GM Hyperfocus: Roleplaying in Limbo

The Sleep of Reason Breeds... Awesome Roleplaying Opportunities!

In Kraetyz' recent blog post about the basics of Kult's cosmology, he talks - amongst many other things - about Limbo. This part especially has sparked some lively and inspiring conversations between Krae, Gabe, and me - some of which I want to sum up and share here. 

We'll be looking at the strong similarities between dreams and roleplaying.

And I describe two techniques to help GMs make their RPing in Limbo both easier and more impactful. 

Here's an excerpt from Kraetyz's article about it:

Limbo may appear as an undefined, immaterial realm with little concrete information to take away. That is on purpose. Limbo, being a realm upon which dreams are imprinted and made real (in a sense), is undefined save what we make of it. Waking life might imprint on dreams which in turn imprint on waking life. Quarrelling with your partner in your dreams will leave you waking up angry at them for real, your emotions inexplicable to them but no less real for that. Going to sleep in the wrong place could stir up an ancient dream lingering there. Memories could be treated as interactive movies, complete with fast-forward and rewind buttons and perhaps a settings menu. 

So he very first sentence here - while being entirely accurate and on point - highlights what might be perceived as difficult to run a meaningful game in. If it can be anything, the onus is on the GM to put in the work to make it a meaningful experience. On the other hand, there is great potential there to make your roleplaying in the dreams larger than life; more colourful, more ominous, more intense, and in general dreamier.

This is what is so magical about both dreams and the roleplaying experience.

Limbo, in contrast to Gaia, Inferno, and Metropolis, does not present an objectively existing outside reality, for characters to experience and explore - or be victimized by. Instead, it presents an objectively existing inside reality to immerse in. The magical part comes in when we consider that - while still being objectively real, i.e. in KULT not only emotions, but also physical injuries, acquired wisdom, found objects etc. may carry over from Limbo to the waking world - this Reality can (and will) be different for everyone who observes it. 

We all bring along our own filters and lenses through which we look at this internal reality. It is a Shared Imagined Space - just like the one we create in RPGs - for all of humankind, but we each interpreat and compute based on our own individual persepectives, baggage, aspirations, fears, hopes... 

• Two people might be sharing a nightmare in which they are fleeing a ravening killer. One of the dreamers believes the murderer to be a friend gone mad (perhaps the figure bears the face of a friend, either by the dreamer's subconscious projection, or by deceitful chimerstry on the part of the hunting dream creature?) while the other dreamer sees a horrible subhuman monster (again perhaps a projection of suppressed archaic fears, or due to the creature playing tricks on their mind?)

Which one of them is seeing "the Truth"? If the scene plays out the exact same way for both of them, regardless of the hunter's physical (or well, limbotical) appearance... does it matter? They are both right, in that something horrible, deeply wrong, and dangerous is pursuing them with ill intentions. 

And we can happily leave it at that. Not all "universal Truths" do ultimately have to be nailed down, much less revealed to the players. 

Consider if you will, the philosophical inquiry of "Do people see colours the same way?".
We cannot ultimately, objectively know it - but it also doesn't matter for our everyday lives to work out just fine, regardless. 

As a GM, if one doesn't shy away from this but rather embraces it, running wild with the raw imagination and visualisation that is embodied in Limbo, then knowing that everyone will see the same scene a little differently in their mind's eye can enrich the scene more than it detracts!

In fact, this plays to the strengths of our medium of cooperative storytelling in RPGs. 

Because you can see the exact same thing happening in the Shared Imagined Space (SIS) that is created at an RPG table: Every player (and the GM!) has their own rendition of the in-game fiction in their head. 

Now, one should not romanticize this notion. The effect in Limbo is undeoubtedly stronger. At a coffe table littered with sheets, dice, pencils and softdrinks, there is often barely enough common overlap between everyone's "head movies" to make the game work and no one "glitch out" due to jarring contradictions or other disconnecting factors. In fact, sometimes it happens over the most basic things!

"Wait, what? I thought the stairs were opposite  from the door??"

"Nah, they're right here next to it man. So I walk up them without getting cllose to..."

"Okay, so actually you guys, the stairs are to the side of the room, and opposite from the door you entered, there is another door..." 

"There is another door??" 

"Haven't any of you been listening to a single thing I said?!"

I'm sure we've all been there, seen that, had our parts in it happening. 

However, we need not worry about irrevocably ruining anything. We can always rewind, clarify, redo. 

And the strong points are that you can tailor your descriptions in the awareness of this malleability of the SIS. Keep it to broad strokes, use strong archetypal concepts and remain scarce on the details - unless and until someone asks about them. Focus on what the scene is about, what it's supposed to convey or make happen. Fill in the fiddly bits later, when needed, or never at all.

 

artwork by Iosef Chezan, used with neither permission nor intent of infringement

Personally, I rejoice every time my characters stumble into Limbo in some way or form, since to me as a GM it feels much like 'coming home'. 

There is relief and freedom in the moment you can shed all the hard work of conjuring up a pretend 'logical, rational reality', and just go back to what the medium does best. (There's a reason the rise of RPGs originated in the Fantasy genre, and I suspect this has something to do with it.)

Can we leave timespans and distances ill-defined, mostly vague or entirely unknown, until and unless we need to nail them down? Yup, like in a dream.
Can people be nothing more than vague sprites or stand-ins, except if they're needed to be more detailed than that? You betcha, we do it with NPCs all the time. We'll describe faceless groups of people who are undefinded beyond 'coworkers' or 'extended family' perhaps... without names or personalities or histories... until you zoom in one and suddenly learn that you know a whole lot about them!  Exactly like in a dream.
Can we suddenly let a detail appear in the scene that wasn't noticed before, or shift everyone's attention to something simply by describing it in more detail than whatever else surrounds it? Sure thing - reality is malleable, subjective, and yours to play around with!

Above and beyond that, suddenly time skips or jumps from one location to another are a thing here, too. Even the "wait, let's rewind and revisit that one scene again... how was that...?" thing happens in both media. Jungian symbolism and archetypal tropes are writ large. 

Often enough, we aim our descriptions at directly revealing what things are about, rather than elaborate on a lot of details that at best embellish, at worst obscure, their intrinsic meaning. 

• An example of this last bit here: It is sometimes more important to convey "A terrible menace appears, that you must run away from or suffer its savage depredations", than it is to make sure everyone is on the same page about the exact number of tentacles (when in doubt, make it 17) and the colour of the creature's scaly hide (it's probably a pale purblish-green... but do we need to care?). 
  So why not say that, sometimes?
  "It's a terrible menace, the stuff of your nightmares, looking to savagely victimize any in its path. All must run from it or suffer. What do you do?"
  

May seem reductionist, overly simplistic, counterintuitively unembellished... but you should try it some time! Hold off from asking the players what particular horrors their character sees in the described menace, at least for a while. See how far you can carry the scene before having to nail down some Shared Imagined Truths. I can promise you it's gonna be an interesting experiment, likely to make for an impressive and memorable scene.

Now You're in the Magic Space, How Do You Wield its Power?

At this point, the enterprising Dream-GM may be left to wonder about how, in all this freedom and vagueness and stripped-naked meaning, to give the dreams your characters wander (or are adrift in) some strength. Some punch. Some impact. 

And indeed, something in that vein is often needed. Things cannot be 'whatever, whenever' all of the time. Dreams should be powerful and memorable, idiosyncratic and symbolic.

I use two techniques to achieve that:

Psychology and Dream Logic. You could also call them Genre and Fancy. They play well off of each other, as one provides a general undercurrent of theme and motifs to any given dream you're running your PCs through, and the other provides odd details and specific whimsies to use within the Limbonian environment that is shaped by that general undercurrent.

Psychology / Genre

Dreams are a mirror of the mind. Our emotions and experiences in the waking inform our nightly sojourns to no small degree. This is fierce enough when you're in your own dreams, but it can be much acerbated yet once you start venturing into other dreamers' nightscapes. 

Adding 'dream types' to your repertoire provides you with psychological undercurrents to the dreams you describe, which effectively clads the dreams a genre: A set of expectations and conventions within which the events and scenery unfolds.

You can have dreams of -

• anxiety and dread
• shame and embarassment
• guilt and persecution
  
• arousal and eroticism
• unbridled, pornolicious sex 
• bizarre, nonsensical, or disgusting sex
  
• anger and violence
• fear of violence
• fear of social victimisation
• fear of unspoken menace
• revisiting past situations or settings  (often connected to problem solving)
• pursuing hopes and aspirations
• utopian joy and fulfilment
  
• nostalgia, past prides and joys
• nostalgia, grief and regrets
  
• elation and euphoria  (usually connected to physical activity, movement)
• empowerment and supremacy
  
• alternate reality / timeline / time / city  (examination of differences; emphasis of similarities)
  
• chaotic combinations of obscurely symbolic imagery
• ...
  

...and many more besides.

The important thing here is to choose a dominant theme (or maybe two) that informs the dream the PCs are in right now. Then, whenever reaching for ideas while you improvise and describe the happenings in the scenes that are played out, you can tap into that theme to draw fitting elements from it.

In dreams driven by fear of violence, people you meet may seem large and menacing, half-emptied bottles of alcohol may be standing on coffee tables in otherwise empty rooms, a stranger may approach you in a hunched manner and push a small spraycan of teargas into your hand, mumbling about "I saw you are planning to head down that way..."

In dreams of arousal and eroticism, all the people may look sexy and attractive, all dialogue may feel ladden with flirty subtext and double entendre, the mayor may be clad only in lingerie, alluring scents may linger in the air and tempt you to follow them into darkened pathways...

In a dream featuring an alternate setting, you may find you have never taken the job at the company you work for, but instead applied and gotten hired by a competitor firm. You are still sitting in the exact same kind of business meeting (except the company is in Tokyo and so everyone is wearing kimonos and sitting on the floor) but in this version, the intern is the boss, and the boss is instead seen in the role of the janitor...

It will not always be readily discernible what type of dream you have stumbled into, at least not right from the start. But the longer you stay, the more unmistakable the signs will become. Perhaps at some point, the friction between the dream and the incompatible visiting dreamers becomes too great, and the PCs are expelled from the realm - or worse, attacked by its inhabitants and scenery. Perhaps the dream's genre sweeps you up and takes you away on its own drift, distracting you from your original purpose.

Or perhaps it remains just an undercurrent, a collection of curious and memorable elements that lend a dreamlike quality to events, but ultimately remain largely harmless to the trespassing dream wanderer.

 

artwork by Stefan Koidl, used with neither permission nor intent of infringement

Dream Logic / Fancy

Where the above described Psychology / Genre gives you a constant, but possibly subtle, subtext and context to the dream, this technique gives you very specific, tangible, and definitely unsubtle elements to engage with. 

In general, Dream Logic works just like normal logic - only it doesn't have to make any actual sense in the way our waking minds would understand it. Dream Logic does follow an "if - then" pattern however, and as such can give your players something to meaningfully interact with. It will usually be reliable in producing rather predictable results... once you have puzzled out all the right connections or some other fiddly bits perhaps. 

Just like

• "at zero degrees Celsius, water freezes and turns into ice"
  

dream logic can be applied to include weird "natural laws" in your dreams. These can be to do with (or cause) odd environmental phenomena, certain behaviors by certain creatures/people, surreal attributes of locations, etc.

• In this dreamworld, there are cracks in every sidewalk. Depending on the weather and season, you either must not step on any of them, or you have to step only on them. Failing to do it right will result in the cracks widening, extending, ultimately causing the world to start breaking apart.
• There are black snakes hiding in the shadows here, and when someone turns off the lights they will come forth to bite. Their bite is poison, which makes your arms and legs fall off. Before long, you'll be crawling in the shadows yourself.
  
• In this otherwise idyllic suburban neighborhood, a noticeable number of homes are deserted and abandoned in the wake of violent, even murderous, home invasions. The windows of these houses remember who lived here and grieve for their death or departure. When the wind howls through their broken panes it acquires their sharpness; everyone inside is cut by the draft as if from jagged shards of glass. People in the inhabited houses normally ignore all this to the best of their ability, but when they see these cut wounds on you, they'll throw you out of the dream.
  
• In this small, dusty frontier town, the saloon and the church are the only two buildings in which any music is ever played. While the organ or the piano play, no one in that space can lie. There are often drunken brawls in the saloon, and the priest knows all the confessions he hears to be the pure and unadulterated truth. No other houses contain any musical instruments, nor would the air in there carry a tune or support a melody. 

These are all things that the dreamer - any dreamer who enters the realm - can know about. It can also be a "hidden" law of the dream if you prefer, but it usually leads to more interesting play if dreamers are aware of it. It doesn't have to be in advance, but at the latest when the stimulus / trigger is encountered or imminent, the implications could be clear to anybody present. 

You can handle this use of dream logic in just the same way as you handle the telegraphing and explicit announcing of possible consequences for prospected player actions in general - but leave out the verisimilitude of assuming a rational worldview informing the environment.

Compare:

• If you draw a gun, here at the airport, in plain view of bunches of people, someone will inevitably notice. People will panic, there will be running and yelling, security personnel, an alarm raised. Sooner than later, the police will show up. You sure that's what you wanna do?
• As you close in on the house and cautiously nudge the leaning door open, you notice that the air inside is perfectly still. You know you can go in safely, for now - but it a breeze should arise while you're still in there, you know the wind will wheeze and whistle and howl through the smashed windows, and it will cut you like invisible razors. At the moment however, not a leaf moves on the trees, and not a paper rustles on the floor. Do you still wish to go in?

No matter how irrational a "natural law" in the dreams may be, dreamers in there may just be aware that "that's how it works, here".

Finally

There's a certain highly overused trope related to dreams and nightmares, and it's the notion that All Dreams Are Meaningful. Resist the temptation, at least sometimes, to make everything in the dreams feel symbolic and deeply relevant to the dreamer's personal issues, and/or to the plot of the scenario or campaign. 

Sometimes, dreams are just random bullshit. Sleepy neurons firing on autopilot. Shreds of unauthored ideas whirling outwards from Vortex. Reason and rhyme are optional, in all cases.

Particularly in Kult, consider also that it's far from rare to travail through someone else's dream. These may well be symbolic and meaningful for whoever is dreaming / has dreamt them originally - but all that may be completely lost on a stranger who visits them.

 

 

Where Madness and Logic become one and the same, the Dream forces us to face the limitations of our restricted understanding of Reason and Truth - and beckons us to dare and transcend them.