enthusiastick | I already know the ending its the part that makes your face implode (Reply)

king_biscuit has asked that I talk a little more about the second Changeling game, the one I ran in college. Which is staggering, really, because each and every time I write an entry about these past games, even by request, it seems like an act of monumental omphaloskepsis. The notion that these posts are interesting to anyone other than myself is, frankly, a little hard to get my head around. Nevertheless I shall press on, because I was asked to, and I'm a sucker for fulfilling blog requests.

The game was set at a fictional boarding school in middle-of-nowhere Connecticut vaguely modeled after my own private school experiences and also the fictitious Huntington Academy. This players were all students and Changelings (except

oberndorf who was a teacher and a Mage) dealing with the day-to-day difficulties of school, with the trials and tribulations of having an otherworldly soul layered on top. The fact that there was an apocalyptic-sounding prophesy in the mix didn't help matters any. If this sounds a lot like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, congratulations, you have seen through my cleverly disguised ripoff.

I don't remember all of the player character's names, so we'll do this by player:

Gavin played a Pooka of the falcon aspect. He wrestled with the weighty contradictions inherent in being a soccer star while also being addicted to cigarettes, and his Pook-ese generally took the form of an incomprehensible and really bad Irish accent.
_glass_house_ played a Satyr who had taken the Winged merit, meaning she had to dress creatively. She dealt drugs and otherwise wreaked havoc.
lassarina played a Sidhe and was generally a prig and a pain in everyone's ass, as befitted her kith. She was also completely not responsible for spawning an evil Cerberus chimera that later transformed into three separate and perfectly servicable guard dogs.
oberndorf played a Mage, as stated, because he was older than me and I didn't know how to tell him "no." He spent much of the game exceedingly confused, and that was before he was dragged into the Dreaming, where things got really weird.
Rodrigo played a grasshopper Pooka, a younger student whose Pook-ese generally took the form of being borderline autistic. The older kids cleverly taught him to shout the names of various venereal diseases at lassarina's character.
thablueguy played a Redcap who was sort of a bully and a punk, although he forged a surprisingly deep rapport with Rodrigo's character and only rarely threatened to eat him.

The best comedic in-character exchanges of the game by far were had between

thablueguy and Rodrigo. They went something like this:

thablueguy: I don't mean to be so angry, but I'm just do damn hungry all the time.
Rodrigo: *blinks loudly*

thablueguy: I'd eat my own leg if I could just stop being hungry. (sheepishly) Sometimes I think about eating you.
Rodrigo: *blinks loudly, twice*

For all my angsty guilt-ridden rambling about it yesterday, it was a genuinely good game, based mostly on the strength of the player's performances. Overall I think everyone had a good time, and the player characters bounced along from one crisis to another before bumping into the metaplot hard. They went into the Dreaming in search of one of the keys to the Triumph Casque of Sorrows, as had been foretold by the prophecy that guided much of the second part of the game. They returned from the Dreaming surprisingly unscathed, just in time for the story to draw to a moderately satisfying conclusion. On a good day I look back at it as one of my better achievements.