Changeling the Podcast

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, with Changeling receiving a solid 40 pages or so of material, deeply informed by French folklore, politics, and probably the home games of its authors. Pooka puts their French degree to good use in order to summarize of what's therein (including the first appearance of the morganed and korred!), so that you don't have to seek it out and translate it yourselves. Ordinarily there would be a link here to purchase the book, but such a thing does not exist for this text. It's not too difficult to knock the PDF off the back of a truck, so to speak, if you want to find your own copy. Meanwhile, for the show's own social media, it's even less difficult to find us, because we provide the links like so: Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast your host Pooka G (any pronoun/they) is, if we are what we eat, an actual sentient viennoiserie. La bonne grâce est le vrai don des fées ; sans elles on ne peut rien, avec elles on peut tout. (Gracefulness is the true gift of the fae; without them we can do nothing, with them we can do everything.) —Charles Perrault, Cendrillon

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 installment. The last major tranche of kiths introduced to the game, the adhene are a hodgepodge of ideas drawn from myths worldwide and tied heavily into the original game's sunset metaplot. Sworn to the Fomorians, they are the vanguard of Winter, and therefore Bad News... Check out the book at: https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/111?affiliate_id=3063731. We also mention material from Charlie Cantrell's excellent supplement, Harbingers of Winter, which expands on the Dark-kin and gives a write-up (finally!) for the aslynthi: https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/388455?affiliate_id=3063731. And the usual mishmash of social things from our side: Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) keeps a jar of ground Tarrarom in the cupboard for chicken, fish, and egg dishes. Pooka G (any pronoun/they) greatly admires the films of Kureksarra. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? —W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

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 Mage: the Podcast, to help triangulate some opinions and lay down some knowledge. Do take notes, for there will be a pop quiz down the line. A few good places to find Terry around the interwebs include: Mage: the Podcast at https://magethepodcast.com/ (through which you can also find that show's Discord, etc.) Pain in the Dice podcast at https://www.paininthedice.com/, because game are fun, but sometimes hard You probably won't find Terry at the book page for Kelefa Sanneh's Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, but because it came up in conversation, feel free to check that volume out... ...but also, as of this posting, Terry has just released a homebrew Mage 20 book on the Umbra, so consider heading over to https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/455874?affiliate_id=3063731 and giving it a purchase! And our usual arrangement of links: Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) believes that whatever the dream of perfection might be, nockers are proof against its attainability, except when it comes to fashion. Pooka G (any pronoun/they) only exists as a concept in relation to pastries and coffees already/yet to be consumed. The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth. —Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie

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 bits of lore, magic, mystery, and story that permeate the pages—and quite a bit there is of all of the above. You may recall that in our television episode, we mentioned Carnivàle as an inspiration for Changeling; this book taps into that same source of ideas. Now for the links! Werewolf: the Podcast lurks at https://keepontheheathlands.podbean.com/, and Mage: the Podcast dwells on https://magethepodcast.com/ Josh did an episode with us where we talked about Werewolf/Changeling crossover (https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-8-werewolf-changeling-with-josh-heath/), and while Terry has guested a few times, listen in to our episode on Mage/Changeling crossover (https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-14-mage-changeling-with-terry-robinson/) If you'd like to acquire the book for your very own, get you posthaste to https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/208?affiliate_id=3063731 And the usual mishmash of social things from our side: Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) lurks behind the Tilt-a-Whirl and messes with the gravity. Pooka G (any pronoun/they) lives in the rigging where everything and everyone is a potential trapeze. The procession moves on, the shouting is over, The fabulous freaks are leaving town. They are driven by a strange desire Unseen by the human eye... —Dead Can Dance, "The Carnival is Over"

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 Werewolf player seeking a less fraught outlet for your character's white-hot, misanthropic, environmentalist Rage? Can an entire podcast post in the interrogative mood be a type of Pooka-ese? Could we have decided to organize this post, if not this episode, any other way? Will you listen on and find out? Will you lift our spirits with your kind attention? Also, did you know that you can give feedback on our show in a bunch of places on the internet? Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) achieves an impressively low rate of cuss-language on the show for a nocker, wouldn't you say? Pooka G (any pronoun/they) isn't much of a pooka at all, are they? "Tell all the truth but tell it slant —" —Emily Dickinson

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, so it's a wyvern.) It's about as long as three kithbooks if you strip out the templates and padding, so we probably get more in-depth and specific treatment of these Houses than any others in the game. Since we'd already had The Shadow Court, did we need this book? As much as we needed the first Book of Houses even though we had Nobles: the Shining Host. Does this book live up to the hype? We report, you decide. If you're into purchasing this one, check it out at https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/3511?affiliate_id=3063731. We also referenced The Book of Invasions and The Ulster Cycle (specifically, the Táin Bó Cúailnge) of Irish lore, because all three Houses make use of it, having explicit ties to Ireland as they do. If you'd like to skim through these source texts yourself, there are multiple places you can do that online. Have a gander, for example, at https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/leborgabala.html for the former and http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/Cooley/ for the latter. And as always, if you'd like to get in touch with us, you have a number of options: Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) steals cattle and takes names. Or is that steals names and takes cattle? Pooka G (any pronoun/they) wouldn't mind a Chronos Cage in their apartment, just to have a space to get some work done. "When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better." —Mae West as Tira in I'm No Angel

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 Metamorphosis, and more grump war stories than have been seen before or since. And as we meander towards the conclusion of the game's 2nd Edition, the disappearance of King David continues to hang over the metaplot, as noble and commoner alike prepare for war... We're of the opinion that this is one of the more solid books in the line, so if you're in the mood to snag a copy, herewith the link: https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/131?affiliate_id=3063731. Herewith also the various social media constellations in which you can contact us! Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast build-a-sluagh contest As mentioned in the episode's intro, we are currently holding a contest into the month of October in honor of the spoopiest of kiths, the sluagh. The winner will receive a physical copy of Kithbook: Sluagh, and their character will be showcased on our Discord along with two runners-up. All you have to do is send the following to podcast@changelingthepodcast.com in the body of an email, or as attachment (DOC or PDF only): A sluagh character sheet following standard C20 starting character creation rules; you may add up to 100 experience points' worth of additional dots if you wish A backstory that describes your sluagh as thoroughly as you'd like—but please try to keep it to five pages maximum! Optional: artwork, a short piece of fiction, a music playlist, or anything else that you think would enrich our understanding of your character We'll be taking entries until 10 October and announcing the winners by the end of the month. Send in your skulkiest slinking creepster today! your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) moonlights as vice-president of the Nockers' Local #621. Pooka G (any pronoun/they) plants anarchist pamphlets in every Little Free Library they can find. Sing along with the common people Sing along and it might just get you through Laugh along with the common people Laugh along even though they're really laughing at you. —Pulp, "Common People"

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 which we are fond of on their own, but also find well-suited for consideration through the lens of the game. Herewith some of their trailers/theme songs/selected scenes in chronological order: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) random scene from the pilot, "Emissary", that gives some characterization and talks about the Trill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McyJA93MGhU Gargoyles (1994–1997) opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygrEVnrg3Ic Recess: (1997–1999) opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zObiglKZKZc The 10th Kingdom (2000) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbrXWWYopq8 Carnivàle (2003–2005) Emmy-winning opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouTCtwNIYaQ Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (2004–2009) teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djNHGRkg2R4 Lost Girl (2010–2015) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W057R9MNRw4 Adventure Time: (2010–2018) opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMDaAcfCYow The Almighty Johnsons (2011–2013) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd80D347iSI Stranger Things (2016–) trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9EkMc79ZSU We hope that if you're in the market for some inspirational material of this variety, one or more of these will help up churn up the Glamour of game planning. And if you've got Thoughts about what we've chosen—or have other ones to suggest which we haven't seen!—feel free to get in touch via the links below... Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) built a chimerical companion out of vacuum tubes and SMPTE color bars. Pooka G (any pronoun/they) enjoys the sound of the phrase "sweeps week" much more than its meaning. Television: An advanced technical method of stopping people from making their own entertainment. —Leonard Rossiter, The Devil's Bedside Book

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-Kithbook in its chapter, dedicated to those mysterious and beguiling merfolk of the deep. Combined with things like aquatic story hooks, underwater combat rules, and ample crossover opportunities, we believe that it's still a worthy edition to the canon. In fact, it left us thirsty for more! (But listen, if you're thirsty, don't drink seawater, because there are probably mechanics in the Appendix about how quickly it will kill you. And don't drink fishmilk unless you're into that kind of thing.) Have a purchase of the book at https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/342?affiliate_id=3063731 if you're so inclined! You can also put messages in bottles and drop them in various bodies of dank water: Discord: https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingT your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) has a vial of tetrodotoxin ready for the next person who mocks Aquaman. Pooka G (any pronoun/they) informs you that a shark on whiskey is mighty risky. (A shark on beer... is a, uh... a beer engineer.) The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

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 of things, but are looking to try some new and more complex methods at their table. Have a listen, and perhaps you'll get some ideas to deploy for your next session...! We also have a whole mess of links this time around. First, two other episodes that are centered on the ins and outs of the Storytelling role: Episode 38 (Session Zero): https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-38-session-zero/ Episode 51 (Storyteller's Guide): https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-51-storytellers-guide/ Three other media outlets whose work we appreciate and recommend for game-running guidance: Simulacra Studios: https://www.patreon.com/SimulacraStudios Mage: the Podcast: https://magethepodcast.com/ Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: https://www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com/ A book of Pooka's that got mentioned for story hook ideas, and a link to Fetch's Discord for many gaming opportunities: Book of Days: https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/412055?affiliate_id=3063731 Fetch's Discord: https://discord.gg/cuMTVAxF And our usual battery of social media posts: Discord (where you can also find Fetch!): https://discord.me/ctp Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699 Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingT your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) is a Síocháin who bears the Mantle of the Flowchart Maker. Pooka G (any pronoun/they)'s chimerical companion is a Star Wars-style opening crawl at the start of each game session. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. —Bertolt Brecht