Hacking MHR/Smallville for Changeling

[Anders Gabrielsson]

About a year ago we tried out the new (well, new-er) Changeling game, and while the tone and themes were interesting the system didn't work for us for various reasons. At the time I made a half-hearted effort at hacking Smallville for it, but there were several things I couldn't get to work properly so I abandoned that project.

Now with MHR I think I have the tools I need to have another go at it. I'm still in the stage where I'm very roughly sketching things out but I thought I'd look for some input here.

Currently I'm planning on using the following set of stats:

• Relationships. These will be pretty much like in Smallville, I think, though I'll probably fold in Extras and Features into the same mechanic but cap the die rating for them at a d8.
• Distinctions. As in MHR - around three of them, used at d8 or d4 + PP.
• Specialties. Similar to MHR, though probably with a d6 rating as well. The Specialties themselves will be very different, probably including things like Dreaming and Trickery.
• Power Sets. Right now I'm planning for each character to have two, one for their kith and one for their court.
• I'm renaming Affiliations as Loyalties. There will be many more of these, probably including Self, Motley, Court, Kith, Freehold, Sovereign and something for one's mortal family, friends and allies.

While I do want the players to have fun using their Kool Powerz I want the game to focus more on Relationships and Loyalties, so I'd like to give them a bit of extra mechanical weight. I was thinking of adding something SFX-like to them, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea or how it would work.

Any comments welcome.

[Mouse]

It sounds to me like Relationships already cover what Affinities/Loyalties normally would. They're conceptually very similar and are likely to have a great deal of overlap. So if I were doing this, I'd probably try to find a clever way to combine the two into one thing that hits all the points you think are important.

I think MHR is strongest by default when things are a little more action packed than in Changeling. You may find yourself doing more emotional and mental based conflicts than physical ones. This isn't a bad thing, but you'll want to think up some ways to represent things like unraveling mysteries as a conflict of some sort rather than just rolling versus the doom pool.

For powers, I find myself wanting more than two. I think I'd do something like:

1. Your Court's Mantle. Every member of a Court gets this one.

2. One of your Court's two Contracts.

3. Your Seeming's power. All members of the Seeming get the same one.

4. Your Kith's power. All members of the Kith get the same one, but make sure that you have several choices.

So you choose your Court and Seeming and have half your choices of power made. Then you choose which of two Contracts and which Kith.

Then you just need to work out what each thing does. So all Ogres might get, I don't know, Strength. Eternal Winter might give you Elemental Control: Cold, with the option of later buying Ice Attack or something.

Anyway, good luck.

[Anders Gabrielsson]

Good points! I'll elaborate a bit on a couple of them.

Regarding the overlap of Relationships and Loyalties I'm hoping that will be a feature and not a bug, with Relationships representing personal feelings and Loyalties being formal obligations, oaths and the like. The interplay and conflicts between these types of bonds are one of the things I find interesting about stories featuring fairy-tale creatures.

I will probably make liberal use of Large Scale Threats to represent mysteries, conspiracies and the like. Together with a more decompressed timescale where each turn might be a day or a week I think that could work quite well.

I should probably have been more clear about the powers: Each character is supposed to get a set of powers each from their kith and court. A Winter Court Ogre might have Elemental Control (Cold) and some kind of fear-based power from their court and Strength, Durability and Enhanced Sense of Smell from their kith, with some suitable SFX for each. (There should definitely be choices involved with which specific powers you get, and probably also which of the sets you want to emphasize more.)

[Mouse]

Oops. You very clearly said, "Power Sets," and not, "Powers," there. A textbook case of reading comprehension failure on my part.

Two questions:

1. What's your Specialties list looking like right now? If you've got it at least somewhat hammered out, I'd like to read it.

2. How are you handling the various powers (mostly Seeming and Kith, from memory) that change how skills work? For example, the, "Can't fail rolls of skill X under Y circumstance," type things.

[Anders Gabrielsson]

Hey, no worries. I've made worse mistakes than that reading things I've written myself.

1) What I've jotted down right now, which is mostly a list of ideas, is as follows:

• Secrets
• Trickery
• Dreaming
• Battle
• Grace
• Lore
• Mortals
• Making
• Glamour

That's mostly based on thinking about what kind of things Changelings are interested in being good at. I haven't figured out what all of them mean yet - "Making" will probably be anything to do with creating something new and "Glamour" is for fancy magical stuff but I'm not sure if that should be a Specialty at all. There will probably be at least a couple more before I feel like I have enough of them.

2) I'm not going to emulate the abilities that closely. I'll mostly look at what kind of abilities the Kiths and Courts have and try to find something thematically similar. Some might get extra Specialties instead, I suppose, if their abilities match those more closely.