A brief review of White Wolf's latest game system, Changeling: The Dreaming. Twenty-five bucks, full color inside and out. A brief warning: I had not intended to buy Changeling at all. First, I tend to obey Kiley's Law #77: Thou Shalt Not Buy White Wolf First Prints. Second, I already have enough gaming systems. My current gaming group already has scheduled our gaming nights until mid-March; we don't need another game tossed into the mix. Lastly, I was skeptical of the collectable-cards-as-gaming- source-material plan.
When it arrived in my gaming store the week before my birthday, I skimmed it; it looked sort of neat. I mentioned this to my friends offhandedly; they bought it and a few of the denounced collectable card packs and gave it to me as a birthday gift. Well, now.
Thousands of years ago the Kithain lived among humanity openly, all over the world. Two events -- the Sundering and the Shattering -- eventually cut off access to Arcadia, the faerie homeland, and stranded the commoner Changelings here on Earth (the nobles had already gone home). To protect themselves, they developed magics to allow them not to be noticed by mundanes, and are reborn as human children when they die; most of them realize their true heritage again when they are young, though they may not remember their past lives very clearly.
An important fact about Changelings is that while they fight to keep the world from getting too Banal (I really, _really_ think they should have used the word "mundane" in place of "banal", incidentally; it's hard not to giggle when saying "You gain a point of Banality"), they don't have the overwhelming, all-consuming war going on that the other angst-ridden members of the World of Darkness have. Certainly there is Evil ("eeee-vil") in the world, and there are plenty of things to fight, including the Dauntain, which are Changelings who have gone totally Banal and now hunt down the Kithain, but there is no Sabbat, no Wyrm, no Technocracy.
As in the other Storyteller games, characters are split into several overlapping groups. The first is Seeming, which is the character's apparent age group. Then there is one's nature as one of the Seelie (honorable types) or Unseelie (freedom-loving, dishonorable types). Additionally, one must pick a Kith (a race, effectively) and lastly, membership or allegiance with one of the five returned noble houses, if you so choose.
What are the cards for? Magic. There's not much randomness involved; in fact the cards' use isn't nearly as cool as what I'd hoped it would be. There are two kinds of magic, Arts and Realms (Verbs and Nouns, essentially); one selects an Art card and a Realm card, and then randomly selects a Bunk card for the requirement of the magic, and if one performs the Bunk, the magic works. The collectable versions of the cards do not have to be purchased to play; all the magicks' descriptions are in the book and players can fabricate their own cards, or use dice if they prefer.
Since I'm on the subject of the cards, I'll deal with them first. They're gorgeous, I must admit. The artwork is typically watercolor (I think; doubless someone will correct me) and matches the feel of the game nicely. The Bunks' requirements are written in little curlicues which are often hard to find, and often hard to read once found; it's cute the first few times, but the cute wears off. The fact that the cards are collectable annoys me. I would love to be able to buy the whole set. I would love to be able to even buy all of, say, the Chicanery cards in one pack. In the three packs I was given with the rules, I had two duplicates, and in subsequent purchases (okay, I broke down and bought two at Gen Con; I'm an impulse shopper) I got about four more. A drone whose name I forget at the White Wolf booth assured me they wanted to come out with a more sensible distribution method for the cards.
The game was better edited than any White Wolf first print rulebook I've seen to date. No "page XX" (that I've noticed), no clipped paragraphs, no typoes on the cover. It feels as though it was more carefully considered than previous games they've done, in that sense. It is full-color throughout, and there is a color knotwork around the outside of each page, as if to remind you that this is a full-color book. The knotwork is too big; some text coulda gone in there. But the _character sheet_ is also in full-color. I doubt this is going to photocopy well.
Speaking of text that could've gone in place of that knotwork, Seemings are immensely confusing. Do they represent:
There is an index, and it's coherent so far.
The mechanics are the usual White Wolf non-intuitive "roll and shout" mechanics, though the use of dice during roleplaying situations is of course discouraged. I'm sure there'll be a Changeling LARP system coming out soon.
The mood and feel of the game are so far unlike the rest of the dreary World of Darkness games. War? What war? The war just ended! Don't buy a Volvo! Go slay some dragons! Patronize the arts! Hobnob with the nobles! The Classic Storyteller System Question, "You're a bunch of faeries sitting around a bar. What do you do?" still seems like it would be a problem, though some adventures have sprung to mind.
My overall feeling about Changeling is that it gets about a B. I would recommend it to White Wolf types, and I'd even recommend it to Lydia, She Who Hates White Wolf Games So Much, due to the change in attitude and mood. It seems very character driven and less plot driven than I would like, but that can be a function of gamemaster as much as game system. I would recommend the purchase of a pack of the cards by prospective Changeling GMs, just to get a look at them, but not more than that unless you're a real fanboy.