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Game Quote
“A roleplaying game is not like a book… it is a shared dream.”
http://www.malcontentgames.com
Summary
Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros is the most poetically-written rpg I have ever seen. It makes other roleplaying games seem as eloquent as a guest on The Jerry Springer Show. This game will be excellent for improving your vocabulary. If you can plough through the long words, though, there’s a decent fantasy rpg setting hiding underneath them. It’s quite professionally presented.
My Biases
I’m a game designer, which makes me more critical of games than a regular customer would be. I like writing styles which are simple and unpretentious and easy to read. I’m very much in favour of small-press pdf publishing in general. I think that it allows some unusual ideas to get out there which might otherwise never see the light of day.
Style and Substance ratings are daft, which is why everything I review gets three (average). That means “no rating” rather than “average”. There’s no absolute scale for how good a game is. So long as it’s readable, it’s just a matter of whether the game helps you or stops you from doing what you want to do in a game session.
These copies were free review copies. The authours were not known to me before I got the books. I know some French guys who’d heard of the game, but they hadn’t played it much, so I began it with no particular expectations.
Presentation of the book
The game is split into three books. These are Book One: Journeyers (that is, the player’s guide; 7Mb, 56pp), Book Two: In the Dreamtime (the magic book; 7.5Mb, 66pp), and Book Three: the Worlds (the Game Master’s book; 13.9Mb, 97pp). I’m told this game has been available in print in France for over ten years. My version was the English-translation pdf version. It’s not available in pdf in French. I’m also told the English-language version is “simplified.” The translator said to me, “I should emphasize that the official copy of Journeyers in particular is a (somewhat) condensed version of the French original; a more detailed and faithful translation is in the works… We will be releasing the new version late [November]…”
The cover art is quite fine, with a Celtic font decorating it, red-brown ink drawings of a dragon (with, of course, a naked woman in the middle), with watermarked-style drawings behind, and a parchment-coloured background. The interior illustrations are black and white drawings which look as though they were originally pen-and-ink. These are well done, and both decorate the text, and (usually) illustrate the topics of the text. Large numbers of the illustrations are of h4wt chixxors. The illustrator Mssr Batheléméy is obviously fond of curvy young women. So am I, but I’m not sure exactly what they have to do with the text. There’s about a quarter-page illustration every couple of pages. These come quite densely in some parts, but where there’s tables and charts, the illustrations disappear.
The main text is a Times New Roman font, in double columns with the Celtic font as Chapter and section titles (with a new section every page or so). Overall, it’s very readable, though of course multiple columns on a monitor are often a pain, since you have to scroll down, then up, then down again, and then on to the next page.
Overall, the layout is very readable, and attractive.
“Damnit, honey, where’d I put my Oxford English Dictionary?”
The language is very sophisticated and poetic. If written by an Englishman, Australian, or other native English speaker, we’d call it “pretentious.” It reads to me as though it’s a direct translation from the French, and such things don’t sound so silly in French. For example,
“Philosophers often say, “The world is a dream of dragons, and I would not contradict them. What is remarkable about a dream is that it only exists if one is there to dream it, to feed it. Its existence is more than precarious: as soon as one awakes, nothing remains, except a memory. Such is a roleplaying game itself. It only exists so long as the players and game master are there, around a table, creating it together. A roleplaying game is not like a book – as well-written and illustrated as its rules might be – it is not a static achievement: it is a shared dream. The players gather, each pretends to be no longer himself, but incarnates the product of his dream – and magic happens. The power of this dream is such that for a few hours the table around which everyone sits is forgotten, as are the character sheets sprinkled with sandwich crumbs, the dice that are rolled and the technical jargon that pervades dialogues and descriptions. One finds oneself in the midst of a distinct reality.”
For my part, I have never before read such a poetic description of “what is roleplaying?” But you can tell right away it’s not an American or Australian writing it. For one thing, who eats sandwiches at roleplaying games? And no-one ever forgets the dice during the game, though they sometimes forget to bring them and their character sheet.
That’s the tone of most of the book. If you couldn’t be bothered reading that little passage, you can stop now – you’ll hate the rest of the game. If you enjoyed reading that bit, keep reading – you might love Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros. Just keep a dictionary handy. I did an English Literature degree, but I still had to look a few words up. For example, they write, “What good is the most beautiful composition in the world, if it is played by an orchestra whose members disagree on the very rules of solfège?” The rules of the what? “Solfège” appears later with “music theory” as part of the skill, “Music,” but is never defined. The authour just expects us to know what it is. I looked it up. It’s the system of words for notes, like in Sound of Music, “do re me so…” Well. “Doe, a deer, a female deer, dies, when you hit her with a heavy dictionary…”
Even the title is obscure to me. It’s Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros: An Oneiric Roleplaying Game. Okay, he tells us that “Rêve” means “dream.” “Ouroborous”? Maybe a dragon’s name or something. Sounds like what I say when the alarm goes off when I’ve got a hangover. “Oneiric”? What the hell is that? It confused me so much, I forgot what “Roleplaying Game” meant, and had to go and play Diablo II for a while to recover. Mssr Gerfaud signed his introduction, “Draconeirically.” What’s that, Ourobouran for “with love”? Hell if I know, the books never told me.
Later on, when the authour’s talking about tables, he talks about the “abscissa and the ordinate.” He means, the rows and the columns (or vice versa, I forget, Applied Mathematics class was ages ago for me). Why not just say “rows and columns”, Mssr Gerfaud? Maybe Denis was reading Proust and Descartes in seventh grade, but the rest of us were reading comics.
Viewing and Printing
For download, you must register your email and so on. Even to download the preview. Well, they never sent me any spam, so that doesn't seem to be a problem. During the registration, they give you a limited liability disclaimer thingy. For an rpg? Yeah, okay. Then the copyright notice. Don't worry, you'll become familiar with that, it appears many times again.
Viewing on a monitor is a little bit troublesome. This is because of the two columns, and the high resolution of the images. So you scroll down, and there’s a pause as the image resolves itself on the screen. Its length (217 pages in all) also makes it tedious to read on a monitor, especially when combined with the sophisticated language. It’s a large download, and will take perhaps an hour altogether on dial-up; the size is due to the high resolution of the file.
This pdf, once downloaded, is well-suited to printing. The cover you might want to get done for a buck at a printing store, but the text you can print yourself. Most cruddy inkjet printers should be able to print all three books, on “quick print”, or “draft quality” (which would be bad quality for a presentation, but is fine for rpg rules that will get fizzy drinks spilled on them anyway), using about half a black ink cartridge. Cheaper of course to go to a store to do it, since they use laser printers.
An annoying feature is the copy-protection. Each and every page has a copyright notice, which is, from the customer’s point of view, a waste of ink. Why do we want to spend our ink on your copyright notice? Three lines on each of 217 pages adds up to too many pages wasted on your copyright notice. This notice includes the statement, “Do not reproduce or redistribute by any means whatsoever.” What, can’t we print it? Well, the law says we can, mate… Anyway, the security settings do allow you to print it, but don’t allow you to copy and paste. This proves an annoying feature, especially to reviewers who want to copy portions of the text for their review. There’s bound to be times when a GM wants to email a table or something to their players. From the copyright notice on every page, and the disabled copy-paste, I assume they’re a bit worried about pdf pirates. They should worry more about their customers being annoyed.
“Alright, alright, how do I make a goddamn character?”
With Oneirics! Okay, maybe not. Or maybe so. Really, I don’t know what that word means yet.
Well, there’s 14 characterstics, plus another 4 you derive from those 14. There’s Size – how big you is (duh). There’s Appearance – it’s charisma, not your looks. Constitution, Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Sight, Hearing, Smell-Taste, Will (get too low and you’re depressive – yay!) and Intellect – but it’s not intellect, it’s memory and education. Tired yet? Then there’s Empathy, Dream (your k3w1 pw0rz strength characteristic), and Luck, and that’s the end of the primary charactersitics. The next lot are derived from the first lot. Mêlée, Missile, Throw, and Stealth. Phew. That was a lot of typing – no copy and paste, remember? Anyway, you spend points among your primary characteristics. Each is rated from 6 to 15. Right now, I’ve got Will 05.
Okay, your skills are tied to your characteristics. Two-handed Axe skill tied to your Mêlée characteristic, Blowgun to your Missile characteristic, and so on. These skills are rated, beginning at, for example, your attribute minus six – you build it up from there. There follows a Resolution table. The idea is that you look at your Skill plus Characteristic, get some percentile number, and try to roll under that. I think. I used to play Rolemaster, but I tell you, I couldn’t make head nor tail of the explanation before it. Maybe it was all the talk of abscissa and ordinate and multiplying the characteristic by 1.5 or 2.5 and… alright, now I’ve got Will 04.
Basically, it's yet another system that has a whole series of calculations and consultations of tables in order to end up with a percentage chance of doing something. Why not just start with the percentage in the first place? Buggered if I know. But then, where would most rpgs be without unnecessary complications? What would happen to all the Rules Lawyers? Poor dears, we have to look after them.
There follows some less crunchy and more plain-language stuff about difficulties of actions, the sort of actions you roll for, etc. “Find edible game.” “Write a play.” “Lose a pursuer in a crowd.” “Understand a French roleplaying game.” Okay, I made that last one up.
The next chapter is so crunchy, you could use it to gravel your driveway. It’s absolutely full of tables and charts. It makes Rolemaster look like Risus. It’s Oneiric, in fact. I’m down to Will 03, and feeling slightly depressed.
“It’s not a real game unless it’s got an equipment list.”
Ah…. On page 23, we get an Equipment list. At last, something easy to understand! They use Roman money, for some reason. Denarius and Sol. Which one’s gold? It’s a very complete equipment list. It even has things that I’ve no idea what they are. What’s an Écritoire? But hey, look at the mounts we can buy! Forget that overpriced 40s “saddle horse”, let’s get the 20s “alligate”! Okay, I’ve improved to Will 06.
Yes, there’s Encumbrance rules. It’s not a crunchy game without Encumbrance rules. Better yet, there’s Sustenance rules. You have to consume a certain amount every day, depending on your Sustenance stat. The thought of having to calculate that every game day has dropped me to Will 04 again.
Rules for Hurting People
I can’t comment on these. I couldn’t understand them. I’m sorry. I know a reviewer is supposed to try, but when it referred me back to the Resolution Chart, my Will dropped to 01 and I couldn’t read the page through my tears of frustration.
The only thing you need to know about the combat in Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros is that you should enter combat with any GM who tries to make you play with these rules. Unless you’re a cryptoanalysis guy working for the NSA, these will be utterly obscure to you.
There follows some stuff about character advancement and the like, but after reading of Luck Points, and Dream Points, and Journeyer Points, and Horoscopes… I couldn’t bear it anymore. I closed Book One and opened Book Two.
Setting
Well, rules are rules, and we can always toss them aside in favour of the setting, right? Let’s hope so.
Book Two begins with more stuff about the Philosophers and their dreams. By now, it’s more annoying than poetic, but perhaps the overdose of it is making me cynical. I’d copy and paste some for you to look and judge for yourself, but I can’t copy and paste, remember?
Anyway, at least we get a definition of “Oneiros.” It’s dreaming. The dream itself. Oy, vey, is that all? Could have said that at the beginning. We dream the Dragons, and the Dragons dream us. Paradox? No, poetry. Very pleasantly written, though.
K3w1 Pw0rz!
The Dream gives you your K3w1 Pw0rz. There’s four kinds of magic. Oneiros is your basic elemental stuff, fire and water and earth and air. Hypnos is illusions and mental stuff. Narcos is magic itself, enchantment. Thanatos is the nasty stuff – death, necromancy, and rpg writing. Well, okay, he didn’t specify the last, but I’m sure it’s in there.
Magicians take funky astral journeys along the Dreamland map, which looks like a map from an early D&D computer rpg. There’s the Drifting Plains, the Burning Mountain, the Spider Forest, the Mourning City – I think I drew a map like this for my first D&D campaign when I was 15. Well, anyway, it’s not supposed to be a real place characters can stomp along on their “alligates”, it’s just a representation of the Dreamlands. The Magician cruises along through the Dreamlands, and in each space meets a wandering monster – er, “encounter.” If the Magician “masters” the thing, he gets to go ahead and cast his spell in the real world.
The traditional fumble table takes a twist on the usual rpg standard backfires, as the Dreamlands encounter may lead to bizarreness in the Magician, such as feeling the urge to dance naked in the rain, spend the night on a ladder, acquire a goat (don’t think like that, that’s FATAL, damnit!), urinate in a violin (okay, that’s like FATAL), and so on.
There follows a lot of detail on how to improve spell ability, and so on. “The Seven Meditations” seem particularly interesting. In the following chapters there are spell lists. Ah, at last something I can understand. “Water to Metal”, “Plant Growth,” “Quiet”, and so on. The effects are well-described. True lovers of K3w1 Pw0rz will be impressed by the Annihilation spell. Overall, this is the most detailed, yet most clearly-written part of the books.
Book Three: the GM’s Book
“Just as in our real world, the characters of Rêve are far from all being mystics” Yeah, no shit, Denis. Too bad the authour's a mystic. "Rêve: the game that's like speaking to the Oracle at Delphi. There's wisdom there, if you can make sense of the cryptic words."
Interestingly for a fantasy rpg, there’s no gods in Rêve. There’s religions, but no gods coming down from on high and poking their noses in our business. Just Dragons, sitting on an alternate plane, dreaming oneirically. Yes, “oneirically.” The authour said it, not me. Anyway, they dream of us, we dream of them, and so it goes. One of their dreams is of the Journey. That’s when the peasant lad goes off on an adventure. Catholics have confirmation, Jews have Bar Mitvot, and Rêve characters have adventures. Adventures are part of growing up? What would the hobbits say, eh? Probably think that old fool Gandalf was causing trouble again.
Anyway, here the authour starts defining “gamey” stuff as “in-game” stuff. There’s some nice writing here. I’d quote it for you if the copy and paste were working. But of course it’s not. Anyway, the Grey Dream is when not much happens. That’s when a player misses a session. Then there’s the Dream Rift, that’s the hole through which appear new characters. Meet in an inn and decide to adventure together? Nope, Dream Rift, baby. Finally, there’s Blur Dream. That’s when the player-characters have time zipped forward for them as the GM glosses over some dull travel. At least, all this is what I think he was saying.
After all this metaphysical stuff has been trudged through, we get to some good stuff about real travel. How a person navigates – partly with their nose, apparently (to smell the seaward air when on land), how many crew for a rowboat, random weather, damage table for ships, and so on.
There’s a whole chapter on the Sciences (which are also among the skills you can take), with a lot of stuff about herbs. Ever had a healer with “healing herbs” and wished for more detail? It’s here. Then there’s stuff on surgery, alchemy, etc.
Then, of course, there’s Creatures. Both human-ish and evil beastie-like. Apparently, the “alligate” is a plant-eating dinosaur. Damn. I thought it was a War ‘Gator. And there’s a Siren. Another H4wt Chixxor by our friend the illustrator. Remember the Succubus in AD&D Monster Manual? Here’s another one, but without bat wings.
There’s no specific campaign setting for the book. Something weak about there being no limit to the dreams of Journeyers is mumbled, which I took to mean, “we couldn’t be bothered drawing a map.” After all that Oneirics, I can’t blame them for feeling tired.
Adventures?
Yes! They have them! This is a welcome change. How many times do you pick up an rpg, and say, “hey, interesting setting. But what do we do?” Well, Basic D&D answered that with Keep on the Borderlands. GURPS 3rd Edition answered that with the solo and group adventures at the back. But adventures attached to roleplaying games are good, useful, and popular, so they stopped putting them out. Well, at least Rêve is bucking that trend.
There’s three adventures here. In the first, the characters fall in a lake. In the second, they save a girl from despair. In the last, they compete in a sort of mini-Olympics. I don’t wish to give spoilers, but suffice it to say that all three adventures are quite decent little scenarios, and could be run in any system.
In the End…
“The trouble with the French is that they have no word for “entrepeneur.”” – George W. Bush.
“No, you bananahead, the trouble with the French is that they have too many words for everything else.” – Your Humble Reviewer.
Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros is poetically-written, with an extremely interesting background. There’s a lot of detail in the magic, creatures, and herbs and alchemy sections. I was unable to do justice to these sections because to really show you what they’re like, I’d have to quote them – and the copy/paste lockout prevented this. Some of it was a bit New-Agey, but it was still quite well done.
The complexity of the game is on a par with Rolemaster or Hârnmaster, which gave me a headache. But some people love that stuff; those two games have devoted followings, after all, and many people enjoy themselves. The rules used unnecessarily complex language, such as “abscissa” and “ordinate”. People can’t understand the rules if they can’t understand the words describing the rules.
The crunchiness of the rules set seemed to me to be at odds with the story-oriented nature of the setting. I don’t think anyone playing this game could ever forget their dice, or the technical jargon. Not when they have to keep reaching for the dictionary.
I emphasise: I’ve not done justice to the setting. It’s very interesting, and creative GM and players could do a lot with it. But unless you’re a veteran of Rolemaster or Hârnmaster, I’d recommend ignoring the Resolution Chart and other crunchiness, and use something like FATE instead, a system which is more in line with the story-based and literary feel of the rest of the text.
Denis Gerfaud should write novels, not roleplaying game systems. He writes with sophistication, beautiful detail, and poetry – but not clearly when it comes to rules. He’s so in love with his setting and rules that he forgets we know nothing about them.
As I noted above, I’m told that a fuller version of the game, better-written with more examples, is in the works. They have a yahoo discussion group for this, so I suggest you contact them by way of their website.
Oh, and I never did find out who or what "Ouroborous" was. It might have been in there, but the text was oneiric, I couldn't bear searching for him.
Disclaimer
All games and movies and tv shows mentioned, their copyright belongs to their respective owners, and no claim on it is intended or should be inferred from my mentioning them here. Anyone who thinks differently is a knucklehead and should stop listening to internet buzz.
