Dream Physics and the Bizarre in Gaming

I have run PCs through dream sequences in almost every campaign I have ever DMed.  In my early days as DM (we ran 2e and loved it) I used dreams as plot hooks and a way to introduce demonic and magical influences in ways that made the players think beyond the dungeon.  I started exploring gaming in active dream state with an adventure I wrote involving four pocket dimensions contained within the rubies on a ring the players found in a treasure trove.  Powerful entities in these dimensions reached out to the PCs in their dreams and planted the seeds which would ultimately result in discovery and exploration of the pocket dimensions in the ring.  This was an example of my "gaming" in college, when I was not actually playing but still compulsively wrote D&D material.

  My games tend toward the extremely bizarre by almost any standards, so perhaps the dream state is the platonic ideal that my games strive toward.  Long before the recent dream adventures of Tilia, I introduced many other situations in my 4e game that are analogous to the lucid dreamstate; I have always liked the results when I give the reins to the players and let them come up with the limits of their actions.

The first time this happened in my 4e campaign was toward the end of the players' exploration of the Temple of Tamoachan.  Naturally I had placed the temple above a long-since-covered-in-solid-rock-by-tectonic-processes alien spacecraft, which radiated the energy used to power many of the crazy magical networks the party had discovered throughout the temple (I have to crazy up even a crazy tournament killer death trap 1e module, of course).  A near climactic battle in a sub-level I created featuring a massive worship hall with "benches" that animated into minions and huge statues that animated into huge demons that kicked major ass was close enough to the energy-emitting alien vessel that I allowed the PCs to take a full rest and refresh all their powers as a minor action by focusing on allowing the alien energy into themselves. Once the PCs got into the swing of things it was a spectacularly fun combat, with me hurling far greater numbers and more dangerous opponents against the PCs than they could have ever expected to survive, and them blowing daily power after daily power and refreshing all damage each round in a whirlwind of death and destruction.

 This was just a primer for when the party managed to teleport inside the spacecraft.  Finding themselves floating in a sphere of white energy that responded and conformed to their expectations, the players soon figured out they could "operate" the spaceship using whatever method they were best at. Hammer the barbarian fired lasers from the energy sphere at far away targets by visualizing his target getting blown the fuck up and using special 4e style attack powers with his ax to cleave the space where he was visualizing the target; meanwhile Beautiful Bob talked the white energy into doing what he wanted and soon gained access to the "ships logs", the total input the energy field had ever received from its former alien users as well as the myriad of sensors scattered throughout the solar system the ship was connected to.  Beautiful Bob soon absorbed the entire history of the world from birds eye view, seeing the continents split and join and the oceans rise and fall and the eventual beginnings of plant and animal life.  This is when the party learned that all intelligent humanoids were the failed byproducts of alien snake man experiments to produce a superior race of bipedal snake warrior servitors, cast off from the golden city on the meteorite into the swamps and forgotten about by the snake men.

Unlike bending reality in the alien spacecraft, I usually make limits to dream physics beyond simply what the player thinks to accomplish.  When I ran Tilia through her dream recently, I made a few notes about the physics of each stage of the dream journey and also improvised details on the fly.  Once Tilia became lucid, I allowed her more control over the dream but I did not give her 100% freedom.  Early on, she mostly walked because that was what her player expected her to do.  I had made a note that she could fly by walking or running on air in most of the dreamscapes, but Mike never thought to try that.  Floating in the mist and the great fall were examples of dreamscapes that started out with the presupposition of not standing on solid ground as part of the beginning dream description, but in all of the other scenes that unfolded in two long dream sessions, Mike assumed that Tilia was standing on the "ground" the whole time.

I assign a sort of elasticity to dream physics; they mostly resemble normal physics at first glance, but prolonged prodding and investigation will soon push them far past the normal state.  More accurately, the act of prodding and investigating shapes the direction in which the dream is pushed past normal expectations; the elasticity is a way to describe the resistance when approaching the limits of human comprehension (which a dream cannot stray beyond), and the resulting snap back into a more normal state of affairs.

There are limits to the bizarre in Dream Physics which do not exist in my alien and trans-dimensional gaming explorations (both are also strong recurring themes in my gaming).  A dream is after all a product of the mind, which experiences and processes reality while awake, and then deals with it while asleep.  Even though the sleeping conscious is not constrained by physical laws, physical reality forms much of the basis of dreams and provides a general framework past which a dream cannot be stretched too far.

Alien Insects - Tube Sucker

Tube Sucker

Number Encountered: 1d6: 1-5: solo tube sucker, 6: encounter 2d6 tube suckers

Move: Jump 6       Initiative: +15   Perception: +25  

HP:150

AC: 25  (35 in full retracted mode)

REF: 26  (20 in full retracted mode)

FORT: 24  (40 in full retracted mode)

WILL:22

Minor: Full Retracted Mode:  The tube sucker pulls all extremities inside the central body and turtles up.

Minor: Tractor Beam: ranged 15   +20 vs.FORT, pull target 1d4+1 squares

Basic Melee:  Claw: +22 vs. REF, 2d10+5 dmg and knocked prone

Standard: Stomach Tube: melee reach 1, +22 vs AC, 3d12+12 acid dmg, ongoing 12 acid save ends, pull target 1d4+1 squares.

Recharge 4,5,6: Claw Pounce: Jump 6 and make 3 x Claw attacks vs target, this move does not provoke attacks of opportunity, if all 3 Claw attacks land make a Stomach Tube attack at +26 vs. AC.

The ubiquitous tube sucker is the aquarium cleaner of the alien planet's surface.  Three metal plated tentacles ending in wicked claws emerge from the 5' spherical body, itself a metal plated ball of muscle.  A charged gas cloud inside the body serves as a simple brain, and three organs floating in the gas detect electro-magnetic radiation and minute vibrations.  A 10' long flexible tube containing an acid-filled stomach exerts a telekinetic pull on living organisms.  

The tube sucker reproduces asexually, a new organism forming like a corm on the outside of the parent's body.  Even the youngest, newly separated tube sucker has the claw and stomach attacks described above, and they typically grow to full size in very short order feeding on the detritus left by the winter storms.  Their ability to quickly assume a fully retracted spherical form allows them to survive even the harshest of winter storms.  Their gas cloud brain is not affected by the constant jarring as the metal plated sphere of muscle surrounding it bounces across the landscape.

Tube suckers usually drift around alone, but occasionally groups are encountered.  Often the group has its origin at a large food source nearby, such as a downed red layer giant gas body.  Hundreds of tube suckers might be found at a fresh collision site, sucking up the thick layer of organic debris.

Tube suckers seem to be constantly hungry no matter how much material they dissolve in their tube stomachs.  The particular kind of acid found in the tube stomach has a connection to shadow in its molecular structure.  It has a constant supply of hungry ions that stream into existence from beyond.  A shadow organ at the base of the tube sends the byproducts of the digestive process through shadow to re-incorporate as energy elsewhere in trans-dimensional space time.  It is possible that every living tube sucker is part of a single larger entity elsewhere, the functional mouths of a multi-dimensional being.

Alien Spore Thrasher

The Alien Spore Thrasher is a parasitic organism that propagates with special spores that drift around looking for a suitable, moist, living environment to start growing in.  A tiny intermediary form is assumed by the thrasher, barely anything more than several sacks that produce a mixture of venomous secretions and a set of mouthlike tubes that connect to the host organism.  The spore thrasher kills its host in short order and consumes its body to grow the thrashing fruiting body depicted above.  The stats below are for the fruiting bodies of large spore thrashers that grow in the metal arm forest ecosystem from the body of fallen metal arm trees.

HP: 1d4 x 100 HP 

AC:20  FORT:22 REF:25 WILL:18

Basic Attack:  melee reach 1 Thrash +12 vs. REF, 5d12 dmg

Minor Recharge 4,5,6:  Release Poison Spore Cloud Close Burst 1d6(6's explode on the radius of the burst roll- roll an extra 1d6, all subsequent 6's also explode) (choose 1 spore type)

Spores:

Redirecting Cloud : Until the end of the Alien Spore Thrasher's next turn, if any enemy rolls a natural 1-4 on a melee attack roll, the thrasher chooses a new target for the attack and the enemy must reroll against the new target.

Stupifying Cloud: Persists for 1d6 rounds.  Any creature beginning its turn in the cloud or entering the cloud must immediately make a save or become dazed, save ends.

Blinding Cloud: Persists for 1d8 rounds.  Any creature beginning its turn in the cloud or entering the cloud must immediately make a save or become blinded, save ends at -2.

Infecting Spores:  +20 vs. FORT vs. all in burst.  Those hit are infected.  The tiny growing organism rolls Stealth +30 to hide its presence (and avoid future heal checks).  1d4 days incubation period.  -3d12 HP from Max HP total.  Save at -2 each extended rest or the infection progresses, -1d12 additional HP from Max HP total.  Three consecutive saves ends the infection, as does magical healing specifically targeted at the infecting organism.

Alien Insects

I have been on a really productive streak lately in my 4e game as far as generating new material.  Most of the time I spend doing DM prep work is in creating new individuals or species for the party to encounter and detailing environments and locations for those encounters to happen in.

Twists and turns in the game have led the party to leave the jungle that they have been adventuring in for a couple dozen sessions and explore an alien planet in another dimension.  Different dimensions in my game have different rules for how energy and matter behave.  This planet has a solid metallic core that slowly cooled, forming well separated bands of different metals at different depths.   Some of these metals can take a gaseous form if subjected to an intense energy charge, and some take a crystalline form when the gaseous form is cooled.  Some of the metals have natural connections through shadow to other dimensions, giving them wondrous properties such as 10 x elasticity or compounding energy storage.

During the planet's summer, when it is closest to the sun in its very elliptical orbit, the heavy gasses of the atmosphere stay a few thousand feet above the surface of the planet, but during the long winter the planet grows cold and the gasses blanket the surface.  Most of the planet's biomass lives in the atmosphere; the bottom of the food chain are tiny chemosynthetic organisms with bouyant gas bladders which produce a strong bioluminescence as a by-product of digesting metallic gasses.  The light visible on the planet's surface is entirely the result of these glowing zooclouds.

During the winter storms, cold winds send tons of atmospheric life smashing into the planet's surface.  An entire ecosystem that mostly hibernates during the summer and comes to life in the winter specializes in cleaning up the detritus, eating the cleaner-uppers, eating the eaters, etc.

I have made up dozens of alien species, many blurring the line between plant, animal and insect.  And luckily I can now post about them even before they are discovered by the party!  Last session Tilia and a giant elder dragonfly creature shared a mind meld (Tilia has a nature spirit living inside of her which facilitates such things).  The ancient creature imparted thousands of years of encounters with the planet's denizens to Tilia, nearly killing her in the process with an overload of energy to the brain.  I gave Tilia a bonus to knowledge and nature checks conducted on this planet as a result, but I also thought it would be fun to post some creatures here so Mike (Tilia's player) can actually gain some real game knowledge that might be very useful...  starting with the creatures that were swooping in to engage Tilia in combat when we paused at the end of last session!

Ice Fly (adult form)  Initiative: +50 (superconductive nervous system)  Stealth: +25  Perception: +25

HP: 30                                 Movement: 15 Flight Hover
AC: 40                                 Shift 5 Fly as a minor action
FORT: 30
REF: 50
WILL: 30 (an incoming attack must hit the WILL defense twice to connect - superconductive nervous system)

Aura 1: Stinger Spine Aura:  Any creature that starts its turn in, moves into, or has the aura move past it suffers the following attack: Im. Reaction, melee +30 vs. Reflex, 5 dmg, ongoing 5 (stackable) save ends.  All damage done by the stinger spines also deals stackable ongoing damage because shadow connections are made that enable the ice fly to keep pumping a very effective cocktail of anticoagulents and uppers into the victim until a successful save is made.  Any creature taking 20+ points of ongoing damage from this gains an extra minor action, taking 30+ gains an extra move action, taking 40+ gains an extra standard action due to the stimulant effect.

Basic Attacks:  Stinger Spines (melee +35 vs REF, 3d6+5, ongoing 5 [stackable] save ends);
or Pincer Mouth (melee +35 vs REF, 2d12+8 and slowed save ends.  The target is also marked.)

Standard Attacks:  2 x Tail Stinger Spines OR Tail Stinger Spine/Pincer Mouth combo

Recharge 4,5,6: Blinding Dance:  Close Burst 10, +25 vs Will against all enemies in burst, Dazed and Blinded, save ends at -2, and the ice fly can teleport to any point within the burst.

Recharge 6:  Swarming Flies: Remove ice fly from play.  Place 4 ice fly tokens at the corners of a 5 x 5 close burst 2.  Each token has Aura 1 Tail Spine Aura and cannot be targeted by melee attacks.  Each token shifts 10 squares.  Remove ice fly tokens from map and place ice fly at any point in the original burst.  The ice fly gains 40 temporary HP.

Encounter:  Ice Fly Arrow:  move 30 fly (must move at least 10) and make the following attack at any point during the move: +40 vs. REF, 5d12 dmg +Blinded +Slowed, save ends at -2, and the target is marked.

Mark:  If marked enemy takes a move action, the ice fly shifts 10


The ice fly is a feared predator of the boundary between the red layer and the uppermost blue layer of the atmosphere.  Its exoskeleton is metallic crystal, and its nervous system is entirely made up of a superconductive metal that actually transmits signals many times faster than the speed of light.

Nymph Form:  Ice Fly Nymphs live in liquid gas lakes that pool on the upper surface of the floating living islands in the red layer of the atmosphere.  They are also feared predators.