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Solo RPG: Wandering Dreams by Sleepy Sasquatch Games
Wandering Dreams by Sleepy Sasquatch Games is available on itch.io! It was in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality lo these many years ago.
Event + Location rolls: 7♥️5 (Surprise): {Loud Roar} + Queen♠️6 (Healing District): {Observation room}
Being roll: J♣️6 (Remains of the Old): {Old Ones Wanderer} + 6 {friendly}
Rewards roll: 1: {nothing found}
Keene awakens within the Dream, shocked to alertness by a bestial roar, attaining only a glimpse of his surroundings - the faux comfort of an observation room, faced by the wide pane of one-way glass behind which hides ... what? - before his racing heart and good sense prompt him to seek a more defensible position, preferably not the bed. He rises, inching towards the door, taking stock. In his hand, he grips his cane - no, a weapon; he knows this without knowing, the strong instinct of - yes, a Dream. But there is no space in his thoughts to celebrate his success. He eases open the door and all but walks into another person, quieter than he, standing just outside.
Keene jumps, but the other person doesn't startle. Older woman, steady gaze. A small smile plays about her lips. "Alive and more or less sane?" she says. "You're off to a good start. What's say we get out of here, eh?"
A fellow wanderer is the best boon he could ask for, and this one is obviously more experienced than he is. "Lead the way," he says, and he's swept up in the old woman's wake. Intent seems to carry power, within the bounds of the Dream. He has never been this able in waking life: footsteps lighter, senses sharper, a quickness of body that feels natural, here, despite its unfamiliarity. More than that: they move through the space too quickly, intermediate steps elided by the logic of dreaming. Even with a beast at their heels, if there is a beast at their heels, the journey is exhilarating.
Event + Location rolls: A♥️4 (Infliction): {Poisoned} + King♠️6 (Healing District): {Abandoned Residence}
Being roll: 6♣️6 (Evil Entities): {Brain of the Old Ones} + 5 {friendly}
Rewards roll: 1: {nothing found}
Out of the complex, hospital or asylum. Into the streets of the district, apothecaries, another larger institution, private residence. The woman pulls up short, tugging him into a side-street, a door. "We'll have a few moments rest here. Take stock. Catch your breath."
Inside, a kitchen. Domestic. Cozy, even. But abandoned. Abandoned as the entire district has been, Keene realizes. A place emptied in haste, or frozen in time.
Keene pulls up a chair. Leans his cane against the table. Tries to catch his breath, slow his heart, and the woman watches him, patient. "Thank you," he says, when his breath has finally calmed.
"Name's Mildred," she says. "I won't ask yours. Not unless you want to give it." She pauses, giving him the opportunity, but he shakes his head, and she nods in acceptance. "I'm guessing you're a scholar," she continues. "You're dressed for it. I was, once. Long time past. On a different mission now. We can help each other, though."
Keene scans the room, trying to make himself useful. Trying to hide the glaces he makes at the woman - Mildred - and buy time for his racing thoughts. This is a place he only imagined. And researched, and strove to enter. Mildred appears as comfortable here as he is not, an interloper, unseasoned. Yet he moves through this space, as sure as she does. How long has she been here? How did she get here? She's a fellow wanderer. And yet. "What was that, back there?" he asks.
"The beast?"
"Yes."
"Not sure, exactly," she says. "Been catching sight of them. Poisoned, I think. Dangerous. Best avoid them. If we can."
Poisoned means what - means a creature not wholly itself, impacted by an outside influence. Weakened, perhaps, or rabid. Keene wants the advice of ... someone. The veil of sleep muffles the waking world. Who would he talk to, were they here? A partner, a lover. But the memory is slipping away.
Poisoned, if not by Mildred, means a third party is at hand. Ally or enemy? Either way -
"We need to watch out. Keep moving." Mildred echoes his own conclusions. She rises, and he follows her lead.
Event + Location rolls: 7♠️5 (Nightmare Village): {Hidden Floor Trap} + 6♥️3 (Auditory): {Silence}
Being roll: Queen ♣️1 (Villagers): Wanderer Stalker + 5 {friendly}
Rewards roll: 3 {One item found} + 8♦️2 (Tools and Trinkets): {Wanderers mark}
Out the door and into the street, the cityscape beyond the healing district. Perhaps a proper noun: the Healing District. The city is new to him, but he can recognize it, label it, the same way he knew the Dream-certainty of his cane. Out of the district and moving into the city proper, into a mixed residential and commercial area. There are signs of life, but no people. Everything standing empty. Stopped in situ. The silence here is complete. Impossible and ominous. It bears down on him, muffling his footsteps, his thoughts.
Another roar would almost be welcome. Life, to break this unnatural stillness.
Instead, silent still, the world falls out from under him. No sign, no warning. The cobblestones turn liquid, shifting and giving way. He catches his arm on the rim and only wretches his shoulder. Then he's falling, and Mildred is gone.
He hits the ground hard, his cane clattering out of his grasp. The dark is broken only by the spots swimming in his vision. His thoughts race alongside his heart: where is he? Can he move? How badly is he hurt? And the noise he made, in the unnatural silence -
Then a light flickers on, and he can see his hands. And his feet. His cane, an arm's reach away. And a stranger's face, staring back at him from inches away, the light in her hand.
"Fool. That trap was not meant for you." The woman stands, light swinging, obscuring her features. She peers upward, into the dark hole overhead, as if waiting for another body to come tumbling down. "That would have been a prize worth the hunting. Not - you. Up. Here. Let's see if you're worth anything."
She takes him through the tunnels, always a step ahead, the long lines of her back inscrutable. As Keene follows her, feeling the danger in her, not directed at him but obvious - the trap, the confidence of her stride, the way the dark seems to cling to the edges of her - he puts a name to her profession, the word arising from the same place that told him his cane was a weapon. She's a stalker. She hunts his kind.
But not him. "You can keep up, at least," the stalker says. They pass signs of other life. Hanging lanterns. What must be a store cache of rations. "Not worth a penny, but - not useless, could be." He doesn't respond. Better to focus on keeping pace. He wants ... his mind is grasping, baffled by the veil of sleep, trying to reach - on the other side of the veil, a lover, broad and sturdy. Keene is borrowing his strength, his ground-eating stride. He'd like to borrow his ear, too. Advice on survival; the sort of advice that Keene has dismissed, in waking life, but would welcome, here.
"Not talking, then. Fine by me. You eaten since you came here?"
"No." He's hungry, now that he thinks of it, the sensation sudden and distinct.
"Not all of you need to. I'd bet my best blade that wanderer up above don't. You and me, we got needs. We still know our flesh and blood. Here. Something to chew on." She tosses a strip of jerky at him. What meat, he wonders, and recalls poison, but sinks his teeth in. It's good, gamey, tough on his jaw. "See? Not a lost cause. Here, this, too."
Dream tells him: this isn't one of the loose details his mind half-retains, proof of a world fully-sketched but not his own. This is an object, purpose-made, and made for him. A badge or pendant, a talisman, beaten bronze, worn and dull. There's a shape on it, an emblem, but the stalker slips it into his hand without stopping and offers no light, no time to examine.
But he knows, doesn't he? He feels it under his thumb. A shock of silver on the bronze, tracing a line, like smoke, like a dream. A wanderer's mark.
"Been tracking her a long time," the stalker says, interrupting his reverie. "She was the prize we wanted, not you. No 'fense." None taken, if the stalker is as dangerous as she seems. "You seem harmless enough. But she's a right bitch, that one. Bet she fed you some cock-and-bull story, said she a fellow wanderer, 'sumed you'd just team up, huh? Wanderer, my arse."
The tunnels twist and wind. He would be lost without this guide. Offer something to gain something, he wonders. He refused Mildred his name, but feels, like she's just out of sight over his left shoulder, a lover, short and soft-figured, shaking her head at his reticence.
"My first time here," Keene says, quiet but too clear in the strange echoes of the tunnels. "She told me her name was Mildred. Why are you hunting her?"
"Some wanderers, they come back the other way," the stalker says without looking back, voice flat. "The Old Ones, they can't make it here. Their emissaries, though. They come. She's one of them. She's dangerous, and we'll have her."
It raises more questions than it answers, but, in Keene's experience, that's the first step of learning anything at all.
Event + Location rolls: 5♠️6 (Hidden City): {Dead Ends} + 3♥️1 (Physical): {Lever Pulled}
Being roll: 5♣️5 (Wanderers): {Beast-crazed wanderer} + 4 {neutral}
Rewards roll: 6 {Two items found} + Q♦️2 (Tools and Trinkets): {Old Wanderers charm}, Equip roll: 4: {item works as planned} + K♦️4 (Attire): {Raven-feathered attire), Equip roll: 4: {item works as planned}
"Hush yerself a sec," the stalker says, although Keene hasn't said a word in some minutes, moments. Dream-time moves like Dream-space, skipping itself, leaving him disoriented. She's leading him along a narrow tunnel, barely wide enough for his shoulders, the walls damp and slick. He stops, waiting; he would hold his breath, only that the village's held silence still rings in his ear. Instead he counts his breaths, steady and slow. One, two, three.
Then one, two, three, she knocks at a door barely visible in the low light. And one, two, three, comes response on the other side the wall. A soft whine of machinery and the door swings open, the tunnel opening into a larger space. "The dead ends," she says, place name, sticking in his thoughts. "You don't pay them no mind. I don't want you trying to memorize your lefts and rights. We got watchers and traps. You'll die, or worse. You don't come back this way. Just do what you need to, and when you leave, you find a different door."
"Why are you helping me?"
"Could be worse." She shrugs him off. "Teamed up with the wrong sort. Didn't know no better. You're not a danger, you're just a dumb kid. You want my advice? You head to the wanderer's camp and you find the big guy. Bastard the size of a bear, scar on his arm, and the tattoos. Name's Gideon. Tell him what I told you," although what that is, other than 'don't team up with the first friendly face,' Keene is uncertain, "and show him your mark. That -" She gestures at the bronze badge, still held in his hand. "Ask 'im how to use it. Or don't. No skin off my nose. Two lefts, then a right, then look for the tents. Think you can handle that?"
Two lefts, then a right. Keene is able.
And Gideon is unmistakable. And familiar. Not this man, but a memory of another: his lover, strong, broad, insultingly tall. As if his lover had spent too long in the Dream, Gideon is Bear-sized, beautiful, but changed. At least, Keene assumes it's the Dream that has changed him. Made him wild, made him a beast, bulked up, furred around the edges. He lets Keene explain himself, in turns still and patient, and pacing, a fluidity uncanny even in this place where motion, time, and space are strange.
Give something to get something, the voice over his shoulder prompts. Not Keene's nature to be outgoing, to pry. But he knows the shape of this man.
"How long have you been here?" Keene asks, thumbing the talisman that ought to be his real concern.
"What is time, in this place? A few days. A hundred years. It doesn't matter. Time's a Dream, here. Show me that trinket." The talisman, the bronze badge. Real. "Real," Gideon echoes. "Much as anything is. Real, indeed. Good."
Gideon, Gideon the bear, traces the same line with his finger, calloused, Keene knows, following the motion with his eyes. A silver line, clearer, now, at rest, lamplit. A line, a dream, a wanderer.
"You've noticed, haven't you? Moving through the Dream is easy until it's not. How far have you traveled, just coming here?" He looks to Keene, but not for an answer, or at least seems content with Keene's noncommittal nod. "And getting stuck - getting stuck is in you, not the terrain."
Gideon passes back the talisman, hand meeting hand. "Intent is everything. You're a scholar." This isn't a question; the Dream-certainty is a two-way road. "You'll be seeking evidence. You won't find it, here. Here, you're seeking something else. Something more. A sense. Intuition. Don't give me that face, pretty boy. Trust your gut.
"And when you find that lacking - well, for longer than I've been around, folks have been wandering in and out of this place. Not all of them bear that mark, but the symbol is strong. It has meaning. Stalker-bitch said, tell you how to use it?" Gideon shakes his head. "By using it. Practice, same as any tool."
Keene fumbles the talisman about his neck. Did it have a cord? It has one, now. Leather, warm, weight. The talisman hangs between his collarbones. He can't tell, yet, if it's working, or if he's called upon it. If Gideon's advice holds, then proof is secondary to the practice.
Keene hides another grimace. On the far side of the veil of sleep, his female lover is laughing at him, at his tenuous trust.
Here, now, within the Dream, Gideon lifts a fringed garment and holds it aloft. Not fringe, but feathers, raven-black, and Keene stands straight as the other man settles the garment over his shoulders. Gideon's hands linger, too familiar. Keene's lover bleeds through and into this man, and Keene knows this touch, knows the intent behind it.
The cloak hangs well, its weight a comfort. Gideon is drinking in the sight, hungers familiar and dense, complicated. "Take care of yourself, pretty boy," Gideon says. "If the Dream finds you here, there's always a meal for a wanderer, or an empty bed."
Event + Location rolls: 4♠️1 (Hidden City): {Narrow alleyways} + 8♥️1 (Physical): {Tight space}
Being roll: A♣️4 (Strange Beasts): {Blood-hungry beast} + 1 {Hostile}
Combat roll: 2 {the being is slain with major injuries to player}
Rewards roll: 6 {Two items found} + A♦️4 (Attire): {Old Wanderer's attire) +3♦️4 {Ash-covered attire} [Note: this was sillly; rewrite to turn three! attire roles into an "upgrade" to the feathered cloak.]
A tempting offer. Keene wouldn't mind letting this punishing dream turn warmer, closer. But the Dream-certainty pulls to action, and he takes his leave and withdraws, making his way through the shanty town that has grown on the edge of the underground city. The people here are private, quiet, but decidedly present. The empty city above, frozen between breaths, feels impossible at this distance: a dream within this Dream. But it was real.
He finds a quiet corner and the last, ragged-torn bites of jerky and chews slowly, thinking. The Dream is unlike anything he expected, and yet - yet not. Its own world, but there is a pattern beneath it, a pattern that sketches it more than a world its own. He can almost grasp it. Intent, like Gideon told him. Dream-logic.
And yet it is like any mundane dream in this way: every answer has pointed in a different direction, and unraveling the inconsistencies is like trying to catch smoke. He can see the contradictions. He can't resolve them. What was that beast - lure, hunter, a tool of the stalkers? And Mildred - dangerous, to be sure; like and unlike him in her role in this place; but as untrustworthy as the stalker claimed, that he doubts. A shanty town of fellow wanderers, not wandering at all, but resting here; a subculture, perhaps, with talismans and traditions and a code of its own.
Keene is so deep in his own thoughts that he doesn't see the thing that comes until it's all but upon him, and then there's no time to run, to flee. He never saw the beast above, only heard its roar; and this time, silent. But it's the same. He knows that as he knows himself, as he knows, now, how to pull the blade from the sheath of his cane. Knows it as he knows the motion, Tully's motion, Tully's advice, Tully broad, Tully steadfast, make yourself big, animals are smarter than people, they prefer an easy target.
So Keene, skinny bastard, makes himself big, waving the cane-blade, metal sparking stone, a warning and a challenge. The beast rears back, hesitates.
But the beast - poisoned - is propelled by something. Rank and hulking, its panting breath filling the alley with the sweet-stink of tartar and rot.
This thing was never hunting Mildred; or, if it was, then he and Mildred are equal prey; it was hunting him. Is hunting him. Is hunting, is made maddened, blood-thirsty, poisoned, rearing back and then lunging forward.
Living his lover's body, his lover's strength, waiting for Tully on the edge of the practice field, book on his knee, ignoring the shout of drills, looking up to watch: thrust in, drive through hide and fur, cause pain. Give the beast good reason to flee.
Ignore the burn of claw across his shoulder, the hot wash of blood.
It flees. A dripping trail of blood follows it down the alley. A pool of blood splatters from his limp hand and to the floor.
Keene pulls deeper into the shadows. He presses cloaked shoulder to a wall, pressure and fabric to staunch the blood, and tries to rip his shirt into bandages. The linen fights him, his body fights him, but the cloak -
The cloak drinks his blood. Warm against his shoulder, he feeds this Dream-stuff of his own life. Pain recedes. Heat abates. His shirt is in ruins and his head spins, his attempts at logic scattered by the violence. But when he peels away the cloak, it hangs undamaged and the flesh beneath is rent, but the bleeding is sluggish, staunched. He settles the cloak over his shoulders again, hiding the injury, hiding the ruin of his shirt. The feathers sit proud against his neck, fluffed, preened.
Dream-logic. Dream-stuff. He can't stay. If the beast returns, if there are others, if any number of threats. Gideon offered him a sanctuary and he was a fool to refuse it. Keene leans on the cane to steady himself and tries to retrace his steps. Bias drives him; he knows that. Tully. His lover is so real in his thoughts that Keene knows he's close to waking, a thread from outside the Dream tying him, tugging him, calling him back. He wants broad shoulders and a warm chest and a waiting bed.
The beast could have killed him. He gains something with every step, every misstep - knowledge, the mark around his neck, the cloak, blood-drinker. But the beast could have killed him, and what happens then?
Gideon. Tully. To sleep, perchance to wake. What he learns here matters, but he can feel himself slipping out of it. This place is realer than he knew, but another real will capture him, soon. In truth, he welcomes it.
Event + Location rolls: 6♠️1 (Hidden City): {Gathering Plaza} + 2♥️2 (Visual): {Stacked boxes}
Being roll: K♣️1: {Parasitic infested villager} + 1 {Hostile}
Combat roll: 4 {Being is defeated with minor injuries to player}
Rewards roll: 4 {One item found} + 7♦️5 (Rune): Hidden song
Keene finds himself as turned and tangled as his thoughts as he makes his way through the labyrinthine tunnels. He's lost his turns, lost his way, but sounds guide him, voices. Noises. The hum of people, a gathering.
Then, suddenly, there is light, and he stumbles into a square, a plaza. Underground, still - even in his artless stumbling, he hasn't made the sort of leaps and bounds that are possible in dreams. This place, though, has the feel of the surface, cavernous enough that it has atmosphere, life, light. Manufactured but vibrant.
This is far from the wanderer's shanty town, settled on the outskirts, tolerated and shunned. These are the native denizens. They seem human enough. They do business he recognizes, sketched loosely in his hazing vision, blood loss and exhaustion and waking conspiring to steal the details from him. Purchasing goods. Eating street food. Carting merchandise. One detail swims into focus: a stack of crates, locked tight, one a barred cage, no light penetrating the interior.
But noise threads out, through the bars. A noise, familiar. Muffled, as if muzzled, but a sound he knows. Soft, dark cousin to a terrible -
"Oi! You can't be here!"
A woman, voice like a knife. Face like a mask; face, masked, porcelain-smooth. She moves, and Keene falls, or stumbles, or is pushed, and he doesn't have the wherewithal to keep his balance. Some wiser part of him is holding that noise, like a hum, like a growl, like a familiar roar, crated in the dark. Some part sees the shadows squirming on the bare skin of the woman's arms. Hope that that part of him remembers, can piece the clues together when he wakes; can find the intuition that Gideon promised him. Should have followed the mark. Should have held the mark.
But none of that now. Keene is pushed out of the square, pushed back into the dark tunnels, noise and light left behind. Keene is pushed out of himself. He lets himself go, pushed out of the square and out of the Dream, and wakes.
Epilogue
Tully is a comforting weight beside him, sleep-warmed, snoring softly, and Keene turns into his broad chest, pressing his nose to his lover's skin, breathing deeply. Weird dream. Felt so important, at the time - he can't remember ever really getting hurt in a dream, before, they normally end just before the fall, just before the cut - and there was something that felt meaningful, some sort of -
"Wha," Tully says, sitting up, dazed for half a heartbeat and then fully alert, Keene's frantic activity pulling him out of his sleep. "What's wrong?"
"I need my notebook, I need - I need Vera. Go wake her." No please, no time, the memories fading already, and his hand shaking around the pen, nib skittering across the page, no, no, no, focus, focus. "I was in the Dream. I got there. Vera, now."
Tully rises without question, pulling on a robe, heading down the hall to Vera's bedroom, and Keene's mind is racing, shorthand as fast as he can scrawl it, as fast as the details fade. A village, empty. Beast-roar, stranger, some division between the groups of wanderers, some considered dangerous, some hunted, some tolerated. Local denizens, underground, beast-song. The mark. Do items persist between Dreams? The cloak. Shoulder, aching, now, in the waking world; must have slept on it wrong, he thinks, and laughs, a wild thing.
"What's so funny?"
"Shut up. Almost done."
"I was sleeping." And then silence, Vera plopping herself down next to Keene, hair rumpled and eyes barely open, staring into the distance as Keene scribbles down the last details he can remember. A man, large, or just - Tully's snoring in his ear? It escapes him. He passes the still-wet pages to Vera, who squints.
"I need a hint. This is almost illegible."
"I was in the Dream."
She gives him an unimpressed look, a 'me too, until Tully woke me up' kind of look. And then she hears him, the import, the revelation, and her eyes go wide.
"You're shitting me."
"Not even a little."
"Keene." Hand over his. Hand, shaking. She looks between him and the notebook page. Tully's deceptively quiet feet still squeak on the fourth stair as he comes up, bearing mugs of tea, steam rising. In the lamplight, on the gray edge of dawn, Vera begins to decipher Keene's notes.
Wandering Dreams gameloop (or, at least, approximately how I structured each act):
Draw LOCATION ♠ card and roll for modifiers, and
Draw EVENT ♥ card and roll for modifiers
This determines initial setting for the scene
Draw BEINGS ♣ card and roll for modifiers, and if applicable
COMBAT
This determines action within scene
Roll for ITEMS♦ found and roll for modifiers if applicable
This determines resolution to scene
Repeat until defeat/running out of cards/other player-determined conclusion.
("Items" are "Things" in the game text but I needed a more identifiable word for Ctrl+F purposes in my doc, also it sounds fancy.)
This was my first solo RPG! I really enjoyed it. Obvs. I wrote in third person; without a diegetic journal structure, first person gives me hives. The epilogue is my own addition; I just wanted to pop in on my characters.
I initially struggled with the card + die combo for each prompt because I wanted to apply it in the opposite order: the prompt table is arranged to resolve suit then die roll then card rank (aka Spades: Locations, 2: Nightmare Village, Queen: Prisoner cages. But I always wanted to resolve it as suit, rank, die; my brain did not want to split the card information around an intermediate step.
On the other hand, this does allow for a MASSIVE table of prompts neatly arrayed in one page per suit. Having played two other games in the interim, I'm retroactively delighted by the number of prompts; it particularly shines in the locations, and the rules include flexible suggestions for more thoroughly investigating a single location which I kinda-sorta integrated into my playthrough. Lots of room for replayability with this set-up!
I also like that the die modifiers for Beings allows for out of the box characters, ex. Wanderer Stalker + friendly. But constantly interacting with new & very strange Beings meant I frankly did a lot of fudging to apply prompts to previously-introduced figures in an attempt to keep scale/flow under control. I also did this for items, but that was more trying to massage weirdly repetitive rolls (getting wanderer's charm/old wanderer's mark, getting like seventy pieces of attire) into something that made sense.
I wish this game had a more lore-y, dedicated introduction to the setting. There's some in the welcome, but I think it would benefit from something like A Visit to San Sibilia's brief overview of the city's districts. Wandering Dreams blurbs the Old Ones and obviously the Wanderers, but encountering Old Ones + Old Wanderers + Old Ones Wanderers + Wanders on the fly got pretty mushy in my head. Sometimes in productive ways, I dig some of the worldbuilding I invented, but I didn't like getting ambushed by divisions I wasn't accounting for (but also don't like reading every prompt in advance, which kills the sense of discovery).
I love the quick reference guide! I wish I'd literally found it BEFORE finishing my playthrough, but we can't have it all. As a first-time player, I internalized the game loop pretty quickly except for prompt resolution order mentioned above, but I did have to keep paging up to check combat/equipment rolls, since those occurred only intermittently. I kind of wish they could be snuck onto the prompts table for their appropriate suit.
I didn't gel with this enough to replay it, not a game-problem, just a me-problem: not huge on relics & monsters vibes; it's also not a great fit for the PC I plugged into this setting, whose vibes are more fey than Lovecraftian. But I love the framing conceit of dreaming, which probably shows in my write-up; I focused on it a lot. And I really couldn't have asked for a better starting place with solo RPGs. This gave me a lot of things it turns out I like: huge, evocative list of prompts; strong atmosphere; flexible modifiers/mechanics depending on how the scene plays out; stakes without a lot of number crunching/things to keep track of; encouragement to adapt prompt generation to build a narrative.
Event + Location rolls: 7♥️5 (Surprise): {Loud Roar} + Queen♠️6 (Healing District): {Observation room}
Being roll: J♣️6 (Remains of the Old): {Old Ones Wanderer} + 6 {friendly}
Rewards roll: 1: {nothing found}
Keene awakens within the Dream, shocked to alertness by a bestial roar, attaining only a glimpse of his surroundings - the faux comfort of an observation room, faced by the wide pane of one-way glass behind which hides ... what? - before his racing heart and good sense prompt him to seek a more defensible position, preferably not the bed. He rises, inching towards the door, taking stock. In his hand, he grips his cane - no, a weapon; he knows this without knowing, the strong instinct of - yes, a Dream. But there is no space in his thoughts to celebrate his success. He eases open the door and all but walks into another person, quieter than he, standing just outside.
Keene jumps, but the other person doesn't startle. Older woman, steady gaze. A small smile plays about her lips. "Alive and more or less sane?" she says. "You're off to a good start. What's say we get out of here, eh?"
A fellow wanderer is the best boon he could ask for, and this one is obviously more experienced than he is. "Lead the way," he says, and he's swept up in the old woman's wake. Intent seems to carry power, within the bounds of the Dream. He has never been this able in waking life: footsteps lighter, senses sharper, a quickness of body that feels natural, here, despite its unfamiliarity. More than that: they move through the space too quickly, intermediate steps elided by the logic of dreaming. Even with a beast at their heels, if there is a beast at their heels, the journey is exhilarating.
Event + Location rolls: A♥️4 (Infliction): {Poisoned} + King♠️6 (Healing District): {Abandoned Residence}
Being roll: 6♣️6 (Evil Entities): {Brain of the Old Ones} + 5 {friendly}
Rewards roll: 1: {nothing found}
Out of the complex, hospital or asylum. Into the streets of the district, apothecaries, another larger institution, private residence. The woman pulls up short, tugging him into a side-street, a door. "We'll have a few moments rest here. Take stock. Catch your breath."
Inside, a kitchen. Domestic. Cozy, even. But abandoned. Abandoned as the entire district has been, Keene realizes. A place emptied in haste, or frozen in time.
Keene pulls up a chair. Leans his cane against the table. Tries to catch his breath, slow his heart, and the woman watches him, patient. "Thank you," he says, when his breath has finally calmed.
"Name's Mildred," she says. "I won't ask yours. Not unless you want to give it." She pauses, giving him the opportunity, but he shakes his head, and she nods in acceptance. "I'm guessing you're a scholar," she continues. "You're dressed for it. I was, once. Long time past. On a different mission now. We can help each other, though."
Keene scans the room, trying to make himself useful. Trying to hide the glaces he makes at the woman - Mildred - and buy time for his racing thoughts. This is a place he only imagined. And researched, and strove to enter. Mildred appears as comfortable here as he is not, an interloper, unseasoned. Yet he moves through this space, as sure as she does. How long has she been here? How did she get here? She's a fellow wanderer. And yet. "What was that, back there?" he asks.
"The beast?"
"Yes."
"Not sure, exactly," she says. "Been catching sight of them. Poisoned, I think. Dangerous. Best avoid them. If we can."
Poisoned means what - means a creature not wholly itself, impacted by an outside influence. Weakened, perhaps, or rabid. Keene wants the advice of ... someone. The veil of sleep muffles the waking world. Who would he talk to, were they here? A partner, a lover. But the memory is slipping away.
Poisoned, if not by Mildred, means a third party is at hand. Ally or enemy? Either way -
"We need to watch out. Keep moving." Mildred echoes his own conclusions. She rises, and he follows her lead.
Event + Location rolls: 7♠️5 (Nightmare Village): {Hidden Floor Trap} + 6♥️3 (Auditory): {Silence}
Being roll: Queen ♣️1 (Villagers): Wanderer Stalker + 5 {friendly}
Rewards roll: 3 {One item found} + 8♦️2 (Tools and Trinkets): {Wanderers mark}
Out the door and into the street, the cityscape beyond the healing district. Perhaps a proper noun: the Healing District. The city is new to him, but he can recognize it, label it, the same way he knew the Dream-certainty of his cane. Out of the district and moving into the city proper, into a mixed residential and commercial area. There are signs of life, but no people. Everything standing empty. Stopped in situ. The silence here is complete. Impossible and ominous. It bears down on him, muffling his footsteps, his thoughts.
Another roar would almost be welcome. Life, to break this unnatural stillness.
Instead, silent still, the world falls out from under him. No sign, no warning. The cobblestones turn liquid, shifting and giving way. He catches his arm on the rim and only wretches his shoulder. Then he's falling, and Mildred is gone.
He hits the ground hard, his cane clattering out of his grasp. The dark is broken only by the spots swimming in his vision. His thoughts race alongside his heart: where is he? Can he move? How badly is he hurt? And the noise he made, in the unnatural silence -
Then a light flickers on, and he can see his hands. And his feet. His cane, an arm's reach away. And a stranger's face, staring back at him from inches away, the light in her hand.
"Fool. That trap was not meant for you." The woman stands, light swinging, obscuring her features. She peers upward, into the dark hole overhead, as if waiting for another body to come tumbling down. "That would have been a prize worth the hunting. Not - you. Up. Here. Let's see if you're worth anything."
She takes him through the tunnels, always a step ahead, the long lines of her back inscrutable. As Keene follows her, feeling the danger in her, not directed at him but obvious - the trap, the confidence of her stride, the way the dark seems to cling to the edges of her - he puts a name to her profession, the word arising from the same place that told him his cane was a weapon. She's a stalker. She hunts his kind.
But not him. "You can keep up, at least," the stalker says. They pass signs of other life. Hanging lanterns. What must be a store cache of rations. "Not worth a penny, but - not useless, could be." He doesn't respond. Better to focus on keeping pace. He wants ... his mind is grasping, baffled by the veil of sleep, trying to reach - on the other side of the veil, a lover, broad and sturdy. Keene is borrowing his strength, his ground-eating stride. He'd like to borrow his ear, too. Advice on survival; the sort of advice that Keene has dismissed, in waking life, but would welcome, here.
"Not talking, then. Fine by me. You eaten since you came here?"
"No." He's hungry, now that he thinks of it, the sensation sudden and distinct.
"Not all of you need to. I'd bet my best blade that wanderer up above don't. You and me, we got needs. We still know our flesh and blood. Here. Something to chew on." She tosses a strip of jerky at him. What meat, he wonders, and recalls poison, but sinks his teeth in. It's good, gamey, tough on his jaw. "See? Not a lost cause. Here, this, too."
Dream tells him: this isn't one of the loose details his mind half-retains, proof of a world fully-sketched but not his own. This is an object, purpose-made, and made for him. A badge or pendant, a talisman, beaten bronze, worn and dull. There's a shape on it, an emblem, but the stalker slips it into his hand without stopping and offers no light, no time to examine.
But he knows, doesn't he? He feels it under his thumb. A shock of silver on the bronze, tracing a line, like smoke, like a dream. A wanderer's mark.
"Been tracking her a long time," the stalker says, interrupting his reverie. "She was the prize we wanted, not you. No 'fense." None taken, if the stalker is as dangerous as she seems. "You seem harmless enough. But she's a right bitch, that one. Bet she fed you some cock-and-bull story, said she a fellow wanderer, 'sumed you'd just team up, huh? Wanderer, my arse."
The tunnels twist and wind. He would be lost without this guide. Offer something to gain something, he wonders. He refused Mildred his name, but feels, like she's just out of sight over his left shoulder, a lover, short and soft-figured, shaking her head at his reticence.
"My first time here," Keene says, quiet but too clear in the strange echoes of the tunnels. "She told me her name was Mildred. Why are you hunting her?"
"Some wanderers, they come back the other way," the stalker says without looking back, voice flat. "The Old Ones, they can't make it here. Their emissaries, though. They come. She's one of them. She's dangerous, and we'll have her."
It raises more questions than it answers, but, in Keene's experience, that's the first step of learning anything at all.
Event + Location rolls: 5♠️6 (Hidden City): {Dead Ends} + 3♥️1 (Physical): {Lever Pulled}
Being roll: 5♣️5 (Wanderers): {Beast-crazed wanderer} + 4 {neutral}
Rewards roll: 6 {Two items found} + Q♦️2 (Tools and Trinkets): {Old Wanderers charm}, Equip roll: 4: {item works as planned} + K♦️4 (Attire): {Raven-feathered attire), Equip roll: 4: {item works as planned}
"Hush yerself a sec," the stalker says, although Keene hasn't said a word in some minutes, moments. Dream-time moves like Dream-space, skipping itself, leaving him disoriented. She's leading him along a narrow tunnel, barely wide enough for his shoulders, the walls damp and slick. He stops, waiting; he would hold his breath, only that the village's held silence still rings in his ear. Instead he counts his breaths, steady and slow. One, two, three.
Then one, two, three, she knocks at a door barely visible in the low light. And one, two, three, comes response on the other side the wall. A soft whine of machinery and the door swings open, the tunnel opening into a larger space. "The dead ends," she says, place name, sticking in his thoughts. "You don't pay them no mind. I don't want you trying to memorize your lefts and rights. We got watchers and traps. You'll die, or worse. You don't come back this way. Just do what you need to, and when you leave, you find a different door."
"Why are you helping me?"
"Could be worse." She shrugs him off. "Teamed up with the wrong sort. Didn't know no better. You're not a danger, you're just a dumb kid. You want my advice? You head to the wanderer's camp and you find the big guy. Bastard the size of a bear, scar on his arm, and the tattoos. Name's Gideon. Tell him what I told you," although what that is, other than 'don't team up with the first friendly face,' Keene is uncertain, "and show him your mark. That -" She gestures at the bronze badge, still held in his hand. "Ask 'im how to use it. Or don't. No skin off my nose. Two lefts, then a right, then look for the tents. Think you can handle that?"
Two lefts, then a right. Keene is able.
And Gideon is unmistakable. And familiar. Not this man, but a memory of another: his lover, strong, broad, insultingly tall. As if his lover had spent too long in the Dream, Gideon is Bear-sized, beautiful, but changed. At least, Keene assumes it's the Dream that has changed him. Made him wild, made him a beast, bulked up, furred around the edges. He lets Keene explain himself, in turns still and patient, and pacing, a fluidity uncanny even in this place where motion, time, and space are strange.
Give something to get something, the voice over his shoulder prompts. Not Keene's nature to be outgoing, to pry. But he knows the shape of this man.
"How long have you been here?" Keene asks, thumbing the talisman that ought to be his real concern.
"What is time, in this place? A few days. A hundred years. It doesn't matter. Time's a Dream, here. Show me that trinket." The talisman, the bronze badge. Real. "Real," Gideon echoes. "Much as anything is. Real, indeed. Good."
Gideon, Gideon the bear, traces the same line with his finger, calloused, Keene knows, following the motion with his eyes. A silver line, clearer, now, at rest, lamplit. A line, a dream, a wanderer.
"You've noticed, haven't you? Moving through the Dream is easy until it's not. How far have you traveled, just coming here?" He looks to Keene, but not for an answer, or at least seems content with Keene's noncommittal nod. "And getting stuck - getting stuck is in you, not the terrain."
Gideon passes back the talisman, hand meeting hand. "Intent is everything. You're a scholar." This isn't a question; the Dream-certainty is a two-way road. "You'll be seeking evidence. You won't find it, here. Here, you're seeking something else. Something more. A sense. Intuition. Don't give me that face, pretty boy. Trust your gut.
"And when you find that lacking - well, for longer than I've been around, folks have been wandering in and out of this place. Not all of them bear that mark, but the symbol is strong. It has meaning. Stalker-bitch said, tell you how to use it?" Gideon shakes his head. "By using it. Practice, same as any tool."
Keene fumbles the talisman about his neck. Did it have a cord? It has one, now. Leather, warm, weight. The talisman hangs between his collarbones. He can't tell, yet, if it's working, or if he's called upon it. If Gideon's advice holds, then proof is secondary to the practice.
Keene hides another grimace. On the far side of the veil of sleep, his female lover is laughing at him, at his tenuous trust.
Here, now, within the Dream, Gideon lifts a fringed garment and holds it aloft. Not fringe, but feathers, raven-black, and Keene stands straight as the other man settles the garment over his shoulders. Gideon's hands linger, too familiar. Keene's lover bleeds through and into this man, and Keene knows this touch, knows the intent behind it.
The cloak hangs well, its weight a comfort. Gideon is drinking in the sight, hungers familiar and dense, complicated. "Take care of yourself, pretty boy," Gideon says. "If the Dream finds you here, there's always a meal for a wanderer, or an empty bed."
Event + Location rolls: 4♠️1 (Hidden City): {Narrow alleyways} + 8♥️1 (Physical): {Tight space}
Being roll: A♣️4 (Strange Beasts): {Blood-hungry beast} + 1 {Hostile}
Combat roll: 2 {the being is slain with major injuries to player}
Rewards roll: 6 {Two items found} + A♦️4 (Attire): {Old Wanderer's attire) +3♦️4 {Ash-covered attire} [Note: this was sillly; rewrite to turn three! attire roles into an "upgrade" to the feathered cloak.]
A tempting offer. Keene wouldn't mind letting this punishing dream turn warmer, closer. But the Dream-certainty pulls to action, and he takes his leave and withdraws, making his way through the shanty town that has grown on the edge of the underground city. The people here are private, quiet, but decidedly present. The empty city above, frozen between breaths, feels impossible at this distance: a dream within this Dream. But it was real.
He finds a quiet corner and the last, ragged-torn bites of jerky and chews slowly, thinking. The Dream is unlike anything he expected, and yet - yet not. Its own world, but there is a pattern beneath it, a pattern that sketches it more than a world its own. He can almost grasp it. Intent, like Gideon told him. Dream-logic.
And yet it is like any mundane dream in this way: every answer has pointed in a different direction, and unraveling the inconsistencies is like trying to catch smoke. He can see the contradictions. He can't resolve them. What was that beast - lure, hunter, a tool of the stalkers? And Mildred - dangerous, to be sure; like and unlike him in her role in this place; but as untrustworthy as the stalker claimed, that he doubts. A shanty town of fellow wanderers, not wandering at all, but resting here; a subculture, perhaps, with talismans and traditions and a code of its own.
Keene is so deep in his own thoughts that he doesn't see the thing that comes until it's all but upon him, and then there's no time to run, to flee. He never saw the beast above, only heard its roar; and this time, silent. But it's the same. He knows that as he knows himself, as he knows, now, how to pull the blade from the sheath of his cane. Knows it as he knows the motion, Tully's motion, Tully's advice, Tully broad, Tully steadfast, make yourself big, animals are smarter than people, they prefer an easy target.
So Keene, skinny bastard, makes himself big, waving the cane-blade, metal sparking stone, a warning and a challenge. The beast rears back, hesitates.
But the beast - poisoned - is propelled by something. Rank and hulking, its panting breath filling the alley with the sweet-stink of tartar and rot.
This thing was never hunting Mildred; or, if it was, then he and Mildred are equal prey; it was hunting him. Is hunting him. Is hunting, is made maddened, blood-thirsty, poisoned, rearing back and then lunging forward.
Living his lover's body, his lover's strength, waiting for Tully on the edge of the practice field, book on his knee, ignoring the shout of drills, looking up to watch: thrust in, drive through hide and fur, cause pain. Give the beast good reason to flee.
Ignore the burn of claw across his shoulder, the hot wash of blood.
It flees. A dripping trail of blood follows it down the alley. A pool of blood splatters from his limp hand and to the floor.
Keene pulls deeper into the shadows. He presses cloaked shoulder to a wall, pressure and fabric to staunch the blood, and tries to rip his shirt into bandages. The linen fights him, his body fights him, but the cloak -
The cloak drinks his blood. Warm against his shoulder, he feeds this Dream-stuff of his own life. Pain recedes. Heat abates. His shirt is in ruins and his head spins, his attempts at logic scattered by the violence. But when he peels away the cloak, it hangs undamaged and the flesh beneath is rent, but the bleeding is sluggish, staunched. He settles the cloak over his shoulders again, hiding the injury, hiding the ruin of his shirt. The feathers sit proud against his neck, fluffed, preened.
Dream-logic. Dream-stuff. He can't stay. If the beast returns, if there are others, if any number of threats. Gideon offered him a sanctuary and he was a fool to refuse it. Keene leans on the cane to steady himself and tries to retrace his steps. Bias drives him; he knows that. Tully. His lover is so real in his thoughts that Keene knows he's close to waking, a thread from outside the Dream tying him, tugging him, calling him back. He wants broad shoulders and a warm chest and a waiting bed.
The beast could have killed him. He gains something with every step, every misstep - knowledge, the mark around his neck, the cloak, blood-drinker. But the beast could have killed him, and what happens then?
Gideon. Tully. To sleep, perchance to wake. What he learns here matters, but he can feel himself slipping out of it. This place is realer than he knew, but another real will capture him, soon. In truth, he welcomes it.
Event + Location rolls: 6♠️1 (Hidden City): {Gathering Plaza} + 2♥️2 (Visual): {Stacked boxes}
Being roll: K♣️1: {Parasitic infested villager} + 1 {Hostile}
Combat roll: 4 {Being is defeated with minor injuries to player}
Rewards roll: 4 {One item found} + 7♦️5 (Rune): Hidden song
Keene finds himself as turned and tangled as his thoughts as he makes his way through the labyrinthine tunnels. He's lost his turns, lost his way, but sounds guide him, voices. Noises. The hum of people, a gathering.
Then, suddenly, there is light, and he stumbles into a square, a plaza. Underground, still - even in his artless stumbling, he hasn't made the sort of leaps and bounds that are possible in dreams. This place, though, has the feel of the surface, cavernous enough that it has atmosphere, life, light. Manufactured but vibrant.
This is far from the wanderer's shanty town, settled on the outskirts, tolerated and shunned. These are the native denizens. They seem human enough. They do business he recognizes, sketched loosely in his hazing vision, blood loss and exhaustion and waking conspiring to steal the details from him. Purchasing goods. Eating street food. Carting merchandise. One detail swims into focus: a stack of crates, locked tight, one a barred cage, no light penetrating the interior.
But noise threads out, through the bars. A noise, familiar. Muffled, as if muzzled, but a sound he knows. Soft, dark cousin to a terrible -
"Oi! You can't be here!"
A woman, voice like a knife. Face like a mask; face, masked, porcelain-smooth. She moves, and Keene falls, or stumbles, or is pushed, and he doesn't have the wherewithal to keep his balance. Some wiser part of him is holding that noise, like a hum, like a growl, like a familiar roar, crated in the dark. Some part sees the shadows squirming on the bare skin of the woman's arms. Hope that that part of him remembers, can piece the clues together when he wakes; can find the intuition that Gideon promised him. Should have followed the mark. Should have held the mark.
But none of that now. Keene is pushed out of the square, pushed back into the dark tunnels, noise and light left behind. Keene is pushed out of himself. He lets himself go, pushed out of the square and out of the Dream, and wakes.
Epilogue
Tully is a comforting weight beside him, sleep-warmed, snoring softly, and Keene turns into his broad chest, pressing his nose to his lover's skin, breathing deeply. Weird dream. Felt so important, at the time - he can't remember ever really getting hurt in a dream, before, they normally end just before the fall, just before the cut - and there was something that felt meaningful, some sort of -
"Wha," Tully says, sitting up, dazed for half a heartbeat and then fully alert, Keene's frantic activity pulling him out of his sleep. "What's wrong?"
"I need my notebook, I need - I need Vera. Go wake her." No please, no time, the memories fading already, and his hand shaking around the pen, nib skittering across the page, no, no, no, focus, focus. "I was in the Dream. I got there. Vera, now."
Tully rises without question, pulling on a robe, heading down the hall to Vera's bedroom, and Keene's mind is racing, shorthand as fast as he can scrawl it, as fast as the details fade. A village, empty. Beast-roar, stranger, some division between the groups of wanderers, some considered dangerous, some hunted, some tolerated. Local denizens, underground, beast-song. The mark. Do items persist between Dreams? The cloak. Shoulder, aching, now, in the waking world; must have slept on it wrong, he thinks, and laughs, a wild thing.
"What's so funny?"
"Shut up. Almost done."
"I was sleeping." And then silence, Vera plopping herself down next to Keene, hair rumpled and eyes barely open, staring into the distance as Keene scribbles down the last details he can remember. A man, large, or just - Tully's snoring in his ear? It escapes him. He passes the still-wet pages to Vera, who squints.
"I need a hint. This is almost illegible."
"I was in the Dream."
She gives him an unimpressed look, a 'me too, until Tully woke me up' kind of look. And then she hears him, the import, the revelation, and her eyes go wide.
"You're shitting me."
"Not even a little."
"Keene." Hand over his. Hand, shaking. She looks between him and the notebook page. Tully's deceptively quiet feet still squeak on the fourth stair as he comes up, bearing mugs of tea, steam rising. In the lamplight, on the gray edge of dawn, Vera begins to decipher Keene's notes.
Wandering Dreams gameloop (or, at least, approximately how I structured each act):
Draw LOCATION ♠ card and roll for modifiers, and
Draw EVENT ♥ card and roll for modifiers
This determines initial setting for the scene
Draw BEINGS ♣ card and roll for modifiers, and if applicable
COMBAT
This determines action within scene
Roll for ITEMS♦ found and roll for modifiers if applicable
This determines resolution to scene
Repeat until defeat/running out of cards/other player-determined conclusion.
("Items" are "Things" in the game text but I needed a more identifiable word for Ctrl+F purposes in my doc, also it sounds fancy.)
This was my first solo RPG! I really enjoyed it. Obvs. I wrote in third person; without a diegetic journal structure, first person gives me hives. The epilogue is my own addition; I just wanted to pop in on my characters.
I initially struggled with the card + die combo for each prompt because I wanted to apply it in the opposite order: the prompt table is arranged to resolve suit then die roll then card rank (aka Spades: Locations, 2: Nightmare Village, Queen: Prisoner cages. But I always wanted to resolve it as suit, rank, die; my brain did not want to split the card information around an intermediate step.
On the other hand, this does allow for a MASSIVE table of prompts neatly arrayed in one page per suit. Having played two other games in the interim, I'm retroactively delighted by the number of prompts; it particularly shines in the locations, and the rules include flexible suggestions for more thoroughly investigating a single location which I kinda-sorta integrated into my playthrough. Lots of room for replayability with this set-up!
I also like that the die modifiers for Beings allows for out of the box characters, ex. Wanderer Stalker + friendly. But constantly interacting with new & very strange Beings meant I frankly did a lot of fudging to apply prompts to previously-introduced figures in an attempt to keep scale/flow under control. I also did this for items, but that was more trying to massage weirdly repetitive rolls (getting wanderer's charm/old wanderer's mark, getting like seventy pieces of attire) into something that made sense.
I wish this game had a more lore-y, dedicated introduction to the setting. There's some in the welcome, but I think it would benefit from something like A Visit to San Sibilia's brief overview of the city's districts. Wandering Dreams blurbs the Old Ones and obviously the Wanderers, but encountering Old Ones + Old Wanderers + Old Ones Wanderers + Wanders on the fly got pretty mushy in my head. Sometimes in productive ways, I dig some of the worldbuilding I invented, but I didn't like getting ambushed by divisions I wasn't accounting for (but also don't like reading every prompt in advance, which kills the sense of discovery).
I love the quick reference guide! I wish I'd literally found it BEFORE finishing my playthrough, but we can't have it all. As a first-time player, I internalized the game loop pretty quickly except for prompt resolution order mentioned above, but I did have to keep paging up to check combat/equipment rolls, since those occurred only intermittently. I kind of wish they could be snuck onto the prompts table for their appropriate suit.
I didn't gel with this enough to replay it, not a game-problem, just a me-problem: not huge on relics & monsters vibes; it's also not a great fit for the PC I plugged into this setting, whose vibes are more fey than Lovecraftian. But I love the framing conceit of dreaming, which probably shows in my write-up; I focused on it a lot. And I really couldn't have asked for a better starting place with solo RPGs. This gave me a lot of things it turns out I like: huge, evocative list of prompts; strong atmosphere; flexible modifiers/mechanics depending on how the scene plays out; stakes without a lot of number crunching/things to keep track of; encouragement to adapt prompt generation to build a narrative.