So....based on some thoughts in @Harzerkatze 's thread:

What would you add, mechanically, to a scene (conflict or otherwise) set in the realm of dreams.

Things we know, narratively:

From Emerald Empire:

"Yumeji, the pursuit of supernatural wisdom through dreams, is a fashionable and fast-growing activity among Rokugani of all social classes. Spirits both good and evil, high and low—from hungry ghosts tormenting living folk they blame for their sorry lot to Fortunes announcing great heroes’ destinies to them—have communicated with Rokugani via their dreams since time immemorial. However, the era when a samurai might receive Hachiman’s nod in their sleep, then wake up to find an enchanted bow and arrows beside their bed is long lost now.

Dreams provide a scandalous and thrilling escape from Rokugan’s social conventions and niceties. In Yume-dō, a scholarly samurai and a curious farmer may interact as equals. A beggar may explore a palace in an Emperor’s memory. A general may unburden herself to a child. Even lucid dreamers with a little practice can conceal their true identities and appearances beneath a disguise of intention and will. A mazoku may dream he is a lovely human geisha. A fisherman may dream he is a butterfly. Rumors even spread of spies and saboteurs filching secrets from privileged minds through dream.

The question of whether a given interaction was a mere figment of someone’s imagination or a legitimate transmission from beyond the veil fascinates budding coteries of dreamwalkers, who practice lucid dreaming and divinatory techniques to explore the Path of Dreams more and more deeply. While interest in this field is growing, the most successful practitioners—the Dreamweavers of the Moth Clan’s Kaikoga family— have explored Yume-dō for centuries.

Concerningly, since this pastime has caught on, the veil between the dreamworld and Ningen-dō has begun to fray. Stories of dream-born yōkai once thought apocryphal, such as the long-trunked baku who either torment sleeping souls or fight off their nightmares, have multiplied fast, particularly stories of sinister baku escaping into the waking world to bedevil the innocent. These stories greatly trouble the Kaikoga, who may ultimately be the only ones with the ability to clean up the mess created by careless dabblers."

From Fortune & Winds (previous edition)

There were points of direct access from the Shinomen, The High House of Light (via a hidden lake), The Islands of Spice and Silk (via a shrine to Yume-do), the Forest of Dreamers (near Shiro Iuchi), and Otosan Uchi (via a specific opium den - though how would you know?).

From way of the Shadowlands (previous edition)

You cannot contract Shadowlands Taint in dreams.

From Mask of the Oni

It is possible to send the spirits of the dead to Yume-do instead of them travelling on to Meido. If it can happen, it has probably happened accidentally or at other times, so spirits of the dead might occasionally be encountered.

Mechanically, Yume-do should be a realm where pretty much anything is possible, in many cases whether you like it or not.

Comparing with the Shadowlands effects from Mask of the Oni and Shadowlands:

• There is a special rule for each element to bring in to narrative scenes:
  • Air (Tainted Air) - Whenever a character receives strife for any reason, they receive 1 additional strife.
  • Earth (Unstable Ground) - PCs must succeed at a TN 2 Survival (Earth) check or suffer 2 fatigue.
  • Fire (Freezing Flame) - PCs must succeed at a TN 2 Fitness (Fire) check, or temporarily reduce their endurance and composure by 2. This penalty ends when they are either subjected
    to a suitable mundane or supernatural warming effect, or when the scene ends.
  • Water (Contaminated Water) - Anyone who drinks suffers the Afflicted condition, and if the water contacts any food or drinking water brought from outside the Shadowlands, it immediately contaminates it.
  • Void (Spiritual Corruption) - PCs must succed at a TN3 Meditation (Void) check or gain Afflicted
• A Table of opportunities for spending in the environment
• A Table of opportunities for spending when facing tainted opponents
• A Table of opportunities for spending when tainted

Creating an equivalent rule-set feels like you should have a similar set of 'elemental' rules you can pull in as required and a few tables of opportunities. For Yume-do, it should mostly be about reshaping the world and any items in it which aren't people.

There's also a secondary note that players aren't technically...there. Just because you're dreaming doesn't mean you're not in danger - and doesn't necessarily mean you can't be killed - and certainly doesn't mean you can't be hurt, but it should be rather more unlikely that the players will wake up to find consequences like severed limbs and bleeding wounds. Disadvantages of either mental or non-specific physical weakness if lasting consequences are to be suffered make more sense.

• Air - truth is a relative matter in dreams and anything is possible.
  • Any character may temporarily add or remove advantages or disadvantages by spending of the appropriate ring equal to the highest vigilance of any observer (including themselves!)
  • Any character with at least one technique in any technique category may attempt any technique in that category, following the rules for Importune Invocations (offerings are not required).
• Earth - Injuries in a dream are not 'real'. That does not mean they are not dangerous.
  • Any effect which would cause a character to gain a Scar disadvantage causes you to gain a Mental disadvantage associated with the same ring, which persists into the waking world.
  • Any character who re-enters the waking world with the lightly wounded condition removes the condition and instead gains the Dazed, Disoriented, Enraged or Exhausted condition, chosen by the character who caused the condition.
  • Any character who re-enters the waking world with the severely wounded condition instead gains all of the above conditions.
  • The Dying condition functions normally and persists into the waking world.
  • Characters cannot gain the Unconscious condition. Any character who would receive the condition awakens. If they are unable to do so (depending on how they entered Yume-do), they instead resolve the critical strike at +10 severity as if they had the Unconscious condition when they received it.
• Fire - A big part of the difference between a lucid dream and a nightmare is your ability to control things
  • Whilst a character has the Compromised condition, they may not keep die results containing
  • If you cause a character to suffer the Incapacitated condition, you may immediately change the environment of the scene to show one of the character's memories of your choice.
• Water - The landscape of a dream is infinitely mutable
  • Whenever a check resolves one or more , resolve an additional which must be used to resolve a General Opportunity (such as adding a terrain feature or a common item in your possession)
• Void - The taint of Jigoku cannot penetrate a soul through its dreams.
  • cannot gain Shadowlands Taint disadvantages or the Afflicted condition. If already suffering these conditions their effects apply as normal.

suggestions? thoughts? insults?

Some opportunities might be good. I don't think a Yumeji technique class is really justified, but a Yumeji Ritual might make sense - a character can use it as a downtime activity before entering Yume-do and [????].

Very nice! Lots of good ideas here.

One point: I would open the importuning up to non-shugenja. Doing magic in dreams isn't just for professional magicians. It also reduces the shugenjas otherwise significant advantage.

Just now, Harzerkatze said:

One point: I would open the importuning up to non-shugenja. Doing magic in dreams isn't just for professional magicians. It also reduces the shugenjas otherwise significant advantage.

I have. Sort of.

15 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Any character with at least one technique in any technique category may attempt any technique in that category, following the rules for Importune Invocations (offerings are not required).

So you can't do invocations without knowing an invocation, but instead, any Bushi may, for example, attempt any Kata, or any monk any Kiho. It also means that anyone who gets Skulk (such as a Hiruma scout or Storm Fleet Sailor) can attempt - once* - any ninjitsu technique.

I thought about cross-technique classes - initially suggested it - but when writing I figured that there should still be some distinction between how people behave in dreams; a swordsman's subconscious reflex is probably to draw [weapon] and do something with it - it may be a weapon of far finer quality than the one they actually own, and the specific technique might be one they've always yearned to master but haven't, but the basic effect of 'pointy bit goes in bad guy' will probably remain.

* One reason I like plagiarising the importune rules - I don't want people in a dreamscape to pick one super-technique they don't normally get and keep spamming it, but I do want them to be continuously trying new and weird things. I might remove the once-per-scene limit provided you can't use the same technique multiple times.

The reason why I encourage cross-technique importuning is that it offers standart dream options like flying (Call upon the Wind). The increased TN still gives those that actually learned the technique an advantage.

I would thing about adding a Rank limit akin to the Kitzu Medium school ability, to keep excesses limited. On the other hand, simple peasants being able to fly or turn unto a fish or looking like an emperor is what makes dreams cool.

What should the effect of the ritual be, except of transporting you to Yume-Do?

The Moth Clan shugenja would as their school ability probably get extra Opportunities equal to School Rank on checks in Yume-Do...

Loving this so far.

Edit; the idea of treating the realm like "terrain" is great. Much more fun and impactful and easy to use than giving a table on how to spend opportunities (which is extremely unwieldy and gamey. I doubt many groups really use most of the table in the corebook, let alone the ones in the sourcebook. This is detrimental to the pacing of the game. First you need to present the players with the "new" table, which they need to compute because they will be required to decide how many opportunities to Keep. Honestly.. not fun. Already too many weird options in the corebook itself, no need to slap more).

6 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

What should the effect of the ritual be, except of transporting you to Yume-Do?

The Moth Clan shugenja would as their school ability probably get extra Opportunities equal to School Rank on checks in Yume-Do...

Not sure. Gaining extra opportunities when in Yume-do was more or less what I was thinking of for the Yumeji technique, as any competent dreamer should be able to do so.

I agree a Moth Dreamweaver should be better, but since I'd suggest that ability (or a variation on it) should be available to others (like Nezumi, Baku, and so on), I might suggest instead they are better at getting information out of dreams.

I'm not sure how you'd manifest that per se; I wouldn't want the Moth to only be able to benefit from their school ability whilst dreaming; that feels too narrow a focus. Instead, rather like the Seppun Astrologer, I'd make them better at exploiting the insights they gained from dreaming. Which still encourages you to do so but doesn't require a dream-sequence scene in every adventure for the character to be useful; it can just be an off-camera downtime activity, but that one time in a campaign where the whole party is in Yume-do they're suddenly freaking Neo.

6 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

I would thing about adding a Rank limit akin to the Kitzu Medium school ability, to keep excesses limited.

A number of times per scene equal to your school rank seems like a sensible limit - though I'm also tempted to say "as many times as you like but only once per specific technique"

Maybe split the difference - at the risk of complicating it a bit more - so you can only dream a specific technique you don't know once , and can only dream techniques from categories in which you have no techniques a maximum number of times equal to your school rank ?

That way, jim-bob the rank 1 bushi student can still chain Soul Sunder into Sweep The Leg into Heartpiercing Strike and so on like the invincible blade-wielding awesome soldier he always dreamed of being, but can only imagine something mystical (like flying or throwing fireballs or suddenly looking like the Emperor) once in a scene.

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

I doubt many groups really use most of the table in the corebook, let alone the ones in the sourcebook.

The 'when tainted' table gets a bit of use around our table, though obviously for tainted adversaries not PCs. It is rather nice in that it does help set them aside from 'normal' opponents, especially the Earth*, Water** and Fire*** ones (which go some way to helping the 'one big bad versus a bunch of players' problem).

* For the rest of the scene, every time you suffer fatigue reduce the fatigue suffered by 2. Particularly nice because it affects fatigue suffered, not resistance, so it gives really nasty oni some way of taking less punishment from Sacred weapons.

** Instantly remove one of a bunch of conditions. Most of them are conditions you could remove in your turn anyway, but crucially Lightly Wounded is one of the options. Combined with the high Fitness check of a high level adversary and getting critical strikes to 'stick' can be hard... ( Bleeding isn't one of the options, of course)

*** Add a kept ring die set to a result containing to your next check. This is awesome because (a) it's a kept die, not a rolled one, (2) in fire stance is a free bonus success, (3) on a ring die there is a result, so you can, if you want, guarantee an 'extra' explosive success on your next check. Granted, you're giving up - and hence a critical strike - to do it, but that's a big deal when you're trying to inflict enough damage to whack-a-mole someone in Earth stance who's not vulnerable to criticals anyway, or someone in Air stance using Guard who's nigh impossible to hit at all.

14 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Not sure. Gaining extra opportunities when in Yume-do was more or less what I was thinking of for the Yumeji technique, as any competent dreamer should be able to do so.

I agree a Moth Dreamweaver should be better, but since I'd suggest that ability (or a variation on it) should be available to others (like Nezumi, Baku, and so on), I might suggest instead they are better at getting information out of dreams.

I'm not sure how you'd manifest that per se; I wouldn't want the Moth to only be able to benefit from their school ability whilst dreaming; that feels too narrow a focus. Instead, rather like the Seppun Astrologer, I'd make them better at exploiting the insights they gained from dreaming. Which still encourages you to do so but doesn't require a dream-sequence scene in every adventure for the character to be useful; it can just be an off-camera downtime activity, but that one time in a campaign where the whole party is in Yume-do they're suddenly freaking Neo.

A number of times per scene equal to your school rank seems like a sensible limit - though I'm also tempted to say "as many times as you like but only once per specific technique"

Maybe split the difference - at the risk of complicating it a bit more - so you can only dream a specific technique you don't know once , and can only dream techniques from categories in which you have no techniques a maximum number of times equal to your school rank ?

That way, jim-bob the rank 1 bushi student can still chain Soul Sunder into Sweep The Leg into Heartpiercing Strike and so on like the invincible blade-wielding awesome soldier he always dreamed of being, but can only imagine something mystical (like flying or throwing fireballs or suddenly looking like the Emperor) once in a scene.

The 'when tainted' table gets a bit of use around our table, though obviously for tainted adversaries not PCs. It is rather nice in that it does help set them aside from 'normal' opponents, especially the Earth*, Water** and Fire*** ones (which go some way to helping the 'one big bad versus a bunch of players' problem).

* For the rest of the scene, every time you suffer fatigue reduce the fatigue suffered by 2. Particularly nice because it affects fatigue suffered, not resistance, so it gives really nasty oni some way of taking less punishment from Sacred weapons.

** Instantly remove one of a bunch of conditions. Most of them are conditions you could remove in your turn anyway, but crucially Lightly Wounded is one of the options. Combined with the high Fitness check of a high level adversary and getting critical strikes to 'stick' can be hard... ( Bleeding isn't one of the options, of course)

*** Add a kept ring die set to a result containing to your next check. This is awesome because (a) it's a kept die, not a rolled one, (2) in fire stance is a free bonus success, (3) on a ring die there is a result, so you can, if you want, guarantee an 'extra' explosive success on your next check. Granted, you're giving up - and hence a critical strike - to do it, but that's a big deal when you're trying to inflict enough damage to whack-a-mole someone in Earth stance who's not vulnerable to criticals anyway, or someone in Air stance using Guard who's nigh impossible to hit at all.

Too gamey and unwieldy. No need for the players to digest all that. Use it as abilities for your monsters/npc. That is fine, but presenting an extra table of opportunity usage for players is wrong. The whole gameplay and roleplay starts to resolve around that, while it brings almost nothing in term of fun. The Terrain-like features are much better, they are one thing to "learn".

Like, if they go in courts, you start to print all the opportunity usage tables for your players? The game halts to a grind and falls into exceptions and bonus/malus you need to remember on top of the already complex task of roleplaying already deep checks and systems and advantages etc.

But then, if you like that and your group like that. Go on. But my feeling is that almost nobody cares about all this, it is overdesign, clumsy and bloated.

While I disagree with Avatar for reasons of tradition alone, I would admit that your rule options are a bit too plentiful:

• Any character may temporarily add or remove advantages or disadvantages by spending of the appropriate ring equal to the highest vigilance of any observer (including themselves!)
  I do not think that Disadvantages and Advantages are usually important enough to warrant this rule. Especially since 3-5 Opportunities do not often happen. I would remove it.
• Any character with at least one technique in any technique category may attempt any technique in that category, following the rules for Importune Invocations (offerings are not required).
  That is a good one, as I said below.
• Any effect which would cause a character to gain a Scar disadvantage causes you to gain a Mental disadvantage associated with the same ring, which persists into the waking world.
  Also overy specific and won't come up often, so onto the decluttering pile.
• Any character who re-enters the waking world with the lightly wounded condition removes the condition and instead gains the Dazed, Disoriented, Enraged or Exhausted condition, chosen by the character who caused the condition.
  Is OK, but still the question: Will it matter? Would you expect the adventure to go on immediately after leaving dreamworld? Otherwise, this rule may be not needed.
• Any character who re-enters the waking world with the severely wounded condition instead gains all of the above conditions.
  Same here.
• The Dying condition functions normally and persists into the waking world.
  Important, but does not need a rule, there is no reason to think it does not.
• Characters cannot gain the Unconscious condition. Any character who would receive the condition awakens. If they are unable to do so (depending on how they entered Yume-do), they instead resolve the critical strike at +10 severity as if they had the Unconscious condition when they received it.
  Great, I like it.
• Whilst a character has the Compromised condition, they may not keep die results containing
  Nice idea.
• If you cause a character to suffer the Incapacitated condition, you may immediately change the environment of the scene to show one of the character's memories of your choice.
  Great idea! So you can go all Inception on someone in his dream, fight him and then see what you want from his memory? Awesome!
• Whenever a check resolves one or more , resolve an additional which must be used to resolve a General Opportunity (such as adding a terrain feature or a common item in your possession)
  Not 100% sure what you mean, but can be worded simpler: Whenever a check resolves one or more , change a terrain feature or a common item in your possession.
• cannot gain Shadowlands Taint disadvantages or the Afflicted condition. If already suffering these conditions their effects apply as normal.
  Is that relevant enough to warrant inclusion into the rules? Sounds like a special case to me, as Yume-Do is far from the shadowlands.

18 minutes ago, Harzerkatze said:

While I disagree with Avatar for reasons of tradition alone

☺️
warms my heart to hear that!

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Is that relevant enough to warrant inclusion into the rules? Sounds like a special case to me, as Yume-Do is far from the shadowlands.

Gaining shadowlands taint is pretty hard, but there are a lot of things which can spontaneously give you Afflicted if the effect is not restricted.

Any critical strike from a weapon with Unholy - which is most things wielded by anything vaguely daemonic or maho-esque, for starters. Which is an issue if items are spontaneously sprouting new qualities every other turn.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Whenever a check resolves one or more , resolve an additional which must be used to resolve a General Opportunity (such as adding a terrain feature or a common item in your possession)
Not 100% sure what you mean, but can be worded simpler: Whenever a check resolves one or more , change a terrain feature or a common item in your possession.

Trying to use the existing rules. If you look at table 8-1 on page 328 the rulebook, there is a 'general example' for each ring which adds details to a scene. I should probably use the specific references, sorry. They do put some structure onto what you can change by ring, rather than anything at any time.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Especially since 3-5 Opportunities do not often happen. I would remove it.

That's a good point - reducing it to makes more sense.

Quote

I do not think that Disadvantages and Advantages are usually important enough to warrant this rule.

I'd very much disagree for two reasons - firstly, in games I've run they do come up a lot mechanically, and have saved several people's necks. Secondly, they are the mechanical element which references things like appearances, bloodline, etc, whose narrative effects are just as important. Being able to grant yourself Dangerous Allure, or hide Shadowlands Taint, when trying to portray yourself as an honest spirit guide and totally-not-the-bad-guy-in-disguise, or to not be Blind in your dreams is exactly the sort of stuff I see as key.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Also overy specific and won't come up often, so onto the decluttering pile.

Players responding to situations they don't understand by trying to stab something (and/or getting stabbed) must be a lot less common in games you've played in than my experience.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Is OK, but still the question: Will it matter? Would you expect the adventure to go on immediately after leaving dreamworld? Otherwise, this rule may be not needed.

Lightly wounded can - depending on the situation - last a week or more, and my concern was more that they shouldn't really translate into the real world in the first place. The 'conditions instead of' were more to try and make being wounded in the dream have some sort of consequence, but - since most of them are 1-round things, unless you wake up to a shinobi attack or a particularly annoyed spouse, you're unlikely to be attacked in the first moments after waking up. Not sure what else might work as the consequence.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Important, but does not need a rule, there is no reason to think it does not.

True, but once messing around with the injury rules, it made sense to me to restate what wasn't being changed. Dreams can't make you bleed - but they can kill you.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Great, I like it.

Thanks. That was why the injury rules needed looking at, though, because putting pretty serious wounds on an opponent isn't unreasonable.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

Great idea! So you can go all Inception on someone in his dream, fight him and then see what you want from his memory? Awesome!

That strikes me as one of the two reasons you'd have a dream sequence - either you want to find something out, or you want to convince someone of something. Since you'll be dragging bits of memories and imagined settings during the fight anyway, it seemed appropriate that someone might be able to pry your secrets out after 'beating' you.

11 hours ago, Harzerkatze said:

While I disagree with Avatar for reasons of tradition alone

I think he was mostly talking about the tables from Shadowlands.

I'm not die-in-a-ditch over the injury rules. But it felt like something should be different - as I say, having a Lost Limb scar inflicted on you in a totally-real-magical-dream is traumatic as heck but it doesn't cut your arm off in reality. I feel it still ought to have some consequence, though - hence the translation to a mental-type disadvantage (like Battle Trauma ) back in reality.