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 Mikko’s character has been replaced by a fetch made out of sticks and stones, who is now the father for his child and a husband for his wife.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.