Devil's Dreams
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.
- WB Yeats
Devil's Dreams is a GMless story game for 2 or more players, in which they share their characters’ dreams as they trade news at a meeting spot. It uses Tarot cards as prompts to create dreams and their consequences.
These dreams come from the Devil, and are a foretelling of the future.
Set in rural Ireland at the turn of the 20th Century, this may raise issues of women’s rights, the flexibility of tradition, the clash between folklore and religion, the position of the Church and the power of British rule.
A two-page story game created for the Folklore Jam 2020
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Comments
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An ominous two-page tarot-based storygame where you play as rural folk in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century - and your dreams predict the future.
The mechanics provide a neat mixture of randomisation and dire certainty - Judgement and The Devil are always in the mini-deck you draw from, which should contain three cards per player, but the other cards can be anything from the remaining Major Arcana. This makes for a sensible limit on the game's duration while enhancing its replayability, since you'll likely get different prompts in future playthroughs.
The prompts are strongly inspired by the traditional associations of each card. This may be a source of appeal for tarot enthusiasts, but from a narrative perspective it does result in fairly short, binary prompt options - a little more depth could have made this even better, though the constraints of limited space are also a major factor when dealing with 22 prompts. I suspect that slightly fewer options (e.g. a d10 random table) could have worked well in this regard, but the drama of drawing tarot cards is very appropriate for the theme of prophetic dreams.
It's always good to see guidance on tone, possible content and safety tools. A little more development of the setting would be helpful - especially for players who lack familiarity with Ireland's culture and history - but that's not a dealbreaker, since it's fully playable regardless.
Overall, Devil's Dreams provides a strong concept and the scaffolding needed for players to deliver on it, as long as they're capable of improvising the imagery and events of dreams to fit a theme. If the premise appeals to you, it's well worth checking out. 4/5 stars - excellent.
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave your review (even/especially your very fair reservations)!
Devil's Dreams is a folklore inspired GMless story game. You play as characters in early 20th century rural Ireland, sharing your dreams to each other. It explores the clash between folklore and religion under the Church and British rule.