Oneiromancy and You!

[Enokh]

I've finally started running a Changeling 2E game, and am two sessions into it. The first session was primarily done as an Introduction to Oneiromancy, as it's something that they can all do and really appears to be a MAJOR tool in their pocket. I had a few questions, however:

1) Finding the Gate of Horn for a dreamer is said to be "just like finding anything else in the Hedge". The best I can tell, is that for the Chase rules relevant to finding things, one would basically just declare "I'm trying to get to Derrick's Gate of Horn" and off you go (so long as Derrick is asleep etc.)?

2) I've sort of been running things very Inception-y. Obviously, one's dreams can WILDLY deviate from reality, but to start off I figured I'd keep it calm (and they've all been mortal dreams, thus far). Does anyone have any experience running things more. . topsy-turvy?

3) How hostile does the Dream get to Infiltrators/Intruders/Assailants? Does the world (or, rather, the Eidolons) become just stand-offish? At higher levels does it devolve into combat, if not automatically than far more readily? Is there an equivalent of a police response to Assailants? Or does everything just get harder overall?

4) How does fighting people work? All mundane rolls double as Dream-shaping rolls; is that still true for, say, shooting people? Is the idea of, I don't know, someone with a decent dicepool in Firearms getting on top of a building, Aiming with a scoped rifle, and shooting someone, getting an Exceptional Success, and then finding out some hidden secret via a Paradigm Shift? While that particular example is rather anti-climatic, the idea of some brawl going on while all the combatants are also using shifts to change the landscape sound as fun as it would be chaotic.

I know many things in Chronicles are sort of ST-subjective, and something like Oneiromancy is probably even moreso. I've no problem at all hearing "your take" on things, and in fact would be very excited to hear various stories about how your games have gone. I've been running Chronicles games for YEARS and Changeling is shaping up to be one of my favorite; it's so BIG. There's so much STUFF you can do!

[ArcaneArts]

1) The Gate of Horn opens to the Dreaming Roads rather than specific individuals, but You could still essentially use the Chase Rules to got to Derrick's Bastion, with the entrance through the Gate of Horn as a particular round.

2) It depends on how you want it to be topsy turvy. I find taking cues from Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine helps out a lot, but again depends on the sort of things you want happening, how they happen, and why they are. Otherwise, lots of freeflow writing/speaking practice, play around with abstractions and literalisms, animate your setting.

3) Again depends on the mind yer in and what you're trying to say about it, but using an admittedly loaded metaphor, let's use the analogy of a black guy from the lower end of town in a white high-end grocery store. Without conditions, this is like the guy is in a place that actually practices what it preaches in terms of equality-no one bats an eye at you. With Infiltrator, people watch our guy, and it makes conversation uneasy, but no one actually thinks he's going to do anything, just that the possibility exists. With Intruder, people want to show our guy the door, or for him to just leave, and the edging of interactions is either there to encourage him to leave, or to provoke him into doing something that will give them the right to leave. With Assailant, the people in power just aren't going to keep him there-security/police is coming to walk him out (or subdue him and then throw him out), and the populace is willing to get deuptized if it's needed.

It similar with the Dream Conditions, with the minor exception that, depending on the personality of the person, how many of the eidolons are going to act as security/police vs as the populace. You either fit right in, people are watching you, people are trying to politely get you out, or they are just flat out trying to get you out.

4) Any action, inclduing shooting people, has the space to be the catalyst for Oneiromancy. It mostly depends on how a player is going to use the thematic of their action to instigate or reflect change in the dream. So the doing a scope shot thing actually could be used to spin out a revealing secret, or it could tear a community apart because you shot the heart and soul of a community, or brign a desolate winter because you shot someone important, or bring up inviisable assailants because you just tripped over that feeling of people being out to get you, so on and so forth.