Character Creation (Info in 1st Post)

[Prunus]

Many thanks, and sorry for the slow follow-up. A couple thoughts:

(1) (a) I wasn't actually thinking of breeding hobgoblins (although now that you mention it . . .), but of (i) negotiating and/or trading with (sufficiently intelligent) hobgoblins, and/or (ii) growing and breeding goblin fruits. I think that the latter of those two, at least, is probably substantially less difficult and costly than hobgoblin breeding? Although still potentially far from cheap and easy. (The extreme version of trading with hobgoblins (going full-on goblin marketeer), on the other hand, still seems likely to be difficult and expensive . . . just for somewhat different reasons.)

(1) (b) When you describe Hedgespun weaver as being a big XP sink, are you thinking about the cost of creating each item (of > 0 dots)? (Speaking of which, am I understanding the implications of the "Hedgespun" article on the wiki correctly, that a Hedgespun created on commission can have the XP cost paid by the commissioner?) Or are you thinking more in terms of the cost of raising Wyrd, Occult, and Crafts in order to be able to craft higher-dot items. (For 5-dot, that would be. . . anywhere from 97 to 262 xp, if I've done my math right, with the lower end representing some ''serious'' specialization at character creation (with associated opportunity costs). So, fair enough. (And also arguably a strong reason to decide at character creation whether that's the road I want to go down.) But 3-dot should be doable with character creation dots alone, and only moderately heavy specialization. I think.)

(2 and 3) Definitely useful information to have. I have a tendency to optimize fairly heavily for particular abilities or goals during character creation (whatever those abilities or goals may be), and that makes it really useful to know if a deep investment in a particular area of activity is likely to lead to frustration.

(4) For whatever it's worth, I was thinking of this less in terms of Magical Realm, or even necessarily having it be a significant element in interactions with other changelings, than in terms of it being the obvious answer to the question: "Suppose I had virtually no chance of impregnating a partner or being impregnated, was unusually resilient to both physical injury (depending on kith, merits, contracts, etc.) and infection with ordinary diseases, had potential access to at least two different methods of curing even normally incurable diseases if I did pick up something nasty (one of which is pretty damn cheap, considering), and could fairly easily read someone's mind to determine one or both of what they secretly wanted and what they secretly feared . . . but also had no legal documents and no easy way of acquiring any, despite having been born in this country. Further suppose that I was disinclined to live by robbery. How, then, could I leverage my unusual advantages to make more than 'illegal immigrant field hand' levels of money (and ideally pick up some glamour while I'm at it, and have enough flexibility in my schedule to be able to pursue Court business without having to considering my leave balance), despite my unusual disadvantages?" But if there's a pattern of that sort of character element working out poorly, I can certainly take that into account in weighing whether to go with that or another possibility.

(5) That's definitely useful to know. When I mentioned some options potentially being "a good source of plot," I was mostly thinking in terms of obvious flesh for the plot-runners (whether ST or player running a PrP) to sink plot hooks into and/or tools for potentially spawning subplots off of main plots, more than opportunities to run plots myself. But it's probably still a useful caution.

Again, I stress I'm not trying to cramp your style or creativity. You asked for what 'works' best in terms of making an interesting and long term character. I've made enough characters in this sites various settings to know that some character concepts sound great on paper but don't work so well in an online forum such as this.

Totally agree. I don't consider myself duty-bound to follow your advice, but if I didn't want to receive it, I wouldn't have asked. Information is always good.

Maybe think of a character first and game mechanics second. The setting is so small now your character will be useful no matter what. Start small and go from there.

In theory, I like this idea. In practice, I have a tendency to generate lots of fragmentary character ideas a lot more easily than I do a single, clearly defined character, and I need some way to winnow them down. And I have a tendency toward analysis paralysis. (One of the reasons I tend to end up optimizing for effectiveness at [whatever] is that it allows me to make one choice (what should that [whatever] be?) that can drive multiple decisions about character options that I would otherwise have to make individually.)

If Long Arm Jack gets your creative juices going, go for it!

There's a decent chance I will. That set of ideas still hasn't really coalesced into a complete character yet, but it's probably closer to doing so than most of the other fragments (some of which it may, of course, end up absorbing).

Just remember it is a collaborative game.

Absolutely. That's a big part of my reason for asking so many questions (in addition to the winnowing element mentioned above) - I'm well aware that creating a character that wants to spend all of their time doing X, and can, does not work well if no one else cares about or is interested in doing X, no matter how cool I may think X is.

[Prunus]

Oh wow, that's a lot of words Prunus , but it looks like Yumyumcrow covered most of that, (which is amazingly awesome thanks yyc!! <3 ), if there's anything else that wasn't covered, or if you have more questions, feel free to ask me!

Thanks.

I do tend to produce large amounts of text when asking or answering questions. Or when describing things. Or under most other circumstances in which I am producing text at all. This can have both good and bad aspects. If it should become a problem for, let me know, and I can try to rein it in a bit.

The only unanswered questions I think I have at the moment (I will no doubt generate more, in due time) are:

1. In whatever level of (non)detail you wish to give, as background information for deciding whether certain character concepts are likely to be viable, what is the current broad-strokes situation of the Freehold with respect to goblin markets and intelligent hobgoblins generally?

2. Any of the rules and mechanics questions that you feel like answering from my post on the FAQ thread (although the "rate of improvement" ones aren't likely to matter much at the moment; I just wanted to throw those out there while I was asking questions anyway). (And if you want me to take a stab at rewording the last one (about glamour harvesting mechanics) so it's not so much of a wall of text, I can do that.)

[Prunus]

Actually, I just remember two more (and then took long enough writing them up that the 5 minute edit window expired), both about oneiromachy:

3. Are (a) personal attack types other than (the dream equivalent to) a simple strike(/blow/cut/shot/etc.), such as a grapple, and/or (b) maneuvers from fighting styles other than FS: Dream Combat allowed? The rules as written seem to imply that the answer is no, at least for (a), but I'm not sure whether I'm reading them right.

4. Do personal attacks with (dream) firearms ignore Defense, as they do in the waking world? The statement in the core book (p 198) that "the weapon the dreamer envisions himself wielding doesn't matter" seems to imply that they do not, but that sort of broad interpretation of that statement seems to be undermined by the rule in Swords at Dawn that "[o]nly Personal Attacks that take the form of ranged weapons may be used from the Battlements [of a Bastion]."

[Yumyumcrow]

In our conversation, just for clarity: -
1B) I was thinking more of the cost of the merits / skills / Wyrd you would need before the character concept could really take off

[Saber Sloth]

Prunus

Okay, wordy can be good! Sometimes it's a little much, especially if it's one big block of text. When that happens I find that more often than not, people will ignore the whole thing, or skim most of it to try and glean the pertinent points. So, you can still be as wordy as you want, just try and space things out better.

Anything publicly available about the Markets and known hobs, is just gathered on the Notice Board

Actions in Dreams use different Rolls than regular Actions. In Dreams you'll be rolling Wits, Wyrd, and Empathy most often, and they can also be used for Environmental attacks, Dream Combat is complicated and simple all at once, the Dream Combat FS makes things easier. You could attempt to do those actions, but mechanically you wouldn't be using the Merit, since outside the Dream Combat FS you'd be using Power Trait + Combat Skill.

For your questions about Dream stuff, the Oneiromancy Primer is a big help. I keep referring back to it, and I'm sure others do as well. Your Defense is different in Dreams vs out of them, and you have Armour as well.

And honestly I haven't looked at Swords at Dawn in a while, normally I don't need it. Currently I'm running two Dream Plots but that's rare, the last time I ran Dream plots was several years ago. So just because it's a focus now, doesn't mean it'll stay a focus - unless people want more Dream Stuff to happen plot wise.

Right now, I'm just going to say that it's all made of Dream Stuff so it doesn't. I might make a different ruling in an actual plot with dream-firearms, but since it's not come up IC I'll lean to doesn't matter.


Now I'm going to try and answer some of your FAQs asks, but I might miss something. If I do, please ask again here, or if you want more clarification, tell me and I'll try my hardest.

The Bonus XP can be used to purchase Character Creation only Merits, you're in character creation when you spend that bonus XP. You do however need to buy any prerequisites for those Merits first with your Starting Dots.

If it's not a matter of prerequisites, then the Dots, Vs XP spending doesn't matter Chronologically. After Chargen is done, everything will be on your sheet whether it's Dots or XP spends.

Changeling has a 1 per-month spending, the only exception is if it's a Merit that has a static amount. So you could buy 1 Dot Status (Street), 1 Dot Allies (News Media) but not 1,2,3 Dots Status (Street) in one month, but you could spend 2 Dots for Lethal Mien (if you have the prereq's) in one month.


Goblin Contracts are purchased Clause to Clause. They are not sequential. The Wiki's just laid out like that to give an example for XP costs, and to change it all up for just the Goblin Contracts would make the page and the table look outta wack.

Harvesting Glamour is normally only seen in Glimpses to get ready for a Plot or during a Plot. Each Scene, (unless it's a connected Plot Scene, if it is, I'll let you know,) You'll come into the Scene with a pool equal to your Clarity rating. So you wont have to worry about Harvesting rolls day to day. Rolling for Harvest you can ask me if you can do, or I'll call for it. You're making it more complicated than it need to be. You can do something that invokes a certain emotion from someone than Harvest that emotion. Or, if the thing you're doing is causing the Emotion, you may also use that to Harvest. It's context/situation specific.

[Prunus]

Thanks for the info. I'll try to keep the desirability of avoiding unbroken walls-of-text in mind. A couple thoughts/further clarifications:

Goblin Contracts are purchased Clause to Clause. They are not sequential. The Wiki's just laid out like that to give an example for XP costs, and to change it all up for just the Goblin Contracts would make the page and the table look outta wack.

So, just to be clear: If I were to purchase (not at character creation, for multiple reasons!), say, Call the Hunt (••••), and no other Goblin Contracts, would that be 12 XP (which is what I think you're saying, but I'm not 100% positive) or 30? (This isn't a pressing matter, at the moment; I just want to be sure I actually understand, while the topic has been raised.)

Harvesting Glamour is normally only seen in Glimpses to get ready for a Plot or during a Plot. [...] You're making it more complicated than it need to be.

Yeah, probably. I mostly asked because some ideas I had for largely "off-screen" activities (mostly along the lines of "so what is this character actually doing to earn a living?" although possibly overlapping with "so what does this character's Harvest: Emotions merit actually represent?") seemed like they might require fairly frequent expenditure of Glamour (mostly for uses of the first clause of Fleeting Spring and/or Fleeting Autumn), but also offer fairly frequent opportunities to harvest more. So I was trying to figure out (a) whether the numbers would actually work out if all of those "day-to-day" scenes without other changelings present were actually played out (not because I expected that any significant fraction of them would be, but just for a sort of narrative consistency) and (b) what sort of ethical and/or practical complications certain approaches might entail.

You can do something that invokes a certain emotion from someone than Harvest that emotion. Or, if the thing you're doing is causing the Emotion, you may also use that to Harvest. It's context/situation specific.

This is useful information, for the above purpose and maybe for other purposes as well. I may have an additional fiddly question or two if I decide to end up going in one of the directions that makes this relevant.


Meanwhile, a single character is slowly coalescing, although there are still a number of questions that I need to resolve, as well as a couple that I could either resolve before play, or bring with me into play unanswered. The biggest of the latter is probably "Autumn or Spring," which a relatively recently-returned changeling with the sort of background and goals that I'm pondering might not have a definitive answer to yet (even if they have tenatively joined up with one or the other . . . which could certainly lead to interesting results later on, if she(?) decides that actually, that was not the right call!). There are at least two separate themes that I'm looking at – engaging with/confronting and possibly overcoming fears, and cross-breeding goblin fruits (and eventually spreading the results?) with the aim of creating something that of value that will last beyond her own lifetime – that seem like they could easily fit with either Spring or Autumn, depending on the emphasis chosen (i.e., confronting fear vs. overcoming fear, and taking ownership of something fae and making it one's own vs. creating something new and desirable). Hmmm.

I'm leaning increasingly heavily toward Cyclopean, although there are some overlapping concepts from other seemings that I'm still contemplating.

I'm starting to suspect that FS: Dream Combat (and possibly oneiromancy more generally) may end up being one of the things that gets cut from character creation and initial character goals. Which is not necessarily a bad fit with Dream plots going on, as a reason to raise those abilities in play (especially given that there's a good argument to be made in favor of a pretty strong set of attributes for oneiromachy (specifically: high Strength, because Ogre, and High Wits and Composure, because Cyclopean) even if that's not a primary focus, so she'd hardly be helpless even without the FS or a high Empathy skill). Again, hmmm.

[Saber Sloth]

Thanks for the info. I'll try to keep the desirability of avoiding unbroken walls-of-text in mind. A couple thoughts/further clarifications:



So, just to be clear: If I were to purchase (not at character creation, for multiple reasons!), say, Call the Hunt (••••), and no other Goblin Contracts, would that be 12 XP (which is what I think you're saying, but I'm not 100% positive) or 30? (This isn't a pressing matter, at the moment; I just want to be sure I actually understand, while the topic has been raised.)

The 12xp listed, like the other tables is if you are going from 3 Dots, to 4. 12xp is the cost of that individual Dot. For a 4 Dot Goblin Contract you would be paying the full 30xp cost.

Yeah, probably. I mostly asked because some ideas I had for largely "off-screen" activities (mostly along the lines of "so what is this character actually doing to earn a living?" although possibly overlapping with "so what does this character's Harvest: Emotions merit actually represent?") seemed like they might require fairly frequent expenditure of Glamour (mostly for uses of the first clause of Fleeting Spring and/or Fleeting Autumn), but also offer fairly frequent opportunities to harvest more. So I was trying to figure out (a) whether the numbers would actually work out if all of those "day-to-day" scenes without other changelings present were actually played out (not because I expected that any significant fraction of them would be, but just for a sort of narrative consistency) and (b) what sort of ethical and/or practical complications certain approaches might entail.

For this, you can always figure it out IC, using Glimpses. But, just think of it this way. If the situation is happening naturally or prompted by another (via rolls) you can take advantage of the situation and Harvest. If a situation is not happening naturally, you can prompt it via rolls, then once the emotion is flowing, you can roll to Harvest that.

eg, You're in a club people are already predisposed to feel certain Emotions, you see Person A and Person B dancing. You feel the Desire rising and decide to Harvest.

In this situation, you'd only roll for Harvest.

Or,

You see a lone figure walking home at night, you decide to follow and make noises to invoke Fear. They start to walk faster. You can now Harvest.

Here you'd roll first to see if your scary noises would even work - If I'm involved I'd roll opposed to see if the person resists - and if it works, you can now roll to Harvest.

And remember mechanically, the Harvest Merit just adds dots of Glamour to your base pool. Base Glamour pool is Clarity + any Dots in Harvest. Which is your pool per scene, unless you're in a plot and I say it's a direction continuation.

This is useful information, for the above purpose and maybe for other purposes as well. I may have an additional fiddly question or two if I decide to end up going in one of the directions that makes this relevant.

Glad to help!

Meanwhile, a single character is slowly coalescing, although there are still a number of questions that I need to resolve, as well as a couple that I could either resolve before play, or bring with me into play unanswered. The biggest of the latter is probably "Autumn or Spring," which a relatively recently-returned changeling with the sort of background and goals that I'm pondering might not have a definitive answer to yet (even if they have tenatively joined up with one or the other . . . which could certainly lead to interesting results later on, if she(?) decides that actually, that was not the right call!). There are at least two separate themes that I'm looking at – engaging with/confronting and possibly overcoming fears, and cross-breeding goblin fruits (and eventually spreading the results?) with the aim of creating something that of value that will last beyond her own lifetime – that seem like they could easily fit with either Spring or Autumn, depending on the emphasis chosen (i.e., confronting fear vs. overcoming fear, and taking ownership of something fae and making it one's own vs. creating something new and desirable). Hmmm.

as has been said on this site again and again Desire and Fear are two sides of the same coin. You can always choose which fits in the moment and go through the story arch where it no longer does and change it, RPing through all the consequences that come with that. Or, you can start Courtless and join a Court when you know your Character better and know which why they'd lean.

My most recent Character, I thought would be an Autumn or a Winter, but she ended up a Summer.

I'm leaning increasingly heavily toward Cyclopean, although there are some overlapping concepts from other seemings that I'm still contemplating.

If you want more than one Kith, you can always take Dual Kith , we're using Winter Masque's 3 dot version, Wyrd 2 prereq.

I'm starting to suspect that FS: Dream Combat (and possibly oneiromancy more generally) may end up being one of the things that gets cut from character creation and initial character goals. Which is not necessarily a bad fit with Dream plots going on, as a reason to raise those abilities in play (especially given that there's a good argument to be made in favor of a pretty strong set of attributes for oneiromachy (specifically: high Strength, because Ogre, and High Wits and Composure, because Cyclopean) even if that's not a primary focus, so she'd hardly be helpless even without the FS or a high Empathy skill). Again, hmmm.

Things to think, and it's always a good idea to plan to grow. You don't need to spread yourself thin in Character Creation, Chargen if just a starting point, and if you think you need to get something because of a backstory reason, but you'd rather get something else, you can always wait. everyone's Durance takes from them, it would be something that was taken, and in play you could regain it.

[Prunus]

(By the way, if my endless questions and analyses are ever getting to be a bit much, just let me know. I have a combination of a very analytical brain, OCD, and a certain measure of obliviousness to indirect hints. It's also more than fine to say "that seems a bit theoretical for me to expend effort figuring out" or "that's actually an interesting question, but I have no time for it right now; maybe I'll get to it at some point in the indefinite future.")

The 12xp listed, like the other tables is if you are going from 3 Dots, to 4. 12xp is the cost of that individual Dot. For a 4 Dot Goblin Contract you would be paying the full 30xp cost.

Okay. I don't think this is actually RAI (and I think that RAW is not entirely clear), but if this is the rule that this game is going with, I'm perfectly willing to accept it; after all, even if it were unambiguously not the standard rule, it could be a house rule. (If you're interested in my reasoning, I can share it; if not, no worries.)

For this, you can always figure it out IC, using Glimpses.

Sure, for a given occasion, and that's probably enough for how this impacts other players and the setting as a whole. But it doesn't necessarily address the off-screen logistics aspect (absent bombarding the forum with an endless swarm of very similar, mostly unimportant Glimpses, which seems to be pretty obviously the wrong thing to do).

(Feel more than free to skip ahead to the next quoted bit (or further, for that matter; you don't owe me anything here) if uninterested; this is the sort of thing I find interesting to analyze, but that I realize not everyone else does.)

For example, one of the ideas I've been playing with for "what do those Resource dots actually represent?" (that I don't think I'll be going with, although I'm still not positive – and this might be another thing that ends up in the "not set up to do it immediately at character creation, but might well go that direction in play" bin) potentially involves a character:

• Providing one-hour (Contract-enhanced, but probably unlicensed, and therefore somewhat discounted) psychotherapy sessions,
• Probably being able to fit (I would imagine) somewhere between 4 and 6 of those sessions into an average 8-hour workday (taking into account breaks, case notes review and preparation, the limited number of clients with both enough money to hire even a discounted therapist out of pocket and a willingness to see an unlicensed one (resulting in some slots going unfilled for extended periods of time), etc.) and 5 workdays into a normal work week, and
• Being able to attempt to harvest glamour (I would imagine) an average of once or so per one-hour session (not at all in the event of a session that goes nowhere and doesn't trigger any strong emotions, but occasionally more than once in the event of a session that swings from one intense emotion to another); but also
• Needing to expend up to 3 Glamour (or more if a Contract invocation fails) per one-hour session for the requisite Contract invocations (e.g., Witches Intuition + Heart of the Antlion, for a session dealing with both new fears that the client finds hard to talk about and the client needing a little more help than just comforting words, to dealing with the emotions they're feeling).

In terms of logical consistency, that would work (without a large, regularly-tappable Glamour source to balance the continually-recurring Glamour sink) if and only if the average Glamour yield per harvesting attempt is sufficient (in this scenario, probably at least 2.5) to balance out the average expenditure in the same interval of time. And if complications arise on a failure, then it becomes important to think about what those complications are, and how often failure will occur. Because the implications for future employment of having one therapeutically unproductive session out of every ten are very different from those of having one disastrous session out of three.

Again, most of the above considerations don't directly impact the broader game. Even if I go this direction (unclear) and can figure out a way to Harvest an average of 4 Glamour per therapy session (unlikely, at least at first), while spending an average of only 2 (plausible), I'm not going to try to argue that that means I should get to have full Glamour at the start of every non-linked scene, just because "logically," I should be pulling down a net 40–60 Glamour a week from my "day job." (Although that does seem like it could be an excellent justification for spending the XP (over the requisite number of months) to buy up the three to five levels of Harvest (depending on starting Wyrd and assuming a starting Clarity of 7) that starting every non-linked scene full-up would require, under the existing rules.) It's just a matter of trying to reconcile on-screen mechanics with off-screen routine, even if only a minuscule fraction of that routine ever makes it onto the forum as Glimpses. (Granted, attempting such reconciliation is probably a fool's errand, with how WoD rules handle various other aspects of reality (e.g., requiring anyone who's a damn good painter to also be a fairly competent car mechanic), but I can at least try.)

But, just think of it this way. If the situation is happening naturally or prompted by another (via rolls) you can take advantage of the situation and Harvest. If a situation is not happening naturally, you can prompt it via rolls, then once the emotion is flowing, you can roll to Harvest that.

eg, You're in a club people are already predisposed to feel certain Emotions, you see Person A and Person B dancing. You feel the Desire rising and decide to Harvest.

In this situation, you'd only roll for Harvest.

That definitely makes sense. But with what traits? This seems most similar to the Darkling example from the core book (page 89), using Composure + Empathy, but I'm not sure if that pairing is intended to apply to all "passive" Harvesting rolls (which would probably make at least as much sense as the blanket use of Wits + Composure + Wyrd for Harvesting in dreams; certainly, I have no problem with that idea), or just that specific example.

Or,

You see a lone figure walking home at night, you decide to follow and make noises to invoke Fear. They start to walk faster. You can now Harvest.

Here you'd roll first to see if your scary noises would even work - If I'm involved I'd roll opposed to see if the person resists - and if it works, you can now roll to Harvest.

So your/the official Edge of Darkness interpretation is that Harvesting is its own roll, even if that roll is following another to create the emotion in question? That makes more sense to me than how I was (tentatively) interpreting the core book's description of "active" Harvesting (i.e., a single roll to do a thing and harvest from it, based on my reading of the Ogre and "Spring Court club kid" examples), but leaves me a little uncertain as to what traits get used. Would it be the same traits as those used to stimulate the emotion, the same traits as for a passive Harvesting, or something else entirely?

I may be missing something obvious (or just delving way too deep into fiddly minutia); if so, I apologize.

And remember mechanically, the Harvest Merit just adds dots of Glamour to your base pool. Base Glamour pool is Clarity + any Dots in Harvest. Which is your pool per scene, unless you're in a plot and I say it's a direction continuation.

Sure.

as has been said on this site again and again Desire and Fear are two sides of the same coin. You can always choose which fits in the moment and go through the story arch where it no longer does and change it, RPing through all the consequences that come with that. Or, you can start Courtless and join a Court when you know your Character better and know which why they'd lean.

My most recent Character, I thought would be an Autumn or a Winter, but she ended up a Summer.

Absolutely. I think I will probably be showing up as a Courtier – possibly one with some history with the relevant court of my previous freehold that inspired the decision to leave quietly, with some contact information for another freehold [i.e., the one here] before anything sufficiently dramatic happened as to render "leave quietly, with some contact information for another freehold" no longer an option – even if (a) I'm still thinking about which, and (b) I might end up jumping ship (whether to the other of the two, or to Summer; I can't really see this character concept meshing well with either the physical or the metaphorical side of Winter). But Courtless is also a possibility.

If you want more than one Kith, you can always take Dual Kith , we're using Winter Masque's 3 dot version, Wyrd 2 prereq.

Indeed. And I may well do that (whether at character creation or later), with any of Artist, Flowering (not necessarily the most mechnically useful for this character concept, but potentially thematic, depending on which way I take it), Farwalker, Woodwalker, Woodblood, or possibly (not at character creation, but perhaps later, if the character develops in the right direction) Chirurgeon. But there are also some broader, seeming-level decisions I have to work out, not so much for the mechanics as for the particular flavor of the concept that I want to go with.

In particular, the basic backstory trajectory I'm contemplating is something along the lines of:

• Human life pervaded with a lot of non-specific anxiety/nameless dread (possibly from an emotionally and/or socially abusive background, but without much (if any) physical violence) ->
• An offer to "take you away, to somewhere that you'll never have to feel like this [i.e., deeply fearful, without being able to articulate of what, exactly] again" ->
• Durance Part 1, with a whole lot of reason for very specific, concrete fears (a horrible, traumatic experience, of course, but also potentially one that carries a costly-but-valuable lesson about the folly of constantly worrying about lesser or ill-defined threats) ->
• Flight and arrival at Hardscrabble Home ->
• Durance Part 2, learning to tend goblin fruit trees, and (among other psychological events) struggling to figure out how to carry forward the more useful of the "lessons" of Durance Part 1, without either carrying forward the more dysfunctional of those "lessons," or needing the same level of constant specific threat in order to avoid falling back into pervasive fear of non-specific threats ->
• Homecoming, initial freehold, development of goals back here on Earth (if not already adequately developed during either or both parts of my Durance), and reasons to leave there and/or reasons to come to Sacramento ->
• Arrival in Sacramento and entry into play

And I can see Durance Part 1 going in:

• A rather Ogrish way, with specific threats that are primarily of raw, physical violence, whether that's violence to the character, to others close to them, or that they're forced to do to others in order to survive;
• A rather Darkling way, with specific threats that give reality to the answer to the question "What are you are most afraid of, right now?" (with the ability to know whether the character is lying, and a gradually increasing levels of detail required, on pain of additional torture until an honest and sufficiently specific answer is received, followed by that answer being given reality anyway, just as it would have been without this additional unpleasantness), on a nightly/weekly/monthly/regularly-cycling-but-what-does-time-mean-here basis (so that additional torture to extract a response is a meaningful threat, rather than simply representing a period of torment that isn't the worst thing imagineable), and possibly sporadic lesser threats (if only as a consequence of living in a nasty bit of Arcadia) in between; or
• A rather Wizened way, similar to the Darkling way in practical terms, but driven by a breadth-first approach to systematic experimentation and observation of the "subject's" physiological and psychological stimuli, rather than question-and-forced-answer sessions.
• A rather Beastly, with specific threats of predation and hunger, reinforcing the Beastly tendency toward absoption in the Eternal Now.

And I need to decide which of those I want to go with. So even apart from the sad lack of a "dual-seeming" merit, I've got some lasting choices to make, since some of these aspects really preclude others.

Things to think, and it's always a good idea to plan to grow. You don't need to spread yourself thin in Character Creation, Chargen if just a starting point, and if you think you need to get something because of a backstory reason, but you'd rather get something else, you can always wait. everyone's Durance takes from them, it would be something that was taken, and in play you could regain it.

Absolutely. It occurs to me that it could also go the other way: Everyone's Durance leaves them with things (wanted or otherwise), too, some of which are much more useful than the propensity to wake up with one's heart racing, drenched in sweat and wondering if the walls of one's bedroom are really there. But some of those things – the useful as well as the merely awful – may be forgotten, and lie dormant for a while, until an increase in Wyrd or an encounter with a particular sensory stimulus brings them rushing back.

Thanks for all the answers and advice.

[Saber Sloth]

This is a lot of words again, and I really keep answering with the quality that I have been, but that takes time and energy. A lot of your questions can be answered by exploring the forum, or reading through the Wiki, or even asking others on our discord. I am really sorry, but I will not be able to continue to reply to your questions with a thoroughness that I'd want while continuing to post as ST of Changeling as well as deal with RL things.

So, I do still want to answer your questions, I just need them to be a little more concise and, if you are not aware, for your Character Submission, Backstories have a hard limit of 200 words. You can of course, put more time and energy into all the nuance and minutia of everyday Changeling life for your Character, but that can be kept in a word doc for yourself, if you're worried about overloading the site with Glimpses. One or two are alright, we used to require Harvest Glimpses, so further into the Changeling subforum, under the Lost category with the Glimpse tag, and [Harvest] written somewhere in the tittle, you can read those and see examples of other Harvesting Glimpses.

[Prunus]

To front-load the one actionable question in this post: The only discord invite link I could find (the one you get by clicking on "chat" from http://nwod.org/forum/splash.php) is expired; is there an updated one?

This is a lot of words again, and I really keep answering with the quality that I have been, but that takes time and energy. [...] I am really sorry, but I will not be able to continue to reply to your questions with a thoroughness that I'd want while continuing to post as ST of Changeling as well as deal with RL things. [...] So, I do still want to answer your questions, I just need them to be a little more concise

That's more than reasonable. And thank you for all the information you provided so far.

A lot of your questions can be answered by exploring the forum, or reading through the Wiki,

I've read most of the obviously relevant wiki articles and many of the pinned forum threads (although I had missed the Notice Board one). I just have (I think) a knack for spotting edge cases where things aren't 100% unambiguous, and a tendency to fixate on things that others might (quite possibility correctly) figure were unlikely to matter much in practice, and move on.

if you are not aware, for your Character Submission, Backstories have a hard limit of 200 words.

Useful to know, and might be helpful in determining which decisions actually need to be made before submission. Thanks.

we used to require Harvest Glimpses, so further into the Changeling subforum, under the Lost category with the Glimpse tag, and [Harvest] written somewhere in the tittle, you can read those and see examples of other Harvesting Glimpses.

I was aware of that in the abstract, but hadn't thought about using it to try to get an "empirical" answer to the mechanics questions that I couldn't find a "theoretical" statement on. I'll go do that a bit, and ask any remaining harvesting questions that leaves me with (if any, and hopefully much more concisely!) after doing so. Thanks.