Black Sun, White Moon
The world is divided into three major realms:
1.) our reality, the banal world
2.) The Dreamscape: a vast mythical world, built up in part through the dreams of humanity and in part by beings of the dreamscape. This world is like the "twilight" in night watch to some extent, but also like the land of Faerie from Stardust, or the umbra, or like the land of the neverending story. I will still have to do a lot of work to define this.
3.) The Aether: a sub-dreamscape, so to speak, full of vast, uncontrollable energies and dire, malevolent entities that seek the destruction of all things.
-The Maelstrom: the heart of the Aether, where, after the Second Rending of the Veil, the most dangerous and powerful entities of of the Aether were confined by the combined might of the houses.
The three realms can be compared to three sheets of fabric layered over one another: at certain "lynchpin" points, they are fixed, and these areas have a firm location in more than one realm. Other than this, sections can slide past one another, allowing those with the proper skill to "flex" reality, or dreams, to allow speed of thought transport among other things.
Characters can represent one of the following "races":
1.) Pathfinders: humans who have learned to manipulate the dreamscape, and to draw power from it.
2.) Avatars: Dreamscape natives, who are able to wield the power of the dreamscape in the real world.
3.) Daemons: Beings of the Aether...this would not typically make a good character class.
4.) Vassals: Golems (constructs made by one of the other classes), mortals, and lesser creatures of the dreamscape realm in service to 1-3.
5.) not meant as a character class (similar to daemons, but this would definitely not make a good character class) it is included here for the sake of completeness: Obliviators: these beings, similar in some sense to the technocracy of mage, seek to eliminate the Dreamscape and the Aether. They have a counterpart in the Dreamscape that seeks to destroy the banal world, but I haven't come up with their name yet.
Pathfinders, Avatars, and a few select Daemons (notably the dragons) are organized in the following ways. Some of the organizational levels are mutually exclusive, some are not.
1.) Houses: The hefty political institutions of the dreamscape, these are akin to the noble houses of the 17th through early 20th century (Hapsburgs, Borgheses, etc.). They are highly hierarchical, with vast resources and extensive, century-spanning plans and policies.
2.) Orders: In general, membership in a House and in an Order are mutually exclusive. Orders form to accomplish some specific task (such as Ignatius' Dragon Crusade of the 13th century, aimed at clearing the dreamscape of dragons): usually those most affected by the circumstances form the core of an order (House Ignus, which was roughly 80% destroyed by dragons, began the order of Ignatius, still active today). Both orders and houses will brook no mixed loyalties.
3.) Companies: Another "exclusive" organization type, companies are small (tens to a few hundred members at most, including vassals) compared to orders or houses. Typically, they engage in little politicking, have a loose organizational structure, and are organized around some poorly defined ideal or principle
Nonexclusive organizations:
1.) Guilds: spanning houses, orders, and companies, those Dreamwalkers that engage in similar trades often band together to share skills, compete for business, or fix prices. Guilds claim to be apolitical, but this is rarely the case, much to the chagrin of many houses and orders. However, the guild structure, much like fellowships, is so ingrained in the Dreamscape that none have been able to threaten it.
2.) Fellowships: it is tradition that young or new members of houses, orders, or companies join into small bands with those from outside their principal organization, as a way to gain experience in the ways of the realms. Some of the stricter orders and houses frown on this, but maintain the tradition nonetheless.
Rules and Systems
The basic rules package will be WoD. By "basic" I mean Attributes, Skills, Health Levels/Damage, and dice mechanics. I'm not a terribly big fan of the WoD combat system, but overall I think its a great system. A simple alternative would be to use Gemini, which is basically cyberpunk, but I think WoD is more appropriate for this, and more appropriate for my style of GMing.
The character sheet will also include Willpower, which will be a very important stat, and a path rating, with the path being co-defined by player and GM. the benefit of Path in this system would be that you can burn "temporary" path as willpower when you are in a situation relevant to your path. If you burn too much, though, your path rating goes down. Violating your path deducts from your temporary path. If your temporary path ever reaches zero, you drop one permanent path rating and go back up to ??? number of temporary path.
In the Dreamscape, your health levels are equal to your current path + your current willpower. penalties should be calculated like for health levels (so you have lots of "bruised" levels, basically). In the Aether, your health levels are equal to your willpower only.
Magic: There are three types of magic: Corpus (body), Cor (heart), and Mens (mind). Corpus magic is uncontrolled and inherent: ie, it is on all the time, you don't have to roll to activate it, and it costs nothing to use. One point of Corpus magic gives you 1 automatic success in one "class" of attributes (ie, you have to assign it to either mental, social, or physical) each round (you can shift it each time you act). Alternatively, it can function as one singular effect from a sphere or combination of spheres (mage system)up to the number of points spent on the effect (ie, Life 3 would be 3 points of corpus magic, if you wanted skin as hard as wood, or regeneration...I can't remember the levels exactly). Cor magic is powered by rolling path and spending temporary path, while Mens magic works on willpower. THese second two will be differentiated by a few minor points, but both will largely have access to all the spheres from Mage, with the possible exception of Time (since messing with time is just too much of a mind fuck for me).
All magic can only be performed in one's True Form. For pathfinders, this is easy, but for Avatars or Daemons it means they must reveal their true form in the real world to do magic. Whether or not they want to do this is up to them. There is a "masquerade" of sorts in play, and the political/social/personal/safety ramifications of violating it will vary by situation. Obviously, in the dreamscape, this is not a problem.
In general, Vassals will get the least points to spend, Pathfinders will be intermediate, and Avatars will get the most. There will of course be benefits, which may be more or less tangible, to picking lower point characters (such as what sorts of merits and flaws may be available).
