Growing Tales

I have been planning to write about my struggle with table-top role playing game mechanics. The theme troubled me when starting my first campaign of Changeling: the Dreaming. Writing about it now could help me smooth my process in future games, so I deciced to do so. Maybe this helps someone else, too. The Rules: Memorizing versus Processing The trouble with game mechanics is that you have to both remember and be able to apply them in varied situations. I think that is why I found it hard to jump from reading to running a game. For any starting Storyteller there is a lot of work ahead. The fact that CtD 20th anniversary book has over 400 pages of content, makes it hard to memorize. A little consolation is that other World of Darkness games use same dice rules. However, Changeling: the Dreaming also has some special mechanics, like gaining Banality and Nightmare,which affect characters' wellbeing. Examples of Processing Learning can be easier by using self-learning tactics. I usual...

So far being a storyteller has been one of the best new things I have tried after turning thirty! Certainly it beats the karaoke singing and most other ways to spend time. Love for Mythical Creatures I have played tabletop games over 15 years solely as a player. Jumping into the role of a storyteller was not easy. Before that I had only vague idea how to design and run a game. From outside it seemed people just wrote some notes, read a story and bought a rule book. What pushed me into trying this was my love for fairy tales. In 2016 I got my hands on the first edition of Changeling: The Dreaming, a tabletop RPG. It was love at first sight! Even though I had been familiar of the other World of Darkness games, this was a novelty for someone who started playing in the 2000s. In my youth I had read my fair share of local mythical creatures, mythologies (Greek & Finnish folk tales) and all the fantasy books our local library had in its shelves. My favourite characters in Finnish ...

I think it is fair to say this blog had a waay too long pause! I started blogging just a bit before I discovered I had a thyroiditis - an auto-immune reaction that first makes your body work too fast, and later way too slow. The first phase gave energy to spring ideas, too, but pretty soon I realised that it wasn't gonna last. Long story short - Now that I have afterwards gone through also hypothyroidism and how to medicate it, I feel good enough to get back to writing and the happy world of gaming. Yayy! 😺😸 Telling stories in the world of CtD still inspires me. However I need refresh my memories of the game system. And of course the pandemic makes it necessary to learn how to organize a game through Discord and/or other apps. Currently I watch (or listen, mostly) The Last Faerie Tale recordings in Youtube. It's a nice way to recall the mechanics and reminiscent how fun the world of Changeling can be!