2 ND’s that involved riding a car. One just being driven somewhere, and the other, we were driving quickly to a place, while trying to outrun exploding cars…
I’ve also started writing in my DJ again…
Though there is nothing grand in there as far as riding goes.
This morning’s ND had me ride a floating platform across a void, a spacecraft, and a bipedal mech. I also drove a car, but I’ve already claimed those points.
Task 2 – LD4all Plays Pokemon
Topical! Why? Because I can.
If you’ve been under a digital rock the last 16 days (or Boulder, I should say), then you’ve heard of Twitch Plays Pokemon. A phenomenon that’s sweeped the web. Over 70,000 and peaking at 110,000 players at once all playing the original Pokemon game using the same input. It’s given rise to jokes, memes, and brought back the nostalgia of the games. This task will be based on the TPP experience.
Summon a Pokemon from the final team (Zapdos, Nidoking, Lapras, Venomoth, Pidgeot, Omastar) +10 pts per Pokemon, +30 pts more if you summon them all at once.
Find Abby, the Charmeleon that was released. +20 pts
Democracy Mode: Fight in a Pokemon battle giving your Pokemon orders. +30 / If you choose to fight with a creature other than a Pokemon, post your incubation in the topic.
Anarchy Mode: Fight in a Pokemon battle and the Pokemon must fight without orders. (Must be a seperate battle from Democracy Mode.) +30 pts If you choose to fight with a creature other than a Pokemon, post your incubation in the topic.
Consult the Helix Fossil! Find the Helix Fossil and ask it a question. The helix fossil is just a fancy snail shell, really, so any snail shell will do. It must give an answer to earn points. +40 pts
And now for the twist. All these tasks must not be done in a game in your dream. Ex. Playing/watching this in an emulator or gameboy in your dream. You have to physically do these things. Would be too easy otherwise. 
Also, scores will be posted tomorrow.
All I clearly know about pokemon is that its an anime and video game series, its most popular key figure is a cat sized animal, named pikatchu, who has some sort of electrical powers.
That’s all I know, that’s all I want to know, and I want it to stay that way.
I never heard about any Zapdos, Nidoking, Lapras, Venomoth, Pigeot, Omastar, or Abby, the Charmeleon, nor Helix Fossil. And I surely not want to have them in my dreams.
Does that mean I can’t earn even a single point in this task? If so, OK, I’ll wait for another.
I didn’t really investigate previous LC’s a lot, but I’m pretty sure tasks never required such exactly defined things to be done to earn base points. Tasks were general directions to do one or another general thing and each person could shape the task according to his personal interests.
This is example how task could be worded to make it fit everyone.
This task will require you to dream about your favorite Anime/TV show/Movie/Video game, etc.
(If, after all, there’s someone who doesn’t like ANY Anime/TV show/Movie/Video game, etc, say so and we will figure how to make the task to fit you too or simply in the end of LC reward you with average amount of points that people earned for this task.)
Summon one of the six major characters. +10 points per character, +30 if you summon the all at once.
<I have no idea what that is, but you do, so you could find equivalent easily.>
Make them fight following your orders.
Make them fight without your orders (?).
Consult the the sage figure and ask it a question. It must give an answer to earn points. +40 pts
I’m not Wyvern, but as a former TM, I’d like to give my thoughts.
First of all, while I disapprove of TMs inserting things that are either obnoxious to a large group or obscure, I don’t think Pokémon fits either description. It’s a worldwide phenomenon, and as the game in question is the very first one in the series, it’s from a time that most people remember fondly, even if the later games may not appeal to many. If you’re not familiar with it, know that it’s very easy to learn about. Heck, a reference to Harry Potter was used in LC 37 Task 2, and that was a non-issue for participants.
This is the truth; you’d have to simply wait. I had a few people in my LC say that they wouldn’t let just anything into their specific dream “worlds”, which meant that they would not act on any task based on LD4all DCs. That’s all well and good, but when you enter an LC, you need to be prepared to act on the TM’s desires and to forfeit points if you won’t do so. This situation is pretty analogous.
This is just my two cents, of course; Wyvern’s the one that gets the final say, but what I’m saying is how it’s worked for the previous 40 LCs. A similar conversation has come up lately about people wanting a substitute for the group incubation points because they didn’t want to work in a group; if you’re not willing to work with a point category, then understand that while the TM may provide a substitute, he/she is not obligated to. 
I’ve never had a pokemon in my dream… I’ve not followed a second of TPP, or w/e that is, other than my brother mentioning it for a second while I was in the kitchen.
I had mew appear in my dreams a while back, which was a unique experience. Beyond that, I have never seen a pokemon in my dreams…
I don’t know enough about pokemon to give any orders, or anything, or know what they’re supposed to do… Can I just use my phoenix instead?
I couldn’t resist getting in on the debate, especially because one of my own tasks was mentioned. I think Thorn put it best when he said that the TM may provide a substitute, but isn’t required to. With that said, I think it is always important for each task to have a significant amount of points for a more general undertaking. If you notice in my Harry Potter task, more points could be earned than not from simply using magic, but there were “bonuses” to be had for going along with the Harry Potter theme. Ultimately, these things are up to the TM; if there had been a huge uproar from a significant amount of participants in my LC, I would have changed the requirements for the task. If there were only one or two people that had an issue, though, I may have made an exception for them on a case by case basis, but probably would have told them to just deal with it.
I think themes can be really cool, and in the case of Harry Potter, I am almost certain that everyone knows enough from either the book or the movie to have finished my task. As long as the theme is something almost everyone is familiar with, I think its fine, given that there be some kind of task that might perhaps be an exception to the theme if a particular contestant really wants to accomplish it that way (Basically a fairly ambiguous task).
We decided on the fairly obvious group incubation of doing a doubles battle with each other, just as in the newest Pokémon games. Everybody has a favorite Pokémon from the team and we will try to respect that, but we know that LC points come first. 
PRAISE HELIX!
He-hey. I got a surprising amount of Pokémon-related things in my dream!
… May and a Snorlax. Both of which will not grant me any points. :I
Still, though, I had a 10-15 second LD, so yeah. You can access my online dream journal here. But for the very sake of redundancy, I will post my dream/dream(s) below (2/3/2014). I skipped 1/3/2014 because I don’t think any points can be won there.
Note that I do not differentiate between different dreams in a single night… It doesn’t matter here, but I will start to do do that from now on. :I
[spoiler]Disembodied perspective: I was watching a live report of a car chase sequence, where a criminal was chased by the police. The chase took place in a mountainous area, and by accident, the criminal drifted into the rail. The car landed on top of the rail, where it balanced, but the criminal was flung from the front window and off the mountain. The news reporter, who was previously calmly narrating what was going on, freaked out at this point because of the criminal’s supposedly-savage death.
Disembodied perspective: I was watching some sort of Pokémon game, but it wasn’t one of the official entries. I only saw the title screen, and it had the Pokémon logo in the left area, and the backdrop was an ocean. I am not sure what the subtitle was. The logo and subtitle logo was surrounded by a thick outline than morphed between two forms (one being basically a fitting outline and the other being more wavy). Accompanying this title screen was some sort of conversation, where they discussed the move Fly’s fast-travel mechanic in Pokémon generation 1. Supposedly, the move had no fast-travel attached to it until later, but then the other person argued that its main ability was to carry the user from town to town, even in generation 1, nulifying the fast-travel later implemented. This conversation makes no sense in hindsight, because there is no ‘extra fast-travel’ attached to Fly.
Disembodied perspective: I was watching some sort of Harry Potter scene. In it, Snape tells off some other character for not taking something-undefined seriously and being happy about things. In return, said characters start taking the something-undefined too seriously, and fail that way.
Something very vague, related to Assassin’s Creed.
I remember being in my house, but it looked vastly different. It had a more modern look, with glossy plastic/glass covering the walls and what-not. My notes make mention of a (possibly-public) washroom, but I can’t remember that.
It was a dark evening, and I was at some docks. I was some unnamed Super Hero whose ability was being fast. This ability had its limits though, and judging from how it went, I could definetely be outsped by a car. I saw a criminal run (he was fast - faster than me, actually), but he was in the distance, and he ran in an arc around me. I could not reach him in a straight line, because there was water in the way. Still, I tried. For a brief moment, I managed to run fast enough to run on the water surface. However, I began to sink, and I had to swim a large portion of the section. Once there, catching this criminal was difficult, but he stumbled at points, which made it possible to catch him.
Later, I returned to the town near the harbour, where my parents were waiting for me in a restaurant. Said restaurant was a floor underground, which I thought was interesting. When I arrived there, it turned out they were already done eating, and that everything was already served and by the time I arrived, cold. My mother was angry at me and demanded the food to be removed from the table so I couldn’t eat.
At home, I noticed that my shoes were awfully muddy, and that my feet were soaked similarly.
Disembodied perspective: I was watching a movie that was about a strange island. In the dream, I regarded this dream as a bad movie. This island was supposedly haunted by bad, undefined things. Above said island was a tiny floating island, where the villains lived. Surrounding this floating isle, there was a collossal set of giant keyboard buttons, arcing around the isle. They were ominous and seemed to emit a black light. Regarding this isle, it seemed that there were three witches who lived there, and they used their motorcycles to float to it. Once near, a beam of blackish purple energy sucked them in. Once near, they seemingly faded away, implying that the isle is something that trascends dimensions.
I have no idea what this piano was for, but I could ‘hack’ into the movie and in process activate some of the buttons.
I also remember that I was in some school-like environment, this time I had an actual presence there. There were a bunch of school kids up to no good, and they set off large fires. Just like the previously-mentioned witches, they lived in the floating isle. However, I’m not sure if they also used motorcycles.
Disembodied perspective: At some point, the dream changed the movie-aspect to an entertainment park-esque place. It was water-based, with swimming pools and several water-based attractiong. Throughout the establishing shots, May - a Pokémon character - could be seen, enjoying herself. But she served little purpose besides that.
Then I was at the amusing park, this time somewhere near the entrance. The entire entertainment park was surrounded by a white wall. At one part, there was a canal tunnel, somewhere near the entrance. This is where I was. I had to close up the canal to make sure something couldn’t pass through, and as such I summoned a Snorlax by unknown means (so I’m going to assume I had a Pokéball). However, the opening was too large, and Snorlax couldn’t fill it up by himself. As such, the idea was useless. Simultaniously, I was irritated by a bunch of school-children who hid themselves in the undeground sewers. I did not see them, but I did hear them and they irritated me with long, balloon snakes from the small sewer openings. Said openings were far too small to go through (roughly 1 feet squared). As such, I began to look for a bigger opening.
I wandered away from the amusement park and into some rugged area. Said area was slightly mountainous and very dry, most of the place being quite brown and grey. I found another opening to the sewers, but this one was also too small. I decided to give up and return to the amusement park. The path was gravely, and if you weren’t careful, you could lose your footing and tumble down the rocky hill. At one point, I broke out into a run and almost slipped, but I managed to stay on the path.
Around here, the dream fades.
I almost forgot. At one point in the night, I had a dream where I randomly decided to fly over a dark environment. I was confused at this action, but as I started to think about it, I started to notice the arcane feeling that signified I was asleep. Immediately, I noted to myself that I seemed pretty clear-headed (and that I would likely not agree with myself when I woke up). Still, I thought over what I could do (I believe I was thinking over the LC, but I don’t think the thought of the Pokémon ever popped in my head), but the dream faded into darkness.
I remained in this darkness for a while until I woke up.[/spoiler]
While for most of you task is just to go dream and and summon all those pokemon that you know everything about. I would have to go study pokemon, memorize their looks and names and behaviour and stuff. And just casually memorizing wouldn’t be enough to make sure they come trough into a dream. That’s a lot of job and not fair.
I had a short LD last night.
demented, (and Lumessence, kind of) the task isn’t to perfectly replicate the pokemon. I’m not Wyvern either, but I’m sure he’d give you points if you at least tried to summon something slightly resembling the pokemon. Zapdos is a yellow bird. If you summon a Zapdos and a non-Zapdos yellow bird appears, as long as you are confident it is a Zapdos, you’ll probably still get points.
For the pokemon battle, as long as you describe something somewhat resembling a pokemon battle (which is just any RPG battle really) you’ll probably get points, even if not all the monsters are pokemon.
After all, dreams aren’t perfect. My username is MEW151, and I doubt I could perfectly recreate any of these pokemon. Heck, I can’t even remember the entire Twitch Plays Pokemon party.
I’m defending this so when I become TM one day, I can have pony tasks! (Not really)
Now that I think about it. It’s too bad I didn’t have a pokeball in my dream where I encountered that spectral glowing Mew…
Actually, I wonder if I could summon that… Since apparently it already exists in my dream world.
I chose the Pokemon task because most people are familiar with Pokemon, and with the recent events on Twitch, there’s been a rekindled interest in it all around the web. The series has an anime, several movies, videos games, and a card game. It’s been around for nearly 16 years.
This kind of theme is not unique to this LC, like said. There have been two Harry Potter themed tasks as well. Harry Potter has been around for nearly 17 years, so like Pokemon, it’s pretty well known.
Even the last LC had a task where you had to have knowledge of horror movies. I hadn’t even seen the movie I dreamt of. Hell, I don’t even watch horror movies… or much movies in general.
I suppose this was my reasoning in making the task, but yes, in retrospect I can see how the task can be exclusionary. I won’t change the theme of the task itself, but I’ve altered some of the subtasks.
At the end of the day, this task focuses heavily on specific incubation. It was made with the intention of being more difficult to accidentally have a ND about and is more challenging than finding something to ride (which is still worth +10 throughout the competition, the same amount as the first subtask). I will offer additional details for the some of the subtasks.
The next task will still be posted on Saturday 4PM EST, but early points for this task have been extended to Monday 4PM EST.
@demented: theoretically with the knowledge you have, you could have just found a pikachu and told it “attack” and attack another pikachu. Then you could have grabbed that pikachu, ran to another pikachu and whipped the pokemon at the other. Would have completed both Democracy and Anarchy mode.
[size=75]… bwahahaha.[/size]
Anyhow… I’ve had two potentially good dreams…
… but I fell asleep before I could write them. This night would probably get me no points either way, but I’d just mention it because I think it may be troublesome later on. :< I really need to learn how to just start writing - even if its notes - and THEN go back to sleep.
Now all I have is this very watered-down blurry mess.
Medium and very boring lucid dream.
I also rode an elevator, an escalator, and a jet ski.
well. I had a ND last night where I was playing with pokeballs… I knew there was a battle going on somewhere in the dream, but I didn’t see it, just felt it nearby. But other than that, I missed it…
Oh! and I was flying a spaceship through a giant space-station maze thing… Does that count as riding?
Oops.
Almost forgot.
Last night I had a short, low quality LD. Again. To be honest, the two are eerily similar. o.o
Aforementioned LD can be found somewhere around here.
Also, the subject of Pokémon seems to crop up quite often, but I haven’t managed to complete any of the tasks yet, intentionally or not.