Dreamland: Modern or Pre-modern Memories (d100)

To create your waking self for a Dreamland game, roll three times on this 1d100 table. These Memories are intended for a character whose waking self lives in the 20th or 21st centuries.

Each Memory is associated with one of the Five Pillars of Dreamland (Wonder, Mystery, Loathing, Passion or Faraway). In addition to potentially shaping your character’s personality, this determines the type of marvels you can sublimate the Memory to create in Dreamland.

WONDER: beauty and awe
MYSTERY: time, science and magic
LOATHING: hate, fear, disgust
FARAWAY: travel, distance, culture
PASSION: love, music, desire

The connection between a Memory and a particular Pillar isn’t set in stone but depends on your waking self’s emotional connections: for instance, if you have a Memory of a location, you get to choose whether that Memory is Wonderful (because you feel at home there) or Faraway (because it feels new and exciting). During character creation you may rewrite your Memories, including changing the Pillars they are assigned to. For instance, an animal sacrificed on a temple altar might make you feel Loathing instead of Mystery.

Some of the random Memories involve violent or heavy subject matter. If you roll a Memory you don’t want to have as part of your character background, reroll until you come up with something you’re comfortable with.

d100 Result

1

an asylum; the horrible cries of the other inmates (Loathing)

2

sleeping on the streets, cold, hungry and alone (Loathing)

3

the bleak gray factory where you work every day (Loathing)

4

the bombs dropping, destroying your village, burning everything (Loathing)

5

the prison cell where you await your sentence (Loathing)

6

seeing your best friend die in the war, blasted to pieces (Loathing)

7

the authorities threatening to kill your family; fear of the government (Loathing)

8

a lifeless, polluted landscape, where no plant can grow (Loathing)

9

the bleak gray office where you work every day (Loathing)

10

undergoing painful surgeries (Loathing)

11

the bank foreclosing on your house, taking everything you had (Loathing)

12

desire for wealth and success at any cost; ideas of Social Darwinism (Loathing)

13

desire for opium, a drug that dulls the pain of life (Loathing)

14

an ugly reflection in the mirror; feelings of shame (Loathing)

15

your hands covered in blood (Loathing)

16

desire for revenge against those who hurt you (Loathing)

17

your classmates beating you because you are different (Loathing)

18

the painful accident that took your hand/arm/leg/eye (player chooses) (Loathing)

19

hatred of your father/mother/parent (player chooses) (Loathing)

20

hatred of your brother/sister/sibling (player chooses) (Loathing)

21

an ancient graveyard, seemingly endless (Mystery)

22

a strange, ancient silver key (Mystery)

23

knowledge of stars and astronomy (Mystery)

24

encyclopedic details of the plots of modern-day TV shows (Mystery)

25

cryptic tattoos on your skin and what they mean (Mystery)

26

knowledge of strange dice games, books filled with peculiar rules (Mystery)

27

knowledge of machines; how to build them and take them apart (Mystery)

28

a stone, a leaf, an unfound door (Mystery)

29

a strange house high in the mist (Mystery)

30

an ancient, forbidden book with pictures of faceless demons (Mystery)

31

the holy book of your religion, memorized word for word; your faith (Mystery)

32

knowledge of experimental art, Dada and Surrealism (Mystery)

33

how to use a library; researching old journals and dusty tomes (Mystery)

34

a museum of natural sciences; rooms filled with bones, fossils, shells (Mystery)

35

knowledge of mathematics; papers scrawled with strange formulae which you wrote (Mystery)

36

knowledge of computers; how to code (Mystery)

37

a hospital; knowledge of human anatomy (Mystery)

38

a laboratory; banks of glass jars each with a human brain (Mystery)

39

a printing press; the great printing machines, and how to use them (Mystery)

40

a sleep experiment, doctors asking what you dreamed (Mystery)

41

love for your girlfriend/boyfriend/lover (player chooses) (Passion)

42

love for your spouse (Passion)

43

psychedelic drugs and the ecstatic visions they gave you (Passion)

44

love for your brother/sister/sibling (player chooses) (Passion)

45

love for your child or children (player chooses) (Passion)

46

love for your mother/father/parent (player chooses) (Passion)

47

a secret affair out of wedlock; everything about your lover (Passion)

48

love for your teacher or mentor (player chooses) (Passion)

49

love for your best friend (Passion)

50

love of your friends; wild nights out with them, drinking, carousing (Passion)

51

love of your friends; intellectual soulmates, exchanging books and letters (Passion)

52

desire to cause a revolution, to overthrow the regime (Passion)

53

desire to be famous, to make your name known (Passion)

54

love of performance; a great crowd joyfully cheering your name (Passion)

55

love for an ex-lover, whom you loved and lost (Passion)

56

your sense of humor; jokes which seem out-of-context in Dreamland (Passion)

57

desire to create a perfect world (Passion)

58

desire to break social boundaries, to overturn useless conventions (Passion)

59

the lyrics of your favorite pop songs (Passion)

60

love of music, desire to play music (Passion)

61

love of flying, ability to fly a small plane (Faraway)

62

road trips; sitting in the hot car, listening to the radio (Faraway)

63

books filled with stories of fascinating foreign lands (Faraway)

64

knowledge of foreign languages; fascination with languages (Faraway)

65

a distant ship’s smoke on the horizon (Faraway)

66

the earth seen from space; knowledge of rocketry and aeronautics (Faraway)

67

being assigned to a faraway foreign post; the instructions from your superior officers (Faraway)

68

names of hundreds of strange drugs and products sold in a store (Faraway)

69

love of hiking and long walks (Faraway)

70

business trips; your briefcase; lonely motels at night (Faraway)

71

an enormous city with giant towers of glass, metal and stone (New York) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

72

the pyramids rising above the banks of the Nile, and a sprawling city of minarets beyond (Cairo) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

73

a city of steep cobbled streets and beautiful temples and quaint tiled roofs (Kyoto) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

74

a beautiful city of gambrel roofs, lawns and gardens (Boston) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

75

a Medieval city of tall churches and old stone buildings (Prague) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

76

a beautiful city of canals and bridges, streets like rivers with boats floating through them (Venice) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

77

a jungle, ferns and vines in the shadow of great green trees (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

78

a desert of red sand, red mountains in the horizon (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

79

green grassy hills and oak forests and lichen-covered wooden fences of rundown farms (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

80

the Himalayas, high mountains covered with snow, a monastery (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

81

a rocky island, cliffs dropping down to the crashing waves (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

82

a snow-covered port city, a huge church with great domes in fabulous patterns and colors (St. Petersburg) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

83

rusted metal, fences, the shantytown behind the railroad tracks, the smell of cooksmoke (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

84

a great tent city in the desert, at the center is a bonfire with a burning statue of a man (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

85

a huge port city of huge shining towers and houseboats and islands beside the mouth of a great river (Hong Kong) (Faraway or Wonder; player chooses)

86

your faithful dog OR your beloved cat (player chooses) (Wonder)

87

the taste of rarebit cheese (Wonder)

88

the delicious taste of madeleine cake dipped in tea (Wonder)

89

your childhood summers, playing outside till the fireflies come (Wonder)

90

your most beloved childhood toy (Wonder)

91

leaning out of your window to see the stars (Wonder)

92

your collection of pressed plants and flowers (Wonder)

93

your collection of beautiful and strange photographs (Wonder)

94

love of sculpture; making strange sculptures of metal, wood and stone (Wonder)

95

love of drawing; black & white images, your hands stained with ink (Wonder)

96

love of painting; the smell of oil paints, the thousands of colors (Wonder)

97

love of writing; the plots of books you want to write, and have written (Wonder)

98

a green garden with hollyhocks, an old woman sitting singing an old song (Wonder)

99

the old school you went to as a child, warm memories (Wonder)

100

your favorite video games, their beautiful colors & perfect sprites (Wonder)