History Literature / DreamPark

* AncientAliens: The hidden source of supernatural knowledge and forces in California Voodoo.

* BuryYourGays: Averted in the third book; while Twan gets killed out of California Voodoo, she out-lives the majority of its participants, and her partner Tammi is one of the very few survivors. Also averted with Sharmela in book four.

** Upon seeing an obsidian sacrificial knife, one of the characters in ''Dream Park'' asks "[[Literature/TheMagicGoesAway What good is a glass dagger?]]"

* AnachronismStew: Generally averted in the Games, as Game Masters go to great lengths to build internally-consistent settings and mythos. Teams of characters ''within'' each Game, ironically, can have contradictory backstories; in South Seas Treasure, there were [=PC=]s with roots in GreekMythology, [[{{UsefulNotes/Charlemagne}} 8th century France]], and [[Creator/FritzLeiber Newhon]].

* JuryOfTheDamned: ''The Barsoom Project'' features a sequence where the Gamers are put on trial by the [[AnthropomorphicPersonification manifestations]] of humanity's sins and crimes, as defined by the literal themepark version of the Eskimo religion.

* ThemePark: Pretty much everyone who's read the first novel would ''love'' to go there if they could.

* AnachronismStew: Generally averted in the Games, as Game Masters go to great lengths to build internally-consistent settings and mythos. Teams of characters ''within'' each Game, ironically, can have contradictory backstories; in South Seas Treasure, there were [=PC=]s with roots in GreekMythology, [[UsefulNotes/Charlemagne 8th century France]], and [[Creator/FritzLeiber Newhon]].

* {{Arcology}}: The California Voodoo Game takes place inside MIMIC (Meacham Incorporated Mojave Industrial Community), a massive one-building city which was built during the 1990s. It was so badly damaged by The Quake that it had to be abandoned. It was later acquired by Dream Park and used as the basis for the Barsoom Project--the {{terraform}}ing of Mars.

* BawdySong: A favorite activity of many Gamers, particularly Kevin (to Orson's horror).

* BigBad: In-Game for ''Barsoom'', it's Ahk-lut. ''Out''-of-Game, it's Kareem Fakesh.

* BiTheWay: Alan Leigh

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Kareem Fekesh

** Inverted in the first book's concluding battle, when a Park actress only succeeds in killing out a Gamer ''because'' the actress is disabled. The actress had removed her prosthetic limbs to play a badly-decomposed zombie, and the Gamer was so startled when she realized the one-legged, one-armed zombie wasn't a hologram that she dropped her guard.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Gina plays up her ditsy image for Yali, only to knock his riddles out of the park. Alphonse Nakagawa's own wife calls him out on his "dumb Texas shitkicker" routine, which belies a level of cunning that [[spoiler: wins the California Voodoo Game by outfoxing ''Bishop'']].

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Reanimated corpses that appear in the first two novels differ from ''each other'', as befits their respective scenarios' radically-different mythos. South Seas Treasure zombies are rotting and decrepit, often laugh eerily (due to having died of kuru), and keep fighting until dismembered. Fimbulwinter zombies ''look'' like living humans in a trance, can open their mouths unnaturally wide, and only need dismemberment to prevent them from arising in the first place. MIMIC zombies are loa-possessed, and their wounds leak nasty black ooze. Zombies from the horror attraction in book one are classic Romero-style flesh-eaters with a taste for shark, and vice versa.

* BattleCouple: Ollie and Gwen, Chester and Gina, Tammi and Twan.

* {{Thunderdome}}: The Crystal Maze is specifically designed for teams of Gamers to challenge one another. Gaming Areas A and B are used as this trope by the U.S. military for training scenarios, and [=MIMIC=] is converted into a temporary example for the California Voodoo tournament.

* ThunderDome: The Crystal Maze is specifically designed for teams of Gamers to challenge one another. Gaming Areas A and B are used as this trope by the U.S. military for training scenarios, and [=MIMIC=] becomes a temporary ThunderDome for the California Voodoo tournament.

* ActionGirl: Acacia, Mary-Em, and Holly play ActionGirl characters in the first book. Eviane is this for the second, and Tammi and Twan join Acacia and Mary-Em for the third. In book four, Angelique is this in-Game, while Celeste and Darla are that way in the out-of-game plotline.

* AnachronismStew: Generally averted in the Games, as Game Masters go to great lengths to build internally-consistent settings and mythos. Teams of characters ''within'' each Game, ironically, can have contradictory backstories; in South Seas Treasure, there were PCs with roots in GreekMythology, [[UsefulNotes/Charlemagne 8th century France]], and [[Creator/FritzLeiber Newhon]].

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Reanimated corpses that appear in the first two novels differ from ''each other'', as befits their respective scenarios' radically-different mythos. South Seas Treasure zombies are rotting and decrepit, often laugh eerily (due to having died of kuru), and keep fighting until dismembered. Fimbulwinter zombies ''look'' like living humans in a trance, can open their mouths unnaturally wide, and only need dismemberment to prevent them from arising in the first place. Zombies from the horror attraction in book one behave like typical Romero-style flesh-eaters.

* FriendlyPlayfulDolphins: The Nommo prefer dolphin-form so they can indulge in being this trope. [[spoiler: Indeed, the young Nommo visitors originally got stranded on Earth because they were ''so'' caught up in goofing around as dolphins that they didn't realize their flatfish-forms were growing too big for their spaceship.]]

** In all Games where players' characters return as undead, they differ from NPC zombies in being independently-sentient. Draegar and Bowen from book one both target Chester because they blame him for how they were "killed out", while Gwen quietly urges Ollie to finish her off so ''she'' won't have to kill ''him''. Twan, conversely, relishes the chance to duel Tammi as much as vice versa.