Friday 4 December 2009

An Awesome Game conceived of in a most Interesting Dream

I had a dream last night that I was participating in a game. I guess you could say it was a role playing game. The game can take place in any area big enough, in my case it was a few buildings based on some of those of at my old high school and others created entirely by my unconscious like a castle tower. At a stretch you could maybe run it in a flat or house with several rooms, or you could expand it to a whole university campus or something like that if you were brave enough, didn't mind the walking, and wanted to make it a really big game. Natuarally in these cases there will be all sorts of people who are "not playing" scattered through the game world, going about their business and most probably absolutely oblivious to what is going on with those participating. That helps add to the atmosphere. The game had a made up name which sounded spanish, which I guess means the playing area reprisented the whole of Spain.
The premise of the game is that you and one other player are long lost brothers and need to search the game world for clues as to how to find the other, each of you follows the "treasure hunt" in the reverse order from one another and it's actually sort of a race or competition to see who gets most fastest and figures it out first, at which the time you both succeed when you meet. The clues are generally dispensed by other characters in the game in various locations, although the actions of characters and choices they make throughout the game may affect things such as where these characters will be found, whether they move to other locations or not, and their willingness to help one or each of these two players.
The default location, order and nature of the clues, as well as the dispositions of those who deliver them, are randomised from game to game by means which were not explained by the dream. N.B. Only one game took place throughout the entire dream and it took hours to play!
The two "main characters" may bump into one another throughout the course of play - but the rub is it if their characters aren't aware that the other is their macguffin "in game" - it doesn't count at all! They may even interact with one another obliviously! (Although in my case we only passed in corridors.) This is supposed to add to the humour an quirkiness of the concept as well as the challenge.
Towards the end of the dream when it was reaching a climax I remember getting very angry at the other player for watching which direction I went off in after we passed, which I claimed to be "cheating."


When I was explaining what happened in the dream to Suzy I suddenly went "fuck... I know what the dream was about..." ... "It's actually about finding myself, isn't it?"

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