{"id":1699,"date":"2020-01-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:38","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-the-last-stand-of-the-dream-guard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2020\/01\/five-or-so-questions-on-the-last-stand-of-the-dream-guard\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on The Last Stand of the Dream Guard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have an interview with Jaye Foster today about The Last Stand of the Dream Guard, available for purchase now<\/a>! Check out this one night tragedy and Jaye’s answers below!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Silhouettes<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tell me a little bit about The Last Stand of the Dream Guard. What excites you about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Last Stand of the Dream Guard\nis a tragedy that takes place over a single night. The dream guard are toy like\ncreatures that exist in the dreamlands, the place where we go when we dream. They’ve\nbeen fighting a war against The Nightmares and have all but lost. The adventure\nuses player prompts and cues to build the detail and drama for what will be the\nfinal battle of the war and the effect this will have on the few remaining\nmembers of the Dream Guard who will fight it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What engages me most about the adventure is who the characters will face a battle that will almost certainly lead to their death. Will seek solace in the nobility of their actions, retreat into a cynical fatalism or adopt an angry denial of their circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
One of the Nightmares from The Last Stand of the Dream Guard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What are The Nightmares and what threats do they present? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nightmares are the darkness\nof humanity given form. Humans visit the dreamlands when they sleep, with the\ndreamlands changing and being changed with each dream. Every human nightmare\nleft a little mark of evil on the dreamlands that accumulated and aggregated.\nThe nightmare are creatures of such hate that they bring only violence and\ndestruction where they go. The longer a nightmare “lives” the larger,\nstronger and more cunning it gets. They are an existential threat to the\ntoylike native inhabitants of the dreamlands and should they be victorious\nhuman dreams will be always tainted by their presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
A page from Character Creation The Last Stand of the Dream Guard.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why is death so ever-present and so likely for these characters? Is it preventable, and if so, how?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dream Guard have been losing this war since it started. The Nightmares seem to be endless and all attempts at negotiation have failed. The survivors of the Dream Guard have retreated to their last standing holdout where The Nightmares have surrounded them and put them under siege. They know it is only a matter of time before the assault begins. What hope and how forlorn it is is part of the story setup by the players and the story leader.\u00a0 Should they choose to, then perhaps the war could be won but they most hold out until dawn. Mechanically, the three phases of combat have been designed to be highly challenging and would require exquisite luck to pass through unscathed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The first phase of play sounds intriguing!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How do players mechanically interact with the world and each other \u2013 what are the basic mechanics like? What are these phases of combat?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The adventure uses the 6d6 2nd Edition rules set<\/a>. The basic mechanic is building a dice pool using which of the character’s advantages are best suited for the task at hand. The main body of the adventure takes place over one night that is divided into 6 phases. 3 of these character interaction phases where the story is progressed through prompts, cues and questions asked by the story leader. The other three phases are combat when the nightmares attack the hold out with increasing strength and threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What sort of support is there to help players approach these elements that might be very frightening or stressful in play?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The adventure doesn’t include specific advice on this, so I would recommend that the story leader and the players work together to select the safety tools they feel most comfortable using.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: Thoughty recommends using Script Change<\/a>, but you can find more safety tools at bit.ly\/ttrpgsafetytoolkit.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you so much Jaye for the interview! I hope you all liked it and that you will check out The Last Stand of the Dream Guard today!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have an interview with Jaye Foster today about The Last Stand of the Dream Guard, available for purchase now! Check out this one night tragedy and Jaye’s answers below! — Tell me a little bit about The Last Stand of the Dream Guard. What excites you about it? The Last Stand of the Dream … Continue reading “Five or So Questions on The Last Stand of the Dream Guard”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[390],"tags":[20,10,4,17,25,8,15,12,26,23,18],"class_list":["post-1699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-five-or-so","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-interviews","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpg","tag-rpgs","tag-story-games","tag-tabletop-games","tag-tabletop-rpgs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/banner1a.png?fit=4679%2C1554&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-rp","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":86,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2018\/05\/leading-with-class\/","url_meta":{"origin":1699,"position":0},"title":"Leading with Class","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"May 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Hello all,For the past several months I've been gearing up to start a new project called Leading with Class. 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