How to Use Dreams and Hallucinations in Your Story

Years ago, when I was DMing for Listen Check, a D&D campaign live broadcast on the radio and podcasted, I needed a way for my developing arch villain of the story, Gruumsh, to needle the players into helping him with a quest. I don't remember how the idea came to me, but I decided it would be interesting to have him communicate with them and torture them through their dreams. 

It was a very dramatic effect. The campaign's players told me that the dream sequences were some of the most affecting parts of the game, and in large part, I believe, because the idea of our minds not being fully our own is very compelling to humans. Most all of us dream, at least a few times, so we're familiar with the ways that dreams usually work. But if you're like me--I have have about 5 dreams in my 32 years of life, and they are a bit more consistent logically than what others describe, so I don't really know what the average dream life is like--it bears mentioning a few of the things that characterize dreams and hallucinations (which I do have some considerable experience with, unfortunately). 

So why should you take this example up and follow it? If you're a storytelling campaign, you probably know that interesting and strange experiences are usually the most exciting for players. Being dropped into a virtual dreamworld where someone is actually consciously guiding the experience is exactly that kind of experience. And you can really move the plot along in fun ways. In the example I mentioned above, Gruumsh gave the characters terrible nightmares on every day that they did not put forth effort to serve him. This created a new dynamic in the storyline where the players felt compelled to plan their days carefully and could roleplay the dread of realizing there was no time left to pursue the quest. And this opened doors for me to deliver news in interesting ways. On one occasion, a character unknowingly advanced the quest, and when they didn't receive a nightmare, they spent a while scrutinizing their actions in the day, trying to figure it out--an organic puzzle! My point here is, it can really spice the game up. 

So how do we create an experience like this? A surreal out-of-mind experience like a dream or a hallucination is mostly defined by its strange logic. I have learned three main things in this regard about common dreams:

1. Oftentimes, you know that something is true even though it is not obvious at all, for instance seeing a dog and knowing that it's your Aunt Brenda somehow. This is a good detail to include: "You see your party mate, but you know it's actually the evil lich." You can also use this to set up a surprise; the dreamer/hallucinator might "know" something like this throughout a dream only to be shocked when the opposite is true later on. 
2. The narrative direction of dreams changes rapidly, and the transitions between ideas do not explain the change. To replicate this in a game dream, you can say something like, "The green knight gives you the package. You turn. Now you're on a boat in a desert. It smells like toasted almonds." This sensory overload helps set the dream up. 
3. There is an emotional undercurrent to a dream or hallucination. In my experience, it can feel like the experience was tailored specifically to have an effect on me. Without trying to force our players to feel negative emotions, we can gently offer them the suggestion of a feeling to roleplay by either describing a general tone, or even just saying explicitly, "After the clouds go away, you feel very sad and lonely." 

This is our basic toolbox; the rest will be the same storytelling and improvising that GMing always is. We're basically aiming to set up a dreamlike environment, and then we add in drama related to the narrative. I think that an example of a dream or hallucination can help to illustration what this looks like. 

The game Don't Rest Your Head is set in a nightmare realm. But in order to get your character into the Mad City, as it is called, your GM is going to have to get you from the world we know into a city of dreams and waking dreamers. When I was introduced to this game as a player, my GM (who had played D&D in a group I ran around the same time) asked me what I was likely to be doing. I had designed a very aggressive computer hacker and gamer, so I said he'd be stealing electronics at the mall. And so my GM improvised a story about my getting caught at the mall and fleeing to a bus stop where I got picked up just in time--all very dramatic and lovely--and then the bus changed. My character was surrounded by monsters from nightmares. It was frightening and affecting, and then my character woke up in the Mad City. It was a fun introduction, and he used a hallucination or waking dream to deliver it. 

On thing that is worth acknowledging from the DM perspective before breaking this example down is that you will taking more narrative control with a dream than you ordinarily would for regular storytelling. You have to describe things in better detail to make the dreamworld seem colorful. You have to take some control away from the player to replicate how we are not acting consciously in our dreams (most of us, anyway). You have to tell the player how they feel in the dream, whereas you would ordinarily never want to do that. In the above example, my GM spoke uninterrupted for a lot longer than he normally likes to because that's what the situation called for. 

Other things of note about the paragraph include that it unfolded following the three points I set out above. The first sign on the bus that something was wrong was that my GM said something like, "You feel like everyone is watching you, but when you look at them, nobody is, but you still feel like they are." This is a good "You just know something is off" moment. Then there was rapid change: the people on the bus transformed, we were suddenly surrounded by different scenery, I think I remember the sensation of falling. And then there was an emotional moment: my character was left alone in the streets, knowing he was in danger he could do nothing to defend against. 

One final takeaway is that it's good to have a goal in mind when you're using dreams and hallucinations. They are fun to use, but it can feel a little like aimless goofing around if there's no idea being communicated by the dream. In my example, my GM was performing the important task of introducing my character to the gameworld. And even in a game that was set in a city of nightmares, my GM never again took away narrative focus to deliver another dream sequence. When I used dreams and hallucinations in Listen Check, I did so only when the story called for it, and even that was partially dictated by the players themselves. The other times I have used a dream or hallucination in a game have been spare--I have only used perhaps one dream sequence in an entire campaign when there wasn't some narrative reason that the information was being conveyed that way. 

It's worth noting as well that the more you know about your players' characters' backstories, the better. The most affecting dreams that happened in Listen Check involved characters' families and friends, which are only created when the player develops a backstory. So pay attention to those details more than you normally would (which should be a lot--paying attention to what your players put into the game always makes you a better GM). 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a profile on famous people in my homebrew setting, a list of more campaign ideas, and tips for creating an interesting villain. Until next time, happy gaming!

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