Changeling the Podcast

We were going to just release this bit of content as Patreon content because it's our shortest yet, but by popular demand, here it is as a minisode...! For all of you Storytellers who feel the need to hide yourselves away from your players, or maybe just shield your dice from revealing too much, the Storyteller's screen is a time-honored tool of the trade. Changeling has had three over the years, one for each edition: some flimsy cardboard, some slightly sturdier cardboard, and most recently for C20, a glossy masterpiece of solidity. For the next eight and a half minutes, we give some comparative notes on what one finds there. May it be helpful to anyone in the market for a physical piece of obfuscation!

Ourselves, we hide behind the following:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) has a screen that just keeps unfolding until it fully encloses the Storyteller in an geodesic cardboard fort.

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

Yes, we already did an episode on those long-suffering boggans, but don't you think they deserve another? Having dealt with the fanmade "old" Kithbook: Boggans previously (check out https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-77-old-kithbook-boggans/), we are now moving on to the new Kithbook: Boggans, released as a Kickstarter goal for C20. In the spirit of the older editions' kithbooks, the text deals with boggan history and society, some famous examples of their kith, and tidbits of lore for the discerning crafty-fae. This rounds out at last the full set of kithbooks from the original commoners (because the sidhe had plenty of their own books already), and also our slate of Lost in the Library episodes before our summer hiatus...! So we hope this will tide you over for book content, for the time being.

You can purchase the book at: https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/242685?affiliate_id=3063731

Feel free to stop by our other spaces online, as long as you wipe your feet first:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) judged the Craftlympics this year and doesn't regret giving a "3" to that one wilder; they know who they are.

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

The freehold is the center of changeling life, providing safety, community, and a connection to the Dreaming for wayward Kithain. But what makes each of them unique? We get some extensive systems and suggestions to answer this question in Book of Freeholds, a C20 supplement that greatly expands previous editions' take on building them. It's a short but dense book, and in this episode, we scour it for the double handful of drossy tidbits that players and STs alike will find useful.

You can purchase the book at: https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/239407?affiliate_id=3063731

And follow the trod to find us at:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) is well known hither and yon for keeping a tidy, ship-shape thorpe.

My house—

Alternate and/or historical settings for Changeling is always something that piques our interest. So we were keen to read the Gimme Shelter Player's Guide supplement (released April 2) that presents the fae of Swinging Sixties London. We're joined this week by the book's author, Bram Clark, who talks with us about his take on this slice of pre-Resurgence life. Clocking in at over 300 pages, the Guide is one of the longest homebrews on the entire Storytellers' Vault. Our conversation goes through the development, art, design... Bram's associated Player's Kit presaged something intriguing, but this was beyond what we expected. Hopefully this episode will give you some ideas about how to use it at your table!

Many a link below!

And the links for our own stuff:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) asks that you not bend, spike, fold or mutilate.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

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, Christine Beard!, who talks about some of the process for reading, running, and writing jumpstart modules like this one. The two supplements feature some solid material to get you into the game beyond the corebook proper, so we encourage you to have a listen and hear what's what...!

Links and things:

And our panoply of social media as per usual:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) runs games with ready-mades, but they are not Changeling characters; they are Duchamp sculptures.

End, begin, all the same. Big change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

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 will apply in an upcoming episode as well.) We're looking at retconned metaplot, restructured magic systems, alternative ways of thinking about different groups of fae, and more. It's not that these three episodes have been the most comprehensive look possible at this edition and what it represents—it's just the most comprehensive we could bring ourselves to get through.

If you need the first two episodes in the series, or to purchase the corebook itself:

Some other bits that found passing or heavy mention in this episode include:

Lastly, the places you can bother us gently and politely:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) would have liked to see the Concordia map re-drawn with lines that made sense.

And so the days float through my eyes

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're sticking with some of the big items overall: the kith creation system, Revelry, new Thallain. Everything that builds on previous editions' systems will be covered in the third and final episode of this set, on the changes in the edition. For now, these are just some ruminations and opinions on the unexpected elements that stand out to us.

Some links to bits that we mentioned in this go-through include:

And if you want to reach out to weigh in on what you think we should be doing next:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) wanted edible Treasure creation rules to roll up some nocker-crafted cheese puffs.

Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.

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 veteran at this point, we hope you'll still enjoy the refresher. Next up are an episode about the new features of this, and then some of the changes (and our feelings on them).

We reference a whole bunch of past installments in this recording, including:

And if you want to reach out to weigh in on what you think we should be doing next:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) only needs eight more signatures for the petition to move the border of the Kingdom of Northern Ice.

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked.

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 conventions, the state of the hobby, and our random thoughts while sitting at a table in a room that (partway through) we were informed we really weren't supposed to be in. We're rebels like that.

Go check out:

And the usual get-in-touch-with-us biz:

Pooka G (any pronoun/they) tried the Dallas RPG, and it was astonishingly good, but then it turned out it was all a dream.

Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power.

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 clan novel series), but we received two for the 20th Anniversary Edition that bookended the line. C20 Anthology of Dreams is a collection of ten short stories that appeared before the corebook, and Immortal Eyes 4: Cup of Dreams is the fourth novel in the Immortal Eyes saga, as well as the final text released for the edition. It may be a little weird for us to combine (technically) the first and last books in the C20 run, but we decided that tackling the role of fiction like this all at once made the most sense. So we came, we read, we opined, and herein our thoughts on what these two books add to the line.

Our previous episode on the Immortal Eyes trilogy is at https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-33-the-immortal-eyes-novels/, if you'd like to do a comparative listen. You can also buy these two books at https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/209390?affiliate_id=3063731 and https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/292748?affiliate_id=3063731 for a pittance!

We'd also like to highlight the Changeling Cookbook project mentioned in the intro to this episode. This is a project for our Changeling 30 initiative, to be launched next year: a dozen books released over the course of 2025, in collaboration with members of the CtP community. For this one in particular, we welcome tasty recipe submissions from our audience, which you can send in at https://forms.gle/PJspJTuMsuj4tjmr7. More information about the particulars can be found on that form; we hope you'll consider sending something in!

The usual haunts for otherwise contacting us:

Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) drank from the Cup of Dreams and only got this lousy T-shirt.

"Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail.