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Using dreams to plant adventure hooks or provide motivation
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<blockquote data-quote="ninjayeti" data-source="post: 8209909" data-attributes="member: 6789120"><p>I've used it a couple of times and think it can work well. It is very genre appropriate and certainly feels more epic than the "adventurers wanted" bulletin board in the town square. Sure it is a bit of a trope - but so are most of the other adventure hooks out there. Besides, part of the fun of the game is having YOUR character experience the cool stuff that happens to heroes in books and movies. As long as you don't go to the well too often, I really don't see it as problematic.</p><p></p><p>The two pieces of advice I would give are:</p><p></p><p>1) Use the dreams as early as possible to foreshadow a later adventure. Let the character have the dreams for a few sessions with no obvious way to act on them - then when they are least expecting it have them encounter something they saw in the dream that sparks the adventure. The earlier you can plant the seed, the more rewarding the payoff will be. </p><p></p><p>2) Dreams should be vague and confusing, rather than giving explicit directions. A dream where their dead father tells them "Go to Wave Echo Cave and defeat the Black Spider" isn't much more interesting than having a generic quest giver NPC tell them the same thing. Instead let them have a recurring dream where a giant black spider eats all of their friends and family - when they hear in passing that the leader of the raiders is called "the black spider" you will have their full attention. </p><p></p><p>As an example, I had a character have a recurring dream about a terrified woman trapped in a golden cage. Several sessions down the road they met the local ruler - who the character recognized as the woman from the dream. Except she wasn't in any apparent danger and looked at him like he was crazy when he told her he could protect her from whatever danger she was in. As it turns out, the real countess had been kidnapped and replaced with an imposter, which the PCs figured out once they started to dig into the situation. I could have set up the same adventure with the "rumors that the Countess has been acting strangely" approach, but I think this got them more invested in solving the mystery and rescuing the countess.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ninjayeti, post: 8209909, member: 6789120"] I've used it a couple of times and think it can work well. It is very genre appropriate and certainly feels more epic than the "adventurers wanted" bulletin board in the town square. Sure it is a bit of a trope - but so are most of the other adventure hooks out there. Besides, part of the fun of the game is having YOUR character experience the cool stuff that happens to heroes in books and movies. As long as you don't go to the well too often, I really don't see it as problematic. The two pieces of advice I would give are: 1) Use the dreams as early as possible to foreshadow a later adventure. Let the character have the dreams for a few sessions with no obvious way to act on them - then when they are least expecting it have them encounter something they saw in the dream that sparks the adventure. The earlier you can plant the seed, the more rewarding the payoff will be. 2) Dreams should be vague and confusing, rather than giving explicit directions. A dream where their dead father tells them "Go to Wave Echo Cave and defeat the Black Spider" isn't much more interesting than having a generic quest giver NPC tell them the same thing. Instead let them have a recurring dream where a giant black spider eats all of their friends and family - when they hear in passing that the leader of the raiders is called "the black spider" you will have their full attention. As an example, I had a character have a recurring dream about a terrified woman trapped in a golden cage. Several sessions down the road they met the local ruler - who the character recognized as the woman from the dream. Except she wasn't in any apparent danger and looked at him like he was crazy when he told her he could protect her from whatever danger she was in. As it turns out, the real countess had been kidnapped and replaced with an imposter, which the PCs figured out once they started to dig into the situation. I could have set up the same adventure with the "rumors that the Countess has been acting strangely" approach, but I think this got them more invested in solving the mystery and rescuing the countess. [/QUOTE]
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