Of Dreams and Despair is an experiment in Play-by-Post gaming.
Victory Conditions
- A Participant reaches the Heart of the Castle and survives the ensuing encounter.
- A Participant has successfully discovered the Castle's History and can recount all major events.
- The 22 Tarosian Entities have been defeated.
Failure Conditions
- All the Participants are either Dead, Lost or Corrupted and no new Participants have entered the Castle.
Leveling Up
Throughout the adventure, Participants will receive Experience Points based on the accomplishments of the group as a whole, known as the Collective. Whenever the Collective gains enough Experience Points to level up, every Participant who is neither Dead or Lost levels up. Corrupted Participants also level up.
Taint
As well, Of Dreams and Despair uses the Taint mechanics from Heroes of Horror, except for the following modifications:
- You do not gain a bonus feat upon reaching moderate or severe taint thresholds.
- Any Participant who reaches the Dead/Insane threshold instead becomes Corrupted. He continues playing, loses all the penalties that his symptoms would produce and is now a PC controlled enemy. He will obstruct other Participants and attempt to slay as many as possible.
- There are ways for Corrupted Participants to be returned to normal. Doing so returns them to Severe Taint and they are no longer against the other Participants.
- There are ways of reducing Taint. Find them.
Exploring the Castle
Of Dreams and Despair has a lot of puzzles and situations that will require you to think things through. Explore everywhere you can, use Perception to find things, but be wary... not everywhere is safe.
Participants are not required to travel as a group. For the ease of gameplay however, actions taken by any Participant is known to all. This helps the Participants coordinate themselves, but also allows Corrupted Participants to easily stalk and prepare.
Getting Into the Game
The Campaign has already begun. A Participant wishing to join the game must head to the Recruitment thread and submit his profile. As soon as I have verified your profile's character sheet and I have replied that you are accepted you may head right to the gameplay thread and begin exploring.
Participants joining in later in the game begin at the current Level (indicated in the Campaign Info tab).
The last and final warning is that there can be no more than 5 Participants at a time within the Castle. If ever a Participant becomes Dead, Lost or Corrupted, the next person in the Recruitment thread will be PMed a message that his Character can now enter the Castle.
It is HIGHLY recommended for Participants not currently in the Castle to follow the gameplay and the events occurring in the Castle so that they already know what to do, and where to explore.
