Changeling: The Lost

Introduction
Over the last five years I have heard a lot of good stuff about Changeling. At first it was all about Changeling: the dreaming. It was supose to be a very interesting game. I have unsuccessfully made a few attempts to get some of my friends to storytell it so I could experience it as a player.

When the new line of White Wolf games was released the hype was that Changeling: the lost was even better than the predecessor. I bought it not long after the release, but have had it on the shelf unread ever since.

Review
I decided on a whim early in April that I would run a game with 4 sessions the first weekend of May. I started reading the core book and was a once fascinated. One of the things I noticed early on was that between the two version they have changed what your are playing. In the dreaming you are playing the Fae creature left being when the Fae abducted a human. In the lost you play the human that has been abducted and escaped.

The book is well written, and immediately gives you many ideas for a game. It is supposed to be a game of beautiful madness. I was unable to make this mood work during the first sessions. Having said that we had a lot of fun.

The system is the new World of Darkness system. As a player I did not care that much for the system. I disliked that it is much easier to hit some one than it is to avoid being hit, which forces attack to be the "only" form of defense. However, from the other side of the table the system is very nice. It runs much more smoothly than the previous one. It is much easier and quicker to handle the attack/defense of the NPC's as only one roll is involved.

The Changeling setting is as I said very fascinating and easy to make stories in. They system and setting is well thought through, and I discovered no major holes or inconsistencies. Having said that, I wish they could have made the section about gathering glamor better, having a more throughout described system for it. The same goes for gathering and finding thing in the hedge (witch is the part separating our world from the land of the Fae).

Conclusion
Changeling: The Lost is a very well written game, and I would recommend it to anyone.

The delayed embrace

As I'm sure I have mentioned, I'm running a vampire chronicle. In this the character all started out as mortals on the west coast of Norway in 754. I did not let the players them selves chose clan or even when they were going to be embraced. After 19 session the character have progressed from to the year 767 and two out of three have been embraced. The last character is a ghoul. 

Having one character that was embraced and the rest as moral worked out very nicely. Especially in the beginning when the vampire tried to hide it's true form. Hiding this information worked nicely for a while. The bigest problem was that I felt the need to communicate secretly with the vampire-player during the first session. Since I do not do that a lot it made the others suspicious. To better allow the player to hid her characters nightly habit we had agreed that she should explain her activities during the day, just make sure that she did not run in to any of the other players, and I would just ignore what she said. So she would go: "I'm out of bed early that morning, I'm going to enjoy the sunny spring day practicing my tailoring skills" and I would interpret it as "I'm going to be sleeping during the day far far away from the rays of the sun." The other players would still believe that she had been out and about that day.

Even after the fact became known it still worked out nicely for a while, but then again the group seemed somewhat artificially glued together. Why would a vampire spend so much time with these mortals, and not try to better her standing among the vampires? In addition I felt it was difficult to give the vampire aspect of the story the proper focus. The beast, the road of enlightenment, the feeding all became secondary things instead of primary things as I think they should. So after some session with one vampire in the group I started encouraging others to get them selves embraced. 

The two vampire character and their players still does not know which clan they belong to, since I decided that the Norse vampires (einherjar) have no concept of clan nor generation. It has been a challenge to keep the clans a secret. Especially the clan weakness causes some problems. How do you hide the fact that the Lasombra character no longer cast any reflection or that a ventrue only can feed from certain types of mortals? Some of them where hidden by a change I made to the setting. I changed it so that each vampire has more flaws than is usual. I also made it so that flaws could be inherited from your sire during embrace. Amaranth will very ofthen generate a new flaw for the perpetrator. Some of the flaws that are much more common in my game are cast no reflection, prey exclusion and light sensetive, all of which also hide a clan weaknes. The main intention was not to hide the clan weakenes, but that was a nice side effect. Some of the other clan weakenes I have hidden in other ways, but I can't divulge tham at this time. 

Conclusion:

It was an interesting aspect of the story to let the characters be embraced at different time. However, next time I will for sure make the characters all enter the supernatural aspect of the setting at aproximately the same time (with in 4 session of each other). By hiding the clans from the players and the characters the normal clan rivalry have been avoided. I'm planing to introduce it to the game when they travel south in to Europe and meet vampires a customed to the clan consept. Still it will be centuries before there are any Tremere around to tell them which clans they are, so untill then they can only guess. 

The Oracle feature

In most of my successful long lasting campaigns I have had what I'm going to call the oracle feature. I believe that this is in part the reason for the campaigns success.

First of all, what do I think of when I say the oracle feature. It could be said to be any power, entity or device that allow the character to ask for advice/guidance for a supposedly all knowing entity. I'll give a few examples:

WOD: The merit foresighted or oracular ability- allow the character to attempt to get a vision of the future.

D&D 3.5: The spell commune - allows the character to ask one or more questions, and get an answer, from a deity.

Any setting: A Oracle - a person/entity that the character may seek out and ask questions about the future for a price. This could also be a person that is not all knowing, but know significantly more than tha characters.

Why do I think this is so beneficial? I should be honest and say that they are a great fun, to play and just as funn to see the players ponder the answer. Well that was why I like them, not what they do for the campaign.

They function as a sort of emergency escape hatchet form prolonged deliberation or standstills. By that I mean that when the players are at a total loss of ideas for what they are to do they might seek out the oracle feature. Or when they can not decide which choice to make in a certain situation they can seek the oracle feature to help make a decision.

I have heard of games that have fudge-points or other game mechanisms for prompting the game forward*. These are as the oracle feature something that the player initiates. The main difference between fude-points and the oracle feature are that the oracle features also can be represented in the setting as a natural element.

Foot Note:
* I admitt to having used this once in Legend of the Five Rings. After achieving some great victory I awardws one player a Divinity Point that he could use to great effect. A few sessions later he cursed an entire city to insomnia. Well the curse was that those that had anything to do with the opiumtrade would be unable to sleep. Did I mention that the city he cursed was the empires center for opiumtrade? It was awsome. Having said that, the Divinity Point could have been an oracle feature if the player chose to, but he chose to use it to fule his curse instead.

Motivation: If giving does not work, maybe taking will...

In an earlier post I wrote about how I had problems getting the players to contribute. In particular I wanted them to write a short journal of what happened during each session. So I could use this information as reference in the future.

In different campaigns it has always worked to award the player XP, for doing this. But when I think about it this is campaigns were I was a player and not the storyteller. Maybe it's just me that is easily bribed with XP. After five consecutive sessions with no journal written by the players I decided to try something new. I wrote a short journal my self, which I always do if the players dosn't. I made a comment in a comment field of the wiki that their arch nemesis had been awarded 40xp for the journal entry. I made sure all the players saw the comment. The very next session a player wrote a journal....and gained the customary 2xp. The question is if there is a cause - effect relation or if it was a pure coincident.

40xp is alot, in OWD. Having said that, the storyteller usually is given the privelege of increasing the NPC's stats as he sees fit. The only difference now was that I informed the players that I did.

I hope the effect will last, but that remains to see.

Expectations vs Requirements

Have anyone other then me noticed that the "generic" gaming group has many expectations of the storyteller, and very few of the players? I'm a storyteller more often than a player (unfortunately) and have therefore given the topic some thought.

Players expect the storyteller to have made various preparation in advance of the game session. They expect him to be prepared, with at least a story or some interesting scenes. That he has some interesting people for them to meet and interact with. Some groups expect him to have prepared a neat puzzle or a mystery for them to solve. Last but not least they expect that their own actions are taken in to account.

What may the storyteller expect from his players? From experience I would say only that they show up, or at least let people know in advance if the do not. Aside from that players almost seem affronted if more are expected of them. I have on more than one occasion heard players say that they have had no time to think of the game since the last session. How would the game be if the storyteller did the same?

This leads me to requirements. I wonder if it might not be a viable alternative to stop expecting things of players and make them requirements of participation. Is it unfair to tell someone that in order for us to have a fun evening we all have to contribute? We all need to put in some effort in between the sessions.

I have plans for trying this requirement strategy with two campaigns. I'm very interested in seeing if this change who will participate. Will the people that usually go "I have been too busy (during the last two weeks to make room for even 30minutes of preparation) to prepare or even think about the game." not join or will they make room in their schedule? Also, it will be interesting to see if the required effort will produce anything beneficial. Will it lead to the players just doing the motions of preparation with out putting any effort into it?

The idea is that for the first campaign I will require a in character summary of last gamesession to be written before next session is planed. Either of the two players may write it as long as it is written.

For the second campaign I'm going to use a setting I'm creating. The game will take place in historical time in relation to the completed setting. I wish to flesh out certain details about the session by playing in it. The general idea is that we will play three weekends, and in between the weekends the players are required to write a contribution to the setting based on the game sessions. This can either be a historical record as written by a historian in the future (relative to the game time), a private journal for one of the character, a in character letter or some other such thing.

For both of them there will be the requirement to spend some time thinking about the game and your character. Especially formulating some goals for the character, and thinking through how the character should act and respond to various things.

Handouts?

I tried to GM Call of Cthulhu, without much success I might say, earlier this year. The issue I had problems with was, making the 1920's come alive. The Call of Cthulhu scenarios that I read were all very hand-out intensive, and I understand that this is true for most of the Cthulhu scenarios. This got me thinking about hand-outs and their effect on the game.

I have generally considered hand-outs to be beneficial for the game. For a player, it is exciting thing to receive them. In the past, I have used hand-outs where "blood" spots or missing parts of the parchment changed some of the meaning in the text, or made a text less certain and more open for speculation. This, I feel, is difficult to achieve without the handout, as it would be almost impossible to describe that some of the things are missing without emphasizing it too strongly.

In my Dragonlance campaign, the characters had obtained a piece of magical paper which contained information about some artifacts they where looking for. It was given to the players as a handout. The paper would change in accordance with what happened to the artifacts. So when the players destroyed one of the artifacts, the symbol for it disappeared from the paper. When the bad guy did some horrible sacrificial ritual with one of them, it would turn red and so on. After a while, the characters became obsessed with this piece of paper. It guided or maybe dictated many of their actions. I had intended the paper to be a motivator for finding the artifacts, but also a way for the players to know that there was a finite number of artifacts so that they would have a sense of approaching the goal. The hand-out did these things, but maybe it did it too well? Did it emphasize the plot line the GM had thought out too strongly, making the players feel they had no choice other than to search for the artifacts? Basically a fancy railroading-device?

One of the characters, or should I say players, got fed-up with the paper. He wanted to "liberate" himself from the obsession. So he took the paper, in game, and threw it into the camp fire. There, it burned for approximately 10 seconds, because the other characters used about two combat turns to get it out of the fire. I ruled that the magical item did in fact burn, against the objection of several of the players, and we threw the paper (the hand-out) into the fireplace. We left it there for 10 seconds, again against some objections, and took it out to look at what was left of it. I must say that, thinking back at this event, I remember that it was great fun.

After having attempted to GM Call of Cthulhu, I started thinking about hand-outs again. Because in the scenarios includes many hand-outs, that are essential to the story line.

I have started to wonder whether hand-outs are exclusively beneficial. For instance, in Call of Cthulhu, the players are rewarded for their research with a handout, when they are on the right track or at least on the track the scenario wants them to take. But when they are chasing the (wrong) red herring, I would not be able to summon any hand-outs for them, implicitly telling them that they are on a goose chase.

Does hand-outs make it abundantly clear that the GM has plans around some part of the story? I think this is an obvious yes. However, does it influence the players too strongly? Is giving out a hand-out a too strong indication that the GM wants the player to follow this particular lead, if yes is that bad?

Einherjar Saga, a few expiriments

I'm currently running a campaign in World of Darkness (The Old One).

Before we started this game, the players were given the following introduction:

Call it destiny; call it fate or the will of God. It chose to have a plan for these particular souls. Some would call them blessed as Odin's einherjar, some would call them cursed as Cain's children. Through the ages they will live, or at least exist. They will gaze on the gates of Jerusalem in 1099 just prior to a bloodbath that will be remembered for eternity. When Pope Innocence III calls the fourth crusade, they are destined to see a piece of the true cross on which Jesus himself died. In Paris, they will learn to fear the guillotine. In New Orleans they will meet Catharina, for they are Odin's blessed einherjarar. Let's start with the beginning, the place is Fossfjordgard on the west coast of Norway and the year is 754, and the five mortals are facing each other……

Furthermore each player was informed that he or she would roll a random destiny, which the world and its powers would conspire to make reality. Though they might, through their own actions, change the course of this destiny. Things included in the destiny were whether the character was to become a ghoul prior to embrace and, if so, when it would happen. What clan and at what time they would be embraced. Finally, for each chapter of the campaign, a special roll was made to see if the players would lose or gain any merits, flaws, backgrounds and so forth... The players did however not get to see the destiny, as it was to be a tool for the storyteller alone. The goal was to challenge myself to work the destiny into the story so that everybody had a good time and to spice up the campaign with choices or combination that I would never have chosen consciously.

I want to tell you about my experience so far with the destiny system. We have had 11 games sessions so far.

The Destiny
Knowing ahead of the first session who would be the characters' sire was a huge benefit. Over the first few sessions, I could introduce the various sires gradually. I think the players appreciated this too, since the NPC that would be their sire was not suddenly introduced just prior to the embrace, but had been present in the game from the beginning. This has given the game a sense of continuity.

At some point, one of the player got a indication through a wise woman (who presumably could tell the future) that she would live to be an old woman. The player reacted very strongly to this. I think the player realized (correctly) that what could otherwise have been taken as a off comment or a vague prediction that she would live long, was in fact a true premonition of what she had rolled for her destiny. At first the player strongly objected, she had no intention of playing an old gray-haired kindred. It took a bit of couching to get the player to try to change the destiny, or at least take her destiny into her own hands. This event played out to the benefit of the game because as a storyteller I was made aware that this event or chain of event was nothing that would fascinate this player.

Another aspect of the destiny is that it is highly unlikely that the players would be embraced or ghouled at the same time. This gave us an opportunity to have a mixed group for a while. The player that was first embraced wanted to keep it a secret from the rest of the players/characters. I had anticipated this, and already from the beginning of the campaign I had focused on events during the night. Since we started in Norway, having almost any event during the night was not a problem during the winter since the nights are so long. The kindred-player and I agreed on a few things we would do to avoid drawing attention to the change. For instance, when I asked if someone wanted their character to do something during the day she would often reply with some action she wanted her character to perform. This was a rouse for the other players, I would just ignore those actions. When in combat she faked the impact of her wounds so that her behaviour more resembled that of a mortal character. These things helped keep the cat in the box. We also did a few "mistakes" that let the other players onto the change. First of all we started exchanging more written (secret) notes during the game session. This had not been used a lot prior to the embrace so it was easily noticed. Second, as a kindred her social status changed, which also aroused the other players' suspicions.
All in all it worked nicely, a few players were suspicious that something had happened to the embraced character, but uncertain as to what. This was mostly caused by the notes and the change in social status.

At the moment I'm satisfied with the destiny experiment. However, I'm wondering if it would have been better not to inform the players of it in advance, and only used it as a tool for the Storyteller.

Predefined Chapters of the campaign
The players were informed that I intended them to experience a few different locations and events. I had decided upon some of them because I had recently bought a lot of oWOD books detailing them. So far this have not played any major part in the campaign, unfortunately. I had hoped to introduce characters from the prepared material as soon as possible. I thought how awesome would it not be to meet the prince of a city I know you are going to visit later when he is still a mortal? However I have found that many of the characters are not even born at the time I decided to start the campaign, and that it felt unnatural to introduce them while the players were stil in Norway.
I hope that I will be able to do this soon though, as it is one of the things I have high ambitions and expectations for.

System
I have made some changes to the system. Instead of the standard character creation system, I modified the existing XP system so that I could use this during character generation. I really do not like the fact that there is one freebie based system at character creation and another system (xp) for improvement during the game. It favours specialicing your character as early as possible, and my experience tells me that too many players come out of the normal character creation with skills or diciplines maxed out. It became a bit more cumbersome, but otherwise it worked as intended. None of the players have complained about it anyway (I wonder if I gave them too much starting XP?).