Idea for a Dreamlands D&D Campaign

Since I’m revisiting The Sandman and the idea of the Dreaming recently, it made me think of a concept I had for a D&D campaign/episodic side campaign in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. Or, well, an altered-to-suit Dreamlands.

Because I always did love the mythopoeia of the Dreamlands. I’ll admit that I first came across them not in Lovecraft himself, but in the third book of Jonathan L. Howard’s Johannes Cabal series. Like a lot of Lovecraft’s ideas, they’ve been reused and updated several times. If you try to look up a map of the Dreamlands, a lot of them are ever so slightly different. Which is cool. But I love the ideas of the Plateau of Leng where fiends/aberrations prowl, the city of Celephaïs ruled by its dreamer king, the city of Ulthar where one mustn’t harm the cats, the port of Dylath Leen where the black ships of the moon creatures come to trade, the Moon itself where eldritch cities of aberrations lurk, the Enchanted Woods where dreamers often enter the Dreamlands …

And I like it for a D&D campaign specifically because you can dip in and out. The main way to enter the Dreamlands is via your dreams (or drugs), and while you’re there you can be someone completely different.

(It’s almost a hybrid of a Domain of Dread and an Astral Dominion? You could put a lot of Ravenloft rules and flavour on this)

So. I was thinking. You could have a Dreamlands plot as the focus, or as a side-along to a party’s adventures in their own realm. When they take a particular drug, they can venture into the Dreamlands for a session/night, play as completely different characters if they want, and then wake back up in their own world/bodies the next session/morning. If their Dreamlands ‘character’ dies in the dream, they just wake up early, and have to recreate it/create a new one to go back in. It’s an interesting thought, to have their characters essentially make a character, someone to be in their sleep, and to lose them/have to make new ones if they died in their sleep. So if you wanted to play as a different class/build for a while, while still staying in the same story without sacrificing your current character, this sort of campaign/side plot could be a way to do it.

And for why they might want to do this …

Dreamlands Adventure Hooks:

The Dreamlands are a vast Astral Dominion, located in that strange borderland where the Astral Sea meets the Far Realms, and ruled over by the Outer God/Great Old One Nyarlathotep (Arcana, Trickery).

Nyarlathotep’s influence makes the Dominion all but impenetrable to spelljamming, unless the god is moved to allow a ship’s entry on a whim or for some purpose of its own. Nor can travellers enter the dominion via the Astral Projection spell. The only guaranteed way to enter the Dreamlands is the consumption of a drug called dreamsand, which induces a state similar to the Astral Projection spell, though this Astral Form can only access the Dreamlands, and need not resemble the consumer’s earthly form.

Dreamsand has begun to proliferate on certain realms. Sages, scholars, bards and poets have begun to praise its use, for the Dominion of the Dreamlands is wonderous and said to contain inspiration and forbidden arcane knowledge long since lost to other realms. The source of this sudden availability of dreamsand is unknown, and likely deeply suspicious. What reason would Nyarlathotep have for suddenly inviting a slew of otherworldly visitors to his dominion?

As well as dreamsand, certain rumours and legends have also begun to circulate. Among them, that somewhere in the Dreamlands is an artefact called the Silver Key, which would not only allow you to bring back knowledge from the Dreamlands, but also physical artefacts (ie treasure) as well. The wonders of the Dreamlands are many, and some impossible to create anywhere but there. The chance to bring back such physical wonders, artefacts and magic would be a coup indeed …

(The Silver Key, quite possibly, would create a portal that would allow the aberrant inhabitants of the Dreamlands to invade outwards, which might well be the purpose of the dreamsand proliferation and the rumours of the Key in the first place, but it would take questioning a high-ranking cultist of Nyarlathotep, and one that was still sane, to discover that little tidbit)

In response to these rumours, many hardy adventurers and voracious scholars have begun taking dreamsand with the intent of exploring the far reaches of the Dreamlands for the Key. Does it lie in the mysterious port of Dylath Leen? The vast summit of Hatheg-Kla, the mountain where the gods of the Dreamlands are meant to dwell? Perhaps on the strange, cold plateau of Leng, where fiends and aberrations are said to prowl? Perhaps the mysterious island of Oriab? In the eldritch ruins of destroyed Sarnath, that hapless city? Or does it even reside on the Dreamlands’ Moon, reachable only through passage on one of the strange black galleys that dock at Dylath Leen?

One thing’s for sure, a lot of adventurers are keen to find out. And not all of them are waking back up, if they take the dreamsand too often or for too long …