Dream Aflame

Dream Aflame is a Belonging Outside Belonging game of wasteland survival and before you completely check out because you saw Belonging Outside Belonging and it isn't your thing, let me talk about the setting, and why this game is worth grabbing even if you're not interested in its engine.

Dream Aflame leans hard into the theme of candles. You live in Wick, the barren place to which citizens of Wax sometimes are sent. Wax is a place of plenty, but it can never be returned to once left.

To this theme of candles and darkness, the game applies a serious slather of southern gothic and new weird.

There's mice-people, chthonic gods, memory wolves, fae from the not-so-nice sorts of fairytales, and voices on the wind---all against a backdrop of badlands at night.

Also there are five playbooks to choose from, and all of them are cowboy + witch.

There's variation between them. No playbook feels like it steps on the toes of any other playbook. But they all channel that exact same energy, and it works for Dream Aflame.

I'm not someone who digs the Belonging Outside Belonging engine (it doesn't put enough limitations on me as a player, which means I have to work way harder to avoid doing something that damages everyone's immersion,) but I absolutely dig the setting and writing of this game.

It's atmospheric and immersive. It pulls you in. And if you want an example of "show don't tell" applied to setting design, this is probably its purest form.

I would highly recommend buying a copy and giving it a read through.