(Contest) Wow me with your Changeling: The Lost material and win a book!

[C.W.Richeson]

Game mechanics, hobgoblins, PCs, short fiction, APs, I want to see the coolest stuff you've come up with for Changeling. My favorite submission will receive a copy of the excellent Night Horrors: Grim Fears, an antagonist book for C:tL.* The contest runs for 2 weeks or 48 hours without an additional post, whichever comes first.

So, RPGnet, dazzle me with your imagination and I'll reward you with a very useful supplement for this solid game.** Post below so we can see the sorts of creative ideas you've brought to the table.

* I'll only ship media to a continental US address. Happy to ship elsewhere, but you pay the difference.

** Thanks to White Wolf for donating a copy for this event.

[drrockso20]

well all I got are two Demotivational posters one that deals with Changeling proper while the other deals with the Fae themselves

[San Dee Jota]

(please be gentle, this is off the cuff)

Fiends & Fortresses

"I forget how we came together in the Basement. Playing the game made me forget so much. There was the Fiend Master, and he probably had the most changes. His spine adjusted and rebuilt so he could better crouch behind his screen. His mouth and tongue replaced with a series of silver meshes, so he could make a greater variety of voices and sounds. The too perfect sounds reminded us of how important it was to speak in character, and his exposed spine reminded us to stay focused on the game.

There was Korie, the wizard; I'm not sure if Korie was the player's name or her character's. Her eyes had been taken out and replaced with a series of shadowy gears so that she wouldn't need to sleep or read something distracting at the table. The soft clicking and whirring of the gears reminded the rest of us not to tire or look away.

Next was Angus, the dwarf. His skin was carved with obfuscated statistics and schizophrenic numbers that moved and flowed and changed as his character had great adventures. The sound of the scrawlings tearing through his flesh as they traveled and transmigrated reminded us not to forget our character sheets; as if we could leave.

Cal'eria the elven thief followed. His hands had been replaced by transparent spheres of crystal, and his arms had been hollowed out to store countless dice of varying shapes and sizes. When the game needed dice to be rolled, Cal'yth pushed them from within his arms and out into the spheres where his hands once were, to quickly be counted before they dissolved back into his arms. His pain reminded the rest of us that the game required devotion.

Finally there was me, Dalith the cleric. I had it the worst of all. No gross transformations or punishments for me. Rather, every time I stopped smiling or laughing, the others would be hurt and pained by the shadowy figures in the Basement. My hidden suffering reminded the others that games were meant to be fun."

-----

Fiends & Fortresses is both a living game and a Fae. It's unknown how much influence it has outside of Arcadia, although rumors of its existence circulate from time to time in the mortal world as the ultimate game for intensely dedicated role-players. It only targets near fanatical RPG devotees and draws its victims into Arcadia as they sleep, replacing them with Fetches who soon lose all interest in RPGs.

It's players awaken within the Basement, a rather large and poorly lit room, modestly decorated. Once in the Basement the players find themselves rapidly forgetting their past identities, confusing them with their game characters. Players never actually become their characters though; F&F wants people to play it, not become it. As such, F&F will use the shadowy dwellers within the Basement to punish and "improve" errant players, making them into better and better players. Eventually the improvements reach such a point that the player either dies or becomes one of the shadow dwellers.

While it would be easy to think of Fiends & Fortresses as a joke, it is also a tragic example of something good gone bad. Games should be fun, but F&F goes after people who mistake obsession for recreation and can no longer simply have fun rolling dice and pretending to smack orcs. Escaping its grasp involves not only having fun with the game while in the basement (something that becomes harder and harder to manage the more one is "improved" while in the Basement), but also learning to have fun with gaming while in the real world. Avoidance may also work, but the obsessive attitude many Lost take to escaping their Fae captors will not keep F&F at bay.

[the_seraph]

First posting:

Teaser post for a Changeling game I recently ran:

To the Changelings: Hidden from the eyes of mortals surrounding them, the Changelings both feed off of and protect those around them. But when hard won Freeholds in the city are slowly lapsing back into the Hedge, and Dreams grow dim with visions of an evil portent, can there truly be a hidden gateway to Arcadia in the city? And will it be found in time to prevent the foreboding visions from coming true?

The Changeling Courts of London are many and varied. London is home to communities from all around the world, and as such their beliefs and practices filter into the dreams of the city and are distilled down into a variety of Courts whose internecine struggles serve to distract the Changelings from their damaged pasts.

However, recently all of the Changelings have begun to suffer from disturbing nightmares. Those with the ability to perceive portents and visions claim that there is a Great Doom hanging over the city, that distance may be the only way to avoid the fate that is riding on the winds of change. But many Changelings have so much invested in the city and its people, in pursuing their own lives or the lives they left behind.

[the_seraph]

Second posting:

A bit of fiction from the above game (used as interludes between scenes/stories so that the Players can see that things are happening in the game outside of their own actions - and perhaps to stir them up a little)



Darkness seeped under the door to the mud-room and then, with a metal-tearing crack, pulled it from it's hinges. A tall spindly shadow stood in the wreckage of the doorway. One of the magi inside shouted out a challenge and fired several rounds from her gun. The figure in the doorway melted away and reappeared at the edge of the property, tauntingly raising a single finger. Several of the magi poured out into the yard pursuing it and one of them shouted over the muffled and distorted sounds of gunfire, "See, I told you that helping the bloodsuckers would lead to this kind of mess."

The mudroom was quiet, but the aviary beyond was a raucous cacophony of noise. A shadow beneath one of the hanging cages darkened, elongated, and finally solidified into a humanoid shape. Stepping out from underneath the cage, the short ugly man sniffed at the air, the empty eye-sockets of his head seeming to peer about as his head sinuously wove from side to side like a serpent. He slowly moved about the room, moving with the curious, half-stumbling gait of a blind-man.

He stopped before one cage, muttering to himself. "Ah, yes. My little one who escaped to America. So... poetic that my little sparrow who had flown the coop is traced back to a nest of other strange little birds, eh?"

"What are you doing in here, fiend," came a voice from the doorway. Morgan stood there, the light behind her glinting off of her skin.

"Me. I'm... browsing." His empty eyes looked her way. "These are books, are they not? That is what I had heard." He looked at the cages as he wandered around the room. Stopping before one within Morgan's sight he opened the cage and reached his pudgy hands in and caught a small bird in his hands. He smiled, light glinting off his abnormally white teeth. "Mmmm, such a tiny thing," the short man whispered. "So tiny I could crush it with a finger, yet it sings a beautiful song, does it not, Miss... " his question trailed off into silence.

Morgan paused, not wanting to risk the life of the bird. Her attention so focused, she did not notice the shadows behind her darkening and deepening.

"The sounds of this place are wondrous, all these living books, sung out by such small and fragile creatures. I only wish I could understand the words." His small fat hands began gently stroking the birds head as he talked, never turning his head toward Morgan instead turning and twisting as if to listen. "How many books have been lost to the years I wonder, what secrets are hidden in the minds of these little creatures. Each book so fragile, each bird full of more secrets than most humans could ever hope to know. Mmmmmm... Its little heart is racing as it sits and sings in my hand, even terrified the creature belts out the story."

The fat man fell still and quiet for what seemed an eternity and as Morgan watched, his hands began to move, it seemed as if he was going to place the bird back, but he held it up to his nose instead. Inhaling long
and slow, he sighed. "So many secrets in this lovely little bird, so rare, so precious, so fragle."

She started to make a dash forward only to find her limbs suddenly entrapped and entangled by thick bands of solid shadow and liquid ice.

He sighed again and his mouth opened. Without any real warning, he stuck the small bird in his mouth and bit, a startled squeek ended by a juicy crunch. The fat man stood, smiling, a small bit of blood trailing down his chin and a few feathers stuck on the corner of his wide mouth. He approached Morgan slowly but confidently, and said "So, will you tell me what I want to know? You see, I love secrets, and these birds hold so many precious secrets, it's hard not to eat them all..."

[San Dee Jota]

Goblin Television

Sitting on top of the TV set is a strange black metal box, wired into the jacks on the back of the set. If you opened the box inside you might find some marbles, a piece of quartz, thirteen Kewpie doll heads, and the rotting heart of an owl. Or maybe you’d just find a loose wad of torn pennies from 1986, fast food burger wrappers from around the world, and thirteen used condoms, all stuffed inside a costume wizard’s hat. Each box contains a different mixture of garbage, whimsy, and disgust, tailor made for its user.

What makes Goblin Television so special is that it broadcasts the shows it owner most wants to see. The still ongoing seasons of shows canceled before their time, the season’s worth of reality police episodes where the police officers have to shoot and kill one’s frenzied ex-lovers, entertaining commercials for products that sound good, movies recast with different actors or dead actors in their prime, or news programs from a world where political events turned out differently and better. None of it is real, but it’s comforting to those who watch. And every spring and fall, new programming options become available on GTV’s 13 channels. There’s always something good to watch.

But Goblin Television is jealous and easily provoked to anger. Those who use the GTV adapter boxes can’t watch any other television network provider; not at home or elsewhere, although friends are always welcome to come over and watch GTV on the customer’s set. They can’t use DVR or VCR technologies; GTV gives no consent to illegal recordings, but at least the commercials are interesting too. Finally, no remote channel changer is included with the service and modifying the adapter box to use one will break the terms of service; you have to change the channel by hand. Breaking any of these rules results in the GTV adapter ceasing to work, and the customer is banned from ever receiving Goblin Television services again.

But while the terms of service may seem harsh, the fees are worse. To keep service, the customer must break someone’s heart somehow. The greater the break, the longer the customer’s account is paid up. Breaking a child’s favorite toy is worth maybe a week or two, but if the customer breaks the favorite toy of his own child, that could be worth a full year. It’s rumored that a circle of TV executives for a major network keep their fees paid by promoting brilliant new shows on their network, only to kill the shows after a single season or two. The sorrow it creates is quite small, but spread over even a couple million of people it adds up quickly.

[C.W.Richeson]

Since 48 hours have passed without an additional post this concludes the contest. Thank you drrockso20, San Dee Jota, and the_seraph all for participating. Those were some really cool posts!

Goblin Television is my personal favorite, though I find Fiends and Fortresses to be very clever and it was difficult to pick between those two.