Changeling: The Dreaming

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Some typical Changeling characters, I think.

Also known as Otherkin: The Glamourbombing. Take a fucking guess why? I'll give you a hint: Motherfucking Elves.

This game takes place in World of Darkness, so the fluff mentions Mages and you can use Vampires and other emo RPG shit in here.

Premise

Long time ago, fae/fairies/faggots were common, and shit like shoemaker elves and troll bridges were for real. Then the elves for some reason decided to get the fuck outta dodge (probably because pre-Technocracy Mages wanted to nerf magic in the world). So they packed up and left for the moon. Only, those other fae thingies that weren't elves got left behind for not being beautiful enough, so developed some prancing magic to protect themselves from the encroaching disbelief of the supernatural (Many of the mythical creatures were part of consensual reality, and as people realized that maybe there weren't dragons and unicorns, they started dying and/or leaving for Mythic Realms). Changelings did exist in the old days as babystealing pricks, only now they went for reincarnating themselves in mortal bodies (displacing the human souls in the process too).

Centuries later, the astronomy division of the Technocracy figure "hey, every time we go to the moon, elves fuck our shit up, let's get the sheeple to believe the Moon is just a rockball orbiting the Earth, and then their collective faith will make it so, and we can finally build moon bases there." So they organize the Apollo missions, and make sure that everybody's watching when they land and there's no green cheese and no little green men (little green elves, get it?), just vaccuum, dust, and outer-space desert wasteland.

Well, the astronomy division fucked up hugely -- the biggest fuck-up that doesn't involve destroying the Earth. Everyone watching saw the Moon, and yup, it's dead, it's empty... but everyone also though "holy shit, we made it to the Moon! The motherfucking Moon! If we can do that... why, we could do ANYTHING!" When millions of sheeple are watching teevee and all hoping and believing the same thing, well, how can Paradox not cause something to happen? So, the elves got evicted from the Moon, the sheeple watching teevee short-circuited the eviction and the elves got a first-class ticket and a red-carpet invitation to return to Earth...

Except not really...basically every changeling that wasn't an elf said "Screw it, we've gotten used to being free of you all." So the Elves did some stupid magic war thing, involving mass battles on horseback, epic battlefields, and fell magics (Note: This all basically amounts to one giant larp where some people are throwing beanbags, while yelling "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!"), then the elves rule everything once again.

Anyone watching these Changelings would see a riot of mismatched children, teenagers and the odd young adult playing some elaborate game of pretend. A mundane spectator can't see that this gangly teen is an eight-foot blue troll, but he would wonder why the kid is always ducking when passing through doors. The same spectator would later say "oh, it was old wood, weak and rotting..." when the same skinny kid boring explanation how that same skinny kid smashes through a fence with one swing of his puny not-blue-skinned-at-all fist, or why a baseball bat spraypainted silver leaves an axe-gash in the hood of a car.

Eventually, though, even the Changelings get more worn down, and grumpy, and doubtful, and succumb to growing up. No Changeling is able to hold on to their innocence and open-mindedness past their early twenties, and all eventually turn Mundane. For them, it's getting on with their lives, growing up, getting serious about life, but they close the door on their fae natures and deny it was anything more than fantasy if they remember it at all. For their friends who can still live the dream, it's another lost friend to Banality.

Politics

There are good elves (Seelie, or Summer), and bad elves (Unseelie, or Winter). The Unseelie elves aren't really so bad, just ruthless. It's kinda like Democrats and Republicans -- really the same thing, but call one of them the other and they'll punch your lights out. Then there's the REALLY bad elves, the Shadow Court, which is a secret conspiracy to... I dunno, since all they can really do is beat each other up and maybe make nightmares for the Mundanes, or harass Werewolves and Mages until one of those powerhouses decide to really bitchslap the sparkly little faggots. The Shadow Court are not your friends.

Kiths

Just like Werewolf tribes, Mage traditions and Vampire families, there's many kiths/kinds of elves so you can be different from other players without having to come up with your own ideas; in addition to powers, all the different kiths tend to have their own personality written on them (Heaven forbid you play a lock-n-load Boggan). It's like all these games are imitations of each other, or written by the same guys.

• Boggans: from the "Shoemaker and the Elves" tale, busybodies.
• Eshu: nigger elves from African stories, the gypsies and storytellers.
• Knockers: what Warcraft and Dragonlance Gnomes are rip-offs off. Probably Santa's elves.
• Pooka: the furries of Changelings, comedians. Tend to shapechange into "cute" critters like bunnies or kittehs.
• Redcaps: violent little bastards that leave bite-marks on everything. Can and will eat everything. Think Elves dedicated to Khorne.
• Satyrs: PROMOTIONS!
• Sihde: Arrogant upper-class Tolkien elves, arrived with the Moon landings and figure they're more "pure" because they didn't have to hide inside human children as long. (A Sihde version of the KKK would be hilarious; someone fund it.)
• Sluagh: Things that go "bump," in the night, the emo gothfags of elves.
• Trolls: Oversized blue walls of muscle, they're the Lawful Stupid elves.

There's other kith of elves in the splatbooks, it's like a rule of fantasy games to have too fucking many elves.

Of Banality, Bedlam, and Balance

Banality is to Changelings what Paradox is to Mages and Humanity loss is to Vampires. The game does a pretty lousy job explaining it, but it consists of having too normal a life. A better way to envision it is like Clarity in Lost, except that most Changelings fear getting it too high...

However, having too *low* a banality rating is also a bad thing. For one thing, it makes it easier to affect you with hostile magic (And one can actually opt to gain banality points to do counterspells), and if Banality gets too low, you gradually start going insane, become a True Fae, and must depart the world.

Cantrip System

If you want to use a supernatural power, first your character has to do something thematically appropriate to the power in question; for example, attempting to scry the future would involve meditating on a crystal ball, flipping the Emperor's Tarot, or tuning a television to ultra-ultra high frequency. However, many of the core examples are very silly. A lot of troupes will have a deck of cards with silly dares written on them. This junk goes over really well when LARPing, but I can't think of the fluff for why elves have to do this other than "it's a silly faerie thing to do! tee-hee! (throws sparkle dust)"