Dreamland - Through Ultan's Door

The Stat Sheet

The Snapshot

• Discovered a weird door only we could see
• Dreamt in the Inquisitor’s Temple
• Murdered a giant, one-eyed bird
• Met some guild-less that asked us to take them away
• Was chased by murderous creatures
• Conjured a sick boat
• Woke up in shock, remembering my dream self and the city of Zyan

The System

Dreamland is one of the coolest systems I've had the privilege to play in. There are few dice in Dreamland. Almost everything is built on words and pillars. To begin, you have to make your Dream Self and Waking Self. That's right, you get two characters to play. Your Waking Self is the person who has memories (tied to Pillars) that you can utilize while playing as your Dream Self to sculpt and change Dreamland. Your Dream Self is a person tied to one of the 5 Pillars in the game with skills and abilities.

Throughout play as your Dream Self, you access a Word Bank by collecting words. This becomes your Personal Pool. Dreamers are limited in how many words they can have by their Dreamer Level. The Word Bank is generated from a set of ~300 words and maintained by the DM. The number of words in the Word Bank is determined by the number of players, and almost all words in the bank are tied to one of five pillars, Pillar Words. Some are neutral words and don't count to the cost of seeing if you break a Pillar of Dreamland.

When players want to do something with their Pillar Words, they describe what their character is doing and try to use X number of words from their Personal Pool in their speech. Then, they have to roll 1d10 to see if they broke a Pillar of Dreamland. If it's less than or equal to the number of Pillar Words they used, they break a Pillar of Dreamland. These have different effects on both players and dreamland.

As a Pillar breaks, the Night Clock is moved forward by 1 hour. When it hits midngiht, the players "wake up" to their Waking Self. Sometimes they've forogtten things about themselves, or they die while in Dreamland. It's super fun and very unique in the way it puts players in the position of narrating exactly what they do and with what words.

I can see Dreamland becoming a framework and spawning games that have their own set of pillars and word banks.

The Party

• Caleb Wannabe game designer / Poet - Iraun
• Larry Businessman / Gravedigger – Ong Zwarba
• Lily Museum intern / Cultist - Rollory
• Clio Nondescript / Executioner

My Character

• Name: Lily (b. ~1992)
• Current Age: 33 (~2025)
• Gender: Female
• Background: A young intern, working at the Carnegie Natural History Museum after finishing their master’s in public history. Born in the rust belt that is Indiana, Lily left cornfields for Pittsburgh after graduating. She left behind her mother and sister on bad terms. Her father passed away when she was very young. She’s well liked with coworkers and has no problem meeting and making friends. In the evenings, she takes classes in stained glass. She believes there is magic in art and historical items like bones and shells.

Skills

1. History
2. Charming
3. Tarot Readings
4. Stained Glass
5. Partying
6. Collector

Memories

• Memory 1: Books filled with stories of fascinating foreign lands (Faraway); Starting to fade; Now completely gone
• Memory 2: Love of your friends; wild nights out with them, drinking, carousing (Passion)
• Memory 3: A museum of natural sciences; rooms filled with bones, fossils, shells (Mystery); Starting to fade

The Brief

In Pittsburgh, we are told about a door in this appliance shop that only certain people can see. A TikTok creator is promoting how there isn’t a door in this appliance shop. It’s an off-white door with a plain aluminum handle. People brush over the door as if it isn’t there, and no one turns the doorknob. Somehow, the four of us can see the door, and we’re all drawn to it.

The owner of the shop won’t let us record in the shop without paying a fee. He tells us about legends of people dying in the building and other unfortunate events. Caleb opens the door and finds a dark little corridor that goes about 8 feet. There’s a blue door painted with gold leaf and swirling pattern with an elegant handle in the shape of a swan’s neck.

Caleb steps in and disappears, gone in a blink. Larry and I followed in wonder where he could have gone. We’re not sure if we were pulled through or walking through the door, but we see ourselves in a medieval castle, beyond its blue and gold gates. As we gather our surroundings, we don’t’ remember who we are or each other. Here, we make our dream selves.

I am the Cultist, and I look like a religious version of the witch king of Angmar.

We’re in a small room. Chipped tiles of geometric pattern with an archway to the left of us, while a door to our right has claw marks. Through the archway, we see a large room with alcoves, and in the center sits a dry marble fountain. There are 3 corpses in robes with plagues masks that remind me of plague doctors, hanging in this room from a railing. Knowing this religion, I recognize they have been sacrificed to the Pickled Prince by having their throats slit and blood drained.

Our Executioner sees a bird with nothing but wings and a glaring eye. It’s menacing but we’re able to resist the hypnosis of it. The Executioner cuts it down once we all resist, but I feel a shock of psychotic damage as if I’ve lost something dear to me. Our Poet creates a marvel where English words dance upon the corpses (a vision only he can see), and he sees/hears how upset they are to not be laid to rest correctly. “Can’t be buried in the sky city of Zyan” They desperately want out of this darkness. As the Gravedigger looks to see if we can bury these corpses here, a great big bear trap snaps at him and injures him.

We remember we’re from the city of Zyan. I have found myself in the inquisitor’s theater, a place that formally belonged to the theater. Part of an inquisitor’s religious duty was not to kill criminals. They lived in remorse in their final days. People who have committed shameful crimes are sent here after becoming guild less. The corpses that hang before us appear to be guilded people. I used to be a member of a forbidden cult, and the memories of this place come back to me. It was a public torture chamber, but they say a curse has fallen upon the city of Zyan. This is why this place is no longer in use. There is guild-less, among others, and I know even boats can come from the sewers. There’s a ruin where the guild-less dwell near here, foul beings no longer considered human.

Recalling this causes us to hear people from Reality, and I become Impassioned.

Meanwhile, the Gravedigger reaches for a light and falls. The fall triggers us to hear bumping from the scratch door on the right.

This pack of explorers, or guild-less, appears past the door. Mine and the Executioner’s silver-tongued words convince them not to attack us, and they ask us to follow them back as if they’re scared.

My name returns to me. I am Rollory. I once had another name…I think.

We pass a statue of the Pickled Prince and come upon a priest and a group of the guild-less. Our Executioner recognizes that this was the priest that killed the other people in the torture chamber. They beg us to take them away and show us to the piers where the river is gross and smelling awful.

Suddenly, we hear creatures/hogs coming for us and the guild-less. A miracle comes to me, and I conjure a boat on the water for us to flee from the creatures. We flee!

Even though we are successful in our escape, all but the Executioner catch a stray bullet from the creatures’ guns.

And then…. we’re awake.

I forget about the joys of reading fantasy, my book club, and don’t remember purchasing many of the books that line my cozy, little library.

The Takeaways

The Pros

• Character creation plays a big role
• Innovative and exciting
• Unlike anything I have ever played

The Cons

• Must be comfortable in sharing creatively (beyond roleplaying your character)

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