by RockyMountainNavy, 9 December 2024
Tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs) that use a house game engine are interesting. The challenge in learning how to play is not how the game engine operates, but operating the game engine in order to make the setting work. This means that players and referees must figure out how to make the game engine work within the setting to not only fit into the story, but to also advance it. When an RPG setting is a well-known franchise, or part of an adventuring world that has been around for decades, the players and referee likely bring a certain degree of metagame knowledge that helps build adventures. On the other hand, when the setting is new and different it may be harder to “get in the mood” of that world. In Modiphius Entertainment’s Dreams and Machines one has a game built on a proven game engine—the 2d20 System—with a setting that appears space opera but seems more focused on younger, even naive, characters working together.
On the surface, Dreams and Machines looks like many other post-apocalyptic sci-fi settings:
A world in the far future, cut off from Earth, where inhabitants balance on a razor’s edge between technological distrust and reverence. A world where sleeping mechs form part of the landscape, part of the culture. Banners and flowers decorate the rustling goliaths while the communities that make their homes around them celebrate births, festivals, and harvests all in the shadow of tools of devastation, now slumbering, their former purpose forgotten. Rumors swirl of a Dark City and yet more tell of Wakers. Mechs that move, that kill, that cannot be stopped. But rumors always swirl, like cloth in the wind. Who’s to say what is real and what is fiction?
The world is wider than you know. It’s time to explore it. (Dreams and Machines, RPG Quickstart, p. 2 and Player’s Guide, p. 10).
Dreams and Machines uses Modiphius Entertainment’s 2d20 System. As the Player Guide summarizes:
In this system, any given Test is always taken by rolling 2d20s (hence the name!) and comparing the results to the attribute you’re testing against. Any die that rolls equal to or lower than the attribute is a success, and each Test will tell you how many successes you need to pass the Test. You also have a few different options of adding additional d20s, usually by spending resources like Spirit. (Player Guide, p. 12)
The setting of Dreams and Machines draws on many tropes. Ostensibly, you have a high-tech society that crossed the stars only to be cut off. In an effort to survive and reconnect humanity turned to machines, that is, until the machines turned on humanity. A long-forgotten conflict ensued and civilization inevitably fell. Now, several hundred years later, humanity is rebuilding in a world described as, “an eclectic riot of the super advanced merged with the hyper primitive“ (Player Guide, p. 37).
Player characters (PCs) in Dreams and Machines lean into the tropes of the setting. Some are high-tech, others enjoy primitive ways. Some are scientists, others are more secular. Some are warriors, others are peaceniks. A key part of character creation is the PCs ability other get along with others.
When reading the Player Guide to Dreams and Machines and looking at the Quickstart adventure, it become obvious that the creators of the setting saw it being explored by young people; seemingly teenager and up. Indeed, the pregenerated character in the Quickstart all look to be aged in their late teens or very early twenties…at best. The artwork in the rule book seemingly reinforces that age emphasis. The opening story in the Gamemaster’s Guide features two “children”—albeit armed with guns.
The Gamemaster’s Guide for Dreams and Machines offers this advice for GMs:
You will have noted at this point that many of the rules in this section encourage players to help each other out. This is a very deliberate! You should let your players know that they benefit from acting compassionately towards each other, and aiding each other, especially in the heat of combat. A group that supports each other is far stronger in Dreams and Machines than a group that does not. (Gamemaster’s Guide, p. 122).
The need for player characters in Dreams and Machines to work with one another is reinforced by the game engine. Bonds between characters govern how they interact and draw strength from each other, both in positive and negative manners. When a PC’s Spirit is depleted they are exhausted and recovery can often only come with the aid of others.
Dreams and Machines is a world where naivety is rewarded and nothing is impossible without a couple of friends. For a world that seemingly is bleak, the setting and its application of the game engine is surprisingly positive. Some players may have trouble with the seemingly sugar-coated setting; for myself the question I asked is why are the people so content to live in the shadows of the mechs when they know at any moment they might turn into a “Waker” and slaughter many? Why not destroy them before they wake?
The most revealing clue given by the writers and creators of Dreams and Machines about the setting and how they envision players adventuring within comes from their discussion of religion on Evera. In the Player Guide they write:
Many of the initial colonists brought their faiths with them from Earth and they continue to be integral parts of communities, though members of different faiths have gained a greater understanding and acceptance of each other’s beliefs and often share and maintain the same spaces for worship. After the Builder War, more people found faith, with a strong focus on community building.
Religious conflict is unheard of on Evera Prime, thanks to the evolution of understanding and acceptance between many diverse cultures and faiths that make up the colony world.
In terms of Dreams and Machines as an RPG setting, this means players should feel comfortable expressing their or their character’s religion, to as great or as little an extent as they wish, or not at all….
If you want to include faith or religion in your campaign you should discuss this with your group since it can have a personal impact. Any character’s ties to any real world religion should never be a point of conflict. (Player Guide, p. 24).
Players of Dreams and Machines will find playing the game easy to learn as the version of the 2d20 game engine used here has few adjustments to make it fit the setting. Players of Dreams and Machines will, however, need to “buy into” the setting which is focused on community building. The game engine rewards players who get along and will force players who want to be that “loner” or counter-culture type to conform if they are to survive adventuring—all for the good of the community. In more than a few ways that makes Dreams and Machines suitable for teen RPG players. Like their PCs, the players will know something about the “reality” of the world but will not be so wedded to it that the adventure cannot spring forth.
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