Whenever you have an RPG about a subject potentially so filled with pretentiousness and bad poetry as "dreams", I immediately get my defenses up for potential Swinery. On the other hand, I am willing to tolerate a slight amount more pretentiousness in an RPG about this kind of topic just because of what the topic is. But that would be no excuse for someone to go into full Hog-mode.  Fortunately, Dreamwalker avoids that. It is a little bit on the cerebral side, but on the whole its a solid game.

The premise of the game can be summed up in the (rather silly) first paragraph of the game: "Humanity is under attack.  The enemy is an alien species that assails us in our most vulnerable state--  while we sleep".  The premise of the game is that the PCs are "dreamwalkers", specially trained people (either scientifically or mystically trained) who can travel into other people's dreams to help them resolve their psychological problems, and to battle a strange alien species (vaguely insectlike) called the Taeniid (anytime you see a name with ae and ii in it, and its not proper latin, you know its pretentious) that appear to feed on our dreams and act as a harmful parasite.  A subconscious case of the crabs, you could say.

The authors explain why they created Dreamwalker as "because we get bored playing one type of game setting each night... changing settings and system... we felt there was a need for a good roleplaying game about dreams... and because we wanted to make money".  I will take these to be the mission statements of the game.

Well, the last of the above pretty much tells me that these guys are not very well versed in the industry. RPGs are not the place to make money. Fortunately, there's nothing too amateur about the production and layout of the game itself. The book is a thin softcover that looks relatively sturdy (though I've found that the cover tends to curl a bit at the edges), the binding seems solid, and the inside has a nice variety of (black & white) illustrations, some much more artistic than others, but over all relatively topical and good. There's some sub-par game fiction in the book, but on the plus side the authors included Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" instead of some cheesy goth poem or something. The layout and organization of the game seems solid.

As to their penultimate statement, that there was a need for a good RPG about dreams; I suppose that could be true.  I don't know about "need" but there was certainly a niche to be filled. The only other dream-based RPG material I can think of is CoC's "Dreamlands", which frankly I've never been particularly happy with. This book presents a far more useful take on the subject than Dreamlands does (I think the latter's error is sticking too close to the Lovecraft material and not daring to take a more generalized approach to the subject, making the "dreamlands" seem far too restrictive and narrow for what I envision). Indeed, I could certainly see myself making use of Dreamwalker the next time my Call of Cthulhu PCs (we play a one-shot every once in a while between campaigns or when a regular game is cancelled) visit Kingsport.  So I would take that as some high praise right there.

And as for the first two statements, about wanting a game that allows for multiple settings using the same system, the use of "dreams" as an "alternate reality" more or less allows this.  In a person's dreams, you can end up anywhere, doing anything, and the game goes some way to accomodating that.  Of course, the particular mechanic of being in a dream means that its not the same as playing in a different setting each night.  Playing a group of psychologists and occultists visiting some geek's dream about the forgotten realms is not like playing in the Forgotten Realms with realms-based PCs.

A bit more about the setting: the premise of the setting is that, several decades ago, a scientist discovered a way to project people into the dreams of others, and set about using that in psychotherapy within a secret government agency.  Doing so, he and his team ran into/discovered the Taeniid and the menace that they represented, as a growing plague that was feeding off humanity in their dreams.  Now the PCs are the front line in the battle against the Taeniid, trying to stop them from feeding off the "Mana" of dreaming humans and setting up their hives inside human dreamspace.  Personally, I find the Taeniid a relatively uninteresting plot device, but I can understand why the authors included them.  Some GMs will want their game to have a more fixed purpose than just "psychoanalysts in dreamspace!" and having a recurring menace to oppose is a good thing. I just wish it had been something a bit more interesting, and maybe a bit more lovecraftian.  The Taeniid are basically just bugs that live in dreams. They aren't sufficiently horrific and alien to be good Cthuluesque villains and they aren't sufficiently intelligent and human like to be good villains of any other sort.  As it stands, they're more like a relatively mediocre D&D monster than something out of the mythos or a good sci-fi story.

The mechanics include three different systems for character creation each of which is slightly more open (and requiring more math) than the previous one. The first is a pure point-buy system where you buy your attributes in multiples of 5; the second is the same but for skills you buy 1d6 (open-ended) for each skill instead of just buying a fixed value, and the third is the same as the above but you no longer have to buy multiples of five (the last system being for those who really want to min-max and just HAVE to have an "87" in perception where for some reason neither an 85 nor a 90 will do).

Attributes range from 1-100 (percentile), and are your typical "strength, stamina, dexterity" variety. Players start with 50 in each attribute, and then have 100 points more to divide between the 7 primary attributes.  After that, you have 6 "secondary attributes" (including health, persuasion, and defense) that you derive from your primary attributes. Finally you have a three traits (courage, creativity, and sanity) that you point buy using some more points.

You begin the game with 10 skill ranks, that you can divide among skills that fit your "character concept" (occupation) any way you like (but an initial maximum of 3 ranks in any one skill), with each rank either counting for 5 points (if you use the 1st method of character creation) or 1d6 points (open ended, so some skills could end up being ridiculously high) if you use the 2nd or 3rd.

You also start with 10 mana points plus a certain number of D6s depending on which "class" of dreamwalker you picked.
Each class starts with certain bonus skill ranks, and a limit of how many special "talents" (mana stunts, for lack of a better term) they could theoretically attain.   The classes include "naturals" (people who dreamwalk from birth), Mystics (people who dreamwalk because of some kind of spiritual training, ie. tibetan monks), Analysts (trained psychoanalysts who dreamwalk via the setting device detailed above), or Users (people who can dreamwalk while getting high on drugs).
Skills come from a pretty standard list, and include skills that are primary (untrained use allowed) or "secondary" (only trained rolls allowed), plus there is a method to specialize in more specific aspects of a given skill.

All checks are done with percentile dice, either direct from the attribute or with the attribute+skill as your base chance. Combat is turn-based and relatively straightforward; you roll percentile with your base chance to hit equaling your dex+combat skill - your targets defense score and modified by any number of possible situational modifiers. If you hit, you do damage according to weapon type, on your opponent's health score.  There are rules available for a number of combat maneuvres as well as vehicle combat rules.   There are also some general rules for insanity, but nothing as sophisticated as CoC or Unknown Armies.  Curiously, one of the listed "insanities" is Incontinence; this has to be the very first RPG I can think of that has particular rules (including charisma penalties) for uncontrollably shitting your pants.

So how does all this dream stuff work, anyways? Well, the basic idea is that when you travel into someone's dream, that dream is for all effects real to you in your dream body. You become a part of whatever "setting" the dream takes place in.  The dream is populated with "unreal" people who are effectively real inside the dream.  Also present, of course, is the dreamer himself, who is usually unaware that he is dreaming or that you are not a natural part of the dream's reality.
You can use mana to make all kinds of special manipulations of reality in the dream; stuff like channeling mana to do more damage in an attack, using mana to get extra actions or spontaneously gain temporary skills, healing physical damage, increasing attributes, or launch or counter attacks of mana bolts, as well as shaping objects or reality in the dream.  And that's just the basic stuff. Characters can also learn Talents, which are advanced abilities you can perform with Mana in a dream.  Mana is useful stuff.
Probably the most important thing you can do with mana in a dream, however, is to attempt to "join" with the dreamer, a kind of vulcan mind-meld where you figure out what it is that the dream is "about".  The "about" is the Denouement.

You see, the game authors do specify that they are not trying to write a treatise on how dreams really work, but they do borrow the idea, popular in various schools of psychotherapy, that at least some of our dreams are meant to be a kind of playing out of certain frustrations we carry with us from the waking day. Thus, the dreams Dreamwalkers visit tend to have a kind of "goal", be it that the dreamer wants to fix something he did wrong in real life, do something he never had the guts to do, or some other kind of catharsis. The Dreamwalkers need to assist that denouement.  Once they do so, they can the enter the deeper levels of the subconscious and deal with the Taeniid infestation.  thus, most dreaming adventures will have a nice built-in set of goals, but the PCs usually won't know what the Denouement is at first, not unless they can find and join with the dreamer, or unless they can decipher it themselves via deduction.

Inside a dream, you can get into combat, and take injuries, and end up dying. Usually, however, damage you take in the dream doesn't translate to your real physical body.  If you die in a dream, you wake up having to make a "dump shock" roll, where if you fail you will lose mana (including the risk of permanently losing 1 point of mana) but otherwise be ok (obviously if you succeed you suffer no consequences).  Thus, most adventures (unless your PCs get into trouble in the real world) will tend not to be fatal, even if the PCs fail or are "Killed" in the dream.

About halfway through the book we get to the Gamemaster's section (page 72). Here we get a lot of neat setting details on what the chapterhouses of the "Project Dreamwalker" organization are like, how they work, rules on the various pharmaceutical methods to dreamtravel, the dangers of the "astral space" between dreamworlds, and of course, details on the Taeniid.

There are basically four forms of Taeniid: larva (which possess Unreal people inside dreams and will try to stop the dreamer from achieving his denouement), drones (big buglike creatures that protect the Queen), the Queen (which lives in a nest deep inside the dreamer's dreamworld), and finally Broodkings.  The last are the only ones that have some real potential to be scary, and of course they're also the most rare.  The broodkings are independent male Taenia, who have the power to manipulate mana just like the dreamwalkers, and can travel through a dreamwalker  into the real world where they can wreak all kinds of havoc (and kill your PCs for real).

The GM's section also describes various other shadowy organizations (including another competing government org, and the Vatican) who know about dreamwalking, and offers some sample statblocks for various human NPCs.

There is also a guide to designing dreamworlds.  Most of the advice there is good, with material on how to think up a good Denouement, and suggested touches of fluff to remind the players that they're in a dream (fluff in this case being wierd stuff that seems out of place in the dream but that everyone but the PCs will take to be just normal, the sort of stuff that happens in dreams all the time). There's also some advice on how to design a good adventure; with suggested dreamworlds that can range from the mundane, to childhood memories, to an alien place, to another time period, to fantasy to horror, to post-apocalyptic, to a wierd mix of all the above.

This, obviously, is that the authors were talking about when they suggested that with this game you can play any setting you want, because "anything can happen in a dream".  Now, I don't mean to piss on their parade here, and I realize that they made the disclaimer about not trying to make a treatise on real psychology or anything, but I have to say that my own dreams almost always have something to do with my outside life (past, present, or jumbled up; but I don't tend to dream about fantasy worlds or post-apocalyptic settings).  I don't know, maybe that's particular to me; I'm not a psychologist, and it could be that I get enough adventure in my real life (more than most) that I don't feel the need to live out weirder adventures in my dream time.  But in any case, there's a stretch of setting going on here, IMO. Not that this is a bad thing! All the contrary, this would be a fucking boring game if it was meant to be a serious game about psychotherapeutic dream analysis. Leave that crap for the Forge.  I just don't think the authors needed to try so hard to justify the suspension of disbelief.

Finally, you get a pretty standard experience point system, about which I have only two concerns. First, it appears that each player can earn a different amount of XP based on his participation in the game.  This can sometimes be problematic from a group perspective.  Second, it seems like PCs gain points pretty fast, especially for a game where there's little risk of actual physical death and having to give up the character.  Fortunately, both of these things can be fixed easily enough.

After that, there's a series of sample adventures, all tied together with a sample chapterhouse ("Pinebrook"). The sample adventures all look ok, involving things like having to help a dreamer save his house from a flood, helping a dreamer see his favourite team win the big game, help a dreamer save her dog from the pound, and finally a big fight against a Taeniid hive in a sci-fi jungle planet setting. Interestingly, of all of these only the last is particularly fantastical, you'll note. In all of them, of course, you have the Taeniid to worry about, though.

Here are my conclusions:

The Good: The game system is reliable and very reminiscent of BRP.  Many of the ideas in the game could easily be translated into Call of Cthulhu. The setting allows for a lot of different kinds of weird adventures.

The Bad: The Taeniid aren't as interesting an opponent as the authors seem to think. I understand why they were put in, as they add structure to the game; however, it might have been more interesting to have either a more malleable alien enemy, or to present shadowy groups of human enemies with dark designs on people's dreams.

The Ugly: Nothing is particularly "ugly" about this game.

On the whole, I think Dreamwalker is easily a better product than CoC's Dreamlands, and I think anyone interesting in the setting subject would be well served in picking up this game.

Finally, I will note that in addition to the print edition, I also received from the author a copy of Dreamwalker D20, which appears to be the same product but with the D20 system.  While time constraints prevent me from being able to fully review this product, I thought I should mention that its out there, should any of you be more interesting in getting  the game already set up for D20.  Personally, I thought the percentile system was pretty good, but obviously if you're already running D20, Dreamwalker D20 might be more useful to you.

There are also a number of supplements and adventures for Dreamwalker, that were also sent my way via PDF; and I may give brief reviews of these supplements in the future, if I am able (there's a lot of reviews waiting for me on deck, and only so much time I can spend reading this stuff, and I want to give everyone a fair shake).  Still, I felt I should mention this now so you know that the game is well supported.

RPGPundit

Hey, that's a great review!  Thanks a lot for being so objective!   I know you've got very selective tastes so I'm glad to hear that you liked it enough to possibly use it one day (more or less).  I had a ton of fun writing Dreamwalker and was just sad to see it get overlooked.  

Just a couple of comments for those who are interested.  The four supplements round out the Dreamwalker "cosmology," exploring more of the dreamworld side of things and providing a bigger picture of how the Taenia fit in.  The supplements include:  The Clinic (a rival goverment dreamwalking agency more interested in controlling people and dreams---think of the movie Dreamscape).  The Sword of Gaia  (a mystical dreamwalking organization devoted to hunting down and destroying Broodkings who cross over into the real world).  Manaed: The Lost City of Dreams (a "fixed" dreamlands setting in danger of being destroyed, kind of a mish-mash of a lot of fantasy, modern, and sci-fi elements).  The Heart of Darkness (another "fixed" dreamlands setting, this one the origin of the Broodkings---has more of a dark, Lovecraftian feel).

The Taeniid are basically just bugs that live in dreams. They aren't sufficiently horrific and alien to be good Cthuluesque villains and they aren't sufficiently intelligent and human like to be good villains of any other sort.

The last are the only ones that have some real potential to be scary, and of course they're also the most rare. The broodkings are independent male Taenia, who have the power to manipulate mana just like the dreamwalkers, and can travel through a dreamwalker into the real world where they can wreak all kinds of havoc (and kill your PCs for real).

The Taenia are sort of "entry-level" monsters.  I wrote them up in Dreamwalker for the default style of play which was: enter dream, help Dreamer achieve his goal, and destroy the threat.  The Broodkings are the real threat, but beginning PCs have no chance against them, so I waited for the supplements to really detail them further.  The supplements also greatly expand on the different roles of Dreamwalkers including adventures in the real world and deep into the dreamworld.  They also contain other dreamworld creatures and menaces, including Broodspawn which are the offspring of Broodkings who have crossed into the real world and mated with mortals (creating monsters, dragons, and such).  

You were right about us being naive about the RPG industry.  This was my first foray into RPG publishing  (as you could probably tell) and there are so many things I wish I would have done differently (some that might actually have let us break even---there's a thought!).  I'll be doing a second edition of Dreamwalker one day using PIG's Impresa system (with a few minor tweaks) to keep it fresh.  I think it'll be a good fit.  One day. . .  

Also on that note, Dreamwalker d20 was designed to be backwards compatible in that you could take your current d20 characters and slip them into dream settings with no fuss, if you wanted to.  There's also an Active Exploits Diceless conversion of Dreamwalker and a few free adventures posted on the PIG website.  

Thanks again for the great and comprehensive review that not only touched on everything _in_ the book, but also covered the design theory and practical uses for the different aspects of the game.  Wow.  Thanks!

Pete

The beauty of the game is really what Pete is best at - it describes how to create and propel stories. The game really provides a good excuse to jump around with the same characters from genre to genre also. You could be in a sci-fi world in one session and jump into a fantasy world the next.

The freebies add a lot of great info for the game and are required if you ask me. This really is a must-have game all-around (in my opinion), no matter the version (Pd6, d20, or Active Exploits Diceless).

Quote from: pigames.netThe freebies add a lot of great info for the game and are required if you ask me. This really is a must-have game all-around (in my opinion), no matter the version (Pd6, d20, or Active Exploits Diceless).

Thanks, Brett.  Just wanted to add that if I ever get around to doing a 2E, it will include the core rules and all four supplements in one book (ideally a boxed set, but I don't think that's going to be possible).  Any feedback on the supplements would certainly be appreciated.  They're free!  

http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=365

Pete

Guys like you, and Flying Mice/better mousetrap are what keep me hopeful about RPGs.  Finally, we're seeing a resurgence of small-press RPGs that are doing well, and have nothing to with pretentious Forge Cultism.

For a while there, it had gotten to the point where I just instantly distrusted absolutely ANYTHING that was small-press, because I just naturally assumed it would be a product of Theory Swine. Gladly, now I can actually look into the smaller games again and not be utterly disgusted.

RPGPundit