A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands

H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. for use with their Call of Cthulhu horror role playing game based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Although Lovecraft’s works are the primary influence for the supplement, an important secondary influence is The House of the Wyrm by Gary Meyers.

Dreamlands has been through many different releases over the years; the version reviewed is the softcover printed book published in 1992. The original printed book can still be found from places such as Amazon, but a more recent and expanded version of Dreamlands can be found on RPGNow. The book has 128 pages, of which three pages are the front matter, one page the Contents and Introduction, two pages are a partial map of the Dreamlands of Earth, there are nine double sided pages of player handouts (these would need copying in order to use, as cutting them up would destroy the opposite side), one page is an investigators’ map of the central Dreamlands, there are three pages are adverts for other products and two pages are a 1920s Investigator Sheet. The book is essentially divided into two portions, based on the two separate books it has been combined from. The first section covers the Dreamlands, the second contains adventures.

A scan of the cover of the perfect bound H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands

Entering the Dreamlands covers how to enter the Dreamlands, either whilst dreaming or physically, gives the effects on equipment, Sanity in the Dreamlands and nightmare effects and two new skills related to dreaming.

Evoking the Atmosphere of a Dream is a single page on how to run and describe the Dreamlands, including how Lovecraft himself described the places, which made extensive use of colour to evoke feelings.

Places is an alphabetical list of locations that can be found in the Dreamlands. Most of these are Lovecraftian; the remainder are based on Gary Meyers’ work. Each entry has a note showing which story by which author the location is taken from. At the end of the chapter is a section on other places, including the Moon of the Dreamlands and the Underworld, with a map of the latter.

New Spells is a list of new spells that can only be used in the Dreamlands.

Notable Inhabitants and Creatures of the Dreamlands describes a few important non-player characters as well as many creatures that can be found in the Dreamlands, many of them being new. This includes the Great Ones, described as being the weak gods of Earth.

Introduction to the Adventures is the beginning of the second part of the book and gives an overview of the six scenarios as well as a brief bit of information on running them.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream is a short, two page adventure that simply introduces players to the Dreamlands.

The perfect bound H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands book

Captives of Two Worlds is set in both the waking world and the Dreamlands, in which the players have to escape from a Cthulhu cultist and the inbred inhabitants of a remote Vermont town by using the Dreamlands.

In Pickman’s Student the investigators have to travel to the Dreamlands to rescue the dream and waking forms of an artist who is being taken over by a larval Great Old One.

Season of the Witch is set in Arkham where a Miskatonic University student is being taken over by the dream form of a relative who was a witch executed during the witch trials. Whilst this isn’t that similar to Lovecraft’s tale The Dreams in the Witch House there do seem to be definite influences.

Lemon Sails is set entirely in the Dreamlands and investigators can help a Sarrubian return to his home, in Dreamlands unconnected to Earth.

In the final adventure, The Land of Lost Dreams, the investigators meet a student whose mortal body is being taken over by a creature of the Dreamlands, in order for it to create a gateway between that land and the waking world, and they have to travel there to stop it.

H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands in Review

The Contents has covers the main sections and also lists some of the others, such as spells, maps, plans and tables. As is often the case, they could be better. The Contents also lack a degree of consistency; there are new spells listed in the Contents in some of the adventures, but not in others.

The supplement has full colour front and back covers, with the internal illustrations being in black and white. These vary in size, up to about half a page (excluding maps, which are often larger), and are mostly relevant to the associated text, although there are some simple images used as page fillers. The maps commonly have a hand drawn appearance to them.

The Dreamlands have a more fantastic feel to them than a regular Call of Cthulhu game. Although there are definitely nightmarish things to encounter, they tend not to be as full of horrors, instead bearing more relationship to a traditional fantasy game. The spells are, by and large, evocatively named, rather than having the boring spell names that are common to fantasy RPGs. Interestingly, according to the Introduction to the Adventures, the original proposal made by Sandy Petersen to Chaosium was to create a Dreamlands game to work with RuneQuest, which ended up being Call of Cthulhu, so Dreamlands is the original idea, even if what was published was rather different.

Inside the perfect bound H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands book

One oddity, although it’s not one created by this supplement, is that the Great Ones, the weak Gods of Earth, are protected by the Outer Gods (although why such beings as Nyarlathotep would wish to protect beings that are both comparatively weak and comparatively beneficent is not clear).

A couple of the adventures may have problems with them. In Pickman’s Student, the Great Old One was manufactured by the Mi-Go. The concept of a Great Old One being artificially created seems a bit off and not congruent with such beings in general. Lemon Sails does have the prospect of making life much more complicated for the Keeper, as it gives players access to Dreamlands other than Earth’s, which would then need creating. It would probably be better to tweak the adventure so that this travel is only a one-shot.

The supplement, as usual, introduces new spells, new skills, new monsters and some minor new books, although these have more of a Dreamlands focus than a Mythos one when it comes to knowledge.

This 1992 edition is basically the same text as the earlier, two saddle stitched booklet boxed edition, only combined into a single softcover book instead of two separate ones. There are mostly changes in format, rather than the addition of new material – or even much editing to the text. The Introduction to the adventures section is essentially referring to a separate book as, indeed, it used to be. There’s a chapter on new Dreamlands spells and then, later in the book, there are more new spells in the adventures, where it would seem more logical to put all the new spells in the same place, given that they are all in the same supplement.

H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands does expand the options for a Call of Cthulhu game, but it is better to pick up the expanded version which has substantially more content as well as what was in the edition reviewed.