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Review: The Society of Dreamers:: Review for The Society of Dreamers: Interesting story game for experienced players
Posted: Fri, 09 Jan 07:58:06

by KatharinaKuo

Authors: Matthijs Holter
German translation: Marcus Jürgens
Publisher: System Matters (German translation)
Genre/Setting: 19th century, dreams
Rule family: Freeform / narrative game
Number of pages: 80 (A5)
Review basis: I played an adventure with the German version.

Contents:

Society of Dreamers is a story game without a game master. The players embody 19th century characters who belong to the Society of Dreamers. This society attempts to explore the Mnemosites, mysterious beings that live in people's dreams.

Rules and structure:

To create characters, all players write down two cards each with possible origins, genders/sexual orientations, occupations (lifestyle), and ages. These are then shuffled, and each player draws one card per category and uses this to create their character (one card may be exchanged). I really liked this method of character creation because it is quick and, thanks to combinations that initially seemed inappropriate, four interesting and varied characters emerged in our test round.

In Act 1, a scene from each character's childhood and one from their youth is played out. A player is chosen to set up the scene before the player of the respective character takes over the narration (with everyone else allowed to contribute). If there are already references to the Mnemosites in these scenes, they are written down. The game provides virtually no guidelines regarding the content or structure of these introductory scenes. In our group, which consisted of experienced narrative players, they still worked well because everyone took care to pick up on interesting aspects of the character introduction when setting up the scenes and to incorporate initial hints of supernatural phenomena and dreams.

Act 2 then gets down to business: one player describes the society's first meeting, before further scenes shed light on the characters' experiences within the society. While supernatural experiences and insights into the Mnemosites were optional in Act 1, new details about these strange beings are now revealed in each scene.

The game allows you to play as many scenes from Act 2 as you like. However, after one round, we had already gathered so much information about the Mnemosites that we felt it was more than enough. In addition, we had limited time – especially in light of this, I think it's good that the length of Act 2 can be easily controlled.

Act 2 also has a special feature: there is a kind of Ouija board that is used to select the prompt for each scene. I made my own board out of thick paper in advance, but it didn't really shine because the board is ultimately just a physical mechanism for the group to agree on the next prompt. I don't think it would have detracted from the fun of the game to simply roll the dice. If you play the game as a LARP (which is entirely possible), it might be different, but for a tabletop game, a die would suffice. I think you could even leave out these prompts altogether, as the respective texts didn't particularly inspire us, but we had enough ideas of our own.

In Act 3, further scenes from the society's activities are played out, whereby the focus is no longer on discovering new insights, but on revisiting already established ones. I think this is a key point of the game: we finished the act pretty quickly, as the previous insights could be organically pieced together and everyone at the table had similar ideas and supported each other's ideas. This led to very exciting discussions about the nature of the Mnemosites, which then led to eerie ideas and cool scenes. For example, our dreamers were able to travel into the past through lucid dreams. However, we also had to learn that there are malicious Mnemosites who want to trick dreamers into having members of society who ask too many questions killed by sleepwalkers. With these ideas in mind, it was easy for us to agree on a coherent conclusion in Act 4, to which one player then added a prologue with a plot twist (the Menomist had good reasons for wanting to kill the character…).

Form:

I am only familiar with the German edition. It is beautifully illustrated, clearly laid out, and contains a useful appendix with the most important information for each act. It doesn't matter that the 80-page booklet is quite thick for a narrative game.

Conclusion:

I had a great time playing Society of Dreamers. I find the setting interesting, although the book contains little information about it, so it's certainly thanks to our nerdy gaming group that we had countless ideas about dreams, supernatural beings, and eerie events. The book contains some tips on setting up scenes and improvising, but in my opinion it is still unsuitable for newcomers to narrative role-playing. Ultimately, it contains few prompts and rules to follow. The act structure provides a certain framework, but depending on the narrative, it may be necessary to deviate from the guidelines. I would therefore only recommend the game to people who already have experience with narrative role-playing games and know how to tell a story together, bounce ideas off each other at the table, and create creepy scenes. If you have such a group, The Society of Dreamers is a great game for developing eerie stories about dreams.

Review: A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City:: [Roger' Reviews] Welcome to the Rainy City
Posted: Fri, 09 Jan 07:56:54

by leroy43

A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City is a non-system specific milieu to set your city campaign in. Some years ago, when Steve Jackson reacquired the rights to The Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition (TFT), I started a campaign with my usual gaming group. After a series of pre-fab modules, and being between ideas, I asked if they'd like to do more dungeon crawling, or if they'd like to have more open ended urban adventures.

They chose open ended urban adventures.

This of course left me in a bit of a pickle. I could of course have come up with my own city. I could have dusted off my copy of Thieves' World. Or, precipitous timing, back the Kickstarter for the Rainy City.

The Rainy City is a place where it always rains. Always. Living in Vancouver, I can appreciate how that could feel, including the one year where I lived through the January record (2006, 29 consecutive days), and also October 2016 when it rained 28 out of 31 days.

Also, despite being system neutral, the people that designed it were themselves TFT players and there are is a lot of connective tissue in the material to drop it right into your TFT campaign. The Achterfuss, wandering octopus' are a direct analog to the the intelligent cephalopods from TFT. As are the plentiful and varied Gargoyles.

There are nods to other RPG species as well. The Deepsy are clearly Lovecraft influenced analogues to deep ones. Gulls are akin to the ducks of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.

The entire 62 page guide is filled with whimsical guidance and background for the city. "The ninth day of the rainy season
begins the most important festival of Vagabond Bay, the Gentle Exchange of the Fish!"

There are sections on major holidays and happenings, the ebb and flow of the seasons, and anarchic structure of the various neighbourhoods. There are guilds aplenty, with funny names like the Droll Union of Brollyfactors, who of course promote their umbrellas over hats. I was able to weave an entire adventure around the rivalry between two guilds of umbrella makers as a backdrop.

Each neighbourhood has its own character and a list of pubs that can become the hub for the party. There is also a list of notable locals.

The supplement feels complete, insofar as there is a lot of scaffolding provided for the game master to weave into their own story, and at the same time is not prescriptive about how the city works. The information is available to tap into and explore and expand as each GM sees fit, and there's enough there that if the party decides they're going to go into The Sump, a quick read of a few paragraphs provides just enough narrative flavour to get things started.

Ultimately, A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City succeeds because it respects the GM’s creativity while doing the heavy lifting of world-building. It provided exactly the kind of "open-ended urban adventure" my players asked for, offeringme just enough structure to keep the world feeling lived-in and just enough mystery to keep them exploring. It is a fantastic resource for any GM, and I feel it's a must have if you want a city campaign that feels as deep and persistent as the puddles in Vagabond Bay.

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "Math Trade Italiane - Annunci Ufficiali"
Posted: Fri, 09 Jan 07:51:29

by angydragon

An item GeekList: Math Trade Italia - Gennaio 2026 has been added to the geeklist Math Trade Italiane - Annunci Ufficiali

New comment on Blog Post Happy Birthday Brichs!
Posted: Fri, 09 Jan 07:37:24

by ChaoticPlatypus