in

a maze dreams
of
A ONE-SESSION PLAY-KIT
 Four colleagues must unravel a
conspiracy of dreams to learn the truth
of their friend’s disappearance.
in
a maze dreams of
A ONE-SESSION PLAY-KIT
AUTHOR ARTISTS
Andrew Gillis Carly A-F

TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 In a Maze of Dreams 7 Series Abilities
3 The Situation 8 The Protagonists
4 Elements of the Setting 8 Kyo, the Unlikely
4 The Prime Suspect Hero (he/him)
5 The Conspiracy 9 Shay, the Guardian
(he/him)
5 Project Alter
10 Mol, the Harmony
5 Kyo’s Avatar (she/her)
6 Director’s Principles 11 Eve, the Outsider (she/her)
7 Additional Suspects 12 Single Session Procedure

An Evil Hat Productions publication in partnership with Seven Crows Games

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© 2023 Evil Hat Productions, LLC and Andrew Gillis.
Evil Hat Productions and the Evil Hat logo are trademarks owned
by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. Seven Crows Games and the Seven

1
Crows Games logo are trademarks owned by Andrew Gillis.
2

in
a maze dreams of
IN A MAZE OF DREAMS
A GIRL BY MOONLIGHT SERIES

Dream travellers seeking the truth of a magical conspiracy.

In a Maze of Dreams is about desire, mass culture, and ideas devel-
oping a life of their own. It is filled with guarded hearts, whose truth
can only be found in dreams. The protagonists have learned to take
refuge in those dreams, but now find themselves tangled up in the
Conspiracy—a multifarious sinister plot, a virus of human thoughts.
They must unravel the Conspiracy, lest it devour our dreams, and make
a nightmare of the waking world.

WHY PLAY THIS SERIES?

Ê You love psychological thrillers, occult mysteries, and things
left unknown
Ê You want to focus on individual characters, and the inner
world of their dreams
Ê You want to explore dream logic, surreal landscapes, and
lush symbolic visuals

In a Maze of Dreams
 The Situation

THE SITUATION
Four colleagues must unravel a conspiracy of dreams to learn the
truth of their friend’s disappearance.
Your friend Faye didn’t come in to work on Monday. Days have passed,
but still there is no sign of her. She’s just gone. Faye used to work
with you at Embrace, a sophisticated, trendsetting consumer tech
company. She left amidst rumours and confusion. You can only guess
at what really happened, or what trouble she was tangled up in. Faye’s
visionary Project Alter is abandoned, unfinished—just a handful of
functional prototypes and empty offices. What caused Faye to leave
so suddenly, without a word to the colleagues who worked so hard
to make her dream a reality?
Project Alter allows its users to travel in dreams. The project has been
twisted by the company’s executives. What was conceived as a tool
for therapy and self-reflection has been weaponized. A tool to forcibly
enter a dreamer’s mind, and extract their secrets. A sinister group of
staff at Embrace is moving to shutter Project Alter—to destroy all trace
of the device, erase all the brilliant ideas and hours upon hours of toil
that went into its production. What are they trying to hide?
To navigate the dream, Project Alter’s users manifest powerful enti-
ties known as ‘Alters’. Your Alter is born of your passions and deep
unconscious. It is a frightening reflection of the self, unshackled from
the compromises of the waking world. Alters grant users the power
to reshape the dream, but they are capricious. Often they use their
power selfishly, seeking to satisfy their terrible desires. Could Faye
have been running from a truth she could not face?
Amidst the chaos at the company, you have made a promise. You will
find Faye’s dream in the labyrinth, and in that dream, her truth. You
meet in secret, after hours. You trace the outlines of the conspiracy that
drove Faye to quit the company—to abandon you. Your relationships
to each other are uncertain, changing shape to fill the space left by
her absence. Will this mystery bring you closer together, or scatter
you into isolation?
How far will you go to learn the truth of Faye’s departure?
Who else is pursuing Faye in the dream? In the waking world?
Would Faye be better off if you just let her go?

3
4

ELEMENTS OF THE SETTING

THE PRIME SUSPECT
Ê Faye (she/her): visionary, beautiful, haunted
A brilliant engineer and designer. Faye was brought on at Embrace to
make a suite of dream-shaping products, which the company named
Project Alter. She hoped to make a powerful therapeutic tool that could
help its users understand themselves. She was a friend and mentor
to many on her team, admired and well respected. She chose to work
at Embrace to get access to their healthcare program, which included
gender affirming care that would otherwise be out of her reach. This
was used to keep her at the company even as the project was twisted
by unscrupulous executives.
For all the friends she had at the company, there were just as many
rivals—envious of her talent, her easy grace. Her swift rise to promi-
nence put her at the center of all manner of drama and spectacle. She
was only close with a small inner circle of friends, and even then she
stayed guarded. Her departure took everyone by surprise, especially
with the project so close to completion.

tting
Elements of the Se
 tting
Elements of the Se

THE CONSPIRACY
The company demands a deep commitment from its employees. A
dedicated few offer themselves up fully—they recognize each other
as kindred spirits. They work in concert, a cult-like collection of exec-
utives, ladder climbers, and techno-dystopian dreamers. Their goals
mirror those of the company, but they don’t do it for money—they crave
something deeper and more total. They see themselves as the founders
of a new age, in which they will shape the dreams of the masses.

PROJECT ALTER
While it was optimistic at the outset, the project was pushed in more
sinister directions by the c-suite. Surveillance and espionage applica-
tions were forced into the product to court military and police contracts.
Faye led a group of employees in protest against these changes, but to
no avail. The latest prototype allows for forced entry into the dreams
of others. It uses a mysterious intermediary space the team has been
calling ‘the labyrinth’ to navigate between dreams. Any dreamer can
be located in the labyrinth, even if they have never used Project Alter.
The protagonists have accounted for most of the prototypes, but a few
disappeared when Faye left the company.

KYO’S AVATAR
Offer hints of what Kyo’s avatar might be. The setup
implies that Kyo’s avatar might be Faye, or some
facsimile of her that he has created in his dreams. Kyo
is struggling to understand his own identity, and his
avatar should reflect that. Is Kyo actually a woman
who still needs to reconcile with her identity?
Offer possibilities, and challenge preconcep-
tions, but follow Kyo’s player’s lead. It’s their
choice in the end—they might even remain
uncertain at the conclusion of the episode.

5
6

DIRECTOR’S PRINCIPLES
Entangle every character in the Conspiracy
Connect everyone to the Conspiracy in some way. Think of direct
connections, like membership in a secret society or perilous online
delving, but also indirect connections, like having a friend who was
changed by the Conspiracy, or an artist whose work the Conspiracy
has co-opted. Have traces of the Conspiracy appear in unexpected
places and ways, infringing even on the protagonists’ most safe and
private spaces.

Let the suspect’s inner worlds spill over

When in the mundane world, show the suspects’ interior life through
body language, what they say, and what they don’t say. In their dreams,
their inner world spills forth, and exists concretely as embodied
symbols and manifested metaphors. A suspect’s dream shows their
personal reflection of the broader tensions and themes at play in the
story. Incorporate visual motifs that are shared across the suspects,
and use them to adorn each suspect’s personal memories and traumas.

Make suspects sympathetic in motivation,

and appalling in their actions
Give suspects well intentioned or relatable reasons for getting involved
in the Conspiracy. Then show how this leads to them doing unconscio-
nable acts, in service to their hearts desires. Let us see the Conspiracy
twisting their desires, and ultimately corrupting them.

Bury them in everyday details

Dreams are built out of mundane places and objects, but twisted and
turned surreal. The mundane world, while seemingly ordered and
sensible, is filled with dizzying human creations and constant activity.
Show how their attunement to dreams makes them sensitive to this
immensity, even in the mundane world. Build a labyrinth for the protag-
onists out of routine and pressure, make them feel tiny and alone.

Avatars are amoral alien egos

The protagonists’ Avatars are not strictly on their side. They are
powerful, capricious, and exist to fulfill their own desires. Their power
comes at a cost, sometimes obvious, other times subtle and insidious,
and always paid by the protagonists. Lead them towards an inevitable
reckoning—sooner or later, it must be decided who is truly in control.

es
Director’s Principl
 ts
Additional Suspec

ADDITIONAL SUSPECTS
Ê Boon: Chief Technical Officer—perverse, charming, cultist
Ê Jo: Coder—sneaky, sleepless, crypto-fascist
Ê Gunn: Technical writer—withdrawn, funny, trans-anarchist
Ê Luce: Archivist—caffeinated, suspicious, open-sourced
Ê Tif: Courier—leggy, cheerful, solarpunk

SERIES ABILITIES
For this play-kit, the protagonists’ series abilities are as follows:
Daydreamers: Gain +1d when rolling obligation.
Lucid: Each protagonist marks a transcendent action dot in forgive,
express, and conceal.
Mark this action dot only in the third or fourth position. If this provides
your only dot in a given action, it does not count towards your attri-
bute rating for resistance rolls.

7
8

KYO, THE UNLIKELY HERO (he/him)

slight, questioning, fresh
Kyo is a junior industrial designer, whom Faye had recently taken under
her wing. He is fresh out of school and uneasy in his skin, still holding
himself with a teenage awkwardness. Strangely, Kyo has no Alter. At
best he manifests brief glimpses of them in the dream, mercurial and
distant. Through Faye, Kyo had a sense of who he could become, of
what his heart desired. Her departure has left him confused and in flux.
What does Faye have that you never will?
What parts of her are reflected in you?
Were you comfortable in her shadow?
An impossible promise: I’ll give what Faye never could.

Actions:
Confess, Forgive, and
Conceal.
Special Ability:
Call Out.
Transcendent Ability:
None.

The Protagonists
 The Protagonists

SHAY, THE GUARDIAN (he/him)

affable, big, wistful
Shay is a marketing director at Embrace. He’s a smooth and charming
man, confident in his middle age, quick to smile or crack a joke. Shay’s
Alter is Bog, a shape-shifting trickster with a love of rumour and inver-
sion. Shay helped recruit Faye to the company, and for a time they were
lovers. As she came into her new self, though, their relationship grew
cold. They haven’t spoken in months.
What attracted you to Faye, back in the day?
What is the flaw in her that others fail to see?
What do you regret about your relationship with her?
A protective promise: I’ll keep safe from Faye’s troubles.
Avatar: Bog. Virtue: clever. Desires: scandal, overthrow.

Actions:
Defy, Perceive, and
Confess.
Special Ability:
Here For You.
Transcendent Ability:
Bolstering Presence

9
10

MOL, THE HARMONY (she/her)

ambitious, hopeful, ingenious
Mol is a senior software engineer at Embrace, who shared Faye’s
interest in shaping dreams. As a child she merged her psyche with
Deed, a being of the dream. Together they are a prodigious intellect and
creative force. Mol and Faye were close collaborators, but Mol’s strident
criticism of the project drove a wedge between them. Mol’s Alter is
Queen, an imperious shining figure who must share her with Deed. The
two dream beings guide Mol, but their agendas are in constant tension.
What is Faye’s greatest accomplishment, in your view?
What critical work did she leave unfinished?
What would you share with her, if you had the chance?
Two conflicting promises: I will show the power of dreams,
and how fragile dreams can be.
Avatars: Deed and Queen.
Virtue: bright. Desires:
apotheosis, adoration.

Actions:
Empathize, Forgive, and
Analyze.
Special Ability:
Synchronized.
Transcendent Ability:
Powerful Presence

The Protagonists
 The Protagonists

EVE, THE OUTSIDER (she/her)

domineering, fashionable, tired
Eve is a senior product designer at Embrace who was put on Project
Alter by the c-suite in an attempt to reign in Faye’s ambitions. Their
initial friction and rivalry gave way to a fierce friendship born of mutual
respect. The two would work long nights together, debating solutions
to intractable problems, or sharing stories and drinks to blow off steam.
Eve’s Alter is Cross, a being of stone, fierce and belligerent, who only
respects power.
What hint of her departure did Faye let slip
to you?
What secret did she share with you alone?
Could anyone ever replace her?
A competitive promise: I’m the
leader, not .

Avatar: Cross.
Virtue: brave.
Desires: supremacy,
indulgence.

Actions:
Defy, Express, and
Conceal.
Special Ability:
Reckless.
Transcendent Ability:
Brutish.

11
12

SINGLE SESSION PROCEDURE

1 Choose one of the playsets.
2 Take turns reading the introduction and character descriptions
aloud. Once everyone is familiar with the situation and characters,
the protagonists each choose the character they want to play.
3 Each protagonist will have specific questions to answer depending
on which character they are playing. Read these aloud and answer
them.
4 After Eve’s player answers their questions, instruct them to
advance the investigation track by 2.
5 Once all the protagonists have answered their questions, read the
questions at the end of the playset introduction, to get everyone
thinking about the stakes of the situation.
6 Each protagonist gets one advance to spend for their character,
which can be used to acquire a new ability, or add one point to
an action rating of their choice.
7 The group also gets one advance to spend on a special ability or
transcended ability from the series.
8 Protagonists write promises. Each character has one promise
pre-written, which only requires that the player fill in a character
name. Their other promise is written based on the open prompt.
9 Play obligation as normal.
10 Each protagonist then gets 1 downtime action, instead of the
usual 2, plus any bonus downtime actions they receive by way
of special abilities, or series abilities.
11 Mission is tier I: explore a suspect’s dream—specifically Faye.
Play the mission.