Broken Toys - A Changeling the Lost Campaign

Autumn Nightmares

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-11-08T13:22:41-05:00

My copy of Autumn Nightmares (the first Changeling supplement) arrived this past tuesday, thanks to Amazon's usual delivery issues for me. It's a handsome looking book, but I've been leery of cracking it open. I've already taken the game in very specific directions and have made some decisions about fetches and the gentry which I don't really feel like second guessing. On the other hand, I suspect it's full of interesting ideas.

Realistically, I probably won't get a chance to read it until after this friday's session, at which point we'll be pretty well committed to the direction we're going. I'll be curious how it reads in that context.

Session #2

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-11-08T13:11:10-05:00

Actual session date: 10/12/07

This is why I need to write these things up when I finish the session, otherwise pieces fall out of my brain. The fact that I can't find the notebook with my notes isn't helping either.

Walter had a bad dream. The normandy invasion was mixed with the flight from the boy, with his soldiers behind him. The fighting was constant, and every time he turned around, he had fewer men behind him, though he never saw them die. This proceeded until he was alone on the empty battlefield.

Tom got approached by a kid who offered him payment for helping out Matt. The kid seemed both knowledgeable about, but incorrect on a number of points regarding, changelings, and the wooden doll he gave Tom had some glamour to it.

Meanwhile, an older gentleman came poking around the clinic, bullying the staff and looking to find out about the accident from the other day. Nika showed him the door, but did get a copy of his card.

Anna was approached by Betty, one of those very friendly ex-hippes who you can always expect to be dressed colorfully and carry a big knitted bag. Betty seemed to know her, and Anna played along as it became clear that Betty was friends with Anna's fetch, and she had something for Anna. That thing she'd promised to deliver. It was a folder, full of her bother's Tim's medical information and a folded note.

These led to some discussion among the Motley, and some dots were connected. Anna was certain the kid Tom met was Tim, and the business card was for the business that Walter's Fetch ran. Tom also discussed the train, and Nika identified it as a ghost train, and pheneomena that showed up in places of great death, though its presence in the hedge was puzzling. An investigation of Anna's old house showed that Tim was not in, but showed all the earmarks of a teenager who had been living on his own for some time. Anna was appalled at the sheer prevalence of hot pockets.

Matters were interrupted by an intrusion in toyland, and when they crossed into the hedge, they took the little wooden train as far as they could, looking for the train tracks, carrying the wooden tracks with them as they wend beyond their bounds. What they did find was a too-safe clearing, and with a bit of wind, revealed the pit traps and also the mortal who seemed to have fallen into one. Rescuing him, they fled before the keeper of the traps returned. The escaped prisoner performed a minor magic, levitating the train a few inches so they could push it more quickly.

The prisoner introduced himself as professor David Strauss, from NYU, Doctor of medieval studies and intermittent paranormalist. He was a little weirded out, and suffering from some time dilation, but actually seemed ok with all this. He explained that signs were pointing to a culling about to happen here. The culling, as he described it, revolved around the collection of a great soul, and was always a time of great turmoil and destruction, though the cause an effect on that was a little muddled. The main thrust however was that numerous forces would have an interest in this soul, and it would be a valuable prize. The documentation of these events was remarkably sparse on the ground, and its significance was hotly debated, so he was very interested in seeing this firsthand. A little bit of googling seemed to confirm the guys identity, and friend of a friend calls confirmed that he was a bit of a nutjob, but a smart one.

Some discussion raised the possibility that Tim might be this great soul, so they set out on foot to check his place again (it's a small enough town that walking is a reasonable option). An accidental division occurred when Tom, Anna and Walter realized they were being followed, and feel back, leaving Nika and Strauss (neither of whom knew where they were going) walking on ahead. The guy following made no attempt to hide, and greeted them in their positions of Ambush, introducing himself as Jack White. He was all sharp suit and sharp smile and freely admitted that he was here for the culling as well. While the characters seemed disinclined to bargain (which he was clearly up for) he also offered no violence, and just seemed happy to introduce himself. While he did not appear to have a seeming, he was also knowledgeable about changeling matters, and they all parted, a little tensely.

Meanwhile, Nika and Strauss, lost in conversations of medieval Russian nerdery, got mugged. Neither wanted to argue with the pistol, and handed over wallets, but Nika subtly freaked the guy out, and he took off, right into the rest of the group. Walter and Tom were cautious, but Anna pretty much just plucked the gun out of his hand with her abruptly appearing monkey's tail. Wallets were recovered, the gun taken, and the mugger ran off, providing a decent harvest while he was at it.

They all turned around and headed back to Anna's old house, and as they arrived, they saw Tim get into a mercedes, and it pulled away. The last sight was the other passenger in the back seat. Walter's wife.

Catching Up

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-11-08T13:05:53-05:00

Catching up, mostly for my own sake. I realized that as much as I like doing a blog for my notes, the technical frustration with being unable to hide things from my players effectively kind of took the shine off this approach, so I've let it languish. That said, I think for my next game I'll try a more robust blogging platform and see if we can do any better. Worst case scenario, I'll just tell my players they can wait to read it after I'm done.

Anyway, we're coming off a break this week, and having the penultimate session Friday night, so it's time for the feces to meet the spinning blades. More posts to follow.

Relationship Map

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-10-14T22:14:12-04:00

I still need to write up the last session (which went well) but I figured I'd put up the relationship map as it's evolved. There's at least one reveal hidden in this, but it's not a powerful one, so I'm ok tipping my hand.

WHo are all these people? Well, that's going to wait until I have a few more minutes to burn.

Session #1 Complete

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-10-05T23:46:57-04:00

So, we just wrapped up Session #1, and I'm pretty happy with it. We started just past 8, and my wrap up instinct kicked in about five minutes of 11, so just about three solid hours, which was pretty good, especially for a first session. Yes, 3 hours is good. We're old people, and we need our sleep.

First, the bad. My notes were fairly comprehensive, but I did not have the rolls required for navigating the hedge at my fingertips, and I ended up faking them a little rather than stopping to look them up. That was fine, since one hedge visit was quite brief, and the other ended up more involved, but playing out exactly right. I also was very erratic in remembering whether the evil dogs had armor, and I forgot to capture the name of one of the NPCs on my way, so there was a hiccup trying to remember it. I also had to get in the habit of calling for a stat+skill pair, rather than just calling for the stat. Smoothed things out a little.

More neutrally, I'd meant to bring poker ships for willpower, but their absence was not a real problem. Similarly, at the last minute I made an addition to the character sheets, adding a "Perception" value (really just wits + composure) to the bottom for ease of reference. That _definitely_ paid off.

Since this was the first session, I was not pushing the character issues as hard as I could, which was the right decision, but I'll always regret it a little. The slow introduction of rules in conjunction with the extensive notes on the character sheet worked out very well, and I think by the end of the session the overall comfort level was very high.

As for play itself, I began with a scattered party, and threaded a couple plots. Walter got dragged out hunting by Vincent, another Changeling, going after some strange dogs in the park. Tom ended up seeing a kid being stalked by one of these dogs, and went after them both. Walter wounded a dog which fled into the city, and was hit by a car, causing an accident. Walter kept after the dogs while Anna and Nika were drawn to the accident, which it turned out involved Nika's father and a woman who was not her mother. Nika made the decision to take them to the clinic, rather than Neptune city hospital, so she could protect her family.

Tom and the kid ended up hiding out in a tree fort while Walter hunted down the dogs, ending in a fight as one of the dogs climbed the tree to come after them, and Walter busted into the clearing, guns blazing. The good guys won, with some blood lost, but the kid ran off, and the cops came to investigate the gunshots, so they ended up fleeing into the hedge at different points. Walter found his way to the Trod easily enough, and came out in Luke's place, but Tom had a harder time of it. He found railroad tracks in the hedge, which was a little odd, and followed them. Predictably, he nearly got run over by a train, but he lept off a bridge, narrowly avoiding the troll beneath it, and found his way back to the world.

Nika and Anna saw to the injured pair. Her father did not wake up, and his head trauma was worrisome, but the clinic lacked the tools to diagnose him properly, and a head injury was not something she wanted to risk a changeling healer on. As such, they arranged for him to be transferred to Neptune City hospital (Where Nika's fetch is chief of medicine) after doctoring the paperwork to remove any mention of the woman. The woman was panicky, but all right, and after some conversation (including a reference to her son) was drugged. Nika eavesdropped on her dreams and got a little more information before they dumper her in a cab and sent her home. While this was going on, Walter came in to get patched up.

The dream stuff required a judgement call on my part - they had no contract to allow dream visiting, but Nika has Dream ****, so I interpreted the second power to mean she could watch and edit, but not truly enter the dream, so it was useful, but not immersive.

Anyway, I'm crazily tired and need to crash. All in all, I feel I managed to really nail the small town feel of it, and everyone got some sort of strong hook except Anna, who was mostly color. However, that was at least partly intentional, since Anna's player was bone-tired, and not likely to engage too much. Her little bit of awesome will probably come to the forefront early in the next episode.

Probably will have more thoughts later, but for now, I sleep.

Character sheets

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-10-04T14:44:47-04:00

The 1 page version of the character sheets are now up in the Downloads section. I say 1 page because the actual character sheets are 4 pages long, with a page about the hedge and two pages of rules summary - the basics, combat, clarity and so on. I could probably have squeezed and shorthanded it down to two pages, but a big part of making a game friendly is making it easy to reference. (I haven't put up the full ones because they are such restatements of white wolf stuff that I'd feel like I'm skirting the pirates edge. Technically, summarizing isn't, but I have no desire to disrespect the game in that fashion.)

While I hope these will be useful for the players, this has also been a very useful for me. It's forced me to internalize a lot of the mechanics by virtue of writing them down, and it's given me a strong sense of what rules I'm going to have to tag for easy lookup, or copy into my own cheatsheet. Hell, I might even buy the GM's screen, though that's a weird thought for me. I tried using one for D&D, and it never quite clicked. Of course, WW does make these great man-killing GM screens, so I may overcome my resistance.

I'm a little worried about combat, I admit. We have a doctor, but no healer (no spring court at all, in fact) among the PCs, and I can mitigate that some with goblin fruits and NPCs, there is so little damage mitigation (and only a little more defense boosting) that I am slightly worried that I will accidentally kill everyone once the first fight busts out. If nothing else, I'm going to go out of my way to avoid enemies with guns, which should work out ok. We were discussing the system last night and I explained it as follows: this is the combat system for a horror game, not an action game. Plan accordingly.

The good news is that made sense to my audience, so if nothing else I may have accidentally recaptured one of the elements I loved about Rolemaster: fear.

First game is this friday. I'm planning on opening up right into people's issues - 5 sessions means there's no point in waiting - so i think I've got a pretty full quiver, but that knowledge doesn't diminish the nervousness.

Gilded and Prep

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-10-01T11:49:59-04:00

I've been mostly working offline in prep for the first session, transcribing characters, preparing handouts and such. I'll upload them when they're ready, but I'm infinitely fiddling with them for the moment.

I did settle on the Kith Blessing for the Gilded. I'd forgotten that the Fairest already can boost their Presence, so I didn't i need to include that. Instead, I concentrated on the idea of the gilded - lots of surface, but not necessarily any depth. Net result was as follows:

The Gilded are those fairest who have been made lovely by decoration, with skin of precious metal, eyes of gemstones and little of note beneath the surface. They are able to make a Fantastic First Impression, and gain +2 dice and benefit from 9 again on the very first social roll they make to interact with someone the first time they meet them.

I'm not 100% confident on the balance on this one. It's a very big, but very specialized bonus, and it is going to come up most often with unnamed NPCs, since the ability is of little use with any recurring cast. On one hand, this suggests that it will see a decent amount of use, since the world is full of people you'll meet only once, and only _need_ one roll for. On the other hand, those people tend to have smallish pools, so it's not like the bonus is _necessary_. The net result is that the player is more likely to get an exceptional success on that first roll and never be abel to repeat it. That feels like exactly the right sort of outcome, but we'll see how it plays out at the table.

Something for the Soundtrack

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-29T13:24:02-04:00

A theme for our keeper

The Boy (The Adam Ezra Group)
a boy wakes up from his dream
jumps out of bed and knows that he will conquer the world
he looks up at the sun
and smiles because his light shines just as bright

and all the people that go running through his mind
join the chorus of his heart and lungs combined and step in time

and the haphazard motion of his dreary dismal day
brings the song out from within his memory
and he knows that lack of direction
directs the intuition of the undaunted mind

and singing softly to avoid a scene
he stifles voices in his heart that want to scream - i am free

and he sings all the time
prophecies in rhythm and in rhyme
and if you listen very closely you can hear him sing the words
he sings out:

i am the sun and moon
and I'll make the angels swoon
i am the wine within your cup
i'll give myself to fill you up
and if I die before i wake
pray my friends my soul to take
and when my bleeding heart runs through
my six brass strings will ring out true

Welcome to New Branch

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-19T18:16:20-04:00

So, I was looking at the coast of New Jersey to get a sense of the geography and figure out where I was going to put the fictional town for the game. As I was zooming around with Google maps, I spotted a town in about the right place with the improbable name of Avon by the Sea. Curious, I check it out, and discover it's a tourist town which seems to take great pride in its victorian buildings. What's more, looking at the map, it's bounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth by the railroad. I literally could not have planned it better. (The logo, btw, is based off the real logo for Asbury Park).

Now, the main problem is of course that Avon by the Sea actually seems like a much nicer place than I'm expecting our town to be. It has a non-commercial boardwalk, for one thing, and my game falls apart without Skeeball. Serious. Even god plays Skeeball, and Kevin Smith will back me up on this. What's more, I've never actually been there, or even seen it, so it would be a sham for me to pretend I'm using it. I'm planning to be crueler to this town than any town really deserves, so I'm going to overtly fictionalize it, renaming the town, the streets and the major landmarks so that there's no confusion.

I was worried I was going to have to make up some derivative name - Avalon by the Sea has a nice ring, but suggests a different game than the one I'm playing - but it turns out that before it got incorporated as Avon by the Sea, it was alternately called Swanton Tract or New Branch. New Branch, New Jersey has, I think, the right tone to it.

Now, Avon by the Sea has a small population, about 2000 people, and the whole county weight in around 600k, but there's an interesting twist - it's close enough to New York City that the county has been getting steadily gentrified by well off folks from the city. That's a great axis for conflict, and it makes things all the more interesting when we go with the darker vision of New Branch - that pressure to change is going to have some teeth, especially if you have a small enough community that the freehold is actually a substantial local force by numbers alone. Small town, quirky community, big city pressures and economic woes? Awesome.

This hit a few notes I was still a little uncertain about, so I feel much better about this now. I even have a map, and that satisfies some deeply geeky part of my soul.

And as an aside, dinking around with graphics and poking around has inspired in me one of my first NPCs. His card:
Naturally, he only wants was best for the town, and his backers have an interest in making sure everything goes smoothly. And he, in turn, is willing to go to great lengths to keep those backers happy.

Hopefully, it will work this time

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-18T20:15:26-04:00

So, apparently, if I manually put in an lj-cut tag, that will translate over to the LJ feed. Using the summary/main entry split should work for most regular RSS readers, so I _think_ we're good. Despite that, I'm going to start with a smaller peek behind the curtain, so that if this one explodes horribly, I'm not spilling all the beans.

Ok, so the setup: The Boy, a fae in the mold of Peter Pan and the Squire of Gothos, was responsible for capturing each of the PCs and keeping them in servitude. They escaped as a result of a terrible tantrum of his that broke toyland and gave everyone an opportunity to escape. Fred was the one who, at the table, provided the impetus, but Fred is also a very, very proactive player, and I was uncomfortable with the fall of the boy being entirely his, so when I wrote up the summaries of the characters, each of them is (by their narrative) the one responsible for The Boy's explosion. Not only does that satisfy me as a GM, it satisfies me on a story level - I can envision this chain of events much more clearly than a can any single event.

Looking over the characters sheets, one mechanical concern has struck me - I need to help my players twink. The difference that timing can make in character creation is almost appalling, so I'm talking to them about optimizing a bit. It's shameless, but honestly, the difference is so pronounced that I feel bad if we don't do it. So far I've done it for Fred and Deborah, and I've given Eric full authority to do it for himself an Em. The difference is pronounced - on average, people have picked up another dot of stats (sometimes a 4th dot) and a second dot of Wyrd without otherwise changing their sheets substantially.

So, now I have the characters.

Now I just knock wood and hope this worked.

My apologies

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-18T12:28:00-04:00

It's a day of blogbombing, I'm afraid. I just discovered that enabling inline comments puts advertisements in my entries, which are ugly, tacky and entirely out of place. Going to have to turn that feature off, and it may cause another republish cascade. My apologies in advance. if it's any consolation, at some point I'll sit down and write up why I would probably have done this in wordpress if I were starting from scratch. That said I'm still trying stuff.

Freaking Spoilers

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-18T12:05:47-04:00

So, because this particular blogging solution's means of doing read more summaries does not get respected in its rss feed, at least so far as LJ is concerned, I may have just aired some of my laundry to my players. I am foaming at the mouth annoyed here, but hopefully this is going to fix it.

GM Thinkery: The Characters

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-18T10:32:16-04:00

Bah. LJ doesn't respect cuts. Yanking this down until I figure out how to better address this.

The Name of the Game

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-17T15:58:30-04:00

Also, there's been a small change to the site as I have settled upon a name for the campaign: Broken Toys.

Edit: Also, I think the RSS issue is fixed. Thank you for the good eyes, Eric.

Edit #2 - And an apology to those on LJ who just go bombed with the full run. Fixing the linking apparently also refreshed the XML feed to LJ.

Chargen

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-17T15:09:36-04:00

Character generation went very well indeed. I sat everyone down with a variety of handouts in hopes of making the process go as smoothly as possible. This mostly worked, though not flawlessly. Notably the backgrounds on the kith pages made it pretty painful to print them out from the PDF (and, as an aside, the PDF sucks. Seriously. It's split into three files with no bookmarking. Noting that it's graphically very intense, in the absence of bookmarks I need to scroll through it manually, which is slower than hell. This bothers me more than it should because the core rulebook PDF has been incredibly useful an easy to reference, and the contrast is painful.) Still, it mostly went well.

Eric and Fred came to the table with ideas in mind, ideas that played off each other quite well indeed and were similar enough that I was surprised they hadn't spoken about it. Both of them are very far out of time, and both have a strong World War II connection. Deborah and Em had to work from scratch, so we kicked around a few different possibilities. Em had a really solid idea for her mortal life, but it took a while to make her time in Faerie really zing. Deborah had a core tragedy in mind and I think she got to build up around that to her satisfaction.

We did not formally discuss the keeper so much as we got to the end of everyone's stories, and the thread of commonality suggested to me that it be The Boy - Peter Pan meets that kid from The Twilight Zone with a dash of Bart Simpson and the Squire of Gothos.

The characters are

Anna Glimmer - Magpie Songbird of Autumn

Anna's parents never got along, and one of their attempts at reconciliation was a second child in their forties. The child was not healthy, and Anna quit school to take care of him full time, acting as his nurse, his guardian and his legs. The Fae took them while they were in the woods, and her last thought as they took her away was for her brother, abandoned in the woods.

In toyland, she was put in a cage and told to sing, and sing she did. Perhaps not well, but enthusiastically. When the traveling minstrel taught her a song of victory to celebrate the upcoming triumph in The War, she practiced it very hard, and when the trumpets blared, she sung it at the top of her lungs, and still doesn't understand why it made him so angry. Things sort of broke after that.

Back in reality, she found that a decade had passed, and her fetch had managed to nurse her brother to health, helping him to walk, and even skateboard. She has not approached, or even seen, he fetch, but a long night of watching her brother through the window very nearly broke her, leaving her caught up on what should be hers.

Nika Kosmas - Haruspex and Healer

Nika was a promising surgical resident from a big Russian orthodox family who went to the wrong break room after a thirty-six hour shift. She found herself in Toyland, where The Boy had need of an oracle, and Nika had been chosen because she could put her organs back in after he had finish casting them.

She saw the disaster coming, in a flash of vision, and could have warned The Boy - in fact, it would have been hard not to, for her innards would reveal it when he asked. But the one thing she had learned to hide was her heart, and without it, the reading went wrong, and The Boy was not warned. Things sort of broke after that.

Since she's gotten back, she works in a free clinic, off the books, and watches the golden arc of the career of her fetch from a distance.

Tom Whispers - Medium and stabbin' hobo

Tom's father was a war hero, who had landed in Normandy, and his youth was idyllic, at least until his brother was born to steal away mommy's love. His boyhood adventures were many, and took him farther afield as his brother grew, til the one day The Boy took him deep into the woods and he did not return. As was inevitable, The Boy grew tired with this new playmate and put him to use as a message - not a messenger, a message. His sole role was to convey something, receive response and whisk away to deliver it.

Tom Whispers was very tired indeed, and perhaps after decades, this fatigue warped a message, perhaps he planned it, but the orders to the general of The Boy's army of toys was not what it should have been. Tom understood this not at all - all he knew was that the general was upset enough that rather than send a response, he folded Tom up and put him in his pocket. SOme things apparently happened, but for Tom, this was the first chance to sleep he could remember, and he only awoke as he burst out of the General's pocket, in the hedge.

Tom has adapted poorly. he was a kid when he left, and there's a good chance he would not have made it back if he hadn't been dragged most of the way. He spends his time among the hopeless now, the homeless of New Jersey, and is a twitching wreck of a man, looking like it will take little to push him over the edge. And sure, his Fetch is old, but his nephew sure looks a lot like him. But he'd never even think of that! Would he?

Walter Gold - The Good Soldier

Captain Gold's transport opened on the beaches of Normandy, but when he stepped through, he was not in France. He was inducted into The Boy's wooden army, fighting forever across a vast gameboard. Something he did caught The Boy's attention, and the wooden soldier was taken from the field, dipped in gold, and returned as a General, overseeing the eternal pointless struggle.

But he did his job too well. Over time, he came to see that the game could never be won, and when a particularly egregious order came his way one day, he seized the messenger, and stopped the fighting. This had never happened before - The Boy had been scheduled for a victory, and this threw everything into disarray, and his rage was unbelievable, but even in that rage, something pushed it just over the edge into a full blown tantrum, shattering toyland.

Gold has adapted to the real world quite well - the talents that made him a capable leader have translated well into business. His mundane concerns are well in hand, but he is facing a stranger issue. His fetch and his wife appear to have not aged a day - both look like no time has passed between his disappearance and now. He has no idea what that means, but a number of the possible explanations are disturbing indeed.

Chargen First Impression

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-14T23:17:03-04:00

Crashing now, but we just finished chargen, and man, they went right for the dark, grabbed it by the throat and drowned it in a barrel of pitch.

Lots of stuff to work with. I'm pleased as punch.

First challenge: New Fairest Kith - the Gilded. Gold and gems wrapped around a mundane frame. Probably going to be a presence/something monkey, but I need to give it some thought when I'm more conscious.

On dice and gifts

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-14T10:56:00-04:00

EDIT: Quick primer for those who have no idea what I'm talking about. The core of the nWOD system is rolling a certai number of d10s and counting 8s, 9s and 10s as successes. Most rolls benefit from the "10 again" rule, which says that if a die comes up 10, count the success and roll it again. Certain special abilities can grant a "9 again" on some rolls, meaning that if the die shows a 9 or 10, count the success and roll the die again. 8 again works the same way, except 8s, 9s and 10s are rerolled.

So, when I got to thinking about kiths and their abilities, I wondered about the difference between a bonus die and 9 again and 8 again. My math-fu is weak, but a little perl trickery revealed the numbers, and I found them interesting. Now, I note that these probabilities probably got cranked out by the math nerds as soon as the New WOD corebook came out, but I don't have the will to dig for those numbers. As a result, this is all pretty new to me. Anyway, the first exploration looked like this.

Pretty simple, and moderately intuitive. The breakpoints are clearly visible. Eight dice is the break point for 9 again. Below eight dice, gaining an extra die is more beneficial, but after eight dice, the benefit from 9 again is more pronounced. At eight dice it's equally appropriate to go either way. The impact of 8 again kicks in much sooner. With only four dice, it becomes more potent to get 8 again than an extra die.

Bottom line, if your diepool is small, you want extra dice. If it's high then then you want an X-again, and 8 again is scary-potent. But because its on a curve, there's no simple equivalency. If your pool is high, you want x-again, but if it's low, you want bonus dice. But even that's not entirely simple.

Bonus dice also help offset penalties, something that x-again does not do at all. If you're under a lot of stress, x-again will not help you much, but bonus dice can keep you from being stuck with nothing but a chance die.

On the other hand, x-again increases your chance of an exceptional success (5+ successes) dramatically. How dramatically?
Consider:

So is it a wash? Kind of. +1d/9 again, +2d/8 again are probably roughly equivalent in a purely mechanical sense, but that's only half the story.

The two types of bonuses represent a kind of essential difference that you need to keep in mind when you give a kith one or the other. Practically speaking, an extra die or dice means that the character should not suck at the activity in question. They'll always have at least a little capability, even if they don't invest in it. In contrast, x-again pays out in relation to how much the player invests in the pool. The character can suck at the task in question if they don't pursue it, but if they _do_ pursue it, the rewards escalate as the return on the investment compounds. If the character's going to be good at something, this is the path to make them very good.

As a shorthand, think of bonuses as talent and x-again as mastery. The person with talent can do more with less, picks it up more easily and so on, and can deal with adversity more handily. In contrast the person who has mastered the task has taken longer to get there, but is prepared to truly excel. When you're giving an ability, are you giving extra capacity (bonus dice) or the potential for greatness (x-again). Choose wisely.

More on place

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-10T14:10:01-04:00

So, I bounced the question to my group and I got a little more feedback on place than I expected, but slightly differently than I expected as well. There was some interest in going with New England, for the depth of folklore, and some interest in a place that was in decline, a place that has fallen upon economic hardship.

Those are both pretty doable, though I ended up drifting a little outside of new England in my thinking - most of the original colonies have a thick layer of folklore, but i still want to stay northeasterly. One possibility this suggested was Cleveland, which was a little bit on my mind after a fantastic episode of No Reservations in Cleveland. Thing is, I think that I'd want to read the entire run of American Splendor before trying it, and I don't have that kind of time.

The other option that sprung to mind is the New England mill town. This hits all the notes precisely, and I think if I sat everyone down to watch Empire Falls it would get the sense of place across very easily indeed. Now, this is a setting I can do - it's deep enough in my bones that I could do it in my sleep. I think there's a really, really powerful Changeling game to be held in such a place, but I'm not sure it's the one I'll run. Small town stories are very personal, and everything is so tightly tied together that it's the sort of place I would love to see one changeling come back to - that would in fact be freaking fantastic - but doing a group could really stretch things beyond breaking.

Southern Connecticut might work too - one of the shipbuilding towns that's moved on. But nothing's jumping out at me there.

So, as I was chewing on this, I was listening to "Radio Nowhere", the advance track for the new Bruce Springsteen album, and Bruce got me thinking about something that had first been planted in my head By Sarah Vowel in Assassination Vacation and driven home in the New jersey episode of No Reservations - Asbury Park.

The coast of New Jersey is littered with resort towns who saw their golden age many decades ago, and are now just sort of shells of their former glory - old boardwalks and boarded up storefronts surrounded by glorious murals faded through years of neglect. Asbury Park is probably the most famous of these, and it's theoretically been undergoing a bit of reconstruction since 2002, but this idea really resonates. I suppose the faded resort town could be in Maine as well, but there's something ephemeral about putting it in New Jersey, some contrasted banality that makes Miami such a good setting. For this I would probably invent a fictional town, but the concept really sings with me. I've already got some visuals in my mind that I'm inclined to roll with.

That said, Fred pointed out that thinking that way also opens up the possibility of Atlantic City, and that's got some legs too, but here's where I admit I've never actually been there, and I feel like that's a problem. But that's also on the table, and I think we're primed for some good discussion on Friday.

Five Steps

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-08T01:15:44-04:00

I was thinking about the role of the Court of Fools today, and more generally about the fifth thing in a cosmology of four, and I realized something incredibly powerful, something that suggests a really good reason why Changeling might be better off never having a fifth (or more) court. It's because the fifth court needs to be missing. It's absence is what gives the other courts their emotional power. Why? Simple.

Spring: Denial
Summer: Anger
Autumn: Bargaining
Winter: Depression

That's four steps. Think about the one thats missing, and suddenly, you have a reason to be playing.

Damn. If that was intentional, it's brilliant, and if it was accidental, it's still really awesome.

Where to play

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-06T11:50:02-04:00

So, I've got a crew (settled on 4) and a planned time. Need to sit down and schedule things, but at it stands, looks like chargen will be next friday, the 14th.

I loaned my book to one of the players, so until wednesday I'm lacking in a reference for the rules. That suggests that it's time for me to give a little thought to the non-mechanical elements of the game. Now, we're going to commit a whole evening to chargen, and that means we'll be discussing certain issues like power level and what point in the character's arc they're in. I'm personally leaning towards early, as I'm hoping to get some mileage out of people's fetches, but we'll see where interest lies.

One thing I was going to wait on was to see which city we should do it in, but realistically this is not a point that my players are going to be very passionate about. I could try to beat an answer out of them, but they're just not likely to invest too much in it, so I'm now looking at that decision.

The first option is to just go with the default setting - Miami. It's cool, and a lot of the work has already been done, but I'll be frank. I have no idea what Miami feels like. I've never even been to Florida or read/seen any of the mystery fiction that makes its home there (well, ok, I saw Striptease, but I don't think that counts). And more, it has no winter. Seriously - my Vermont-born reality has difficulty grasping that. Northern California was about as weird as I can take in that regard. Without winter, I'm not entirely sure what human beings _do_.

Second option is Baltimore. I've already researched the hell out of it for The Dresden Files RPG, so I'm certainly armed, and its close and familiar, which is a big plus. However, I've already done so much Dresden with it that I'm not sure I could safely keep the two idea pools firewalled, so that's probably a no go.

Third option is DC. It's the biggest city I know best, and lord knows it's full of interesting potential history and such. This tempts, but I'm slightly disinclined because if I do DC, I think I'll instinctively want to take the game big. Move onto the Movers and Shakers. Aaron Sorkin's Changeling, And that would be cool, but I'm not sure I'm up for that quite yet.

#4 - Burlington, VT - could work very well. it's a weird, not terribly large city that I know quite well. That plays to one of changeling's strengths - since the logic of freeholds is based upon how close a place is to the hedge rather than the presence or absence of people (as is the case in the big three) it is just as likely to find Changelings in a small town as in a big city, possibly without any rhyme or reason. Consider, in contrast, trying to run Vampire in a small city - you start hitting upon resource issues very, very quickly. But changelings? They can rock out, no problem. So this is definitely a strong contender. Interestingly, this logic also makes a good case for Frederick, MD.

Next possibility is just making something up. An invented city is definitely an option, but I don't have one sitting in mind at the moment. This would be most tempting if i was intimidated by researching a real city or if there was something I needed to have that a real city couldn't provide. Neither is the case, so while I'm not ruling out this possibility, it's not likely.

And the problem is that at this point I start to waffle. Burlington's a good choice, but I twitch and wonder if it's narcissistic or too small. Maybe I need to do Portland or Pittsburgh or something. No rational objections, but just a sense that there's a better choice.

So I'll compromise. I'm mailing my players about scheduling anyway, and I'll see if maybe I'm wrong and they have ideas about setting I haven't considered. If they don't, it'll probably be Burlington or Frederick, unless something especially inspirational strikes me. If they do, I will at least have something more to think about than just being neurotic.

Some Sample Kiths

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-05T15:32:45-04:00

If you haven't read the previous post about how to make your own Kiths, I'd start there, since it's the frame for these.

Suppose someone wants a Beast with arctic characteristics - a Walrus, say. Sure, they could go with the usual Swimmerskin package, but the player wants to reflect the arctic element. This is still going to be an aquatic kith, so the heart of it will be like Swimmerskin, with the character able to hold his breath underwater for a long time, but we can replace the secondary ability with something else, such as a resistance to cold temperatures. That seems simple enough, so all we need is a name. Blubberhide would probably not go over well, so we'll call it Icehide.

Icehide - Changelings who draw their affinity from the aquatic beasts of the arctic, such as walruses and seals. The Icehide's blessing is Frozen Depths. He can hold his breath underwater for half an hour, as if he had a 7 stamina, though he can hold it no longer than normal out of water. Additionally, the character never faces any risk of hypothermia (or even discomfort) from cold water.

Next, let's consider a Darkling. All darklings are good at stealth, so one can be sure that someone, somewhere wants an assassin, a knife that strikes from the shadows. So we'll run with that, and go for a combat ability of some sort. Now, as discussed, combat abilities make for very small bonuses, not likely more than +1 without some sort of large qualifier. One easy solution might be akin to the Blade Lore of the Wizened Soldiers, and grant a specialty which applies to a certain sort of combat - striking from ambush in this case - but that's a little dull. Let's look into the rules for ambush and see if maybe there's a derived ability we can put a bonus on.

Surprise seems to mostly depend upon the target making a wits+composure roll to see if they can act. We could maybe try to modify that, but it has the feel of a rule that's in place for a good reason - specifically to prevent people getting hosed by surprise attacks. However, one other interesting piece of rules jumps to mind - surprised targets do not get their defense, but they _do_ get their armor. Allowing our darkling to bypass armor in these situations seems like a possibility. Ignoring penalties allows more leeway than adding bonuses (because they come up less often), and this is a very specific sort of situation. However, completely ignoring armor makes for some potential cognitive issues if the target is VERY armored, so a cap might be in order. With that in mind, with produce the NightKnife.

Nightknife - Darklings who served as the final expression of their master's displeasure, their work was dark indeed - assassination and murder. The Nightknife's blessing is Strike from the Shadows - when attacking a target in melee who is deprived of their defense due to surprise, the changeling may ignore three points of the target's armor.

Ok, one more, just because these things take time. Let's try an elemental, and go for one of the obvious gaps - thunder and lightning. Not only do we have a storm-themed major NPC, but there's a guy tossing lightning right there in the art. We need a storm elemental.

Now, there's a temptation to go right to the lightning chucking, but that would absolutely be a combat ability, and definitely a bit over the top. We could maybe go for some sort of electrified touch, granting +1 bashing damage when unarmed, but that's kind of dull and, strangely, a bit too literal. Notice that some of the elemental abilities have a lot more to do with the metaphorical features of the element, rather than just literally throwing the element around, so there may be some potential there. The storm is rich in potential - the tempest is all about wild energy, the thunder booms, the lightning is quick. Since I don't really want to get into berserk-style rules to reflect the passion, the most appealing thought is that idea of presence and energy, which sounds like a bonus to Intimidation and Socialize. Taking the idea of thunder a bit further is enough to suggest the special ability and we end up with:

Stormborn - Thunder and lightning roll through the veins of this changeling, carrying power and passion. Their blessing is Voice of Thunder - Their speaking voice carries like thunder, from the rolling boom of enthusiasm to the distant rumble of menace. The changeling receives the benefit of 9 again when rolling Socialize or Intimidate, and when addressing a crowd, he may always be heard clearly without the benefit of a sound system and despite any ambient noise.

(Note that the special ability is cool, bit not necessarily potent. This is ok because Socialize and Intimidation is a powerful 1-2 punch).

Anyway, that's enough for now. Maybe more later, but I think this gets the idea across.

Creating New Kiths

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-05T12:07:03-04:00

So, I sat down and looked over the kiths and thinking about what's involved in making new ones, so I broke down the entire list of bonuses, chewed them over a bit and I think it's actually pretty trivial to create new kiths, so here's my ballpark method for doing it.

Option 1 - Steal
There are a few options, but the first one to bear in mind is that there's nothing that keeps you from stealing between existing kiths. If you want to make a a character who spent their time as a star in the sky, but you want them to be an elemental, there's nothing that keeps you from making an elemental with the Bright One kith. SImilarly, if you want to play a beast with cephalopod characteristics and you want to emphasize the bonelessless of the character, go ahead and borrow the tunnelgrub kith ability. And heck, the Woodblood ability is a great way to do a chameleon-like Beast.

Option 2 - Build
So, while there is a wide variety among the various Kith abilities, there are a few core templates that a lot of the kith use.
* A small combat bonus. Examples include doing lethal damage with bare hands or a +1 bonus which can be applied to a combat roll. That +1 bonus is about as much as you're going to get, maybe with a "Spend a glamour to reroll the ability". Examples: Draconic, Hunterheart
* A bonus to two non-combat skills plus some small bonus (generally 9 again), either equivalent to a small merit, a minor glamour-activiated effect (such as a reroll) or the ability to use a skill when it might not be appropriate. Alternately, 9 again on 3 different skills, with no bonus. Examples: Flowering, Antiquarian, Snowskin, Woodblood.
* A bonus to many skills or a stat, but only under specific circumstances.
* A very narrow but powerful non-combat bonus, generally +3 (or 8 again( to a specific application of a specific skill with a potent supporting effect. Example: Mirrorskin, Steepscrambler, Artist.
* Underwater abilities tend to be the ability to survive underwater for a time (either 30 minutes or a scene) and some supporting effect, either related to mobility or some other matter of functioning underwater.
* Access to an ability, such as purchasing another seeming's contracts more cheaply. Only one example of this (Maninkins) but it's worth remembering.

Beyond those abilities, there are a number of colorful effects that demand the expenditure of glamour. These seem to require either spending one glamour, or granting a scaling bonus (which is to say, the bonus increases with each point spent). There are some stat boosters (Though you can be sure there's a reason there's no dex booster) but the more interesting abilities seem to be roughly balanced with 1 dot abilities, and when they exceed that, they have some sort of drawback. To be totally frank, these are less easily templated than the other abilities, so it's just worth eyeballing the existing abilities and asking "Is there any reason I would take an existing ability rather than this cool new one?" If the answer is no, then it's probably out of whack.

Next up - we'll turn theory into practice, and write up some examples of this.

Next Step - Kiths and Chargen

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-04T13:30:13-04:00

Ok, so I need to plan my schedule a bit better, but I think we might be able to do chargen next friday. I have 2 concrete bodies and two more I just need to catch online to make certain of. That means maybe one more seat, but maybe I'll be smart staying at 4.

I've been pondering the Kiths. Now, compared to old changeling, the sheer variety of options is through the roof. Combined with the setting limitation that characters are still pretty much human, ruling out 6 inch pixies with fairy wings (and thank goodness), the range is broad indeed, but it's still a numerical cap around the mid-30s. Or at least so it first appears.

One of the things that I think was very clever is that the kith's are loose types, rather than strict one. The beasts are probably the best example of this - each kith is a type of animal, but may be any animal within those bounds. Thus, while there is only one kith for birds, that kith can as easily be used for eagles, pigeons, ravens and seagulls. That's pretty sweet, and I think it addresses the big issue of making sure players get the character they feel like they should have.

In my mind, the question of what you did in service of the Gentry is one of the most important questions in chargen (possibly second only to "What did you come back for?") and the idea that your form altered to better serve that purpose allows players to come in from a very open ended perspective, and the real question is how many answers to that question can be reasonably answered within the existing kiths.

My suspicion is that a lot of them can. Not all, certainly, but the variety of form and style available (especially between the Fairest, Darklings and Wizened, who are barely bounded at all in their descriptions) is enough that I've been hard pressed to hit on something I could not fit into the current structure, at least to my satisfaction. That's not enough to make it decisive, but it's enough to make me comfortable.

Now, the real strength is on the flipside. If a player comes to the table looking through the kiths for inspiration, there are more than enough options that this player should have no shortage of potential ideas without a strong likelihood of overlap. As an example, if I want to make a character who is good at fighting or sneaking or talking, there is no obvious correct choice, and that makes me very happy indeed. It means two people might have similar ideas, but be able to pursue them very differently, and that's always welcome from my perspective.

Of course, this doesn't men I'm not thinking about new Kiths, just because I can. Adding a whole new type is rough - it would require a new contract, general abilities and most importantly there would have to be some need to fill that I don't quite see. But adding a kith is really a matter of picking the equivalent of a 1 dot power and calling it a day. The balance among the existing kith is hardly precise, so I figure as long as you don't include anything more potent than the Mirrorskins (who I think have the most potent ability) but still make it something someone would want to use, you're good to go.

As an aside, I've gotten some reports of rss choking. I haven't been able to replicate it, but I'm trying to see if I can suss out the problem.

The Chance Court

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-09-01T18:00:19-04:00

Long weekend means plenty of time to sit and think, so I did a write up for the Chance Court, the Court of Fools and put it up in the downloads section. it's just a first swing, so I'll let it sit for a few days before I try redlining it. As a minor court, they only have one contract (Serendipity), relating to luck.

NPCs

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-08-31T08:09:51-04:00

I've hit on an idea for the NPCs of the setting. Not going to go into details, but I now have enough source material for them that I feel pretty confident about how fleshed out they will be.

Thinking about the game itself

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-08-30T10:34:15-04:00

So, as much as it's interesting to think about the specifics of rules and such, there are a few practical considerations to running a game. Some of them are game specific: What city should I use? Should the game start with the escape and revelation of the setting, or should it start with the characters a little more established? How powerful should the characters be?

Others are more general: How many players? Where should we play? When should we play? How long will the game run?

The general considerations come first. This is a newish system for me, and I think I want to cap out at 4 or 5 players. 6 is a comfortable spot for me if the system is seamless and the setting already has player engagement, but neither is true in this case. Keeping it slotted to 4-5 also means that as I get more comfortable with the game, it becomes more practical to bring players in for guest shots.

Next, I'm disinclined to lock into a long campaign with an untested game and system. I'm not averse to it turning into one if we have a lot of buy in, but I think it's a lot more reasonable to start with a short arc and see how it plays. That allows a beginning, middle and end that can give some satisfaction and payout to the players (and myself) and gives a definite ending point where we can stop and ask what to do next. Maybe it'll turn into a longer game, maybe it will be something worth coming back to later, maybe it will be a horrible disaster. It's just good to have an opportunity to stop and ask.

As an aside, I expect the first session to be primarily about character creation. I know everyone could just make their characters offscreen and bring them to the table, but I really feel that if I want players to buy into the setting (and each other) then the return on sitting down to talk things out cannot be overstated. I intend to come in with some ideas and a rough sketch of the setting, and I'm hoping to draw the players into helping craft the details.

So, given that, there are really only two timeslots - a short weekday night slot or a longer weekend day slot. Weekday slots need to be shorter - the window is really ~7 to 11, realistically probably closer to 7:30-10:30, so there's a need to make the game pop in short order. This is challenging, but it's also probably good for the game. There isn't time in these slots for shopping expeditions and there's a lot of appeal to that. They also have the advantage that it's reasonable to expect a weekday night game to happen every week.

A weekend slot has the advantage of having more time, which allows for more play, but it also allows for post-play socializing, which I enjoy a lot. The downside is that the lack of time crunch makes the games more lax, both in and out of character. Weekend games also introduce more scheduling problems because people, quite reasonably, tend to go out of town, have guests, and so on. They tend to start from an "every other weekend" plan, and then turn into "Once a month, you're lucky."

I guess, now that I put it down on paper, weekends are easier. Weekdays are more work, but are probably better. Now, no way in hell I'm doing monday night - Skyfall did a good job of illustrating why Monday nights suck for any gaming that requires brainpower. People (myself included) are burned out, and you don't tend to know how much the day will suck until it comes, so there's little advance notice on cancellations. Wednesday is boardgames, so that leaves tuesday, thursday or friday. We've got a historical bias against friday since we theoretically should be out partying or something, but I've gotten old, and I admit the prospect of gaming with friends on a friday night appeals a bit more than fighting the local crowds for a restaurant or movie. Well, no need to decide right now, but that narrows it down reasonably.

As to where: for the moment, the only option is my place. As players are selected, the hosting options will open up, but that's the last step.

The issue of who is going to play is perhaps a bit more complicated. There is always a dance of trying to include people but simply not having the slots for everyone, and looking to avoid leaving anyone feeling left out or slighted. What's more, I don't want to ask everyone at once - if too many people say yes, I get a bigger group than I want to handle, so the process of starting gets slowed down a little. The smart thing to do would be to narrow down which night I'll be running the game on, and ask people with that as the understanding. Not every night will work for every player, and it is easier to have them say no up front then end up in a position where one night works for one player and another night works for another, and suddenly choosing the schedule becomes about choosing between players. Awkward.

So, speaking with the one player I know I have (my wife), Friday looks most promising, so I think I'll cement on that, and start takingn it to people.

Minor Courts and other randomness

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-08-29T16:32:31-04:00

So, one of the ideas that really resonated with me in C:tL was the reasoning for why the faerie courts exist. The idea of seasons, specifically of ordered change, is antithetical to the Gentry, so tying themselves to the powers of the seasons offered the changelings some amount of protection from their former masters. Now, mechanically there's nothing to this - courts get you cool contracts, but they're just that - but conceptually it's pretty awesome. Awesome enough that I immediately started thinking about other, lesser courts.

Now, this idea may be better served as one of the organizations among the changelings, but I think those serve a different role. The idea of tying oneself to a power or idea because it's an anchor against the fae is what makes these interesting to me, so I've been pondering what ideas a changeling might tie themself too for that purpose.

The first one that struck me was the Court of Fools, who pledged themselves to luck, with the philosophy that it was luck that allowed them to escape and keeps them free. Fae understand madness, change and randomness, but luck is not part of their repetoire - for all that they are wild beings, they are defined by contracts and always in control of their own fate. Luck laughs in the face of fate. The king of the court is the king of fools, and those who spend time among the seasonal courts (high favor characters) may be called the fool of the appropriate season.

Mechanically, I figure that lesser courts either only have contracts that go to 4 dots, or only have one contract. Beyond the first power, I haven't considered it too much. Now, that first power, Call It, is like a safer version of the goblin contract, albeit only for 50/50 chances, with the catch that it's free if you made the last call of the same type correctly. Since this allows for the bit from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, that makes me happy.

I'm also struck by the idea of the Court of Games. I'd originally been struck by a court of chess, but the idea broadened (while keeping chess as its central theme). Again, the Fae understand play and they understand rules, but they don't respect the rules of play, seeing them as mere inconveniences. For mortals, these ideas of rules of play are some of the most powerful of ideas knocking about the collective unconscious. Not entirely sure how the contracts settle out though.

Unrelatedly, I love the pledges to death, but they forgot one critical type: the Wager. It's easy enough to fold into the existing system, thankfully, but it's absolutely critical to make sure it's there.

Anyway, I'll probably write these up more fully as they suit my fancy, but for the moment, I just wanted to get these down on paper (so to speak) so I could reference them later.

Chargen Question

rdonoghue@gmail.com.com — 2007-08-29T15:44:52-04:00

The default character creation method in the World of Darkness always leaves me feeling like I've made a gimpy character, unless I actively game the system, and by game the system I mean spike everything I can with creation points, then buy cheap things with XP (where it is far less expensive). I think this works ok if everyone's familiar enough with the system to exploit it in this way, but I don't anticipate that with my group. As such, I'm considering some options.

Option 1: All XP

Since pricing is an issue, it might be interesting to just start everyone off with a pile of XP and have them build with the same rules they'll use to advance.
Pros: More balanced, and allows finer control over character level.
Cons: More complicated, and I need to figure out the XP budget.

Option 2: Package buys

The point values for skills are where things break down. It's hard to get a character who feels competent without sacrificing things. This is done to prevent spiking, but I wonder if it would be easier to just replace the points with structured dots. Suppose for example that your primary pick gave you a ●●●●, a ●●●, two ●●'s and three ●'s?
Pros: Simple, and rounded.
Cons: Overly structured?