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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Changeling: The Dreaming

Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!

19:35 / 14.06.05

The unloved sibling of the "World of Darkness" series of games, Changeling: The Dreaming was the first RPG I truly fell in love with. I had enjoyed other games before, but when I read the First Edition of this game it affected me in a way that has caused me to force it upon all of my roleplaying friends, and some of my non-roleplaying friends, too.

The mechanics are a mess, and every fan knows it. The mood of the game involved the loss of hope and the death of dreams and creativity. However, unlike most other White Wolf games, Changeling was more about the refusal to accept the mundane and mediocre. The writer (Ian Lemke) managed to communicate the feelings of wistful longing and dying hope in such a way as to touch me somehow.

And it's still my favourite RPG.

Has anyone here ever played it, or considered playing it?

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01:04 / 15.06.05

I'm in a long running Changeling LARP at the minute, and have been for two years now. (Yes, this makes me undeniably more pathetic than anyone else so far. ::eat it, bitches.:

It gave me the opportunity to play my first successful and horrifying villain. It couldn't last long-- I had to kill him off and go play some good guys for awhile to reassure myself that I could never in real life torture children to create nightmare spirits.

My first RPG and stil my favorite is Mage, but Changeling runs a close second. It is criticized for being "childish" by the teenygoths who absorb themselves in V:tM, which is odd-- by and large the Changeling players I've known have been a pretty mature lot, prepared to explore some pretty heavy issues in game (so long as it comes with a good dose of fun as well). It seems to me that the end of imagination and beauty in the world is a pretty mature theme in and of itself, leaving aside the other kinds of things that usually get brought into Changeling games-- insanity, mental trauma, intrigue, etc. C:tD is also a good medium for exploring the contrasts between fantasy and reality, which can get somewhat "meta"-- not quite as much as Mage, perhaps.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

08:45 / 15.06.05

The rulebook, for all that the actual rules were a nightmare to figure out was without a doubt a thing of beauty, I can’t remember the exact quote, but I remember those text pages every now and then describing the slow ebbing out of youth and hope at each stage of the Changeling’s life sent shivers down my spine. Even so, despite picking the rulebook up as soon as it was released, and despite spending days shut away in my room creating characters for the game, it’s now about ten years later and I’ve still never actually played it. I’ve not RPG’s much since school and not at all since University and I’ve never actually come across anyone that wanted to play the game, even other White Wolf fans, which is a shame. I could usually just about sway people to play Mage instead of Vampire or Werewolf, but I could never quite get them interested enough in Changeling or Wraith to give those a spin.

18:05 / 15.06.05

Never played Changeling myself, but I knew some players and the GM in a very good Changeling game that ran for a while. It always struck me as WW never really knew the game that they were selling. It's a game about fairytales and myths, beauty and creativity and the death of such. And so it has the chance to be much much darker than any of the other games, because there's actually a lot of light in it's background.

But WW kept focusing on the bloody Sidhe and how noble and tragic they were also it focused on how the States were the homeland of all creativity that hadsince left the Old World and don't get me started on how bad the UK sourcebook Isle of the Mighty was (they put Stonehenge in Wales).

The idea of playing children was actually quite novel at the time, you don't want your players always to react with violence to problems, make it so they 12 and watch them think their way round stuff. With the right bunch of players this could be a riot.

It's a pity that Changleing wasn't in the New World of Darkness as they've managed to boil away all of the dross in the other games, I think they could have managed that with Changeling

Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!

19:11 / 15.06.05

It's a pity that Changleing wasn't in the New World of Darkness as they've managed to boil away all of the dross in the other games, I think they could have managed that with Changeling

There may yet be a Changeling 2.0, as Black Hat Matt has said he is pushing for one, or something similar.

Personally, what I've seen of the New WoD leaves me feeling underwhelmed, but I might check it out if thay release a Fae game.

01:40 / 19.06.05

I've always had something of a soft spot for Changeling myself - but I thought Wraith was fucking brilliant. Good luck getting my players on board.

Dunno if you'd be interested, but one of the only interesting growths of the d20 hydra I ever saw was a little indie press supp called Grimm. If you haven't seen it before and dig C:tD, I'd recommend you grab a copy.

22:57 / 21.06.05

Has anyone read/playtested White Wolf's Dark Ages: Fae?

I've been trying to get my hands on this out-of-print book, due to really intriguing reviews on it. Like this one:

It details the Fae’s not-so-humble beginnings as creators of the world to their present predicament of a failing Oath-Truce between the courts and a lack of communication between them and humanity. It also details a bit more about the churches relationship with the Fae, as a human’s ability to have faith can actually ward and even hurt a Fae.

Chapter Two: Origins and Courts details the 3 different origins and 5 different Courts (well, really 4, but anyway). Firstborn are the purely Fae beings who sprung from the Mists with life by their own accord. Inanimae are those Fae who sprung to life in the form of something from nature. Changelings are much like they are in common folklore, Fae children swapped for a real child. Both the Fae and human child will grow up to be Changelings (as long as they are not baptized).

The Courts are split into the 4 seasons. Each of them has their own view on the world and their own ways of dealing with humanity. The Summer and Winter, and Spring and Autumn courts diametrically oppose each other in all areas, yet you can still have a group of mixed court because of Agendas, how the Fae treat Humanity. Either they try to understand it better or decide to kill them all or ignore them all together.

It seems like a better, bolder, darker retconning of the original Changeling.

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

07:08 / 22.06.05

DA: Fae is BRILLIANT. I was on the White Wolf moderated DA chats when it first hit the shelves, and I played this short, Gollum-esque creature called, simply, The Amung. It was great...I played this horrible little rhyming bastard who looked at everyone like they were the next meal, and went straight into the Winter Court with willfull abandon.

As for Changeling...I'm in a long running Camarilla-run Changeling LARP ATM. I'm playing a genuine, suit and black hat wearing, cane carrying, badly German accented Unseelie Nocker super-villain. Super-villain in the James Bond sense, not the Superman sense. Herr Doktor Innis Dupoir Nachteltaffen.

What other game can you play three characters: an adventuring travelling chef, a young willfull pirate, and a maniacle supervillain in and still have them all fit into the setting?

Tom Tit's Tot: A Girl!

16:52 / 22.06.05

Has anyone read/playtested White Wolf's Dark Ages: Fae?

Yes, I preordered it and ran a very short-lived game for my players. Sadly, I think the game was scuppered by excessive ambition on my part, and lack of interest in a Dark Ages setting with the players. It never jelled, and that was a shame. I also think I didn't run it to the best of my abilities, that and the fact that Inanimae and Firstborn characters are so inhuman as to preclude a properly human motivation...

But, no, it's a very cool game. Just didn't work for us, sadly.

[rant]White Wolf seems to always fuck over it's more innovative games, such as Wraith and Changeling (which the fans were told was 'on hiatus' for two years, then it was cancelled after being given 1/5 of 'Time of Judgement'. Work was almost complete on two Changeling books, "Book of Glamour" and "Keys to the Kingdom" but WW never even bothered printing them. It's not like Changeling lost them money, either; it simply made less than their three flagship games.

Then, DA:Fae comes along. Fan response is immediate, and immensely positive. The run sells out within two weeks. So what does WW do? Well, they certainly don't print another run, even though there is a demand. They sit on their hands for almost a year, then cancel the Dark Ages line. I fucking hate whichever employee or executive consistently fucks over my favourite games...[/rant]

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03:08 / 23.06.05

Unfortunately, I think DA: Fae sort of rewrites the history of C:tD in a way that makes the two really hard to mesh. DA: Vampire is still essentially Vampire, and from what I understand DA: Werewolf is still essentially Werewolf. The world is different but you can reconcile the two. And it was distractingly hard to reconcile DA: Fae with Changeling.

Also, for some reason, I had been thinking of Changeling as having a deeper history than DA: Fae seemed to imply.

At any rate, I was disappointed.