantasy games I know : there are no gods in R:tDO. The Dragons are not gods because they don’t care one iota about the creatures that they dream (do you care about the inhabitants of your dreams ?) and worshipping a Dragon will not make a little bit of difference in the end. That doesn’t stop you from having cults or churches, etc. but they are essentially fallacies as far as the game universe is concerned.
General Evaluation
As you may have worked out from this looooooooooong review, I have been playing R:tDO for nearly 20 years now and I feel I know the game inside and out. So take this as a bias if you think it is one. However, I genuinely feel that the game is original, excellent, and still up to date despite having been written in the early 80s.
R:tDO presents the GM and the players with a very original and somewhat poetic low-fantasy role-playing experience. However, unlike other games that go down this path, it is also grounded with solid rules and a system that players familiar with D&D, Rolemaster or most classic fantasy games will quickly feel at ease with. To me, this is the game’s biggest success. In addition to that, the quirky and unusual cosmology makes it very endearing without needing any heavy “world” appropriation by players or GMs.
The variety of adventures that can be run in R:tDO is nearly endless, from classic dungeon crawls to weird dream-experiences. In fact, the string of adventures released during the two editions of the game in France have ranged from odd dreamquests to piraty treasure-hunts and even a not so classic “destroy the artefact” campaign.
However, I don’t think R:tDO is the game for everyone. First of all, it’s so low-fantasy that some players will just never get it. I had a couple of players over the years dropping out after a few sessions because they didn’t like the idea of risking your character’s life every time you climb a small cliff or face a town guard in combat. The game also encourages the Dream Master to be light-handed with monetary rewards (which has the interesting side effect of having the characters blow off any large sum of money they earn on futile stuff…) Some players might be really annoyed with that too.
On another level that some may enjoy and others not, R:tDO is essentially an a-moral game. There is no in-game incentive to do good, and in fact, “good” or “evil” do not exist in game-terms anymore than they exist as absolutes in our real world. It makes a nice change of pace from D&D, but some players, and indeed some GMs may have trouble with that. To sum these points up, I’d say that R:tDO is essentially un-heroic. It’s not an inherent flaw of the game though, but the fact is it won’t necessarily be tasty to every palate.
There is a more fundamental flaw that I have noticed over the years, and that is the essential instability of the game world. The fact that it’s all a dream, and that you can just go through a rift and never know if you’ll ever come back to where you came from induces an indolence in players. They start to not care very much about your finely crafted cities and locations, your interesting NPCs, etc. Just because they assume they’ll be gone the next day. What this means is that if you or your players are fans of long-winded word-exploring campaigns where the characters make friends, ascend socially or discover world shattering mysteries, you’re gonna have a hard time doing that in R:tDO.
Now this can be worked around. In fact, the last release in the French game-line was an attempt at having a stable setting that still allowed you to move around in other dreams but that you could also come back to. My latest campaign worked on a similar principle with a “core” dream that most rifts were likely to point to. However, it’s additional work for the GM and not the way the game is supposed to work.
In that sense, and even though I understand it was additional work, I think it was a mistake not to include the three adventures that were in the original French version in the English translation. Trying to think up of some adventures as a new GM to this game can be daunting. I understand that Malcontent Games will release these scenarios for free to purchasers of the complete rulebooks in the coming months, so that’s not so much an issue, but it can be a slow learning process finding out exactly what a R:tDO adventure is supposed to feel like.
Conclusion
All in all, I strongly recommend this most excellent game and I praise Malcontent for translating it (it must have been a hell of a job…) If you like D&D and other classic fantasy RPGs but are looking for something different, then you should definitely give this a try. If you’re just out for something different, then chances are you’ll like it too. If you’re looking for a different way to do D&Desque dungeon crawls and heroics, chances are this isn’t the game for you…
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