Dreamdance (Minor)

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drewkitty ~..~
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Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

The time spent looking is unde DeamSteam time. Which done not flow at the same rate as that of the real world time. ISP usage is Based on the real world time.
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Re: Dreamdance (Minor)

Unread post by acreRake »

My opinion: in order to find the dreampool of someone that "far" from you in the Dreamstream you have to spend at least one hour looking for it. I also think that due to the nature of the Dreamstream, leaving and returning to continue a search is useless, you have to do it all at once. So, in your example a second level psychic has no chance of finding a dreampool in this manner, i would charge 48 ISP and one hour's search for each roll.

The chances of finding it are not cumulative.

I mean, this is a very useful power so i don't think those limitations are too extreme.
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Unread post by Jefffar »

Yeah, they need to spend th equivalent of one real world hour of continuous searching. If their power reaches the end of its duration,t hey can pump in more ISP to keep at it, but they don't get to roll until after an hour.
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Re: Dreamdance (Minor)

Unread post by Tinker Dragoon »

gadrin wrote:using the last example (someone you've only heard of) means you get a 20% chance and you roll 1 per hour.

does this mean that if you're 2nd level and can only stay in the dreamstream for 10 minutes, you simply get one roll? Or does it mean you have to expend extra ISP to keep hunting? (fill out the full hour). it doesn't mention whether it's cumulative or not.


I see two ways of handling this:

A) You make the percentile roll immediately when the power is used, and can't do it again for another hour. You could spend the ISP to hunt for another fifty minutes beyond the initial power use, but it's not mandatory. You still wouldn't get to make another percentile roll until a full hour had passed from the first attempt.

B) You make the roll at the end of each hour of use. By design, this completely prevents low level psychics from being able to explore the Dream Pools of people they've only heard of (they are simply beyond the novice's ability).
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Sanctu
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Unread post by Sanctu »

My own impression has always been that if you can't stay in for the full hour to search (and yeah, the roll would be made after a full hour), then you are pretty much just pooched and don't have time to search on a single usage of the power. Leaving and coming back in would be especially useless in the Dreamstream because once you are out, when you go back in you are again back at your own dreampool. (This may or may not make sense, depending on if you actually ever "move" in Dreamstream. I think so, though.)

Now, mind you, like many other psychic powers with a duration, if your duration is expiring, I don't see why you could simply expend the points again to maintain it. You are seond level, so a use only lasts 10 minutes, so after 10 minutes you expend the ISP again and continue to be there. You could do it with telekinesis, telepathy, sense evil and the like logically, you shoudl be able to do it here. So while you are searching, you'd be spending ISP every 10 minutes to maintain being in the Dreamstream.

I don't see why it would be a real world hour to search, though. It should be an hour from your point of view, and your point of view is from the Dreamstream, not the outside world. Part of the point of the time difference is that you can spend a great deal of time in dreams, and yet only a very smal amount of time in the real world has past. That this might make figuring out how much ISP you are expending a bit more of a pain is no different from any other time you'd be in th Dreamstream doing whatever.

Astral Projection, while I would think would work the same way, confusses me quite a bit in the whole "lost" aspect. I can see how you could become lost while doing so. However, everything I've ever heard of returning to your body (and ending your projection) while you are projecting has said that specifically returning is instantanious, no matter the "distance" from your physical body. I've read accounts where it's even hard not to -- think about moving your physical foot and suddenly your back and the experience is over. Exceptions would come if trapped somewhere mystically (anyone ever read the comic Red Fox?) or if your silver cord was actually severed. Thus if the duration expired on that and you were unable or unwilling to pay, you'd simply find yourself back, your experience projecting over.
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Unread post by Sanctu »

On the matter of time, it's passing in the Dreamstream, searching, and ISP cost...

OK, so let's say I use Dreamdance (minor) and enter the Dreamstream. When I get there, I decide to search for Joe... uh.. something or another... whom I've only heard of through friends. He sounds like a neat guy, but I just keep missing him at social events. Woefully, I'm only 2nd level, and I only have a 20% chance of finding him every hour I search.

So, I search for him -- or, more acturately, his dream pool -- for an hour in the Dreamstream. Let's say, just for agruments sake, that I find him, enter his dream pool, and share in his dream of a teddy bear ice cream social for an hour. I then leave the Dreamstream for the real world and "wake up".

Now, it appears that the chart on page 83, where time's passage can be slightly different between the Dreamstream and the waking world, is optionally. (I quote, "...more than an hour ... the game master may role...or pick a result that is appropriate for the scenerio or story line." So, the game master could choose not to bother.) Let's say the roll is made and we get the result that "every hour spent in the Dreamstream only counts as one minute in the real world." So, upon waking, only 2 minutes have passed.

Now then, why would my whole dreaming adventure (searching for Joe and partying in his dream pool) be based on time's passage in the real world at all? Jefffar said that "they need to spend th equivalent of one real world hour of continuous searching." This does not make sense to me at all. If I'm spending an hour in the Dreamstream doing something, in this case searching or socializing, this time is passing in the Dreamstream, and that's what should count as how time passes for purposes of searching. I don't disagree that the roll itself should have come AFTER my hour of searching, and had I failed I would have spent another hour before I got to roll again. But the time spend isn't in the waking world at all, and time passing in the real world should have no bearing on when the rolls are made.

On the other hand, ISP usage is based on how much time is passing in the waking world. In my case, I would have spent only the basic 8 ISP for my adventure, because I was only actually in the Dreamstream for 2 minutes, even though subjectively I spent two hours there. Had the roll gone differently or the GM decided differently, my ISP cost would have gone up drastically -- each hour in the waking world that I'm Dreamdancing costing 48 ISP (8 ISP per (5 * level) minutes).

That's my take on it all, anyway.

If you find, as a GM, that this seems like power gaming or taking advantage of the whole time difference thing, then the solution as the GM would be to make the time searching simply not make any difference between the Dreamstream and the waking world.

Personally, I think that the ISP cost for this psychic ability is a tad on the high side for long duration dream travels. Were I running a game where the Dreamstream is a part of the game and this was how my psychics were interacting with it, I'd make the duration pretty much indefinate. You spend your 8 ISP, dream away, and not worry about how much time is passing in the waking world while you did your thing. Abuse could easily be handled with time differences, encounters with unpleasant things, things happening in the waking world, etc. Not to mention the fact that while you are Dreamdancing (minor), you aren't getting back any ISP as though you were "sleeping".

Quoth gadrin, "Rifter #9 one of the first powers it explains is [Astral Projection] and there it specifically tells you that the snapping back causes save vs Coma -- whether you believe that or not..."

I believe you that it's there, and I thank you for going through the effort to look it up. I consider it bunk, though, from what I've read and heard about real world tales of astral projection. The flavor of it all seems to be that it's hard getting out of your body deliberatly, moving around, and not snapping back to your body. (Hence the ISP cost, which unlike Dreamdance (minor) I don't think is a little steep.) Why would returning to your body ever put you into a coma? By definition your conscious/spirit returning would wake it. If the rule was to have you roll a save vs Coma in order to snap back suddenly ("ACK! An evil spider demon! Run away!"), then I could see it... and it might work well for preventing abuse by players, as this role woudl be instead of doing anything else that melee round ("Wait, that body I've been trying to forget about through meditation..." *tries to wiggle toes*).
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Unread post by Sanctu »

Quoth gadrin, "sorry, not to be a d*ck..."

When I first read this, I thought, "Why would I mind if you were a duck, exactly?" and thought of people who like ducks in Glorantha.

And you aren't at all.

I understand that you don't care about real world experiences or similiar situations in fantasy literature, and can sympathize. The world in an RPG can easily be very different than anything you might have experienced in another genre. And, as you say, people tend to have different experiences.

Re-reading my own post, there is something I was seriously missing mentally that morning reguarding coming back and saving, etc. I could not wrap my mind around the concept that you would be in a coma (and astrally projecting), and then do something that essentially kept yourself there (you've come back FAST and failed yor save, and are now ina coma). I get it now and was missing something entirely.

Question: what does happen if you are Astrally Projecting and take so long to do whatever it is your doing that you run out of ISP? Is that an instant you-need-to-save vs coma experience?

As far as being lost, yet having this silver cord to get yourself back, that always made some sense to me. Basically, you are roaming around the astral plane, and you have lost track of "where" it actually intersects physical reality, much less where you left from. You have this cord that goes directly to your body, but using it as a guide tends to mean drawing your attention back to your body -- the type of attention that ends the out of body experience you are having. If you add to that the fact that pulling yourself back from such a big distance away actually hurts (ie. save or you wack yourself into a coma), it's not something your able to use to use for finer manipulation. That's how I always looked at it, anyway.
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