Red Dragon's Tale is rife with indications of a large world beyond the boundaries of the model: a shoreline and dock, an open meadow, and multiple references to places and factions of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. The model's edge, however, is not as flexible as this fiction. When a play-tester asked what would happen if they tried to venture off the map, I informed them that they would bump into a video-game-esque invisible wall.
Any traditional prep-heavy RPG runs into problems if they players deviate away from the expected adventure site – but for our Lego-based game, the world simply does not exist except for what the model-builder has designed. Staying within that prescribed space is a non-negotiable requirement. Now, we could pretty easily include a rule stating that the players are prohibited from trying to take their characters off-model, and put the burden on them to justify the behaviour diegetically. But whenever I hit a hard limit of my chosen medium, my impulse is to adapt the whole of the work around that need, rather than try to paper over it. I found a way to do exactly that while my play-testers and I were discussing the matter of the game's genre.
I had instructed the play-testers that they could design their own minifigs for the game, but that they should stick to Lego elements that would mesh with the medieval fantasy setting of Red Dragon's Tale. That proved to be an almost immediate source of friction – not because the playtesters didn't appreciate fantasy fiction, but because they owned plenty of exciting, enticing minifig elements that simply didn't fit the vibe. We resolved, therefore, that a general Lego RPG ought to be as permissive as possible in terms of genre trappings. I immediately suggested that, rather than medieval fantasy, we should hew closer to "planetary romance". Offhandedly, I cited D&D’s own Spelljammer setting as an example of the style.
The concept clicked into place immediately. As in Spelljammer, players would portray the crew of an interdimensional ship, travelling between pocket universes – each enclosed by a firmament membrane which, naturally, would coincide precisely with the boundaries of its own Lego model. Thus the game also acquired its initial working name, but as the title of this post has already spoiled, I'm changing that name now.
The "Dreamskimmer" is the (working) name of the players' interdimensional ship. The Dreamskimmer's "reality anchor" allows it to "dock" with other realities by creating a stationary bubble where the ship's world overlaps with the alien world, like the middle of a Venn diagram. The crew can then disembark to explore, study, and document each world they visit, while also seeking provisions to help extend their overall expedition – but only as far as the bubble permits. This premise has proven fertile not just for permitting infinite places to visit, but also in terms of how the fictional details of reality-travel can be used to drive other elements of gameplay.
