The Current State of Dream-Quest (Part I)

Though I haven’t posted anything new about the Dream-Quest project lately, it’s not for lack of activity — provided one is willing to count thinking as a form of work. I mean that only half in jest. Thinking can be real work, but only when it leads somewhere. Otherwise, it drifts into mere rumination and, as someone very prone to that particular vice, I try to keep a wary eye on it. I’ve already filled a small graveyard with promising ideas abandoned before they ever reached fruition and I’m not eager to carve a new headstone for Dream-Quest just yet.

All the same, I find myself wrestling with a genuinely large question and it’s one I hope you, my patrons, might be able to help me answer.

The Origin of Dream-Quest

The earliest inklings of what eventually became Dream-Quest appeared this past August, while I was writing Grognardia’s The Shadow over August series in honor of H. P. Lovecraft. That project proved unexpectedly fruitful. It gave me two things I’ve learned I absolutely require if I’m to write every day: direction and energy. Just as importantly, it struck a chord with readers. The level of thoughtful engagement it generated — in comments and private correspondence alike — was both heartening and galvanizing. It reminded me that this sort of work still mattered, both to me and to others.

One immediate consequence of that renewed energy was the revival of my Pulp Fantasy Library posts, a series I had abandoned two years earlier. I had stopped for many reasons, but the foremost was simple exhaustion. By that point, I had written about hundreds of stories, famous and forgotten, and the labor involved was considerable. Worse, I often felt that labor went largely unrecognized. Rightly or wrongly, I began to believe the effort outweighed the reward and I let the series quietly die.

Returning to it after such a long rest, however, proved surprisingly invigorating. That the first story I chose to revisit was “The Silver Key” felt almost inevitable. Lovecraft’s strangely gentle and deeply affecting meditation on the loss — and possible recovery — of wonder struck me with renewed force. Reading it again after so many years felt less like criticism and more like convalescence. Something dormant in me had been stirred awake and with it came a restored appetite not only for Lovecraft’s work, but for the wider constellation of writers whose imaginations had shaped my own.

At the same time, I felt a growing sense of obligation toward Lovecraft himself. I encountered his stories at a formative moment in my life and, though we differ profoundly in background, temperament, and outlook, I have long felt a peculiar kinship with him. He was a man who sought refuge and meaning in dreams, fantasy, and the life of the mind. That was true of me once, and, if I’m honest, it remains true even now, as age advances and the world seems less enchanted than it once did.

It was during this rereading of the Dreamlands tales that a vague but insistent urge took hold of me. I wanted to do something with them, though I had no clear sense of what that something should be. What I did know was this: I wanted to help others encounter a side of Lovecraft that has too often been eclipsed — not the prophet of cosmic dread, but the dreamer of strange cities, enchanted forests, and terrible but beautiful wonders. I became convinced that roleplayers, in particular, deserved to meet this “other” Lovecraft and that the best way I knew to make that possible was through the creation of roleplaying material rooted in the Dreamlands, material that I hoped would respect the dignity, texture, and unique spirit of those stories rather than reducing them to also-rans next to his more well known Cthulhu Mythos creations.

That impulse is where Dream-Quest was born. What I did not yet realize was that I would soon find myself pulled in several different directions at once, each one sincere, each one persuasive, and each one at least partly at odds with the others. Untangling those impulses and deciding what Dream-Quest should truly be is the topic of my next post and, I hope, the beginning of seeing a path forward.