Dreams have been an important part of my RPG journey as a world creator.
I have detailed in the past my recurring nightmare of the "Very Haunted House".
The house was an old Victorian manor complete with spooky attic and sub-basements.
It was haunted by the ghost of an evil old woman that used to torture kids.
This house was based on a few things in real life. The biggest was "Maplecrest Apartments" in my old home town. It used to be an old tuberculosis hospital turned into low-income housing. I delivered newspapers back then and that was on my route. Scary place. The house took more form when I went with my dad to see the Dana Thomas House in Springfield, IL. These nightmares plagued me forever, to be honest, and they were not the "whew that was a weird dream" nightmares these were the "oh my god I am going to die in this dream" sort where you wake up afraid and still full of terror. I added details to dream with every movie I saw or book I read including a bathtub full of black water with a rotting corpse that I am sure I got from "Silence of the Lambs".
Oddly enough they stopped about 15 years ago. I had the dream and in it, my wife was standing in the dark attic only now it was bright. She held a mop and had her hair tied up, she looked at me and said "What? I cleaned it." Cheesy as it sounds I think she helped get over whatever fears it represented.
I have since used this house in other adventures I have written. I first used "Cotton Crest" in my Buffy RPG adventure "Under a Cajun Moon". Years later "Oakcrest" made it's debut in "The Haunting of Oakcrest Manor" in the Guidebook to the Duchy of Valnwall Special Edition.
I am considering also doing it again, only this time Willow Crest. Cotton Crest was haunted by demons, Oak Crest by ghosts and other undead. Willow Crest? Extra-dimensional aliens. Sounds like a good Dark Places & Demogorgons adventure.
Other dreams have given me some great monsters and some other game ideas.
Looking forward to see what I dream up next.
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