What's That Game's About?

[Arkandel]

@Wizz

Well, I guess what I'm saying is playing against type isn't the same as being anti-thematic. Take D&D for example, not every adventurer has to be a happy-go-lucky treasure seeker, do-gooder or glory hound; you could play very legitimate characters who're caught in situations against their will or judgment and just kept going despite really wanting to settle down. And ... hey that's kind of the story in the Hobbit which is as much of a classic blueprint for fantasy as a book can get!

The controversial part is that there's nothing wrong with an original take on concepts unless the player isn't very good at it, in which case there's lots that's wrong with it. But very few people are good about evaluating their own skill level, which is probably why everyone hates my totally awesome PCs.

[Wizz]

@Arkandel said:

@Wizz

Well, I guess what I'm saying is playing against type isn't the same as being anti-thematic. Take classic D&D for example, not every adventurer has to be a happy-go-lucky treasure seeker, do-gooder or glory hound; you could play very legitimate characters who're caught in situations against their will or judgment and just kept going despite really wanting to settle down. And ... hey that's kind of the story in the Hobbit which is as much of a classic blueprint for fantasy as a book can get!

Absolutely nothing wrong with playing against type.. But you're still talking about the character. What this sounds like to me is having Bilbo travel to the Lonely Mountain only to find that Smaug is a hearty and cheerful host who showers the party with gold and then accidentally sits on one of the dwarves.

[Arkandel]

@Wizz Go to Shang and someone has already played that out, only with more ball gags and penis infusions.

[surreality]

@Arkandel said:

@Wizz Go to Shang and someone has already played that out, only with more ball gags and penis infusions.

And all the dwarves are hermaphrodites, with at least one of them having secretly having been an anime character all along.

[Pyrephox]

Think about Rip Van Winkle, or Thomas the Rhymer. Rip had a /grand old time/ playing bowling with the ghosts, singing and drinking and living it up for a single night...that turns out to be a hundred years of his time. His horror, his trouble, comes not from the fact that his time on the other side was terrible, but that now almost everyone he knows are dead, and he's a man out of time. Thomas the Rhymer willingly goes away with the Queen of Elfland, and parts (mostly) happily with her, with the gift of prophesy - his difficulties come in dealing with the gifts of Faerie, which are always double-edged. The main character of Kappa quite enjoys his time among the kappa, and it is the real world which is a terrible, disappointing thing to him (and he is also already a psychiatric patient, since the whole thing is a parable more than anything). Tam Lin apparently quite likes being a captive of the Elf Queen, until he a) is going to be sacrificed as a tithe, and b) falls in love.

The books, in general, tend to play up the idea that there is beauty and wonder in what the Lost experienced, as well as terror and pain - and that doesn't mean that /everyone/ has to have spent a durance which was filled to the gills with sexual slavery, torture, and blood. Things can be complicated. Things SHOULD be complicated. There are a lot of reasons that the Lost don't fit in with the human world, and some of those reasons can be that there's a part of them that misses Faerie and always will...even if they wouldn't choose to go back.

[AmishRakeFight]

@Coin Oh yeah, I figured and there are plenty of people who take that suggestion literally. Still, at least one werewolf tribe and one bloodline in the Gangrel actively encourage playing this trope. It's not necessarily the brightest choice but its a choice enough people make.

[Arkandel]

Here's a question though: How about coming up with concepts from one sphere which has ties with another (or others) if you're aiming the PC for a multisphere game?

Do you think there are ways to do this which won't get you called names?

[Coin]

@Arkandel

No. Because people are judgmental.

[HelloRaptor]

A perfectly valid Lost concept is someone who knowingly traded away seven years of life to be a Fae companion in exchange for some sort of miracle and considers it a worthy bargain, or someone who had a great time with their Keeper...but has now been abandoned because their Keeper was bored of them, and is realizing that they can't go back to the world as they knew it, and aren't willing to make that bargain again, knowing that the Fae can never return their feelings. Even someone who cold-bloodedly made a bargain with the Fae for knowledge, /knowing/ it would change them. There are more stories than kidnap victim, and more horrors than the durance!

Really? That's not at all what I got from the Changeling books, though it's admittedly been a while since I read them. Outside of being a Loyalist, I was unaware there was any mention of your time with your Keeper being limited because that's all you agreed to. As for the rest, the fact is that Keepers are presented as supernatural rapists, whatever form they take, and playing a character whose perspective is that they had a great time with their rapist until it got bored with them isn't going to go over well with the other Lost.

If there's Changelings presented as you're describing them in the books, I feel marginally less hostile towards the game, I suppose.

[Wizz]

@Arkandel said:

@Wizz Go to Shang and someone has already played that out, only with more ball gags and penis infusions.

...Wha...who...

...oh...oh wait...

Smaug is a hearty and cheerful host who showers the party with gold and then accidentally sits on one of the dwarves.

showers the party with gold

showers the party with gold

...God damn it.

@Pyrephox, that sort of thing happens in familiar, traditional fairy tales, sure. But that's still more Dreaming's angle, not Lost's. I'm not saying you can't craft a flawed, excellent character with that background, but it doesn't seem very thematic to me in the sense that Lost and nWoD in general started leaning hard on personal horror. There's nothing wrong with having something familiar, but it seems to fit best when you reach the expected and there's some sort of disturbing twist.

[HelloRaptor]

@Pyrephox said:

Think about Rip Van Winkle, or Thomas the Rhymer. Rip had a /grand old time/ playing bowling with the ghosts, singing and drinking and living it up for a single night...that turns out to be a hundred years of his time. His horror, his trouble, comes not from the fact that his time on the other side was terrible, but that now almost everyone he knows are dead, and he's a man out of time. Thomas the Rhymer willingly goes away with the Queen of Elfland, and parts (mostly) happily with her, with the gift of prophesy - his difficulties come in dealing with the gifts of Faerie, which are always double-edged. The main character of Kappa quite enjoys his time among the kappa, and it is the real world which is a terrible, disappointing thing to him (and he is also already a psychiatric patient, since the whole thing is a parable more than anything). Tam Lin apparently quite likes being a captive of the Elf Queen, until he a) is going to be sacrificed as a tithe, and b) falls in love.

The books, in general, tend to play up the idea that there is beauty and wonder in what the Lost experienced, as well as terror and pain - and that doesn't mean that /everyone/ has to have spent a durance which was filled to the gills with sexual slavery, torture, and blood. Things can be complicated. Things SHOULD be complicated. There are a lot of reasons that the Lost don't fit in with the human world, and some of those reasons can be that there's a part of them that misses Faerie and always will...even if they wouldn't choose to go back.

This is all well and good, but again not what I remember reading in the Changeling books. So I restate my question (I hadn't seen this when I posted before): Is this actually supported by C:tL's books? My memory is of the Durance and the Keepers responsible for it being pretty much just terrible alien monsters, no matter how beautiful, and that the decision to flee from that being important, and the flight back through the hedge being what rips your soul up so the magic can seep in and finalize making you a Changeling, being universally pretty horrible.

So is what's described above actually what's described in the C:tL books, or just something players who want to play it that way have decided should have been described? That's not sarcasm, I really don't know the answer and would like to.

[Miss Demeanor]

From what I can tell from re-reading at least the core Changeling book... Durances can and do vary quite a lot, and while Keepers may not be CONSCIOUSLY monstrous or horrible to their captives, they ARE alien beings incapable of empathizing with their charges. So its possible that some Changelings had Durances that weren't completely horrible and terrifying, but they likely were at some point dissatisfied enough to attempt leaving. There's also mention that some Durances (rare and puzzling ones) where a time limit WAS imposed on the bargain between Fae and human, or where the Keeper simply released them apropos of nothing.

What makes you Changeling is making the initial bargain with your Keeper just so that you can -survive- in Arcadia, as nothing of Arcadia exists outside of glamours and Contracts and complicated oaths woven by the Fae. According to the book, without making a bargain with your Keeper, even surrounded by food and water and a warm campfire, you would eventually die from thirst or starvation or cold.

The Thorns DO rip at the soul and humanity of a person, but that happens both upon entering and leaving, and the deeper a person travels, the more fucked up things get and less likely they are to find their way back out without luck or help. It also says, however, that most who venture in on their own are able to heal the damage done to the soul over time, once they're out of the Hedge. Changelings can't because they made that bargain and thus carry a part of the Fae with them always and forever, amen.

[Thenomain]

@Miss-Demeanor said,

Keepers may not be CONSCIOUSLY monstrous or horrible to their captives, they ARE alien beings incapable of empathizing with their charges.

And yet, Empathy is the key stat for manipulating the Hedge. Tres interesting.

However, I have to twitch at your description of a "deeper" Hedge. There is no meaningful distance in the Hedge after you leave sight of Earth and until you reach sight of Arcadia. The books do say this outright once, and imply it a number of occasions.

Not to pick on this, but it's a peeve of mine in how they assume otherwise,

[Miss Demeanor]

I'm not saying 'deeper' Hedge as in some known place between the Hedge and Arcadia... just... deeper in TO the Hedge. As in, you can wander for DAYS before reaching Arcadia. The longer you're there, the more you lose. And the less likely you are to find your way back out.

And not being able to empathize with your slaves doesn't mean you have no empathy at all. Slave owners way back when had no particular concern for their slaves, doesn't mean they had no concern for their own family or other white folk. They were simply.. viewed as completely separate species. Slaves were considered little more than animals, sometimes less so. Hell, they showed more concern over their crops than their slaves. So its not unlikely that while a Fae could have the Empathy skill, they would not have any for their captives.

[Thenomain]

Deeper in time. So longer in the Hedge.

And "just because x doesn't mean y"? Eh, I suppose you could say that about a lot but it's not very interesting. I prefer to think of it as: Gentry don't have to worry about that, and the Empathy skill doesn't mean to Gentry what you'd think it means to people. Alien.

[Miss Demeanor]

Whatever works! I like to think of Gentry as alien as well, and trying to define them with a sheet does them an injustice. They should be able to pull off stunts that simply don't exist in the books.

[Bennie]

And yet they gave them a book with stats.

[Miss Demeanor]

I know, and its sad. So sad.

[The Tree of Woe]

I found them overly simplistic for beings that are supposed to be alien and unknowable. Then again, I was running smack into inflexible players at the same time.

[Ganymede]

I concur with Raptor in that I don't recall Pyrephox's interpretation from my readings of C:tL's main book.

Changelings can bargain with the Gentry after their escape, at their own peril. That's fine. But when you consider that the Gentry reap humans to create air, trees, and stone, it seems clear to me that they aren't truly interested in getting anything tangible from humans. They likely only bargain to eventually fuck with someone else, that's all.