Dreamwalker D20
Modern Day Roleplaying in the Land of Dreams
I reviewed the original Dreamwalker game awhile back. Now they've released a D20 Modern version of the game and asked me to review it, too. It comes as a set of 2 PDFs, one formatted for online viewing and one for print. I haven't gone through it thoroughly, but it looks like the print version leaves out some of the grayscale illustrations that might suck up a lot of ink.
You can find the original review here. It might be worth glancing over, because I'm mostly going to look at how they changed the game to fit the D20 Modern system. The original set of rules used percentile dice and its own system, so what all has changed?
First, the basics: Dreamwalker is an RPG in which the PCs are all employees of Project Dreamwalker. Their job is to send their minds into the dreams of the institute's patients, helping them to heal themselves... It's not as easy as it sounds. The real problem is the fact that most people's minds are infested with psychic parasites called the Taenia. These creatures will actively oppose any attempts to help the dreamer, because they feed on the negative emotions of their hosts. It generally takes an entire team of Dreamwalkers to root out the infestation and restore the host's mental health.
Some dreams (in this setting at least) are attempts by your subconscious mind to achieve some sort of specific goal, which is referred to as the dream's denouement. If a dream achieves its denouement, the dreamer awakens refreshed and well rested... and if it doesn't, they don't. Most dreams would normally end “correctly” on their own, but the Taenia interfere with them in order to steal that energy for themselves. The patients of the clinic tend to be people whose Taenia infestation has grown to the point where it's starting to damage their lives and careers, so there can be a bit of risk involved... the Taenia can't normally harm a Dreamwalker's physical body, but their mind is fair game while it's in someone else's dream.
The book opens (after the mandatory D20 liscence paperwork, of course) with an explanation of the setting and why they've decided to release a D20 version. It's simple enough- they wanted to hit a wider audience (and to make more money). I can't fault them for that.
We get the background of the setting, including the discovery of the dreamwalking drug, Black25 and the creation of Project Dreamwalker. There are 4 types of dreamwalkers in the system: Analysts (professional therapists who have to use Black25 to enter peoples' dreams), Naturals (people with a natural ability to dreamwalk, usually developed at a very young age), Mystics (people whose religious faith and deep devotion allows them to duplicate the effects of Black25 through meditation) and Users (a form of Natural whose dreamwalking ability can only be activated through the use of potent hallucinogens).
Each type is slightly different. They get different bonus skills, different starting Mana (Mana can be expended in a dream to alter it), a different number of additional Mana points per level, and a different max for how many Mana Feats they can take. Users, for example, get more Mana at character creation than anyone else (the drugs they take make them extremely strong dreamers), but they only get another d4 Mana points per level and can only learn 1d3 Mana Feats. Contrast that to the Natural, who only starts with about half as much Mana but gain d8 per level and have no limit on the number of Mana Feats that they can learn.
I really expected these four to be character classes, but actually they're actually 4 variants on the Dreamwalker Feat. When you take the Feat, you're required to choose one of the four options and it can't be changed later. It's an interesting way to handle it, and lets you use the advanced and basic character classes from D20 Modern to their fullest extent.
Dreamwalking is the only standard Feat added in Dreamwalker D20, but there are some Mana Feats which alter the ways in which characters can use Mana in dreams. An interesting note: characters with psychic powers can spend psionic Power Points as though they were Mana while dreamwalking, but not vice versa.
Most expenditures of Mana don't require any rolls. A few require a Wisdom check; if you fail, you'll still lose ½ of the Mana you were trying to spend, anyway. You can't expend more Mana per turn than 1/10th of your maximum rating(rounded down) so a character with a max of 58 Mana can spend up to 5 points per turn. Presumably if you managed to make a PC with fewer than 10 points of Mana, you wouldn't be able to spend any of them until after you acquired more by going up levels, but all four kinds of Dreamwalker start with at least 10 points, so the issue isn't likely to come up.
Characters normally start with all of the “basic” Mana powers but can pick up Mana Feats later. There's an interesting optional rule where each character type starts with a limited number of the basic abilities and gets an extra one every time that they gain a level. That allows you to make a group of low-level characters whose powers are still somewhat specialized, instead of everyone starting with all of the same Mana abilities.
The various Mana effects have also been rewritten in a standardized format a bit like D&D spells. Each one lists how long it takes to perform, the range, what kind of targets it affects, the duration and cost, followed by a text description of exactly what it does. Interestingly, they've added a new Mana effect called Gain New Feat, which lets you spend 15 Mana to gain any Feat that you otherwise qualify for; it lasts for the duration of the current dream. I've no idea why the Joining effect is listed as having a permanent duration; like most Mana-based powers, it ends when the dream does so its duration should say "Standard."
Mana Feats aren't available to low level characters, but in a Dreamwalker campaign I'm sure everyone will want them. These are very potent abilities, and include effects like Intense Training (which grants a permanent +5 bonus to one of the physical stats of your dream-form) or Lightning Reflexes (which grants you an extra action every round). Both of those can even be taken multiple times, so watch out for the specialist who sinks every available Feat into them. There're are also Feats like Spider Climb, which lets you climb any surface without rolling (in dreams, anyway) and Pheromones, which makes you so attractive that dream-beings of the opposite sex have to make a Will save or be at -10 to harm you.
And those are the minor Mana Feats. The major Feats include Raven's Wings (grants automatic flight in any dream), Spirit Wind (which lets the character teleport at will) and the oh-so-abusable Night Whispers, which lets a dreamwalker implant hypnotic commands in the subconscious of anyone whose dream they enter. That last power just screams "Villain Feat" all over.
The stats for Taeniid seem reasonable. Larvae are tiny, helpless worms that can take over any entity in a dream. So you might encounter one inside a tiny sparrow... or a gigantic tyrannosaur.
Taeniid Drones are 4HD monsters with decent stats. They're good foes for beginning Dreamwalkers, but you'll need to boost their stats against experienced ones. That's easy, though- their stats are often modified by the nature of the dream itself. If the bad guys in a dream are vampires, it's a good bet that the drones will all have vampire-like powers and weaknesses.
The Taeniid Queen's HD range from 6 to 10, but her real power lies in her ability to use Mana like a player character. They even get 1d3 Mana Feats. The dreaded Broodkings are even tougher and their ability to create new minions is pretty nasty.
Fair warning; the stats for these creatures vary so much that you'll often end up doing something like saying "Area guarded by 3 drones in the form of wolves. See Monster Manual for stats." Many of their stats are rated as "varies", so they can't all be used without a little extra work.
Oh, and don't mess with lucid dreamers in their own dream. If the dreamer is aware that they're dreaming, their avatar in the dream will (effectively) have every stat at 25 and unlimited Mana. Try to avoid ticking someone off while you're in their dream.
One thing that seemed a little unclear was exactly what numeric value each "Infection Level" is supposed to represent. They range from Superficial (the Taeniid infection is so mild that the dreamer can probably fight it off themselves) to Critical (so extensive that they will almost certainly go mad without immediate assistance from a team of experienced dreamwalkers). The IL is used in a number of calculations, including things like how many Larvae are present in the dream. There are five levels that are given names, so I presume they represent 1 to 5, but I didn't see anything that said for sure.
The adventures in this version are completely new and replaced the set in the old rulebook, so I'll go over them in a little more detail. Each one has a summary table that shows you what sort of dream it is, how bad the infestation is, how many drones and larvae there are, the basics of the plot, and a small list of Underworld Mana pockets if your characters decide to delve into the dreamer's subconscious in search of extra Mana.
The first adventure is "Invest in the Future" and it's a gem. I really like it. The PCs have to help the dreamer rob a bank, but there's a bit more going on than just unresolved feelings of greed. The bank represents the con artist who recently stole the dreamer's life savings and sent them into a spiral of depression. It's nicely surrealistic in places and rewards clever roleplayers a lot more than combat gumbies. If the PCs are alert, they can actually not just rid the dreamer of his Tanaiid infestation, they can also recover some forgotten information that might help him get back his cash in the real world. That's the sort of adventure that lends itself well to an ongoing campaign, where the PCs' actions will have permanent consequences in the waking world as well as in the dream.
"Making the Band" is even more bizarre, and could end up with the PCs fighting against gansta rappin' cockroaches. The dreamer watched a tape of "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" the day before his appointment, and it has influenced the dream... the characters are tiny and start out stuck in the bottom of a bowl of cornflakes. The plot isn't quite as interesting as the first one, but it gets points for its bizarre setting.
After the two adventures (and there are only two, my paper copy of the original game has four), there's a fairly nifty NPC writeup... an 18th level Dreamwalker of great power, but with a major personal problem that cripples his ability to do stuff himself... he's dead. The character is well written and has an interesting history... and his ability to keep doing stuff after his own death is actually already covered by the "Crossing Over" Mana Feat.
After that we get a five page appendix on expanding and improving the use of "Fluff"... those surrealistic elements of dreams that don't directly have anything to do with the plot. If, say, the dream was about wanting to be a fighter pilot, but all of the cars in the dream are Volkswagon Bugs, then that's probably fluff. If everyone in the setting is wearing a toupee or you find a bunch of toilets that are mounted out on the sidewalk instead of inside the restroom, that's probably fluff.
The article discusses three types of fluff: humorous, insignificant and dangerous. It also covers stuff like rapid changes of environment or fluff that actually has real-world significance (for example, the location of a lost item). I'd have probably called that Significant fluff and added a fourth category, but that's just me. Overall, it's a good article and a nice expansion of the original half-page on fluff that my hardcopy book has.
The last appendix is a discussion of "Bridges", areas where the real-world and the dream-realm overlap and how to use these in your game. It's got some definite plot potential, but it's hampered by the fact that Bridges should be phenomenally rare.
After that we get a blank Dreamworld form that you can copy as use as the basis for writing up various adventures. Then a blank psychological evaluation sheet from Project Dreamwalker; this is the standard summary that the characters generally get before going into anyone's dreams. The last thing in the book is "Simpler Times", a piece of game fiction that introduces you to the setting and shows you a dreamwalk in progress.
The PDF is full of links and has a full set of thumbnails and bookmarks, so they're doing their best to take full advantage of the medium. They aren't perfect; I noticed that the link to the short story "Simpler Times" actually takes you to the page before the story begins, but at least it puts you in the right part of the book. There are also some links that say that they're going to a particular page number, but the section that they're hitting is actually on another page. I suspect that's just an effect of the page numbers being handwritten rather than calculated, so modifying the PDF moves the links. While the paper copy of Dreamwalker that I have was 150 pages, the D20 version is 137, making it close to the same size even though it doesn't need many of the rules sections.
The layout is fairly nice and quite functional. There aren't any fancy border illustrations or background images behind the text, so it's not likely to win any prizes for its "artistic" layout, but that also means that there's little wasted space and no hard-to-read text. I've certainly seen far less professional PDFs out there on the market. The art is basically the same as the paper version I've got. Just decent art, neither impressive nor crappy. All B&W and grayscale.
If you liked the basic premise of Dreamwalker but didn't like the system, then this could be the version for you. It's a nice conversion to D20 that seems like it keeps all of the charm of the original while pairing it with a better known game system.
I think the style of this one is actually cleaner than the original; possibly because it's been rewritten a bit and because it lacks the sometimes-confusing rule writeups. I can't give assurances that they got all of the D20 mechanics correct, because I'm no D20 expert myself, but it all looked fine to me. More adventures would be nice, but the two they gave were both high quality, so I give it a 4 for style and a 5 for substance.
It's available for $5 from RPGNow and the company's website is http://dreamwalkerrpg.home.att.net.
