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Five Eyes posted:It would be "horrifying" to be caught in a landslide and gradually crushed to death by a heavy rock, but that doesn't make a landslide a good antagonist. Considering what is written in Equinox Road about Changlings that reach Wyrd 10, it would be reductive and wrong to continue calling True Fae as thoughtless as a landslide.
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Dec 10, 2018 06:06
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Five Eyes posted:None of that has anything to do with biographies and detailed motivations, and I'm not sure how you arrived there? Equinox proposes Gentry that aren't abusers so much as abuse engines. You can speak about their effects in the passive voice. There's a place for that in fiction, but I think it's better served for, say, the God-Machine, where the senseless impersonality serves the metaphor of relentless, grinding institutions. I don't see how Changeling is improved by saying its chief antagonists are semi-autonomous abuse drones executing a script. And I don't think the whole "aren't abusers so much as abuse engines" thing really lands, because for the purposes of the game narrative, that's the only way it works: They're the initial abusers in a cycle (unless they're sufficiently-Wyrded-up changelings who turned into Gentry), so the explanation of why they're abusing is because, that's what they do. Short of a book explicitly saying "yeah there were True Gentry at one point, but every one you'll ever interact with is a formerly-Changeling Gentry" I don't really think you're going to come up with an explanation that fits the metaphor better, and certainly not one that stands up to a book's worth of scrutiny.
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Dec 10, 2018 06:12
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I had no idea what was happening the first time I got roped into a LARP because I had only just gotten into RPGs fairly recently and I was like 13 or something being told by older kids I was an NPC in the "Grand Masquerade" that took up the entire latter half of the monthly School RPG Club Night. I drank an entire 24-pack of Coke in an hour on a dare and vomited an oil slick in the front yard. No one bothered to ask me about whatever the gently caress was on my cue cards. I do remember a handful of juniors and seniors running all around the cul-de-sac yelling poo poo about powers they were using. None of it had anything to do with all the cool lore and NPCs in the books I was reading so I thought it was dumb as hell. Some of those teenagers grew up to be Adult LARPers, among them two "regular" sex pests and at least one pedophile. But that was the graduating class that also had a remarkable number of murderers and non-LARPing pedos in it. The only other time I went to a LARP was like 10 years later. Requiem had just come out and my friend met this cool out-of-town lady who was finishing her law degree at the local college who wanted to find a LARP, which was in another town nearby. She drove both times we went, and she hit on both of us the whole time. She was also really insistent that she could purr like a cat when she's happy, no, like an actual cat, and then she'd make the sort of noise a normal-rear end human makes if they try to imitate a cat purring. At the actual LARP, in a common college cafeteria area, the first time I took three hours to make my character because I wanted to actually know the goddamn rules, with almost no guidance on either rules or the specific social situation of the local scene, and I barely saw anyone so I thought they were off playing somewhere else. The second time, after our characters were finished, my friend and I were mostly just hanging out in the cafeteria area again because the entire LARP scene in that city tended to separate into cliques and then go off into separate rooms to monologue at each other. I felt like a loving idiot trying to knock on the doors of private dining and storage rooms in a college cafeteria going "Hi I'm a brand new Mekhet Ordo Dracul who, despite having various backgrounds implied by my Merits, has no loving clue what is going on or even why I'm in this lovely little Midwestern town." I declined to go back; I think my friend went again two or three more times. Then the lady who seemed to actually enjoy going disappeared off the face of the Earth. I guess she went to get her law degree somewhere else. I hope people who like them have good LARP experiences, but I think at this point I'm constitutionally incapable of taking them seriously. well thats my larp story send tweet
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Dec 10, 2018 06:15
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I think the script drives home the point that the Gentry don't care about you in a very different, very viscerally unpleasant way from the God-Machine. The G-M's got this weird long-con Everything Happens For A Reason, Maybe thing going on, while the Gentry are reading from a script and expecting you to know the lines too, even though you just got yanked off the street and told you're part of the cast now. They don't care whether or not you're up for being a part of the production, but by god, you will hit your loving marks and say your lines or there will be hell to pay. Now I'm imagining the True Fae as Joan Crawford. I don't know if I'm delighted or horrified by this.
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Dec 10, 2018 06:24
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Five Eyes posted:None of that has anything to do with biographies and detailed motivations, and I'm not sure how you arrived there? Equinox proposes Gentry that aren't abusers so much as abuse engines. You can speak about their effects in the passive voice. There's a place for that in fiction, but I think it's better served for, say, the God-Machine, where the senseless impersonality serves the metaphor of relentless, grinding institutions. I don't see how Changeling is improved by saying its chief antagonists are semi-autonomous abuse drones executing a script. Neither Equinox Road nor Changeling 2E suggest that True Fae are "semi-autonomous abuse drones executing a script" or that you can "speak about their effects in the passive voice." I don't know where you got that idea. "Equinox Road, pg. 82 posted:The Kindly Ones. The Others. The Old Gods. The Gentry. The True Fae. Such names don’t truly describe the powers of Arcadia, but don’t dismiss the power of names themselves. A True Fae’s name is a promise made to Arcadia. I vow to exist, she says, challenging the Wyrd to make it so. Birth is the hardest, mightiest oath of all. It screams at Arcadia, setting raw will against absolute, passionate chaos. "Equinox Road, pg. 83 posted:A Keeper’s name is his promise to be a will that binds the Wyrd, but existence is more than ambition. True Fae not only have wills and motivations, their will precedes everything else about them. Being stories doesn't prevent them from being subjects rather than objects, and in fact, the desperate drive to be a subject rather than an object is exactly what drives them. "Changeling: The Lost 2E Core, pg. 267 posted:A True Fae is not a person, but a Name wrapped in a tapestry of vows and deals. Deep in the mists of forgotten time, the Fae bargained with Arcadia itself, declaring that they would exist — that they would own the land entire and claim it as a vessel for their Wyrd, dreams, and facets, in exchange for a web of arcane rules so complex no one of them could ever know them all. At their core, the Fae are ravenous beings that must possess. They want, and in their all-consuming wanting they strike bargains to sate their desires, whether for slaves, kingdoms, secrets, or spoils. Changelings who live and labor among them usually see only the tip of the Gentry iceberg, but those brave and foolish enough to delve more fully into Faerie’s mysteries catch a glimpse of the truth: A True Fae’s Name is its heart and its undoing, and all the vast kingdoms and beauteous treasures with which it surrounds itself are made of promises. And promises can be broken. I'm also not seeing the "2E moved away from True Fae as living stories" thing at all. CtL 2E explicitly uses theater as a metaphor for how an Arcadian realm works (pg. 268). The behavior of a True Fae in Arcadia is still bounded by the "legend of its identity" (pg. 270). Stories held dear in human hearts can open the way to Arcadia (pg. 199) Huntsmen are described as having "no story of their own" (pg. 264) as a consequence of their hearts being stolen by True Fae. Some Changelings speculate that the reason iron is the bane of the Gentry is because the idea of Iron has mythic significance in connection to the industrial revolution and the resulting "deathblow to the age of superstitions and legends" which "makes it anathema to creatures of dream and magic." (pg. 102) CtL 2E is even more explicit that a True Fae is not a person (see CtL 2E pg. 267 vs. Equinox Road pg. 83) with ER saying that they can be "person, place, or thing" and "a dozen minds at once" and CtL 2E putting slightly more emphasis on Contracts as the "how" of a True Fae's existence, but per the rules on page 269, the stuff about them being multiple people, places, things, or even abstractions/feelings is all still true -- the main difference being that 2E is slightly more concrete and basically limits them to one Title = one NPC character sheet. I don't think either book comes right out and literally says the words "living stories"; that's an interpretation based on how they're presented, and always has been. It's just a very easy interpretation given what we're told about Names and Titles. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 06:25
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Actually I guess it might be my fault given how I described The Year of Plague -- who, I should emphasize, generally chooses not to manifest as a character or person, but can if it decides to. Being a person is a secondary and optional part of being "a collection of people, places, things, and events that follow fairy tale logic and have to make good on their promises, and are ultimately defined by their Titles and Name."
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Dec 10, 2018 06:31
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You're going to have to unpack that for me, Gerund. Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:And I don't think the whole "aren't abusers so much as abuse engines" thing really lands, because for the purposes of the game narrative, that's the only way it works: They're the initial abusers in a cycle (unless they're sufficiently-Wyrded-up changelings who turned into Gentry), so the explanation of why they're abusing is because, that's what they do. Well, let me cut the Gordian Knot here: What if, when a Keeper kidnaps someone as, say, a prospective bride to lock away in durance vile, or to hunt them across the misty moors, it is because the Gentry, y'know, wants a bride, or wants to hunt the most dangerous game, and also they are an abusive rear end in a top hat who forces their wants on others? And not because that the Gentry is affecting the pose of a Bluebeard or a Huntsman out of existential necessity? Tuxedo posted while I was forming this, I'll try and give you a proper separate response.
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Dec 10, 2018 06:38
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I like to think of it this way: So the Name, itself, is pretty close to being a person. When a True Fae is stripped of all its titles and exiled, it either turns into something a lot like a Changeling, or depending on exactly how it was expelled, something like a regular human being. (And similarly, in 1E a Wyrd 10 Changeling is on their way to becoming a True Fae, and in 2E it's more ambiguous, but there's still a growing connection to Arcadia as your power increases -- Wyrd 10 Changelings "dream often of Arcadia" and remember being there so clearly it's almost like they're experiencing it in the moment.) The thing is that the Name exists in a web of interconnected Titles and associated Contracts and promises which define it, and most of the "existence" of the True Fae is bound up in those things. The Name is the cornerstone, but not the whole story. If we stick with the abuse / abuser metaphor, it's like if instead of the antagonist being "Joe who beats his wife," the antagonist is still Joe, but also all of Joe's ugly justifications, all his buddies who turn a blind eye or egg him on, the house he and his wife live in, the neighbor who lends a sympathetic ear to the wife but never intervenes, Joe's exaggerated self-image, and even the insecurities he tries to deny to himself -- and they've all taken on a horrifying life of their own. Joe is still in there doing his thing, and his desires and motivations are still among its desires and motivations, but since in the Chronicles of Darkness the whole complex entity is something literal, alien, and supernatural, it probably wants more and stranger things than just what Joe wants. e: So to explicitly answer your question, it's both. One of the Titles, most likely, wants the bride for all the usual reasons. The Title is not the whole True Fae, though; the True Fae is all the Titles plus the Name, and it wants to exist, which is furthered by the Title having a bride. The Titles can want contradictory things and even fight among themselves, although it's all kind of hollow unless they have someone else to inject a little originality into the drama. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 06:45
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Or put another way: Joe just wants to feel big and in charge. The True Fae wants the wife to try to leave Joe, only to fail and stumble and infuriate him every time. It wants her to go crying to the neighbor, who will pat her on the back and subtly imply that as bad as this is, she just has to live with it. It wants their house to be so dreary and enervating and maze-like that when she finally works up the courage to leave him, she's changed her mind by the time she actually makes it to the door. And yeah, it wants that in order to survive, but if that doesn't make your skin crawl I don't know what would.
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Dec 10, 2018 07:07
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Neither Equinox Road nor Changeling 2E suggest that True Fae are "semi-autonomous abuse drones executing a script" or that you can "speak about their effects in the passive voice." I don't know where you got that idea. I arrive there because I have trouble seeing a person in the Gentry as ER describes them. In an Actor, sure, I suppose, but if the Actor is merely playing a scripted part...? Every Actor, Prop, and so on is an affectation taken in service of dramatic conflict, but the Gentry doesn't care about the outcome of the conflict, nor any of its constituent parts. Dramatic conflict is just metabolic action. It's undertaking these poses because the alternative is nonexistence. If an Actor engages in a callous campaign of abuse or treachery against a changeling, that's the Gentry just enacting one of its Titles. The Gentry doesn't care about the outcome of these actions - indeed, relishes twists and resentful off-script action - because the drama itself is food. A Title holds its own dramaturgical obligations, but rules don't make the pose any less artificial. The Title of "The Wifebeater" expresses itself in an Actor, "Joe", and acts as you'd expect, but there's no "Joe" to have insecurities outside of the feigned re-enactment. Every action "Joe" takes is in service of playing its role - as the name suggests, it's acting. Joe abuses as an existential obligation of its role-Title-Contract; when Joe reforms or repents, it is merely playing out a different archetype within that Title. Joe can't do anything with sincerity, because "Joe" is a rules-bound limb of a narratological jellyfish that uses "Joe" to shovel drama into its mouth. I feel this leads us to a place where, in Faerie, one Is Abused, but there is no Abuser. No decisions are made that lead to the outcome; it's just how Gentry are. Any Gentry that doesn't, isn't. To riff on your last example: The Gentry doesn't care if the wife successfully leaves or overcomes Joe. It starves if the wife refuses the drama. Resentment, improv, and rebellion are also nourishment - an empowered wife that defies Joe and burns the neighborhood to ash is fine, too. I would find your example more unsettling than what I think we get, because it would mean that the Gentry wants something specific out of its narratives, and not that it just...narrates, because if it does not narrate it does not exist.
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Dec 10, 2018 07:26
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What Gentry desire isn't totally value-neutral, though; they want to possess and dominate. They're willing to lose things on occasion, but it's because that makes those things even more desirable. e: It plans on getting them back; it permits this because it wants them to hope, escape, enjoy life, and then suffer the despair of being recaptured even more than it wants them dead-eyed and pliable. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 07:30
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I think part of the problem might be that there's no explicit irrational tension between what's seen as the "core" motivation of the Name (to exist) and its actions, but: a) These are arch supernatural antagonists. They tend to be reductive. b) It's not explicitly excluded. If just any old sort of drama could sustain them—and in many cases it appears it would be "good enough"—they could do so in nearly 100% implacably correct ways at all times with no risk to themselves if they were Rational Actors. But, like humans, they're not Rational Actors, not even when it comes to stuff that's vital to their continued existence. They do stuff that endangers their "foodstuff" or even their immediate survival all the goddamn time. That's at least in part why there are so many changeling running around. I'm not saying "b" exists within the text, and I understand that its lack or the lack of something like it might be unsatisfying, but I don't think it's a tremendous stretch either.
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Dec 10, 2018 07:39
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You have to be careful not to fall into the Exalted 2E trap of describing every sufficiently powerful NPC as a (possibly malfunctioning) machine. One of the Gentry's responsible for its acts even though those acts are an emergent property of a cloud of fairy dust rather than a pile of neurons.
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Dec 10, 2018 07:40
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It's very clear that the Gentry don't want their abductees to ever get out, though. Maybe, occasionally, a Title is screwy enough or oblique enough that its personal sense of drama or even its artificial role-level desires (say, to dominate another Title, or to serve a certain role) overcome the basic desire to exist and feed, and that Title will help a Changeling escape. Maybe occasionally a Changeling escaping is valuable long-term, because when they come back that's worth more. But Changelings escaping explicitly harms the Gentry, and escaping dramatically and burning the place down when you go does even more damage. Refusal to engage with the drama doesn't actually do as much to them as breaking free does, because you've removed that source of real independent action that they want. They might orchestrate a near-escape, or a particularly dramatic scene, but in the end their fundamental use of Changelings is to feed and reproduce. There is a hypothetical Gentry that isn't super abusive - they could invite humans and then allow them to leave when the humans want to, and only humans who chose to stay so long they stopped being human of their own will would become Changelings. But the Gentry don't see humans as mattering or important at all, and so they don't establish that kind of symbiosis - they abduct and digest, such that Changelings eventually get reduced to nothing. Digested, in other words. (All of which goes without mentioning that the True Fae also fight with each other, as well.) The True Fae want to engage with humans, but the way they do so is abuse and abduction. By doing so, they empower themselves in certain abstruse ways, and also they have toys and trophies to take place in their decadent and fundamentally empty courts. That's not a mindless narratological jellyfish, that's the Gentleman with the Thistle-Down Hair from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel. e: Fundamental to the Titles and Names of the True Fae, from the section Tuxedo quoted, is that these are the titles and powers of nobility. There are no Gentry who are not, well, gentry. So they don't just make themselves into stories, but into stories of power and domination over their lessers, and so any Changeling escaping must necessarily undermine their Titles. No Keeper wants Changelings to escape permanently because that goes against the entire logic of "We will exist, and rule Arcadia entire by our strange laws." You can make some assumptions about their underlying will from that (and their will is explicitly prior to anything else). Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 07:42
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You fuckers are making me want to play Changeling and I've never even cracked the book
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Dec 10, 2018 07:47
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Unoriginal Name posted:You fuckers are making me want to play Changeling and I've never even cracked the book I've only read bits and pieces and a bunch of discussion, though I'm interested in playing it someday. I just really really like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel and that's basically 'two mages get increasingly caught up in proving each other wrong, while in the background a True Fae of atrocious power watches and steals people he finds interesting.' There's also a True Fae antagonist in one of the Mage books, I think the Astral Realms 1e book, who's camped out in a Banisher's soul in order to watch the festivities and enjoy/feed off of screwing with the poor guy, who also might potentially stop being a Banisher if the Gentry can be kicked out. No idea if that contradicts any Changeling lore, but it's clear that a Title like that behaves in every way like a person, except that they're a deeply cruel faerie.
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Dec 10, 2018 07:52
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I like to think of it this way: So what you're saying is that being a True Fae is like being a game master, except you get your players by kidnapping them and locking them in your basement and giving them a pregen.
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Dec 10, 2018 08:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:What Gentry desire isn't totally value-neutral, though; they want to possess and dominate. They're willing to lose things on occasion, but it's because that makes those things even more desirable. I agree that this is how the Fae are presented in the core book, and in the segment of the 2e core you excerpted. I'm less clear on where, in ER, I'd find it expressed. It's true that the Gentry constantly Feud, but they die without conflict, and Feuding is how they eat (one another) when mortals aren't available. Rather, I would suggest that: Equinox Road posted:Mortal fear, hate and disorientation strengthen psychic boundaries and feed a Keeper’s needs. Resentful slaves are the most valuable kind. When they rebel, they trigger Legends of their own, and True Fae revel in them. These conflicts sustain them, too. ...pliability and submission are undesirable traits in a thrall. Keepers don't want apathy or disengagement (most obviously, escape); their inability to dominate a mortal slave increases their relish, and not - at least in the section I've excerpted here - just because it gives them something to crush. If they don't want their thralls to submit, do they really want to dominate? (Edit: To clarify our previous example, the wife can leave Joe as long as they don't escape the show. Recovery from Joe's influence, while still within the Gentry's hold, seems to be a perfectly acceptable outcome for feeding purposes - the influence of the Joe-narrative persists even if the mortal goes down a different course.) Do they want Titles and slaves because they are driven to possess, or because without them they would cease to exist? Joe Slowboat posted:e: Fundamental to the Titles and Names of the True Fae, from the section Tuxedo quoted, is that these are the titles and powers of nobility. There are no Gentry who are not, well, gentry. So they don't just make themselves into stories, but into stories of power and domination over their lessers. Maybe? ER says that Titles are deep Contracts with the Wyrd; the Gentry may not invent them, they assume their obligations and privileges. That Titles share a common element of dominion tells us something about Faerie, but not necessarily the Gentry - they have to use Titles to eat, and they have to enact the Title's obligations to use it. It may be that there's a Title of "Gary, The Basically Reasonable Guy" and no Gentry has ever bothered to take it up. It may be that the Wyrd's stock roles are just twisted in certain ways. Five Eyes fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 08:42
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Joe Slowboat posted:entire by our strange laws The entire point of their existence is the fact it's not their laws. They made their oaths with things outside themselves, and if they break them they are destroyed. It's not their power. It's not their land. They aren't Lords of the Wyld. And if they want to call themselves Lords of anything, the Wyld binds them to that. And there's nothing they can do about that.
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Dec 10, 2018 09:08
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Mulva posted:The entire point of their existence is the fact it's not their laws. They made their oaths with things outside themselves, and if they break them they are destroyed. It's not their power. It's not their land. They aren't Lords of the Wyld. And if they want to call themselves Lords of anything, the Wyld binds them to that. And there's nothing they can do about that. It's the Wyrd, not the Wyld. And the fact that they receive their titles from laws they entered into doesn't make them not nobility. They do, in fact, 'own the land entire.' They agreed to the laws, even if even they don't know the whole of those laws. The laws would not exist without them. To quote Tuxedo Catfish quoting Equinox Road (emphasis mine): Tuxedo Catfish posted:Deep in the mists of forgotten time, the Fae bargained with Arcadia itself, declaring that they would exist — that they would own the land entire and claim it as a vessel for their Wyrd, dreams, and facets, in exchange for a web of arcane rules so complex no one of them could ever know them all. At their core, the Fae are ravenous beings that must possess. They want, and in their all-consuming wanting they strike bargains to sate their desires, whether for slaves, kingdoms, secrets, or spoils. Being a 'ravenous being that must possess' which has human-level intelligence and sufficient will to force yourself to exist in the absence of previously existing is not being a mindless automaton. It's being an rear end in a top hat. That the variety of thing that is a True Fae is pretty much universally an rear end in a top hat is sort of a given. They had 'Wyrd, dreams, and facets' before they were Lords of Arcadia, and those dreams and facets appear to revolve around being selfish and terrible and mostly abusing people. The idea that a 'resentful slave is the most valuable kind' can just as easily describe sadism as weird push-button robots; they enjoy and benefit from abusing the unwilling, because it gives them more of what they want. E: on a basic level the True Fae at the very least play with their food. Even if they are ultimately slaves to their appetites, they go through all sorts of unnecessary layers of complication to get what they hunger for. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 09:25
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Joe Slowboat posted:To quote Tuxedo Catfish quoting Equinox Road (emphasis mine): That's quote's from the 2E core. I probably should have made two posts or something.
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Dec 10, 2018 09:50
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:That's quote's from the 2E core. I probably should have made two posts or something. Whoops, my bad. Regardless, it takes a pretty clear stance on who runs Bartertown/Arcadia.
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Dec 10, 2018 10:04
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With wraiths I think I have to treat them completely seperately - they'll skew the numbers way too much otherwise. Factoring in the likely number of Shoah wraiths has them sitting at at least 1:4000 of the global population. This also means 1999 is a truly horrifying year in terms of 'true deaths'. 6000 vampires, dozens of Garou, tens of mages, millions of wraiths.
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Dec 10, 2018 10:10
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Five Eyes posted:I arrive there because I have trouble seeing a person in the Gentry as ER describes them. In an Actor, sure, I suppose, but if the Actor is merely playing a scripted part...? The reason why it works is because this is how a lot of real-life abusers function. They don't hurt people because they really want to, it's because they crafted themselves narratives where they get to be powerful and also totally in the right, and their victims are just props to maintain the illusion. Narcissistic abusers, for example, craft themselves a false persona that's perfect in every way - but can't withstand any internal scrutiny, so it must be constantly reinforced with the help of other people. Everyone whom they make a part of their life gets to play a role or even a few roles - an admirer who fawns over them, a trophy partner to increase their status, a lovely person who constantly fails them (and who they eventually forgive). Being close to them is a chore because they won't tolerate any behavior that hurts their self-image, which is incredibly fragile. And yes, if they can't have you as a loyal partner or a friend, they'd rather prefer you became their enemy who hates them and wishes them bad, instead of ignoring them and have a life of your own.
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Dec 10, 2018 10:54
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Tuxedo Catfish, how did you get hold of the 2E rules?! Did you back the KS?Joe Slowboat posted:It's very clear that the Gentry don't want their abductees to ever get out, though. Maybe, occasionally, a Title is screwy enough or oblique enough that its personal sense of drama or even its artificial role-level desires (say, to dominate another Title, or to serve a certain role) overcome the basic desire to exist and feed, and that Title will help a Changeling escape. I've bought Equinox Road since I posted my questions, and it does claim that the Fae will let changelings escape on purpose to mess with them later, though? It's set up as a thing that happens rarely, but could conceivably be plotted by a particularly unpleasant Keeper. Tias fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 12:09
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Ericsson is the apex level "let me tell you about my game."
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Dec 10, 2018 14:24
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It may be more helpful to think of a True Fae as a movie production rather than a story, per se. The True Fae takes on the role of director, cast, crew, except for a few specific roles that, for whatever reason, it decides it needs someone else to do. It also believes the only way to act is The Method, and if you don't plan to play along, too loving bad, you're a method actor now.
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Dec 10, 2018 14:27
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Dawgstar posted:Ericsson is the apex level "let me tell you about my game." There's a telling moment in the docco where he says that the White Wolf-Underworld law suit was the first time 'we' got acknowledged, speaking of White Wolf. He wasn't employed by White Wolf back then. He'd never been employed by them in any capacity as far as I can tell. But it's 'we', not 'White Wolf'. It says it all.
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Dec 10, 2018 14:46
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sexpig by night posted:yea the LARPs I hit up were all the 'get something out of your closet, if your vamp is the type to dress up just wear whatever is a good approximation that you don't mind moving and all in you don't need to actually buy an Armani suit just to be a Ventrue.' It was never some grand elaborate affair it was a bunch of typical WW fan theater kids hanging out to basically improv with a loose (let's be real, dogshit) rule system around it to keep Jeff from just pulling a Michael Scott and winning every scene by pulling a gun out. This is entirely correct and the whole "we're putting a bit of effort in and just having fun with it" is so much of what I loved and love about it.
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Dec 10, 2018 14:49
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That Old Tree posted:my friend and I were mostly just hanging out in the cafeteria area again because the entire LARP scene in that city tended to separate into cliques and then go off into separate rooms to monologue at each other. I felt like a loving idiot trying to knock on the doors of private dining and storage rooms in a college cafeteria going "Hi I'm a brand new Mekhet Ordo Dracul who, despite having various backgrounds implied by my Merits, has no loving clue what is going on or even why I'm in this lovely little Midwestern town." I declined to go back
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Dec 10, 2018 15:09
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Zereth posted:So what you're saying is that being a True Fae is like being a game master, except you get your players by kidnapping them and locking them in your basement and giving them a pregen. Yeah, basically, which is again why CtL rules so loving hard. For both players and the storyteller it's the exact right amount of meta... because the converse to that is that being a Changeling is like being forced into a lovely pregen by some rear end in a top hat GM who really wants to tell his bullshit, railroady epic story, and the only way you're getting out of the thing is to try and run the line between staying in character enough to not get him mad while also derailing his opus every chance you get. Unoriginal Name posted:You fuckers are making me want to play Changeling and I've never even cracked the book DO IT. It's the best game. It's so good it made me retroactively hate CtD, and that game was weirdly formative in my youth. God, I'd loving give up an arm to play in a solid CtL campaign with a solid storyteller.
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Dec 10, 2018 15:43
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Digital Osmosis posted:Yeah, basically, which is again why CtL rules so loving hard. For both players and the storyteller it's the exact right amount of meta... because the converse to that is that being a Changeling is like being forced into a lovely pregen by some rear end in a top hat GM who really wants to tell his bullshit, railroady epic story, and the only way you're getting out of the thing is to try and run the line between staying in character enough to not get him mad while also derailing his opus every chance you get. Honestly, between reading the short story collection Onyx Path released (Huntsman Chronicles. It's like 2.99 on Kindle.) and the various discussions here about the game, I dug into the 1e Lost core and I'm really excited and also a little intimidated to run it.
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Dec 10, 2018 18:29
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Digital Osmosis posted:DO IT. It's the best game. It's so good it made me retroactively hate CtD, and that game was weirdly formative in my youth. God, I'd loving give up an arm to play in a solid CtL campaign with a solid storyteller. I loved the original softbound CtD, but 2E poo poo me so much that I swore never to touch it again. Years later I picked up this freebie CtL pamphlet and put a special order in for the corebook a day later.
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Dec 10, 2018 19:24
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Tias posted:Tuxedo Catfish, how did you get hold of the 2E rules?! Did you back the KS? I either backed the kickstarter or pre-ordered and got access, it's long enough ago that I don't remember which for sure any more.
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Dec 10, 2018 19:39
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Probably it was a kickstarter thing - I backed shortly after the KS campaign ended and I'm furiously awaiting my hardcopy's delivery and considering just also buying the .PDFBieeanshee posted:I loved the original softbound CtD, but 2E poo poo me so much that I swore never to touch it again. Years later I picked up this freebie CtL pamphlet and put a special order in for the corebook a day later. I read and liked both editions of Dreaming, but 2E has a special place in my heart because I loving love Rebecca Guay intro art. I also don't remember a ton about Dreaming these days, what do you remember changing between the editions? I don't recall anything as big as say Mage's Avatar Storm.
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Dec 10, 2018 19:51
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This is the first time I ever heard somebody express the opinion that Dreaming's first edition was better than the second one, yeah.
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Dec 10, 2018 20:02
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Maybe we have finally found the one diehard fan of the cards.
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Dec 10, 2018 20:06
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Even the 1e players guide had alternate "don't use the cards" rules iirc though.
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Dec 10, 2018 20:21
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Digital Osmosis posted:Probably it was a kickstarter thing - I backed shortly after the KS campaign ended and I'm furiously awaiting my hardcopy's delivery and considering just also buying the .PDF Wait, if you do the after-Kickstarter preorder thing you don't even get the backer PDFs?
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Dec 10, 2018 20:25
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That Old Tree posted:Wait, if you do the after-Kickstarter preorder thing you don't even get the backer PDFs? That's what happened for me with Trinity. Speaking of which, anyone get the backer pdf yet?
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Dec 10, 2018 20:28
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