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.

Since we’re half-way into the year, I thought to look back a bit and write about how things have been progressing and what my feelings about them are.

First of all, the good news. We managed to complete the Henryn viimeinen iso keikka -campaign. There was a lot of things in it that didn’t work out the way I had planned, but that’s what always happens when you’re creating a new RPG system and put it to playtest. Things need fine-tuning, a lot of it. But the basic idea works, and that’s the important bit. The campaign turned out to be a petty bet between two old criminal masterminds where people’s lives were put into stake for a single dollar and ended on a cliffhanger with all characters on their way to a possible trap. The great thing was that we actually managed to complete a full campaign run even if it was only 7 games + character creation. Our games have had a problem that they have slid to oblivion instead of actually reaching a conclusion. A way to restore faith on gaming.

Secondly, peoples’ timetables are a total pain. Both the Changeling and the Summer D&D games have suffered from this and even Henry had slight problems. Month or two long breaks aren’t unheard of because people aren’t around at the same time. But that’s life. I’m quite pessimistic with Changeling, since it’s 3 people who all need to be there for the game to work, and we can’t manage to get a time for the game together. And it’s one of those games that really suffer from long breaks as the mood of the fairytale needs to be recaptured and the not-fully-human characters re-immersed into. Game-wise it’s been a fun experience when we’ve been able to play – surreal landscapes are fun and the rules don’t come to the way too much. The Summer D&D on the other hand can surprisingly live even with the breaks. While I’m not fully happy with what D&D wants to be as a game, I am slowly seeing the potential in it. Lots of neat moving parts that are fun to twiddle.

About future plans regarding gaming – There will be a round two of Henry in the near future with the tweaked system. Also I might have gotten slightly inspired again to go try running larps after the Knutepunkt trip a couple of months ago.

I’ll hopefully get some more inspiration / time to write some actual stuff in the blog in the near future.

I’m known for how I like to run games that aren’t based on the world of any known system. Preferring to draw stuff purely from my own imagination, or at least dilute and remix the original source so much that the result is something that no longer resembles it. When I was asked to run a game for a group of mostly first-timers (including Spikey, who hasn’t played a single honest RPG in his life, just things like College of War run by me), the first natural instinct was to run something home-brew. But for some reason, I ended up running a game of Changeling: The Lost to them. And most surprisingly, it was more or less by-the-book.

The player characters were a group of people abducted to serve as pets and playthings of a couple of insane faerie sisters. Mikko played a burglar who had stolen a ring from the White Sister and because of this, spent 10 years as a pet of some sort to the pair of Gentry. Desperate to hide from the wicked one of the sisters, he hid in the trees, and eventually developed squirrel-like traits in the process. Taija played a emo/goth chick who ended up as a dancing marionette for the sisters for what felt like an eternity and then discarded like an old toy. When she returned to the human world 5 years after her disappearance, she was partly doll, unable to close her eyes and having hinges in her joints. Spikey’s character disappeared from the real world in 1973, and returned to a new, completely alien surroundings after being something of a Mr. Potato Head for the twins, who cut off his nose, ears, chin and whatever and replaced them with others so many times that holding on to what he was might have been difficult. The end result of all this was a man made of mirror able to switch his appearance on a whim to pretty much anything he wants to.

The two games we’ve run so-far has sparked a renewed enthusiasm in me to get first-timers to game with me. They aren’t burdened by years of action and adventure by Dungeons and Dragons, and things that might be “old” to the mainstream RPG crowd still provide endless amounts of entertainment for them. The game has gone into fantastically dark places and feels like what Vampire: The Masquerade should have felt like back in the day when we were playing it. We’ve so-far focused on the little and personal aspects of the characters as they’ve moved back to the real world. Mikko’s character has been replaced by a fetch made out of sticks and stones, who is now the father for his child and a husband for his wife. Spikey’s replacement is a shrewd bastard like the original, and seems like it’s taken an active role in finding Spikey. Something that is only made worse by the fact that he’s in the State Senate. And Taija’s character found out that her replacement had died, and its death had driven her family apart. And as said, I’ve been playing the game by the book, without the need to come up with something even more fantastic, because the players don’t know what to expect from the actual game. This is something that bothered me about Vampire: The Masquerade back in the day – EVERYONE knew the big secrets, and the little secrets.

It’s noticable how the players’ play styles differ. Spikey’s been mostly playing in over-the-top freeform high fantasy games GM’d by yours truly, so the notion of rules sometimes baffles him, he’s mostly a player who pokes at the game world to see if he can break it from within somehow and then laugh at the result. Manatic’s an old fox and it’s easy to see when he wants something to happen – he steers the situation towards it and makes it happen (which is ok, of course). He’s the closest to a story-focused player we have, and even he’s quite character-centric. And Taija is really immersing into the character. Pure character all the way. So a nice mix.

When I get back to Helsinki, I have to run some more first-timer games. So much fun. Now, I’ll be heading to the airport bar.