Now that we're through the corebook for C20, other supplements seem like small (but no less nourishing) potatoes. This time around is a double feature: we're flipping through Yours to Keep, the jumpstart and intro adventure for the edition, and Ready-Made Characters, a set of 13 write-ups (one for each core kith) and sample motleys to use in your game. Joining us is author of the first book, Christine Beard!, who talks about some of the process for reading, running, and writing jumpstart...

And so we come to the third part of this trilogy, wherein we talk about changes to this edition. There are hundreds of little tweaks and adjustments to be found in the Changeling 20th Anniversary corebook, but we're focusing on a dozen of the most significant that stand out to us. (Slight spoiler: there's another big one that we realized after the fact we didn't talk about it... but luckily, it will apply in an upcoming episode as well.) We're looking at retconned metaplot, restructured magic...

Whew. Doing a walkthrough of the corebook was kind of a marathon, but treating it as a text in isolation is only part of the story. In this (thankfully shorter, because we recorded it the same day as the first) installment, we're drawing on our grump knowledge of the previous editions to talk about the new material in this one. There's a lot that we could have covered in that description, but we're sticking with some of the big items overall: the kith creation system, Revelry, new Thallain....

Well, here we are at last...! After dozens of episodes covering the earlier days of the line, we are beginning our read of Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition, the corebook proper. This first in a trilogy of episodes will be a walkthrough of the book, giving some concise information and commentary about each chapter. It's primarily geared towards new players, but if you are a veteran at this point, we hope you'll still enjoy the refresher. Next up are an episode about the new...

Behold, the bonus episode! Back in December, Pooka had a chit-chat at PAX Unplugged with Terry of Mage: the Podcast and Mike of Darker Days Radio. This was released on Mage: the Podcast a couple weeks ago, but we're cross-posting it here as some random content to tide you over until everything is ready for the C20 corebook dive in a couple days. It's just a meandering conversation about TTRPGs at conventions, the state of the hobby, and our random thoughts while sitting at a table in a room...

We've spoken before about what novels and short stories bring to the World of Darkness. At best, they can provide a naturalistic feel for a lived-in world that players and Storytellers can explore; at worst, they confuse the reader and muddle the rules of the setting. There aren't nearly as many items in the data set as for other World of Darkness games (looking at you, Vampire, with your multiple clan novel series), but we received two for the 20th Anniversary Edition that bookended the...

As much as we enjoy flipping through pages and making sweeping claims about Changeling, we have never (alas) been directly involved in the production of the official game line. So for this roundtable, we invited some guests with insider knowledge: four of the writers and developers involved with the 20th Anniversary Edition. We obviously couldn't pull the curtain back too far, but these Bears With Balloons told anecdotes, shared insights, and gave us an idea of what it's like to work on a...

When we covered Dark Ages: Fae, we mentioned that it was the one canonical historical setting kind of for Changeling. That's not entirely true, because in the earliest days of the Exalted line, its world was lightly framed as the "prehistory" of the World of Darkness. While that aspect fell out of the setting pretty quickly, the first edition still echoes many of the modern World of Darkness games, recycling terms and ideas in novel ways. The counterpart to Changeling is Exalted: the Fair...

Don't worry, we're not totally casting off our roots quite yet. While Changeling: the Dreaming was in deep freeze, the mantle of "modern personal horror fae game" was taken up by Changeling: the Lost, a rather different entry in the (new) World/Chronicles of Darkness. At a glance, Lost shares a lot of terms and concepts with Dreaming, but digging into it, the game diverges significantly from its predecessor. This doesn't mean it's a bad game! We're giving it a fair shake this week and talking...

As we alluded to in our minisode about the unreleased Book of Glamour and Keys to the Kingdom, there was one more title done dirty by the unceremonious end of Changeling's 2nd edition. The long-lamented Kithbook: Boggans was on the putative release schedule (and available for pre-order) until long after the line's conclusion. When it became clear that the book would not be materializing, [cue dramatic music] an intrepid band of netizens and boggan devotees, led by Thad Papke, took it upon...

We're tackling a slightly heavy subject today, talking about neurodiversity and ableism in the context of Changeling: the Dreaming. There are numerous ways in which these arise allegorically and literally in the pages of the game. We cover a few broad topics, but really we're just scratching the surface here, framing our interpretations of the themes with our particular perspectives and experiences. Regardless of what your own may be, we hope this episode encourages you to pause and think,...

We're informed in Dark Ages: Fae that "the Oath-Truce falls with the darkening sky"... but it took another decade for the creators of the line to fulfill that promise. In this solo minisode, Pooka talks a bit about the eponymous supplement, Darkening Sky, released at last in 2014. This coda to the Revised line provides five stories centered around the eclipse of 1230 AD, whereby we get the only canon material for the Fae outside of the corebook. It's a quaint little adventure that draws on a...

And now for something completely different...! We're diving into one of the last books for the old World of Darkness this week—and we do mean OLD, for the book in question is Dark Ages: Fae. Technically a spin-off of Dark Ages: Vampire, and one of the standalone corebooks in the Dark Ages line, this is both the only full Revised book and historical setting that we got for Changeling: the Dreaming. Whether it's actually the latter is debatable, and we will indeed be keeping its suitability in...

Behold the minisode! Today we're diving into the Library of What Could Have Been, as we talk about two books that we never actually got for Changeling: Book of Glamour and Keys to the Kingdom. Long-promised, partly written, and much desired, the complete guide to fae magic and the globetrotting metaplot adventures lingered in the dreams of 2e players even after the old World of Darkness had been detonated. Presumably some of the material made it into the 20th anniversary edition; the signs...

Another week, another theme episode...! This time around, we're considering the role of morality in Changeling: the Dreaming, and the World of Darkness at large. Folklorically, the fae have always tended to dance to their own tune (and often drag hapless mortals along with them) when it comes to questions of right and wrong, good and evil, awesome and dastardly. And yet the changelings are half-human, caught between the memories of their inner nature and the modern values with which they were...

We're baaaack...! It's the start of Season Three here at the Podcast, and we're excited to once again be bringing you some weekly-ish discourse on Changeling: the Dreaming. As we proceed chronologically through the game's history, we're now in that wilderness between the end of 2nd edition and the launch of the 20th Anniversary edition. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to say about Changeling and it's place in the World of Darkness. We're talking today about Hunter: the Reckoning,...

...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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...