One of my favorite things about the modern indie TTRPG space is how creators expand the medium’s range. TTRPG games are no longer something you play in a friend’s basement or a game store once a week. Indie TTRPG creators are designing games that can be played at any point in your day or while you’re performing any task. Alfred Valley’s Diedream is a fantastic example of this trend because you play the TTRPG before going to sleep.
Diedream is a rules-lite, setting-neutral game built around an oracle system. As the player tells the story in their head, they ask themselves yes or no questions to decide where the story goes next.
A Game That Takes Things To The Bedroom
Diedream Is A Game You Play While In Bed
Naturally, the game doesn’t use dice or props to resolve situations (as no one wants a stray D4 to get lost in their sheets just as they are trying to fall asleep). Whenever it is time to roll, the player randomly picks two two-digit numbers and adds them together. They then add the digits of the answer together and repeat this until they reach a single-digit number.
This number is then compared to a scale within the book to find if the answer is yes, yes but, no, no but, or a tie (with higher values indicating a more intense degree of success). The player then uses this answer to decide what happens next (and what the “but” is if they got a yes but or no but answer).
However, ties work slightly differently. On one hand, a tie can mean that your question doesn’t fit the situation. Maybe your character misunderstood something about the environment, or the action they were attempting to pull off got interrupted by an external force before they could put their plan into motion. A tie can also mean that the situation gets worse for your character, maybe a new problem suddenly arises, or something they’re attempting to do leads to them getting hurt.
The oracle can also aid in world-building, even creation, and scene description. To use it this way, the player first decides what they want to flesh out. They then roll as they would when trying to resolve a situation, adding two random two-digit numbers and the resulting number’s digits until they reach the digital root.
Once this is done, the player checks the oracle. Each pair of numbers on the oracle is linked to an element (Air, Fire, Earth, or Water). Once the player knows the aspect, they allow themselves to free associate until they reach something that answers the question or fits the situation they’re trying to expand on.
The Design Of A Sweet Dream
Diedream Clearly Put A Lot Of Thought Into Its Concept
Diedream is a stunning game that utterly blew me away. While the idea of a TTRPG you play while attempting to go to sleep may sound like a gimmick, Diedream pulls the concept off with aplomb. Alfred Valley clearly put a lot of thought into the game’s mechanics as they perfectly walk the tightrope of being involved enough to actually feel like a game while not being so complex that they keep you awake.
In fact, the game seems tailor-made to help the player fall asleep. The flowing nature of the game’s story, combined with many of the rules asking the player to focus on adding numbers together before recalling an oracle, means that the game functions similarly to the body scan method of meditation that is often recommended for people who struggle with insomnia and similar conditions.
Plus, the TTRPG beautifully exploits the hypnagogic state we fall into just before sleep. Some people may presume that having the player resolve situations by randomly picking numbers will lead to the player picking numbers that always give the highest level of success. However, this isn’t the case if you play the game just before sleep, as the hypnagogic state causes your brain to wander wildly and you to act without thinking things through, meaning that you get a nice spread of results.
On top of this, the game is full of clever flourishes. Most notably, most of the game’s core rules include a tip to help you memorize them (such as remembering the phrase “my hands are tied” to remind you that a result of 5 is always a tie), meaning that even people with a terrible memory will be able to play the game with their eyes closed.
However, while I appreciate the system’s openness, I feel Diedream would be helped by a few pre-built adventure scenarios or a table of starting prompts. Due to its unique setup, I worry that many newcomers to the game may struggle to come up with a good place to start their story when they first close their eyes, leading to them checking out of the experience before they get a chance to enjoy its brilliant design work. Thankfully, Alfred Valley links to a pre-made Diedream adventure called Wild of Eye on the game’s Itch page, and the Diedream download does include a module-creation template, meaning that this issue will likely get resolved in time.
Diedream is a must-play game for fans of the TTRPG medium. I can’t stress enough that while the idea of a TTRPG you play before sleep may sound like a gimmick, Diedream is far from a one-note curiosity. Its thoughtful design radiates off the page, with every mechanic obviously designed to work with and complement the game’s unique bedtime setting. During the play, the game quickly becomes second nature, meaning that after playing it once, you’ll likely find yourself unconsciously sliding back into it every time you lie in bed and wait to fall asleep, meaning that Diedream could become a central part of your nighttime routine.
