Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 12 Dreamism (Patreon)

Spoilers for:

• People of the Dream Keeper Campaign

• People of the Dream Keeper's Core Nemesis Monster

• People of the Stars

We are returning to the Arc Philosophy series with the central philosophy for the People of the Dream Keeper (PotDK) campaign; this is not only the last of philosophies that make up the potential mix for a beginning settlement, but it is also the first time we get to look at a philosophy that revolves around a campaign's core nemesis. That means Dreamism is setting the standard for what to expect from future core nemesis philosophies; as such this is a pretty exciting section of the Gambler's Chest Expansion (GCE) to dive into. But it gets even more exciting because the core boss monster we are looking at is one who made numerous appearances in the game's world before hand.

The Dream Keeper aka The Gambler turns up or is referenced more than once in the basic hunt events and is also a Constellation that can be unlocked during People of the Stars. This means that this Entity is one of the big players in the world, and exploring the People of the Dream Keeper Campaign gives us insight into The Gambler's unique perspective on Kingdom Death (and also establishes a friendly rivalry between The Gambler and The Hand). Here are the two hunt events that include The Gambler as a part of their narrative.

48. Death Wager

The survivors are awoken by a traveler hidden in a deep cloak. The trave ler removes his hood to reveal a face whose jaw has been split in two. Two chins curve away from each other, each with its own mouth. In a dreamlike state, the survivors all understand this entity is known as The Gambler and if they speak they will d ie. Until this event is completed, only the event revealer can speak. If any other player speaks, their survivor turns cold and is dead. The survivors must play The Gambler's game or be trapped with him forever.

70. Tomb of Excellence (1.5 Rulebook and later) roll result 10+

The doorway to the tomb is framed with a wood that has small hands for a grain. Inside, murals depict a hero at the center of a labyrinth that is holding a giant, human-filled fruit above his head.

(Quick Aside, it took me far longer than I'd like to find that specific passage, I originally checked what turned out to be a 1.31 rulebook and was confused about where this text was located, almost giving up before I realised which edition I was leafing through. Once again I found myself wishing that the official site would include a searchable pdf of the most current rulebooks).

It is this gentle world building in the background that helps contribute towards what makes People of the Stars such a beloved campaign in the general community; that campaign brings up a whole Pantheon of Entities and also suggests that The Tyrant (People of the Star's Core Boss Monster) as being an equal amongst them. This is a great way of world building because it gives lots of interesting details while also leaving enough of things open to interpretation.

PotDK as a campaign doesn't take as broad approach towards this world building as some of the philosophies, instead it focuses in more on two Entities and establishes that The Hand is indeed (as we suspected) a big deal in Kingdom Death's pantheon by the way that The Gambler treats The Hand as an equal (or at least being slightly inferior/worth cheating against and won't be caught, but that is a subject for a future analysis of People of the Dream Keeper as a whole).

So, we get to learn a lot about The Gambler's agenda, its powers and its overall stance towards survivors throughout the campaign and also through its philosophy.

The Gambler is, as its name would suggest, is a manifestation of Gambling, Gaming, Luck and Chance. Making it as close to being a “God of Luck” as we'll probably get within this world (many of the Entities land within certain deity tropes, such as The Storm being a War God or The Goblin being a Death God); but this monster also has close ties to survivors themselves as it forever carries a large ball of “fruit” constituted from sleeping survivors. The act of carrying this ball around is very reminiscent of the Greek Titan Atlas. Atlas was responsible for carrying the weight of heaven upon his shoulders as punishment. This might suggest that The Gambler carries this ball of gently snoring survivors because of some past transgression, a parallel to Atlas's own punishment. The miniature of the Gambler certainly reflects the most typical depiction of Atlas, bent knees and back, holding a globe upon his shoulders.

The Farnese Atlas, dated around 150AD and currently held in the Museo Archeologico Nazional, Naples. For once, The Gambler wears more clothes.

But of course The Gambler is not just a straight Atlas reference; it also includes that element of gaming and luck, in this one can consider the Ball as being an oversized dice and the two faces of the Gambler represent two sides of a coin; referencing both the flipping of a coin to determine something's fate and also how one can be lucky or unlucky as elements of chance.

So this is kind of what we would expect to see reflected throughout the Dreamism philosophy ranks; references to The Gambler's personal burden and world viewpoint giving insight and depth to the game's narrative.

The Hunt XP Track and Neurosis

Age advances are at 2, 4, 7 and 10; something we would call the “standard” progression speed for a philosophy. That makes sense as it keeps the philosophy at the same pace as most of the other early game philosophies.

The core neurosis here is not too bad, though it gets worse when you start to tackle Overwhelming Darkness and thereby asks for innovations that help mitigate that event's tables during higher level hunts. For the most part you will just seek to not line up methods of showdown/hunt replenishing survival with Dreamism survivors and instead look for a solid departing survival bonus in combination with methods that reduce any unintentional survival drain and a high settlement survival limit.

I think it is a well designed neurosis, something that is a downside with significant consequences; survival actions are one of the most powerful tools that survivors have, but unlike other types of survivors who can use survival regeneration options during the showdown/hunt phase there's no recovering here. Every point of survival spent by a Dreamism survivor is meaningful, you can't rely on some Seasoned Monster Meat or a Survival Token to get a little extra back (it also disables the Rawhide Set Bonus, which is a very cool nerf to that powerhouse).

I really like this neurosis, it has an interesting impact on your path through the game without being as absolute a roadblock in some situations as something like Deadism's neurosis is.

Rank 1 – Massive Figure

"Can you turn off the ball's snoring for me?"

+1 lumi and a roll follows some world building; with a 1 being the huge penalty of -1 luck. Suffering a loss of luck is a major deal for a survivor's path through the game, it becomes important for survivors like that to line up contributions that are less damage orientated during the showdown. Tanking or Support roles become more palatable options and weapons like Axes (which can still critically wound persistent locations at Master level) or deal most of their damage through normal wounding (like Clubs) taking a better role for survivors that get this unfortunate result.

On a 2 to 7 the survivor gains an observation in Guardian (the core tenet); with an additional +1 understanding on results 5 to 7 at Collective Cognition (CC) 4+. Guardian is a solid tenet, and free advancements in it are always welcome because it is something one wants to level up with a reasonable pace.

8 to 10 trades your ability to Encourage for +1 luck; this is a really sweet deal because PotDK survivors are less reliant on Encourage due to also having Fist Pump. It does still have cost, because any encourage related cards (gear etc) will lose function on a survivor with this. However, we've all experienced shattered jaw survivors before, this is functionally the same downside.

Rank 2 – Snoring Mass

"I woke up and all I got was this drowned bald man."

+1 lumi and a roll here gives us a shot at +1 population, this means that Dreamism survivors who reach Rank 2 are “self-replacing” and it also gives us a place where we can use those cool bald survivor heads outside of constructing references to Saitama, The Ancient One and Cassandra Nova Xavier.

A 1 results in the unfortunate demise of the dreamer; giving the Dreamism survivor an additional +1 lumi. A 2 to 7 result gives us an additional 0 hunt XP survivor with [K] Fingernail Door and the Dreamism survivor also gains that same knowledge. At CC 19+ a 5 to 7 also has the new bald survivor even gains +1 luck and the Rank 2 survivor receives +1 lumi. Very generous results here, though given the way that Dreamism changes post Core Boss Showdown you have a limited time to benefit from this.

On an 8 to 10 the population is also gained, and we get a little more of that world building with acknowledgement that the two survivors share the same likeness (not surprising given what we learnt in Faceism and how we also know there are gender swapped versions of many survivors out there in the world). Both survivors get +1 courage and +1 lumi; it's also interesting how this result is somewhat weaker than the 2 to 7 result, especially during the CC 19+ 5 to 7 portion of that roll result.

Rank 3 – What are Dreams?

There is a lot of really interesting world building in this one, not least of which in the art, which I wanted to post in full here:

This imagery of a fleshy tree/fruit with survivors growing from it is something that has become a bit of a reoccurring element in various parts of the game's lore now and I think it is also significant that the cages here are described as lanterns. It ties into the Mountain Man, the Lonely Tree, The King, Lanternism, Watchers and many more portions of the game's world (possibly even the way that the ground spawns new survivors). What this all means, one can only just begin to speculate, but I can absolutely say that for me this is very interesting and exciting.

+1 lumi and a roll once again occurs. A 1 gives us a dream of crawling through a place of iridescent plumes and tickling hands before the survivor devours a bug that crawled out from the dreamer (dream keeper? Dreamers in the ball? Not sure here). This bug is 60% of the time (1 to 6) a Scarab of Antiquity and delivers +3 strength along with +3 systemic pressure. A good trade for survivors who are not tank orientated in their build (which most Dreamism survivors should not be, as this is an offensively slanted philosophy). A 2 to 4 gives the survivor [K] Dreamless Sleep (more on that next time); while a 5 to 9 gives us a tour of the orchard pictured in the image above and also bestows [K] Adrenaline Junkie.

Finally the Lantern 10 gives us +3 lumi and the knowledge that this survivor knows the Dream Keeper's true name – it's also got some world building I love, in that this is the result of a wager between you and the Gambler that you cannot lose. The Gambler is a prolific cheat in all of the best ways possible, and this is just one small way in which he makes his own luck. I honestly really love the Gambler's portrayal and personality, it is refreshing and fun in a way that parallels The Tyrant's own personification.

Rank 4 – A Dreamer's Dreamdeath

"I can't help but see this image as symbolism of the Gambler as an egg being fertilised by multiple sperm."

This one is super interesting in how it sets up the event in the introductory paragraph and every single result on the table here is dripping with tantalising theme and style.

+2 lumi is gained before the roll and a 1 or 2 gives us the True Peace ability: This sets both torment and systemic pressure to 0, and will hold it there because this is an ability not a one time bonus. That's really useful given that a number of knowledges and other things in Dreamism add those negative attributes.

3 to 8 gives the survivor the Game Master ability, this is basically the Blue Ring from Spidicules, but as an ability. Apart from it not working in the official rules for solo play (which removes the monster controller tile from the game) this is nothing other than a great little bonus. Just like the Blue Ring it'll interact with the Gloom Hammer if the survivor before the Game Master has it. This is also a really fun and thematic piece of mechanical design as it turns the survivor into a literal Games Master (GM) which is the generic name for the player who controls the game and non-player characters in a roleplaying game. There's even an official variant for KDM called Storyteller Mode which has one player act as the GM (see Game Variants in the core rulebook).

This leans into the playful way that the Gambler flirts with the game's fouth wall while also giving an ability that is strong enough to justify its Age Rank 4 status. In addition, with just CC 10+ a 6 to 8 will give the survivor an additional +1 Luck to boot.

The 9 to 10 result gives +1 luck to the survivor, however if they know the Dream Keeper's true name from the previous rank, then they will gain the [K] Gambler's Grace ability. This isn't an easy achievement, only 10% of Rank 4 survivors will know the true name and they can only hit this roll 20% of the time, so it is a 2% chance (20% of 10%). Which is long odds, but exciting when it does happen.

Divergent Ranks

"Yes I know children, the foot isn't large enough to live your whole life in, it's a metaphor."

This is the big part of Dreamism that sets the template for future Core Monster philosophies, because the Gambler is no longer in the settlement after the Core Final Nemesis showdown. This is something that happens in most of the current campaigns (not Sun) and as such I am happy to see that Dreamism doesn't just evaporate or become terrible post Gambler. That would be a cruel punishment to level on the players.

I am very excited to see what happens with the People of the Stars philosophy post “Core Boss” fight in particular, the game changes its feel a LOT at that point and would also benefit from a "fail forward" system that can help ensure a climactic final battle perhaps with weaken constellations.

Rank 1 gives the survivor a knowledge from a returning survivor, a simple way to pass on expensive and powerful knowledges, you simply need to engineer a new survivor gaining their philosophy by returning from a hunt with the survivor who already has it. Or if your survivors are born at Age 1 automatically due to innovations then instead you just need to make sure that the desirable knowledges have been out on a hunt and are returning.

Rank 2 is a simple +1 Luck, reasonable, thematic and useful in the end game. Rank 3is +1 systemic pressure and +1 strength, not as good as rank 2.

Finally rank 4 gives you the Dream Keeper's Legacy ability, which if you have at least 1 permanent luck allows you to set your permanent luck to 0 and flip any attribute token in play. The stronger uses for this are to flip damage tokens that higher level monsters have, because it is effectively -2 damage to all attacks and that isn't anything to sneeze at. But it costs all your permanent luck to use this and you can't use again without somehow gaining additional permanent luck, which is a tall ask for a Age Rank 4 survivor to do.

Another black mark against this particular ability is that Final Final Nemesis monsters, like the Godhand at the end of the People of the Dream Keeper campaign do not have innate damage or speed tokens by default. Which means saving this for the final battle isn't worth much, so you'll end up either not using it, or spending it on a high level Node 4 monster to help reduce the threat that it represents. It is of course no joke to flip a L3 King's Damage or Speed Token down and effectively turn that scaling bonus into the L1 version.

It's strong for sure, two survivors with this can effectively turn an L3 monster into a slightly stronger L1 version and that is nothing to sniff at, even if only one survivor nerfs the speed or damage you are still going to feel significantly stronger against the monster.

Summary

Straight up, if this is the standard that the other Core Monster specific philosophies start at then I am very excited for the Arc Survivor's future in Kingdom Death. This is a huge part of why I am not interested in playing “normal” survivor campaigns except for work purposes any more. Arc survivors are more complicated, but what they add to the game's mechanics and world building are just too much to pass up on.

Dreamism's theming around luck and dice manipulation is for sure really strong, luck is one of the best attributes in the game, with perhaps only Movement being stronger and even that is up for debate, so that alone would be enough to make this an easy powerhouse philosophy. However, the additional elements and the thematic strengths of them just make this into an all star experience.

Next time we'll look at the knowledges and see where they fit into the game's various puzzles, and after that, well I have a question for you in the second post that has come out just after this one.