...and that's a wrap! For this year, at least; we intend to be back in a couple of months, after taking our usual winter constitutional. A happy solstice be upon you, and thanks again to everyone for sticking with us through the second half of the Season. We hope you'll help us make Season 3 one to remember as well. As reminded in the episode, we are putting together a passel of homebrew books over the course of 2024, for release on a monthly basis in 2025, in celebration of Changeling's 30th An...
Dec 21, 2023•13 min•Season 2Ep. 72
It's strange to go back to the end of an era, but that's the feel of things this week as we pick up Time of Judgment , finale to the old World of Darkness. After the "Big Three" each got their own book of the end times, the remaining (lower-selling) games got one chapter each in this catchall supplement. And those were the last pages of Changeling for over a decade—so it's seems fitting to cover this as our last full episode of the season. There's some Storytelling guidance and five scenarios (a...
Dec 18, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 72
Another trip across the ocean...! Pooka put their linguistic skills to use in order to skim/translate (read: stumble through with a dictionary in one hand and a fervent prayer to the word-gods in the other) the long-lost book Trolle, Träumer, Tiefe Wälder . This German-only supplement was released near the end of 2nd Edition, and describes Germany from a Kithain perspective. (It's also the original source for the Wichtel and Wolpertinger kiths from C20, although they are rather different here......
Dec 14, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 71
And now for something rather different... we're stepping out of the Changeling canon and into the wonderful world of late 90s/early 00s homebrew with Changeling: the Celtic Cycle . Written by three World of Darkness authors, CtCC radically re-imagines the world of Changeling: no Glamour and Banality, no Dreamers to cultivate, no Dreaming separate from the Umbra. Instead, the fae in this version of the game are directly inspired by Celtic mythology and epic. The supplement was released in three i...
Dec 11, 2023•55 min•Season 71Ep. 71
Wanderers and storytellers, tricksters and rapscallions... we're diving this week into Kithbook: Eshu and all that it has to teach about this most wonderfully wayward of Kithain. This was the last full-length Changeling: the Dreaming supplement for something like fifteen years, and as presumed final entries go, it was an intriguing one. (The last page of the original print edition, though, with the ad for a book that would never materialize... that was kind of heartbreaking.) We discuss levels o...
Dec 04, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 70
It's the weekend of PAX Unplugged , a three-day convention for all forms of non-digital gaming in Philadelphia, and Pooka got themself a media badge. So, in an effort to justify that, they went around doing on-the-spot quick interviews with a number of RPG creators whose work is Changeling-adjacent (mostly fairytale and mythology themed). Please forgive the sound quality; the interviews were conducted using a tiny microphone in a crowded and busy expo hall, and voices don't always travel well th...
Dec 03, 2023•33 min•Season 2Ep. 69
We're returning to the world of Live-Action RolePlaying this week, as we flip through the second and final of the Mind's Eye Theatre books produced for Changeling. Author and developer Peter Woodworth returns to talk about the creation of the Shining Host Player's Guide . Even if you prefer throwing dice around the table to dressing up and cantripping through the woods, there's plenty in this volume that enriches the setting. Mannikins with stories, Shadow Court slice of life, secret society emb...
Nov 27, 2023•1 hr 57 min•Season 2Ep. 69
Sometimes a House isn't so much lost as misplaced , but sometimes you misplace four and a half of them. This was how the sidhe did back at the turn of the millennium, but good news! Those waywards are coming back through the gates in Book of Lost Houses: The Second Coming , the tome that gave us Houses Aesin, Beaumayn, Daireann, Arcadian Scathach, and Varich to round out the complement of noble branches to thirteen. (Because if there's one thing Changeling needed, it was more nobles.) Even thoug...
Nov 21, 2023•1 hr 43 min•Season 2Ep. 68
It's a time-honored tradition among Changeling groups to construct their own kiths, but the process has always been idiosyncratic. Doing justice to folklore and balanced game mechanics don't always go hand in hand. Luckily, the 20th Anniversary Edition has provided a basic template for creating them, so we're taking the opportunity to do a short kith-building workshop , wherein the nymphs finally get their due. (Yes, yes, Inanimae: the Secret Way tried to definitively re-cast them as Sessile One...
Nov 13, 20230•Season 2Ep. 67
Just in time for Guy Fawkes Night (and a bit on the early side of our usual release day), we're looking at the breakdown of social order in fae realms... kiiiind of? Despite its title, we've uncovered in our reading that War in Concordia: The Shattered Dream is more about widespread political tensions, the occasional skirmish or violent incident, and a whole bunch of metaplot updates that, er, have all been retconned in the 20th Anniversary Edition. But! There is still plenty here to examine and...
Nov 05, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 2Ep. 66
They eat what they want— when they want— who they want. And what more do you need to know? Quite a bit, actually, if our readthrough of Kithbook: Redcaps is any indication. This is maybe the first book where we had serious differences of opinion about its utility: Josh says it's the best kithbook, Pooka thinks it's not worth much more than the nutritional value of the paper it's printed on. (OK, maybe that's too harsh.) But nevertheless, there are some tasty morsels in here for all kinds of woul...
Oct 30, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 65
Pardon us while we get a bit esoteric, but it's time to talk about time (and memory , and cyclicality ). The way the fae experience it is rather different from your garden-variety fleshly linear human types—and yet at the same time, not so different at all. We're talking about the chaotic progression of time in the Dreaming and the magic that changelings use to harness it, but also their life stages and cycles of reincarnation, and how those inform the calendar they live by. As is usual for our ...
Oct 23, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 64
Salut, gentlefae! It's time for a solo minisode to fill in the Banal void of the working week. In this installment, Pooka discusses Le Monde des Ténèbres : France , one of the few 90s World of Darkness books not developed by White Wolf. Published by Ludis International at the start of 1997, the book only exists in French, and was the start of a series of books (which would have eventually been translated into English) that... never materialized. Each of the five major WoD lines gets a chapter, w...
Oct 19, 2023•21 min•Season 2Ep. 63
In they crawled through the long-shuttered gates, slowly they slithered into the world—the Dark-kin have arrived at last! And as we go on our flipthrough of Denizens of the Dreaming , we realized... well, not all of them are all that Dark. And they don't much act like kin. And are they even really all "of the Dreaming" any more than the Kithain? (OK, mechanically, maybe so.) We deal with these questions, and many more than we thought we'd have before we opened the thing, in this mid-Spooptober i...
Oct 16, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 63
Settle down, class! If you didn't mean to attend this first lecture for the Faelosophy major, then we suggest you exit gracefully now... but if you'd just like to stay and audit, that's fine too. We're talking about Changeling metaphysics today, hashing out some of the Deeper Questions about the nature of being, the relationship between dream and reality, and what really happens when a troll walks through a doorway. Joining us again is special guest and resident metaphysicist Terry Robinson of M...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr 40 min•Season 2Ep. 62
Egads! a crossover! We're joining forces with Josh Heath of the inestimable Werewolf: the Podcast and Terry Robinson of the redoubtable Mage: the Podcast to talk about Midnight Circus , an all-line World of Darkness book from the glory days of the mid-90s. This is back in time for all of us, relative to our respective readthroughs of each game's books, but the concept of "diabolical circus" never really goes out of fashion. So, we're doing a round robin discussion that touches on the various bit...
Oct 02, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 2Ep. 61
What makes a kithbook, really? And what makes a kithbook great ? Is Kithbook: Pooka , the fourth and fuzziest of the splatbooks for Changeling, a noteworthy representative of this category, or simply so much curiously stained paper to arrange on a shelf? Can these questions really be answered? Is this a rhetorical question? When you think of the pooka in all of their circumlocutory glory, do you think of fables and furries and curious mechanics for hashing out their animal forms? Or are you a We...
Sep 30, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Season 60Ep. 60
As refreshing as it was to get a taste of commoner life last week, we're not displeased to be back with the deliciously wicked warlords and courtiers of the Unseelie this time around. The lengthily-titled Pour L'Amour et Liberté: The Book of Houses 2 covers the three (at the time) Houses of the Parliament of Dreams' loyal opposition: Ailil, Balor, and Leanhaun, wyvern, serpent, and rose. (Yeah, yeah, the Ailil crest gets presented as a dragon, but in the original drawing the thing has no legs, s...
Sep 25, 2023•1 hr 39 min•Season 2Ep. 59
We've heard plenty about the noble sidhe, and we'll hear plenty more. But spare a moment to think of the plights and pleasures of the common folk! Kicking off the World of Darkness' "Year of the Reckoning" in 1999 is this week's offering, Fool's Luck: Way of the Commoner . It focuses on the history of the other eight (at the time) core kiths in Concordia—and elsewhere in the world!—along with their societies, traditions, and lifeways. This is the book that gave us the tricksy pixies, the Art of ...
Sep 18, 2023•1 hr 37 min•Season 2Ep. 58
Television, it turns out, is massive . When we set out to choose ten television shows that we found inspiring for Changeling, we had no idea that there were so many options we'd end up with, even considering the criteria we set for ourselves. (We looked at shows we had seen ourselves, and ideally ones that weren't already called out as inspiration in the books.) And that was before listeners started suggesting a bunch more. Nevertheless, we feel pretty happy with our picks; these are entries whi...
Sep 11, 2023•54 min•Season 2Ep. 57
Something fishy is going on this week, as we plunge into the murky waters of Blood-Dimmed Tides . Technically, this is a general World of Darkness sourcebook rather than a Changeling sourcebook, with material for the "Big Five" game lines of mostly 2nd Edition. (Coming at the start of 1999, this includes both notes about Vampire's recent Revised rules, and helpful instructions for how to party like it's.) But Changeling has the lionfish's share of material, with practically an entire mini-Kithbo...
Sep 04, 2023•54 min•Season 2Ep. 56
There are at least as many styles of Storytelling (or DMing, or Gamemastering, or whatever) as there are Storytellers, most of whom have Strong Opinions about the best way to do things. We've had a bit of discussion here and there over our two seasons, but this week we—along with special guest and veteran Storyteller, Fetch—are having a roundtable on advanced Storytelling techniques we favor. This is especially geared towards Storytellers who have run a few Changeling games and gotten the hang o...
Aug 28, 2023•1 hr 51 min•Season 2Ep. 55
White Wolf's "Year of the Lotus" initiative was an attempt to explore the World of Darkness' various game lines through the context of "the East" with... uneven results. Changeling was not spared, and the last book of the Year was Land of Eight Million Dreams , covering the hsien of China, Japan, and environs. There's a lot of interesting material in this book; there is also a lot of cringey, baffling, and/or confusing stuff. We're joined by special guest LewCid for a wide-ranging discussion on ...
Aug 22, 2023•1 hr 58 min•Season 2Ep. 54
After teasing the nymphs in various shapes for nearly four years, Changeling's 2nd edition finally got around to giving us a supplement dedicated to the fae of nature. In this book's fullest presentation of who they are, Inanimae (and their Secret Way ) are elemental dreams, the product of human imagination interacting with noteworthy hunks of rock, majestic trees, pools of water, etc. They sidestep a lot of the cultural issues and relativity of Banality that complicate the other kiths, providin...
Aug 14, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Season 2Ep. 53
Senses and memories and fae (oh my!) mix in very particular ways. Enchantment brings mortals into the chimerical world; the Mists blur the details of that world even for changelings. While the mechanics in are solidly established in Changeling: the Dreaming, more or less, it can be tough to incorporate those two aspects into a game. This week, we're exploring how to handle that from a Storyteller and player perspective, across editions of the game. We talk about the role of enchanted mortals, th...
Aug 07, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 52
We're jumping over the Lughnasa bonfires to bring you our first full-on episode in six weeks...! Herewith our dive into the Changeling Storytellers' Guide . This is the only proper ST-focused volume the line ever got, and while it's uneven, there's still plenty to enjoy within. Advice on planning the story and managing the table, reprinted crossover rules and thoughts on alternate settings, art that baffles as much as it inspires and an attempt at what the charitable would call a game-wide index...
Aug 01, 2023•1 hr 43 min•Season 2Ep. 51
Surely you didn't think we were going to leave you all completely hanging during our summer hiatus...? Granted, this is only a mini-sode, but we hope it still serves a pleasant tidbit in between are larger installments. On this occasion, we are exploring the (general) World of Darkness supplement, The Bygone Bestiary , full of all your folklore-steeped medieval-and-Renaissance creature needs. The book claims that it can be fairly easily integrated with Werewolf, Mage, or Changeling, but in pract...
Jul 10, 2023•37 min•Season 2Ep. 50
A merry solstice to all! Keep an eye peeled for any fae wheelings and dealings in your neighborhood today, and be sure not to stray into any mysterious mushroom rings... In the meantime, you can also have a listen to this state of the podcast for the first half of Season 2, where we do an assessment of how things are going so far and our plans for the rest of the year. (Just a short audio morsel to tide you over.) The biggest news herein is that we are finally converting episodes to video format...
Jun 22, 2023•11 min•Season 2Ep. 50
Our fiftieth (full-length) installment! Thanks to all who have been listening, especially those with us from the start, and we hope the next fifty are enjoyable. It seemed right to close out that milestone, and the first half of Season 2, with something a bit more relaxed. So here we are with another inspirations episode, this time on thirteen films that we think are particularly suited for Changeling: the Dreaming. (It would've been ten like the other inspirations episodes, but there was no way...
Jun 19, 2023•57 min•Season 2Ep. 50
We'll be the first to admit that the Southern US is not our primary field of expertise, and to point out that TTRPG books—especially some of the 90s White Wolf ones—are not the greatest resource for learning more. That being said, the Kingdom of Willows supplement on the Kithain realm of the same name, covering that part of the world, is one of the more robust entries in the canon. It has its curiosities, and it has its cringes, but few Changeling books can match it for density. This week, we're...
Jun 12, 2023•1 hr 42 min•Season 2Ep. 49
