labcats | More on Equinox Road

I'm in the last ten pages of Equinox Road, a supplement for Changeling: The Lost. It continues to impress me.

The third chapter is about how the True Fae work. The authors explain that, while the GM can make up stuff on the fly and totally at whim for this, that boils down to playing the "I'm the GM -- I win" card, and that this is not a good idea.

That's a little unusual for a White Wolf product -- or at least, for the White Wolf books I was reading in the 1990s. Well, to be fair, there were products that paid lip service to this principle. I remember reviewing one supplement for Vampire: The Masquerade that said, quite correctly, that GMs shouldn't up and say, "Right, despite all that you can do, your PCs are automatically captured now." This same product had a scenario where, despite all that the players can do, their PCs are automatically captured. This happened not once, but at least twice, possibly three times in the scenario. This, in my arrogant opinion, was a serious, serious flaw.

But, in Equinox Road, there is no mixed message. The authors not only say that it's a bad idea to play the "I win" card -- or the "You win or lose based on my whim" card; they also explain why this is a bad idea. And, even more importantly, they provide tools to give GMs a healthy alternative.

I am not certain that all GMs will be able to figure out how to use these tools correctly. Heck, I am not certain I can use them perfectly. But, they are there, they make sense, and they seem sound.

Chapter Three of Equinox Road explains, both in terms of crunchy mechanics and in terms of story and fairy tale logic how the True Fae work and why. The authors show readers the building blocks and the various structures these blocks can create. Players may never learn what the rules are. Indeed, unless the GM goes out of her way to reveal them, it is extremely likely that the players will not learn them. But, the rules are there, and they are internally consistent.

This matters. Even if players do not know what the rules are, knowing that there are rules that do not change based on GM whim is important. Even a rule of "Events unfold to create the most dramatic story" can work. Even a baroque system of hidden mechanics can work, whether players know these mechanics or not, because there is a logic that they will feel.

At the same time, there is no uberplot here. There are no set factions or grand True Fae plans. GMs have both the tools they need for a fair game and the freedom they need to make a Changeling game truly their own group's game. This is not an easy thing to present, and it is not something that White Wolf has been known for doing. But, Equinox Road does it well.

I also like the authors' take on what makes the True Fae and their creations tick. And, when I was reading about how Fae realms in Arcadia work and why they work that way, my first thought was, "Ah! The True Fae are like GMs." The parallel may be unintentional, but it would not surprise me learn that it was deliberate.

I think this is the most useful of the Changeling supplements, and that even GMs planning to ditch the mechanics or most of the world of Changeling will get a lot of use from it. I think the gming advice is useful to GMs who don't plan to run Changeling or to use any form of Fae characters.

I'm considering running a Changeling campaign. If I do this, I'll probably ditch the whole Courts paraphernalia, even though Lords of Summer did a good job of making them attractive. I'll go with the idea Patrick Riley suggested in Alarums & Excursions of making the PCs be about 90% of the known Changeling population.

But, I really do have to run Candlewick Manor first. One campaign at a time. (Well, two counting my pbem. Well, three, counting the other pbem, where we're all gming because it's an epistolary game. Games where I'm purely a player don't count for this purpose.)