Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Communist Zombie
Nov 1, 2011

Kavak posted:

the huge blowup with the Exalted 3rd Edition Kickstarter*
*That wasn't really pandering but it was still shameful.

What was this, since I only vaguely follow Exalted news?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Communist Zombie posted:

What was this, since I only vaguely follow Exalted news?

They put a preview charm out for abyssals that basically sent ghosts out to "ravish" a target victim, then basically acted like weird jerks when called on it. Check out the thread to see the righteous fulmination of 1,000 goons.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kavak posted:

Oh my God did they seriously add in "Your LARPing rival" as an actual, statted antagonist? Goddammit White Wolf why do you have to suck so much sometimes? :negative:


Gee, the originators of the 90s Metaplot Craze wherein the writer's super cool characters do everything while your PCs watch are kind of lame and pathetic? Color me surprised.

ZeeToo
Feb 20, 2008

I'm a kitty!

Night10194 posted:

Behemoth almost certainly represents a hippo. Everyone in that region was goddamn terrified of hippos, with extremely good reason. Imagine all you had was bronze age tech and try to fight one of those things.

No, I'm pretty sure an elephant with three trunks is a more plausible fear.

AmiYumi posted:

So, uh, are we just gonna gloss over this? 'cuz this seems all kinds of racism-ey.

I'm not sure what else to add. Yeah, it probably would be, but you'll notice the game doesn't say anything specific. You're going to have to gently caress that one up for yourself.

Pththya-lyi
Nov 8, 2009

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020

Ningyou posted:


Oh god which alternate-universe Walter is this is there a hidden season of Fringe where everyone but Other Other Evil Lady Walter is teens and the whole thing's framed as a changeling/mage crossover larp and no one talks about it because it is utterly uncomfortable to watch

Godfucking damnit, this is why libraries are dying, isn't it? They don't try to understand why librarians (or any mature people) do what they do! For example, libraries impose due dates not because the librarians hate borrowers, but because they want to make sure that people other than the current borrower can have access to the book. If you keep a book past its due date, you're forcing the other library patrons to do without the book! The late fee is meant to deter people from keeping the book too long! Now, maybe it's because I'm a ~*mundane*~ who can't appreciate ~*whimsy and wonder*~, but it seems to me that someone who sets up rules to provide equal access to imaginative stories to everyone in a community does more to cultivate imagination than a faerie who hoards books.

e: Also, in my (anecdotal) experience there are just as many frumpy, poorly-dressed librarians as there are prim-and-proper ones. Even the prim ones tend to wear pantsuits; I don't think I've ever seen a real librarian wearing the pencil skirt-blouse-bun combo.

Pththya-lyi fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Nov 14, 2014

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
A few fun bits (but not funbits, that would be crude) from later in the Changeling line, because Ningyou touched on them:

First, like early education, there are three R's to glamour harvesting. Reverie and Ravaging, noted before, and Rhapsody, where you take a promising mortal and stuff them so full of glamour that they turn into a demon core of whimsy. They don't last long, but oh the juice you get back out of them!

Repeatedly or randomly glamming mortals because they could be so much cooler is a bad idea, even for the late-line mortals with enough fey blood to see the troof normally, because it slowly unhinges them. And by 'unhinge' I don't mean the insulting fishmalk parodies of Quixote or Robin Williams as the Fisher King that the line fawns over, or the unmedicated OCD Minutiae Maven (because remember, psych treatment is unglamorous), but rather straight-out, non-responsive-to-stimuli catatonia. But oh, the adventures they had before that!

I know the WoD wasn't supposed to be a mirror held up to our world with The Truth revealed within, though god knows how many people played it that way, but OChangeling enthused and irritated me the most of all their lines. A setting where mental illness turns you into a singing hobo, and every scientist has a lab funded by stolen leprechaun gold and filled with vivisected rainbows is childish-- not out of Gilliamesque whimsy, but the distorted, myopic lens it perceives complex concepts with.

Forums Terrorist
Dec 8, 2011

Adventure idea; run a Hogfather rehash in the old Changeling setting. You're personifications of various minor fears and phobias who do what they do to protect people from the real monsters (like the fair folk).

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Pththya-lyi posted:

Now, maybe it's because I'm a ~*mundane*~ who can't appreciate ~*whimsy and wonder*~, but it seems to me that someone who sets up rules to provide equal access to imaginative stories to everyone in a community does more to cultivate imagination than a faerie who hoards books.

Changeling, as a central hook, writes itself into a hole where it has to judge people as fun vs. boring. It was a breeding ground for writers to expose their prejudices.

What's funny with all these stereotypes is how reserved they are compared to all the terrible people I've known. Once there was a librarian I knew that wouldn't let children check out books unless they sat down and read a full novel in sight of her! (It turned out she used the library as a cover for a land scam, strangely enough.) All Changeling can come up with is "librarian that is really organized and doesn't want children to read certain books"? How lame. Anybody who's LARPed can tell you of worse personalities than the one given above (see also: PUAs, pedos). And I don't think we need to get into how much worse a parent can be...

The kicker with the librarian is the anecdote where "we assaulted and terrified her and now she's all better". Of course. :rolleyes:

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Bieeardo posted:

I know the WoD wasn't supposed to be a mirror held up to our world with The Truth revealed within, though god knows how many people played it that way, but OChangeling enthused and irritated me the most of all their lines. A setting where mental illness turns you into a singing hobo, and every scientist has a lab funded by stolen leprechaun gold and filled with vivisected rainbows is childish-- not out of Gilliamesque whimsy, but the distorted, myopic lens it perceives complex concepts with.

The WOD forum I frequented back in the mid-oughts was a general WoD forum, and had pretty good representation from all of the groups. But after the nWoD transition the only group that maintained any real following was the Changeling group, and that was because they basically larped their posting. The Moderator and his wife were two Forty-somethings who got married in a "real life freehold" where he was wearing SCA Plate and she had on a giant pair of butterfly wings. They welcomed new posters with "Glamour Cookies" so they could better perceive the strangeness that would surround them in this new place. And they would ask people IC questions outside of PBP threads, like asking people with Werewolf avatars who posted in C:TD threads to recite their lineage back 4 generations before they could continue contributing to the conversation.


The fourm was dying for years before the admin just stopped paying the bills and to it's dying day they blamed the rest of us for "being banal" and not playing along with their ridiculously creepy game.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
Even the most far-out people I met in Vampire LARP seemed to think that all Changeling players were like that. Oh, and that they all LARPed on Ecstasy.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 23 days!

Pththya-lyi posted:

Godfucking damnit, this is why libraries are dying, isn't it? They don't try to understand why librarians (or any mature people) do what they do! For example, libraries impose due dates not because the librarians hate borrowers, but because they want to make sure that people other than the current borrower can have access to the book. If you keep a book past its due date, you're forcing the other library patrons to do without the book! The late fee is meant to deter people from keeping the book too long! Now, maybe it's because I'm a ~*mundane*~ who can't appreciate ~*whimsy and wonder*~, but it seems to me that someone who sets up rules to provide equal access to imaginative stories to everyone in a community does more to cultivate imagination than a faerie who hoards books.

e: Also, in my (anecdotal) experience there are just as many frumpy, poorly-dressed librarians as there are prim-and-proper ones. Even the prim ones tend to wear pantsuits; I don't think I've ever seen a real librarian wearing the pencil skirt-blouse-bun combo.

As a professional librarian myself, I can attest that I've never encountered the quasi-mythical breed of librarian described here. Yeah, we ask people and children especially to keep the noise down - many people use the library, and keeping noise down is a matter of courtesy for those trying to read or work or study in peace. Children bent on "wacky hijinks" are disruptive to other patrons. And yeah, we don't allow children to check out some books without the express permission of their parents. These tend to be books on very mature topics like, say, the Holocaust or the psychology of serial killers. Children *should* be reading fairy tales and Harry Potter, not that kind of stuff.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I think the problem with C:TD is that the elevator pitch is that it's a game about being a literal manchild. Sure there are darker elements within that but it basically boils down to "growing up is bad". Which runs counter to almost every single piece of written fiction involving children, including loving Peter-Pan. There could be an amazing game written around trying to protect that sense of childlike wonderment in others by forcing yourself to grow up beyond your years, but the rules make that literally impossible because growing up means you're unplayable. And when you mix Pooka and Satyr in with the "My character is literally eight years old" problem everything takes a sharp turn into "Oh god call the cops" territory.

theironjef
Aug 11, 2009

The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Cythereal posted:

As a professional librarian myself, I can attest that I've never encountered the quasi-mythical breed of librarian described here. Yeah, we ask people and children especially to keep the noise down - many people use the library, and keeping noise down is a matter of courtesy for those trying to read or work or study in peace. Children bent on "wacky hijinks" are disruptive to other patrons. And yeah, we don't allow children to check out some books without the express permission of their parents. These tend to be books on very mature topics like, say, the Holocaust or the psychology of serial killers. Children *should* be reading fairy tales and Harry Potter, not that kind of stuff.

That's all very reasonable, but can you see why kids like Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 23 days!

theironjef posted:

That's all very reasonable, but can you see why kids like Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

Of course I can. It's full of sugar and to a lesser degree has cute advertising aimed at kids.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Cythereal posted:

Of course I can. It's full of sugar and to a lesser degree has cute advertising aimed at kids.

Wrong! It's because it's full of magic and whimsey! Drag them behind the speculative fiction stacks and don't come back until they love wackyness.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 23 days!

Kurieg posted:

Wrong! It's because it's full of magic and whimsey! Drag them behind the speculative fiction stacks and don't come back until they love wackyness.

Children require no assistance in that regard. Our job is to help them find books that they'll enjoy reading, not cram some arbitrary notion of whimsy or fantasy down their throats. That only makes them resent whatever you're trying to instill in them. In order to teach effectively, you must first make a child want to learn.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy
CtD is a horse made by committee. There were so many different visions colliding in that game and no one really telling anyone what the standard was. There was also no real antagonist in the game until the end of the line. The antagonists were people who are soul crushingly boring and some lukewarm evil unseelie Sidhe until a couple years into the game. The metaplot was pretty much, High King David is missing and he might be the prisoner of the leader of the American Southeast but we'll never touch on that until the literal end of the game world. Sidhe also might be inherently evil due to how they inhabit mortal bodies*, which we won't really touch on until the end book, and there is some resistance to the Sidhe coming back but let's just talk about how awesome Sidhe are.

Dark Ages Fae is pretty good though so it at least has that going for it.

*Sidhe aren't changelings. Changelings are the product of a ritual used to bind fae to mortals who share their outlooks. This creates a gestalt soul that reincarnates over time like in WtA. I could be wrong but that's how I remember it. This in effect merges two beings into one and that's why you have the whole dream self and real world self. The Sidhe fled the world around the time the Anarch Revolts happen in Vampire and the Order of Reason comes into its own in Mage. The Sidhe were the aristocrats and they pretty much hightail it to Arcadia while everyone else is left for death in a world that's becoming more rational. One group of Sidhe remain but they're the mysterious watcher faction, Scathach, and actually changelings. The Sidhe return in 1969 and take over like nothing happened. Since they never did the changeling ritual, the question of how they can inhabit a body like they do comes up and it pretty much points to them consuming the consciousness of their mortal body or merging with it in a body snatcher-esque way. The Sidhe claim the original owners are partying in Arcadia, Great Race of Yith style, but they don't even know the answer to that as well. CtD had a lot of potential in terms of horror but most of it is never capitalized on.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Cythereal posted:

Children require no assistance in that regard. Our job is to help them find books that they'll enjoy reading, not cram some arbitrary notion of whimsy or fantasy down their throats. That only makes them resent whatever you're trying to instill in them. In order to teach effectively, you must first make a child want to learn.

I was joking :negative:

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

*Sidhe aren't changelings. Changelings are the product of a ritual used to bind fae to mortals who share their outlooks. This creates a gestalt soul that reincarnates over time like in WtA.

Werewolves have reincarnation, sort of, it's one of those things that changes based on the writer. It can range from "I am the reincarnation of all of these great heroes from the past and I can occasionally tap into those past memories" to "Their spirits watch over me and can inhabit my body in times of need" to "The Garou have a instinctual genetic memory and you can remember things your genetic ancestors knew".

It's probably closer to the 3rd thing because that's literally a thing the Mokolé(were-dragons) can do, but the Past Lives adventure literally has you inhabiting your past incarnations as you progress, and the Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers don't have access to the ancestor's background because they've "angered them with their ill reverence" and I'm pretty sure your DNA can't hold a grudge.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009
Probation
Can't post for 23 days!

Kurieg posted:

I was joking :negative:

Sorry. We can, however, agree that oChangeling sucks.

Flavivirus
Dec 14, 2011

The next stage of evolution.
I remember when I took over managing the local university rpg society's book archive there was a copy of The Autumn People there, in perfect condition. The weirdest thing was how high quality the production values on the book are - glossy pages, full colour throughout, quite a bit of art. Was that common for oWoD books? It was eye catching enough that I gave it a read, but oh man is it stupid. Just wait until you see the self-aware banal antagonists!

I ended up selling the book online for far more than anyone should want to pay for it, and used the money to buy Fate instead.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Kurieg posted:

I'm pretty sure your DNA can't hold a grudge.
Try telling that to the Fenris!

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Flavivirus posted:

I remember when I took over managing the local university rpg society's book archive there was a copy of The Autumn People there, in perfect condition. The weirdest thing was how high quality the production values on the book are - glossy pages, full colour throughout, quite a bit of art. Was that common for oWoD books? It was eye catching enough that I gave it a read, but oh man is it stupid. Just wait until you see the self-aware banal antagonists!

Full color on all the pages was rare, hell full color for a core book was rare. Seeing it in a supplement was almost unheard of. Everything outside of core books or at least other hard bound items you normally got paper stock in black and white. Core and hard bound were usually semi-glossy but not color.

Halloween Jack posted:

Try telling that to the Fenris!

Which version of the Fenris, the "We're totally not Nazis we just hate those loving Kikes and the rest of the mud races" or "If you find any Nazis let us know so we can eviscerate them before going back to the business of saving the world."

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Flavivirus posted:

I remember when I took over managing the local university rpg society's book archive there was a copy of The Autumn People there, in perfect condition. The weirdest thing was how high quality the production values on the book are - glossy pages, full colour throughout, quite a bit of art. Was that common for oWoD books?

Not for oWoD books in general, but for Changeling they did every book as full-color glossy. They sunk a shitton of money into that line (remember the CCG?) but I doubt they got that much of a return on their investment.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Flavivirus posted:

I remember when I took over managing the local university rpg society's book archive there was a copy of The Autumn People there, in perfect condition. The weirdest thing was how high quality the production values on the book are - glossy pages, full colour throughout, quite a bit of art. Was that common for oWoD books? It was eye catching enough that I gave it a read, but oh man is it stupid. Just wait until you see the self-aware banal antagonists!

I ended up selling the book online for far more than anyone should want to pay for it, and used the money to buy Fate instead.

OWoD books always had a lot of art and were super artsy. 2nd edition vampire books used to begin with art spreads with pretentious goth quotes and werewolf books used to begin with comics. Eventually they switched over to about NWoD level art placement. The binding on White Wolf softcovers were especially lovely though, don't get me started on the larp books.

I think every 1st edition Changeling book was in color. It was part of the gimmick of the line but they stopped doing it in 2nd edition. White Wolf was never a big company and printing costs were what usually kept companies at breaking even or losing profits. Since CtD was never a big seller, I think they just went with b&w like all other White Wolf books because full color wasn't making a difference.

Here's a list of all the CtD related books White Wolf put out and if they were color or not. http://www.giveneyestosee.com/changeling/changeling-withpics.html After 1997, they mostly switch over to b&w.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

The binding on White Wolf softcovers were especially lovely though, don't get me started on the larp books.

Huh? The hardcover bindings on my WTA books are falling apart while the softcovers are just fine, even the ones I got used, did the Changeling books use a different process?

I'm hesitant to even open my copy of the revised core because some of the pages are being held in by friction.

Kurieg fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Nov 14, 2014

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Kurieg posted:

Huh? The hardcover bindings on my WTA books are falling apart while the softcovers are just fine, even the ones I got used, did the Changeling books use a different process?

I'm hesitant to even open my copy of the revised core because some of the pages are being held in by friction.

The thin ones hold up well but the bigger books, like the combination books from 2nd edition, are not very well made. The finish on all of them can start to peel as well but that's a common problem on that type of cheap, glossy coating.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
I ran Changeling: the Dreaming for a good while, but I ignored most of the core conceits for modern supernatural pulp adventure where the PCs race to stop a villainous count from gaining the Black Cauldron. It was more a way to add excuses to have swordfights atop speeding cars than anything to do with banality or the ennui of turning 22; I really just wanted modern fantasy and I shoehorned it in pretty hard.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."
I look foward to the potential for Changeling20 to be a Revised version that actually does some hard thinking about what the game is supposed to be doing.

(I regret that Mage20 was not this.)

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
I'd be more excited to see Wraith with some thought put towards actual play; that was a hugely evocative setting that struggled to actually present itself as a game.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Evil Mastermind posted:

Not for oWoD books in general, but for Changeling they did every book as full-color glossy. They sunk a shitton of money into that line (remember the CCG?) but I doubt they got that much of a return on their investment.

Some of the late Changeling books were black and white. I remember reading a friend's Big Book of Sidhe Stereotypes and being horrified when the goddamn ink in the margins started coming off on my fingers.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

CtD is a horse made by committee.

I'll say it again: I did like first printing Changeling. The mechanics were poo poo, and whoever decided that collectible cards were the only way to go with the magic system should have been shot, but it was loaded with conflict. Commoner vs. Noble, mundane vs. fantastic, seelie vs. unseelie, modern vs medieval, it just writhed with metaplot-free tension and potential. And then people like Jackie Cassada, who invented pooka who communicated only in the exact opposite of what they really meant, and whoever wrote the Autumn People, squatted the line and turned everything into Mercedes Lackey flavored poo poo.

quote:

*Sidhe aren't changelings.

That's what really, really bothers me about the Sidhe. Well, beyond each of their Houses basically being a better, shinier version of an entire kith's schtick. The Sidhe hosed off aside from one House (with its own special, shiny magic). They never undertook the Changeling Way. The Sidhe are horrifying in their implications: they were either kicked out or escaped from Arcadia, in the process hollowing innocent people of their minds and souls, and reappeared on Earth as an invasion force. They murdered negotiators and emissaries under a flag of truce, using cold iron weapons (which are guaranteed to kill fey souls dead, permanently), and finally installed themselves as feudal lords through the use of magic that makes you play by their SCA rules.

The Sidhe are alien invaders, using murder and mind control to keep hold of the reins of power, so far out of the patterns of changeling life that they duplicate the other kiths internally, and by the time 2e/revised/whatever comes around, everyone is more or less fine with that. It's just such utter, incredible bullshit.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Bieeardo posted:

That's what really, really bothers me about the Sidhe. Well, beyond each of their Houses basically being a better, shinier version of an entire kith's schtick. The Sidhe hosed off aside from one House (with its own special, shiny magic). They never undertook the Changeling Way. The Sidhe are horrifying in their implications: they were either kicked out or escaped from Arcadia, in the process hollowing innocent people of their minds and souls, and reappeared on Earth as an invasion force. They murdered negotiators and emissaries under a flag of truce, using cold iron weapons (which are guaranteed to kill fey souls dead, permanently), and finally installed themselves as feudal lords through the use of magic that makes you play by their SCA rules.

The Sidhe are alien invaders, using murder and mind control to keep hold of the reins of power, so far out of the patterns of changeling life that they duplicate the other kiths internally, and by the time 2e/revised/whatever comes around, everyone is more or less fine with that. It's just such utter, incredible bullshit.

The Sidhe were absolute bastards and even High King David borders on, "He was a tyrant but he was the best of them!" Anyone who loved the Sidhe was almost always that type of problem player who likes to go on power trips and be the center of attention.

It would have been cool if there were areas of the US where the Sidhe weren't in control, like the Free State or Sabbat cities in Vampire. Having the equivalent of commoner Parliamentarians would have been cool but it just goes into Sir Walter Scott territory, all the time. It makes sense that the dreams of a modern nation like the United States, full of many diverse people with modern sensibilities, would line up with Le Morte d'Arthur.

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
Storyteller's boyfriend was that sort, right down to flashing Sovereign at NPCs to get his way, yep.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
My last sit-down gaming group was pretty cool but the GM and his wife were big C:tD fans and occasionally wondered if anyone would be interested in playing it and the response from everybody else was always "no." Pretty much everything being discussed here is why.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Changeling has a similar issue to Werewolf in that later writers obliterated all nuance, I think. They do start with the fact that both societies are built on shaky foundations, but as both lines go on, writers presume the status quo for both groups is the way things ought to be. Any self-reflection on the profound flaws of both societies instead got replaced with a fannish rah-rah, particularly in regards to the Sidhe, where they became a profound example of coolness over content.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Changeling has a similar issue to Werewolf in that later writers obliterated all nuance, I think. They do start with the fact that both societies are built on shaky foundations, but as both lines go on, writers presume the status quo for both groups is the way things ought to be. Any self-reflection on the profound flaws of both societies instead got replaced with a fannish rah-rah, particularly in regards to the Sidhe, where they became a profound example of coolness over content.

:crossarms:

1st Edition Werewolf was literally "The clans are hidebound and this is the way things are they will never change, also technology is evil and the dark ages were awesome". By revised the Glass Walkers have been taken over by the Random Interrupts so they're no longer the Werewolf Italian Mafia, The Get of Fenris have started the purge that routed out the last stragglers of the Sons of Hiemdall, Koinetzko is consolidating his alliances in eastern europe and using them for the actual betterment of the Garou Nation (in addition to his own personal advancement), the old clan Silver Fangs are losing power and King Albrecht is dragging the entire Garou Nation into the 21st century whether they like it or not, Evan Heals the Past is doing his darndest to get the Wendigo to stop being absolutely idiotic, and even the Children of Gaia were starting to become more active (before their revised clanbook came along).

Ningyou
Aug 14, 2005

we aaaaare
not your kind of pearls
you seem kind of pho~ny
everything's a liiiiie

we aaaare
not your kind of pearls
something in your make~up
don't see eye to e~y~e



Intermission: Let's Have a Bad Art Party (with our friends, the Autumn People story NPCs)

I know it's low-hanging fruit, but oh my god there is some weird, unfortunate art in this book.






Meanwhile, I skimmed through the rest of the book as a refresher and holy *poo poo* the Dauntain NPCs are....something. Since this is both pretty WELP and fairly quick to do (and lmao i'm not going to do anything more exciting with my afternoon than catching up on Arrow) ((YOU NERDS SHOULD WATCH ARROW it is a Good Show)), I'm going to write up a bit on ~Famous Autumn People~ featured in the back of the book.

In order:

1. The first Dauntain -- like, not just first in the book, LITERALLY the first Dauntain -- who was a kind and just sidhe prince brought low 'cos dude was terrified of becoming an Old (which, you know, makes sense... I mean COME ON this is Changeling, the game of CHILDLIKE WHIMSY UBER ALLES where being in your mid-to-late-twenties makes you a gnarled old crone.) He tried and tried, starting with Magic Stuff and going on quests for the Fountain of Youth or w/e and moving on to Glamour-raping his way into staying youngish like he was the lost Jackson sibling, Erzsébetoya, and eventually staved off aging by becoming some kind of weird Tremere ghoul/Dauntain crossover.

This both caused the land he was ruling over to wither and die and turned him into a super-Banal SUPER HATER who will "Ravage any humans or Kithain within arm's reach" and has ~corruption~-themed Thaumaturgy paths and Dominate 2 because of course he does.

2. A thirteen-year-old runaway who...hoo-boy. First night on the street, she starts having super vivid nightmares that "threaten to tear away her sanity." This first time, she wakes up and sees some horrible creature leering at her but it disappears suddenly. The dreams keep coming every night, only stopping when she turns them into ~art~. Eventually, she comes to San Francisco and is ~drawn~ to a Cool Older Kid who knows where the Cool Stuff is and loves her art.

Then she gets magical super-migraines that don't let her draw for a few days, which brings back the nightmares, and so when the migraines finally *stop* she has to draw a ton (how is she getting all these drawing supplies anyways????) to not have horrifying dreams all the time.

One night, she wakes up to find out that the person who has been doing this since literally her first night on the street was Cool Older Kid Rob, who...followed her to San Francisco to terrorize and mind-rape her in her sleep over and over again? So she hits him in the head with a flashlight, he runs away, she got taken in by CPS and stuck in a foster home, and she grows up some and eventually becomes a police officer for self-serving reasons like "trying to deal with trauma" and "wanting to stop ~magickal~ child rapists." ("She wasn't in this to serve and protect, except to protect herself. She was in it to control her own destiny and destroy those who would bring nightmares.")

Long story short, she runs into Cool Older Kid Rob on her first day, beats him comatose with Magic Fists, and comes back to her partner all OH LOL HE GOT AWAY afterwards. :v

However, the encounter had done something for her resolve. She knew she could identify the monsters like Rob, those who would rape a young girl's mind for dreams. So she decided to hunt them down and make them pay for their crimes. She hasn't considered that not all of these beings would do such a thing or not. She believes they are monsters who invade minds and destroy sanity for the sheer pleasure of it.

#notallmien (SORRY i couldn't think of a better way of making that joke)

Anyways, the book goes on to say that she got promoted! She has used her position to get her faesecution on both during and after work, and she happened upon the Toybox (~magickal coffeeshop~ full of The Good Fae; UM EXCUSE ME WE DON'T SERVE "COFFEE" HERE WE ONLY SERVE WHIMSY AND GLAMOUR), which she plans to raid on a pretext before hunting down all the coffeeshop patrons and murdering them.

See? Haters.

3. The littlest Redcap, who was "just one of those children who attracted abuse" from literally everyone in his life and only survived by retreating into daydreams. He went through Fae Puberty, it was nice and heartening, some of the fae-students at his school took him in, everything was happy except for the whole "going through actual puberty and being an insecure, paralysed wreck riddled with self-doubt because of a childhood rife with constant abuse" thing. And then...

The arrival of Reyna, a fox pooka, did little to help. She tormented Brand mercilessly, seemingly poking fun at his every fault and playing the cruelest jokes she could think of. In truth, she wasn't treating him any differently than anyone else. She'd just emerged from her Chrysalis and was simply enjoying herself. One night, after a particularly harrowing joke involving some baling wire, matchsticks, a pickup truck, and a Wayfare cantrip, Brand snapped. His Unseelie Legacy surged to the fore and he completely lost his temper. When he came to his senses, Reyna lay dead at his feet.

Gosh, why couldn't that no-fun s a d t e e n take a joke she's an equal-opportunit--oh. OH. :gonk:

And then he ate her and found out he really really liked it.

:stonk:

And then he went straight from this to eating a Sluagh he didn't like and from *that* to sadism and serial cannibalism (seriously the book says he has gobbled up over a hundred other fae) because he's afraid that every changeling he meets is out to ~torment~ him and has to GET THEM FIRST.

God, Changeling loving looooooooves their "loss of innocence in childhood = RUINED FOREVER but also PREJUDICED LIKE YOU KNOW LIKE RACISM EXCEPT AGAINST ART STUDENTS/GOSH YOU ONLY DISLIKE X B/C YOURE DAMAGED" tropes.

4. A spoiled teen with overbearing parents who went off to do fae stuff with her new fae friends because UGH MOOOOOOOM. She tried really hard to do Fae Stuff, but "she could do nothing right, and eventually no one was willing to deal with her on her own terms," so she left her not-coterie to live on her own and went through a depression spiral that culminated in her going catatonic and getting committed. This led to her using unconscious not-magic to psychically feel around and then mind-rape every other patient there.

Meanwhile, as she withdrew even more, this s a d t e e n's mind-rape powers evolve (like a pokemon! Like the worst Pokemon.) into draining the Glamour and will and everything from anyone who comes near her like a great sucking hole of You're No Fun At Parties God Why Can't You Stop Talking About Your Sadbrains! She is such a downer that she can literally Undo people by proximity, leading the local Whimsy King to declare that no fae can visit the institution where she is except maybe to kill her.

God, it's like the world's worst wink-nudge fable written for 90s teens.

Okay maybe this is less quick than I thought. More later.

Ningyou fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Nov 14, 2014

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Every single time they try to make a Hunter type character a villain in White Wolf games, they almost always seem to come off as the hero. That police officer is the actual protagonist, these loving faeries need to get brained.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Night10194 posted:

Every single time they try to make a Hunter type character a villain in White Wolf games, they almost always seem to come off as the hero. That police officer is the actual protagonist, these loving faeries need to get brained.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

Night10194 posted:

Every single time they try to make a Hunter type character a villain in White Wolf games, they almost always seem to come off as the hero. That police officer is the actual protagonist, these loving faeries need to get brained.

"Lack of self awareness" is a time honored White Wolf tradition. C:tD just runs the extra mile with it.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Kai Tave posted:

"Lack of self awareness" is a time honored White Wolf tradition. C:tD just runs the extra mile with it.

In fairness, it has at least seemed to have limited itself recently to Mummy and Exalted.

  • Locked thread