a civilizational transition game by koru

Dreamscape is a reality-altering game inspired by friends, and co-created by the cofounders, of Koru, a social network of cultural subversives who want to connect with new ways of being in the multiverse. By presenting shamanic moments, the experience of playing Dreamscape is like being in a lucid dream, and will potentially provoke, in players, a consciousness shift about their shared universe. Without a fixed goal, a definitive strategy, or clearly delineated opponents, this simple game is designed to engage players in radically disruptive ways in ways that shake their imaginations about what is possiblein ways that powerfully suggest that the world, our identities, our ethical spaces, our motivations, our social systems, institutions, technologies, and histories are dreams, holographic projections of our collective consciousness, and that we often can change itif we dare.

The Akasha Scribes

There are lots of words in this guidebook. Sorry. If you really dont like words, and would like to skip to the part where you learn about the game itself, then start from Chapter 3 The Story. To get a feel of the game and the inspiring ideas that have birthed it, read from the beginning. There are no page numbers though. Its deliberate (we actually want you to read the entire thing!). Whichever way you approach this book, we welcome you to the Dreamscape!
We are because we play

Ej and Bayo Akomolafe (Designers) [bakomolafe@yahoo.com]

Glossary

The Story
Introducing Dreamscape
Playing the Game

The Characters

Chapter 1
Reality is an illusion. What we often take as the real world, the world of solid objects, is a dream.
Our world today is groaning for solutions to multidimensional problems that do not seem to ever go away. Just turn off the television and take a good look around you: at this moment, millions of hungry people are going to bed without having eaten a meal. Tomorrow morning, they will wake up earlier than most, and slave for a few coins from a system that claims to be meritorious and fair. At this moment, an army of bulldozers are clearing what used to be a pristine forest with an exotic biodiversity. They are making way for a new ultramodern estate that will have all the trappings of the good life. At this moment, a child from Africa is learning in school to memorize all the words of a seventeenth century philosopher from Europe. She may or may not recognize that her learning has nothing to do with her real questions and the challenges of her people; still, she will memorize the text faithfully and hope to be awarded good grades. It is the only way she can have a chance at getting a job in the future. At this moment, a woman is watching wealthier peoples children at a daycare program rather than spending time with her own. At this moment, someone is walking home from a grinding days job. He passes by a newspaper stand that screams war, poverty, under-development, scarcity, crime and ignorance. He glances at the headlines and then mindlessly trudges on disempowered. He is convinced that this is the way the world is. Thats just the way it is.

Thankfully, we need not believe that. Also, we need not believe that our intractable problems of poverty, ignorance, ecological devastation, war and corruption can only be solved in G8 summits, in the boardrooms of powerful enterprises, by isolated professors and their isolated ivory textbooks, by religious exclusivists and their claims to conditioned universal salvation, or by flashy politicians and their promise of reform when they take the reins of their respective nation-states. Even more critically, we need not believe that these so-called problems are what they are conventionally labelled as: deficits in our collective efforts to populate our world with schooled, educated, certificated consumers whose identities are validated by the global industrial complex. Welcome to a different awareness a place of waiting, a burning feeling of restlessness that has inspired hundreds of thousands of spontaneous movements and small initiatives around the world, a place of magic. Today the exciting news is that thousands of people are waking up to a different sort of consciousness. They are beginning to reappraise their landscapes and their social institutions and normative experiences in ways that are radically different from and disturbing to the orthodox establishments. They are beginning to see that money is not a neutral tool of exchange, but a zero-sum technology that has siphoned real wealth and concentrated it in a small elite class of exploiters; they are understanding that schooling is a social sorting mechanism that has conditioned millions into a life pattern fitting to the interests of silent hegemonies of

control; they are standing up to resist the claims to universality that have been wielded by capitalism and Eurocentrism much to the silencing of indigenous ways of being and knowing. They realize certain ways of seeing the world are established as normal or natural, obvious and necessary, even though they are often entirely socially engineered. This awakening has spurred the creation of alternatives to schooling, performative spaces that seek to undercut the commodification of knowledge in universities, new food networks that connect the farmer to homes, local currencies that are not based on the myth of scarcity and fear, indigenous health systems that do not valorise disease and illness as opportunities for profitmaking enterprises, and new technologies that are subverting the power of the few over the many.

Stretching from the crowded uprisings of the Egyptian revolution to the Occupy movement in New York, what lies buried in the heart of most of these awakenings is a very subversive idea a troubling feeling that has the power to transform everything. This idea is not so much a single notion as it is a complex amalgam of resistant consciousnesses, the politics of possibilities, a coalition of knowledges from below, and a re-enchantment of a fringe tradition. It is this: that the world is only as it is because we have dreamed it to be this way and, accordingly, we can dream another dream.

This consciousness, this re-storying of the world as dream is more prestigious than might be suggested by its own articulation. Central to this idea is that reality is much more paradoxical than was initially thought, and that we are citizens of a multidimensional pluriverse of absurdity. Objective reality does not exist. The conventional idea of the world as being composed of matter or matter and the nonmaterial is no longer tenable. These binary visions of reality have since unsuccessfully met their match in new insights in quantum mechanics, which now seemingly supports what was well understood by Eastern mystics and is now being championed by psychedelic adventurers, cultural visionaries, non-western indigenous shamans, and religious guides. The world is as we dream it. If we strip away layers upon layers of any material in order to find out what is universally basic to all matter, we will find the non-material: consciousness. We will find ourselves observing. Consciousness seems to innervate all stretching into alternate universes or multiverses that defy logic or reason. Indigenous cultures such as the Mayans, most African cultures and Hopi Indians believed that everything is interconnected in a seamless weave of dreams that the world is no more real than the worlds we seemingly conjure in our non-wakeful states. Indeed, they had amazing rituals of dreamsharing, and employed shamans as purveyors of new dreamscapes. New insights suggest that these shamans ingested psychedelic substances (such as ayahuasca, iboga and substances on the back of certain kinds of toads) that

allowed them access into other dimensions and realities where they were able to converse with entities alien to our realms and bring back wisdom relevant to the needs of their respective communities. Their practices averred the idea that our reality is not the only reality and that we actually co-create our contexts and summon them into the actual with the labels we employ. In other words, there are no facts, and the things we traditionally take as normative are only so because we reinforce their holds on us by participating in their potentiality. Consequently, life is a story, a participatory arena of dreams. Life is a game, and we derive our identities, our hopes, our ethics, our sense of placement, our tragedies and our futures from the game that we play. When we look out at the world around us, it is not the way it is because of some law beyond us it is largely this way because we have conceived ourselves, knowledge, and what we can do together in very particular ways given the infinity of paths we could choose. How we live emerges from the stories we have and continue to tell. Indeed, it is the internalization of norms that shapes what we perceive as the only legitimate way to live; it moulds consciousness and directs energies to what we should be doing. What would happen if we all stopped, failed massively, and reclaimed the occupied territory that is our lives? What would happen if we found the courage to dream again? What would happen if we wake up to another dream?

Life is a dream.

What do we need today - more than anything else? A new politician messiah with stirring messages of hope? A new G8 summit? A reformulation of our most notorious social institutions? A hundred dollars in every pocket? I would vote for none of these. What we need today is irreverence the longing to subvert the notions of reality that have been imposed on us by the global industrial complex and the hegemonies of consumerism; the willingness to 'fail' or open ourselves up to the possibility of other forms of being, other forms of knowing and modes of being where the emphasis falls less on money and work and competition and more on cooperation, silliness and adventure; the realization that happiness is not always the best way to be happy, and that we need not be slaves to the tyranny of positive-ness that has held our civilization in its numbing grip. Irreverence for logic! Irreverence for the work ethic! In our poetic subversion of the actual, we will wander, improvise, fall short, and move in circles. We will lose our way, our cars, our agenda, and possibly our minds, but in losing we will find another way of making meaning in which no one gets left behind. We will find, in leaving the actual, the magically possible.

Ej and Bayo Akomolafe Designers, Dreamscape

Chapter 2
Are we sleepwalking through our waking state or wake-walking through our dreams?
Life is a game, remember? Our lives are dreams, stories told and held in silence, selfmade prophecies, contradictions, paradoxes - an ever-unfolding festival of clowns and angels, yet shot through with beauty softer than the feathers of fairies. It is this sense of the absurd, this roving sense of paradox, this groundless playful transgression and reenchantment of 'reality' as 'potentiality' that gives us the most compelling sense of hope about our world - the hope that we can speak new stories into being, find our healing from the stories we once told, and challenge the very right of reality to be the only thing real to us. At the Koru network, we sought a way to midwife people into new ways of seeing and being, an invitation to failures byways through the superhighways of our normative experiences. We felt this experiment should capture the beautiful idea that our realities are at root a form of play with consciousness. We hoped that what we have co-created, while being immense fun, will provoke conversations and possibly social action. We present to you Dreamscape! Dreamscape is a reality-altering game (RAG) designed along the lines of the ARG format. Participants are immersed in provocative circumstances that ARE real. By presenting shamanic moments, the experience of playing Dreamscape is like being in a lucid dream, and will potentially provoke, in players, a consciousness shift about their shared universe. Without a fixed goal, a definitive strategy, or clearly delineated opponents, this simple game is designed to engage players in radically disruptive ways in ways that shake their imaginations about what is possiblein ways that powerfully suggest that the world, our identities, our ethical spaces, our motivations, our social systems, institutions, technologies, and histories are dreams.

Playing Dreamscape is an experiment with disciplinary transformation on behalf of the project of generating new forms of knowing and being. The aim of the game is to energize cultural subversives, a maroon community of outcasts who refuse, resist, and renege on the claims and demands of our normative experiences. Specifically, Dreamscape is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It's a breath-taking juggling act that immerses players in a gripping world of absurdities, magic and epiphanic (nay, shamanic) moments. Dreamscape is an invitation to debrand our minds, transcend the dumbing down of our present civilization, and break into alternative ways of being. Dreamscape is not safe. The idea is very subversive. The whole thrust of the game is to invite people to re-envision their world, to see with new eyes, to re-imagine their normative perceptions and experiences of life. However this first comes with recognizing that the world is actually contested and contestable, that our social, ethical and even physical realities, behaviours and systems are fleeting, always in tension, temporal, disrespectful, promiscuous, unstable, porous, plural and entangled like a dream. Dreamscape is therefore a valorisation of the idea that we are players in an ecosystem of possibilities. The fault lines underneath our perceptions of stability are always restless. Ultimately, Dreamscape enriches the Koru process of nurturing a community of cultural visionaries, outliers and walk-outs, who want to experiment with new ways of being and knowing that are not dependent on money, work and competition, and who might have ideas about how to bring transformative change to their worlds.

Chapter 3
A world is plunged into an unprecedented crisis a catastrophe so riveting, so troubling and menacing that it imperils life as we know it. The real threat of this multidimensional crisis is that it is barely noticeable, and is perceived only by some who do not see as others see. Others feel it, but are unable to name it. Its invisible power is like a poisonous lullaby, numbing the listener, dragging her deeper and deeper into realms of sleep, listlessness, and disenchantment. This ineffable veil cloaks the landscapes unchallenged reigning supreme over all suffocating all that was once held dear. Perceiving that it is crucial for this situation to be addressed, an amorphous group of artists, poets, thinkers, and visionaries come together to form the Akasha Scribes, an intentional community of persons who seek to invite others into an awakening, a shift in perception so that the veil might be revealed and, possibly, broken through. To do this, the Scribes invent a game, a sacred ritual of shamanic strength able to gift the conscientious user with new eyes. They call it Dreamscape. Inspired by other veil-revealing traditions in the world, they make Dreamscape a portal to other worlds, a doorway through the Veil, a pathway that can summon into actuality other possibilities a way out. However, the ritual is a riddle that can only be unravelled by persons prepared to awaken into another dream.

These persons, invited by the Akasha Scribes, are collectively called Tulpans, and like their name suggests, they must create tulpas or thought-manifestations (or carry out certain tasks) in an epic adventure of collective awakening. They will learn that their world and all around them is a dream, and that another dream is possible. Even more importantly, they will have to unlearn the world they have become accustomed to. It is the only way the crisis can be upended.

Chapter 4
The Akasha Scribes A roving visionary community of poets, thinkers, walk-outs, failures, artists, musicians, activists and people who generally feel a better world beckons, the Akasha Scribes have a passionate longing to invoke an awakening across communities spread out over the worlds disenchanted landscapes. The Scribes have no code, no decree, no doctrine, no truth. There are no established creeds, and there are no leadership structures. The Scribes are instrumental shamans, calling forth multidimensional realms to intervene in re-enchanting the world they dwell in, through the conversations they share, the instructions they give to the Tulpans during gameplay, and the emergent stories they popularize. The Scribes created the Dreamscape, and are the mobilizing community for the game. The game arose out of the need to nurture, in a trans-local manner, small groups pressure points that can disturb the equilibrium of collective perception. This practice, the Scribes assume, opens up holes in the sky from whence new ways of being, living, knowing and solving problems may come through. The Scribes are bound together by their free conversations and a shared practice: to invite others to perform the Dreamscape ritual, and to administer participation of the Tulpans. They sit at the centre of the ceremonies, the practice, and the performance of Dreamscape; the objective of the Scribes is mapping new worlds, new possibilities, and new realities together with the Tulpans, and sharing this wealth of possibilities through social interconnectivity technologies.

The Tulpans The Tulpans are the called ones, the people, young and old, who have been invited to participate in Dreamscape. Whereas the Scribes may be comprised of any number of people (3 upwards), the Tulpans are a more defined unit of 6-12 people. Their objective is not as simple: they must attempt to unravel their perceptual frameworks and knowledge schemes by co-creating tulpas tasks issued by the Scribes specifically designed to place players in paradoxical circumstances. A tulpa can best be understood as an invitation to walk through walls. Additionally they will solve riddles, find missing objects and sometimes compete (or collaborate) with other Tulpans (a total of 4 Tulpan teams play in a particular session). The Tulpans are defined by their shared dream-space; their task is to wake up, to work through the consciousness shifting tasks together, to unravel the meanings that shape their collective subjectivities and consensual reality. They are bricoleurs of alternative possibilities. Tulpans meet in real time, and have real adventures

Every Tulpan team member has specific interchangeable roles:

The Sirens: The Sirens must pollinate (keep reading! Youll understand!) by seeking persons extraneous to the game and enlisting their narratives of disenchantment and/or pledges of support. The Spirits: The Spirits perform and plan the tulpas, while others support. The Storytellers: The Storytellers painstakingly keep a journal of conversations, narratives and experiences.

Chapter 5
Building a Tulpan Circle Dreamscape is a game played over time in small collectives. It is built to be played by connecting online (minisite linked with Koru portal) with other groups of people though a variant of the game can be played without internet access. It cannot be played alone or completed in a single sitting. To play, you must assemble your Tulpan Circle [see Glossary for definition of terms], which should advisably comprise of 6-12 persons (this is because there are many simultaneously occurring tasks during a Dreamscape session; the more the merrier!). It is preferable that these persons in your local group are in close proximity to your connecting point. So invite friends over or persons you can have a conversation with! Remember that Dreamscape explores your vulnerabilities and emphasizes reflexive conversations. So be sure to keep this in mind before joining a session. Securing your Akasha Scribes Building a Tulpan Circle is only part of what is needed to commence a Dreamscape session. Youd also need other Tulpan Circles, but more critically, youd need Akasha Scribes. As explained earlier, the Akasha Scribes are central to the Dreamscape game. They actually mobilize the formation of Tulpan Circles and invite them to a session of the game. They also partly administer its progress. A potential Tulpan Circle may however also initiate a Dreamscape session by connecting to an already existing Akasha Scribes group. Again, it is also better to join a session administered by an Akasha group that is locally situated. Beginning the Game When the participants in a session are complete, the game commences. There are no dices like in conventional games. The logic of Dreamscape is entirely conversational nothing is set in stone. Almost everything can be contested. The Dreamscape story unfurls based on the actions and decisions of the networking groups.

The Whirl (The Four-Armed Spiral) The playing arena for Dreamscape is called the Whirl. The Whirl is a four-armed spiral. Each arm is cloaked in a different colour called Energies. Each arm is also divided into 49 grids called Norms. Among the grids are three groups of special grids called Tulpa, The Pass of Echoes, and the Ridge of Re-enchantment. The Tulpa grids represent tasks that are to be carried out by the Tulpans. The Pass of Echoes is a space along the way that requires a member (or more depending on the number of persons in a Tulpan Circle) to share her/his stories of disenchantment from her/his life experiences. There are nine Tulpa grids, ten Echoes grids, but one Re-enchantment grid on each arm of the Whirl. All arms of the Whirl culminate in a central point graphically represented by a mushroom. There is no name for this endpoint.

Gameplay

Gameplay consists of a rich array of tasks the most basic of which is called Scape-casting. To scape-cast is to pose a challenge to other Tulpan groups in form of an ambiguous, near-inscrutable riddle. The riddle could consist of any subject, and can be posed in any way so long as it is suitably written in the Book of Energies., where it is viewed by participating teams and the local Akasha Scribes. The Book of Energies contains these riddles, and is positioned to the side of the Whirl. The Tulpan Circle that begins the session is randomly picked by an in-game random number generator.
When a Tulpan Circle has scape-casted and assigned a time-limit, the other Tulpans must come up with an answer defined by its plausibility (there are no correct answers). The other Tulpans must, within the allotted time, post their responses in the Book of Energies. The scape-casting group will then assign its own colours (energies) to the group or groups with which they most resonate with. For instance, if a scape-casting Tulpan group has Yellow Energies, and it agrees with the Tulpan groups with Blue and Red Energies (but not with the Green group), it will most likely assign one yellow energy to the groups in agreement and refuse to grant its energy to the one group in disagreement.

The next group to play will scape-cast by posting in the Book of Energies, assign a time dimension, and await responses in the same book. This order will repeat itself until all the groups that can possibly play in a particular column of grids have played. The main task of Tulpans is therefore to exchange all their energies with different ones or at least two thirds of their energies. Successfully doing this will earn them access to a Tulpa grid. If a group is unable to do this, they will have to try to exchange their energies in the next try (that is, after a Tulpa session is done), compensate in other ways (will be explained later!), or use one of their Cards of Unknowing (will be explained later!).

Co-creating a Tulpa This is probably the most challenging aspect of Dreamscape. Each Tulpan group can earn access to a Tulpa task by successfully disrupting the energies in their norms. The Akasha Scribes will then contact them (it could be by phone, mail, messages to the Scroll of Portals, or any other means) and assign to them a tulpa task. A Tulpa task is literally attempting to walk through walls. The Scribes assign these tasks in other to disrupt the teams perceptions of reality, and to nudge them into testing new possibilities. A tulpa task is never carried out alone, but requires the coordinated response of a Tulpan Circle. The emergent Tulpa must be carried out, documented, and have an audience of some kind. Examples of a tulpa include the following: i) ii) iii) iv) v) vi) vii) Go without food for a day. Give hugs to strangers you meet between a certain time window. Experience three days without money, your mobile phone, television, and your car. Go to a slum, eat with them, and interact with them for a week. Get lost and try to find your way back home. Go to a street and inspire others to dance along with you. Offer home-made gifts for fifty dreams or stories of disillusionment from strangers.

A single grid or Norm (with red energy); this is the take-off point

A special grid or Tulpa The Pass of Echoes

A tulpa is a provocative participatory performance, a what-if, a practical way to investigate the pliable nature of dreamscapes, to defamiliarize the apparent, and to fathom more and more deeply how illusory it really is. The challenge posed by a tulpa to a Circle is to walk through walls. Think of tulpas as experiments designed to deconcretize the supposedly real, and valorise the absurd! In the world of Dreamscape, participating in weaving a tulpa could be a truly transformative experience. Prepare to be embarrassed, ridiculed, wondered at, helped, supported, transformed, and shocked into multiple possibilities. Tulpas are the pathways to magic potentialities of the pluriverse. Players are going to ask: who am I? What am I experiencing? What am I stuck in? What is happening to me and what am I happening to? Once a Tulpan Circle has saturated its tasks, it must take evidence of completion to the Akasha Scribes. Usually, the Scribes, when posting a tulpa task in the Scroll of Portals, determine what will count as evidence (could be video footage, photographs or more). As soon as the Scribes are satisfied, they will allow access into another round of scape-casting. If a tulpa is not satisfactorily carried out, or the evidence provided is not pleasing to the Scribes, they can choose to reassign the concerned Tulpan Circle another tulpa session. No team is assigned the same tulpa twice in a Dreamscape session.

The Scroll of Portals is the sacred book that holds the tulpa assignments. The Scribes post the tulpa tasks in the Scroll eventually since they may choose to assign tasks in different ways.

Specific aspects of Gameplay

Compensating: During gameplay, there will be moments that inevitably lead to a team being left behind due to
its failure to resonate with the scape-casting teams (this also implies that the team has failed to disrupt its norms with different energies or colours). This will cost a team a chance to advance into the Tulpa rounds with the other teams. At this time, the team may prefer to wait out until the scape-casting rounds resume at which time, it must attempt to disrupt its energy grids again.

There might be instances when no team is able to advance into a Tulpa round! At this time, any team can try to compensate. Compensating highlights other simultaneously running activities that define gameplay. These activities include:

Pollinating: Pollinating involves meeting with new people outside your Tulpan Circle, and inviting them to
share (in brief) their stories of disenchantment with their civilization. These stories will be harvested by the Sirens (who, as described above, are a part of your Tulpan Circle, whose task is to attract these stories from strangers, friends, relatives or just about anybody), and must be posted in the Tree of Voices. The Tree of Voices, like the Book of Energies, is populated singularly by disenchantment stories. The Sirens must invite people to post in this book. Each post, allocated to a team, will serve as a kind of life currency that may come in handy in sticky situations. For instance, if a team is unable to complete a Tulpa round or is unable to advance into it, it may (in negotiation with the Scribes) exchange a specific number of voices for the kind of access required. It is therefore a neat strategy for a Tulpan Circle to continually deploy its Sirens for pollinating tasks.

Using a Card of Unknowing: All Tulpan Circles have specific non-renewable cards, which create new situations

that could help them reach their targets on the Whirl. These are called the Cards of Unknowing. These cards are powerful forces that a Circle might wield to its favour as well as to its detriment. They are only available (unlocked) in the Scape-casting rounds after the first Tulpa tasks have been carried out. The cards are 1) Trickster (1 Card): This unlocks in the second round of scape-casting (after the first tulpa rituals are done). Playing the trickster card scrambles the entire section of energies in a grid field. This may be used when a team has been unable to exchange its energies to meet the 2/3 access criteria. Doing this may provide such a team with the colours needed to advance but it also scrambles the grid fields of the other Tulpan teams! This could actually in fact aid them rather than stall their progress since using the trickster card is embracing a random possibility.

2) Skip Card (1 Card): This allows a Tulpan team to skip a Tulpa round. 3) Energy Giver (2 Cards): If a Tulpan team needs a specific energy (Colour) in order to disrupt its own field, it can generate one by playing this card. With the appropriate energies, a Tulpan team can proceed to the next rounds.

4) Walking Out (1 Card): Walking out is ending your time in a session or calling for a period of rest (limited to three days but an Akasha Scribe group can alter this limitation).
The Pass of Echoes is a sacred ritual of mutual reflection, silence, mindful listening and shared vulnerability during a Dreamscape game. Players arrive at the Pass after a tulpa round has been completed. In the Pass, a Tulpan will share his/her stories, questions and experiences with the rest of his team. During the narration of these stories, the Storytellers must document them and find ways to capture them. The Pass is an opportunity to share tulpa experiences as well. There are 9 Passes. The Ridge of Re-enchantment, which lies just before the final grid, is a special kind of Pass of Echoes. In each Pass of Echoes, a player in a Circle will share her stories and the conversations that ensue are centred on this players experiences. The themes for the reflections in the Pass of Echoes are disenchantment, experiences of frustration, ideas about inequality and failure, feelings of being disqualified and similar stories. Whereas, when a Circle reaches the Ridge, they all-at-once can reflect, share, and have conversations in their meeting place. These conversations are focused on new possibilities, hoping or not hoping, and ways we can address their feelings of disenchantment. These conversations can be facilitated in any way the group chooses. They can be structured with protocols for commencing or ending a narrative or they could be free-wheeling conversations without any such protocols.

Finishing the Game Finishing Dreamscape depends on the kinds of relations the players have exercised towards each other. The game is largely malleable so that it supports cooperative and competitive playing. Thus, the idea of winning or getting ahead is held in close tension with its own contradiction. Dreamscape could be a race, a shared journey, or both. What is important is that it holds transformative moments for the courageous players who take on the tasks of co-creating tulpas in defiance of their consensual realities. There is therefore a stronger sense of implicit rewards in playing Dreamscape; players earn much more than a cutesy congratulatory message on the screen they (might) earn alternative frames of perception, a new sense of the porosity of reality, a new hope for change, or even a sense of resignation to the unfolding wonders of being. More or less, playing Dreamscape is its own reward fun, exciting and challenging. What a team does when it advances beyond the Ridge is self-defined. However, after the conversations in the Ridge of Re-enchantment have been exhausted, the team will contact the Akasha Scribes, who will respond by scape-casting - for the final time. The Scribes will pose a difficult riddle challenge to the concerned Tulpan Circle(s). Whoever provides the most plausibly resonant response in conversation with the Scribes will win the game.

Game Modes Dreamscape can be played in two different modes. Only registered Tulpan Circles (who have completed at least one session of a previous Dreamscape game) have access to the second mode, which is called Earn a Fern (the first is the Classic Mode). In Earn a Fern gameplay, the Tulpan Circles via the Sirens will try to invite an audience to watch their tulpas online, and pledge to support them with gifts. The aim is to raise funding for a clearly defined DreamQuest. A DreamQuest is a project undertaking by a Koru collective (in this case, a Tulpan Circle) to embark on an adventure of social transformation. It could be a desire to share new information, initiate a local currency, stimulate localization, or reanimate indigenous learning systems.

The Sirens will invite the persons who share their stories in the Tree of Voices to also pledge a sum of money or any other support to aid their local projects. In the Earn a Fern mode, players can team up, articulate a shared project or multiple projects, and play Dreamscape.

Having More Fun on the Way! Dreamscape is spurred by the imagination and creativity of its players. For instance, players can create a tribe totem that defines them one which they can brandish proudly to others. The choice for creative expression is entirely up to them.

Playing without the Internet or without Electronics A session of Dreamscape is possible without connecting online with others. This is a smaller, more in-touch way of playing Dreamscape. All the elements of a Classic Dreamscape game remain except that the Whirl is depicted on the ground in a playful space where each team can meet with the others. The Akasha Scribes are also available in this playground. Some persons have to be appointed to keep the books of the Library (that is, the Book of Energies, the Scroll of Portals and so on). These persons can be positioned a distance away from the Whirl, so that it is more exciting to race to reach them. The Whirl of course would have to be drawn, and the energies exchanged would have to be represented by objects unique to each Tulpan Circle. Because each tulpa has to be viewed by the Akasha Scribes to advance, a member or members of the Scribes could accompany the Tulpans to their locations to observe them (in a non-participatory manner) carry out their tasks.

Akasha Scribes: Tulpan Circle: The Library: The Book of Energies: The Scroll of Portals: The Tree of Voices: A DreamQuest: Cards of Unknowing: Compensating: Pollinating: The Whirl: Dreamscape Session: Norms, Grids, Fields: Tulpas: Energies: Scape-casting:

The mobilizing community that administers a Dreamscape session. A team of 6-12 players A compendium of books kept in the game. The book in which scape-casts are posted by a scape-casting Tulpan Circle Held by the Scribes, the Scroll is the book in which tulpa tasks are posted A book of narratives of disenchantment A project of revitalization in a community Various gameplay options available to Tulpan Circles in the second field Different ways of meeting up with other teams Reaching people outside the game to share their stories in the Tree of voices The playground A session of gameplay can take days (maybe even weeks to complete!) A field is a collection of norms, which are in turn the basic grids on an arm of the Whirl The tasks of co-creating an impossible event that subverts mainstream notions of reality The exchangeable colours or objects in possession of a Tulpan Circle Posing a difficult challenge/question which has no clear answer Moments for sharing stories or disenchantment and possibility

The Pass of Echoes and Ridge of Re-enchantment: