"That adventure was all just a dream!"

>"That adventure was all just a dream!"

Is there any way to pull this off without your players deciding you need to get punched in the throat?

the dream having tangible affects in the "real"world.

As in, it was all just a dream, but that dream was very very real.

Lovecraft/Bloodborne Dreamlands? Just because it was a dream doesn't mean it's not real.

Maybe, first figure out a good reason for why it should happen in an RPG. I can't think of any.

Total Party Wipe?

No.

Perhaps the party was cursed to endure eternal sleep or something, but by adventuring together in the dream world they can break the curse and proceed to kick the ass of whoever cursed them in the real world.

But what about everything that happened in the dream before the total party wipe?
But what's the point of having the dream being the game then, if the point is something doing stuff outside the dream?

My DM did this in our first ever campaign. It lasted for two years, and we all became life long friends. We still play together every week for the past 7 years.

Every time he jokes or mentions "IT WAS ALL JUST A DREAM" I still want to punch him in the goddamned throat.

I did this once as a group of powerful psionic dreammages needed to test one of their apprentices before they could promote them to the rank of master. To do this, he must defeat the heroes, except from the players perspective, they were suddenly abducted from camp and attacked by some bizzare creature that morphed into their worst fears.
The players won and were returned to their slumber at camp and awoke with tattoos that they could use once to temporally boost one stat +1d6 for a whole day as a reward.

Yes, by not doing it.

Make sure they know it's a dream at the beginning of the adventure, not the end. That way they don't feel cheated at the end, and you get to do some fun mind-bending stuff.

Pulling a bait-and-switch plot twist like this will never work out well. Hell, it barely even works outside of cinema.

Pic related, though you don't need to rip it off wholesale to get a fun dream adventure.

Addendum:

If you're really married to the "It's all just a dream! What a tweest!" aspect, you should consider doing that twist at the halfway point. Construct a scenario where the characters are struggling to a solution to their problem, and let them realize they are dreaming. Once they know they are dreaming, one of the obstacles to the adventure should be easier to overcome now that the players know they can tackle it in a different way.

Pic also related, but probably don't look his way for inspiration.

Don't have it be very long.

Bloodborne does it pretty well. In the end you even have the choice to become the host for the next dream.

I've seen this work once in a one shot adventure. One guys character was completely average and the other two were a super lawful good paladin and a bizarre wizard. The wizards and the paladin ended up acting as this guys conscience through an adventure that involved them saving a bunch of orphans and ended with the guy being woken up in a hospital waiting room by a nurse telling him that his son had just been born with him now ready to face that.

The weird thing is I don't think it started out as a dream. Just the other two characters were strange enough, and made the adventure strange enough, that it being a dream all along was the natural conclusion to the story.

I had a DM also do it to my group.

There was absolutely no reason for it, beyond him going way to far into weird land and losing the thread of his narrative. It was right about the point where we just couldn't stay quiet about all the plot holes and inconsistencies that he played his master stroke.

I'm pretty sure he still thinks he's pretty clever.

Either what this user said

>the dream having tangible affects in the "real"world.

Or make it clear that the entire adventure is a dream from the very start. Don't get your players invested only for a cheap cop-out, but put yoru chips on the table so everyone knows exactly what they're getting into.

By introducing this idea later on, you break immersion. Your players bent Pete knows how many sessions getting immersed into the story and getting attached to the characters and the growth they went through only to realize none of that really happened. "It was all a dream" might as well mean "It was all a gigantic fucking waste of time and you could've spent all the hours playing this utterly meaningless game doing something useful like learning a foreign language".

1) Remove all sharp objects from the table
2) Go through with it
3) Take it back and tell them you were actually joking before they can stab or throttle you to death.

If you can still read this: Congratulations! You've successfully gotten away with telling your group that their campaign was all a dream.

Give the dream meaning.

Pulled from the archives:
>Before session, tell the players you wish to try running the game in a strictly traditional sense; in that the GM takes care of every roll secretly.

>I have the players go to explore some old forest ruins that people have been disappearing into. As they approach, a dense fog hits, and they wander into a lively hamlet. They are then sent on a quest that links into every characters goals/desires in some way, a dungeon basement with old texts that may lead to the killer of a players wife for my group. They explore the dungeon, defeating every foe easily, dodging all manner of traps and dangers without a scratch, and finding the loot they desire!

>Turns out they were trapped in the mindscape of a young zygomind the entire time. A perfect replica of reality except for one quirk; the players desires become true; in essence, every single roll for them is a natural 20 critical, and every roll against them is a natural 2. Once a player/character remarks on how odd it is that everything is going too perfectly, they wake up in the real forest ruins in front of the zygomind.

>It has been 3 sessions and no-body suspects a thing. I have begun adding their subconscious desires to escape as messages appearing in the world. The word PUEKAW appears in blood at many critical points, once already in a magical tome found at the heart of the dungeon, but still nothing.

>I may have made a terrible mistake.

Dreamscape.
You can use magic to get from one place to another through someone's dreams. The party decides that they'll save time by going through the wizard's dream into another wizard's dream on the other end of the spell.
Technically, they are correct, because the time that passes in the real world is 8 hours or less.
However, they will find that 8 hours in the real world translates to a lot more time in a wizard's dream.

>going through the wizard's dream into another wizard's dream

But that's a setting and system, not the twist that OP is referring to.

This. A Christmas Carol was all just a dream.

A pathfinder campaign turns into UBIK.

>lord of the rings
>Garfield
>Azathoth
>settra
>MLK
>Shaquille O'Neal

What is happening in this dream?

Using the MacGuffin that turns the last 24h into a dream, resetting the world.

You don't have dreams like that, user?

It's what happens when you stay on Veeky Forums too long.

It can work for a short, small adventure, but doing it for a long campaign is a dick move.

pull a gone with the blastwave. your players will probably still decide you need to be punched in the throat, but you'll have been running the campaign online so they can't act on their (totally justified) violent urges

Easy: it's only the beginning.
Yes, it was a dream, but all the PCs had the same dream, and none of them are known to be telepathic, so they must have been caught in someone else's dream.
This happens every time they sleep, and it's taking a toll on their health.

...but was it, really?
Didn't he gain knowledge that he did not go to bed with in the case of the Ghost of Christmas Present?

> It was a dream.
> The real world is a game of Dark Heresy and they were sleeping on the way to deployment.

If this is a dream, then I want dream powers.

Yes, by giving them ways to figure out that it's a dream, and then use the tools they have/rules of the dreamworld to escape or achieve a goal.

Give them XP anyway and call it a night? If the adventure was short I would be okay with it so long as we got something out of it. Also drop hints that they're dreaming along the way.

Make them fight against an illusionist. Or a dream monster.

>Give them XP anyway and call it a night?

If you really think that's enough to assuage the rage, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

I remember being in this thread like 2 months ago? It wasn't to far back.

OP just play it like the emerald dream from WoW. Real effects from what you do in the dream, real danger. You won't pull a "Ah ha! It was all a dream" without some serious fucking planning and knowledge on how your pcs act.

Pft, Squid end is best end.

As with most tweests, they only work if you foreshadow. No foreshadowing, and it feels like a stupid asspull.

Make it so everyone was in on the dream, so there are consequences

Isn't it all dreams with real effects in the Persona universe? So mundane shit during the day and fantasy shit at night.

This.

>Is there any way to pull this off without your players deciding you need to get punched in the throat?
if there is I haven't heard of it.

On a side-note what would you recommend for making a campaign feel more dream-like? give it just that right amount of strangeness and off-kilter-ness typical of a dream but without the players getting completely lost or frustrated.

Figure first and foremost starting the players off mid-adventure with little-to-no idea what's happened prior, but still give the situation enough urgency that they will still proceed forward even if the "how" or "why" is not entirely clear to them.

anything else that would be a good idea?

Wake up from cryosleep pods.

The thing you're fighting lives in dreams. You actually managed to kill it, even though the only thing you did in the "real" world was twitch every few hours.

Sure.

It took place in a Dreamworld, exp stays but not loot.

Do it sort of like this. The dream was technically real, but was in reality you affecting the encounter from the distant past, after you wake up the party gets a "redo" while dealing with the fallout of their actions in the dreamstate

if your regular campaign is slice of life or mystery with minor mysticism and the "dream" adventure was a one-shot that you presented as downtime from the main game but then incorporated it back in.

Had a campaign "End" with "You wake up in the inn with a great adventure fresh on your mind" They were used to mind fuckery in my campaigns so they checked what powers they had and equipment. Lvl 1 the name of the tavern is where they first met under similar circumstances. See important NPC's and villains in the bar doing menial jobs. The wizard decides to read a book. No words just blank pages. They check finger nails and relies the white part is missing. Group suicide. "The necromancers previously smiling face drops like a fucking rock when he sees your glazed eyes blink with anger and realization hes within grabbing distance".

The adventure was shit, you know it was shit, they know it was shit, and you know why it was shit and how to do better, so you basically just hit the reset button so you can do the campaign properly.
OR
Adventure was mini campaign which serves as interactive way to introduce the backstory and world of the main campaign.

>not fervently praising the Emperor in their sleep
>Not purging their minds for having impure thoughts
Do your PCs even 40k?

Run the first game in DnD or some high fantasy setting. In the last session, after they defeat the BBEG, fade to black. Turns out they are all clones of superheroes created by an evil mastermind to take over the world, and the previous game was actually their training being programmed into them. But, oh no! You've defeated the BBEG way quicker than evil clone dick expected, and he hasn't had time to (fully) integrate the final stage mind-control programme before you all wake up!

Next session is a new game of Mutants and Masterminds, and now you can fuck with the players as their half-finished mind-control programming clashes with their own free will!

Yea/Nay?

hell the rpg Fluxborn is entirely set in the Dreamworld

do you get to be cuddled by the doll?

I was running a pathfinder game over a three-year period with four players. They went from 1 to 20 and made it all the way to the BBEG through an extradimensional fortress that spanned multiple planes of existence.

When they reached him, he had achieved godlike status. He often considered their actions as 'amusing' and insisted that what they did was merely all entertainment to him. So he waved his hand and they all fell unconscious at his feet.

Up to this point most of the campaign was the party going against adversity, hopelessness and curmudgeoning their way into bringing light back to the world, so they were damned if this was going to be the end.

In reality, the party had each developed individual desires about the perfect world they were slowly creating. I acted upon that as their characters developed. I performed private 1 on 1 sessions with the characters after that, where each of them awoke in a 'perfect world' with no memories of their prior adventure. They lived their lives, all the while I dropped subtle hints about it being a dream and when a character would figure it out, I offered a choice:

Return to a potentially dying world where they knew shit had hit the fan, and that even if they defeated the BBEG it may never be the same again, or stay in a perfect realm where everything is very much real and there's no pain, suffering, or anguish.

Every single one of them had a soul-searching trip. Each one of them on their own decided to return, to not give up on the world that had been nothing but horrible to them.

The BBEG wasn't a difficult boss fight, but damn did it make them think. They won, returned as victors to a world that wouldn't accept them, but they made it work.

They had a perfect dream, a perfect chance, and they passed it up to do the right thing, even the Chaotic Neutral demonblooded sorcerer.

An important NPC is trapped in a dream coma. Your players have to dive into the dream, finish the adventure inside, and wake up the NPC.

What if it WAS an all-paladin/cleric party?

If it is established before the game begins, or during play, that the events are a dream. I have a game where they players learned about halfway through that "reality" is actually a dream, and they are figments of it, and all evil is linked to a concept called the Nightmare. So, not only is it all a dream (and so failure holds no real punishment beyond their entire civilization not existing; existence will return the next time the dreamer sleeps), but they are aware of this and are able to count on it as a constant and tangible force on their game world.

As long as they can actually use the information you give them, things will pan out alright. If you reveal something and never let them factor it in, or give them a chance to knowingly plan around it, you're shit.

Tell them befofehand.
Make the dream a single session only and throw the PCs at evil telepaths or something.

>What if it WAS an all-paladin/cleric party?
What shitty el-oh-el ekkkkks deee kind of homebrew piece of crap are you playing. Everyone knows that Paladins are men at arms, and that those are expressly forbidden to the Echlesiarchy. You have no understanding of 40k lore and should stop acting like you've played DH

weew

In Wonderland No More, this is an actual option both for the plot and for a character's origin.

Mind you, I think that's the same with all Alice's Adventures in Wonderland based RPGs.

It's more of "subconscious" rather than strictly dreams. That's why people do things like forcibly trigger themselves in order to manipulate their subconscious.

But yeah, good call on the night business, because the subconscious is much more active at night.

>"That adventure was all just a dream!"
As a side session, it works great.

I ran a game over IRC weekly, and at one point was running a side session for the young girl character, who was going off into a magical library to do some late night reading along with another party member, who had tagged along.

Halfway through she failed a constitution roll, the other party member disconnected and rejoined with an underscore after his name, and everything got progressively weirder from that point.

The player was surprised but not dismayed to find it was all a dream (with parts of it being prophetic later on).

In particular they only noticed all the hints in hindsight.

>The player was surprised but not dismayed

Are you really sure though? This is one of the more common circumstances where a player doesn't express their disappointment, because it makes them look like a "poor sport" for getting upset that they fell for the GM's trick.

Not to cast doubts or anything, but it's important to always do your best to understand your players, and it's only too easy to imagine they're happier than they were.

The players are literally dreams who have gained cognizance and a divine spark of their own.

Your PCs are normal people that share a collective dream. Each night the PCs are forced to fall asleep at 11:48 p.m. no matter the circumstances and sleep three hours. The dream itself is a savage surreal fantasy world that stops and starts back up again whenever the players are forced to fall asleep in the real world, and if you die in the dream, you're a brain dead vegetable in real life.
During the day the PCs need to figure out why they're sharing the dream while planning for how they will survive together during the inevitable dream.

Make it not their dream but the dream of a dead God that they were pulled into. Make it horror.

This was essentially the plot of the Matrix. I didn't want to punch the Wachowski brothers/sisters/whateverthehelltheyareanymore until the sequels.

A shared world of real information and consequences is pretty far removed from what most people consider a dream to be though.

The secret may be to make dreams just an alternate world like the Matrix, but that needs a whole slew of special rules to govern it, and those range from cool like the Matrix to "why" like the Nightmare on Elm Street series.

Make their suffering so complete that they cry tears of joy when they find out that none of it was real.

...user, I think I have a problem.

Prophetic dream set up by a god or whatever to protect you. Pretty much party runs into a situation and dies, wakes up and its a dream. They continue towards their goal but stuff plays out exactly like the dream. Whether the party turns around or plans a different strategy for the real encounter is up to them.

If there is one adventure in a semi-real dreamscape that would be cool. Provided I still got xp from it and it wasn't just a waste of time. If you end a campaign like this I will fucking end you. Unless it was like a retarded comedy campaign for like three sessions, then I would probably laugh.

By killing yourself.

Dragon Age did it that way. The Fade is the place you go in dreams, but it's also very real and full of monsters.

(Only played the first one, no interest in the gay dating simulators that followed.)

I'm actually starting to see a pattern. Do persistent dreamworlds lead to crappy sequels?

The real world is standard and boring, just a normal modern day setting, the players are probably nobody exceptional. The dream world is where all the adventuring takes place. the dream world should be bizarre and not make much sense. I would probably have the players make low point characters for outside the dream world, and then give them extra points to represent their dream world form.

We do it for holiday specials and other stuff that didn't "really" happen, it's a good way to have funny adventures without breaking the overall tone of the game.

Also, usig it as some kind of trap, like they get sprayed by some gas and have a weird, trippy adventure from there on in, or a powerful wizards casts sleep on them when they enter his lair and they have to use information they got from that dream to defeat him.

>sword art online
>first season is good, second is meh, second series is completely skippable

>Log Horizon
>first season is good, second is completely skippable

Oh god.

Adventure? No. What I did was host a surprise session where the party is suddenly much higher level and has an encounter to match. Regardless of its result they wake up at the level and point in time they are supposed to be, like some prophetic dream showing them a taste of power.

IIRC, there are rules for adventures in the dreamlands, and the Lucid Dreaming feat.

Yeah, they were. The player had a bit of suspicions when the other character started floating around them and giving them protection that something was up. My players are all great roleplayers and do trust me quite a bit that I'll do right by their characters and give them a fun story, and it's a really big boost to ego to have my players clamour to get into my games because they love them so much.

>Mother's Rosario arc
>Skippable

Nah

Ribbon dreams of a lot of things doesn't she?
Why does she sleep in a box?

Doesn't it look comfy?
That is one comfy box.

>The Fade is the place you go in dreams, but it's also very real and full of monsters
i suppose you can call fireball spamming mages monsters, but i prefer to call them tedious bullshit

yes, in fact that explicitly happens in the ending cinematic. She picks you up and swaddles you

This is a good one, make the end seem like it's all a dream, but smart players will realize that they actually just entered a dream and have to get out of it.

Wait, is that zeppelin customized to store and launch aircraft?
Sky pirates assemble!

Yes. Canonically.

tell them beforehand that it's a dream, and then have the player, in character, accept the dream quest. Oh, sure, ancient elder, I'd love to be your champion in the dream realm. Give me the drugs.

Question. Is it acceptable if it ends with "it's all just a dream" if the entire campaign is focused on waking up?

What is god's name are you babbling on about?

This is fabulous

Have them wake up with a weapon or artifact. Prophetic dreams can be neat.