I'm home for reading week so I'm trying to spend lots of time with my folks while I'm here. We watched Inception last night. My third time seeing it now (I went twice to see it in theaters) and geeze is that ever a good movie. It blew my mind again even though I knew all the stuff that was coming. The action and visuals are fantastic, but they ultimately serve only as the back drop for the story and a very interesting counterpoint to the plot. It really seemed to build like a song in the way it was filmed and how it cut back and forth and up and down and forward and backward throughout the film, and yet it managed to do it all in such a pleasing way (without being too disorienting- possibly confusing yes- but during the action climax where several action sequences are being presented simultaneously its not too hard to figure out what is going on ).
Also I have to say the love story in Inception is I feel one of the best I have ever seen, the love, loss and regret expressed between Dom and Mal is so intense, sad, and beautiful.
Anyway, late last night i was reading this post here
http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2011/02/ad-cosmology-defense.html and it really got me thinking about what it would be like to adventure in some kind of strange Dream Realm. The Pathfinder setting has something called a Harrow Deck which is basically a D&D version of a Tarot deck, each of the 54 cards represent a specific combination of an alignment and a ability score. So for example The Rabbit Prince here represents Chaotic Neutral and Dexterity. Each card title is really interesting and the art is super cool and evocative.
What does this have to do with Inception? Well basically in a dream world type adventure I don't think the characters should be able to just create anything Inception style but they should have some influence on the dream and its landscape. So I decided in my setting part of the journey into the Dream Realm involves having your cards read, not quite sure on the specifics yet but the players keep the cards they draw and may evoke them at some point on the dream quest, thereby gaining an advantage and altering the dream.
So say I got The Rabbit Prince card, at some point in the quest I can summon The Rabbit Prince himself to come aid me on my adventure- creating a new npc ally who may join the party or preform some other service.
More on this later. .
That sounds like a really cool idea, and I'd be interesting in hearing about how you finally implement it. I found Inception pretty inspirational as well (I did write too posts on its game application ;)).
ReplyDeleteYeah it was so good. And yeah it was your posts that got me thinking about using a dream world in d&d.
ReplyDelete