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 Don't worry about meeting a platonic ideal right now, you need some place to grow. Chapter 2 of the C:tL corebook opens with a quote from The Island of Dr. Moreau, poetically imagining that every person walking down the street is, somehow, a metaphoric creature. When you take a step back, people often attempt to live up to certain images of themselves- the entire fashion industry rolls on these concepts. This is the purpose of character creation- the challenges you face are largely arbitrary (if not god-like), and so attempting to scale that mountain is hardly the point. The game is, after-all, about self-empowerment through inter-personal growth- and not murderhobos. The next few columns are the same numberwang spiel you've seen in any other White Wolf product. However, C:tL is built to give a player much more freedom than other splats: there is no pressure to give your character traits that a basic bougie american should have. Not every changeling remembers- or was taught- how to drive, or how to use computers, or how to tell a lie, and so you can create a far more 'twinked' character sheet than is at first blush acceptable. Further, a well-established feature of the True Fae is their love of the exceptional- your talent is hardly a virtue (ha ha dark irony indeed). So making a character with brute strength or exceptional knowledge of, say, surviving in a desert is hardly a stretch. But again with the big stop sign on character creation: no adolescent characters, no characters from more than 50 years ago1. You are playing a character than has something to return to from Arcadia, not to escape into the fairyland to live inside your make-believe story. The Changeling Template gives you very little compared to other White Wolf splats: a free skill specialty in Athletics, Brawl or Stealth2 that corresponds to your escape from Arcadia, rather than bumping up a resistance trait or what-have-you. When it comes to being a human, changelings are hardly better than a normal mortal. This is not a game about diving into the secrets of the multiverse or perfecting yourself into the ultimate killing machine or becoming king turd of poo poo mountain... so why are you asking for what amounts to a gamist 'free xp bump' for nothing? The rest is what I am going to gloss over by describing it as the 'basic nWoD design'. Having been fairly late in the line's life, there is something more unique in that there are 24 different combinations (6x4) rather than 25 (from a 5x5)... but I feel like the evocative nature of the Courts (and the unspoken fifth court) keeps things much more alive. Another special note here is that the specific magik powers known as Contracts (which we'll go into later) also allow players to justify getting a one-dot clause of a Goblin contract with your starting dots... which is strange if you consider your character being a fresh-from-the-thorns changeling, as they are specifically contracts found at the Goblin Market. Huh.  And another, buried at the end of the usually skippable Virtue and Vices section: a changeling's willpower has half as much to do with what is 'normal'- especially for changelings of low Clarity- as with your Wyrd-tinged life. While the book makes pains to note that you don't deserve Willpower refreshes for being virtueous or viceful regarding your Arcadian "truth", I find it more fun to dole out willpower for it anyway when I'm playing more gonzo hedge-filled games. Pages 76-77 is the splash-page of easy-to-index statmunching. Special note: Wyrd is very expensive compared to most other things, and contracts can be just as expensive as becoming a genius or a body-builder. Mortal skill is, afterall, hardly a challenge compared to the blissful fae. The next section of the book concerns the Prelude: that beginning-of-the-Bond-movie element of storytelling that sets the rest of the campaign forward. Rather than being handwaved like so many other 'adventurers in a tavern' stories, C:tL is built to bring the players together despite however many special snowflakes have to be crammed into the same campaign. Thankfully because of the flexible nature of time in the hedge, you're even given explicit license to weave each part of your preamble without regard to cause and effect. You can run a character's escape with Tom Dick and Harry before you even, as a player, know how you were taken... or you can escape so fuzzily that you're not entirely sure how it happened3. Your name is your name. I've gamed with a 'nameless wonder'  and its maddening to begin with, but because of the nature of the Wyrd, you're given much more license to go HAM into your folklore rather than Big McLargehuge or Frank Yeoman. Being TOO special snowflake, however, can result in the wrong kind of attention (because it just might be the name of a Keeper, strumming the string of the vast spider-web of Fate). So Damiens, Mega-Mans, and The Crow v2 need not apply (if the ST is feeling titchy)The example given of character creation is of a character built for the in-book campaign setting of Miami with its Eternal Summer King: Jack Tallow, Elemental Fireheart of Summer and social crusader. As an old hand, it feels like he was twinking as a cross-Fairest with your basic 3 defense and decent Magick tricks involving that most loved of elements: fire. I understand why the section exists, but I would personally pay for my 3rd copy to be a special-edition that cuts it out because its two and a half mostly-worthless pages4. Next time: the three unique flavors of Changeling 1 - Personally I fudge the 50 years to pre-WWII, but I definitely understand why some people might want to avoid having characters from before the Civil Rights era. 2 - I used to give people leeway at deciding a different skill specialty, but I've come to believe that anything else doesn't jive with the visceral truth of having fight/run/sneak the gently caress out of there. 3 - To play up the dream-like quality of Faerie, C:tL even tells you to ignore all logic and play with rules and objects outside of the regular gameplay and kill people off ignobly and then bring them back. Done well, sure... but I'd say to try and play loose with reality, not as a chance to run your dick through Pissforest at the player's expense. 4 - Its only worth it to see another case of WW's personal view of what Status, Contacts and Specialties are to use as Canon Law for later arguments... 
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Jan 14, 2014 02:09
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The inner fire of the faerie is from it having no soul to scar C:tL takes the player's expectations of a nWoD system and uses what makes it unique as a way to further express its core themes. Wyrd There is a strong theme of your super-special inner magic not actually allowing you to become that much more potent. Like all nWoD systems, there is a core 'power stat' that ascends linearly, one to ten, that represents your personal, unalterable 'magic engine' through which all your mutant powers key off of. However in C:tL, the essential hypocrisy of the gameline is that all changelings escaped from the land of the Wyrd, known commonly as Arcadia, in order to become more human. But the Wyrd, as the power-stat is known, is described as an alien force that separates you from your mortal experience. Which each incremental improvement of your hoodoo force, you become more distant from what anchors you away from the True Fae. As you 'level up', your emotions become greater, in what I would call borderline personality1, acting wildly inappropriate to what is normal. The Mask that prevents humans from seeing your antlers and lightning-spark eyes begins to slip. And even at night, your dreams of your durance become more vivid, the memories all the more real. But gently caress yeah, superpowers, amirite? Mechanically, a Wyrd score acts as a numerical limit to the game mechanics. You can only spend X glamor per turn2, you can only carry X Goblin Fruits in the mortal world (later), live an extra X years longer than a regular mortal, and you can only agree to X 'vow' pledges at a time- In the book, it describes the changeling being release-able from an existing vow, which is... difficult to explain away. When it comes up, I'll explain the differences. And in one of the most minor parts of a benefit, you gain X bonus to "remembering or interpreting dreams". This is buried near the end of the non-mechanical bullet point describing how much 'Arcadia memories' you remember per tranche of your Wyrd. Its a very non-mechanical section which leads to it getting glazed over by even the most specific lore-nerds of C:tL. Dreams are a huge part of Changeling- easily a third of the 'playgrounds' within the game, but sadly it doesn't say "+Wyrd to Investigation rolls for crappy ST riddle-solving" soooooooo An important element to gaining higher Wyrd is the ability to 1- become a being of myth in the realm of strength/smarts/looks than a human 2- Incite Bedlam, a game mechanic that nearly never gets used, and for good reason. Incite Bedlam is an overly-complex device used as a 'soft mind control'. If anyone has experience with Vampire, you understand how 'soft' is really code for 'unregulated'. You can only drive people towards one of the core Seasonal Court emotions3. Effectively, it is a classic Charm Person that can affect seven or more people at once, and it gets copied equally by other Contracts and abilities later, other than being supposed to only create 'wild and unrestricted emotion' rather than an gentle nudge. It also works on the closest first, including targeting allies, and it is essentially a big red "gently caress you" button that works unpredictably- it even describes it as being a bad idea to give Anger to your enemies. Strangely, it is solely a Wyrd phenomena, but works strictly according to the Seasonal Courts. On the negative side, which for Changelings is always the deeper cut, your Wyrd score also acts as an easily-dilineated "how attractive am I" meter to the True Fae. At six or higher, you're a minor celebrity or up-and-comer to whom Arcadian Intrigues are attracted like a magnet. To quote from the book, "as with all things related to the Others, the Storyteller has control over how this mechanic manifests during play." Because True Fae are not supposed to be fully-stated dragons, dipshit. Your changeling's body does not respond easily to the alterations of the Wyrd. You gain Frailties, taboos and banes straight from the storybook than can easily cripple a character, or even kill them, should it be sufficiently lethal or prevalent. In a game where prophecy, nightmares, and truth-telling are major components, hiding a Frailty is nearly impossible... So of course, there are also mechanics for decreasing your Wyrd, which could be summarized as quitting Wyrd magick 'cold turkey' like its an addiction. The parallels are even more obvious when it mentions how greater Wyrds require longer abstinences, and also when considering what is: Glamour Its more than just an odd spelling, it is what C:tL calls the nWoD system's "mana". The gas or blood for Wyrd magic, Glamour is described as energy both separate and equivalent to the Wyrd from Arcadia. But the Others are only but artisans of Glamour- they require a harvest of mortals to fuel them; specifically, the harvest of primal emotion. To a changeling, the harvest of Glamour is explicitly described as emotionally addicting- and even physically to changelings of even greater Wyrd (one lethal a day, unhealable, until a new 'fix' of glamour). If you've played in a nWoD game, you understand how Glamor 'points' are used. Special mention is deserved for the Mask, however: you can strengthen the Mask to the point that even your fellow Fae cannot see your Mein by sight while in the real world (although they can via your shadow), and if you choose to dump your entire pool to drop the mask, like a fantastic magic trick for any mortal passer-by. So then, it is in the Harvesting with which C:tL makes its mark.
Another alternative is within a mortal's Dreams. Dreams are harder to get into, requiring magic via Contracts or specific Pledges. However they also give you a greater roll- adding your Wyrd 'dream bonus' to the similar "whatever skill makes it work symbolically". The third alternative is through the bounty of a mortal's pledge. Fulfilling promises, therefore, gives a changeling glamour. Again, what specifically gets you your glamour is specific to what you first initially decide is your 'method'. Pledges are more described later in the book. Finally, you can harvest glamour from within the hedge, doing actions that consume strange items that are colloquially known as 'goblin fruit'. The paragraph makes pains to note that not all glamour is within strictly vegetation- rather it is in the act of 'consumption', however poetically achieved, that creates the empowerment within the changeling. And so I'm going to wrap up this entry of F&F with a summation of why this the unique nature of Glamour makes C:tL The Best Game. In other splats, the mechanics for getting your omfph are all-to-often specific and arbitrary and confined by the pre-written fictions of the story- some of which are fairly dark and twisted and involve some sort of blood sacrifice. For all the comments about how 'dark' a game this era's Changeling is, it does its best to get out of its own way by letting players make their own darkness. Glamour is explicitly dynamic, emotional, allegorical, and most of all personal. It pushes players to self-express rather than duck your head down and follow according to the stereotypes unthinkingly. C:tL is a game about your characters finding a form of empowerment via self-definition and, strangely enough, requires the players to self-express about what they want their characters to be. The Best Splat. Next time: I get to the third flavor, the most depressing one. 1 - The entire game can be seen through this lens if you so prefer. 2 - This starts to matter when we get to Contracts later. 3 - Despite there being an additional eight courts, each with their own court emotion, later in the game's life! The gameline (wisely) drops the entire Incite Bedlam mechanic like a bad habit. 4 - There is an interesting debate to be had regarding fetches, as to whether a changeling can harvest their glamour and whether that indicates an essential 'soul' that was given to them by the Keeper from a piece shorn from the human it stole. 5 - Including other splats, with their own suggested quirks from the rule book: vampires only ever give 1 point, mages are oddly aware but otherwise human, Werewolves give double from anger with a price, and Promethans feel... oddly second-hand.
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Jan 17, 2014 00:44
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Where the morals are made up and the ethics don't matter Being a changeling, you are defined by having escaped your Keeper's durance to return to the mortal world. Caught between these two defining poles of existence, you play within a game of 'Beautiful Madness' where your Clarity- that which defines your ability to stay sane in an insane world. Despite there being no real mechanical emphasis, a changeling's Clarity is what allows the character to tell the difference between the Hedge and the real world, magic and physics, dream-thoughts and mortal truths. The Changeling is described as beginning to falsely perceive fae creatures in the grocery store or mortal concerns while in the thorns. Because this deals with perception, there is more pressure on the ST to play this up, as they are the vehicles for the character's understanding1. Yes, C:tL is a White Wolf game, and the major game conceit within the nWoD is the morality system: characters are given a Hit-Point like singular number that begins at a stable point and lowers until it drops to 0, at which point your character is essentially 'dead' for playing purposes. As part of the system, you are given a codified chart of 'breaking points' that represent a morality play's slide towards inhumanity. In this chart, you are given a fairly unfair listing of commandments. Of all the splats, C:tL is one of the only games to have as its core understanding that your Clarity can be attacked without it ever having been the action of the player2. Along with the easily-understood collection of "don't be a sick twisted freak" you have elements of 'life changes' that could mean pregnancy, losing a home to fire, or getting promoted at work at the higher points. What does that mean for the game? It means that the game doesn't shroud the ST with deniability when it comes to having lovely things happen to the characters outside of what is understood as 'fair play'3. All of the actions have in-game mechanical consequences, and so it forces STs to leaden every cheap premise-threat of stealing a car or killing an NPC with importance- or else you're just creating more dice-rolling work than is necessary AND doing a lovely job. In play, these breaking points are always a factor to consider: you cannot excuse yourself from consequences merely for adhering to your 'shtick' of Vices- because Clarity represents not a simplistic understanding of 'goodness' as being a set of morals held dear, but rather a strong history of stability (right or wrong!) that represents a clear understanding of the difference between mortal and fae. One special point brought up is that Kidnapping, being the defining tool of a Keeper, is especially heinous. Comparatively, this is one of those actions that is so uncontroversial to most PCs of other games that players hardly understand the difference between games until it becomes apparent. Holding someone against their will, especially when it explicitly involves moving them from 'their' space into another, is a core element of human society and stories that changelings simply do not do. Speaking of the human/changeling divide, another point is that murder of a changeling/fetch is merely a class 5 sin, while killing a human is a class 2. Because to a changeling, people with souls are more important than those without them. This means that even playable characters have a much easier time killing their fellow citizens... but as above, have a hard time justifying imprisonment. Its easier to justify murder than arrest in a Freehold. There are other comparative differences between splats, but without the games in front of me, the only one that feels important to note is that violence is a much 'higher' sin, and psychotropic drugs are called out specifically as being dangerous to your Clarity, as is casting magic or dropping the mask in front of mortals, both at what would be considered fairly 'high' points on the scale (7 and 6) So what mechanical emphasis does exist for Clarity? Dropping down does make you develop 'derangements', some of which are quite devastating to a character when they become personal anchors such as alcohol addiction or paranoia. At the higher levels, you gain a +2 to perception versus a 1 to 3 die penalty while your Clarity begins to slip. Further, at only level 6 or higher can you tell whether there is a supernatural presence in the area- and otherwise a slickly disguised object (that is otherwise not being supernaturally obscured) is impossible to pick out from the changeling's surroundings4. If you want to avoid those penalties, despite them being fairly tame5, the game describes an important element of self-definition and stability as being the tools to regain your Clarity. The self-image of a changeling is something that must always be fought for and defined- as such, the only way to raise your score is by spending XP points. Next time: A discussion of merits 1 - This often means that the impact of having a lower clarity is dependant game-to-game and plot-to-plot as to what exactly it entails. 2 - Ignoring the well-known "paladin falls" morality trick questions. 3 - I will admit that this can lead to expectations in the same shade as olden D&D era wizards being considered 'too weak' to have a goblin swing a sword at them. 4 - Winter court uses this fact to hide from their fellow fae in the mortal world once they empower their Mask with glamour. If you've only ever seen Antler Sparks the fae, you'll miss Mary Smith walking down the street. 5 - Later, there are specific other penalties that having low clarity comes into play; I believe this is the result of the authors/designers feeling like the Madness part of the game was getting ignored in exchange for the Beautiful element.
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Jan 19, 2014 00:58
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Paint yourself with all the colors of the black-dot rainbow The last two entries have been bordering on overwrought1, so I'm going to take the next five pages of changeling-specific merits in a much more breezy trot. The first paragraph goes over the merits that are in the nWoD corebook and how they can be applied to C:tL. Mental merits that would allow you to keep track of the sort of mundane concerns that are below the Fair Folk are attractive. Physical Merits such as Giant can be great ways to detail the changes that occurred over your durance2. Social merits of individual quality such as Striking Looks is, much like Giant, a good touch of detail- but many are hard to justify as having come straight from the thorns. Onto the unique merits, and our first is a doozy: Mantle Another in the long of divergences from the base WOD splat assumptions, Court Mantle is an explicitly magical empowerment as well as a social-in-group rating for the courts; mechanically this means that each dot not only adds to your dicepool for social rolls within your court, it also acts as the core stat for your in-court Contracts as well as your access for them. We'll get into this further within the book, but a high mantle means you're able to purchase the court's contracts of up to one higher than your mantle rating. Stylistically, mantle serves a dual purpose within the freehold: it is both a form of social status separate from day-to-day politics (e.g. a softer status given to a well-respected religious leader) and also the major jockeying point between rivals within the same court. A mantle also gives a player near-infinite descriptive potential to describe just how awesome they are within their Court; a high-mantled courtier can describe winter frost crawling upon glass, invisible to the eye of mortals, that while not mechanically impactful represents how far the game is built towards self-definition. To live by the court ideal in action is meant to reward the changeling with further power. Court Goodwill. This merit is a named merit specific to each different court within your freehold (excluding the courtless), and represents a sort of "soft power" you wield from outside the court. Mechanically, it acts as a +1 to social rolls per every 2 dots, and also works as a qualifier for those Court's contracts, much like a stunted form of Court Mantle, Emphasis on the SOFT power, there; a character can snub a character to avoid the die bonus applying- however this can result in a slipping of your own Mantle if the snub is not somehow justified, as your own court's bonhomie slides. Mantle, just like Court Goodwill, is partly a social construct and partly a mystical one- no court is an island3. At this point I'll bring up the special rules I mentioned back when I was describing the courtless: any changeling may change courts, for any reason, and exchange half, rounded down, of their Court Goodwill dots into Court Mantle dots and vice versa. Changelings are explicitly accepted for traveling within the courts to find themselves and their role within the universe. I'll also go into the mention of the Court Crown- the symbol of leadership that represents that the changeling so laden is the great leader of the Freehold. The method of the Wyrd in choosing its head is as arbitrary as the storyteller makes it: the basic assumption is a common leader emerges amongst a court during its season- but off-season rulers, democratically elected leaders, singular court dominance, or a leader of a less than maximum mantle rating are all acceptable to the Wyrd. Whatever makes for a better game. Of the crowns:
Relatively uninspiring in the whiz-bang department, they also give strong weight to what each king/queen is to be doing- blessing, dueling, discovering, surviving. Harvest is a broken merit; it acts as a basic numberwang bonus to rolls to acquire glamour in a open-ended form. Three of those mentioned- Dreams, Emotion, and Goblin Fruit- use rolls. The fourth, Pledges, does not technically have a roll. Whoops!  Hollows is where we get interesting; these are hidey-holes inside the hedge that you personally own and control through unnamed fae magick & gardening. Mystic castles such as Camelot that don't involve terrible abuses are likely Hollows. Games can be run solely circling around a network of Hollows within the freehold: as the bastions of changeling safety and adhering to no natural law other than the Wyrd, they are the vehicles for creative plotting and self-expression. They don't exist in the real world, so players don't have to always justify their existence further than a simple "I did it", versus what is always a long and drawn-out procedure regarding vampire/werewolf/mage locations. By being unbounded by all but the narrative, the game is more free- pretty cool, huh? As a 'safe space' merit, you have four riders-
New Identity A classic merit that gets stolen by every non-Changeling LARP, it represents the mechanical 'weight' of such an effect that goes beyond a riding "spend resources to ignore issues X, Y, Z"5. A one/two/four merit that is only vaguely discriminated between, roughly a tissue/paper/rock delineation. Can be purchased multiple times. For a game that starts Step 1 as people that have no mortal identity to return to, a very necessary merit. Tokens Solely represents magical artifacts brought with you from Arcadia, as typically Tokens do not require XP to acquire (unless they do because, as is subtextually stated, the ST is making a promise not to steal it then). Rated 1-5, and also can be used as dots to purchase 'trifles' of the more single-use-potion variety. Next time: A race/class to be finished! 1 - In my defense, I really love Changeling 2 - A kid that comes back huge is a great piece of character-building angst for what is normally a straight numberwang stat-bonus. 3 - Yes, to the Wyrd friendship is magic. 4 - At this point its open to interpretation whether a hollow door can be located into another hollow. Arguments about 'nesting' hollows, ugh. 5 - I've heard enough people complain that Resources Should Buy Everything that to stock answer is that it seems fair to ask for XP for something so important and irreplaceable (try coming back from being a lying fake person sometime) when so few things impact your character's bank account such as buying a new set of pearl-handled pistols for every endeavor.
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Feb 9, 2014 23:28
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Heros? Ha! We don't cut ourselves and call it a costume Scars are a major thematic push of Changeling: the Lost. Rather than indulging in the more trite elements of pre-pubescent empowerment, the game emphasises in the first three paragraphs that Arcadia is not kind, you have escaped, and it is up to you to make that important. There is a touch of the less-savory when you compare what is written in the game book versus what is known and expressed about real survivors of abuse. In C:tL, the Durance works according to the cliche1 of your Keeper having 'imprinted' his essence into the changeling becomes part of the story of the game. And to emphasize, C:tL is a game first and foremost; its purpose is to allow the players to enforce freedom to be in itself valuable- and to ensure that it is, they make that very same freedom be something that is a source of conflict and doubt. In this, each changeling that escapes their Keeper is roughly sized within a Seeming that is unique to the player that plays it. Seemings are not 'family', but they are relations. More than just the inherent life-story of having been taken and having escaped, the powers and restrictions of the fae are similar enough to provide a sense of fraternity that each changeling can react to as they will. The Gentry are not predictable factories of rubber-stamped creations. Each changeling that escapes from the thorns is essentially unique in their creation and reaction to their Durance; there is no inherent seeming to each Keeper, but there is a inherent seeming to each Durance- that of the Beast, Darkling, Elemental, Fairest, Ogre, and Wizened. When you know your name, says Autumn, you can know your limitations and your potentials. You can't run away from what happened to you, but you can decide to 'make it your own and to truly grow up'2. Furry fellows, scaly scamps, and feathery folks 1 - And the Wyrd works according to cliches 2 - Direct quote! C:tL is very much a different game from C:tD
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Feb 24, 2014 20:35
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I'll still never forget reading KJA's deep, loving appreciation of the training of storm troopers. The dipshit mooks of the sci fi canon being given the same hallowed tones reserved for the least self-aware WH40k Space Marine fan-fiction.
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Mar 27, 2014 17:54
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Wraith Squadron was legitimately a dark humor book in the style of Dirty Dozen. Its the only book(s) that reads like it was written by Han Solo, while the rest read like they were written by Luke Skywalker.MalcolmSheppard posted:This reminds me of being surprised in WEG Star Wars when stormtroopers kicked our asses because we didn't know they were scaled for the movie characters and not us--new characters who assumed we'd be like the movie characters. Silly us. The WEG game had supplements that also created the alternative 'Rainbow Force' that I still roll my eyes at every time its mentioned.
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Mar 27, 2014 23:34
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So you can design a character that throws X grenades during the first round of combat, and then gets X+Y actions because they threw grenades and lightened their total weight? God, it emulates original Team Fortress combat so well.
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Mar 31, 2014 19:24
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Wapole Languray posted:
This is one of my favorite games of all time and one of the best in the hobby. 
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Apr 17, 2014 05:55
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Kurieg posted:You can really tell where the work went into Tome of Magic. Yes, but I'd really love a F&F write-up of the Binder chapter simply because I remember it all being really cool and evocative and each was WAY more interesting to 'wear' as a character than 99% of all other choices in regular elfgames.
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May 23, 2014 02:09
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Its all instinct and game until someone loses an opposable digit- the Beasts Each Seeming gets its own four-page spread, in a lime-forest-ivy green background and a drop-shadow symbol to go with the scare-font title. This big-budget treatment of what is traditionally just another paragraph in other systems makes the following twenty-four pages into something you revisit for inspiration and guidance, again and again and again. The section starts with a fairy tale to describe the mindset of the Beasts. But it isn't a cliche 'darker version of the Grimm classic' that tries to make the fae 'cool'. By inference and re-framing of the major beats through the game's conceits, the story becomes one of horror one that you'd never take part. Beasts plum the werewolf thing pretty hard- pulled between two worlds, native in neither etc etc. But instead of American South revanchism combined with noble savage orientalism, you're just trying to live your life as the seeming that "had the most difficult road back through the Hedge"1. I feel that the gameplay benefits from the de-emphasis of the alpha-ego culture. Another reason the game differs from Werewolf is that players are allowed to pull from the entire Darwin catalog. Fish to fowl, prey to predator, every snowflake is permitted. Of course it is a good idea to reward players who draw from more mythic origins, but in a game of odd people there isn't much reason to limit them by anything but mechanics. Beasts gain 8-agains with Animal-Ken, and a free spec in a single species (typically the one they most represent, but interesting concepts exist with parasite-host and herd-shepherd dynamics). To further empower the Beasts as social creatures, they may also spend glamour on non-Manipulation social attribute pools2. The curse is significant, if not something you can easily build around, of simply not being good at using skills in the mental part of the game. Beast Doctors and such exist, but you'll be annoyed when it comes up. Then you get a eight-person line-up with the kiths shown. Beast kiths, to make up for the fact that each one is already appealing to the cat-ear crowd, are pretty lame.3 A list Kiths and their blessing:
And the stereotypes list is magical, and you should go out of your way to find them. THE SHADOW KNOWS 1 - Hint: every seeming thinks that it had it the hardest 2 - If it wasn't for the fact that glamour was the single easiest fuel to gather and store, I'd say this special ability is completely underpowered. As is, I'd say its not as impactful unless you have a pass/fail that requires a single roll, such as detection or seduction. 3 - The story of the seeming. Built-in appeal means less mechanical 'love' to otherwise drive nerds to them.
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Jun 18, 2014 02:14
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Creepy crawling in my skin- the Darklings Just as nicely laid out as the previous member of the alphabetically ordered seemings, the Darklings have a vector-drawn maggot with bat wings (in comparison to a neo-pagan horned god of the Beasts). But to be honest, the Darklings are the 10th grade rushed homework of all the seemings. The typesize is almost 150% the size as it was before, and the column inches are occupied by much more art than text.1 And again to be honest, the Darklings are the least iconic seeming. Their unified 'shtick' is one of having dug too deep, and too greedily into that which should not be known. Rather than a unified shape or type, the Darklings are citizens of Tim Burton's halloween town. A pack of liars and scuttlers, they receive a blessing of being able to pump their stealth and subterfuge2, as well as 9-agains for the former and another attribute font for glamour (this time being Wits). But despite being a fairly underwhelming blessing, they have the least impactful curse, depending on the way a storyteller runs. As they are essentially born from the same twee mindspace as vampires, they have a comparable weakness to sunlight; but rather than being damaged, they are rather merely penalized at using magic during "daylight hours"3 and especially in view of the sun. Darkling kiths are, compared to Beasts, much more iconic and unique. Rather than trying to be a catch-all for any single creature on the planet, Darklings are leveraged into being interesting archetypes just by their kith:
Liars and cheats, to a soul. They get better in the later books, but in this book they're underwritten. Rockstars and wilting violets 1 - This is not unheard of for White Wolf to make a structural addition late into the design; in this, I'd call Darklings the Fate Arcana of C:tL 2 - Both of those skills are much more a critical binary than something like Composure, per se. With Wits being a go-to attribute, Darklings do quite well for themselves. 3 - Remember, time is nearly meaningless inside the hedge, soooooooo 4 - Ghosts don't develop as characters, they just move on Quantum Leap style. So you're only using them as a tools within a plot rather than as plot-devices in themselves.
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Jun 20, 2014 06:06
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God bless you for your Alternity F&F review. My teenaged group didn't run with any of the Grid rules either. Or computer hardware statting even, it was always supplied/stolen as-is and then never mentioned again.
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Jul 22, 2014 23:10
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I remember Psionics and mutations being the only good Alternity subsystem because the only long-running game we had was essentially Gamma World crossed with Star Trek.
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Jul 24, 2014 14:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:If it had some central game consequence, that would be neat, but it's just too fiddly to be handy in Spycraft 2.0. Like, I could see doing some weird system where like initiative doubled as some form of HP or resource, but as just something where you punch somebody and they drop 2 initiative is a good example of a significant bookkeeping addition with little actual consquence . The same could be said of the tick system from Exalted 2e... which really is just a phase system, honestly. In theory that kind of thing can be interesting if you're weighing the pros and cons of a low-tick action versus a high-tick action, but in reality it's mostly just charop axis where you drop your speed as low as possible to chip away at your foe's mote pool with cheap pokes. I am always a big fan of importing standard boardgame mutable turn order systems into rpgs. But Spycraft 2.0, as a consequence of being a d20 derivative, is married to the initiative clock and all of the hidden costs that are a given for the sake of tradition. There would be something to extending an escalation die-esque system into the game with the knock back element, to make turn order a valuable element. As is, its just design for the sake of word count.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:13
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Empty your mind, be formless, meaningless like mortal. Now if you put mortal in the suit it becomes the suit. Become mortal, my friend. Elementals! Gosh, this section is nicely laid out. Tight, light text that puts the previous entry to shame. The Elemental icon is a flame-cup-gem-root chimera1, and the opening fiction contrasts the seeming with every other- whereas other seemings are inspired by a role of humanity, Elementals are inspired by a primal force of nature. Of all the Seemings, they are the most un-human. They take on the look of their force, and often come to represent some outsider legend such as the ifrit. The background states that the True Fae went out of their way to take you; this means that in contrast, the other seemings are almost accidental and avoidable. Something big wanted you bad, like a Dorthy's tornado. Except this tornado turned you into the house that landed on the witch instead of granting you a token of ruby red slippers. Every Elemental had it hardest to escape through the thorns because they didn't just have to find their way home- they had to reclaim their humanity as well. The act of decision, to choose to be non-fae rather than acting out your inanimate force of nature for the rest of your existence, is so very human that to define it as a quirk of the Wyrd would pervert it2. The seeming blessing of Elementals is that you basically get extra health levels because you are not human anymore. In exchange, you can't really interact with anyone on a social level anymore; penalizing non-seeming contract pools of Manipulation and some basic skills. Now, I'll mention here that Elemental is pretty much the go-to Seeming for giving to a new roleplayer. By nature, you're a hard-to-kill sperglord with super powerful contracts. Everyone wants to have an Elemental around to talk to because they're just so off-the-wall in their point of view, and the new roleplayer can avoid feeling like they're not "in character" enough3. The 'ideal' Elemental usually closely matches the stereotype of a kung fu master, which is why I supplied the modified Bruce Lee quote for this entry. The contract chain gives them a very powerful combat booster for brawling attacks, and the overall mood of an Elemental can be confused for the orientalist concept of inscrutability. Now, the Elemental kith selections are pretty basic, and cover nearly every pokemon type you can think of. I would say that in the power scale, these choices tend to run on the lower side along with the Beast kiths; like with them, you don't really need a reason to want to be a rock over a flame.
, they'd be passed up more often than not. Thankfully, they don't get ignored as often as other seemings.The REAL rockstars and wilting violets 1 - Not that chimera. We get to it later. 2 - Of course, no writer inspired by Changeling: the Lost would ever do that. 3The number of times I've heard "Your character is a rock- go!" as the sole bit of roleplaying advice is amazing. As well as how many of those characters evolved into fully-detailed and important members of a freehold. 4 - "Does the hedge count as/act like" is basically a fun fill-in-the-blank game to make a storyteller rip their hair out. Depending on your game, this can make Woodbloods specifically amazingly powerful. 5 - Seriously, I would take the Elemental contract suite against everyone else's, even Ogre Gerund fucked around with this message at 03:23 on May 30, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 04:54
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I love the meta-satire of Car Wizards. Of course the 90s pastiche parody RPG would have a supplement, and said supplement would be a cheap reflavoring of the system to hamfistefly jam in a completely unrelated game experience. Anyone who has suffered through the player that bought 5 ranks in Drive feels this pain.
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May 29, 2015 02:14
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Cythereal posted:One of the most fun moments was calling in the IRS to set up a new regional branch headquarters to serve as the lock on a True Fey's prison. They feed on empathy and creativity as I run it, so the IRS is serving as an unwitting seal and first line of defense. This sounds like it was really cool and good for your game, and I like your take on True Fae. But I personally wouldn't have used the IRS, as tax returns are some of the greatest works of fiction in the American canon 
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May 29, 2015 14:33
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I expanded the last entry a bit. Onwards! My beauty may fade, but my impact never will Fairests! Another nicely laid-out section that makes the Darkling entry look more and more feeble as we go on. We're in the back-9 of the Seemings now, and so we get into the three more unique selections. While Beasts cleave close to the Gangrel/Werewolfian and Darklings ape Vampires more often than not, Fairests are a very different experience than what you can usually expect out of a WoD game. The Fairest symbol is a peacock feather. Subtle! The opening fiction-blurb makes it clear that Fairests had the hardest1 escape through the thorns because their Durance was filled with faerie beauty. Cruelty, violence, passion, ecstasy but never love- and especially not true love- are the tools of their Keeper. Emotional holds are chains in the skin digging as deep as physical ones. But the brush of fae beauty never fades in their dreams, and that same beauty is reflected in their Mien. Yes, Fairest are the pretty Seeming. They're even mechanically benefited for taking Striking Looks, one of the classic wastes of merit dots of nWoD2. Their blessing is their ability to fuel Presence, Manipulation, and Persuasion with Glamour3, which makes them one of the more powerful "wizard" Seemings, since Changeling contracts key off of social attributes more often than not. In exchange, their curse is the most tragic, and yet least hampering, of all the seemings: they fail Clarity checks more often. So a player playing a Fairest either has an expiration date, is more hesitant than most to endanger their sanity, or lives on a happy-crazy medium near the gutter of madness. Everyone told you you'd leave a pretty corpse, after all. Now, while Fairest are most often a social seeming, the book also makes pains to state that this doesn't make them the leaders of Changelings either. More than a few water-headed Fairest find themselves grasping for power and holding onto it, while others tend to do "their thing" and stick to it no matter what. Either way, they will be the first to tell you that a Fairest was stolen because their talent was undeniable- no matter what the Wizened have to say about it. The Fairest Kiths tend more toward the powerful side. Just being pretty is a better definition of an Elemental work of art, after all. In fact, some of the most pure combat kiths are in the Fairest section; because flounce like a butterfly, sting like a stab-wound.
Fairests, especially Spring Fairests, are the classic "girlfriend" Seeming. You stick her there, she plays pretty princess, and you save her with your gruff and tough Ogre/Beast/Elemental/Wizened/Darkling. Nothing wrong with it, and it is better to have an unstated expectation than having an expectation of a boys-only club.4 Next: What if Hulk SMASH was the constant, not the climax? 1 - Everyone had it the hardest escaping through the thorns 2 - In compensation of such an act, no Changeling should ever, ever take Direction Sense 3 - In case you didn't notice this is also essentially the Beast Seeming blessing- Changeling is definitely a social-primary game at its heart 4 - Looking at you, the majority of Werewolf
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May 30, 2015 02:53
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"In Faerie, to become hardened to something is often to become that thing."1 The wait is Ogre! Yes, everyone's favorite swole-killbeast-murder male power fantasy is alive and well in this NWoD game. Ogres are the seeming who most often physically overcame their captors and barriers to escape- and most often the seeming that is the most emotionally perverted by the act. The opening fiction is the most explicit in the subtheme of C:tL- that gaining strange wyrd faerie powers does not make you a better person, and often turns you into the monster you were trying to defeat. The symbol of the ogre is a broken door and set of chains- and after all, if you are defined by your chains, you can't ever free yourself from them. You cannot use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. With Ogres, the pithy description of C:tL being a game about abuse survivors for abuse survivors is risen from subtext to text. Ogres were taken by monsters, and became monsters to survive- and what is worse is that they often remember this the most. Its also true that an Ogre that escaped was of the most able- as anyone who is able to both survive their Durance and Escape are those of uncommon talent and ability. So gently caress yeah, super powers! Ogres get a lot of them. They add dice per glamour spent on Strength, Brawl, and Intimidation; they are described in appearance as brutish and cruel-looking, even if they may be uncommonly attractive or diminutive. And stubborn, or at least with a sense of self and purpose that doesn't get swayed as often as others would think. Except for being asked not to act. Yes, the Ogre curse is one that causes a lot of strife and chaos: an Ogre doesn't get 10-agains when rolling with Composure for non-Perception purposes, and are at one less Composure when using it for defense. Which means that they are lovely poker players and the more often to go HAM and ragey because they were called stupid.2 This doesn't make Ogres inherently impossible to play in a social etiquette-driven game; a failed Composure roll in this game doesn't inherently drive you to do anything like it does for games with inherent rage mechanics. C:tL is a game where the characters get emotion-affecting powers from contracts that Changelings use rather than having their own characters have inherent out-of-control emotion mechanics3. The Ogre Kiths are pretty basic in their hunter-killer theme.
Next: We finish the Seemings with some ignorable thing that probably never mattered anyway. 1 - Direct quote from the text! 2 - As is the case with Werewolf and Vampire dynamics, when you can't expect everyone to be on their best behavior, people tend to watch what they say more. The games without the "rage" social dynamic- i.e. Mage- ends up with a lot more petty squabbles and name-calling. 3 - There is a optional rule in Rites of Spring that makes emotional-glamour cause a 'drunkeness' of that emotion affect the changeling; while I like it in games, it is still only an option for STs that like the rule rather than being a part of the game's dynamics. 4 - 9-agains are basically useless unless for some reason you can't get a +1 die to a roll. 5 - Later kiths completely obsolete this because of course they do. Gristlegrinders are the M:tG 3-mana 2/2 creature of C:tL kiths
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Jun 2, 2015 00:43
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I love what Cliomancers look like; my own call would be to have all historical events that cause minor / major charges to have to be from before the adept was born to emphasize the "everything has been discovered already", and have the recharge specifically reset the moment the historical place rotates on the earth across the moon and have the charges expire explicitly when the moon is in the same phase to increase the tie to the Moon as a great Cliomancer focus.
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Jun 9, 2015 00:01
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Count Chocula posted:http://ua.johntynes.com/content.php?id=C0_1_3 - The site won't let you click on links at the moment, but there's everything from snails to vomit to waking people up Adepts. Master of Chains sounds like it could have a grand paradox and already has its sad down-and-outers. The paradox is that despite being in a physically different place and being served by different people unique food, you get the exact same thing no matter where you go. The down-and-outer would be the people with the top-rated Starbucks points, the McRib chaser, the 400lb daily eater. Minor charge is going to a single establishment enough times to "fill up the punch card" or a week. Easy enough, and requires no travel. A significant charge would be going to the same chain, but never the same one twice, for a month. A major charge involves visiting EVERY version of that chain that has ever existed in the world. The taboo is purchasing something at an establishment different than what you have a charge from that provides a similar product to your "chosen" chain. McDonalds precludes most burger joints, Walmart most other stores, etc.
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Jun 13, 2015 04:29
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If it weren't for your work, you'd have died a long time ago. - the Wizened We finish this section of the book with the Wizened Seeming, from pg 120-123. The chapter has the typical tight text, and the symbol for Wizened is a kobby cane and a smith's hammer. This all just makes the Darkling chapter look less by comparison. The opening fiction is one of the first of the alien-abduction references. These are always sprinkled throughout the book, but never really escape the confines of the fiction margins in this edition. Changeling 1e is more than happy to make reference to modern myths but still retreat into the romantic fantasy1. My one personal gripe is that the stereotypical Changeling game has more to do with Gilliam's the Fisher King than with X-Files, despite the existences of Fetches being really good gristle for a body-snatchers plot. The Wizened are more unique than the typical cliche White Wolf anti-hero protagonist- especially as they have been crafted to never be a protagonist at all! Their Durance was not matching wits against a Keeper, but of figuring out how to both do their service to their Keeper yet also find an escape. As a metaphor for abuse- parental or economic- the Wizened are much more aligned with the common man than the rage-o-matic Ogre Seeming. The background for a typical taking of a Wizened is that they were simply in "the wrong place at the wrong time", which always invites the question if any Changeling should ever be blamed for their own Durance.2 Yet the idea of the "mean" in a Victorian sense comes back with a vengeance here. Where it originally meant "average", mean is also spiteful and cruel to their 'betters', and a typical Wizened is not above that. A Wizened is more likely to drive a hard bargain than be free-handed with their work. And never cross a Wizened.3 This "mean-ness" also comes through in that it means you're smaller, too. Sometimes this means weight, or height, but always in social impact. You always avoid notice, and you're never the person that gets the credit in a crowd. Most Wizened, however, convince themselves that they like it that way. All said and done, the Seeming blessing of the Wizened is super kitschy. You spend glamour for 9-agains on Dexterity rolls or adding Wyrd to your dodge for a scene. This is one of the weakest blessings, however their curse is also just as impotent; you don't roll 10-agains with Presence, and are additionally punished on UNTRAINED skills. Other than the differences brought by Kiths, a typical Wizened is largely a regular human with Changeling talents. But lets not ignore the Kiths! Wizened have more Kiths to chose from than most seemings. They are largely very retrograde occupations that don't fit within modern society, and often have older spellings or interpretations. There are no Wizened Computer Programmers4.
Now, here is my soapbox moment. You'll notice that there is definitely more room to grow with Kiths (and even Seemings). And in a game about self-expression, you'll find that most of the time, a player will try to include as many different "colors of crayola" as possible inside their character. Now in Winter Masques you'll find many more ways to expand the box, including cross-kith and dual kith options. But in all honesty, I would encourage you to emphasize as a storyteller and player the purity of a concept first, and a grab-bag of distinct numberwang superpowers second. There is more than enough room for everyone in the swimming pool without having to attach a +1 bonus to the butterfly stroke to it. Next time: The crazy-nuts magic list that is Contracts! 1 - Steampunk Changeling isn't even an ironic parody, its part of the text! 2 - A short answer is no. A longer answer is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck no. 3 - This comes up in a general 'don't invite cruelty' of the Changeling setting, but Wizened-affinity contracts typically have catches that punish people that have welched on a deal. 4 - Or actors or newscasters or professors or tour-guides. Its common to see people backwards-engineer Fairests, but without the Clarity curse, into Wizened. 5 - Just... decide ahead of time if this means that Chatelaines can cast contracts with the bonus. It'll be easier to make the houserule than wait for the eventual argument when someone tries to contest someone else's emotionally-affecting contract.
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Jun 16, 2015 22:57
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The magic system of mage is meant to define all of reality into 10 little silos in 5 (or 6, considering Archmastery) levels of scale. You can't really put that on the same level as a Vampire without making each level of power prohibitive in an XP sense. This is why I like Changeling's Contracts as magic, which is coincidentally my next entry in F&F!
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Jun 17, 2015 17:13
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This agreement to powers to alter reality imparts no liability if said reality-altering ruins your life.1 I'm going to start with just going over pg 124 for the Contracts section. For such a short entry, it helps define what Wyrd magic is, and what it isn't. The long and short of it is that magic is not an answer, but it is a way to ensure that what you were meant to do is done.2. It is emphasized in the text that the magic of the Fae are enigmatic and curious. There is no border or cause for fae magic, no why. Like the nature of old, it just IS. This is why they are called Contracts, as they are agreements and bargains struck between the Fae and a feature of the natural world.3. Each contract is its own country, not to be combined or blended with another contract... except for certain contracts in this book that demand you name a type when you sign on- like a Kith for a Seeming. So having a Contract of X doesn't make it cheaper nor does it combine in any way into a Contract of Y, except for when having a Contract of Helvetica X makes it cheaper to buy Contract of Times New Roman X. And then you have to remember that even though every changeling is enslaved to the Wyrd, you still have to note how close your affinity is with the concept- be it via seeming or court. Descriptively, this involves acting in creative ways to become closer with your connection to the concept. Mechanically, it means you might have to spend more XP than others. Except when buying a different type of contract that does the same thing- you get a single XP per clause-to-gain reduction! Yes, the last paragraph is inherently silly Yet because you are making a contact with some universal concept, this also means that Contracts are not unique: a single changeling (or small group of changelings) having the sole ownership of a contract just doesn't work. All Contracts are with the Fae nation by being struck with the Wyrd, and so any party- True Fae or Changeling- is able to "me too" onto it if they really, really want to4. Like vampiric disciplines, they are divided into a five-step ladder where each rung is called a Clause. Clauses are written in naturalistic language where the entirety of their rules are self-contained. This, of course, leads to arguments about scope and purpose of Wyrd Contracts, and so you should refer back to pg 124 as your guideline, and decide ahead of time whether anything gives you "true invisibility" short of the power that actually gives you invisibility, or what the meaning of "weaponized form of an element" is. In that case, it should be noted that a Contract is not making you fireproof; you are being protected from harm from Fire itself. This anthropomorphizing is a fine distinction, but it is important to understand the meaning behind the magic. You never get powers yourself, you're always getting in on loan to something bigger and better than you. 5 What makes this antriphomorphization work is the Wyrd, and on a mechanical level, this is represented by the effects of clauses being capped by a changeling's Wyrd score (or the Wyrd's cousin, your Mantle rating ) rather than the number of your successes... except this isn't consistent across the gameline, AND you're almost always adding Wyrd/Mantle to your success roll anyway.6And the interest you pay on this loan is Glamour, and sometimes also willpower points. The cost depends on the Clause, but typically the costs rise as you increase your connection to the Contract. Some major contracts cost a butt-ton of Glamour, which entails delaying their use if you don't have the Wyrd score to spend in one turn. OR you can use the Catch, a form of loop-hole that allows you to avoid paying the... Okay, turn back our books to page 8 and check the last line of the chapter. This tiny little legal documentation will tell you if you hold a first or second printing of the book in your hand. The differences between the first and second printing is largely just a case of basic errata, mispelled words and missing minor details for certain contracts. HOWEVER, the difference between the first printing and the second printing in this case will change the basic understanding of Catches. In the first printing, the meeting the requirements of the Catch made the contract free for all costs. In the second edition, having the Catch only reduced the cost of Glamour for the contract to zero. I'm of the opinion that the "all costs" method is generally more valuable and has a nice side-effect of making Healing (via Eternal Spring 3) a degree cheaper than it would normally be. However, I'm kinda okay with players not dying often if they are in a group with a Spring changeling "that has honestly professed their love (either Familial or Romantic) to them." And of course, as this is a White Wolf game, there are also contracts with no (effective) Glamour cost but do have a Willpower cost. Taking the second printing as your gospel is, however, a very fair choice.Next time: A smattering of the everyday magic. 1 The use of formal legalism to describe and understand magic is what makes C:tL better than Dreaming's dislike of the "banal". Read Charles Dickens's Bleak House, and not just because it is one of the best 100 books in the english language, because it establishes that the concept of law is one of the greatest and more terrible works of art humanity has ever created. 2 - My subtextual reading is that making extant plots easier to solve is the reward of spending XP on Contracts, in contrast to other systems where magical powers are plot-defining elements themselves. Magic is a crutch, not a requirement. 3 - And the reason there are no Contracts of the Internet are explained-ish later in Equinox Road 4 - So its like V:tR's bloodline disciplines, except the exact opposite! 5 - This distinction is sometimes lost by the writers, but ultimately chemistry majors need not apply their wankery to the Wyrd. 6 - Either way, C:tL ensures that gaining some umpteenmillion success on an extended action roll either doesn't matter or is impossible. 'sup Mage?
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Jun 17, 2015 22:44
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I remember an Onyx Path developer coming around and calling Mummy "a loving goodbye". And whatever he meant to say by that, it ain't a great game.
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Jun 18, 2015 01:41
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Just Dan Again posted:Holy poo poo this is as true as anything has ever been. Sure, there's some tragic backstory, but within the actual plot of the novels he's got super powers, natural talent, and about a million characters with their own super powers watching out for him every second of every day. His whole air of vulnerability is just an elaborate plot constructed by his various benefactors so that he can learn humility and be even more special. J. K. Rowling read Ender's Game and decided to make her own version that was less sexualized and had more flying broomsticks.
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Jul 2, 2015 20:17
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That which makes you just as special as everyone else here, chump. Universal Contracts- they're cheap and they are (comparatively) everywhere! These are the spooky super powers you can expect to run into in every Freehold, and so it also behooves you to expect to have to plan around them existing within every freehold. Some of this means that certain catches are especially dangerous- such as the giving of a True Name. Now, while I was writing this, I found myself disliking the feeling of writing down the entire body of the rules text as commentary. Instead, I'm going to cruise through the following universal Contracts noting what is interesting and important, leaving the rest for the reader to skim through the text on their own. Unless otherwise mentioned, every Clause of these Contracts uses Wyrd in addition to whatever I mention; you'll note that every universal contract uses an attribute over a skill. and for good reason. Onward! Contracts of Dream Contracts of messing around with other people's dreamscape, without having to do that mucky "getting into people's head" part that true oneiromancers deal with. The clauses are basically extra special cheat codes to the dream world... except for the first clause, which works exclusively in the hedge. Huh. 1Pathfinder Your intelligence tells you a single fact about the hedge based on evidence within line of sight, per success. Gaining an exceptional success means that these facts are not limited by line of sight. But beware, there is a penalty if the the “local hedge”2 is foreign or strange to you! This is otherwise the go-to "I don't want to die in the hedge" clause, especially as it is cheap and easy to pick up. Forging the Dream Using your wits to edit a dream of another in any way as you wish up to the dreamer’s death. A great way to "prime the pump" and create an initial dream-scene for your eventual dive into the subconscious3. I enjoy the evocative nature of the penalties/bonuses for how physically and/or emotionally close you are to the dreamer. Its easier to hack a dream of someone you are close with than create nightmares for strangers. Phantasmal Bastion With no effort and perhaps a catch of holding a 'token of a favor from an enemy or one of their “loved ones or family members”4, you’ll turn into a Dream-Combat superthug. "You wanna be a loving dream fighter?" asks the head promoter of mixed dream-based arts, "Then you better get this loving clause!" Cobblethought An intelligent person can pull any object that exists within a dream for up to four turns... or indefinitely with an exceptional success. While these objects don't get special powers other than perhaps what their dream-like shape would give them, things that can’t exist and things that are incredibly specific are mer penalties rather than a flat no! The existence of a contract like this means that spending your time wasting away on crafting some poo poo is for dumb losers who can't think good. Dreamsteps Using the interconnectedness of all people, an intelligent person can travel up to 10 miles per success on the roll to another dreamer that is close to where you want to go, and an exceptional success means you get exactly where you want! This means that any wall or border in the mortal world is easily breached if you can find a sleeping hobo within ten miles on the other side. Contracts of Hearth A catch-all dice-trickery combat, which each clause allowing you to do a different level of dice-trick for a single Glamour. However the trick to this is the Ban, which acts like a Goblin-Contract-esque Drawback that only triggers if it is used too often. What is even more difficult is that the Contract strongly implies that the cool-down timer will be in effect against any use of the contract, meaning that the Storyteller then has to declare and manage a world-wide cool-down timer for every single character in their world. As Storytellers are not actually computers, this results in the only time that the Ban of Contracts of the Hearth matter are during the presence of the PCs.
Contracts of Mirror The "disguise yourself" contract chain, but also a not-so-secret physical combat contract chain. Riddle Kith You turn your Mein into a different Seeming or Kith of your choice- but as this doesn’t work on the Mask, this means that you're still recognizable by a regular human paparazzi. But against other changelings and while in the hedge, it works as a disguise of anonymity, as a Beast version of your Elemental self is quite different. What I like about this Clause is that the Catch of having dined with a member of the chosen Kith or Seeming within a week means that even a social dinner has a deeper, manipulation subtext. A Riddle Kith-using fugitive hiding out in a hollow with a rolling buffet party is a great little plot-nugget. Skinmask This is a frustrating Clause, as it is purposefully written in a vague and useless way unless you trigger the clause. A single success gives you "a feature" of someone you are attempting to impersonate, but an exceptional success allows you to skip having to roll as long as you pay the costs. Meaning that a person who triggers the catch can spend an effectively infinite amount of time waiting to get an exceptional to get a perfect disguise as someone else, and to disguise as someone else perfectly, you have to have a perfect level of detail while you are using your Clause to get the right collection of features. The catch is that you possess something of your intended disguise. Meaning that the social impact of such a clause results in a few things: this contract doesn't dupe mantles, so you can at least be sure that a Summer person is a Summer person; Changelings automatically identify anyone by the pledge they have with them6, so you have to manage a small or smaller circle of pledges based on your level of trust; you can only hold things that be a no-pants wonder and claim that you own nothing. And in any situation outside of those cases, you shouldn't trust anybody. Transfigure the Flesh A dual Ant-Man / Giant-Man size-muckery Clause. Using Stamina, you gain or reduce your size up to half your successes rounded up. The catch is kinda hilarious in that as long as it is not the right size clothes, it works, whether it is big or small. Popping this in the first round of combat is a fantastic choice and works as an off-brand version of the size-gaining Ogre Kith, and the shrinking aspect is great to get out of unfortunate bindings. Oddbody A super boring combat Clause, you use your strength to get a bunch of minor combat boosts a la the Life Disciple Transmute Form. The only interesting one is getting armor; everything else is easily dupeable with merits either in the corebook or Rites of Spring Chyrsalis A strong enough person can turn yourself into a semi-animate object. That rock in the room? Might actually be WATCHING YOU. Also, a great way to Colony Drop people if your Storyteller lets you get away with turning into a gigantic-sized object that can still wiggle about a little bit. The catch is a social one as well- anything someone else makes for you means that you asking for a favor gets an extra bonus. Contracts of Smoke The sneaky bastard clauses. Wrong Foot One of the rare no-roll clauses. You alter the trail of your passing so that it seems like it is something else... but it is always uniquely *you*. Its kinda dumb, in all honesty, other than freaking the mundanes with bird feet at a murder scene. Nevertread For a Clause that is based on intelligence, you would think that it would do something different than the previous one. Instead of leaving behind a calling card, you leave zero trace… kinda. A contract that depends on a Storyteller call to give either a minor penalty or make it impossible to tracking you based on “the circumstances” is very weak. What makes it worse is that the clause gives you penalties and bonuses to the roll that directly involve “circumstances”... meaning asking the Storyteller to also decide the effect of your roll seems like an extra step of fiddly bullshit. Shadowpatch Spend glamour, get a very decent bonus to Stealth rolls. The catch is that you can’t be touched by natural light in the last day, so its almost built for night-owl types to begin with. Murkblur One of the best save-or-suck Clauses in the game. Your intelligence versus your opponent's resolve to make that person blind. Light-shy You gain "true invisibility" for a few minutes or up to a scene… which isn’t THAT powerful unless you spam the contract with a catch (and you use first printing rules, because this is a Willpower contract) of having made a meaningful lie to someone that you care about, if this lie was revealed. At this point, the subtext of being a closeted Fae with a normal partner becomes text. Next time: The magic of your peoples. 1 - This gets explained in an obtuse way by the time Dancers in Dusk gets released around, six books later. 2 - This is the first reference to the "local hedge" in the book as a concept, and while it is later picked up on for other powers, what makes the "local hedge" local is infuriatingly undefined. I have my own house-rule for this in games I run because it heads off later arguments. 3 - Editing a dream with someone already riding inside the dream gets detailed later in the book. It is, obviously, complicated. 4 - This would be a much sillier and random distinction if it weren't for the catch of third clause of Eternal Spring- aka the healing contract- that depends on honest declarations of romantic or familial love. Thankfully, even if you do have an enemy that gets a token of favor from you or one of those people, Dream Combat is basically easy-mode. 5 - The Clause makes pains to note that you can not use this automatic success to do more than one success's worth of damage, no matter how clever you think you are being. This is because the writers are not catering to pedants. 6 - This actually means that one of the ways you prevent rival enemies of a freehold from killing each other is to bind them in a mutual pledge, as an agent of chaos can otherwise impersonate an 'enemy' and create a false-flag conflict in the freehold.
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Jul 6, 2015 20:36
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inklesspen posted:My archive is now (to the best of my knowledge) completely caught up with all three threads, with two exceptions: at some point Evil Mastermind rebooted the TORG review and I skipped the reboot because I would like EM to tell me what to do about that (merge it with the previous one, delete the previous one, etc), and also I skipped the fanskin writeups for Monsterhearts and Apocalypse World because they seemed to require a lot of back-and-forth conversation posts to make sense. Hey inkless my last ten or so entries in my habitually delayed C:tL review, all in this thread, don't seem to be archived. Not sure why. Also I suggest FATAL & Friends 2016 - A Review-Your-Own-Adventure Thread (Also I wouldn't critique the Eclispe Phase furry book too hard; dragons that live, fly and breathe fire yet die to dudes with swords is just as much of a fetish imo) Gerund fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 21:30
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inklesspen posted:When I click the little question mark to show only your posts in this thread, the most recent post I see from you is in July, subtitled "That which makes you just as special as everyone else here, chump." I think it might be an issue in my phone's browser then, as I see the text in the link but not the table of contents. Will check when I get home, thank you for doing a thankless task.
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Jan 6, 2016 02:27
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I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is giving a high five Seeming Contracts are the WoD-ism of giving access to an entire ladder of superpowers at a discount to every shard of monster available. This, of course, doesn't prevent anyone that really needs a clause or three to truly complete "their concept["super]1[/super] from spending experience points on them. These are the powers that you can be fairly certain to encounter or use constantly- especially as characters are asked to have some number of Clauses from their personal Seeming (or Court) Contracts. Again, you must have first purchased the first clause of a contract to get the second cause later. No dip'n'skip around here! Wizened Seeming - Contracts of Artifice The contract of tinkering. This is where Changeling: The Lost gets its reputation for steampunk gadget gags and being a game more about gear than superpowers.2 Brief Glamour of Repair You fix something, with a catch of it being something that isn't yours. Usually a day, but can be durable if you achieve an exceptional. Touch of the Workman's Wrath You're a gremlin, 'arry! This is where the spiteful Wizened stereotype comes to roost. A single success disables a "device" or vehicle for at minimum of a minute. What counts as a device is best decided before arguments arrive. Blessing of Perfection A really ugly mandatory extended action to add your Wyrd (or half-Wyrd, rounded up) to an item's bonus for a length of time. This is also one of the few Clauses that specifically mention a Goblin Fruit ("Promise Leaves") Unmaker's Destructive Gaze The second Clause, but at a distance and more explicitly of a combat use. Even works on items that have no moving parts such as knives. Take THAT, reality! Tatterdemalion's Workshop Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You basically create a Gilligan's Island palm tree device of whatever you need for a scene or longer. The catch is dead simple, but requiring it to be your own workshop makes it harder to break out of prison with. Darkling Seeming - Contracts of Darkness Tim Burton horror pastiche. A bunch of powers that don't make any sense together and aren't even that useful outside of very specific scenarios. Creeping Dread Reduction of resolve or composure rolls against "fear or intimidation" equal to Wyrd, and can be used in a burst. Catch of "frighten intruders into your your dwelling" is pretty goddamn pointless and/or a mistake. You're either a trapdoor spider or a grumpy loner, choose one. Night's Subtle Distractions A really, really bad obfuscate power3 that depends on "environmental factors". Still written in a less wordy and assumptive manner than your typical copy of obfuscate, so it has that going for it. Balm of Unwakeable Slumber For when you want to rob an entire children's ward of their things / dreams. Also useful for kidnapping but... we don't mention that. Boon of the Scuttling Spider You can move on walls and never trip, even fight on walls... for no stated benefit. A better narrative-control power than actual effect. Touch of the Paralyzing Spider Another save-or-suck Clause, halving most rolls that matter in combat. Next time: Contracts for the Elements and Beasts. 1 - Strange how often someone's character concept involves being King poo poo of Murderhobo Mountain, but so it goes. 2 - An artifact of Changelings not having the same power scale as your typical White Wolf splat, along with "cold iron" being a strong counter to everything. 3 - As in the classic "You aren't actually invisible, you're just ignorable." Do you screw up cameras? People walking in late after you popped the magic? Do people remember what happened afterward? How ignorable are you, really? Another argument waiting to happen if you don't decide it now. Gerund fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Jan 6, 2016 |
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Jan 6, 2016 03:38
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