Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros
Complete rules
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 whose 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.
Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros is a full-fledged fantasy roleplaying game built around an elegant action system that covers everything from casting a spell to sailing a ship to picking a lock or writing a play--all elegantly resolved on a single table. Included is a flexible character generation system that lets you play the character you want, extensive equipment lists, rules for time and movement, eating and sleeping, fatigue, endurance, life points, wounds, first and full aid, poisons, diseases, & combat - including particular successes and fumbles. There are even optional rules for astrology, luck, destiny, morale, even the uplifting (and sometimes devastating) effects of love and music. Check out advanced and detailed rules for seafaring, alchemy, botany, diseases, and ancient texts. Best of all, these mechanics are all based on the single resolution table, so all the rules work smoothly together.
The concept of the Archetype - the sum of your character's knowledge through all her incarnations - is detailed in a system that uses reincarnation as the critical device for allotting experience. This unique experience system allows characters to grow in a multitude of ways: from stressful encounters and situations; training and apprenticeship; and rolling exceptionally well when attempting difficult actions.
What would a fantasy game be without magic? Between these covers you'll find a comprehensive and unique magic system. High Dreamers enter a trancelike state, travel through the Dreamlands to cast their spells. Learn about the nature of Dream and reality, master the tools of the trade, and have encounters in the Dreamlands. Manipulating the stuff of dream has its perils and rewards: complete tables are presented for Dragon Tails, Breaths, and Necromantic Shadows - deleterious side effects of the High Dreamer's calling - as well as Dragon Gifts. Learn how to interpret Draconic signs, master the seven meditations, and gain experience and learn new spells and rituals from a list of over 200 in all:
- The Way of Oneiros includes area-effecting spells such as Air to Fire, Mirrors, and Teleportation.
- Illusions, Suggestions, and Invocations such as Amnesia, Invisible Humanoid, Transformation, Invoke Sord Warrior and Wary Murder are the stuff of The Way of Hypnos.
- In The Way of Narcos you will learn how Dream is invested in inanimate matter and magic items are thereby made; virtually any magic item can be devised - at a cost - according to the Eight Rules of Enchantment, using such rituals as Purification, Mastery, Scale of Effectiveness, and Grand Scales of Narcos.
- Finally, come over to the dark side of the Dreaming and enter the world of nightmare, The Way of Thanatos. Possess your unfortunate victims and cast Curses such as Blindness, Disease, or Interdiction; converse with the dead, animate corpses, and even have nightmare entities do your bidding.
Rêve: the Dream Ouroboros also provides a unique cosmology of parallel dreams. The multidream is explained and travel between dreams -- whether via Rifts, Blur Dream or Grey Dream -- is detailed. The Three Ages, Journeyers and the custom of the Journey, and the role of villages and cities are likewise included. Rêve includes several humanoids: encounter (or even play) the mysterious blue cyan, drolls with their Evil Eye ability, gigants, gnomes, mockturtles, ogres, repviles, saurians and sylvans, among others: 14 species in all.
The game's bestiary includes animals from the dangerous bane, to the horrific ghûl, to the sibylline oracle bird, to the terrible turntooth. There are walking nightmares like the coqmare, kraken, shadow and sludgehammer. Or encounter pure nightmare entities like Hates, Fears and Despairs. But not all dream entities are evil: there are chimeras and unicorns, too. With over a hundred creatures and entities, any Dream Keeper will find ample resources for his campaign.