Napping Cat's Dream

THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE DREAM

The Napping Cat's Dream was a forum-based role-playing community which grew from one forum dedicated to the Master Zen-Dao Meow webcomic, to having its own server and thirteen distinct forums.

The forum began as the Mystical Messageboard in January 2000. In February 2001 it moved to The Nice, expanded to thirteen forums in March 2002, and moved to its current site in April 2003.

Master Zen-Dao Meow featured anthropomorphic characters; not surprisingly, furry characters made up a sizable portion of The Dream's population, as well. However, there were many human characters (as well as other types of fantasy beings) amongst The Dream's denizens.


The Dream was administered by Karol Luis, Furilius Pitch, and Krinele Fullin.

In game terms, The Napping Cat's Dream was a multiverse of infinite realities inside the mind of a sleeping feline. Each player god ("PG", the player in real life) was represented by one or more avatars (characters). Avatars were required to be original creations; they could not be directly taken from other fictional universes - e.g. you could have played a psychic warrior with a sword of light, but not a Jedi with a lightsaber.

A PG could have more than one avatar; this condition was often referred to (tongue-in-cheek) as "MAD", or Multiple Avatar Disorder.

Each thread in The Dream is its own continuum; what happened to an avatar in a given thread did not carry over to other threads, unless the PG wished it to be so. The threads were moderated by the PG who created them, referred to as the God Moderator (GM); as with any RP session, the GM had overall control of the scenario.

There was no set theme or genre in The Dream's role-playing threads, especially those in the PERFORM forum. Other types of threads were posted to their specific boards; threads with no particular forum set for them often wound up in MEET.


THE COMING OF THE PSYCHEDELIC AVATARS.

Over the years, the board's administration awarded artwork in the form of "Avatar Cards" to various avatars who made excellent contributions to The Dream as a whole through role-playing, art, or discussion. These avatars were referred to as Psychedelic Avatars. Three of this forum's founders, Maus Merryjest, James Rayner and Sovan Kawasagi, were bestowed Psychedelic Avatarhood.

Outside of the recognition, and the fact that, at one time, the PA with the lowest number in The Dream's official chat acted as moderator in lieu of one of the administrators or forum moderators, there was no other special functions assigned to Psychedelic Avatars.

The first thirteen cards (#0-12) in the series depicted characters from Master Zen-Dao Meow; the first card awarded to an avatar was for Dork Lord, on April 8, 2001.

For the majority of the run, the cards were awarded by Val, also known as the "Dancing Yin", one of the avatars from the comic. Her announcements of new Psychedelic Avatars included a brief description of the avatar who was "ascending" to Psychedelic status, often in well-written verse.

The card series came to an end with Card #500, on December 31, 2004, as the cost of commissioning the artwork had started to become prohibitive. The last forum avatar to receive a PA card was #494, Thalamasa; the remaining six cards were characters or concepts in Master Zen-Dao Meow


THE END OF A DREAM....

In April 2009, Krinelle Fullin announced a new, upgraded forum structure would be set up. During the discussion of the new structure, Furilius Pitch posted the following :
"The MZDM motif (the icons, the cat's dream premise, the characters, the ENTER-ESCAPE themed forum structure) will not be retained. The hope is that there is enough core participants left here to carry over into the new forums and seed a new RP community. Any current MZDM avatars can be re-registered in the new system (by their original creators only)."

As of 31 May 2009, the Dream was closed to new threads, with the remaining active threads copied to the MEET forum to allow for their orderly completion. The Napping Cat Chat was shut down on 15 June 2009, and The Dream as a whole was finally closed to all activity as of 30 June 2009, after ten years.

It is Furilius Pitch's intention to allow the archived Dream to remain up for a time, but the site will eventually be brought down completely.


Our Longest Journey takes place after the awakening of the Napping Cat, and it deals with the lives of the avatars who used to dwell in the Dream and who are now cast to the randomness of the multiverse.