Let's get into week 1 of this TTRPG devlog. So Pocket Quest 2025 is in full swing this year this year's theme, Dreams & Nightmares, is a toughie. I personally don't haven't consumed a lot of media that follows these themes. Don't get me wrong, stories like the The Sandman comic or movies like Inception fascinate me greatly. But for whatever reason I have always opted for some other type of story when given the choice. So that's coming back to bite me a little. Over the last week I have pulled together an idea I think is going to go really well. At the very least it is something I am excited about, and that's half the battle!
Project Dream (which is what I'm referring to the project until I think of a better name) is going to be a GM-less game where you play as a sentient collection of concepts, of words. Your groups goal will be to traverse a sprawling desert representing a vast mindscape. Working toward reaching the very center of it all so you together can answer a question you don't yet know.
Writing it down it seems very heady, which is kind of the point I suppose. But mechanically it's actually fairly simple so don't let the concept scare you off. Essentially your character holds a collection of words, like Wind, Run, Courageous, Soft, etc. The number of words you hold will potentially affect how powerful the things you do are and definitively will represent your health. Traversing through the mindscape is dangerous and while you will have opportunities to gain words, there are just as many or more that will steal your words away.
All great concepts on paper, but weaving them together is the hard part. There are a lot of moving parts at the moment and some big aspects of Project Dream are catching on each other. As such, refining and defining is my number one priority. Let's dig into those sticking points a little further.
Character Creation
The core of any player's experience and how they interface with the world. Obviously I've made it known I want wordplay to be a major focus of characters. Being a collection of floating words in a cloak traveling the desert has a weird appeal to me. Using parts of yourself up in order to accomplish goals. Risking fading completely away as there is less and less of you there. Which is why it seems like tying your health and the way you DO things seems like an obvious choice.
However what is there to actual do? What does giving up a word actually get you. How does it drive you forward toward your goal? All of these spinning questions rely on other parts of the game before I can start to nail them down. I've tried to start here and only have collection of loose mechanics that don't connect to anything.
Risks & Challenges
A deck of cards and a ten-sided die (d10) are the only things I want the players to need aside from pencil and paper. The deck of cards because I think it would be really cool to make a custom deck for this game. It will serve as a progression mechanic, where drawing a card will reveal the next part of the journey and/or a challenge for the players. The d10 is to allow for some lifting when interacting with the risks and challenges. What that lifting is and how the characters can modify it is still a mystery to me.
It's what is holding me up in this section. Right now the only resource the players can expend are the words that make up their characters. Which wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't also making those words the health of a player. And all of THAT is mute because I don't know what I want the challenges to be. I'm taking some inspiration from Quiet Year (great TTRPG, you should play) where the cards will have prompts the players can choose to interact with. Things like "The storm is starting to pick up, how to do weather it?" or "A ruin half buried in the sand is revealed, what do you find here?" But without knowing how the players will overcome these challenges I am finding it difficult to write them. Which brings me to my final sticking point.
Resolution Mechanic
All of these different ideas are clashing against each other creatively. Not that I don't think they will work together. I just don't know how to build them out when I have so many unanswered questions (a little ironic don't you think?) Nailing down a resolution mechanic, how the players will overcome challenges, I think is my next step though.
I realize I need another resource for the players. I tried to tie words into a players health, power, and end game which is way too much. Keeping it tied to health and the end game I think are, thematically, the best option. Which means this new resource will be paramount in whatever this resolution mechanic is. If I can use it to encourage the players to work together all the better. So that's my main goal this week.
Summing It Up
I need a resolution mechanic to build all the other parts around. It needs to;
Renewable so to last the entire game
Easy to get
Have the slightest risk in obtaining it
Encourages players to work together
Fit Thematically
Not a bad start for a first week all things considered. I know it doesn't seem like much but I have a LOT of random notes on things I want to implement that I came up this week as well. They aren't fully fleshed out but are the raw materials I'll need to continue building Project Dream. Hope you're as eager as I am to see where it goes :)
Thamizhpparithi Maari, River sand of Chinna Salem, Transformed by Michael DeBondt', CC BY-SA 3.0