The Napping Cat's Dream

The Napping Cat's Dream was a forum-based role-playing community related to the Master Zen-Dao Meow webcomic. It began solely dedicated to Master Zen-Dao Meow, but eventually began hosting its own server and thirteen distinct forums.

Background
The Napping Cat's Dream began as the "Mystical Messageboard" in January 2000, and In February 2001 it moved to "The Nice", expanding to include thirteen forums of its own by March 2002. It finally moved domains to its current host in April 2003.

Master Zen-Dao Meow featured many anthropomorphic characters; furry characters made up a sizable portion of The Dream's population, however, there were many human (as well as other types of fantasy) characters allowed in the roleplays. The Dream Rules stated that there is to be no excessive profanity, graphic sexual discussion, or pornographic material, and  violence was to be moderated on a per-thread basis. .

The Dream was administered by Karol Luis, Furilius Pitch, and Krinele Fullin.

Premise
"The Napping Cat's Dream" was presented as a multiverse of infinite realities inside the mind of a sleeping feline. Each player god, or PG (The out-of-character user) was represented by one or more avatars (characters). Avatars were required to be original creations; they could not be directly taken from other fictional universes or canons. A PG could have more than one avatar; this condition was often referred to (tongue-in-cheek) as "MAD", or Multiple Avatar Disorder.

Each thread in The Dream is its own continuum; what happened to an avatar in a given thread did not necessarily carry over to other threads, unless the PG wished it to be so. Each thread was moderated by the PG who created it, who was referred to as the God Moderator (GM). As with any roleplay session, the GM had overall control of the scenario.

There was no set theme or genre in The Dream's role-playing threads, especially those in the "PERFORM" forum. Other types of threads could be posted to topic-specific boards. Threads with no particular topic or assigned board were typically placed in the "MEET" board.

Crossovers
Avatars from other web comics occasionally appeared in The Dream. There had been frequent crossovers between The Dream and the Gaming Guardians in the past; The Dream was featured as one of the "gaming systems" the Guardians were to defend.

Cards and psychedelic avatars
Whole threads were occasionally recognized for exceptional roleplaying by being awarded an Adventure Card, a tradeable type of artwork which reflected individual PGs' avatars. The first Adventure Card was awarded for Tales of Rhiann roleplay in 2001, and the tradition continued until the eventual close of the site.

Over the years, the board's administration awarded artwork in the form of Avatar Cards, similar to Adventure Cards, to individual avatars who made large contributions to The Dream as a whole through roleplay, art, discussion, or other means. Recipients of Avatar Cards were often called Psychedelic Avatars. The first card awarded to an avatar was given to the user Dork Lord on April 8, 2001. The first thirteen cards (#0-12) in the series only depicted characters from Master Zen-Dao Meow. The card series came to an end with Card #500, on December 31, 2004, as the cost of commissioning the artwork had started to become prohibitive; the last forum avatar to receive a PA card was #494, to user Thalamasa. The remaining six cards were characters or concepts in Master Zen-Dao Meow.

Format
The main page of The Dream featured the Master Zen-Dao Meow comic, related side projects (animated in Flash), and each of the thirteen forums:


 * ENTER - rules, guidelines, new member introduction.
 * MEET - general discussion and light roleplay.
 * FLIRT - romantic role-playing.
 * LEARN - tutorial threads on various subjects, Dream or otherwise.
 * CREATE - artistic endeavours.
 * DEBATE - lively debate, mostly on real-world subjects.
 * PITCH - advertisements from members (webcomics, commissions, etc.).
 * REFLECT - personal reflections and emotional discussions.
 * FIGHT - never opened for its intended purpose; was to be the home of the "Messageboard War".
 * SETTLE - threads detailing the homes and terrain created in The Dream.
 * PERFORM - the main role-playing forum; in-depth roleplay.
 * PONDER - Master Zen-Dao Meow comic in HTML and side projects.
 * ESCAPE - messages from members leaving The Dream.

New avatars started their Dream experience in the ENTER forum, often with a personal thread describing how they found their way into The Dream. Once an avatar posted substantially thirty times (either in starting a thread, or elsewhere in ENTER), they could be sponsored for full access by an already-authorized avatar who had over one-hundred posts. An authorized avatar was one that had been sponsored and approved for full access by the administrators.

Site closure
In January 2009, the administrators began to move inactive threads to separate archive boards, and, in the following April, Krinelle Fullin announced a new, upgraded forum structure which would soon take effect. During the discussion of the new structure, Furilius Pitch posted the following :

"The MZDM motif (the icons, the cat's dream premise, the characters, the ENTER-ESCAPE themed forum structure) will not be retained. The hope is that there is enough core participants left here to carry over into the new forums and seed a new RP community. Any current MZDM avatars can be re-registered in the new system (by their original creators only)."

As of May 31, 2009, The Dream was closed to new threads, with the remaining active threads copied to the MEET forum to allow for their orderly completion. The Napping Cat Chat was shut down on June 15, 2009, and The Dream as a whole was finally closed to all activity as of June 30. It was Furilius Pitch's intention to allow the archived Dream to remain running and available, but the site eventually became defunct outright. Successor sites included Lucidia Fantasy, Our Longest Journey, and Phantagraphia.