Some thoughts on Changeling
Dec. 31st, 2003 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cmdr_zoom(non-gamers can just skip this post.)
One of the themes of Changeling is fantasy overlaid on, or peeking into, reality. Many players see this as an altogether good thing (not least because the alternative is presented as a death of the spirit). What they fail to consider is that not all fantasy is pleasant and entertaining, and that as gamers, they choose when and how to experience it - an option not available to schizophrenics or drug users with flashbacks. Scary voices in your head and chimerical spiders crawling on you should be at least as common as translucent Seussian parades down Mulberry Street. In fact, a good Changeling game (IMO) should have moments of doubt in which even the most self-assured Troll or Sidhe might wonder if they are merely normal people having psychotic hallucinations.
Old Vampire players may recognize this as a variation on the Malkavian Problem. Real insanity isn't silly or fun. It's disturbing, frightening, and sometimes dangerous. Naturally, we choose what aspects of this we wish to explore in our fantasy; but again, this is not always possible for our characters, and to ignore that is to deprive them of depth and struggle. Changelings, balanced as they are between the worlds, must dance the razor's edge and not succumb wholly to either, taking the bad with the good.
Am I talking out of my ass? Let me know!
One of the themes of Changeling is fantasy overlaid on, or peeking into, reality. Many players see this as an altogether good thing (not least because the alternative is presented as a death of the spirit). What they fail to consider is that not all fantasy is pleasant and entertaining, and that as gamers, they choose when and how to experience it - an option not available to schizophrenics or drug users with flashbacks. Scary voices in your head and chimerical spiders crawling on you should be at least as common as translucent Seussian parades down Mulberry Street. In fact, a good Changeling game (IMO) should have moments of doubt in which even the most self-assured Troll or Sidhe might wonder if they are merely normal people having psychotic hallucinations.
Old Vampire players may recognize this as a variation on the Malkavian Problem. Real insanity isn't silly or fun. It's disturbing, frightening, and sometimes dangerous. Naturally, we choose what aspects of this we wish to explore in our fantasy; but again, this is not always possible for our characters, and to ignore that is to deprive them of depth and struggle. Changelings, balanced as they are between the worlds, must dance the razor's edge and not succumb wholly to either, taking the bad with the good.
Am I talking out of my ass? Let me know!
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 05:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 05:26 pm (UTC)As for Malkavians -- well, you've seen how I play them. Draw your own conclusions.
It's about identity (and I hate Dr. Seuss)
Date: 2003-12-31 05:40 pm (UTC)I think, IMEO, that Changeling is about finding one's own place in the world of dreams and myths, and that changelings are supposed to learn how to be who they are in the "real" world. I had a character who worried that changelings (himself included) were nothing more than wisps of human whimsy given form and nothing more -- no true identity seperate from the role adopted in the world of glamour and "make-believe." It's too easy for changelings to get lost in the role of the moment as whatever kith of whatever Court of whatever legacies of whatever seeming of whatever initial motif chosen at character creation. CtD should be about learning to be one's self, and that that self is more wondrous and glamourous than we might be tempted to believe when having to go to work at McJob. I try to place emphasis on the *self* in that sentence, because too often the system, setting, and players have a tendency to get lost in the pop culture "glamour" of modern fantasy, children's literature, and so forth.
CtD has always had this problem (the primary color wunderland) I think partly because they had so many kiths they had to appeal to and they had to make the Dreaming garish enough that the average reader would have some minimal clue about what they were going on about. Have you ever seen the book that actually talks about the Dreaming and the realms within? The way it's presented, no reasonable changeling should ever want to go there: it will drive you mad and make you the stupidest extreme of what your kith "is," and pretty much destroy any motley that wanders into it. But this is, presumably, the place changelings originate from -- and it utterly destroys any personality or distinctiveness your character had.
At the same time, I think CtD is best done if you encourage players to examine what their mythic thread actually means and how they actually relate to it. Yes, you are This (sidhe/troll/pooka/whatever), but what else are you? What is *your* story? Are you only a mythic stereotype, or are you something more? Without any of this, you might as well be playing Shadowrun 2003 (or D20 Modern Fantasy) and just go explore dungeons and fight monsters.
CtD also has a great deal in the background for who characters were in their lives before their present incarnation. I think this also relates to understanding who you were, who you are now, and who you can be.
Just my verbose thoughts on the matter, spurred by my dislike of Dr. Seuss. :)
Re: It's about identity (and I hate Dr. Seuss)
Date: 2003-12-31 05:50 pm (UTC)Of course, my character resolved this dilemma by realizing that if he was questioning and worrying about this, that probably demonstrated that he wasn't merely just someone else's fever dream.
Re: It's about identity (and I hate Dr. Seuss)
Date: 2004-01-01 02:45 am (UTC)I like Seuss, just not in my gaming. Or badly interpreted for the big screen.
Some very good thoughts. Thanks for commenting. I was a little worried I might be off-target, since my firsthand experience with CtD is extremely limited (mostly a Mage player).
Re: It's about identity (and I hate Dr. Seuss)
Date: 2004-01-01 12:36 pm (UTC)Re: It's about identity (and I hate Dr. Seuss)
Date: 2004-01-01 01:47 pm (UTC)CtD has always been the red-headed Irish stepchild of the WoD because it was never quite as monolithically dark or oppressive (at a first glance) as the other WoD games. Also, the various kith are pretty damn varied as far as trying to figure out what to do with a motley's redcap or pooka or whatever, and they go out of their way to make, I think, the kith even more stereotyped than most other factions in other games. I think it's because each kith might as well be its own "species" of WoD critter (Troll: The Pretending to be a Klingon Samurai Norse Warrior or Sluagh: The Whispering Goth Angst), just using the same mechanics as the others (basically). The other factions in other games are pretty much distinguished along social and cultural lines (the differences in blood ancestry pale compared to the social and philosophical outlooks of Ventrue and Torreador), and people have an easier time wrapping their heads around that. I think most people look at changeling kiths and go "the hell is this?" and almost all they have to work with is what's in the basic book or the kithbook for that kith. *shrug*
That and CtD attracted it's own brand of weirdo compared to the other games.
Re: It's about identity (and I hate Dr. Seuss)
Date: 2004-01-01 03:38 pm (UTC)Re: It's about identity (and I hate Dr. Seuss)
Date: 2004-01-02 05:31 pm (UTC)Well, some of us do find the redemptive and moral issues of V:tM rather appealing. (Like the 2nd Ed Vampire book says, "You're supposed to be playing a tragic hero, dumbass.") The same with D:tF, a very similar game which suffers from horrible art but encourages heroic / sympathetic characters even more.
Granted, some sensuality in the mix also helps, something which I often find lacking in Changeling, which is often described as either modern D&D-esque silliness or a very austere intellectual exercise. I like your take on it well enough, particularly trying to find a balance (a common WW theme) but it still comes across as being a little too dry for my tastes. The closest analogue I have to it is Wraith, the little game that could, and its themes of loss, questioning and longing...
IMO, Changeling suffers primarily from a lack of focus caused by the need to encompass a much broader concept than "vampire", "werewolf" or "ghost". There's a lot of territory to cover among the Fae, and trying to convey the themes of Changeling to an audience which has received relatively little exposure to the concept is no easy feat. Demon, as a weird Vampire-Changeling hydbrid, attempts much the same thing, often with more success given the familiarity of the material.
As it is, I still find more meaning in WoD and Exalted than in virtualy any other game, monolithic darkness and oppression included. It at least communicates at a level above "kill, level up, kill".
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-31 06:47 pm (UTC)I appreciate that you cap'ed the Malk Problem, I've never heard or seen one played that wasn't some sort of reject from a Loony Toons cartoon- and that destroys any shreads of 'darkness' the might otherwise have had.
I agree, overall.
Date: 2004-01-01 08:58 am (UTC)By coincidence, what actually brought Changeling to my attention was one of the most disturbing, but brilliant, pieces of RPG world design and adaptation I've ever seen. It *ENCAPSULATES* what you discuss in your journal entry, in fact, by taking something which the common publich sees as rather fluffy-fuzzy harmless fantasy and (A) adapting the REAL material, which was not nearly as bright-light-perky as the average public perception of it, and (B) working out a sequence of events showing what horrors could be visited upon that world.
I speak, of course, of OZ: A World of Darkness. http://people.smu.edu/bsbrown/ozframe.html introduces this brilliant, creepy, and amazing bit of work. I was a complete Oz junkie as a kid (I have all of Baum's original Oz books and a couple of the others), and this is... stunning.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-02 01:05 pm (UTC)