Changeling the Podcast

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, Chr...

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 w...

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'r...

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 vetera...

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...

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...

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...

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 game...

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...

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 dra...

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 experience...

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 c...

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...

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...

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-hu...

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 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 ove...

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 t...

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 origina...

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...

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 th...

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 condu...

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 volu...

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 br...

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...