Changeling: The Dreaming and Creepy LARPers

[GoblinGilmartin]

While I don't have much play experience beyond the more common RPGs (D&D, Pathfinder, VtM, among others), I loved reading RPG books for many different games. The White Wolf oWoD had some really neat ideas, but when I read CtD, it just bugged me. It reminded me of tales of really creepy role players who have gotten too far away from reality. And if you've read it recently, there is a page about a little girl who is taken into the woods by her friends and initiated into the Changeling world, probably becoming a satyr or centaur or something.

How is this game anything but creepy? Or is that the point?

[Comet]

Haven't read it, but I'm always glad when someone makes a horror game that manages to actually scare someone.

[GoblinGilmartin]

Haven't read it, but I'm always glad when someone makes a horror game that manages to actually scare someone.

But it's NOT a horror game. at least not in that way. Its main theme is being an allegory for loss of innocence.

[Comet]

Oh yeah, you're right. I was probably thinking of Changeling: the Lost. The Dreaming was suppposed to be one of the more lighthearted offerings in the Old World of Darkness, wasn't it?

But still, fairies have always been pretty creepy so I'd wager that at least some of that is intentional here.

[Ravens_cry]

Fey are every kind of creepy.
Morality and ethics that works on a whole different set of axes?
Check.
Propensity for kidnapping?
Check.
Use of illusions and glamour in terrifying ways for lawls and giggles or the below or as a reward? Check.
Will avenge perceived slights disproportionally? Check.
Slights you might not even realize because of the skewed perspective? Double check.
Even their boons can be baneful for the unwary.
Changeling might be 'lighter' than WoD is usually, but, then, so is Promethean.
It just happens to have a broken music box playing in the background just . . . off . . . key.

[GoblinGilmartin]

Except that CtD doesn't use fae, in the traditional sense, the way that CtL does.

[GorinichSerpant]

If I know anything about World of Darkness games, then the book succeeded. Not that I know that much, mind you as you give off the impression of having read more then I have.

[GoblinGilmartin]

If I know anything about World of Darkness games, then the book succeeded. Not that I know that much, mind you as you give off the impression of having read more then I have.

Seems to be the impression I'm getting from everyone....I didn't realize it was THAT obscure....

But CtD isn't a "scary" game like Vampire or Werewolf. what it SAYS is that "the fae are a thing, they're born as people, who then discover their 'true' selves and fight other fae". But basically power is drawn from whimsy and belief. the fae world is layered on top of ours, and is invisible to most people. a powerful changeling could, in the fae world, be wearing a glittering suit of armor and wielding a beautiful sword. But to any passers by, he could just look like a crazy homeless guy swinging a yardstick around.

My point was that this draws a lot of parallels to what I would consider the "dark-side" of roleplaying, where IRL, you have trouble distinguishing between fact and fantasy. It's unnerving. To me, anyway.

[Comet]

They might not have meant for it to be super horrific, but I'm almost 100% sure that the line between fantasy and reality is exactly and primarily what the designers of that game were looking to explore when making it. So you're probably not reading it wrong, that stuff is there.

[Grinner]

Seems to be the impression I'm getting from everyone....I didn't realize it was THAT obscure....

...

My point was that this draws a lot of parallels to what I would consider the "dark-side" of roleplaying, where IRL, you have trouble distinguishing between fact and fantasy. It's unnerving. To me, anyway.

Obscure? No. Expensive? Yes.

Anyway, it bears mentioning that there are many sorts of horror. Fangs and blood are but the simplest sort. Werewolf and Vampire might be "horror", but they're the sort of horror that scares children. Every work of horror has an intended audience, and when most effective, it'll prey on the fears of that audience. It seems Changeling: The Dreaming has struck a particular nerve of yours.

[sakuuya]

I don't think the creepiness is the official point (since it's billed as a "modern fantasy" game rather than any kind of horror), but since it's supposed to be a lighter side of the oWoD, I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to poke fun at that sort of person. I bet White Wolf had heard all kinds of LARP horror stories by the time CtD came out.

[Sith_Happens]

Its main theme is being an allegory for loss of innocence.

Which it's pretty hard to see

a little girl who is taken into the woods by her friends and initiated into the Changeling world, probably becoming a satyr or centaur or something.

--as anything but.

[gom jabbarwocky]

As far as I know, the discomfort that the OP has with CtD is one of the reasons it was a significant flop for White Wolf. The juxtaposition of certain elements in the game came off as really disjointed and failed to appeal to anyone. In other words, the game was billed as being the "lighter" side of the World of Darkness, but, in reality, it was probably the darkest, since it's a game about sustaining oneself on delusion and fantasy in a world succumbing to banality and cynicism. The parallels to those suffering from real-life mental illness were probably intentional.

This is what I assume, anyway. I wasn't there, so don't take it from me.

Potential players either came to CtD looking for something more fun, and found it incredibly depressing and gloomy, and players that preferred the dark stuff were turned off by the cutsey art design. The way I explained it once to someone was "It looks like Candyland, but has the heart of Terry Gilliam's Brazil."

[Yuki Akuma]

The horror of Changeling: the Dreaming is about having your individuality worn away by everyone who doesn't 'get you'. About losing that unique 'spark' that makes you different from everyone else. Finding out you're really a Changeling is meant to be a good thing, because it means you're 'special'. The 'horror' part comes in the fact that you won't stay special for long - you've got until your mid twenties, at the very latest. Even less time, if a therapist gets hold of you.

The setting has plenty of traditional WoD horror too, of course. Redcaps and unseelie pookas can be worse than vampires and werewolves. Some of their cantrips rival Mage magic in terms of power (if not flexibility... except some of them are pretty bloody flexible, too).

It's probably important to remember that the power of Glamour is real, in-setting. Chimerical effects don't work on normal people, sure - but Wyrd effects will. Pooka shapeshifting actually happens, for instance. Like, not in front of people, because it only works if no one's looking, but if a pooka ducks behind a dumpster and then walks out as a cat, mortals are gonna see a cat, not a dude walking on all fours.

Bogans actually can do housework in a fraction of the time a normal person could. A redcap can actually bite someone's head off. A nocker can actually make a working television out of a couple of tin cans and a drinking glass. Et cetera. And if you step out of the real world and end up in a fae realm... you actually leave the real world. Better hope you know the way back.

[Arbane]

There's an old Woody Allen essay where he jokes about trying to commit suicide by inhaling while in the same room as an accountant.
For Changelings, that's an actual thing that can happen. 9_9

In addition to WW's traditional SCIENCE BAD! attitude, it's pretty much the Otherkin RPG.

[Rowan Wolf]

Fey are every kind of creepy.
Morality and ethics that works on a whole different set of axes?
Check.
Propensity for kidnapping?
Check.
Use of illusions and glamour in terrifying ways for lawls and giggles or the below or as a reward? Check.
Will avenge perceived slights disproportionally? Check.
Slights you might not even realize because of the skewed perspective? Double check.
Even their boons can be baneful for the unwary.
Changeling might be 'lighter' than WoD is usually, but, then, so is Promethean.
It just happens to have a broken music box playing in the background just . . . off . . . key.

I'm pretty sure only Red Caps use axes in their morality.

Axis

Sorry I just couldn't help myself.

[Yuki Akuma]

Do you... not actually know that 'axes*' is the correct plural of 'axis', or did you just want to make a dumb joke about homographs?

_{*'Axe ease'~}

[goto124]

http://flowingdata.com/wp-content/up...-your-axes.png

[Yuki Akuma]

http://flowingdata.com/wp-content/up...-your-axes.png

Oh God. A homograph graph joke.

[Segev]

C:tD was actually the first WoD game I stumbled across, and I did love its fluff, flavor, and themes.

At the time, I was new enough to gaming that I didn't realize why I was having so much trouble wrapping my head around the rules. I didn't understand game design and mechanics, and had no conscious connection of how mechanics can be used to reinforce fluff. I was still, in other games, under the delusion of the Stormwind Fallacy, as well, which didn't help much because I've always been more than a bit of a powergamer in my soul of souls.

Regardless, I have always loved Changeling: the Dreaming in theory. In practice, with a better grasp of game design as a general thing, I can say that its biggest flaw is not a failure of fluff, but of mechanics.

It has the same issue as the other oWoD splats (save Vampire) regarding its "mana:" Glamour is in a single-digit pool and is difficult to recharge, but nearly everything you want to do in the mortal world costs it.

Additionally, the idea of Arts and Realms is cute, but there are not enough of them handed out at chargen and they're too expensive to raise, and applying them in a way that even makes narrative sense is tricky at best.

If you play it entirely on the Dreaming side - that is, only with other important NPCs being also Changelings or chimera - then it's a bit more doable. You can get away with a near-catchall Realm and a lot less Glamour expenditure. But then you're really playing "LARP: the Escapism," because you're playing in a fantasy game that makes passing nods at there being a modern world out there.

Like all oWoD settings, it is at its most enjoyable (to me, anyway) when it's "you're supernatural in a world that doesn't believe in it, and looks mostly like your real world." But C:tD doesn't support that well, because if you try to play with the mortal world being at all relevant, you're little more than a LARPer.

Yes, Kith special features work, mostly, but not all have useful ones and those that do still have just one trick. Yes, you CAN make Wyrd effects with your Arts, but buying the Realms to make them useful is prohibitive and getting your Glamour back is extremely time-consuming.

I think Changeling would have been better designed if Banality and Glamour were more at war for the player's attention and interest. If Banality were actually useful for more than a no-sell of the magics of other Fae, but actually helped you interact meaningfully with the mortal world while giving you a dangerous power in the Dreaming. Conversely, Glamour would help you interact meaningfully in the Dreaming while giving you a dangerous power in the mortal world.

I think Glamour should be something Changelings could get large reserves of from the Reverie and Ravaging mechanics, and EVEN larger from Rhapsody; where they get the dribs and drabs to keep their normal pools topped off should be from Echoes.

Echoes is a measly flaw in the game as written. At varying levels of it, you have increasing amounts of Faerie Traditional Weaknesses, ranging from being powerless to use your magics on mortals whose clothes are inside-out or who throw salt over their left shoulders to being wracked with pain at the sound of a church bell.

Instead, I think it would have been more powerful if complying with traditional weaknesses gained you small rewards of Glamour. It could also wear away at your Banality. For those who are suffering too much Banality, this could be a good thing, but for those who'd been too low on it, resisting the urge to comply with Echoes would be hard but also would be an important way to assert the mortal side.

Maybe at particularly low Banality, breaking a taboo inflicted by Echoes actually costs Glamour, rather than complying with them granting it. But you naturally regenerate it just from being you.



...anyway, the problems with Changeling were horrible mechanical design which didn't quite support the fluff and flavor. It tried, but it was scattershot on its power level and too many things had to line up for you to be able to USE anything. And the mechanics didn't actually give support to the duality of the setting; they mostly just tried to talk you into shunning the mortal side as an inconvenience, which loses a lot of the point, to me.

[Yuki Akuma]

I'm hoping they fix the mechanical issues in the 20th anniversary edition - assuming they release one. If not, well. It could probably do with porting to nWoD mechanics, honestly.

[Segev]

I'm hoping they fix the mechanical issues in the 20th anniversary edition - assuming they release one. If not, well. It could probably do with porting to nWoD mechanics, honestly.

I share the hope, but don't think that porting to nWoD's core mechanical changes would actually impact the problems with C:tD's mechanics. Those remain splat-specific, overall. It would still require so much redesign of the C:tD-specific mechanics (the ones it didn't share with other oWoD splats and therefore wouldn't be implicitly changed by an update to nWoD) that it would be effectively a new edition.

I have no idea how Onyx Path might approach the hypothetical C20; I would be interested in it should they make one, however. I recognize that my musings on the subject would represent significant fundamental changes to core aspects of the C:tD-specific mechanics, so I doubt they woudl reflect the approach taken in such a hypothetical C20. I hope that whatever approach is taken in the event it is done will resolve the issues I have with the old editions mechanical implementation.

[Arbane]

...anyway, the problems with Changeling were horrible mechanical design which didn't quite support the fluff and flavor. It tried, but it was scattershot on its power level and too many things had to line up for you to be able to USE anything. And the mechanics didn't actually give support to the duality of the setting; they mostly just tried to talk you into shunning the mortal side as an inconvenience, which loses a lot of the point, to me.

I get the impression this was WW's 'thing' - (sometimes) great writing and art, rules written by people who think mathematics is an evil hoax by The Conspiracy and playtesting is for neeeeeerds.

[Segev]

I get the impression this was WW's 'thing' - (sometimes) great writing and art, rules written by people who think mathematics is an evil hoax by The Conspiracy and playtesting is for neeeeeerds.

Mayhaps, but V:tM, M:tA, and W:tA were all actually rather playable. Their chargen mechanics allowed you to make viable creatures of the sort involved who could use their cool powers to do fun supernatural things in a world that didn't beleive in them.

C:tD... well, I am not sure everybody who wrote rules for the book actually read other parts of the book, let alone playtested their rules.