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"London Calling"

Once Upon A City... Wherein I put forward ideas for London the Dreaming. A setting for Changeling, somewhat far removed from Concordia, the default/defacto setting in the corebook.  The noble houses of the Sidhe remain, but the High King in far off Tara Nur is a world away. London is largely under the sway of the Duchess of Sorrows. She rules from the nightmare tower known as Castle Darkhearth, strangely protected from the banality of the square mile where it is located. There, in her mortal guise as Fay Morgaine, she runs a powerful hedge fund known as Mordred Investments. She is never without her loyal troll bodyguards, Mr Fe, Mr Fi, Mr Fo, and, of course, Mr Fum. They are a renegade family of extremely efficient and quite sadistic thugs. Even the London Bridge freehold wants little to do with them. Efray is nominally loyal to House Balor, but serves darker forces, long ago bent by the dark kin of the Thallain and bought into the Black Court as their champion against the Excalibur Co
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"Forever Autumn"

Well, maybe not forever,  but this is a world of Autumn. A world of darkness. For what is the light of glamour and dreaming without the shade? London will be the setting for the Changeling Chronicles(s?) I run. A city I'm somewhat less unfamiliar with, as a Brit, than the cities one usually associates with these games (because most of them are made in the US, I guess). For some, probably weird, reason I won't use a city I'm more familiar with. Everyone speaks like a farmer and it just feels weird playing right on your doorstep. Don't know how I'd feel were I actually a Londoner, and not a cosplay cockerney! In the Tower of London the Ravens guard a special prisoner that the Autumn World has long forgotten about. She is the Merry Maid, the Snow Princess. Daughter of King Caliburn of Old. The One True King of the Lands of the Young. She has been kept there, restive and asleep, for breaking her betrothal. She was promised to Prince Basil, son of the Duchess of Sorrows.
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"I was dreaming while I wrote this"

Currently I am reading Changeling The Dreaming, the 20th Anniversary edition. There are 20th anniversary editions for all the original games, in fact Vampire hits its 30th this year. Perhaps there'lll be a new anniversary for this one. God that makes me feel old.  I've read all the core books, and some of the revised editions over the years. Vampire 1e is a bit of an anachronism. It really came into its own with 2e - and you can see from the production values and quality (at least back in the day) just how successful 1e was.  I remember 1e Werewolf with the claw cutaway on the cover betraying a crepuscular scene of natural beauty underneath. The only problem was that it was a softback book. Don't rip it! All the reviews pointed out this flaw, and all the copies, raging across the world, eventually succumbed! Mage 1e was fantastic. Ultimately it's a game about robots fighting wizards for control of reality. To be honest that's disturbing, because who decides what'
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"Hello darkness my old friend"

Hello dreamers, About a lifetime ago me and a friend walked into a local game store. For reasons I don't recall we both had a mind to pick up a new roleplaying. My experience of the hobby was more interest than practical experience. Sadly that remains the case: I own more product than I play. I'm willing to bet that isn't uncommon. Finding players is never easy, especially in the antediluvian age that was 1991. In the end my friend picked up something called Shadowrun while I picked up a weird green book called Vampire.  No idea why those are the choices we made. If anything I should have been the one going for Shadowrun being a fan of Cyberpunk (at least). I've never really been into horror movies or stories, and, with few exceptions, that remains the case. But Vampire proved compelling. There was something about the urban sprawl that wasn't a million miles from cyberpunk. Plus you got to play an urban anti-hero (or so I thought) - after a fashion. A bit like the o
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