Exchange of Realities

For regular readers, it’s a well-known fact that I’m not too fond of fight scenes. But offer me a fight within a dreamscape and I may well eschew my usual combat avoidance in order to take it. What, then, is so great about dreamscape battles?

1. Nobody dies. I realize that some people might take a dimmer view of that than I do, but I’m rather fond of the idea that someone can lose utterly without necessarily risking losing his character. The best part is that it doesn’t take away risk, just permanent consequences; do you really want to know what does happen if you lose, particularly if it’s already established that you can’t just wake up?
2. Entirely different metaphysics. Want to try a fight without gravity? Without friction? With improvised magic? Where combat is literally based on things like confidence and cunning rather than strength and speed? A shapeshifters’ Rock-Paper-Scissors match? A situation where he who tells the best story wins? You can probably find an excuse to do it here.
3. Almost anything is possible… Dreams don’t have to have the same kinds of limitations that a waking world battle does. A character in a dream can often convince herself she can do things she wasn’t able to do before; she might shape her surroundings into objects (often exploiting the symbolism of her ‘materials’) or even pull objects or creatures out of thin air; she can take ‘putting existing magic to uses for which it was not intended’ to an entirely new level. And all that she needs to do is justify it within the dream logic. Which leads us to Point 4…
4. …within reason. Even dreams have metaphysics, and you can limit exploits by making them clear in the very beginning. Maybe things created within the dream on the spur of the moment can only be so powerful. Perhaps there’s a size limit, or if one person grows the others’ scale rises to match. Maybe a change doesn’t do quite what its user expected it to. Either way, it’s possible to keep someone from pulling out something that says “I just win now”, while still allowing for a much greater range of abilities.
5. Yes, and…. The idea of “Yes, and…”, of accepting someone’s suggestion and then adding something on to it, is more suited for a dream battle than a regular battle. In a normal fight, you have to work within standard limitations: in a game, the mechanics rules, in a story, the laws of physics and magic modified by suspension of disbelief. But in a dream, there’s not as much to limit you; you can just take someone else’s otherwise impossible idea and use it as a springboard, or counter it. And all that matters is keeping the dream-logic intact. If it works for improv actors, there’s no reason not to let it work for you.
6. Symbolism is a weapon, literally. Using symbolism as a way to juice up an attack is a useful skill, but unless you’re practiced at it, it’s pretty tricky. Since people can literally do anything from making shields out of faith to turning a magical effect that protects them by guiding their movement into a binding for a summoned creature, there’s a lot more room to practice without the use of symbols looking more silly or overblown than meaningful.

Sure, there are a lot of advantages to fighting in the waking world. But in many ways, dream-based fights are a lot more fun.

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