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I mean this literally. Sure, day dreaming can work well for coming up with new adventure or campaign ideas. But what about using your actual dreams you have while you’re sleeping? As long as you can somehow remember the many dreams you may have at night, you can end up with some very good material that can make for great material to use for adventures or even entire campaigns.

Now I’m sure there’s a number of you who may rarely, if ever, dream. And I’m sure plenty of you may have dreams, and are aware of them, but can’t remember a bloody thing about them.

Remember Your Dreams
I think most of us have the same problem of not being able to remember most of our dreams. We know we dream them, but usually end up forgetting the whole thing. So one way to start being able to better remember dreams would be to write about whatever you dream as soon as you wake up.

One possible way to do this is to keep a notebook with a pencil right by your bed. However, if it fits your fancy, you could write in some sort of electronic journal, much like I do. And as you’re writing about your dream, try to recall whatever details about it that you can. This includes even naughty details too.

I think just the act of writing down your dreams can help you to better remember them as you awaken every morning. Heck, you could even begin having even more dreams, as you’re less apt to forget about them. And I’m sure that once you keep up with this practice, you may find yourself being able to still remember your dreams even days after having them.

Another method that may help, especially when combined with the writing, is to put forth an intention to remember all your dreams as you’re going to sleep. However, making the intention requires a bit more than just saying “I want to remember my dreams tonight,” and it goes a bit beyond the scope I want to cover here.

For more information on setting intentions and the Law of Attraction, I recommend reading Steve Pavlina’s Blog, as well as checking out some of his articles. There’s also some stuff there about lucid dreaming, if it interests you.

Morph Your Dreams
Now that you’re able to better remember your dreams, and perhaps even have a dream journal of sorts, you can now refer back to them for ideas that you can use in your next adventure or campaign. Some dreams may be very fitting for an adventure or an entire campaign, but others may not be right off. Those that may not necessarily fit could be morphed such that they do, similar to what I briefly touched upon in Expect the Unexpected.

Also, you may find that only certain elements of your dreams will work in a given adventure, while other elements may be more suitable for another. Don’t be afraid to split the elements into two or more separate adventures! This can help give you more material for your players to have their characters run amok in.

Also, I should point out that you should only use material that’s appropriate to use in your current or future campaigns. I think as a general rule, naughty bits should be left out. However, I do know that there are DMs out there (and I admit, I’m guilty of this as well ) who do introduce sex and whatnot into their games. Overall, it’s really your own personal discretion as to what will be used as D&D material, and what will be left out. However, I will say that you should definitely leave out anything that’s really personal.

Don’t Stop Dreaming
I hope this helps you to come up with even more ideas for adventures and campaigns that you can use with your D&D group. However, just because you get one or two good ideas from a dream shouldn’t mean that you should just stop keeping track of your dreams. Keep on writing them down, and keep using those weird ideas for your D&D campaign. And even if your current group gatherings come to an end, due to whatever circumstances, keep writing down your dreams. You’ll never know what you can use with another group of players.

By the way, have any of you created adventures or even whole campaigns based on dreams you’ve had? Did you have to change the dream significantly, or were you able to use it as is? I’d love to hear about this, so please leave a comment!