For the finale of my campaign (set in Greyhawk), the adventurers are going to explore the dreamscape of the sleeping snow elf god of mountains and rivers, Tarsellis Meunniduin.
I'd be interested to hear any suggestions as I design this area . . . What would an adventure in a god's mind be like?
Are there any Pathfinder modules involving dreamscapes? What about dreamscape modules for other systems?
Any suggestions are welcome!
Maybe a sort of riverboat adventure? White water rapids, canals with swift, dark currents, or labyrinthian moors where the party may become lost forever?
If they make it through, there could be an impossibly titanic mountain, full of gold and goblins, dragons and dwarves.
I'd play with the idea that a god is more than a mortal, that a god is what mortals dare not be, so their dreams would be suitably big and grand. Dial up the fantasy meter a bit, compared to the rest of the game.
What sorts of things are you looking for, exactly?
What level is your party?
The old AD&D 1e adventures, EX1: Dungeonland and EX2: The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, definitely have a dreamscape feel; as they are (loosely) based on Lewis Carroll's Alice books. And both feature some (more or less cosmetic) Greyhawk connections, despite being set on their own demiplane. (IIRC, both were incorporated into the later Castle Greyhawk megadungeon, but I'm only familiar with the standalone versions.)
Similarly, The Harrowing (PF, for level 9) is not precisely a dreamscape adventure. It's set in a demiplane where every card in the Harrow deck has manifested in some way, so is pretty bloody surreal. And it involves a great deal of dream-like logic to figure out what's going on well enough to escape.
I've only played a couple Pathfinder modules that actually used the dreamscape rules. One was a PFS scenario, which I'm blanking on the name of at the moment. The other was The House on Hook Street (level 6), which is primarily set in Korvosa, but involves a number of dream-haunts erupting into the waking world, followed by the PCs having to enter the Dimension of Dreams in order to deal with their source. It's easily the creepiest PF adventure I've ever played, and the module encourages the GM to tailor some of the horrors to the PCs. (Pre-game, our GM asked questions like: What was your greatest success? What was one of your failures? Who is someone who have a positive relationship with? A negative one?)
Finally, there is the Dreamlands supplement for Call of Cthulhu, but using any of that material would take a great deal of conversion. It might, however, give you more context for Lovecraftian elements that have made it into Pathfinder, such as Leng, zoogs, Nyarlathotep, etc. I'm also not sure how much of it fits the idea of being inside a god's dreaming mind, precisely--though the plot of "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" itself (which the sourcebook summarizes, but the novella is well worth a read, too) could be interpreted as exactly that.
I once did a oneironaut campaign with The House on Hook Street, Realm of the Fellnight Queen and The Harrowing.
Great suggestions, everyone! Thank you. I'll definitely check out House on Hook Street & Dreams of the Yellow King.
(In particular, I like the idea from Hook Street of visiting the same location in reality and then in dream: I might have Tarsellis' sleeping place be a temple of his that must be adventured in twice in this way.)
I'd forgotten about the Dreamlands supplement back in the day but I might look into that, as I don't mind converting stuff at all.
If anyone remembers the name of the PFS scenario, I'd love to check that out too.
Since Tarsellis is specifically an elven deity of mountains, winter, rivers, and the snow elf people, I want to make those elements overwhelming in the dreamscape--if anyone has specific ideas along those lines, I'd love to hear it. In Greyhawk lore, he departed from the elven pantheon (the Seldarine) after being seduced away from his wife Ehlonna by the goddess Megwandir, who later became Lolth. When he realized her betrayal, he tore out his own heart and buried it in the mountains before departing into the Shadow Plane/Feywild (same plane IMC) to become the Master of the Wild Hunt.
The characters have recovered his heart and have journeyed into the Shadowlands to replace the god's heart in his body while his spirit, as Master of the Wild Hunt, hunts down their retired characters from the previous campaign (who are acting as a distraction for the god to give the new characters a chance to succeed).
The characters are merely 9-10 lvl (so little in the Shadowlands as almost not noticed) but I convert everything anyway, so a 20th lvl module is as useful to me as a 1st lvl one. I've pulled in a lot of the Shadow stuff from Kobold Press for this campaign: Wrath of the River King, Courts of the Shadow Fey, and Paizo stuff like Realm of the Fellnight Queen.
Also, I'm curious--there are some Pathfinder adventures set in Leng, right? which is mountainous . . .
Does anyone know if there's anything appropriate to Tarsellis' dream/nightmare in the Pathfinder Leng stuff?