Goodman Games

The next session I am running opens with a short adventure that takes place in a dream the characters are sharing. There will be combat, some puzzles--basically everything you would find in an adventure in the "real" world. The question I haven't found an answer for is: do they get XP for this stuff?

The obvious answer seems to be, "No." However, I think this has certain implications about the nature of dreams. Do we, as people, not feel like dreams are important, meaningful experiences?

Though the players can't actually die, dreamdeath will mean they wake up fatigued (-1d to all action dice, skill checks made untrained, speed halved) due to being distracted for the next few hours.

The other question I have is, if players burn luck, spellburn, etc, does that carry over into real life?

If it doesn't have consequences, your players will probably be annoyed at it. Why not just give them a printed dream to read beforehand?

I personally would run it exactly as a regular session, though, XP and everything. Maybe low XP rewards, but allow them to spellburn/luck burn, etc, and recover stuff normally.

Just my thought.

This was my thought as well, and I do want the players to affect the outcome. If the party wipes in a dream, they will all be groggy and miss out on some awesome, prophetic stuff.

My universal thoughts on XP gains: if the player has involvement in the outcome, their character is at any risk at all even if only of temporary consequence, dice are going to be rolled and session time dedicated to more than just narration of the event - then it is worth XP, even if only just the 1 (since XP is based on risk).

And when I feel something shouldn't be worth XP, then it is necessarily narration.

Sometimes in trying to decide something I might imagine a more extreme case, and see what it tells me...

If several sessions were run, with leveling up and all as expected, and then you said, "Hey, remember that soothsayer back in the first session? He actually put you all to sleep and everything we've been doing is a dream. You are all first level characters", people would likely be upset.

If they are playing the dream just as they would play anything else, why not give them XP? If you need a narrative explanation to justify it, maybe they gained insight (into the world, into themselves, etc.) that will help them from there forward.