Multiple Settings Sweet Dreams Corps. (Interest Check) ((Redux))

[TruthHurts_22]

So lemme settle the score.

This RP is one I made back when I first joined RPN, earlier this year. Everything was going good, and I was rearing to start... but then the world got very crazy. Given the setting of the roleplay (taking place in a volatile city quarantined from the world) I thought it best to let things settle before moving on with it.

And that day is today! No, I didn't say 'day' at all last sentence, don't worry about that. Welcome to...

~ ~ ~ ~

For the better part of a year, the city of Wincrest, New Jersey, has been a literal nightmare.

A malicious force has fallen over the city, something that people have started calling 'The Curse'. For some, The Curse traps them in their own mental worlds, dreams and nightmares that bleed into reality if left unchecked. Others turn into monsters of any shape and size, born from their very fears. An organization called Behdlam R&D has put the entire city under lockdown, walling it away from the rest of the world. To put it simply, things are pretty shit nowadays.

You're one of the lucky ones, though. You're immune to The Curse's effects - you don't get sucked into these weird dreamscapes, you haven't turned into a monster yet, and the people in charge say you're safe, so it looks good. But that also means you're in the thick of it. Behdlam R&D has recruited you against your wishes, using your natural resistance to their advantage. Now part of a branch called the "Sweet Dreams Corps", it's your job to clean up the messes. You stop the monsters, you go into people's heads... essentially, you're supernatural pest control.

Good luck!

~

PREMISE
​

You are the newest "recruits" of the Sweet Dreams Corps, a militarized taskforce made to combat The Curse, a supernatural force that's plaguing the city. Between fighting off horrific monsters and diving into the dreams of those under The Curse, you'll have your work cut out to keep the peace. Luckily, along with being immune to The Curse, you possess a slight grasp over it, and can wield its dream-like power for yourself. With Behdlam R&D backing you and literal magic at your fingertips, you might stand a chance against the weirdness going on out there.

But there's a chill in the air, a sense that, as you near the first anniversary of when The Curse began, something really bad is about to happen...

• Structure & Tone
• Objectives, Achievements, & XP

• 
  This RP will be done in a loose pseudo-episodic fashion. What this means is that there will be distinct Chapters, arcs centered on a certain event or major period of time within the story, and a lot of the fluff in between will be passed over. There may be 'Break Chapters' that take place between the bigger ones, but it probably won't be consistent.
  
  This is so that the focus will be more on the meat of the RP and will hopefully avoid any slow lulls that happen waiting for a traditional timeskip.
  
  As for the tone, I'm aiming for a semi-comedic, dark Saturday Morning Cartoon-esque style. The subject matter is going to be serious (it's about fears, the inner workings of people's minds, and big scary monsters) but the stuff surrounding it will be absurd and sometimes ridiculous (you could fight monster clowns with colorful neon bubbles).
  
• 
  In keeping with the lighthearted side of the RP, I'm going to be including some game-y elements. For every Chapter, there will be Objectives, which are basically plot beats and end goals put into concrete form. There are both Main and Side Objectives. A Chapter ends shortly after all of its Main objectives are completed (and I don't pull a fast one by adding more) to keep the flow going. Side objectives will remain uncompleted if they aren't once a Chapter ends, and may even affect the story going forward ooooooOOOOoo
  
  Achievements are straight-forward, they're fun little rewards for doing something significant, either on your own accord or due to certain objectives. These aren't going to be set in stone and I could very well come up with them on the spot if something real interesting happens or people manage to subvert my expectations, so don't be afraid to get a little wild! Just, y'know, not too wild.
  
  Finally, both of these systems(?) are directly related to the third: XP. Each Objective and Achievement comes with it a small bit of XP that is awarded to the characters that were involved with reaching them. Once a character reaches a certain XP milestone, they can cash it in for some benefit - different equipment, more ways to use their powers, etc. This won't have an in-universe rational, this is purely a meta element, justified in that your characters are receiving actual experience as they do cool things. That makes sense, right?
  

SETTING
​

Wincrest. The Zombie City, as people call it. Having died and revived since its conception, Wincrest is infamous in most of New Jersey and the surrounding area for being cursed. Any business that starts there is soon to go bankrupt, and moving into the city is sure to shatter any dreams. Wincrest is either a thriving hotbed of hopeful beginning or a husk of utter nothingness, depending on who you ask. Of course, if you asked anybody now, they'd all agree that Wincrest really sucks.

Ever since The Curse was realized, Wincrest has been cut off from the rest of the world. Surrounded by a 10-foot thick wall of hard metal and encased in a gigantic bug-zapper of a dome, nobody has entered or left the city since. A dark haze fills the air, almost like a perpetual nighttime that blots out the sun, making the already depressing city even drearier. Life tries to go on as normal, but with jobs growing more defunct every day and the streets being a danger at a moment's notice, most everyone is antsy, riled, wanting things to change.

Now, folks are starting to gather; criminal elements converge, trying to overtake the city; mobs form, conflict rising as they just want to leave; some are even embracing The Curse, a cult that's steadily gathering more members as it boasts of salvation.

And, worse than all of that... the Block Stop finally ran out of slushie syrup!

• Wincrest's History
• Behdlam R&D, Sweet Dreams Corps, & Daydreams

• 
  Wincrest's history is a bit of a shaky one.
  
  Originally Fort Wincrest and populated mostly by soldiers in the late 1600s, the small New England-based outpost eventually forgot why it was there and became something of a small village. It had a long history of participating in witch trials, doing so even after it fell out of style, to the point where its superstitious leaders, the Wincrest family, abandoned the townsfolk to their own devices and fled back to England in an effort to avoid the wrath of the many, many witches they've executed.
  
  Fort Wincrest slowly declined, only the most stubborn of families staying around to try and maintain the place. Eventually, Jonathan Wincrest II returned to America, and decided to shack up in his family's ancestral home. Fort Wincrest, now just called Wincrest, was on the up as people flocked and buildings were raised, finally earning a spot on the maps.
  
  A bit of good luck hit when it turned out that part of the land Wincrest was on was directly above a sizable oil reserve. With that, the city flourished. It attracted lots of families and businesses, and for once, truly thrived. But nothing good lasts in Wincrest. A competing oil company managed to sue the rights for all oil-related profits out from under the Wincrest family, and to top it off a new highway expansion diverted large amounts of traffic out of Wincrest. Once the oil ran out and the new company moved shop, the city was truly dried up.
  
  In the years leading up to its current state, Wincrest had a bit of a resurgence as a new major highway was built, cutting right through the city. This was both good and bad; good for the short-term as the increase in traffic had a small bump to the economy, but bad for those that saw Wincrest as a home, as the highway brought with it greasy food chains, cheap hotels, and a loss of proper businesses and housing that used to be where the roads now are. It's a burden off the mayor's shoulders that something else is taking the public's focus now.
  
• 
  Nobody knows much about Behdlam R&D except for the people who work there. Mere days after the first known cases of The Curse hit the local news, Behdlam was in the city. They were just there for research, but once the issue became apparent (and outright deadly), they took over Wincrest overnight. The wall, the headquarters across from city hall, the newly outfitted police force... their presence was everywhere in an instant.
  
  Despite a metric ton of naysayers and conspiracy theorists, Behdlam R&D has done nothing against the city itself or its people. The worst it's done is forcing civilians into their ranks as the Sweet Dreams Corps. Which... yeah, is pretty sketchy, but it's still for the greater good!
  
  The SDC have been around since the start, but have been mostly dormant due to The Curse having less of a grasp over the city before now. Most ordinary folk don't see them a whole lot, as they're almost always in the company of other Behdlam employees or monsters. They have a bit of a reputation, either seen as legit superheroes or violent and part of the problem.
  
  This is because, as a Sweet Dreamer, you're immune to what The Curse normally does; you won't be put under the effects of an encroaching Nightmare or spontaneously combust into a being of pure fire (just an example). In fact, with Behdlam's resources, you can even produce magic of your own in the form of Daydreams. Put simply, they're magical powers manifested from a good dream, instead of the usual fears and nightmares The Curse preys on. Though it doesn't have to be an actual dream - it can be something they hold close, like a nice memory or something important to them. It really depends on the person.
  
  Though for very legitimate reasons, Daydreams always have a neon yellow, pink, & green coloring. Certainly helps make them look pleasant.
  

OTHER INFO
​

I'm looking for around 4 to 5 people in order to start the RP, and will likely have a cap of 10 players. Character guidelines and all that stuff will come once I garner enough interest to justify making a thread for that, so if you're wanting a piece of this, say something!

And there you have it! I hope that this checks your interest. Whatever happens, if you're reading this, I'm wishing you Sweet Dreams~

 

[Shadow Cat]

Interested!!

 

[TruthHurts_22]

Thanks for the interest! ^^

 

[AreSneksSly]

Really interested :>

 

[azenva]

i might join this rp, am interested

 

[Arkaeis]

Curious as to what the limitations on curse manifestations are, what roles are needed in the cast list and defining characteristics of Chapter one?

 

[olive.tree]

I love this!

 

[TruthHurts_22]

Thanks for the interest, everyone! I think we should be good to put up the character/ooc threads sometime this week.

Curious as to what the limitations on curse manifestations are, what roles are needed in the cast list and defining characteristics of Chapter one?

If by curse manifestations you mean what The Curse does to people, there's no exact limits outside of it happening one of two ways: a person is pulled into a deep, coma-like sleep, and is stuck in a mental landscape of one sort or another that if left unchecked can begin to spread to their surroundings - turning their environment into a bizarre mishmash of their Nightmare and even trapping other people in it as well. The second way is the much more immediately troublesome "Wakers", which are individual peopleturned into strange, typically dangerous monsters.

If you instead mean what kinds of Daydreams your character can have, well, no real limits on those, either! The only stipulations I have for them are that a) it takes the form of some sort of physical object, regardless of its effects, and b) they need to encompass something good related to your character, opposite the fear that The Curse usually draws from. It can relate to a happy memory (a favorite toy that functions as an actual weapon), a dream, literal or otherwise (summoning a personal artillery plane or boxing gloves from your glory days), or something closely related to their personality (an alien conspiracy theorist flying around on tiny UFOs). It's more of a 'feel' thing than a concrete this-and-that-can't-happen.

There won't be any 'roles', per se. You can make a character fit into a role if you want - a tank, a healer, etc - but it'd work just as well if everyone signed up as big punch-folks.

Chapter One will have your characters as the newest recruits for the SDC, going out on their first rounds of duty, getting the swing of things, and having their special power-granting gizmos, slash, tracking devices bolted onto their wrist. You know, rookie stuff! :b

 

[Arkaeis]

Thanks for the interest, everyone! I think we should be good to put up the character/ooc threads sometime this week.



If by curse manifestations you mean what The Curse does to people, there's no exact limits outside of it happening one of two ways: a person is pulled into a deep, coma-like sleep, and is stuck in a mental landscape of one sort or another that if left unchecked can begin to spread to their surroundings - turning their environment into a bizarre mishmash of their Nightmare and even trapping other people in it as well. The second way is the much more immediately troublesome "Wakers", which are individual peopleturned into strange, typically dangerous monsters.

If you instead mean what kinds of Daydreams your character can have, well, no real limits on those, either! The only stipulations I have for them are that a) it takes the form of some sort of physical object, regardless of its effects, and b) they need to encompass something good related to your character, opposite the fear that The Curse usually draws from. It can relate to a happy memory (a favorite toy that functions as an actual weapon), a dream, literal or otherwise (summoning a personal artillery plane or boxing gloves from your glory days), or something closely related to their personality (an alien conspiracy theorist flying around on tiny UFOs). It's more of a 'feel' thing than a concrete this-and-that-can't-happen.

There won't be any 'roles', per se. You can make a character fit into a role if you want - a tank, a healer, etc - but it'd work just as well if everyone signed up as big punch-folks.

Chapter One will have your characters as the newest recruits for the SDC, going out on their first rounds of duty, getting the swing of things, and having their special power-granting gizmos, slash, tracking devices bolted onto their wrist. You know, rookie stuff! :b

Count me in as very interested.

 

[g r i m]

I'm very interested in this!

 

[Hugh Flynn]

an experienced lucid dreamer here! very veRY interested~!

 

[mauverie]

Interested!

 

[Shagranoz]

Interested.

 

[Folly-Derrezzed]

So basically this is like a more crime ridden cursed fosters home for imaginary friends?