The world is still here.
An affectionate mishmashing of mahou shoujo tropes and setting conventions, Beautiful Dreamer is an AU Journal Roleplay, in which characters awaken as magical warriors known as Dreamers in order to protect both the waking and dreaming worlds.
Set primarily in the fictional city of Yumemigaoka, Japan, Beautiful Dreamer takes place in a setting split between two worlds: the Waking World that we call reality and the Dream Sphere, a world of magic where dreams and nightmares take on a very real form that threatens the stability of everyday life. The ones who keep this stability in balance are Dreamers, magical warriors who can traverse the Dream Sphere and are tasked with protecting both worlds from that which would threaten them. As becomes increasingly clear, however, something would very much prefer to keep things out of balance and is willing to push back against the Dreamers with force if necessary...
The game began on May 1st 2023 and can be found here
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This game provides examples of:
- Aerithand Bob: The given names of the player characters are a mix of regular if anime-esque Japanese names, foreign but otherwise totally mundane names and... Zeke Genbu.
- Action Initiative: Enforced in boss threads, but minor combat threads are generally run by the players however they want.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Boss encounters are three to four players to a boss, with the characters chosen from a pool of volunteers.
- Arc Villain: Dreamer Crimson seems to be set up as the primary antagonist of the first half of the story, with hints something else may be going on behind the scenes.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Many of the characters who hold high positions in the DU are themselves powerful and experienced Dreamers.
- Badass Adorable: Many of the younger Dreamers, who can pack just as much of a punch as the adults.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: A Disturbance is the result of a character wishing to flee from reality and live exclusively in their dreams and while they *do* get that... it just so happens that the 'dream' they flee to is made almost entirely of the trauma and fear that caused them to run away in the first place.
- Breather Episode: Months following Disturbance dives are always "event lite" in order to give players and characters space to breathe after the chaos.
- Caged Bird Metaphor: Mio is found inside a cage when located in the heart of her Disturbance, as a representation of how trapped she feels in reality.
- Calling Your Attacks: While this is only strictly necessary to make use of a Signature Power, some Dreamers will dramatically call out their attack names just for fun anyway.
- Chaos Architecture: Everything in the Dream Sphere as it accordingly runs on dream logic. While some places are just lightly fantastical versions of real world geography, there's just as many with impossible geography that lack any and all respect for the rules of reality.
- Combination Attack: Tandem Powers, which allow Dreamers to combine their magic to interesting effect... so long as they can get along well enough to work together.
- Conditional Powers: Dreamers can only make use of their magic when actually in the Dream Sphere. In reality, they're no different from any other human save for their ability to pass into the Dream Sphere.
- Dreaming of a White Christmas: With Yumemigaoka being in the northern end of Japan, it's natural for it to snow during winter - however, it also tends to snow in the Dream Sphere during the same time of year purely because it's reflecting everyone's expectations that it should snow during Christmas.
- Eldritch Location: Disturbances can be considered this - while they don't look all that much different from other places in the Dream Sphere, it's repeatedly emphasized that they *feel* deeply wrong in comparison. Not to mention the strange domain characters tend to stumble into when pursuing Dreamer Crimson...
- Empathic Environment: The Dream Sphere as a whole reflects the thoughts and emotions of people in the real world and changes and reacts to them as time passes. In particular, the firey Fury Peak and constantly raining Vale of Sorrow are explicitly reflections of rage and sorrow respectively.
- Fighting Your Friend: Both Ango and Amane's Disturbances resulted in this, with the two of them fighting alongside their respective Night Terrors against the Dreamers who had come to save them.
- Flavor Text: Every boss and miniboss has this in their descriptions.
- Green Hill Zone: Reflection Glades.
- Interface Screw: Contact with Dreamer Crimson and the... whatever else is in the Dream Sphere turns text in the Excursion Results glitched and distorted - or in some cases, redacted entirely leaving it up to inference and imagination exactly what a character may have seen or encountered.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Combined with Loss of Identity, this is the possible outcome of a Nightmare attack; if not saved in time, a victim can lose huge chunks of their memories to the point of becoming a completely different person once they wake up.
- Magical Girl Warrior: Explicitly what Dreamers are, with fancy new outfits, titles and a sparkly henshin trinket to boot.
- Meaningful Name: All Dreamers' titles are this, being representitive either of their powers or the important feelings that caused them to awaken as a Dreamer.
- Possession Implies Mastery: Averted by the Rank system. Characters must put time and work into their magic to get the most use out of it and this is reflected in game mechanics by a power's effectiveness being determined by a Rank that can be raised via activity rewards.
- Show Within a Show: A whole page's worth of them, even.
- Spontaneous Weapon Creation: A Dreamer's Sandglass turns into their weapon when they transform and it can be dismissed and resummoned as necessary.
- Standard Office Setting: Hilariously enough, the Dreamer Union is this. Despite handling the comings and goings of an entire city's worth of magical, dream-travelling warriors, their day to day functions are surprisingly mundane.
- Weird World, Weird Food: While Dreamers don't *need* to eat in the Dream Sphere, they still can. Parties and gatherings in the Dream Sphere itself thus usually are catered with all manner of bizarre and otherworldly food, just for the fun of it.
