Welcome, dreamers, to a new tabletop roleplaying game that invites you to explore the fascinating world of lucid dreams. We’re thrilled to present an exclusive interview with Benjamin, the designer of Dancing In Limbo (DIL), known online as cosmicPostman.
DIL challenges players to explore these shared dreamscapes with their friends, facing formidable creatures and crafting unique weaponry to aid their quest. As you descend through the various floors of the dream, you’ll be seeking answers to a fundamental mystery: who created this dream, and what is its purpose?
Dancing In Limbo has been previewing as an actual play on YouTube.
Join us as Benjamin pulls back the curtain on the creative process behind this intriguing new TTRPG.
First off, congratulations on hitting ten episodes with Wonderland! That’s a fantastic milestone. How does it feel to see the show establish itself and connect with viewers?
Thank you very much! I’m very grateful that we’ve made it even this far – organising getting players together consistently, all the planning and preparing and editing episodes once recording is done has all been extremely busy, but I’m glad the work is starting to pay off! I think we’re getting into the swing of recording now – though, as with all tabletop gaming groups, we don’t manage to get together every time a session is planned. Still, I’m very happy with where we are and I’m only becoming more excited as we progress through the campaign I’ve planned. I’m hoping viewers will really connect with both the players and the NPCs as the story progresses and we begin to learn more about them.
Dancing In Limbo sounds incredibly unique with its lucid dreaming concept and custom-made weapons. What was the initial spark of inspiration that led you down this creative path?
One of my biggest inspirations was a choose-your-own-adventure webcomic I started reading in my youth – Lucidstuck, by intrepidPioneer. I started reading it around fourteen years old, and it kickstarted my lifelong interest in lucid dreaming. I knew I wanted to apply the concept to a TTRPG someday, though it took many more years to reach that point. Many of the key aspects of Dancing In Limbo – guessing whether you are awake or asleep, crafting custom-made weapons and having familiars representing part of your personality – are all inspired by similar concepts in Lucidstuck, but my designs have diverged from the direction that Lucidstuck is going in.
The custom-made weapons were something I felt I had to add. I’ve always been obsessed with crafting systems in RPGs – I spent years of my childhood alchemising the strongest weapons in Dragon Quest IX. I felt that Dungeons and Dragons didn’t capture that feeling of going to new towns and excitedly seeing what new weapons were in stock, since most players use the same weapons the whole campaign, unless they acquire magic items. I began to envision the way that common household items could provide different effects to your weapons, and over the process of multiple campaigns, added over 550 different items, which offer over 400 dreamcraft traits, allowing you a huge amount of freedom in what kind of weapon you make. It’s one of the most absorbing parts of Dancing In Limbo – I’ve had many late-night conversations with my friends, theorycrafting the way different traits interact and how you could make some ridiculously powerful weapons with the right combinations.
Eventually, through plenty of iteration, test sessions, practice campaigns, late-night calls and feedback, I’ve got something that I’m truly proud of. The name ‘Dancing In Limbo’ was always intended to reflect both the lucid dreaming and dreamcrafting aspects of the game. In the dream – or limbo, if you will – players start out struggling desperately to survive, hounded by monsters at every turn. But as the boss monsters fall, one by one, and they begin to craft weapons capable of slaying anything that faces them, the dreamers don’t struggle – they learn to dance.
You mentioned that the player’s rulebook, monster stat blocks, and DM’s guide are still private. How do you balance showcasing the game through the Wonderland webshow with keeping some of those details under wraps for a potential future publication?
The way we’ve done it so far is by keeping the actual documents under wraps, but being fairly open about their contents within episodes. I’ve clarified rules, explained the effect of rolls, given some details on how monsters work, but I’ve generally aimed to provide the viewers with enough information to understand what’s going on without overwhelming them with the whole story. Monster stat blocks are, of course, hidden from players too, but they can figure out a monster’s traits and weaknesses through trial and error, which also helps reveal information to the viewers. Our hope is that we’ve revealed enough information for viewers to enjoy Wonderland – and when we publish the documents, that’ll be enough information for viewers to run their own Dancing In Limbo campaigns!
The idea of players battling their own demons in lucid dreams is fascinating. Can you tell us a bit about the process of designing those “demons” and how they tie into the players’ characters?
The process is quite varied. One of the things I decided early on in the develop of Dancing In Limbo is that I didn’t want ‘generic’ monsters – every single monster in the game is a unique encounter, and can only be encountered once. It did add a lot of work for me, but I’m happy with the result. Some monsters are based on references to my favourite horror media – you’ll see some creepy animatronics, statues that move when you don’t look at them, and creatures lurking in the deep waters – but there’s many more that are uniquely terrifying.
Oftentimes I’ll begin with a concept that I think would be effectively scary, so my notes might read ‘nervous system that can control other people’ or ‘freaky doctor that grafts limbs to you’, and then I expand that concept out into a full monster by planning out how exactly those ideas would work in the rules of Dancing In Limbo. I also mentioned this during episode 12, but several of the monsters are based on actual monsters I’ve encountered in my own nightmares, ripped straight from the pages of my own dream journal. Ideas come from everywhere!
Most of the monsters are just wandering the dream without much purpose, but whenever I design a Dancing In Limbo campaign, I include a few monsters that are explicitly tied to players’ backstories. As an example, one of my test campaigns included a monster that was a corrupted version of a player’s girlfriend, who they had a complicated relationship with before her death. Some monsters in Wonderland will be similar, with in-depth knowledge of my players’ fears and buried secrets, and will bring them to the forefront. You don’t win those fights with strength – they’ll have to overcome their secrets and trauma to cast those monsters down.
Wonderland features a custom soundtrack by Seiinity and coffeebug. How did that collaboration come about, and what impact do you feel the music has on the show and the game’s atmosphere?
I was determined, when I began planning Wonderland, that I wanted a custom soundtrack. As much as royalty-free music is convenient, it doesn’t lend itself to giving the show a unique feel. I personally scouted both Seiinity and coffeebug after discovering their music on YouTube, and recruited them to do the soundtrack.
Seiinity is our main composer, who is handling the primary themes, such as the ones for the waking world, exploring the dream, and the boss fights. Coffeebug is helping with additional songs, generally those which are used for specific monsters or specific parts of the dream, so we’ll see more of their work as we encounter the more unusual monsters in the dream. They’ve both been excellent to work with, and their work has given Dancing In Limbo a lot of its life – the atmosphere is impeccable, and I’m very excited to reveal more of their songs as we descend the dream. I couldn’t have asked for a better pair of musicians, and I’m incredibly grateful that they saw potential in Wonderland.
You said, “It’s not the Dreamweaver that makes Wonderland so great; it’s the cast.” Could you tell us a bit about your players and what makes them such a great fit for Dancing In Limbo?
My players are a varied group, which is one of their great strengths, I think. They’re all good friends of mine, but all from different places and experiences. There’s people like Ash, Isaac and Heather, who are all avid TTRPG players and know what kinds of tricks DMs like to throw at their players, but that’s balanced by Ari and Krow, who are relative TTRPG newcomers, and have only really played Dancing In Limbo – though both of them, and Ash, are skilled artists who have drawn many of the monsters and artwork shared in some of the episodes and our Instagram page @dancing_in_limbo!
They all approach the game in different ways, which allows me, as Dreamweaver, to show off everything the system can do – some focus on role-play in the waking world, others are pushing dreamcraft to its limits to make the best weapons, and some find a mix of both, just here to enjoy the story and engage with the mysteries in place for them. I think that gives them a lot of opportunities to shine in different areas.
Overall, they’ve got some great chemistry, both with me and with each other, which has made recording every session a pleasure. I couldn’t have asked for a better group to launch Dancing In Limbo‘s flagship webshow with, and I’m incredibly excited to see what else they can do in Wonderland.
Looking ahead, what’s the ultimate dream for Dancing In Limbo? What would a successful publication look like for you?
The goal right now, regardless of anything else, is to continue Wonderland until it concludes. I’ve planned for three seasons and twenty floors, so that’s a lofty goal, considering we’re still barely past the first floor of the dream. We’ve been discussing our options as a group, and believe that Patreon or a similar crowdfunding source would be the best way to continue working on Wonderland with more consistency – that’s something we’ll be looking into once we have more viewers and more of a presence.
In terms of publication, we’re considering our options currently. We’re hoping to begin approaching publishers with Dancing In Limbo as we build up viewers and interest and see if we get any bites. The goal for a successful publication would be a published Rulebook, Dreamweaver’s Guide and Monster List – expanded and improved versions of the documents I’m using to run Wonderland right now.
We’d also ideally like to work more closely with Roll20, our VTT of choice for Wonderland, as the dynamic lighting really lends itself to a more horror-themed TTRPG such as Dancing In Limbo, and potentially release the floor maps of Wonderland for players once the campaign concludes! I’ve got several previous campaigns – and potentially several upcoming ones – which I would ideally like to rerelease as modules for other players to use, chock-full with the unique monsters and intriguing NPCs that give Dancing In Limbo its flavour.
Are there any sneak peeks you can give us about what’s coming up next for the Wonderland crew now that they’ve completed the first “floor” of the dream? What can viewers expect from the next nineteen floors?
Well, I’m not one to spoil too much, but with the first floor complete, the dreamers will be exploring ever-deeper in the dream. There’s a rogue’s gallery of boss monsters coming up in the next few floors – a dragon older than the dream itself, a fire goddess with some serious anger management issues, a doll that wants everyone to take part in her endless playtime, and above it all, the archangel that has total control over the first five floors of the dream… it should prove to be an exhilarating challenge for our unlucky dreamers!
They aren’t the only bosses for our viewers to watch out for, though. Dreamers who complete esoteric conditions in the dream, follow hints given at rare opportunities, and make objectively bad decisions will gain access to hidden, backward areas of the dream, ordinarily inaccessible, where they will encounter adversaries – these monsters are many times more powerful than even boss monsters, and they are not ordinary fights with ordinary rules. Can you defeat a foe whilst encased in a pyramid scheme, or whilst you have been banned from battle? How will you win if the path to victory is profiting on the stock market, or surviving a lethal television interview?
The adversaries await, and the first one isn’t far away, accompanied by the click of dice hitting the floor…
Thank you, Benjamin.
