Ever Dream This Man? - Session 1
Horror fiction told through the medium of a solo journaling RPG. My playthrough of "Ever Dream This Man?" by Adam Vass and World Champ Game Co.
I attended PAX Unplugged this past year with the goal of gathering a nice little collection of solo roleplaying experiences to try out for both fun and as tools for practicing my fiction writing. One of the books I came home with was a very interesting lightweight recurring nightmare simulator called “Ever Dream This Man” by Adam Vass and World Champ Game Co.
The concept is a simple one, at the core of which is an infamous hoax of sorts that you may be familiar with:
Since January 2006, over 8,000 people have reported being followed in their dreams by the same inscrutable entity, known only as “This Man”. You and your playgroup are some such people. It is up to you to investigate This Man in your dreams and learn as much as you can to defeat him before it’s too late.
Mechanically, you do this through a couple of activities:
First, you and your playgroup generate a playlist of songs by using a tarot deck and a list of song prompts. This playlist will inform the dreamscapes that your characters venture through.
Then, you play through four different Phases, each of which represents a dream you are exploring in order to learn more about This Man. You will pull more cards from the tarot deck to be given prompts to answer that flesh out what happens in the dream, and each prompt you answer requires listening to a new song on your shared playlist and using that song as inspiration for how to answer the prompt.
Last, you must confront This Man in order to win the game. Over the course of the game, some prompts will ask you to describe more of the details of This Man and draw them, ostensibly leaving you with some kind of tangible monstrosity to face after Phase IV. The hope is that you will have learned enough about This Man before facing him in order to overcome him, otherwise your story ends in tragedy.
Conceptually, that all really resonated with me as something cool to play through as a solo journaling experience, that combined with my graphic design experience would provide really excellent exercise for both my writing skill and by visual art skill. So I did not hesitate to grab a copy of the book before leaving the convention.
My plan is to play through a full game as time to write permits, releasing whatever I am able to finish on the days that I play as a series, then I will compile the whole narrative together once it is complete. I hope you will come along on the journey with me.
With that, let’s get to my pre-game setup and the result of my first couple of turns in Ever Dream This Man?
The Set Up
Before I could venture into the world of my nightmares, I needed to do a few things. Aside from grabbing a tarot deck to play with, I also wanted a template to work off of for my visual representation of This Man. So, I grabbed a stock photo from Adobe Stock and quickly made this creepy canvas in Photoshop:
Then I needed to make my playlist of songs for my play experience, which involved pulling one-at-a-time from a deck of the Major Arcana and choosing a song for the prompt provided and putting them into a Spotify playlist in the order that I drew them. I’ve added a button below that will take you to my playlist, if you’d like to listen along as you read.
With all that done, I was ready to begin. For the sake of keeping the written narrative interesting for you, the reader, I have not broken up the fiction with the cards I pulled or the specific prompts I followed. But I will include my song titles as they change throughout the story, as well as updated images of This Man whenever I learn more about his appearance.
Without further ado, let’s get to my first journey into dreams.
Song 1: Reborn - Colin Stetson
It happened a few years ago, or maybe a few decades—I can’t be sure because I wasn’t paying attention then because who would. I mean, the reports were crazy. In some old winter, a bunch of people all going to the same shrink say that they all see the same man appear in their dreams all the time. It’s a local story, a neighborhood curiosity, weird but benign and too thin for national news. Until it happened in another place and another, all the way on the other side of the country. Then people were talking about it. What could it mean? Not that I was talking about it. I was sure it was all bullshit.
Then I saw him too.
Little by little, I started to see him more. Every time I slept. Sometimes he’d be close, sometimes far. Sometimes he’d be in clear focus, sometimes hard to make out. He talks, but in a fake language I think only he knows, and sometimes he doesn’t talk at all. Just watches. From somewhere.
I read about this thing once called the Tetris effect, where you spend so long and so much concentration on an activity that you start to see it everywhere. Like you play too much Tetris, and then you start seeing the ghosts of blocks haunting your vision. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that he started showing up when I was awake too. Just in my imagination, like a mirage. But he was still there, and it was driving me mad.
I started learning about lucid dreaming. They always say that if you can learn to do that, you can totally take control of your dreams and change them however you want. I thought I could evict him myself, y’know? So I did the journaling about the dreams I’ve had, and wrote down some dream markers to look out for. And I did the meditation, and made myself a mantra. When you wake, you will be dreaming. And I repeated it a bunch in my head as I fell asleep. And I learned to do it, I learned to lucid dream, I was ready.
Did you know that a lucid dreamer only successfully gains control over a dream about one-third of the time? The other times you can really only control yourself, like switching from automatic to manual. You can’t change the world, you can only make choices.
My choice right now is whether or not to scream.
That Man is here, crouched over me, nose-to-nose but he has no nose just now. His features are blurred, or missing I think. Except for a big scar along the left side of his face. Was that always there? My face starts to hurt. The same place. I feel my flesh rip open, carving a seam into me, and now I do scream. I hear him screaming too, but he has no mouth. Then my skin is forced back together. Staples? It’s all so awful.
And then I blink and he’s gone. The wound is healing, the pain is dull, and the worst is the bruising.
I’m in my room now, lying in bed exactly as I entered it, but it’s morning. When you wake, you will be dreaming. I scan the room, and I see the folder on my desk full of the homework assignments I was supposed to do last night. And I panic, even though I am thirty-four and this is a dream. A lucid dream. A two-thirds lucid dream. I think he knows why I’m here, and he’s not happy, and this is a two-thirds lucid dream. Fuck.
No turning back now.
Song 2: Radar Detector - Darwin Deez
The moment I’m out of bed, everything speeds up. I know this dream now. It all kicks off at night, so the daytime gets played out as a sort of montage. Bite-sized clips. I know a song is underscoring it, lively and bright, and I can’t hear it. I shower and get dressed. I brush my teeth like I wouldn’t have done back then, and I choose not to scramble to finish the homework because I am still thirty-four and this is still a dream.
I leave and take the bus to school. I would have driven my car usually, but now I know how bad the price of gas can get. Plus, who would have messed with a high-school senior riding the bus? That’s got a vibe of I-don’t-care-I’m-out-of-here-anyway to it that doesn’t seem worth provoking. The ride is all glimpses of landmarks, nearly instantaneous, and I’m exiting onto the school campus. No one cares I rode the bus. Turns out they did have their own shit going on after all.
My friends are there to greet me. They are two feet shorter than me, full of foam, and covered in felt. Their felt skin comes in all kinds of fun colors, and so does their clothes. They dance, herky-jerky, like their limbs are being flung about by strong winds. Our secret handshake is revealed in quick cuts spotlighting each movement and each friend. Hammy, Andre, Pradeep, Stu, and me.
Then we’re in class. I hear none of the lesson. Like it doesn’t even happen. Like the class period was only my friends and I goofing off, and then my teacher sends us to the principal’s office. I could have done it differently. I could have told my friends to shut it so I could listen to the teacher. But you never met Mr. Hartman, and I have, and I made the right choice the first time.
We sit outside the office. We’re told she’ll be with us soon, but we’re seniors and this is the third time we’ve been here this month and she’s not paid enough. So we’ll just sit and think about what we’ve done and then head to next period. And we do, in an instant, then we’re whispering. Whispering about a party. That night. Andre is too good for it, and Hammy is too bad. Pradeep has the last game of the season, he can’t make it either. It’s just me and Stu.
Then it’s after the party. We don’t even see it in flashes, because that part of the tape was erased. It’s the dead of night, probably 2 a.m. Pitch black. We need a place to sleep, can’t stay at the house. So we sleep in the car, cramped but safe until morning. Stu is out fast, he went balls to the wall. So did I, but I’m always wide awake in this dream.
That Man is staring at me through the window, and on his cheeks are freckles the same as mine that become mud when my face is flush. I can’t look away, and my vision vibrates. Eyelids become heavy. Sleep comes on. No. This isn’t how it goes. This isn’t how I wanted it to go. I don’t have control. He can take me any time.
I crash to black.
I am not off to great start. I’ve already uncovered two of the man’s features. At this rate, he’ll appear fully realized before I’m ready for him, and that will not end well for me. Anyway, thanks for reading Part 1!
Enjoyed this? Check out Session Two now!