Bidi’s World

Last weekend I ran the demo from White Wolf of Changeling: the Lost. This was my first White Wolf game I’ve ever played and a first look at Changeling: the Lost for all of my players. In all fairness the entirety of our experience was based off the demo packet as none of us had source books to reference. This was intended to be an exercise to see if it would be worth purchasing the source books and if my gaming group would even be interested.

The demo was very well put together. I did have to visit the forums to clarify one or two details but I’d have to say that everything we needed to play was contained in the demo packet as promised. I do with they had broken the PDF into two separate files though so that I could send one to the players with the quick start characters and the rules without sending them the actual adventure. The rules were on the first five pages of the PDF while the characters were at the end of the PDF. It took a lot of work preparing primer documents to give the players without spoiling the story.

With that said, the story that comes in the demo was excellent. With only the smallest exception there was a good balance between block text and story information. The story did an excellent job of instilling paranoia in the players which is a hallmark of the Changeling setting.

The basic premise of the story is that the characters are recently escaped from Arcadia and living in Miami. The Summer Court has been controlling Miami well beyond their normal reign and refuses to hand over control to the other courts. The players are invited to a coup to overthrow the summer king and for their individual reasons they agree.

Over the course of the demo they players get a chance to experience combat, social manipulation, and the every day risks that Changelings face. It did a great job of running the gambit of the various aspect of Changeling: the Lost.

The thing we found wanting about it though was the game engine. We found combat to be far too lethal. Defenses didn’t seem to balance well with offenses so NPCs and players would die too quickly. It’s the nature of the setting that people aren’t running around in full armor like in a medieval fantasy. Unfortunately that would have helped.

I understand there is a realism aspect to the idea that a normally clothed person has no special defenses against a bullet or a knife. Realism aside, there isn’t a lot of fun factor in an NPC dropping a PC on the first round just because of a lucky roll either. Perhaps we weren’t understanding something correctly but I feel fairly confident we were running things the way the demo intended them to be run.

Everything considered we had a great time though. I think we’ll try another White Wolf demo in the future, at least to give the system a second chance. They have demos for a few of their games. Perhaps Mage: The Awakening next?

While I’m not quite sold on the game system the setting was a blast and I’ve got Monte Cook’s World of Darkness on order. Once that arrives and I get a chance to dig into it, I’ll be sure to post a review here.

• Witch Hunter 101 (0)
• Hope everyone had a fun “Worldwide D&D Gaming Day” (5)
• GameStorm 10 - 4th Edition Demos (0)

This weekend I played in my first Witch Hunter game. This was another living campaign setting. It is produced by Paradigm Concepts who also make Living Arcanis.

Witch Hunter is very different from any role playing game I’ve played so far. Not only does it take place in a setting that is based on reality but it is heavy on the role play and uses dice pools instead of the more familiar d20 system.

Witch Hunter takes place in the seventeenth century. America is still young and colonial, the ocean is full of pirates, and it has been recently discovered that the things that go bump in the night are real. The Witch Hunters come from various organizations with a common goal. Their task is to deal with the abominations that threaten civilized society. Think Van Helsing meets Pirates of the Caribbean.

Each Witch Hunter got to where they are through some defining event in their past. It is the one key moment when their path became clear that they become a Witch Hunter. At our table that ranged from spiritual quests to personal tragedies. This aspect of character definition is important in Witch Hunter and even more so in the module we ran.

I was a bit skeptical at first about the dice pool system. I really need more practice role playing though as it isn’t an aspect I’ve delved into much in previous games. At the same time though I wanted to combat to still feel crunchy enough that I could enjoy the dice rolling too. I was surprised to see how well it all fit together. It really exceeded my expectations.

The nature of the dice pool flattened things out a bit so my newcomer to the table didn’t feel as out of place among the more established characters. Even though there were plenty of opportunities to roll dice, I also found it didn’t get in the way of good role playing either. There was even one conflict where role play resolved a combat scene where the players weren’t intended to survive otherwise. It was perhaps my favorite moment of our game session.

I’ve got to say I loved the system. I’m now looking forward to playing more.

• GameStorm 10 (0)
• Demoing Changeling: the Lost (0)
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