TRPG General Chat

Ben

6:00 AM

d100 is that main die used in the game

(percentile?)

Althis

Anyway. Gotta go to sleep.

Then I am going to wake up, and continue thinking on how to perfect this thing.

Ben

Ciao

Althis

@doppelgreener, thanks for reminding me of Dungeon World. I had completely forgotten that existed.

@Ben, thank you for remembering me.

@Pixie and @HadesHerald, just thank you.

Ben

All good :)

Pixie

Anytime!

Ben

6:35 AM

Does the term "Changeling" ring any bells for anyone?

trogdor

yeah

doppelgreener

[cough] i wouldn't, uuh [cough cough] know what that is

trogdor

XD

Ben

Ok. That's easy then

What would you suggest is the best way to identify one?

I do realise the irony in that

trogdor

uh, you generally couldn't unless they started exhibiting powers I would think

doppelgreener

6:40 AM

Ben

@trogdor My thoughts also.

Pixie

I can't give away trade secrets.

Ben

@doppelgreener unfortunately, while I do realise this is intended to be some form of joke, I'm at the end of my workday and linking A to B is a tad difficult for me at the moment :P

Nyoze

@Ben Well, if you happy to see the same person twice at the same time, I'd suggest there would be something afoot.

Ben

@Nyoze My spidey senses are tingling...

Nyoze

6:42 AM

I'm glad you are. My internet is running too slow to tingle :(

trogdor

@Ben it is a joke about him being one

Ben

And I actually laughed when you said that.

What about smells or perhaps behaviours? Just how real is the transformation? Are we talking skin deep, or full Zygon?

doppelgreener

(yes the joke is that i am a green doppelganger)

Ben

cc @doppelgreener, got a response from beyond blue, and they have said unfortunately that is not their area. They suggested Men's Line instead.

@doppelgreener Arr. Hurr hurr. I get things.

doppelgreener

@Ben nuts. something specific about the issue, or do they just not deal with requests regarding helping others?

Ben

6:56 AM

@doppelgreener "It sounds like you care tremendously about your friends mental health and well being and are looking for guidance on how to best approach the situation. As our service focuses specifically on giving advice relating to treatments and strategies to manage depression and anxiety your questions do not fit within the scope of our service."

BESW

@Ben "Changeling" means lots of different things depending on context.

Ben

@BESW D&D 5e

BESW

Then I can't help, I dunno their lore.

doppelgreener

@Ben Ok, thank you. :)

Ben

@BESW What are you familiar with? It might be useful, depending.

doppelgreener

6:59 AM

@Ben I am glad they pointed you somewhere useful.

Ben

@doppelgreener Thankyou for starting me off somewhere :)

Pixie

That helps. As with dragons, changelings are a mythical being/fictional creature and their rules change considerably depending upon interpretation. But yeah, I don't know about them in 5e.

doppelgreener

Plus there's the original folk-lore and mythological changelings alone! (that being the second thing BESW said)

BESW

@Ben I suspect 5e's version is the boring "shapeshifter who specialises in pretending to be other people" thing, instead of the much more drama-prone (and more traditional) "person who thinks he's human but is actually a fairy who was swapped with a human when they were both babies."

Pixie

As I'm familiar with them in 3.5, they are way different from like the usual mythological changeling. I do not know whether this has changed or not between then and 5e.

Ben

7:00 AM

Well. Goes to show my ignorance haha

BESW

(With the attendant "fairy who's really a human that got swapped as a baby" counterpart living somewhere.)

doppelgreener

[suddenly having fond memories of Harold, the troll changeling]

BESW

Yeah, the Dresden Files setting adheres more closely to the traditional "cuckoo" concept.

@doppelgreener Yanno, any of our DFAE PCs could easily show up in the Amaterasu setting.

doppelgreener

@BESW They could, it's true!

Ben

Quuuuestion......

How do Changelings breed...?

BESW

7:03 AM

@Ben Privately.

Ben

I should certainly hope.

Maybe I'll ask the DM (and likely get a similar response haha). We came across a giant Changeling nest in our game recently, full off Changeling eggs.

Pixie

Sometimes monster manuals detail species genesis, but I don't have 5e's. That'd be the best place to look, though.

Ben

True. I'll look into it

And there we have it (or at least part)

> Changelings. Doppelgangers are too lazy or selfinterested to raise their young. They assume attractive male forms and seduce women, leaving them to raise their progeny. A doppelganger child appears to be a normal member of its mother's species until it reaches adolescence, at which point it discovers its true nature and is driven to seek out its kind to join them.

BESW

In traditional mythology, changelings aren't a race/species. They're displaced individuals with environment-modified phenotypic plasticity.

trogdor

@doppelgreener I originally thought that was what your joke was about XD

Ben

7:07 AM

@BESW Big Words.

BESW

@Ben They grow up different than their parents because of the changed conditions they grew up in.

Ben

@BESW Are you saying they're just abnormalities? Mutants?

Ohhh...

A bit like the traditional term "Alien"

doppelgreener

@trogdor oh right XD

BESW

Real-world example of environment-based phenotypic plasticity: there's a kind of grass that grows like corn if you raise it in temperature and air similar to 10,000 years ago.

trogdor

but your name makes sense too

BESW

7:11 AM

Its genes don't change at all, and its seeds will grow like the modern grass if you put it in modern conditions again.

Obviously traditional changeling myths don't draw on scientific principles like phenotype, but my impression of the basic concept is that it works similarly.

Ben

BESW

A human raised in fairyland will wind up being more fey, and a fairy raised in human lands will wind up being more human, than mere cultural changes can explain.

But they won't become totally the other creature.

doppelgreener

@Ben So, if it clarifies, Harold, a character I played: He's a traditional changeling. His parents were trolls, which are usually enormous and absolutely hideous looking. At some point, for whatever reason the fey have, he was swapped out for a human baby. He was in his early twenties in our game. He was very tall (like seven feet or so), very muscular, and impressively resilient to harm.

At some point, well before Harold learned about trolls even existing, he got gored by a boar trying to stop it in its tracks. He was fine, shook it off, and continued fighting the boars. He concluded afterwards he must be superman!

Ben

That would definitely be an interesting life to live!

trogdor

It was a hilarious way to take it seeing as everyone at the table knew there was a different reason for it

doppelgreener

7:16 AM

He was just a DJ in a small modern tropical island community that was also a fairly good place for tourists to visit and relax.

BESW

It was also the headquarters for a mainland organised crime organisation.

Ben

What a twist!

doppelgreener

At some point, I can't remember what it was, there was an intense life-or-death situation, and in desperation to survive, his trollish nature began to pour out - he grew bigger, stronger, a bit uglier. He was becoming a half-troll, and it helped him survive what was going on.

Ben

Now I think about it, I do have vague memories of this sort of behaviour occurring in stories before. (No specific memories of when or where)

doppelgreener

Harold later met an actual troll, and learned something about his heritage. Had the game continued further, he may have even had to make The Choice, something all changelings must do soon after reaching adulthood (it was about time he made it, too).

The Choice was this: to become completely a troll, no longer human at all, and lose all free will. (Because Fey do not have free will.) Or, become just a normal human, and lose all trollishness entirely, forever, but keep his free will.

The Choice is Dresden Files lore, I don't know if it relates to traditional changeling folk lore.

I still do not know what Harold would have chosen.

Harold and a couple of other people were trying to keep two people alive and safe from a wizard who had come to the island for the express purpose of killing those two people, because they'd dabbled in forbidden magic. (They didn't even know their own nature let alone it being forbidden, but the court of wizards does not really care about details like that.)

The events that transpired in doing so took him from a fairly ordinary world into confronting a suddenly fairly magical one in which certain wizards get appointed to hunt and kill certain other wizards, in which trolls exist, and in which he was a troll since birth.

trogdor

7:30 AM

it was actually a pretty great short campaign

doppelgreener

It was fantastic and short, yeah. :)

trogdor

to be fair, it was a system that was still being tested

but it was still great

doppelgreener

Yes. We did this as part of the Dresden Files for Fate Accelerated playtest.

trogdor

I think we all had pretty great characters and some surprising interaction between them

doppelgreener

We did! Let's see... We had Harold, a mafia gangster fire elementalist, Ben's character was a wizard who'd committed the crime of performing mind magic, you and Ira played a samurai and wuxia ninja who'd been pulled back out of the aether by Certain Powerful People With Plans and assigned to guard the mind wizard.... I can't remember clearly who Raycia played though.

trogdor

7:38 AM

she talked to objects

sorta anyway

doppelgreener

7:52 AM

Aha right :D

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