OSSR: Changeling: the Dreaming

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 4:13 pm

Oh, yeah. Those.

You know, one day we're going to have to do a more indepth review of AW that ignores the base mechanic long enough to mock everything else. Don't get me wrong, quantum bears is in of itself is enough to dismis the rest of the game -- but it seems like the game is an entire jawbreaker of shit, baby wipes, vomit, skunk oil, and Chrono Cross ROM chips. Yet we haven't even penetrated the first shell.

Sakuya Izayoi · Post by **Sakuya Izayoi** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 4:48 pm

Here's some choice quotes from Monsterhearts, an AW spinoff

This isn’t really a game about monsters. It’s a game about
the confusion that arises when your body and your social
world start changing without your permission.
Your story will be more interesting and real if it includes
queer content. It’s another dimension of isolation and
anxiety to explore through your characters. It’s another
way to keep the story feral, by breaking down our own
expectations concerning “normal” (i.e. heterosexual)
relationships and desires. It’s also another way to introduce
messy, unrequited love interests into the picture.

When someone decides to roll to turn you on, you don’t
get to block that move by insisting that you’re straight

When you make a move to turn someone on
(with a character action or with scene description), the
other player doesn’t get to exclaim, “Wait, my character
is straight! There’s no way that’d turn them on.” That’s a
decision that we as players can’t make for our characters.
The dice are going to be the ultimate referees of what is
and isn’t sexy for these characters.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:04 pm

In my copy, there's a picture of a blue elf lady that looks like Koumei's art on page viii.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 5:10 pm

Oh damn, CtD: The game that gave me my internet handle. Around 94 or so I was heavily into it, enough to have cosplayed as a nocker on 95's Carnaval (I'm not even sure if a costume you wear during Carnaval counts as cosplay, but whatever).

This review is gonna be good.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:00 pm

Mask_De_H wrote:In my copy, there's a picture of a blue elf lady that looks like Koumei's art on page viii.

You have the first edition (softcover), Longes has the second edition (hardcover). The original opened with about 16 pages worth of random shit and handwritten notes, the revised version has a story about a kid and his schoolteacher learning to fight dragons together. The latter is much more readable, since you don't have to try to decipher White Wolf's handwriting font.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 8:36 pm

talozin wrote:The latter is much more readable, since you don't have to try to decipher White Wolf's handwriting font.

Is that font better or worse than Da Vinci Forward Regular?

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 9:09 pm

Lord Mistborn wrote:
talozin wrote:The latter is much more readable, since you don't have to try to decipher White Wolf's handwriting font.
Is that font better or worse than Da Vinci Forward Regular?

Significantly. It used some pseudo calligraphy font if memory serves.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 2:52 am

Book Two: Wilder Or: How to play your loli sex goddess.

The rules chapter is six pages and tells you to fuck your rules, man. This is a first edition White Wolf product, so that's good advice. Turns are anywhere from three seconds to three minutes, which is a thing I guess. Seeing as this is a first edition White Wolf product, you've got a shifting TN dicepool system. Better men than I can explain why that's fucked, but going off the examples, there's no real rhyme or reason as to why things are the difficulties they are. You also auto-succeed if your dice pool is equal to your difficulty. There's the standard rules for extended tests, teamwork, yadda yadda yadda. They give you a starting character sheet for a character that gets introduced in the next chapter because why the fuck not? There's still no idea as to what your magic can actually do, because that comes in the next book because fuck you that's why.

Onto character. It's the standard setup where they tell you to pick your character concept first, but character concept involves all the clan and flavor of Steve and junk. You also pick Legacies, which is your Nature/Demeanor from standard WW shit. Some of them are Seelie, or good, some of them are Unseelie and bad. But Bumpkin is on the Seelie list so what the fuck. Your Seemings determine your magic, your Willpower and your Banality and being a child is the master race, maxing out Glamour and minimizing Banality at the expense of Willpower, which you can just buy on the cheap. I already covered the kith, so let's get to the houses: you've got the tinker Dougal, the magical Eiluned, the passionate (read: spotlight hogging) Fiona, the Gwydion who are both known for being wise and having terrible tempers and the goffic Liam. Nobody cares about backgrounds, but you can have either regular humans or special humans.

There are six arts and five Realms, which are your magic things: there's Chicanery and Legerdemain which are practically the same thing, Primal which covers healing, Soothsay which covers luck and prophecy, Sovereign which deals with command and Wayfare which moves you around. Off the jump, Sovereign sounds like the money school, like Dominate/Presence is the Vamp money school. Your Realms are Actor (people), Fae (what it says on the tin), Nature (again, what it says on the tin), Prop (manmade stuff) and Scene (specific places).

They work you through appearance and quirks and shit, then tell you to do one-on-one roleplaying to establish character. Personally, I think you can do that during play as a part of the collaborative storytelling. It's hard enough getting people together for a game, why add extra games on top of that?

The Traits chapter opens with the three types of Fae: Childlings (>= 12), Wilders (13-25) and Grumps (old people). As noted earlier, Childlings are the master race and Wilders are the ones who run shit, so everything works off Peter Pan/Magical Girl logic. But you're still millenia old fae on the other side of things. I get the feeling people played on the low end of the Wilder scale, so you have a society run by children. You have the cake and blowjobs Satyr kith. Combine the two and you get loli sex goddesses and give me a powerful urge to drink. Before I have to think about this too hard, let's move on to the kith.

Boggans are Hobbits meets gnomes. They're good with their hands, good with social interaction and have to help people out.
Eshu are Africans, pretty much. They're big on stories and movement, but are reckless and rash. The Boggans think they're thieves.
Nockers are perfectionist assholes, they work with tech and can make or fix pretty much anything nonliving. They can never get things perfect
Pooka are furry fishmalks. They are good at manipulating people, can turn into animals, and lie like mattresses.
Redcaps are nasty little assholes who like to tear shit up. They're good at intimidation and can eat anything but nobody likes them.
Satyrs are also fishmalks, but they're cake and blowjobs fishmalks. They make people want to fuck and get bonuses to physical skills, but are nasty drunks.
Sidhe are better than you and they know it, they get cap breaking Appearance and can't be made to look bad, but Banality hits them harder
Sluagh looked like they stumbled out of a Tim Burton movie. They can dislocate their joints, get heightened senses, but can't speak louder than a whisper.
Trolls are your faerie Klingons; big on honor and strength and shit. They get cap breaking Strength, can't botch Athletics or Alertness rolls and get two dice to Willpower rolls. If you break an oath, you lose your Strength bonus.

Flipping through the other stuff, I notice that your MC can just give you Banality if you're being too mundane, which is to be expected. You can get Banality for a lot of shit, including using your Banality to resist a cantrip, fail to overcome a mortal's Banality, killing another Kithain and their aspect both net you points. If your Banality is more than your Glamour by the end of a story, it's game over.

Just the existence of a Childling Satyr using their fuckmusic power is all sorts of wrong, and I can't really be fucked to care about most of the other fae. Trolls are kind of cool though.

Next time: Fucking Faerie Magic, How Does It Work?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 4:50 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What other games aside from Werewolf, Exalted, and Changeling do you get a huge mechanical penalty for not being sufficiently creepy at the table?

How could you forget Wraithu?

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:54 am

fectin wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:What other games aside from Werewolf, Exalted, and Changeling do you get a huge mechanical penalty for not being sufficiently creepy at the table?
How could you forget Wraithu?

Wraith, when played properly, is pretty much an exercise in mental self-abuse in a group setting.

Don't get me wrong, the ideas at work are actually pretty cool, but holy jesus every "succeessful" wraith game I've ever played in (only a couple) basically lasted 1-2 sessions, then everyone got super depressed and decided to play D&D or something lighter. Like Clanbook Baali and bug/vagina/satan fucking.

Also I forgot about redcaps. They literally have the ability to intimidate everything. "I intimidate that chair" *rolls* "Yes, it is actually intimidated". In theory you could intimidate a raging werewolf. It might be hard, and the consequences would probably suck, but you could do it.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:26 am

TheFlatline wrote:Also I forgot about redcaps. They literally have the ability to intimidate everything. "I intimidate that chair" *rolls* "Yes, it is actually intimidated". In theory you could intimidate a raging werewolf. It might be hard, and the consequences would probably suck, but you could do it.

Only while in the (Deep?) Dreaming. In the Dreaming everyone gets crazy powers. Pooka shapeshift into elder dragons, Sidhe get +8 Appearance and you can't harm them or go against their orders without spending willpower, etc.

Just the existence of a Childling Satyr using their fuckmusic power is all sorts of wrong, and I can't really be fucked to care about most of the other fae.

Both you and Frank are full of shit. Aphrodisia is an Art Mer get, introduced in the splatbook no one cares about. It's not related to Satyrs in any way. Satyr splatbook has a small paragraph on childlings, and you are supposed to have things like first love and first kiss. Sex is usually not an option for the ten year olds, so if you use your magic to have sex, THEN IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN CHOICE AND STOP BLAMING THE GAME FOR IT.

There are six arts and five Realms, which are your magic things: there's Chicanery and Legerdemain which are practically the same thing, Primal which covers healing, Soothsay which covers luck and prophecy, Sovereign which deals with command and Wayfare which moves you around. Off the jump, Sovereign sounds like the money school, like Dominate/Presence is the Vamp money school. Your Realms are Actor (people), Fae (what it says on the tin), Nature (again, what it says on the tin), Prop (manmade stuff) and Scene (specific places).

Scene expands the area of effect of other realms. So Actor - one person. Actor + Scene - the whole bar. You also forgot the Time realm, which adds an activation timer to your cantrips.

Primal has one healing spell. It's also a shapeshifting and direct damage Art. Legerdemain is telekinesis, Chicanery is illusions.
Sovereign is good, but not as good as Dominate. 1) You have to do bunks before it, and that takes time and gets you stabbed in the face. 2) People can resist it with banality.
The real winner is Wayfare and its multiple actions power. As well as no-save teleportation power at the top. And all this stacks with Chronos Art of the Sidhe, to give you 6-10 actions per turn for a short period of time.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 7:11 am

TheFlatline wrote:
fectin wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:What other games aside from Werewolf, Exalted, and Changeling do you get a huge mechanical penalty for not being sufficiently creepy at the table?
How could you forget Wraithu?
Wraith, when played properly, is pretty much an exercise in mental self-abuse in a group setting.

Not Wraith, or Wraithu, even, Wraeththu, the game of glamrock hermaphrodite twink orgies.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 7:49 am

Longes wrote: Sex is usually not an option for the ten year olds, so if you use your magic to have sex, THEN IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN CHOICE AND STOP BLAMING THE GAME FOR IT.

No. This is a bullshit defense and I'm actually creeped out that you'd try to make it.

Look, I understand how if you were making a first draft of a game about fairies that while you're brainstorming you'd have the Satyrs/Nymphs/Apsara "fairies as sex metaphor" and the Peter Pan/Goblin King/Cottingley "fairies as childhood metaphor" on the white board at the same time. But those do not go in the same story, and they sure as damn fuck don't belong in the same character. If you find that you are discussing childhood and sexuality at the same time, you need to go back to the drawing board and rethink your design principles. If you actually go to print with that shit, you need to be put on a potential sex offender roster and rethink your life choices.

Loli Sex Goddess should not be an emergent choice from basic chargen options. We aren't talking about an open ended game like HERO where you can technically make anything and there's nothing theoretically stopping you from making something vile. We're talking about a game where one choice from colum A and one choice from column B makes you a prepubescent child with sex powers. That is not OK.

And it's not even an obscure or disincentivized option - it's mechanically one of the better things to be. And that's disgusting. Changeling is not actually better than FATAL. At least FATAL is openly an overlong dead baby joke. Changeling and its fans slaps 10 year old sex masters on the table and both it and its fans try to tell you that's normal. It's not normal. It's not OK. And people who defend it are extremely creepy.

Look, I'll come out and unironically defend peoples' rights to draw and masturbate to hentai manga with underage girls having surprise sex with tentacle monsters. Real people aren't being hurt or exploited, and the stuff is supposed to be clearly marked as being for adults to have fap fantasies and blah blah blah. Changeling isn't marked. It's just a roleplaying game, which people unironically play with people of different ages. It's transgressive in a way that people masturbating in their own corner of the internet isn't.

-Username17

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 9:48 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Longes wrote: Sex is usually not an option for the ten year olds, so if you use your magic to have sex, THEN IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN CHOICE AND STOP BLAMING THE GAME FOR IT.
No. This is a bullshit defense and I'm actually creeped out that you'd try to make it.

Look, I understand how if you were making a first draft of a game about fairies that while you're brainstorming you'd have the Satyrs/Nymphs/Apsara "fairies as sex metaphor" and the Peter Pan/Goblin King/Cottingley "fairies as childhood metaphor" on the white board at the same time. But those do not go in the same story, and they sure as damn fuck don't belong in the same character. If you find that you are discussing childhood and sexuality at the same time, you need to go back to the drawing board and rethink your design principles. If you actually go to print with that shit, you need to be put on a potential sex offender roster and rethink your life choices.

Loli Sex Goddess should not be an emergent choice from basic chargen options. We aren't talking about an open ended game like HERO where you can technically make anything and there's nothing theoretically stopping you from making something vile. We're talking about a game where one choice from colum A and one choice from column B makes you a prepubescent child with sex powers. That is not OK.

And it's not even an obscure or disincentivized option - it's mechanically one of the better things to be. And that's disgusting. Changeling is not actually better than FATAL. At least FATAL is openly an overlong dead baby joke. Changeling and its fans slaps 10 year old sex masters on the table and both it and its fans try to tell you that's normal. It's not normal. It's not OK. And people who defend it are extremely creepy.

Look, I'll come out and unironically defend peoples' rights to draw and masturbate to hentai manga with underage girls having surprise sex with tentacle monsters. Real people aren't being hurt or exploited, and the stuff is supposed to be clearly marked as being for adults to have fap fantasies and blah blah blah. Changeling isn't marked. It's just a roleplaying game, which people unironically play with people of different ages. It's transgressive in a way that people masturbating in their own corner of the internet isn't.

-Username17

There is no mechanical incentive for being a loli sex goddess. The Aphrodisia is a mermaid-exclusive power from the splatbook. The satyrs are in the core and don't have anything to do with it. Satyrs aren't forced to have sex in any way - drunkards and gluttons are perfectly valid. Changeling does encourage you to play a child. However, it doesn't encourage you to have sex powers or have sex as a child. Does Vampire encourage pedophilia because you can be Toreador with Child flaw?

EDIT: Just for reference, here's the flaw Satyrs have:

Passion's Curse — Passion has its unpleasant moments as well. Satyrs are prone to wild mood swings, especially when they're drunk. With the slightest of provocation, they may explode into a torrent of fury or a fit of weeping. Furthermore, on the rare occasions when they try to resist temptation, the difficulties for all Willpower rolls are increased by two.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 4:31 pm

The fuckmusic power is in the core book mate, Loli Sex Goddess is a supported archetype. Satyrs can inspire great lust in anyone who hears their music as one of their basic powers. Just having hedonistic children that others find alluring is kinda weird. See also: the Pooka's manipulation powers and Childling moe baked in to interactions. Also, if there is a mermaid exclusive fuck power, then your Loli Sex Goddess is a mermaid instead of a satyr and the option is still on the table. That is not cool.

There's a fundamental disconnect between this being a light and fluffy game about faeries and your standard White Wolf product. It doesn't know what it wants to be and that leads to things like Loli Sex Goddess. You're supposed to be this dual natured ancient Fae and a ten year old and that is categorically a trick used to make wanting to fuck a little girl okay in hentai. It's not as blatant as the dog fucking in Werewolf, but it is there.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:25 pm

Mask_De_H wrote:The fuckmusic power is in the core book mate, Loli Sex Goddess is a supported archetype. Satyrs can inspire great lust in anyone who hears their music as one of their basic powers.

Gift of Pan — Dionysian revelry is high ritual to these fae. Singing, music and dance can be used to stir fae and mortals alike to the height of carnal passion. Anyone who fails a Willpower roll (difficulty 7 ) is swept away by hidden desires and the activities of the evening.
After an hour or two, the Banality of the those in the area slowly drops. Everyone involved, mortal or not, has his permanent Banality lowered by one for as long as the satyrs continue to perform. Tragos can combine their efforts to lower Banality even further. Each satyr fueling the fire can lower the revelers' temporary Banality by one more, to a minimum of 2. These effects last only for as long as the satyrs continue to entertain. Lost Banality returns at a rate of one point per hour.

"hidden desires and the activities of the evening" is open for interpretation.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:29 pm

Longes wrote:"hidden desires and the activities of the evening" is open for interpretation.

Do you know what isn't?

Singing, music and dance can be used to stir fae and mortals alike to the height of carnal passion. Anyone who fails a Willpower roll (difficulty 7 ) is swept away by hidden desires and the activities of the evening.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:46 pm

virgil wrote:
Longes wrote:"hidden desires and the activities of the evening" is open for interpretation.
Do you know what isn't?
Singing, music and dance can be used to stir fae and mortals alike to the height of carnal passion. Anyone who fails a Willpower roll (difficulty 7 ) is swept away by hidden desires and the activities of the evening.

dictionary on the internet wrote:a : relating to or given to crude bodily pleasures and appetites
b : marked by sexuality <carnal love>

So yes, your music can make people want to have sex, it can also make people want to eat all those delicious cookies, drink all the (ginger) ale, smoke all the weed, and dance until their legs bleed. Depending on who listens.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 5:58 pm

Dude, it takes quite a bit of creepy naivety to blame the reader for inferring sexuality here. This is a satyr power that explicitly evokes "carnal passion", "hidden desires", and "nocturnal activities."

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:01 pm

No. That is not what carnal passion means you disingenuous fuckwit. "Carnal Passion" is an idiom, it means exactly one thing, shut your fucking mouth.

The word "carnal" can appear as an adjective in front of all kinds of things and mean all kinds of things. But if it comes in front of the word "passion," it is specifically and exclusively the second meaning: where it's about sexuality. That is what it means, and it doesn't mean other things.

Here, let me google that for you [NSFW].

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 7:57 pm

Longes wrote: Sex is usually not an option for the ten year olds, so if you use your magic to have sex, THEN IT'S YOUR OWN DAMN CHOICE AND STOP BLAMING THE GAME FOR IT.

Here's the thing: the informal social contract people play under is informed by the setting they've agreed to play. Nobody forces any one player to include wizards in D&D, but the option is expressly on the table and so the social contract needs to account for players or gms including wizards. And so it is with Changeling and magical jail bait. Nobody needs to play uninhibited children but it's a listed option and you might run into one in the world, which means that Changeling touches territory that most gamers find so squicky that they don't even want to talk about it long enough to explicitly forbid it.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:56 pm

Yeah, you don't have to fuck a dog or be a Loli Sex Goddess or do the myriad horrible things you can do in Vampire, but they're a part of the setting. They're vile parts of the setting, but that's White Wolf for you.

In other news, how am I doing on this OSSR? Should I go into more detail, find pictures, what?

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:49 pm

Mask_De_H wrote:In other news, how am I doing on this OSSR? Should I go into more detail, find pictures, what?

Sure, pictures of the aforementioned page 8. You can't just tease us like that.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 12:52 am

I wasn't aware that carnal had any kind of non-sexual meaning. It's the kind of word that, in common use, only ever means sex. Similar to how a modern work can't describe something as "gay" and expect people to know they mean cheerful and lively.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 3:13 am

Prak_Anima wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:
fectin wrote: How could you forget Wraithu?
Wraith, when played properly, is pretty much an exercise in mental self-abuse in a group setting.
Not Wraith, or Wraithu, even, Wraeththu, the game of glamrock hermaphrodite twink orgies.

What in the actual fuck did I just read?