Parting the Mists

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

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 ...

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...