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Portentous Dreams $1.99
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Portentous Dreams
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Portentous Dreams
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Jason C. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 07/12/2013 13:04:13

This is a low-cost, short supplement that gives simple, specific advice on a particular staple of fantasy adventures - dreams - and does so in a straightforward, effective way. At only 6 pages of actual content (assuming we count the introduction), don't expect a massive tome or a major way of changing how you play the game or magic. However, if you want to provide a crafted dream that expresses something about the experience of the characters, this is a good supplement. It begins with an introduction detailing a creator's history with dreams in fantasy fiction, and goes quickly into an explanation of principles for how GMs should decide to implement dreams in their game. It's true - when you describe a dream a character has and the player later connects that dream to something happening in the character's waking life, the player is always thrilled, and sometimes creeped out!

Next are several tables of dream imagery that you can use for your game. This section could be improved by describing specifically how to alter the tables to connect with the cultural underpinning of your own setting. Black may be a sinister color in our culture, but perhaps in your fantasy world it is considered noble or even godly - its meaning in a character's dream should be colored (ahem) by the culture and experiences of the character. On the other hand, this can be taken too far, you don't want to have the player see their character as too alien or from a culture they don't have any instinct for or can't understand, even in their dreams.

There's a new feat that will give interested characters a game mechanical push into oracular dreams and several thoroughly described oracular dreams for common campaign occurrences. (This section appears to be missing a header, at least in the Screen version of the supplement.)

Portentous Dreams is a solid start on incorporating dreams into your fantasy adventure campaign. There are aspects that could be improved and certainly expanded, but for the (currently $2) price, it's worth checking out. It does include both print and screen versions, as well as bookmarks, but this isn't really necessary (or that helpful) given the minimalistic art and extremely short length of the product.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Portentous Dreams
Publisher: Raging Swan Press
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/27/2012 04:58:38

This pdf is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page advertisement, 2 pages of editorial, 1 page ToC/foreword, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 6 pages of content, so what does this pdf offer?

Essentially, we are all familiar with maddeningly obscure prophetic dreams that can provide central hints, ignite quests and make ironic sense once their circumstances become real. Thus, in order to understand dreams, we get three sample sources for these portentous visions - divine, arcane, and yes, thankfully also psionic sources are covered and the basic three guidelines are presented - especially cool for novice DMs: Guide, don't expect; be vague, but not too vague; less is more. Of course, these are only the introductory guidelines. After that, we get to the meat of the product, the easy to use tables:

First, you can chose the tone between benign dream and nightmare, the we determine one of 10 locales and if urban, the exact urban location. This all works via d10. After that, we determine environmental factors via d6 and events like "birth", "death" or "change" via d8. Next, we determine the subject via a d20-table (missing the 1-entry) and add between d10 objects or roll a d20 to check for a 3/4-chance of the dream to feature prominent colors. We also get a new feat to represent knowledge gained from dreaming, the Oracular Dreamer feat, which lets you essentially e.g. recreate Johnny Depp's role in "From hell" by enabling you to reroll mental skill-checks upon awakening to reflect the revelatory nature of your dreaming. The last pages of the pdf are devoted to 18 different sample dreams.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, though I noticed a minor bug with one table. Layout adheres to RSP's printer-friendly two-column standard and the pdf comes with two versions, one optimized for screen use and one to be printed out. The pdf comes fully bookmarked. I'm a huge fan of prophetic dreams and the subject matter - when I'm playing CoC, I often draw upon Kingsport and the Dreamlands. When I think about a stellar PFRPG-module, Coliseum Morpheuon is always one that comes to mind.

When I think about dreams in 3.5, I think about the system of the "Book of Hallowed Might 2", which provided a vast selection of symbols that corresponded to different concepts - once the players had learned what a symbol meant, they could interpret dreams with a semi-reasonable accuracy. A constancy in symbols and what they mean, perhaps even reliant on signs in the heaven (I have created 13 such signs in my home-game) does A LOT to immerse players and DMs in a given setting. And this is also my major gripe with this pdf.

Yes, it provides guidelines to create portentous dreams, but it lacks a sample guideline of such symbols, never going beyond a basic setting up of elements that serve as the dream's backdrop. The tables remain painfully generic and thus also inadequate to the task of creating complex messages veiled in dreams and symbolism - essentially, this pdf is a guide to setting a dreamstage, but not on how to enact a compelling play on it. If I'd use such a supplement, it would be to convey e.g. "the princess has been kidnapped by a duke who is in fact a doppelgänger" - making this message obvious: Simple. Making it a veiled, subtle dream? Not so much.

Ambivalent symbols would go a long way to enhance gaming experiences and the usability of this pdf. This pdf provides a great first step towards making dreams matter, the new feat rocks, but ultimately, if you're looking for something beyond the basics of DMing dreams, I'd suggest you'd rather check out Rite Publishing's "Rituals of Choice"-AP and learn from the way in which symbolism and dreams are woven into these modules - I learned more from them. Is this a bad pdf? No. Does it work? Yes, if you're a novice and plan to invest quite some time in crafting your dreams.

If you're looking for a spontaneous generator, this pdf is too short and generic to provide excitement. If you're looking for a complex set of symbols, this pdf delivers just about nothing. The sample dreams are nice, as is the excellent feat and I cannot help but feel that this pdf's main problem is its length: Were this a 20-page file, I'd wager it would be awesomeness incarnate - author Christian Alipounarian knows his craft. But at this short length, the supplement only manages to skirt the outer rim of the subject matter without delving in what I'd consider a sufficient depth. If you're a novice DM without a clue for dreams, you might enjoy this. Otherwise, there's not much to glean from these pages. For novices, this is a 3-star file, for every other one, me included, though, I'll settle for a final verdict of 2 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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