The Book of Broken Dreams

[Messageboard Golem]

The Book of Broken Dreams features 50+ pages of optional rules for adding realistic effects of trauma, psychosis and personality disorders to your d20 game.

Chapter one outlines the crippling psychological effects of traumatic stress and details the most common disorders that afflict trauma survivors: post traumatic stress disorder and dissociation.

Chapter two introduces a system of personality development that produces thousands of realistic, believable and diverse personalities which span the spectrum of sanity. From the mildly avoidant to the severely anti-social, these personalities will bring a vivid new dimension to your role-playing games.

Chapter three discusses what really happens when characters become insane. Schizophrenia, dementia, manic-depression and more are all discussed in clear, game-mechanic terms. Add these options to your game for a dose of harsh reality and an accurate depiction of madness.

Chapter four includes dozens of new spells like burden of proof, elude, labyrinthine conundrum, normalcy, and many, many more.

Chapter five of of the Book of Broken Dreams covers three new prestige classes, the mentalist, the lunatic, and the dream weaver. It also presents several new feats including Lucid Dreaming.

Add these options to your game today and watch your characters writhe in the grip of disorder, trauma and madness!

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This pdf book has all sorts of information to deal with psychological issues. It describes ways to determine a characters psychology, stress, mental disorders, spells and prestige classes.
The feel is quite dark, and will specially be suited for dark-themed worlds. A game of Call of Cthulhu could certainly benefit from it, although the spells would need a bit of changing and the chapter on insanity would prove informative at best.

Taking each chapter one by one:


Chapter 1: Stress

An interesting idea, but a bit wierd in its mechanics. It brings in a new secondary ability score, representing a character's resistance to stress, as well as rules to determine how great a stress an encounter induces, and what the effects of great stress can have on a character.


Chapter 2: Personality

This was by far my favorite, and I'd have bought the book for this one alone. It presents a way to create deranged character mentalities in a rather quick way (once you understand the rules of course). There are a variety of personnality aspects, each possibly being more or less severe in someone's personality, and each includes a series of traits that describe a specific quirk of the character.
There is also a section detailing a method to understand interactions between different characters, depending on their mentalities.
This section contains barely any d20 rule, because it is not really needed. This means you can easily use this section for any RPG!
One thing that nearly frightened me is that I found some traits that really fitted me very well. It was a kind of self-psychanalisys
It looks very coherent and scientific. Made me think it was written by a doctor in psychology


Chapter 3: Insanity

This chapters details various insanities, along with their game effects.
The details are very interesting, but the game mechanics are really weird. They don't look very uniform, and I'm quite sure the DM will need to adjust some things.


Chapter 4: Spells

This section contains a spell list and then their description. There are nearly 50 of them and they are all more or less mental-related. There are spells for all levels, though unequally distributed.
First noteworthy aspect: most spells are from the enchantment school, quite a few are illusions, with just one from divination, one from transmutation and one from conjuration.
A lot modify the target's behaviour, or make it see things that aren't. Some also have physical effects, as a result of a mental disturbance.
A few spell names that are quite evocative: phobia, insomnia, creeping shadows, mind probe, mass hysteria, masquerade, etc.
Second astonishing aspect: all spells are for Wiz&Sor! Nothing for the others! Not even the bard?!
Obviously, some spells could be appropriate for other spellcasters, but again, the DM will need to assign those, thus some more work is needed.
The spells are interesting though.


Chapter 5: Prestige classes

The dreamweaver, the lunatic and the mentalist are the three presented classes.
The dreamweaver gets to do all sorts with dreams and the dream world...
The lunatic draws power and abilities from his state (could have been a template in some regards, especially since this is more a condition than a training).
The mentalist is some kind of inquisitor getting to manipulate other's mentalities.
These are medium quality, nothing groundbreaking, balance looks okay on paper. There are quite a few abilities a character can get from spells anyways, so some of their levels look superflous to me.


Conclusion
Overall, the book is well organized but he artwork is mediocre. There are a few spelling errors. But nothing really distracting.
One of the two main gripes I have, is the way game mechanics are treated. I sometimes wondered if it wasn't some 2nd edition stuff. Some rules just dont look coherent in regards to the other, or just plain weird. On the other hand, these could be left out in a lot of cases, since a lot of the material is here to give the DM additional tools to role (not roll) play characters, set the mood, and find inspiration for really disturbing encounters.
The other negative point is the frequent reference the document makes to another product published by the same company, the Primal Codex. I don't own that one, so it kind of frustrated me. But at the price these are, I can't really complain.

In the end, I really liked this book, and hope to use a lot of chapter 2 and 3, as well as some of the spells.
Buy it for the ideas, concepts and informations, not for the rules!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Not really a complaint about the review, but doesn't this review belong in the PDF are?

And yes, it does seem like a cool concept.

The Auld Grump