Anyone else using dreams for wolrdbuilding?

[LostName]

Might be all the fantasy and sci fi media I consume but occasionally I have dreams with that kinda stuff and when they are interesting I try to write down what I remember, not as some kind of dream diary which I'm not interested in but purely because it gives me ideas for worldbuilding.

E.g. a while ago I had a dream about being in some kind of sci fi underground complex and choosing some kind of location for a adventurer or hunter or whatever exam and which gate to go to get there after reading too many manhwa where gates to dungeons open on earth and monsters some out if you don't beat the dungeon boss while some humans have gotten rpg abilities (it's all with lots of video game mechanics). They can be fun but like with all media there is a lot of garbage and they are mostly inane power fantasies where mc becomes super strong super fast.

On like Friday I started getting tons of an ideas related to this and created a new world, though it has nothing to do with earth and is about that underground facility and the gates like in my dream.

I also once had an incredible dream about some sort of ancient Egypt like place with a king / emperor / pharaoh / whatever siting on a massive throne and being entertained by magic creating and controlling birds made of gold and gems but then the entertainers turn the birds into a weapon and later into some kind of giant demon to try to assassinate the emperor and I've written down several hundred thousand words of ideas about that setting since.

 

[pmmg]

Sadly, I almost never remember my dreams, so they do not inspire much of my fiction writing. I have come to discover thought that the likelihood of having strong dreams I will remember has a lot to do with the amount of caffeine I have in a day. When I am off caffeine, I dream more. I'll call it one of the benefits.

 

[Finchbearer]

I have had dreams that have given me ideas of things I want to write about, but not specifically worldbuilding.

 

[Rexenm]

I have dreams of driving home, and back home, repetitively, and then I run to a third home. Car, bus, plane, train it doesn’t matter, it’s like things are more interesting at home, but boy I can run fast. I think my brain is teaching me independence, they are not uncomfortable dreams, there are a lot of familiar characters.

 

[NoahGrey]

My wife has been journaling her dreams since she was a teenager and has it laid out to create an entire story based around dreams and the dreaming world.

 

[CupofJoe]

Like Finchbearer my dreams sometime lead to ideas or feeling that I want to explore in a story. But the dreams are usually too surreal to be useful as the basis of world building.

 

[Aldarion]

When I was a kid, I had a dream where talking dinosaurs were besieging last remnants of humanity in the Pula Amphitheatre.

And so I remembered that dream, and decided to write a (short) story based on it... whenever I catch time.