How to effectively run a “Petal” trip or other dream-like sequences

Question

A little background:

Eclipse Phase has a drug in the setting that creates a shared hallucinated experience among participants. These drugs, called Petals, are also designed to have some sort of narrative beyond them- think shared LSD trip with some overarching theme. Generally these trend towards something pretty dark.

While this is a fairly system specific question, the answers don't really need to be. I think a lot of GMs have probably had similar experiences running shared dreams or the like.

My Question:

I'm looking for specific advice and considerations about how to design something that will feel otherworldly and exotic to the players. How do you go about designing an encounter or series of encounters like that?

Answer 1

A couple of ideas...

• Draw upon myths and legends to create an otherworldly story. Native American, Aztec, Mayan, and aboriginal Australian myths are just a few examples of wild, exotic stories featuring creatures that can best be explained by hallucination.
• Create a story driven by metaphor. In my Shadowrun game, I envisioned a clustered UV node on the matrix as a set of medieval villages; a rogue dissonance sprite became a rampaging dragon, and the PCs needed to pierce the firewall/mists of Avalon and locate the sword of knowledge in order to slay it. For a hallucination, you could wrap the story around a chosen theme and set of symbols in a way that was unique or significant to the characters.
• Decide how to convert the PCs into your hallucinatory realm. For the virtual reality battle I mentioned above, the adventure was a short one; I let RP serve as the primary driver, and only threw in a couple of dice challenges. If you plan a longer story with more battles, you may want to have each PC determine an alternate form that fits the metaphor of the story. (Eclipse Phase is uniquely suited to this kind of thing, I believe.)
• Use fluff associated with visions and dreams. For example, many people have dreams of being attacked or chased, or dreams of falling. Dreams can be repetetive. In a dream, sometimes you 'just know' things without experiencing them, or have an understanding of an event that isn't quite the same as seeing it actually happen. You could probably look for drug-related tropes that fit this mold.

Answer 2

Get a sub set of the players apart from the ones who plays the ones in the petal dream and give them NPCs and directions as to how you want the events to unfold. Don't tell the ones PC at all what is happening and let them work it out. The rest of them should be able to play different roles for the duration and lead the story where you need it to go.

As for settings, I would recommend you look at Sucker Punch (even just the trailer), The Black Lodge from twin Peaks, and Fear and Loathing Las Vegas. Or just look at the last dream you had!

Finally, lights and music. Use just a red light for parts of the dream, then switch to blue or green or whatever. Make sure your colours reflect the theme of the petal scene. Music wise, I would use something from either Biohazard or Silent Hill sound tracks on repeat. If you have samples of screams or crying or whispering then so much the better. I assume that you have a computer that can play two tracks at once: mood music and sound effects.

Answer 3

I would focus the "acid trip" into a goal in its own. For example, make the group have an objective in the "petal world" and when they complete that goal, they end their trip. Usually when your on a drug, you don't fall asleep, but rather you over-exhaggerate everything while being awake.

Because of this, you could make an encounter, say NPC1 using an awkward weapon, or better yet, make their arms and legs switch positions. A good example of this would to have a minotaur look like a cow carrying two twigs on the top of his head and he yells "Moooooo!" when he attacks.

As for the goal, have it to where the group must enter a certain building in this "petal world", but they cannot enter until they kill the "Five Clowns of Passion Island". However, the only way to get to the island is by eating 10 pounds of desert (depending on your game).

In the end, it's all about how weird you can use your iamgination, and how funny you can make events. My best advice if your not so good with that, would to take 2 or more creatures and combine them and give them an awkward weapon.