Changeling Done
[ roleplaying games ][ changeling: the lost | rpgs ]
[ September 3rd, 2009 ]
[ by: Alvan ]
Yesterday another RPG campaign ended – this time it was our Changeling: The Lost game that we’ve been struggling with all summer (scheduling is hell).
Changeling is a game of “beautiful madness” according to the official tagline – Our version was about walking the thin line between the beautiful madness and the harsh reality. The fantastic elements of the game were surreal, mythical, fairy tale-like and quite separate from the real life elements of the game, only clashing in few occasions, when outsiders (such as the police) got involved in the mythical situations. The best game moments for me rose from this contrast – when the Changelings of the Miami Courts were preparing for war in a grand, supernatural, glamorous gesture, one of the player characters needed to restore some of her Glamour (best done by going to humans with strong emotions and soaking those), so she went to a nearby meeting of breast cancer patients, and listened to their stories for a while to do that. The reality of that moment really sunk in because there was absolutely nothing fantastic about it, as opposed to the scene just moment before.
The Changeling setting provides a good solid story for the players to walk through. Just by going through the motions that are provided in the basic book, you can get an interesting story where you pretty much know where you’re going all the time. The escape from your captors, the return to a world no-longer your own, realization that it has managed quite well without you, the meeting of those who were a part of your life before, the meeting of those who are like you and so on. It’s a very good, wide path that borderlines on railroading the story. But even with the clear steps you take, there is enough leeway to make those scenes original for each character.
Another thing learned from the game was that the system needs to be understood by the players before the game starts fully. I’ve been so spoiled by the freeform games I’ve been running to think that the system is a secondary thing, but it’s critical to make sure the players understand what they’re getting into and what their choices mean. Spikey’s character ended up really odd on the technical side because his interaction with the system was done partly uninformed.
And then of course there were the scheduling problems that led to the campaign ending quite fast as people (mostly me) were tearing their hair out as we never got to play the game. Changeling would benefit from more games, each one focusing on one single thing and theme, explored from both the fairy tale and the real world perspective. Not games where you have to rush through two or three big things in one session so you can finally end the game at some point.
The downside of Changeling is that because of the damn good path for the story, I don’t feel like running it again. With the old Vampire: The Masquerade, there wasn’t that clear a way it works well, so there was a lot of replay value – Lots of things you’d like to do and try with it. While I could run a chronicle about Court intrigue or hunting in the Hedge, it wouldn’t be the thing I found cool about Changeling in the first place. A shame really. I could run another chronicle at some point to different people and go through the same motions in a different light, but that’s unlikely as well.
All in all, it’s a good game. It’s a great setting. Possibly the favorite one from World of Darkness stuff for me. Fond memories came from it.
Also, as a bonus, the spotify playlists we used for the game:
- Neon Lights and Car Sounds
- Fairy Tales
- Normality
- Arcadia
- Semiautomagic
- Court – Winter
- Court – Spring
- Court – Autumn
- Court – Summer
- Darkest Days (Penultimate game soundtrack)
- Finale (Not actually used in the Finale, but played before the last game session began)
We also used Chris Vrenna’s American McGee’s Alice soundtrack in the finale, but that’s not available on spotify in Finland, so had to use the CD.
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Tags: changeling: the lost, rpgs
October 26th, 2009 at 15:00
Interesting stuff. You should blog more often. Had a similar experience to your Changeling: The Lost campaign, only with Vampire: The Requiem. That is, very long, very character-driven narrative campaign that included, at one time or another, pretty much everything a game about the modern vampire mythos should include. The rules system is crap, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is, the setting is only usable once, after which you’d just be repeating yourself endlessly. So, after running that campaign, I really don’t feel there’s anything else at all I could contribute that would make another Vampire: The Requim chronicle a worthwhile idea.