Nightmares - an Unnerving Sense of "Wrongness"

[Shadow]

Last night I had a nightmare.

I was commuting from work and had to switch trains. However, the station seemed huge...much more towering and labyrinthine than I remembered it; I had to run down several stories of stairs to get to the platform. I ended up getting to the platform just as the train was departing! Damn, I missed the train. I'll have to wait for the next train or find call a friend to give me a ride home.

Somehow I got home. In my apartment my parents and my brother were there to greet me and welcome me back. Huh? I don't live in the same apartment as my parents or brother. Did they come all the way overseas to visit me? As I excused myself to my room, I began to feel an increasingly unnerving sense of "wrongness". My apartment was slightly different from what I remembered it - slightly more spacious and much neater. Moreover, I felt more and more "trapped in a dream". Everything was too vivid to be a simple dream, but not real enough to be reality. Who was I? Was this real? What was happening?


Upon awakening to the sound of the alarm clock, I was thoroughly disturbed and creeped out by this dream. Thinking back on it, there was nothing remotely threatening or "scary" about what I dreamed. In fact, some things should have been comforting (seeing my parents and brother). Yet, there was an all encompassing sense of "wrongness" throughout everything. The layout of the station and my apartment was wrong, my parents and brother "shouldn't" be living in my apartment. Most of all, was the weird "in between the dream world and waking world" atmosphere that pervaded everything (i.e. too real for a dream, not real enough to be reality). Altogether, this made everything much more frightening than a simple nightmare of being chased by a monster.

The surreal is definitely much more frightening than the overtly menacing and threatening. (Think of the whole uncanny valley phenomena.) The 2e Nightmare Land Box Set had scenarios for nightmares, but if I remember correctly, most of the dreams involved some direct menace to the PCs. Although, frightening, I'm trying to think how you could pull off such horror in a role playing game - an essentially oral medium. How could you describe a sense of "being caught between dream and waking" without directly telling the players how their characters feel? Could such a horror effectively work in Ravenloft?

[Brandi]

I'm trying to think how you could pull off such horror in a role playing game - an essentially oral medium. How could you describe a sense of "being caught between dream and waking" without directly telling the players how their characters feel? Could such a horror effectively work in Ravenloft?

Not every player will appreciate this, but if you go ahead and describe the wrongness in a tone that doesn't broadcast THIS IS VERY WRONG you can drive them nuts. One time I had some people pacing out a room in a haunted castle to see how long it was. When they walked from the door to the back wall it was 15 feet. When they walked back it was 16.

It stayed like that when they paced it a second time-- and switched the third time. And I just gave the description as if it was a perfectly normal room all the time. Put them on edge just a bit it did.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I've had dreams like that, specifically finding rooms in my house that were never there before. Nothing scary in the room, just the oddness of a room that should not be.

I've played with the concept a bit in some recent dream scenarios in my campaign...

A clocksmith PC dreams he's working on his latest invention in his workshop (except that he doesn't have a workshop in the real world).

A PC with a dead mother dreams he's having dinner with her. Nothing sinister in the dream (until later) except that she shouldn't be there. She's not rotting or anything, just happy and alive when she shouldn't be.

Another male PC with a possible crush on a female PC dreams that she is throwing herself at him, except he knows that in reality, she is too Innocent to do so.

The best nightmares aren't scary so much as they are wrong.