Parting the Mists

Hello fellow former Arcadians! Pushing Simon's house rules for interregnum seemings out the door. These rules extend tentacles into a lot of different parts of the game -- a big part of this deals with the more open Kith system that our game uses. I think I managed to include explanations of every place these alternate seemings invoke another house-ruled concept, but my usual editor was busy. As always, comments and criticism are welcome. Alternate Seemings: Seasons .

The Autumn and Arcadian Courts This is a short (at least as far as I do "short") piece. It's mostly narrative flavor from the perspective of a bitter old Brownie who rejects the Concordian narrative. What follows is a brief discussion about the Seleighe and unSeleighe Courts, why they seem like a giant mess, and what that might mean for the meta-narrative of your Changeling: the Dreaming games -- with some examples of how one might tie real world history from the Interregnum in to Changeling 's courtly philosophies and shadowy politicking. Finally there is an introduction for the nearly forgotten Courtless (or Solstice if one prefers the Dark Ages: Fae terminology) changelings and an associated merit. As always, feel free to take what you feel improves your game and throw away or modify anything that doesn't. - Simon

C20/Expanded Epiphany System First People Revelries C20 added “Revelry”, a kith-specific method for recovering Glamour to the game but did not give this ability to the Nunnehi (and by extension the Menehune). This is likely because C20 retconned away the Nunnehi’s ability to draw power from human inspiration and emotion altogether, doubling down on the “being disconnected from the Dreaming makes them something different” narrative. It should be obvious by now what we think of that narrative but in case it isn’t: it’s a terrible choice to encode a disadvantage for the only explored nonwhite groups into the game’s core mechanics. Particularly one that is contradicted by white group’s history (the Kithain did not lose the ability to muse during the interregnum, despite being completely cut off from the Dreaming as the Nunnehi are now). While there are interpretations of the animist feeding dynamic that aren't centered on coping with colonial violence, this is how the system is f...

Origins and Epiphanies: House Rules for C20   Here are Simon's house rules surrounding changelings' feeding habits. The goal of these rules is to make the Epiphany system less restrictive, allowing players the freedom to make European changelings who engage with animism and First People changelings who feed from inspiration. Included is a brief discussion about renaming certain elements of the game to make the system itself more inclusive of world views that might be held by the Gallain, as well laying the framework to begin bringing the Hsien into the Dreaming. Also introduced in this set of house rules are Epiphanies for feeding from worship and Epiphanies that allow changelings to feed from the dead. I hope that these new Epiphany styles add character creation opportunities and narrative diversity for pure Changeling: the Dreaming games, and create space for interesting competition interaction with certain Prodigal groups in cross-over games. The rules as wr...

Why the Whitesmiths? Honestly, because I was a metalsmithing major in college, which drew me to the original writeup of House Dougal. I also appreciated the tragedy of the Arcadian Sidhe of House Dougal who stayed behind and died over the years (what can I say, I’m a sucker for a good tragedy). I love the new makerspace Dougal, I think they hold a very vital place in a 20teens story, but I wanted the Smiths of Dougal to have a significant place in the house identity. That place was absent for me in the C20 writeup, and really the Whitesmiths are more a metaphorical expression of my feelings on how these changes were handled, as opposed to a real headcanon. There are a couple references to Smiths in the Dougal writeup in C20, so the following text requires cleaning that up, and tripling down on the implications of the Dougal exile text. That said, I think this creates a very interesting story space, and ties Dougal to modern fine art Whitesmithing, which seems very VERY Changeling to ...

So this isn't exactly what this blog is normally used for, and for those of you coming around to find game tidbits I'm sorry. This was my first exposure to shaping combat (not that I understood that at the time), and serves as a perfect example of how you can fight the Dreaming and her children without resorting to Banality. This is a story my mother told me when I was very young. She wrote the story out for me several years ago, and it's been tickling my mind recently, so I decided it was time to dig it up. The images are intended to be child like, but I know they're a bit awkward. They're an old project I did with this story and I've been thinking about my mother and Changeling a lot recently so I wanted to get this out there in all of its rough around the edges glory. There are a lot of stories out there about Changeling children raised by parents who don't understand them, who are all too often Autumn People. I know Changeling is fundamentally a tragic...