Geek on the Borderlands

Tonight I had the final and epic battle of a short 3 adventure campaign I ran for my regular group and a long lost gaming buddy who returned to us for a limited 3 month run.  I’m happy to say that things went smoothly, everyone had a lot of fun, and the good guys won out in the end.  Yet when I think back over tonight I’ve come to realize that the most memorable battle for me wasn’t the final encounter with the nasty evil menace, it was one of the previous encounters.  The reason it sticks out in my mind, at least to me, has to do with the fight environment.

The more interesting battle took place in a temple that was built deep underneath a lake.  It was filled with air, but the bottom level had the corners open out into the lake and channels of water that flowed around the room.  Every round one of the channels would fill with water and try to wash away whoever was foolish enough to stand in them.  It featured enemies who could swim and who understood the terrain.

This area forced the players and characters to think about where they moved and opened up some interesting tactical considerations and roleplaying moments.  The poor swordmage got pushed into a channel of flowing water by the tail slap of a lizard man, but she managed to escape thanks to the quick thinking of her friends.  That was interesting.  It was dynamic.  It was memorable!

The final battle, in contrast, took place in the village where the nasty monster from beyond the stars crawled out of the well.  Sure, it had a lot of interesting things in the environment to use, but none of the players were forced to interact with them, or even encouraged.  The fight was tougher, sure, but it was less interesting because the environment was so darn passive.

These days I think that an environment that changes the field of battle and provides interesting ways to use it is far preferrable to stagnant and passive environments.  Especially in a game so tactically crunchy as 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons.  I’ve stopped thinking about the battlefield as a passive place and started treating it more like a monster or active participant in a fight.  The terrain should move, or provide new options in a fight, or even just provide some really interesting set dressing.

Sure, this concept isn’t new to roleplaying and I’m sure that a lot of you out there have done this for years.  I’ve done it myself once in a while, but this is the first time since I started running games where it’s in the front of my mind.  And let me tell you right now, that’s a really good thing!  It’s made my fights more interesting and memorable and really forced me to think about how the players might actually move about a space.  It makes things seem more real.

So, the next time you’re planning that epic battle for your group, sit down and really thinkg about where it’s going to take place.  See what you can do to make the battle more interesting by spicing up the environment.  You might be surprised what a difference it makes!

So this kicks off the WW2 rules quest.. what will hopefully become a series of blog posts about ww2 wargaming, as I and my friends go through a ton of wargame rules, analyze and talk about this, and test out the same scenarios with each system.

The series will cover both commercial and “freeware” rules.

The first on the list is Landser, which is free from the yahoogroup located at http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Landser/

This is a first glance before putting the rules to the test. The rules are short and compact: Only 4 pages in total and only covers infantry combat (which is all I am interested in, generally). No army lists are included, though the downloaded included separate PDF’s covering US, German and Soviet squads. The game is aimed at about a squad on each side.

Turn sequence is a straight (I go, then you go). When its your turn to go, each figure can perform one action, such as moving, hiding, firing etc. Its possible to fire on the move, but at very low accuracy. There’s a fair number of actions, and I like the inclusion of a hide and sneak option, though I’d prefer an alternating activation sequence

There’s not much in the way of command/control. Figures can move off as they see fit, and there doesn’t seem to be any particular benefit to the squad leader.

Combat looks very quick and dirty. You roll to hit, and then roll for effect. Automatic weapons get a template, and there’s rules for the most common weapons types (various machine guns, grenades and rifle grenades). As an interesting touch, most hits will simply force the target to hide, causing a suppression effect.

If you do get wounded, the wound may be light or heavy, and each has a small chart to roll the actual effect. Very nice touch as it gives a good range of possibilities. As it reads, it looks like long range fire will be relatively safe but can easily disrupt a squad, while an MP40 at point blank range is bad news.

Morale is simple. Once 2 men are dead, you test morale with a D10 against the number of men left. If you fail, you break off the fight. Its unclear if you are supposed to test once, every turn, or every turn you take an additional casualty, though the latter makes the most sense. This “break point” increases for more determined or well trained units.

National traits are briefly discussed in the separate PDF’s. Soviet soldiers cannot fire on the move, while Germans and Americans can only assault if a leader does so.

Fielding most infantry types should be relatively easy, though I did not find rules for the Sturmgewehr and no distinction between self-loading or bolt-action rifles.

Overall, Landser is nothing anyone havent seen before. It is however a nice, quick and effective skirmish game, with some fun touches to it. I definately look forward to playing it, and I could see this little freebie becoming a recurring game at my table.

Super Mario STing
(or why White Wolf STs should go read a DMG)

“Thank you, Mario,
But our princess is in another castle…”
~Super Mario Brothers, NES

I have a confession to make: I play on online White Wolf chats.

As I am a fan of the Old World of Darkness, it’s tough to find players anymore.  Online chats were a natural interest as you could find players, even if physically they were hundreds, if not thousands of miles away.  And while I have found some terrific players and stories on those chats, I have also suffered through some of the worst games of my life online.  Recently I have been hit in the face with something that has become a massive pet peeve, something I call the ‘Super Mario Syndrome.’

How does that work in roleplaying?  Easy.  The ST schedules a scene (or a game session if you’re playing tabletop) and everyone gets together to solve problem A or seek out Badguy X.  And the PCs sally forth to the someplace (hideout 1) where they have a clue that Badguy X will be, encountering a big group of his goons or traps or what have you.  The PCs fight a valiant and (because it’s old White Wolf) exceedingly long battle with the goons, only to find that Badguy X is not there and they cannot get much useful information from the defeated goons.  Only “Sorry, PCs but the Badguy is in another hideout.”  So the session ends, you may or may not get XP, and you schedule to play again.  Next time you go to hideout 2, to find more of Badguy X’s goons, have another long fight, and find out once again that ‘Oh yeah, Badguy X is in another hideout…” and so on.

I can stomach the idea of having to defeat multiple villains to collect multiple MacGuffins (to continue the classic video game references: The Zelda Plotline) as long as every chunk of the game offers a tangible reward.  It is too easy to forget the ‘reward’ part of a poorly thought out, ongoing storyline.  This problem is complicated tenfold in White Wolf style games because the game does not offer inherent rewards for combat, unlike Dungeons and Dragons.  You might get a few XP, which in turn you can use to raise your physical stats, and fight more things.  But unless your players are completely content with fighting endless hoardes of baddies, rinse, repeat the game quickly becomes tiresome if they can never accomplish story goals.

I have a negative gut reaction against running a scene with no purpose.  Both as a player and as an ST I dislike the convention of fighting for no reason, or questing without reward.  Some STs use this to build up tension or to make the players ‘work’ for something in order to earn it, but I find all too often that it only builds frustration in the players and stretches out a watery plotline for longer than it is worth.  Having been victim of the Super Mario Syndrome in several games, in my experience it always ends the same way: sooner or later the players get frustrated without getting anywhere.  They get up the gumption, complain to the ST, and the ST in return gets angry because he or she feels like their hard work STing isn’t being appreciated.  In rare cases I have seen STs learn from their mistakes and reform their plots – but more often I see an ST go ‘well, if you want and ending, then fine!  I’ll end it!’ and they make up a sudden and unsatisfying ending to the plot.  Players and ST go home unhappy and the game starts to fall apart, which just isn’t fun in any sense of the word.

So, let’s dissect the possible reasons for the Super Mario Syndrome:

1.    The storyteller seeks to build tension.
Tension is an integral part of a dramatic plot.  However tension at the expense of the group’s enjoyment is a waste.  I find it far better to build tension with scene settings, good descriptions, and by making the villains connected to the PCs in some way.  By giving them a reason to give a rat’s ass about a villain (whether that means they have some positive connection to them or they have a deep and personal hatred of them) your players create tension for you through their PCs own personal struggles.

2.    The Storyteller seeks to challenge the players.
Oftentimes as an ST I worry about ‘is this challenge difficult enough for my players?’  Unlike 3.X DnD and beyond there are no ‘challenge levels’ in White Wolf.  There are no clear guidelines as to when something is challenging enough, too easy or too hard.  So, in order to get a proper sense of challenge, some STs like to drag things out to make sure the game is properly difficult.  But it is all too easy to drag things out too long.

My suggestion?  Make individual encounters more difficult.  Swallow your fear of killing your PCs and make each scene potentially deadly, and if they succeed, “Let it Ride.”  That’s a term pulled directly from Burning Wheel – which I highly suggest any ST should go pick up because reading the concepts in that system is well worth the $25 even if you never play it.  Anyways, let it ride is a mechanic that says you cannot call for re-rolls and you cannot reneg on success or failure.  If the PCs succeed on a roll (or working from there, succeed in a task) they succeed.  You cannot try to go back on your word and suddenly make the task again more difficult.  If need be pre-define the conditions for success and let the players know them.  If they succeed, they succeed and you move on.  And honestly, the game isn’t about the ST versus the PCs.  The ST doesn’t ever need to ‘win.’  The PCs do because the players play the game for success.  So if they succeed, let them win.  There is nothing wrong with that.

3.    The Storyteller wants to ‘hang on’ to a great recurring villain
Oh, the curse of the awesome NPC.  You created them in a burst of inspiration and now you can’t let them go.  The PCs love them – or at least you thought they did.  But now they can never reach their goals because he is standing in the way.  You can deal with this in a few different ways, and one of the simplest and best is sit down and talk to your players OOC.  Do they love the recurring villain as much as you do?  If the answer is yes, they all love to continually hate him, then structure your game with a smattering of other, defeatable villains and you know you will always have your ‘Lex Luthor’ around to show back up.  Or perhaps the PCs could confront their favorite recurring villain and cause him or her to convert to being a good guy.

The hardest part to this is when you find that no, in fact your players don’t share the same love of a particular NPC that you do.  Then there is really only one thing to do, and that is to go back to the above point, suck it up and let them have the chance of defeating him.   And if they do, you let the NPC go.  You’re an ST.  You should be able to create an equally awesome villain for the next plot – or save this one and reuse him in a different game with different players.

4.    The Storyteller hasn’t planned his or her story to the end.
This is the monster that destroys games: lack of follow-through on the part of the ST.  Sometimes it manifests in a wandering lack of plot while the ST searches for inspiration on how to draw it all into a conclusion and sometimes it manifests in the ST being wholly unable to tie all of his or her complex threads together.  Super Mario tends to show up while the ST is trying to stall for time.  Now, I do not believe that planning a game should feel like a chore, but that a good ST should put a reasonable amount of time and effort into planning.  Many good STs enjoy that planning.  But at base, your game needs a plan for what the problem is, what the resolution will be and what the reward for success is.  How the players get from problem to resolution is up to them and it can comprise the bulk of your game, but the ST needs to know what the eventual conclusion is.  If the game is long-term and/or epic there needs to be clear ‘chapters’ of play, allowing minor successes to add up to a final success in the overarching goal.

The difficulty with flexible story-based games is that you need to start with an interesting story.  Part of the job of the ST is to decide how long a planned story (or game) will last.  Some stories are far better suited for short campaigns, while others more able to sustain long-term play; and a smart ST can separate the two.  If you have a short-term story run it as a one-shot or a few-shot and don’t try to drag it out past its prime.  But most importantly: figure out what plot you are running before everyone sits down to play.  Not a railroad, but a general idea that “The PCs want X.  When they get X, they will get Y reward” or something that gives a sense of conclusion to the basic structure.

Getting over the roadblocks allows the players to feel like they are a contributing part of the game and that their actions have meaning because they advance the story somewhere else.  No one wants to play a game where they feel like they are at the whims of an ST.  If we wanted that we’d all go get cubicle jobs and get pushed around by our bosses all day and call it ‘fun.’  An ST needs to step back and let his or her players affect the game or story with their actions as much as the ST shapes them.

Then Super Mario will be the one in another castle.

So, you all might have noticed not only a new look for the site but some new and old posters chiming in here.  That’s because I realized that I just don’t write often enough to really make this site worth visiting very often.  So I’ve asked my friends to join in (and some have been posting here for while now).  I find that it’s a lot better to offer a variety of viewpoints beyond my own and I’ve been blessed with a great many friends that have taken up the challenge of writing random things here.  I figured that I should take a moment to talk about them a bit.

Runequester has been posting here for a long while, and thanks to the new look you can actually pick his posts out from mine now.  He’s been a good friend and it’s probably pretty safe to say that at times we’re on opposite ends of the gaming spectrum.  I’ve had the pleasure of playing in a few of his games and his style is a lot different from mine.  I tend to love new systems while he might be what you’d call a Grognard.  Which is good for me as a gamer, as he keeps pointing out things that I might have forgotten as a embrace the shiny new systems of tommorrow.

The one place where we really meet and have fun is with wargaming.  Runequester is the author of the fabulous Fast and Dirty (http://fad.savevsdm.com/) rules.  We have a lot of fun pushing some lead around a table and drinking beers.  A solid friend all around and a credit to his country and gamers everywhere.

I have known Plain Simple Garak even longer than Runequester, and she’s been a wonderful friend to both me and my wife.  She’s the one who broke me out of my power gaming and hack and slash ways that I had for so long.  She ran the finest Vampire game that I’ve played in and her Changeling games are very, very good.  She’s the one who showed me that I didn’t have to always follow the rules, that games could be more about killing things and taking their stuff, and that sometimes it’s better to ignore the rules.

She tends to run games that are very story and background based, and I’ve learned a lot playing in her games and talking with her.  She showed me that the Forgotten Realms could be interesting and that maybe I could find something better in the older editions.  I think that she’s done more to change the way I think and run about games than just about anyone else I’ve had the pleasure of gaming with.  Which is a good thing, trust me.

Javier is a good friend who happens to hail from Spain, which means that he’s a dashing and handsome young man with a dialect that my wife tends to call “sexy.”  That and he’s got a really good head on his shoulders and a keen mind for crunch in a game.  In some respects he’s the one that thinks the closest to me, save that we tend to like different editions of D&D.  That and he actually got me interested in running a Star Wars game, which is a credit to his silver tongue.

Javier is also quite up on Warhammer and a lot of other systems that I don’t know a lot about.  Which is great, because he’s filling in a niche here that none of the rest of us can really fill.  Sadly I’ve never had the pleasure of actually gaming with him for any length of time, given that we live in different countries.  But I think that I’d really like the games he’d run and that we have talked at length about our various games, giving each other encouragement and ideas.

So, those are the new (and old) faces around here, each of them with a different perspective and voice to add to this little site.  I hope that you all enjoy reading their stuff as much as I do.  Posts and articles are probably going to remain on an erratic schedule for the time being, and I’ve long since given up on promising any sort of regular schedule.  But with more of us here new stuff should be going up a lot more frequently.  Which is good.

So, I can’t just let my friends get all up in my blog and throw around their own opinions without adding my own, can I?  I figure that it’s high time that I throw down and explain just why I love 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons to itty bitty little pieces.

My friends and those that know me through various message boards generally know that I’ve always been a big supporter of the latest edition of just about any game (Changeling: the Lost notwithstanding).  Generally I feel that most new editions are actual improvements over the old ones, at least when it comes to my own preferences when it comes to roleplaying games.  Now, in the past I’ve been a bit of an edition elitist when it came to my favorite, but thankfully my friends disabused me of my superiority and I’m now what you’ll call a positive champion.  Yes, I like 4th edition over any other editions, but I realize know that it’s because the rules adhere to what I want in a game and not because it’s flat out superior.  I’ll never say that one game is strictly better than another game or edition, but I will state that I think it works better for me.

So, why do I love 4th edition so very much?  There are a variety of reasons, but the biggest is because I really love crunchy bits in a game, so long as those crunchy bits aren’t too complex.  I love 4th edition, and Mutants and Masterminds, but I also like games like Spirit of the Century or Savage Worlds.  I like my crunch on the medium to moderate level, not super complex like Hero or as fiddly as GURPs.

For me, 4th edition hits that perfect level of crunchy and “rules light.”  Yes, there are a lot of powers and fiddly bits, but by and large they all follow one generic framework that’s easy for me to understand.  I like combing through all the books looking for that perfect feat or power, I gather a great deal of enjoyment finding things like this.  For me character creation is just as much a fun part of the game as playing itself.  I love finding that combination of feats, powers, and skills that can be combined in an awesome way.

Some of my friends call me a power gamer, and I suppose that I have to cop to that to a certain extent.  I don’t like breaking the game or coming up with stupidly powerful combinations of things, but I do like my characters to be really effective.  System mastery and rules mastery are fun and enjoyable to me, and 4th edition definitely scratches that itch.  And best of all once I know all those rules I can tweak or ignore them to my hearts content when I run a game.

I also like class base systems, and after running at least two or three games for groups of newbies I can tell you that classes are actually really valuable when introducing new players to the hobby.  They’re a wonderful package of “cool things you can do” that are a nice shorthand for a new player to wrap their head around.  If I have a new player who wants to help his buddies I can point him right at any leader class and then let them go from there.

I also love running games, and for me 4th edition has been a vast improvement over the earlier editions.  I have all the tools, digital and otherwise, to create fun and dynamic encounters that are both flavorable and tactically interesting enough to make running them very enjoyable.  There is just something about how 4th edition monsters work that I can so easily understand that it’s been pretty trivial to prepare an adventure.  Compared to the previous edition my prep time is about 1/10th of what it used to be, which means I can concentrate more on creating interesting areas and plots than on what magic items an NPC might be carrying.

That and 4th edition is also interesting in that it’s kind of two games in one.  On one hand you have your classic “kill them and take their stuff” challenge of a traditional D&D game (not to say that my games are that simple).  On the other hand you have this wonderful tactical miniature style battle game when you start rolling initiative.  I have so much fun figuring out how my group of monsters is going to beat up the PCs, running each combat like a little miniatures skirmish game.  I live for this kind of stuff and 4th edition is pretty unique in that I can sort of get two games in one.

Finally, the rest of my regularly weekday group has always been a D&D group.  It’s the game they like far mroe than any other and we generally use the newest edition.  I’m lucky in the fact that my players actually enjoy the same system that I do, and that my good friend and fellow GM upstairs is just as enthusiastic as I am.  We talk for hours about how to do various things and what we’re going to spring on each other the next time we run.

All that said, I still enjoy a lot of other systems too.  The weekend group I have (I’m fortunate enough to have not one, not two, but three different groups) tends to dabble in a lot of different systems, and I have to say that it’s been really good for me over all to try out so many different things.  Learning how other systems work just reinforces my love of 4th edition and all the other games, because each one brings something different to the table.  And in this day and age all us gamers have no excuse not to use the perfect tool for the job.  Or the right system for our preferences.  And when it comes to a fantasy game, that right system is 4th edition for me.

“It’s during long pauses such as these that we often grow philosophical and ponder the deeper questions of gaming…

Just where did that tiger keep those 20 silver pieces?”
~GM Hold music (sednagames.com)

Lately I have noticed the discussion crop up on a variety of message boards over ‘Is Dungeons and Dragons really all about killing things and taking their stuff?”  The discussion invariably then delves into people saying “Yes, but it can be about a whole lot more” or “Well X edition was a whole lot more about killing things and taking their stuff than Y edition” or the people who stick up and say “Yes, that IS what it is all about.”  Yet one of the things I always notice about the discussion is that while gamers spend a great amount of time arguing how DnD can be so much more than killing things and taking their stuff or lambasting their least favorite edition while supporting their favorite no one stops to ask: is it OK that the game could fundamentally be centered on killing things and taking their stuff?

Everyone pussyfoots around it, like it is some dirty little secret that didn’t make millions of dollars for the video game industry.  But, despite me being a White Wolf loving, story-based, hang-the-rules sort of roleplayer, I’m going to tell you straight: there is nothing wrong with the concept of a game being founded on ‘kill things, take their stuff.’

Now before you rush out and go have a Mountain Dew rampage on how plebian I am, let me explain.  Let us, for a second; break down the basic structure of the “Kill Things, Take Stuff” plot.  In my mind it has 4 stages:

Problem (There are monsters)
Action (The PCs go find the monsters – usually in the form of a ‘dungeon crawl’)
Resolution (The PCs kill the monsters)
Reward (The PCs get stuff from killing monsters)

The Problem -> Action -> Resolution -> Reward structure is a primer for a successful RPG story.  It is one of the most basic, tried and true plotlines of DnD – or any other game.  It can be as simple as shown about or it can be far more sophisticated:

Problem (Innocent children have been disappearing from the PCs hometown, and last night the mangled corpse of a child was found in a dark alleyway)
Action (The PCs start a careful detective-style investigation into the shady elements of this city)
Resolution (After many clues and some random encounters the PCs decide that one of the respected politicians of the town is actually a corrupt wizard who is responsible for this atrocity, so they confront him)
Reward (Defeating their foe, the PCs find and release the surviving children.  The Lord of the city gives them a generous reward – or conversely they loot the dead wizard and take his stuff )

Either way and everything in between, the structure gives players what they crave: the chance to take actions that bring about solutions and give them rewards so they can go solve bigger and badder problems.  To reiterate: players want resolution and reward.  They put the work into solving the problems the DM presents them with, and in order to make the game gratifying to them, they want rewards for taking that action.  While setting up a problem is easy for most any DM, working the game through to a conclusion is more difficult.  Dungeons and Dragons sets up an almost fail-safe game structure where getting rid of obstacles (killing monsters, defeating traps, ect ect) grants reward and leads to a conclusion.  At the end, the DM can tally up all of the treasure and XP and reward his or her players.

I’m going to argue that the creators of the original DnD intimately understood what made the game fun, and that resolution and reward were an integral part of the enjoyment of the game.  That is why by-the-book you get treasure for slaying monsters and why the game seems set up to kill things and take stuff: it provides inherent rewards.  I will go so far to say that the DMG should be required reading for anyone who wants to lead any game system, because beyond the rules specific to whatever edition of DnD you play, the book is filled with a wealth of information on how to structure a basic game plot.  Don’t scoff at the seemingly simple examples.  Because it is far more gratifying and fun to play in a campaign with a very simple plot that keeps you engaged, active and rewarded than playing in an interminably complex plot where you just keep running in circles never reaching a conclusion because you’re either not smart enough to figure out the clues or the DM just hasn’t figured out the end yet.  (I see the latter happen most frequently in White Wolf STs, but that is the subject for a different rant.)

The DMG urges new DMs to start simple and if they and their players want to, they can refine the subtlety and complexity of their plots, as they understand the game and how it is played.  Or don’t – if your players get their jollies by mashing monsters and saving villages from orc hordes, let them!  Follow the basic rules of resolution and reward; and no matter whether your game is about complex political scheming or killing things and taking their stuff, you will be surrounded by a group of your friends who are all having fun and enjoying the game.

And in the end, getting together with friends and having fun is what Dungeons and Dragons is really about, no?

As this is my first post, I decided to go for something that might tell the reader who the heck I am and what my insights on roleplaying are.  I can tell you to start that my tastes run both very similar and very differently from Save, Runequester and Javier.  Part in parcel that’s because I’m one of the rare, the proud, the gamer chicks.

Now let me also lay it down that I don’t play CtD because of any inherent love for lovely elfin chicks or fluffy bunnies.  I have been a longtime ST and I don’t like running stories with ranbows and prancing ponies.  I do run storylines pulled from the old fashioned myths with burning people at the stake and having gang members shoot PCs down.   So why would I be so devoted to Changeling the Dreaming, a game stereotypically know for all of those things?  Why stick with a system burdened with outdated, clunky combat rules?

It all has to do with the basic theme and mood of the game.  I, for one, agree with Save that for the most part I like embodying the hero in my games.  That is because to me, the game is not just a fun pastime spent getting treasure and killing things; but it is a change to tell a story with friends.  If I wanted to kill things and get XP and treasure (which I will grant can be hella fun) I would play a video game.  If I want to share a story, I will play a RPG.

So what compels me about telling stories with Changeling?

1. The ability to play with both past and present.  I’m a sucker for the ‘past lives’ thing in an RPG.  I love having PCs discover their past, deal with thier past lives, have that shape them or being something they act against.  The clash of who you were, who you are and who you would like to become is a dramatic question I find compelling.  It invites a second layer of characterization for the player to contemplate – and great story opportunities of discovery.

2. The ability to ‘awaken’ to magic.  At base I am a positive person and I like my games to be in general positive.  Dungeons and Dragons is at heart (no matter how you play it) positive: I start out a normal person (or dwarf or what have you) and through experience and work adventuring I become someone who is powerful  perhaps heroic, perhaps rich, or whatever else the player decides.  Changeling is, too.  There is nothing inherently angst-ridden about waking to a world of magic.  It can be confusing and startling.  It could be horribly painful, traumatic and/or destructive to the psyche – but it doesn’t have to be.  I like having the choice to play a character who is, at heart positive.  Having a group that doesn’t feel the need to sit around angsting about the horrible trauma thier PCs have been through.  This is what set me off about large parts of the new world of darkness.  For me, the ability to play a normal person who grows to become something different and more interesting without having to die, be maimed, enslaved, tortured ect ect is a strong appeal in a game.

3. Human vs. supernatural halves.  I like the pull of ‘one side vs the other’ contained in one psyche.  I like having players facing decisions and saying “well the fae half of me wants to do this, but the human half would rather not” or comparing fae morals to human morals.  It creates tough choices in a game, and tough choices are fun because they prompt action and conflict, which lets the players create a story to be resolved.

4. The ability to bring in anything you can imagine. The dreaming is a wonderful place.  shaped and influenced by the dreams of humanity, if you’re feeling like a dark and resonant game your PCs could travel through a reflection of their city where the ghosts of people killed by domestic violence walk around showing their bloody wounds.  Or if your group craves something light and shamelessly fun, you could have the action heroes of the lastest summer blockbuster manifest and wreak havoc.  The best thing is both are not only supported, but encouraged by the setting.

5. At base, the game supports humans.  Call me crazy, but I really hate games that say ‘humans are crap, lets kick them around.’  Now, having human and non-human options is not the same: humans in DnD are not enslaved and oppressed by the other races, they are just as viable as anything other race to become adventurers.  But some games (I would argue that the infamous Wraethu and the new game Changeling:the Lost) at base put humanity is a very bad light.  I don’t want to play a game that tells me ‘there are big bad things that are better than/control normal humans.  So you have to serve them/get changed by them, be one of them to be something.  Yes, CtD focuses on characters that are humans who awaken to a fae soul, but I like the blend of human and fae – I ike the idea that fae need to interact with humans for glamour and for sanity.  And at base the dreaming is crafted from the dreams of humanity – humans shape the fae as much as fae shape thier dreamers.  I can get behind that.