Here’s Nightmare Lands (1995), another expansion box for Ravenloft. This is sort of like Castles Forlorn (1993) in that it is a little bit of a sandbox setting, a little bit of rules and a little bit of linked adventures all in one box.

The titular nightmares are literal, not metaphorical. The Nightmare Lands are a portion of an realm of dreams, ruled over by the Nightmare Court, and can only be visited in sleep. The Court is a group of dream creatures that prey on the suffering of dreamers. The box introduces a D&D psychologist who opposes the Court (and runs an asylum) and the provided adventures give players a chance to intercede in the conflict.

Before you ask, yea, I am pretty sure someone was reading Sandman comics. It is weird though, considering anything is possible in dreams, not a lot of this box set jumps out as memorable. I like the Ghost Dancer, though. She’s a member of the Court who resides in the Theater Macabre in the City of Nod and is an undead ballerina trying to discover the manner of her murder through dreams and can only communicate through dance. Everything else feels like the rough draft instead of the final product. If it had been better fleshed out, it might have been a classic, but I think it winds up mostly being a casualty of late-era TSR mismanagement.