Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros

Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros cover

Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros, by Denis Gerfaud
A 232-page PDF rulebook for all levels of player

Cover illustration by Florence Magnin
Interior illustrations by Rolland Barthélémy.

It's dangerous to play with Dragons...
Does adventure mean more to you than hack & slay, dungeon crawling, and min/maxing? Feel like you're drowning in a tired sea of character classes, races, spells, and rules rules rules? Looking for a game with elegant mechanics while fostering a sense of poetry and wonder?

What game do you dream in?
Welcome to Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros - a world of high roleplaying and oneiric adventure. Rêve is a skill-based RPG with a revolutionary action resolution system that allows players to manage the subtleties of their characters, not juggle a myriad supplementary rule books.

Rêve features a unique magic system consisting of four Draconic Ways: Hypnos, Oneiros, Narcos, and Thanatos; a truly deadly combat system; and 14 humanoid races and 90+ creatures.

Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros contains EVERYTHING you need to play or run a game. Also included are 3 adventures that enable you to start your Rêve gaming today!

It has a feel of someone mixing Gormenghast, Lord of the Rings, and The Dying Earth chronicles with a bottle of NyQuil, and writing down the resulting dream.
— Mime Assassin





she sleeps...

Malcontent Games was launched in 2002 to publish the English-language edition of the highly acclaimed Rêve de Dragon, a roleplaying game of oneiric fantasy. Written by Denis Gerfaud, it has had a loyal following in France since the mid 1980's, and now as Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros it is garnering rave reviews from English-speaking players.

Here at the Malcontent Games website, you can learn more about Rêve, download free supplementary materials, and find links to our many Rêve products.

Please enjoy Rêve, and come back often.

Thanks, the Malcontents

Rêve: The Dream Ouroboros imagines that all worlds and everything in them are dreamed by an inaccessible race of dragons (the original French name, Rêve de Dragon, literally means "dream of the dragon".) Characters are Journeyers, compulsive wanderers in the multidream. Their whole purpose it is to see what lies over the next hill, what strange customs exist in the next city, what bizarre creatures lurk through the next Violet Rift, unfolding the designs of unguessable dreamers.

But, just as a nightmare can wake the dreamer in a cold sweat, so too can these dreamed characters, mere figments of the dragons' collective unconscious, affect the greater Dreaming. Of course, it's dangerous to play with Dragons... The Third Age is restless with dreams, and that urge you feel to pull on your boots and brave the night winds is the Journey, calling you.

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Denis Gerfaud

Introduction from the author
Denis Gerfaud

When no one knows what lies over the next hill, perhaps a nightmare monstrosity patiently waiting its appointed hour; when no one knows where that track leads to that none has taken in living memory-perhaps to a rift, a barely visible 'violet cloud' which will send you forever into another, unknown world-one has a tendency to stay home.

There is nevertheless a custom usually followed by most sedentary peoples: to attempt the Journey, at least once in one's life. The Journey might be as simple as going someplace where one has never been before. For some, the Journey might involve going to the village beyond the next one, then hurrying back with a few memories that will grow with embellishment over the years as they are told and retold on winter evenings around the fire. For others, more ambitious, the Journey might take them as far as the nearest city. And for a few others, the Journey just continues...

Player characters are by definition Journeyers. They have known the road and trackless wilderness, nights spent sleeping on the ground, campfires under the eaves of a forest or an inn found by providence. Regardless of their prior peregrinations, they have at least once had the experience of passing through a rift in the Dreaming. As a result, they are not in their world of origin and they know that their chances of ever seeing home again are infinitesimally slight. Forever uprooted, they have become authentic Journeyers (with a capital J): characters for whom the Journey has become an end in itself. To take in the world in its infinity, to marvel at its diversity, to rediscover the path of one's own forgotten dreams and to find oneself in the end ever stronger, ever greater: this is the lifeblood of these characters who love their freedom above all else.

Rêve is
Brought to You By

Denis Gerfaud
The author and creator of Rêve de Dragon saw the first edition of his game published in 1985. Rêve de Dragon's second edition (which is the basis for Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros) was published by Multisim in 1993. It is one of France's most popular roleplaying games, and since Multisim's demise has been picked up by the French publisher Ubik.

Mr. Gerfaud has written numerous scenarios for Rêve de Dragon. Countless adventures have been published in French gaming magazines such as Casus Belli, Dragon Radieux, Info-Jeux Magazine, Chroniques d'Outre-Monde, and Graal.

Florence Magnin
Rêve's cover artist is a native Parisian and has provided illustrations for the 2nd Edition of Rêve de Dragon, and the Rêve de Dragon campaign world known as The Unirêve. Her work can also be seen in Three Reflections of Old Dreams, Ambre, and Dragon Noir, as well as numerous comic book projects.

Rolland Barthélémy
The illustrator of Rêve de Dragon & Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros, he has worked in advertising and media in France since 1982 as an illustrator and graphic artist, primarily as a freelancer. He has simultaneously pursued his career as a role-playing game illustrator, a career which, in the last twenty years, has known the same vicissitudes as role-playing games themselves.

His illustrations appear in roleplaying games published by: Jeux Actuels, Jeux Descartes, Halowe'en Concept, Multisim, Nestiveqnen, as well as such magazines as: Opzone, Orbites, Okapi, Les Cahiers de la Région P.A.C.A., Mag'Jeunes, Métal Hurlant (the French version of Heavy Metal magazine), Casus Belli, Jeux et Stratégies, Plasma.

English-language Playtesters
Sean Briscoe, Mike Burke, A. Armand de Orive, Curran Engel, Robie Evans, Tom Gerrow, Mike Greene, Kelly Henley, Randall Hollensbe, Monty Kerr, Whitney Madere, John Neill, Damon Lane Waldrip, Rob Wiberg, Jon Wolf, Eng-Shien Wu.

Rêve de Dragon is a registered trademark in France of Denis Gerfaud.

Rêve : the Dream Ouroboros (English translation of Rêve de Dragon) ©2002-2005 published by Malcontent Games under license of Denis Gerfaud.