The Somnium Bleed:

Life is filled with stories.  All lives, each and every one of them.  Things that happened, how things could have been, how things might become, stories.  As a Game Master in FARAD, an individual can weave their own stories within the pen and paper universe that the players and NPCs live within and respond to, sometimes taking on twists and turns that surprise all involved, bringing life to the stories.  The same goes for those using the local host version of the computer game in their own universe, or the larger universe of the servers.  NPCs and players alike grow up, marry, have children, go on quests, defend their homes, face hardship, trials, torments, bleed their hearts out both emotionally and physically to the last drop, going through their dreams and nightmares in their sleeping and waking hours.  All these stories pool together in a realm known by many names.  It is called Sornea to the Nemen, beings who protect deams, and whose life bleed away in grains of sand.  Their earliest encounter with humans, shrouded in the distant forgotten past, may have brought one of them its human nickname, The Sandman, though there are a multitude of Nemen living there.  Unfortunately, so to do the Righe, who call the realm Gare, land of nightmares.  They are considered to be a cousin species to the Nemen, their lineage splitting unknown millenia ago, the sand that bleeds from them being purple in hue.  Other races have called this realm many other names, but the most commonly acknowledged one shared by the majority of species is simply The Somnium Bleed.

The Somnium Bleed, home of both the Nemen and Righe, is a realm of possibilities, bleeding through the different universes and realities into the minds of countless sentient species as they sleep.  It is a realm in which the stories of each individual's life are written in sharp detail, ripped from their own mind, appearing muddled at times if their memory is failing them, but always expanding as they grow older.  The Somnium Bleed, as the realm crossing over different universes, is also where the different versions of FARAD can interact with one another.

One of the key features I want in The FARAD System is the notion that it is not just a pen and paper game, or just a solo rpg game, or just a mmorpg server game.  The system is being designed to be capable of running within all of those platforms and with crossover between them.  That in mind, while at work and at home I thought for a while on different possibilities for dealing with this issue, and balancing the potential for abuse of such a crossover system when dealing with the fact that it is not only impossible to control the pen and paper universes, but also that it would be incredibly detrimental to story to even attempt to.  Below is my process of coming to the point of The Somnium Bleed, which originally was just the overlap of Sornea and Gare, and how it turned from that into a much more important part of FARAD as a whole.

I first considered a long time ago just having there be no transfer between the multiple universes, but that defeats the purpose of it being on multiple platforms, as players would gravitate to one much more strongly than the others, which, while it might foster more activity on the servers or more interesting story development in the pen and paper universes, it would limit both.  Second, I considered the possibility of just making it so anything and everything could transfer to the computer universes, leaving the pen and paper universes to the GM's discretion, but that would be extraordinarily chaotic and be unfair to those players who didn't outright try to cheat the system that way.  The third possibility, which I also threw out almost immediately, would have been to let GMs register themselves as such and get authorization to transfer items, funds, experience and the like between the pen and paper universes they made and the computer version for their players in order to ensure they weren't cheating.  That obviously would delay transfers without removing the potential unbalance of cheating as a player could then register as a GM themselves or have a friend do so and transfer things that way.  It isn't possible to eliminate the cheating of the system, merely to slow it or make the very act of doing so take as much if not more time then using a legit method of gaining the items or experience within each universe.  The fourth idea I had was to limit the transfer amount to once per week or per moth and cost real money or in-game experience and funds, at a lossy percentage and with limited item transfers and exclusions on certain things.  If there were to be any official competitions sponsored or approved by FARAD's overarching company, then they would transfer in full.  The issue with this would be making it so no one would want to use the system at all except from competitions.  Fifth, I thought that since the system runs when a player is offline and a GM can have it operate in the pen and paper universe without the players present, an individual they could utilize the away time as time spent doing transfers or gaining new experience as they so chose, at a lower percentage than if they were actively doing it.  This would still allow competitions to fully transfer, but at the same time, why would a player spend time transferring experience and items while away if they could just get new experience outright?

Finally, considering some of the time spent when a player is away from the game is spent in-character sleeping, I realized I already had something that might aid in both transfers while they are active or not: The Somnium Bleed.  When a character is sleeping, it doesn't gain any experience it can use in the waking world unless they have specific skills that apply to the bleed-through of dreams and reality.  As such, most players would probably spend as little time as possible there while active unless for some story reason.  Since I had initially wanted it to have more importance, and had a transfer system to work out, I combined the ideas.  A character, player or otherwise, can spend time in The Somnium Bleed as a matter of just resting to replenish their focus at the normal rate, or can complete quests within it with a bit of focus used in the process, to be able to utilize the experience within the dream to turn experience gained from other universes into currency within The Somnium Bleed, which can be spent copying items from one universe to another.  Certain ones would still be restricted from transfer out of The Somnium Bleed, but others could be turned into physical reality to be grabbed if they physically enter the realm instead of merely visiting it in their dreams.  Entering it physically brings its own challenges and risks as they can't simply wake up from it if in danger, but the items they can't transfer out of it would be useable as well within The Somnium Bleed for defensive purposes, or sold off to the denizens of it.  Contests would still allow players to transfer items and experience with an authorization code, and if a GM wanted to control their pen and paper universe or local host universe to prevent a transfer, they would still have the control to do so, letting a character instead utilize it only within The Somnium Bleed or convert it to experience only usable within that realm.  The Somnium Bleed also is an area that certain apparitions of those deceased or in a coma might arrive to if their renown is high enough, and they haven't yet awakened, or gone on to face their reaper.  Players can also sometimes peek into the lives of other characters from the character's perspective depending on how resistant or open they are to sharing of themselves to the public at large.