4 Simple Tips For Dreamscape Combat [public service announcement]

After watching Paprika last night, I thought our readership might find a few general tips for surviving combat in a Dreamscape useful.

[Besides Paprika, the other sources contemplated as reference material on combat in dreamscapes and other existential war-zones included, inter alia: The Cell, the Nightmare on Elm Street series, The Sandman graphic novel series, Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Restless episode), eXistenZ, The Matrix (not the series, just The Matrix), In Dreams (1999), Southpark (City One The Edge Of Forever), Futurama (The Sting), Flatliners, Night Watch/Day Watch, The Wheel Of Time (Tel'aran'rhiod description), The Devil's Advocate, The Lawnmower Man, Fight Club (final scene), Oblivion (Through A Nightmare Darkly), and Star Trek: TNG (Frame Of Mind, Phantasms, Where Not One Has Gone Before, Remember Me).]

4.) If possible, it is always better to fight in your “own” dream rather than in someone else’s. In your dream, you can control setting and external factors in ways that make surviving combat more likely. Sometimes, you will have to leave your home turf to finished off the bad guy, but fighting in someone else’s dreamsacpe should always be a second choice.

3.) Have a person there to wake you up when shit goes bad in the dream. It pays to pick someone who is not a drowsy narcoleptic and who can stay awake for more than 15 minutes at a stretch. (Sub-rule: Advise this person not to just repeat “Wake up!” over and over again. If it doesn’t work once, have them try something else, like throwing water on you. Repeating “Wake up!” is likely to be one of the least effective methods of waking you. It’s also annoying to the audience.)

2.) At least once during dream combat you may feel that you have woken up and all is well. “It was just a dream.” You haven’t woken up yet. You are still in the dream. Remain vigilant.

1.) Although people will tell you that dying in your dream will kill you in real life, if you should die in your dream, do not despair. This “rule” may be broken, possibly through the full in-dream realization that you are dreaming. If, at the moment of death, you are able to become fully conscious of dreaming — from within your dream — you may be able to revive yourself in the dreamscape and prevent your waking self from perishing as well. This technique is recommended only as a last resort, for obvious reasons.