Woo-hah! We got here at last. Yule is upon us and it's time for another State of the Podcast before we enter our Winterregnum period. As stated before, there will likely be a bit of content here and there through the coming weeks, but—with one or two possible exceptions—no full episodes until some point in February. And when we come rocketing back at that point, well, we have a thing or three in store for you. In this bit of bonus content, we're talking about statistics from the Season, plans for the next one, little life updates, and whatever else crossed our brains on a chilly weekday night.

Although we won't be releasing much to the winter airwaves, you are still welcome to get in touch with us through the usual socials below! The conversation rolls on, and if you don't want to miss what's happening, our freeholds are always welcome to you:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) has set up the nocker sugar shack what makes the Glamour syrups and chimerical caramels.

Et quand viendra l'hiver aux neiges monotones,

—Charles Baudelaire, "Paysage" (tr. George Dillon)

Like any grumps, we often ruminate on the past and what it has (and hasn't) brought us. After the closing of the old White Wolf forums post-Time of Judgment, those in search of community found our way to various places on the internet, one of the most noteworthy of which for the two of us was Shadow'n'Essence, a message board forum with extensive space for each of the WoD lines (and more!) in the 2000s. You may have heard us wax poetic about it in our online games episode a couple weeks ago. The vibrant atmosphere and creative energy among the Changeling fans in particular is something still fondly remembered, and sometimes people turn up years later to talk about it—like Chris Bern (aka Swordsman), former coordinator (aka Vilicus) of the Changeling section of the site, who joins us for this minisode walk down memory lane. Tune in to hear us talk about things as they once were, and if you were on SnE, we'd be delighted to hear from you...!

Chris' repository of Changeling bits from the days of yore can be found at: https://theshepherdsfreehold.wordpress.com/. And as for us, it's the usual mishmash of places:

Josh Hillerup (zenten) absconded with a Glamour slushie machine and the gods of internet past can't have it back.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

Once again, it happened...! Pooka is in attendance at PAX Unplugged this weekend, and spent Friday afternoon rushing around doing on-the-spot interviews with creators whose work is somewhat Changeling-aligned. Herein are five short interviews about games that touch on the fae, dreams, imagination, and more. The sound quality in this minisode is particularly awful, which is what happens when you're doing interviews in a giant hall filled with 10,000 people, but at least everybody was as lovely and informative as they could be on a frantic day. Hopefully these will inspire you to seek out new and interesting games to expand your horizons, and if you happen to be at the convention, check out the booths in questions!

The various creators and their web presences:

As for ourselves...

Pooka G (any pronoun/they) has no voice today, and must game. (Credit to Mike from Darker Days Radio for this too-true line.)

The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Maybe it's pretty obvious that we do a lot of gaming online nowadays, and that as hosts of a podcasts, we are thorough netizens who have thoughts and feelings about the interwebs. Nevertheless, online games have their own particular dynamics, opportunities, and cultures that we thought it might be good to explore, for people who are less or un-familiar with the experience. We're joined by veteran Storyteller of online gaming, Fetch, who shares wisdom from her extensive experience, which we compound with hoary reminisces about the forums and text-based ditherings of yesteryear (which we would not trade for anything of this world). This isn't an episode about the digital Dreaming itself, although maybe that's yet another entry for the Season 4 wishlist; this is an episode about how, through gaming, to dream digitally.

Some of the links we discussed in the episode include:

As for ourselves:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) once used Metamorphosis with Prop 5 and Scene 5 to briefly transform all of mIRC into a single honeybee.

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

In the annals of Changeling history, there are many books that have been promised without coming to fruition. The Changeling atlas, Kingdom books beyond Willows, Book of Glamour... the litany goes on. Things are less clear for C20, but one title with a particular twisty path was By Night Studios' Mind's Eye Theatre: Changeling, which was almost official before it was de-officialized, and then eventually released on the Storytellers' Vault, but with a different team, even though their books for the other lines are official... or something. In any case, at nearly 400 text-dense pages, this is by far the largest homebrew Changeling product on the Vault, and its vaguely formal connections to the line meant that it was a candidate for reading. Pooka is joined by special LARP correspondent Amanda to talk about the book's evolution, particulars, and reception within the community. Much mixing of opinions ensues!

You can purchase the PDF from https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/326469?affiliate_id=3063731 if you're so inclined. Amanda also recommends reading the essay "The Economy Cool" by Jason Andrews at https://jasonbandrew.com/role-playing-games/role-playing-game-articles/the-economy-of-cool/. And naturally, if you want to get in touch with us, you can reach out via any of the following:

Pooka G (any pronoun/they) wonders if the mind's eye is covered by the company vision plan.

The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

And so here we are. It's time to open up the last few chapters of the Changeling 20th Anniversary Player's Guide, thereby ending our readthroughs of the game's canon. Feels weird, to be honest. When we started the show, it felt like we'd be going through the library of official texts forever, and now that there are no more, there's a bittersweetness much like when the game was canceled (and then canceled again). We don't know whether it will reincarnate in the future, as the fae are wont to do, but if there's one thing the last three years have taught us, it's that the community is as vibrant and inventive as it ever was. So while we're discussing Síocháin and Imprints and Lycians and swan maidens on this episode, our thoughts are already reaching forward to see what new dreams are on the horizon. (And we hope you'll continue with us on that journey...!)

Once again, the book can be purchased at https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/274520?affiliate_id=3063731, and if you want to listen to our previous two episodes on the title:

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, the options are ample!

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) jousts every Wednesday with the snarky Oppidan guarding the Chaudière Bridge. Or is that Pont de la Chaudière?

It is today that we must create the world of the future.

What do you get when you cross the infinity of the Dreaming's possibilities with eight billion humans? Questions about how many of them are changelings, that's what. This week, we're applying the art/science of demography to the fae, throwing numbers and proportions and calculations around like so much spaghetti, so that we can see what sticks. You may ask, why does this matter—but how many and what kinds of changeling are running around the setting for your game will impact its feel. And not just the fae themselves: a local expression of the game's themes and moods depends upon Dreamers, Autumn People, and even just those mundane humans we talked about last time. So take note, Storytellers! We hope that after listening, you too will be able to graph a demo, Dreaming-style.

The spreadsheet to which Josh refers to throughout the episode, with some proposed numbers based on the population of various divisions of Concordia, can be found at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rv_S2aGs1VtfeCvhyOoq_iZ10w9Eag2ERlo-UONllcY.

We also refer to two episodes from our sibling show, Mage: the Podcast, on the subject of games with high numbers of mages and low numbers of mages, and how adjusting those numbers creates a different play experience. Pooka may have been using Chronos when talking about these, as it appears only the former has actually been released thus far. Nevertheless, check it out at: https://magethepodcast.com/running-and-playing-low-mage-count-games/.

Our own bureaux of statistics:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) bribes fae of the Kingdom of Northern Ice into filling out the census form with maple syrup dross.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.

Changelings, lest we forget, are part human. Spending time in a meatsack isn't always Glamourous or exhilarating (though it can be both), but it's an inherent part of their experience that can be interesting both in and of itself, and as a contrast to the escapist fantasies that the Dreaming is built on. Yet players and Storytellers often gloss over those aspects of the characters that populate their games. So! We're here this week to try and redeem mortal life in Changeling a bit, giving due consideration to some of the more human elements that might come up at the table. Day jobs and homework, customer service interactions and strangers on the street, Dreamers and Kinain and Autumn People alike... there are many possibilities that you can explore. Naturally, we won't be covering them all, but maybe some of the tidbits here will help you craft a game experience that feels a little more real and useful for when you step away from the table at last.

Our perfectly mundane contact information:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) is fourth on the leaderboard for messing with Autumn People in the halls of Canadian government.

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

It's that time again! This second installment of our trilogy of episodes on the Changeling 20th Anniversary Player's Guide continues as we flip through Chapter Three. What's that, you say? An entire installment on a single chapter of a single book? Well, yes, because this "World of Dreams" section takes up a third of a dense text and covers a lot of ground, visiting four continents in swift succession. We're taking an honest look at how the fae histories of these regions are handled, the kiths that dwell there, and the stories one might be able to tell that connect with the game as a whole. Slight spoiler: we have a bone or five to pick, and honestly two to three of them were immediately resolved by In the Realm of Gods and Dreams, which you can hear about at https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-90-in-the-realm-of-gods-and-dreams/. But don't let all this stop you from learning a thing or two about changelings around the world and how they got that way...!

As mentioned in our last C20PG episode notes, you can pick up the PDF (or print on demand book) at https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/274520?affiliate_id=3063731. Visit our own digital world of dreams around the various platforms below if you want to contact us:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) is still searching for Carmen Sandiego.

I'll put a girdle round about the earth / in forty minutes.

What is love? (Baby, don't hurt me!) In the context of tabletop RPGs, sex and relationships and all the matter around them can be tricky business to navigate for players and Storytellers alike. In the context of romance and Changeling, there are all sorts of specific considerations to think about. What are the norms of chivalrous courtship in this or that noble's jurisdiction? How do cantrips complicate physical pleasure and emotional fulfillment? Can a redcap truly feel love? Questions of this sort abound in the pages of the supplements, as it sometimes seems like every other characters has some kind of sexual or romantic thread to their story. This episode is not an exhaustive treatment of everything that might come up in the game... but we try to cover some important topics and give some pointers about handling at the table.

As for links...! We alluded to the recent episode at our sibling-show, Mage: the Podcast, on this topic; check it out at https://magethepodcast.com/adding-romance-to-games-with-friday-stout-and-sebastian-yue/. We made reference as well to our Session Zero episode (https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-38-session-zero/) on hashing out discussion around sensitive topics before you jump into a chronicle. And as usual, you can reach out to us strictly platonically at:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) theorizes that non-binary polycules are held together by them-ical bonds.

Love, love is a verb;