Dream-Quest: Generating the Dreamlands

In my public post a couple of days ago, I discussed the idea that every referee’s Dreamlands ought to be his own. There is no a fixed geography or canonical map common to every Dream-Quest campaign, but instead a personal landscape of wonder, nostalgia, and unease. Lovecraft’s dream stories offer plenty of inspiration, but they never cohere into a consistent setting in the way that, say, Middle-earth or the Hyborian Age do. That's not a flaw, because I don't think that HPL ever intended to the Dreamlands to be that kind of setting in the first place.

Even so, certain images and ideas recur throughout Lovecraft’s tales, like moonlit seas, alabaster cities, the Great Ones, lost kingdoms, and the uneasy presence of the waking world intruding upon the realm of sleep. These motifs can become a kind of shared vocabulary in Dream-Quest. By drawing upon them, each referee can generate regions, encounters, and journeys that simultaneously feel true to the source material without being bound by it in a slavish way.

The system below is a very rough first stab at providing some help to referee in doing just that. It's presented as a series of random tables for the creation of a single region or scenario within the Dreamlands. Each roll suggests a combination of imagery, emotion, and theme. The results are not meant to be definitive, only evocative. Whatever results the referee generates are a starting point rather than the end. Furthermore, the tables below are necessarily limited, since I haven't yet had the time to flesh them out fully. Doing so properly will take time and, rather than delay sharing my general idea because it's not yet complete, I thought it best to show you the direction in which I'm headed.

As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions on how to improve this.

Each region or scenario has five components, each of which is determined by a random table. When combined, these components are meant to inspire the referee in the process of creation. I will undoubtedly expend all of these tables, since it's important that there be lots of possible entries. For now, though, I've purposefully limited them, so you can see what I'm aiming for.

The Landscape (1d10)

What is the terrain of the region?

1. Verdant vale of impossible flowers and strange perfumes

2. Moonlit coast where the sea gleams like silver glass

3. Bleak plateau scattered with obsidian monoliths

4. Labyrinthine city of cyclopean towers and whispering alleys

5. Golden desert strewn with forgotten idols half-buried in sand

6. Shadowed forest of colossal trees, older than memory

7. River winding through ruins where dreamers trade in lost relics

8. Mountains rising into cloud and myth, home to unseen watchers

9. Quiet meadow under perpetual twilight, haunted by nostalgia

10. Walled garden of tranquil beauty that conceals corruption beneath

The Inhabitants (1d10)

Who or what dwells here?

1. Dreamers who never awoke and have built lives here

2. Beasts of fancy (e.g. winged lions, white apes, moonbeasts)

3. Lost peoples of forgotten cities, their culture a mosaic of half-remembered ages

4. Serene priests serving the Great Ones

5. Merchants trading in dreams, memories, or emotions

6. Pale scholars seeking the Road to Unknown Kadath

7. Courtiers of an enchanted ruler, veiled and soft-voiced

8. The dead, who linger in peaceful imitation of life

9. Masks that move and speak as if inhabited

10. The land itself, which is sentient, responsive, and fickle

The Mood (1d8)

Every dream has an emotional palette. What tone colors this one?

1. Languid beauty

2. Profound melancholy

3. Awed reverence

4. Decaying grandeur

5. Stupefied peace

6. Dread beneath stillness

7. Wonder at the infinite

8. Unsettling familiarity

The Intrusion (1d8)

Dreams rarely remain stable. What disturbance changes or threatens this place?

1. The waking world presses through

2. A Great One's attention turns toward this place

3. A dreamer has seized control, reshaping the land

4. The borders blur; time loops or reverses

5. A fragment of nightmare corrupts the dream

6. The inhabitants begin to forget their purpose

7. A gate opens to another region, calling the dreamer onward

8. The dream starts to collapse — unless something is remembered

The Secret (1d6)

Every dream hides a truth. What lies beneath the surface?

1. The dreamer has been here before

2. This place reflects a buried desire

3. A Great One once walked here and left a mark

4. A waking world event echoes faintly within this place

5. A lie told in waking life gave rise to this landscape

6. The dreamer’s name is known here and spoken by others

Using the Results

Roll once on each table or choose what best fits your campaign. Each result suggests a piece of imagery, which can then be woven together to imagine a region or scenario in the Dreamland's

For example:

A labyrinthine city (4) inhabited by veiled courtiers (7), filled with languid beauty (1). A dreamer has seized control (3), reshaping the city into a reflection of his desires. The secret: the dreamer has been here before (1).

There are many different ways these results could be interpreted but, for the purposes of this example, let's combine them to create a decadent dream-city ruled by a sleeper who no longer remembers his waking life or perhaps a mirror-version of the waking world seen through the lens of yearning and loss.

Dreams as Systems of Meaning

What I intend with this system is that it doesn’t define the Dreamlands but summons them. By that, I meant that it gives just enough structure to evoke Lovecraft’s imagery while leaving plenty of space for mystery and personal invention. The Dreamlands, after all, are not about geography but about memory, emotion, and transformation. Every referee’s Dreamlands should feel different, because every dreamer dreams alone.

In a future post, I’ll attempt to build upon the rough foundation presented here by adding a more structured framework that's closer to a true system for generating, mapping, and linking these dream regions together into a sandbox setting. For now, I hope this serves as a taste of what I have in mind and what I hope Dream-Quest will offer that's unique from other takes on Lovecraft's Dreamlands and on fantasy roleplaying in general.