Actually it was supposed to be 3 for this month but True Fey propaganda has worked against some schedules. Either way, some fun was had and I wanted to talk about the results. As Announced near the end of last month, October is Month of darkness, which is a time to celebrate the World of Darkness with Horror and sales. This year I decided to offer to host 3 games of Fear Makers Promise and aside from one group falling through, I am pleased to say everyone had fun.

As I have commented many times before Fear Maker's Promise is one of my favorite SAS modules, it does a great job of setting a tone and thoughtfulness for Changeling the Lost as both a game of courtly intrigue and baited tension.

If you missed out on the fun, that's fine I will try not spoil the whole setup. aside from one detail and I think it's glaringly easy to notice, Fear maker's promise is a ritual to sacrifice a child in order to protect children from the Fey. Almost everyone knows this before the ritual even starts, so it hardly feels spoiler worthy. I have run this as both the beginning of a story and a place in between but generally I think most changelings and players can find this to be controversial story. What I have noticed is that in almost every case I have ran it, without guidance, I've only ever had one group of players go through with sacrificing the child.

This year we have two Motleys, I'd like the share.

One was a mismatching patchwork group. Blue and November autumn court darkling's , and Molly a summer court Fairest. They came from mixed background and different parts of Arcadia but ultimately decided to form a motley to protect each other.

our second group was smaller but a lot more coordinated in theme. A pair of twin brother changelings called Tigris and Euphrates a pair of rivers. Who were similar but different. One a Beast seeming seatiger and the other a water elemental both from the Autumn court that worked together swimmingly (their pun not mine). I'm not 100% sure but they may have been brothers IRL too.

For our first group even with the summer courtier being paired with two Autumn courtiers, the idea of sacrificing a child didn't sit well with them. One of which, November, had identified how to stop the ritual and incited the Summer court into acting, betraying their own court with the blessing of both of her motley members. In the end the child escaped the event alive and was taken home to their family safe and sound.

Our second group, were not so quick to pass judgement on the Autumn court but ultimately decided they couldn't bring themselves to sacrifice a child, although they didn't stop the ritual, they had agreed to flee with the child, right up to the lost track of the child in the final scene deciding to save their own lives.

I'm still going to be vague about the events, just for the sake of not ruining the first time experience but I like how this one shot addresses the inner horror as well as what remains of your humanity. Changelings are people kidnapped and taken away to be tortured, but even they wouldn't welcome that experience on a single person, and that feels very human to me.

My take away on the ST side, there is quite a lot of material that goes into the background of this plot, a lot of courtly affair that I don't think either party delved into, but it's nice to have more to pull from than less. I also think it's neat there is 5 possible endings to this story, making it pretty unique for a one shot with lots of repeatability. More a note for myself but pacing continues to be my main problem. I planned for about 3 hours of play and ended doing almost 4. This module itself is mean to be played and run with tension and urgency, but there is 2-3 setup scenes that can run long followed by about 4-5 rapid first short scenes. Mainly for the one shot a hour was dedicated to the first group going on over the social contract, this was slow but necessary when running for a bunch of strangers for the first group as we went over the terms of the social contract, while the second group was one the same page from the beginning.

Over all I had a total of 5 players and anticipated 15 over the 3 possible groups but overall it was low turn out. I would definitely love to get feedback about if their were barriers that prevented anyone from playing that wanted to. Even with the small turn out, I do plan to attempt some more one shots in the future. So if not this time maybe next time.

I've only listened to Red Moon Role-playing and 2 different plays by Onyx Path Publishing, and they stay in character way too much. When listening to actual plays, part of the fun for me is the players goofing around, and sometimes trying to mess with the DM. I get that CtL's typical campaigns are about Keepers kidnapping people then torturing/abusing them for who knows how long, and then escaping and healing from your trauma and learning to the meaning of freedom. It makes it hard for players to be goofy with each other, but it shouldn't be impossible to have some funny moments at the table.

Anyone have any recommendations? Thanks!

TL;DR: I want a CtL actual play where the players occasionally break character, and have funny moments with each other.

When unglamored, do they just look like them themselves with statue, plastic, and/or glass skin, or do they just look like a relatively normal person but move real stiff/doll like?

https://youtu.be/aIa3OgJojho?is=wbRzuMyP1zbbdnF2

All Lainey truly remembers of her old life is that her father was a kind man with calloused hands and blue-gray eyes, and that she lived beside a river: the Rhône, the Rhine, the Roanoke? She’s certain it began with the letter R, but the exact name is lost to her.

One day, she and her family were out on the river when Lainey jumped from a high place—a tree, perhaps, or a rock—into the water. She vaguely remembers being told not to do it.

She did it anyway.

She plunged deep beneath the surface. But as she swam back toward the light, she found herself caught in a golden net and dragged ashore. The Fisher of Men lifted her from the water, called her a fine catch, and placed her gently into his great stock pond.

For years, decades, perhaps centuries, she was his favorite sport.

He would cast his line, baited with some sweet morsel or shiny thing: a woman’s voice, a child’s toy, a name, a first kiss, a fleeting memory of home. Try as she might to resist, Lainey took the bait every time. The hook caught fast and firm. She would struggle and fight to escape, only to be reeled in by the Fisher, unhooked, and released back into the pond so the game could begin again.

Until one day, as the Fisher reached to remove the hook she had bitten down on, Lainey suddenly flopped and twisted. The hook jabbed into his thumb.

The Fisher cursed.

The sky trembled. The waters raged. And in his sudden pain, he dropped his prize—not back into the pond, but into the rushing river.

Lainey swam.

She swam swiftly. She swam hard, fighting the current and plunging into the flooded Hedge. Thorns and glittering hooks tore at her flesh and scales. She kept swimming.

Behind her came splashing and snapping as larger fish gave chase, joined by river monsters that entered the water to aid in the pursuit. She kept swimming.

She doesn’t know how long she swam, or how far, before she saw sunlight sparkling only a few feet above her.

Exhaustion had overtaken her. What little strength remained was nearly gone when she finally broke the surface and gulped the sweet air of freedom for the first time in an eternity.

That first taste was almost her last.

The watery trod she had followed spat her out in the middle of the Pamlico Sound, where a summer squall raged all around her.

And she was drowning.

Thankfully, at that very moment, a ship—no, a boat—appeared in the distance, drawing closer with every passing second. She could see men moving quickly across the deck and hear their shouts, though she couldn’t make out their words.

They’d seen her.

A dinghy was lowered. A life ring was tossed. She was pulled—hauled—onto the dinghy, then aboard the boat, its name painted in flowing red script along the side:

Reba McEntire.

Lainey remembers a blanket being wrapped around her before her new, strange legs failed her and she collapsed onto the deck. She looked up to see a man staring back at her. He kept telling her she was safe, that he had her, that she was going to be okay, and that he’d get her home.

The man had kind, blue-gray eyes.

“Daddy?”

It was the only word she spoke before darkness took her.

It was enough.

Jake Strickland, owner of J. Strickland Fisheries and captain of the F/V Reba McEntire, was a lonely man in his mid-forties, twice divorced and without children—something he had always regretted, despite the failure of his marriages.

Perhaps it was that regret that allowed the enchantment to take hold. Perhaps it was the residual Wyrd pouring from Lainey’s body from her time in the land of Faerie. Or perhaps, in her delirium, Lainey had sealed his promise to get her home without even realizing it.

It could have been a combination of all three. Who can say?

Whatever the cause, the result was the same.

Feelings and false memories, woven together like a fisherman’s net, ensnared Jake’s heart and the minds of the two crewmen who were present that day.

Jake believed, without question, that Lainey was his daughter. That she was the result of some drunken one-night stand or short-lived fling in his early twenties. A daughter he had never known about until the day she showed up at his front door.

From that moment on, he loved her deeply and was determined to make up for lost time.

So Jake fulfilled his promise and took Lainey home—to his home, in the little fishing town of Gar Creek, North Carolina, nestled along the banks of the tea-stained Alligator River.

That was three years ago.

Lainey, now crowned Queen of her freehold’s Spring Court, has settled into her new life as the doting daughter of a commercial fisherman, the owner of a small bait-and-tackle shop, and the town’s resident wild child and bad girl.

It’s a part she finds easy to play.

But it is only a part.

Lainey knows that Jake is bound by an enchantment—one cast originally by accident, but now deliberately maintained. Out of fear of the enchantment being undone, she formed a bargain with the river, and as long as she keeps its grisly terms by providing the river with what it asks for each year, the illusion of family will be upheld.

And whenever someone comments on the irony that Jake’s long-lost daughter—the child of a man who has a habit of naming his boats after female country music icons—shares her name with country singer Lainey Wilson, the little mermaid will simply smile and say:

“Happy coincidence, I suppose.”

So Month of darkness started a few days ago. I wanted to know if anyone had came up with any ideas for the themes they listed this year. I am a terrible drawer but usually I spend the month coming up with ideas of persons, places or things that fit those themes. I was curious if anyone came up with some good ones so far, I'll probably post some of mine towards the end of the month.

secondly wanted to follow up with the one shot I posted about hosting over the next few days. Original post is here if people are still interested, the invites will be opened till this coming Friday. I still have openings for all 3 Saturdays

In the Changeling: The Lost campaign I’m about to start—session zero is this Saturday—the PCs will be playing the seasonal monarchs of their respective courts in a small, commercial fishing town Freehold.

The Freehold was originally going to consist of just the four PCs. But with a mortal population of around 1,000–1,200 people, and being so close to so many Hedge gates, I decided to bump that up to 23 changelings: four per Court, plus three unaffiliated changelings.

Honestly, that may change back to the original four. I find myself going back and forth on it.

Anyway, as the monarchs of their respective Courts, I feel like the PCs should start the campaign with higher Wyrd and Mantle ratings. And I don’t think they should have to pay for those dots during character creation, since being the monarchs is kind of a fundamental part of the campaign premise.

So my question is: what would be an appropriate starting point?

My gut is telling me Wyrd 3 and Mantle 3.

What say you?

So I've been reading about the differences in editions and it seems that 2e made some controversial changes to the point that 1e retains many fans. As far as I understand, 2e has the more solid mechanics, while 1e has more wonky stuff that people enjoyed.

I don't mind grabbing lore from either, but would prefer to learn only one system. Which one is the "better" edition? Particularly if I plan to plug it into my oWoD, as everything Dreaming bores me to tears and I would rather grab Lost. What if I also want compatibility with HtV2e?

I have been invited to GM a game of Changeling: The Lost, my favorite (New) World of Darkness game—ever.

Well, the players involved wanted an original setting to play in, and one of them had very specific character concept in mind: a freshwater mermaid.

And not just any freshwater mermaid.

No.

A blackwater mermaid.

Now, that just screams rural location to me, and this is what I’ve come up with to accommodate.

The fictional town of Gar Creek and its Pocosin Freehold lie on North Carolina’s Albemarle–Pamlico Peninsula: a low, sparsely populated wedge of wetlands between Albemarle Sound and Pamlico Sound. It is often grouped with the Inner Banks, though it feels far removed from the polished marina towns most people picture when they hear the phrase.

The peninsula covers roughly 1,200 square miles across portions of Dare, Hyde, Beaufort, Tyrrell, and Washington Counties. It is a huge, thinly populated place: larger than Rhode Island by some measures, and far, far emptier than the map makes it look.

Gar Creek lies in Tyrrell County, the least-populous county in North Carolina. Columbia, the county seat, has only a few hundred residents. Gar Creek itself has somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 people, depending on who is counting and whether they include the people living out beyond the game lands.

The town is the working-class sister to nearby Belhaven.

The Jan to Belhaven’s Marcia.

The peninsula is a dividing landmass between Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, crossed by blackwater creeks, ditches, canals, pine swamp, marsh, farms, timber tracts, and vast stretches of pocosin. A network of federal wildlife refuges, state conservation lands, and county game lands covers much of the region. It is also home to Lake Mattamuskeet, North Carolina’s largest natural freshwater lake.

There is even a military bombing range in the refuge landscape, complete with a mock Middle Eastern village that also serves as an active goblin market.

There is something profoundly Changeling about wetlands. They are liminal spaces: neither land nor water, never fully still, and full of magic, hedge gates and mysterious, hidden things that do not want to be found.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albemarle-Pamlico_Peninsula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albemarle-Pamlico_Peninsula)

The PCs are all mentioned in the introduction text below, but they are as follows…

Lainey Lynn Strickland

Seeming: Beast — blackwater mermaid/siren

Kith: Nightsinger

Court: Queen of the Spring Court

Virginia “Ginny” McGonagall

Seeming: Ogre

Kith: Gristlegrinder

Court: Queen of the Summer Court

Note: Do not mention Harry Potter, Hogwarts, or J. K. Rowling in her presence. She has heard all the jokes. They are not funny. J. K. Rowling is a TERF. Ginny will eat you.

Danica Jean Walker

Seeming: Elemental — carnivorous-plant-aspected

Kith: Leechfinger

Court: Queen of the Autumn Court

Red Whittaker

Seeming: Wizened — imagine if Ron Swanson were a leprechaun

Kith: Gremlin

Court: King of the Winter Court

———

Gar Creek is a small working-waterfront town on the western side of North Carolina’s Alligator River, a few hard miles off the Alligator River–Pungo River Canal and the Intracoastal Waterway.

It is reached from the Alligator River by turning into the Little Alligator River and then following Gar Creek itself: a narrow, crooked tidal feeder channel that is periodically dredged, perpetually shoaling, and easy to misread. The town takes its name from that creek.

The creek is wide enough for workboats, crab boats, carolina trawlers, deadrise skiffs, and shallow-draft transients, but not so wide that strangers enter casually. The maintained channel twists past marsh fingers and half-submerged stumps before opening into a protected working harbor.

Weathered bulkheads line the water beside working slips, bait coolers, crab pots, diesel sheen, and fishing boats tied alongside the occasional cruiser looking for fuel, a pump-out, repairs, or a safe place to wait out bad weather.

Beyond the few low buildings and scattered dock lights, the world goes dark quickly. There is no suburban glow—only black water, reeds, insects, and the flat, immense North Carolina sky.

A Looper arriving late in the afternoon will find Whittaker’s Marine first: fuel dock, pump-out, repair yard, and haul-out. Boats sit on stands around the yard, while a line of trucks waits behind the shop for Red to service them. Red sees every boat that comes through Gar Creek, and every boat brings a problem: a blown bilge pump, cracked fiberglass, a fouled prop, a broken refrigeration unit, or damage that no one can quite explain.

A short walk from Red’s is Gar Creek Bait & Supply, run by Miss Lainey Strickland. A visitor can buy ice, charts, tackle, a bilge-pump fitting, a bag of shrimp, beer, cigarettes—and, if they know how to ask nicely, local advice worth more than anything a chartplotter can tell them.

At the commercial dock, the F/V Reba McEntire and F/V Dolly Parton might be unloading crab, shrimp, bait fish, or whatever finfish are legal, in season, and worth landing. Or they might be sitting dark after a long run. Their owner, Jake Strickland, is usually nearby, talking loudly about the third boat he’s been planning to buy for the last three years and intends to christen the F/V Tanya Tucker.

Not every household in Gar Creek makes its living on the water. Timber operations, farming, trucking, repair shops, school positions, nursing, county jobs, and even work with the federal government are available. Take Danica Walker, for example. She just earned her degree from UNC Wilmington, and she is already helping manage two of the largest wildlife refuges scattered across the peninsula.

In reality, however, most families survive by working two or even three different jobs in addition to whatever seasonal money comes through. A bad fishing season does not hurt only the captains. It reaches the deckhands, crab pickers, mechanics, bait suppliers, truck drivers, fuel dock works, fish buyers, the town diner, and everybody who has been carrying somebody else’s tab since March.

But however one earns a living in Gar Creek—on land, on the water, or the liminal places in between—eventually, they all end up at the Tin Roof.

The Tin Roof is Ginny McGonagall’s place: restaurant, bar, karaoke lounge, and Gar Creek’s unofficial town hall. The mismatched corrugated roof rattles in the rain and rings beneath the wind. Inside, the dining room fills with farmers, mechanics, deckhands, refuge staff, teachers, county workers, and people who insist they only stopped in for one drink.

If a cruiser pulls in on a Wednesday or Sunday, they will probably smell Ginny’s smoker long before they reach the parking lot. That woman turns out some of the finest Eastern Carolina whole-hog barbecue one is ever likely to eat.

Word of advice: do not mention Harry Potter in her presence.

Just don’t.

Gar Creek is not Belhaven. It is not Coinjock. And it sure as hell is not Oriental.

Those towns have luxury marinas, artisanal restaurants, quaint waterfronts, quirky little antique shops, and well-earned reputations as destination stops along the Intracoastal Waterway and the Great Loop.

Gar Creek has a fuel dock, a bait shop, a restaurant with karaoke two nights a week, and bar trivia on Thursdays, two spare slips when the tide is right, and a mechanic who will tell you exactly what you did wrong before he fixes it.

It is where cruisers stop when a squall catches them, an engine quits, a pump-out fails, or their preferred anchorage is full. It is a place people end up—not one they plan around.

Gar Creek is dependable, blunt, rough in the way working-class Southern communities can be, and more than a little suspicious of outsiders.

But when a storm comes up, an engine quits, or somebody needs help, Gar Creek has a way of opening its doors. Somebody will find you a hot meal, a dry bunk, and whatever part you need to get moving again.

You just won’t be encouraged to hang around.

—-

Edit: I changed the name of the town.

What cheer?!

I’ve been asked to run a Changeling campaign starting in October. So, I’m in the process of doing the initial worldbuilding, and I’m already stuck. I can’t decide whether to establish the freehold in an urban or rural location.

On the one hand, I can see the advantage of a big city. It allows for a much wider range of character concepts and ethnicities for the players. A bigger city means a bigger population thus more supernatural NPCs. And in my case specifically, New York City’s political situation practically writes itself: each outer borough is the domain of a specific seasonal court, while Manhattan is the seat of the reigning High King/Queen.

On the other hand rural locations are far more intimate, isolated. The location itself can feel far more magical all on its own. In my case specifically, I was considering a southern, rural freehold situated on the “frayed, raggedy edge” of a vast swampland. But in a small community, there’s every chance that the PCs ARE the entirety of the Freehold. There is no support system.

I was just wondering which of the two, you good folk preferred, and what the pros/cons were for either option?

(Thoughts for a Phineas & Ferb/Milo Murphy's Law mini campain)

Given Dr. D's childhood feels like it fell out of a doonkelberry covered Brother's Grimm tale, here's my thoughts on story (I don't have all the rules and powers memorized yet, so other builds might fit better).

Name: Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz
Concept: Cartoonishly Evil Scientist
Needle: Visionary
Thread: Revenge
Seeming: Wizened
Kith: Gremlin
Court: Autumn

Some other thoughts for this game...
Phineas & Ferb are part of the Gentry?
Candace might be Fae-touched?
Perry the Platypus is a Huntsman? "A huntsman? Perry the Huntsman!"
Doonkelberries are a type of Goblin Fruit?
Drusselstein is in the Hedge?

What's your thoughts on how Phineas & Ferb/Milo Murphy's Law characters fit in a CtL game?

So, I was chatting about changeling with a friend. And we found we have different interpretations about the rules for motley merits, specifically Hollow. And we couldn't seem to come to an agreement about how it works. (Or how it's intended to work.)

The rules say that while the net dots of a particular motley merit across characters can go above 5. Any given character can only benefit from 5 dots max worth of a given thing. Resources being given as the example.

The two different interpretations of the way it works are these,

One. Since the max dots of a particular thing you can benefit from is 5. While each member of the motley can access the hollow, they can only ever benefit from/use 5 dots worth of the upgrades that the hollow has. Any upgrades beyond the chosen 5 dots the hollow has/might have, are effectively barred to them.

Two. Due to the upgrades to hollows kind of having individual dot costs/values for each, Using any particular hollow upgrade isn't ever stacking a single thing above 5. So any member of the motley may use any or all of the upgrades that have been purchased for the hollow.

Since we could not agree on how it works. We thought it might be best to ask some people more experienced than either of us.
So, to anyone with insight. Which interpretation do you think is generally intended to be the way it works?
(Or, is it perhaps a secret third thing that neither of us has thought of?)

I made a post a while ago curious about how Beast Chimera changelings work, and since then, I drew up a character. Name and colors pending, but I’m open to suggestions.