RPGs where MECHANICS (not setting) help create a dream-like vibe?

Hello, community! I got some really good suggestions when I asked for pulpy sword-and-planet adventures last time I was here, so I figured I'd dip my toes in again with another hyper-specific request.

There is no shortage of games with trippy, imaginative settings. However, a lot of these games don't really do much to weave that dream-like sense of whimsical, slightly unsettling unreality into the mechanics themselves. For example, Numenera's bizarre distant future winds up handling like D&D but with goofy consumables, and the somber, beautiful Cloud Empress struggles to enforce its themes around the viciously antagonistic Mothership engine.

So, I'm looking for games that achieve the feeling of floating between scenes that evoke a sense of both wonder and mild confusion, where things are just illogical enough to keep players slightly off-kilter, but make enough emotional sense to stay engaged. Something in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland, an 80s fantasy puppet movie, A Wrinkle in Time, or Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Again, not looking for cool settings (those are a dime a dozen), but for mechanical methods to make players feel like they are experiencing an intense trip or especially strange dream.

Please read the other comments before making a recommendation so that you don't all wind up repeating each other. Thank you!

Mythic Bastionland. Done.

How does it mechanically enforce that dream-like feeling? I only ever hear peopel talk about the setting.

Basically every time you go into a new hex, you roll to see if an Omen happens. Not only are these Omens typically coded pretty “odd” but they also might not fit the hex exactly.

Which means you get these super funky encounters where you’re trekking through a desert but the encounter says a great beast is talking to itself in a massive forest and won’t stop until you answer a riddle (this is just a random example, probably not in the book but it’s a good way to wrap your head around it) so it makes it a pretty “dream-like” type of story. There are other mechanics but that’s the one that I think best exemplifies it

It is so wild and loose with the abilities and omens (or whatever they are called), but at the same time so compelling, that you are left really wanting more and having to dream it up on the spot. Sometimes the omens themselves are following dream logic, and the only way to approach them is to follow the same logic.

Songbirds 3e has some wonderfully surreal abilities available to players.

What is an example of a mechanic that you’re talking about?

Very cool, thank you for the explanation. What does a typical gameplay loop look like for a player?

I think Pbta Systems with Truppe moved might have a good shot.
The Wildsea, Yes its the setting. It also is in the moves and features of the classes.

Thank you, I'll check it out. I think a friend has a copy so I can try before I buy.

The procedures dictate that 1/3 of the time that you travel in the wilderness you get the next scene from a random myth. The landscape warps around the dictates of these scenes. Lakes appear when needed and disappear again. Mountains loom close then shrink into the distance. You can work hard to make it make sense, but it makes a better impact if you don't. The places where people live make sense — the wilderness is unknowable.

There is also a free version that would probably work just fine for a few sessions. On dtrpg. Hope you have a good time!

Never heard of it, but it seems to advertise itself as an OSR dungeon crawler. Can you provide an example of one of those abilities?

It's a hard line to draw between mechanics and setting here, but when you follow the rules for myths you can end up with incongruity between the map and the experiences of the players as they explore - an ocean appearing in a desert, for instance.

The setting being dream-like makes these potentially disorientating experiences feel evocative, and in terms the way the myths develop mechanically helps the setting feel more dream-like.

Travel. GM checks for “encounter” Players decide how to deal with encounter.

If in doubt, the rules give the guidance that the player characters should always point in a direction that “Seeks the Myths, Honors the Seers, and Protects the Realm”