Parting the Mists

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...

What Is This? The Nightmare Incursion system is meant to make the threat of accumulating nightmare points immediate and thematic. Written mostly before C20 was available, this system was originally an expansion of the 2nd edition Nightmare rules. While C20 went in a different direction with what nightmare does to a changeling the system they wrote is not very threatening in short or one-shot games. Nightmare incursions provide the possibility of nightmare accumulation, even in one-shots, having serious ramifications for characters. In longer games, nightmare incursions give the storyteller (and players) another tool for developing the stories they’re telling. As we’ve played with the system and refined it from its original form we’ve found that some of our best sessions revolved not around our characters’ dreams, but their unresolved nightmares and baggage. Unexpected deep dives into a changeling’s shadow can build some amazing stories. All that said, these rules aren’t for eve...

The Inanimae are among the strangest, most ineffable creatures of the dreaming. Inanimae: The Secret Way is one of my favorite original Changeling texts, but to be honest most of the systems were difficult to understand and often thematically odd. Changeling the Dreaming 20th did a lot to revise the Inanimae, and introduced some concepts that fixed a lot of the old problems with them, but as I’ve read through the chapter a few times I’ve run into some brand new thematic problems and contradictions, and some of the quirkier rules from the original text were included in C20. I have put together a few house rules for my home game to make the Inanimae a bit more approachable, while working to retain the goals that the C20 developers. As I am not one of the C20 devs I might miss the mark and may have misinterpreted the reasons for some of these rules, but I hope my take on these are useful for some of you out there adventuring in the deepest kingdoms of the Dreaming. Simon will be posting...