Pretendo Games

Sometimes I get game ideas while dreaming. I used to post them to G+, but since that’s soon to be gone, I figured I’d share a few here that I dug up.

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I dreamt I designed a super-simple D&D variant that fit the rules entirely on a quarter of a standard 8.5″ x 11″ page, and also fit the entirety of a character sheet in the same amount of space. The idea was that you’d print out one page with the rules 4 times over, and then on the back, you’d print out a page with all 4 character sheets (fighter, thief, wizard, cleric), then cut it in 4, and everybody would get a wee tiny character sheet with a wee tiny rules reference on the other side.

I woke up and realized this is totally doable, but also that I’m not sure why I’d go out of my way to make or play this when the real selling point seems to be “like every other minimalist D&D game, but you don’t go through as much paper.”

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I dreamt I designed a heretical GLOG D&D variant that went up to level 5 and included rules for partial success.

This dream led to me realize that I my dreams get pretty mundane when my life is less stressful.

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I dreamt that I came across some beautiful and mysterious games that nevertheless irked the hell out of me because I couldn’t figure out what they were for. I assumed they were all part of some shared line because they had a similar design and illustration aesthetic (reminiscent of Dungeon Crawl Classics), but without any clear indication on the cover of who published them, or even what the games were about. I inferred from the illustrations that they were an OSR take on urban fantasy, focused on modern-day magic users operating in secret societies, but I couldn’t quite tell you why.

Eventually, of course, it turned out that the reason these books were so confusing and weird was that they were actually magic, which meant that stumbling upon them in some random local bar inadvertently put me in grave danger. 

In short, I think I dreamt the beginnings of a marketing plan.