A small out-of-the-way community.  The barbarian citizens get strange nightmares where they fight strange foes intent on killing them.  Sometimes they wake as they find themselves slain, while other times they defeat their foes and celebrate and a dark figure comes forth and they wake shortly after.

Basically, the warriors are being summoned to fight for a summoner or wizard and are fighting the summoners enemies.  The spells bring them in their dreams into a physical form on that plane for a time, until the spell is up.

Might build up a theme, and they would discover while summoned they must follow the dark figure's commands and desires.  Straying might be only slightly work, and might result in actual illness on the individual when they wake.

In this sense, it would almost be like an arena game, heavy in combat... but would be open to an almost OOC like IC responses as those afflicted in the village might start to talk with one another about their shared nightmares.

In reply to Wrath (msg # 1):

I was looking at this it made me think would this work best if the game was assigned two groups for threads.  One being the Home spot, the other being the arena, Where the player is only able to see one group at a time, each episode  of combat is given a separate Thread but each thread might be the equivalent of a three ring circus or two players, in each thread, each person versus one opponent. pseudo randomly picked to start with they don't face each other. but as the other 2 or 3 are NPCs they might face them. or creatures and persons from some other places they don't know about.

Well the original idea was to have the group in the #1 world, to eventually find a way to transport themselves back to the #2 world where they kept getting summoned to fight for people.  With some wizard or something on a mission.

But yes... maybe a sort of an arena setting could work... if the mages are learning summoning... and are pitting their summoned creatures against one another.  After several such situations, and noting beginning to note that there are dark shadowed creatures in the surroundings.  [they are just shrouded by the magic intent of the summoner excluding them from the combat, only those seen and targeted are seen clearly]

If this were done in 5th edition, I would have to examine the summoning spells.  I think they may be higher level spells now.  I'm trying to figure out how to give the 'barbarian' warriors some sort of bonus or incentive for being clever in their encounters?  Some way to encourage them to work out what/who is causing them to have these nightmares.

I had an idea for a campaign area thinking steam punk. Then as I started to work through details of "punkishnes" i thought about their tendancy to super science and wondered if I could create in a steam punk era some form of psicic cyberpunk based on crystals and illusions cast into the border ethereal.

That being said as i thought about the city and how it was supposed to be built in and around a great vent it would have an innate source of steam.  I began to wonder if..

To make a long story short, I am actually now thinking of it as a standard 3.5, or 5. edition DnD. with gnomes running the cities "brassworks guild" dwarves the volcanic forges.. and halflings the hot air ballons and dirigables. and elves the navy based on dual sails and alcahol based brasswork engines.

I have no clue how most cyberpunk rules work and was wondering if you had a clue.

The most common cyberpunk game I'm familiar with was ShadowRun and it was a combination of Fantasy and SciFi.  It had different races and different classes.  I can't remember all the mechanics as I didn't play it that much.

The primary part that was most memorable was how the 'jacking' into the computer system and doing computer combat was treated similarly to how in other games you might view planar travel.  Where the individual entered the 'computer' world and did combat and such in a slightly different sub-game.