This page is a brief sum­mary of the char­ac­ter cre­ation process for my Changeling games. Mostly the method is the same as for any old World of Dark­ness game, but in case you haven’t played WoD before there should be enough info here to stat up your char­ac­ter anyway.

The Char­ac­ter Gen­er­a­tion Process

The Most Impor­tant Bits

• Name: Well duh.
• Seem­ing: Not nec­es­sar­ily depen­dant on your actual age, more of an indi­ca­tion of how the char­ac­ter thinks. Seem­ing deter­mines your Glam­our, Banal­ity and Willpower.
  • Childling (Child­ish): 5 Glam­our, 1 Banal­ity, 1 Willpower
  • Wilder (Adolescent/Young Adult): 4 Glam­our, 3 Banal­ity, 2 Willpower
  • Grump (Old): 3 Glam­our, 5 Banal­ity, 5 Willpower

  Reawak­en­ing only: Unless you want to play another character’s tag-along lit­tle sis­ter, your char­ac­ter will be a Wilder.

• Kith: Pick the type of faerie you are. Any­thing from the Changeling books is fine, and other ideas are wel­comed too! Your kith deter­mines the affin­ity of your magic, your Birthrights and your Frail­ties. In my set­ting, non-Sidhe can be nobles too (see the new Titles back­ground) but are a lit­tle prejudiced-against. Being Sidhe, how­ever, is a 1^st-class ticket straight into the upper class (2 points of Title back­ground for free). The fol­low­ing kiths are detailed in Changeling, from which you can choose if you wish:
  • Bog­gans: Often dwarflike, hon­est and hard workers
  • Eshu: Wan­der­ers and storytellers
  • Nock­ers: Skil­ful and inven­tive arti­sans, imag­i­na­tive and obsessive
  • Pooka: Trick­sters, liars, animal-like people
  • Red­caps: Vicious, night­mar­ish imps
  • Satyrs: Wild, pas­sion­ate and lustful
  • Sidhe: Beau­ti­ful and noble, once the sole rulers of the fae
  • Slu­agh: Secre­tive peo­ple, mostly dark and for­got­ten like their homes
  • Trolls: Loyal, duti­ful and strong

  Reawak­en­ing only: You may also be a com­moner, if you so wish. Com­mon­ers have no kith, and no birthrights or frail­ties. They also do not have the nor­mal kind of Glam­our, with Arts and Realms. Com­moner magic is rare, but when it does exist it is sub­tle and mun­dane, for exam­ple caus­ing slightly bet­ter weather at harvest-time or hav­ing lucky escapes from black­smithing accidents.

• Lega­cies: Choose a Seelie legacy and an Unseelie one. These are sin­gle words which effec­tively define the “light” and “dark” sides of your per­son­al­ity. There’s lots of sug­ges­tions in the Changeling core books, but feel free to use lega­cies of your own devising.
• House: The flower-themed noble house that you are a mem­ber of (or on whose land you live, if you’re a commoner).

  In Love and War only: The party should largely be from House Poppy, though some may be from other houses pro­vided they have rea­son to have been trav­el­ling with the Poppies.

  Reawak­en­ing only: You are mem­bers of House Mandrake.

As with all WoD rules, there are 9 stats, split up into:

• Phys­i­cal: Strength, Dex­ter­ity and Stamina
• Social: Charisma, Manip­u­la­tion and Appearance
• Men­tal: Per­cep­tion, Intel­li­gence and Wits

You start with one point in each of the 9 attrib­utes. Then, order the three groups accord­ing to your character’s strengths. For your best group, you have 7 points to allo­cate, for your next best you have 5, and for your character’s worst group you have only 3 addi­tional points to spend.

Although the game takes place in mod­ern times, the char­ac­ters are faeries through-and-through and not quite up-to-speed on human tech. There­fore the base abil­ity lists are a more medi­ae­val set rather than those from Changeling: The Dream­ing. How­ever, a char­ac­ter may choose modern-day abil­i­ties (shown in brack­ets at the end of the lists below) up to the rank of their Human Con­tact back­ground. Such abil­i­ties cost twice the nor­mal amount to buy.

The abil­i­ties are:

• Tal­ents: Alert­ness, Ath­let­ics, Brawl, Dodge, Empa­thy, Expres­sion, Intim­i­da­tion, Ken­ning, Lead­er­ship, Sub­terfuge, (Streetwise)
• Skills: Ani­mal Ken, Archery, Crafts, Eti­quette, Melee, Per­for­mance, Ride, Secu­rity, Stealth, Sur­vival, (Drive), (Firearms), (Technology)
• Knowl­edges: Aca­d­e­mics, Enig­mas, Hearth Wis­dom, Inves­ti­ga­tion, Law, Lin­guis­tics, Med­i­cine, Occult, Pol­i­tics, The­ol­ogy, (Com­puter), (Science)

As with Attrib­utes, arrange the three groups in order. Spend 13 dots amongst the abil­i­ties in your pri­mary group, 9 in your sec­ondary and 5 in your ter­tiary. If this feels restric­tive, don’t worry — it’s easy to add new abil­i­ties with the free­bie points you’ll be spend­ing at the end of char­ac­ter gen.

You have seven points to spend between the fol­low­ing pos­si­ble backgrounds:

• Con­tacts: Know­ing the right people.
• Forces: The num­ber of fight­ing men and women you con­trol (pinched from Exalted: Dragonblooded)
  • Num­ber of war­riors you con­trol = 5^(Forces rank), e.g. 1 Forces = 5 war­riors, 4 Forces = 625 warriors.
  • At the begin­ning of the game you are restricted to at most one dot of Forces.
• Hold­ings: Land you own within the kingdom.
• Human Con­tact: How much con­tact you have had with the human world in recent years. Lets you cross worlds more eas­ily and lets you take mod­ern human abil­i­ties. (New!)
• Legacy: Faerie souls rein­car­nate, and regard­less of who you are now you might have been some­one really impor­tant in your pre­vi­ous life. This back­ground rep­re­sents the sig­nif­i­cance of your pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion. (New!)
• Men­tor: Some­one who advises and sup­ports you.
• Resources: Your dis­pos­able income.
• Ret­inue: The num­ber of non-nobles who serve you.

  In Love and War only: At the begin­ning of the game you are restricted to at most three dots of Retinue.

  Reawak­en­ing only: At the begin­ning of the game you are restricted to at most one dot of Retinue.

• Title: How high in Fairyland’s social struc­ture your char­ac­ter is. (Modified)
  • 1: Minor noble or knight; 2: Respected noble or knight; 3: Highly-regarded noble, major landowner, Duke/Duchess’ fam­ily; 4: Duke/Duchess, rul­ing coun­cil, gen­er­als; 5: King/Queen

  In Love and War only: Since House Poppy is very much reduced in size, at the begin­ning of “In Love and War” you may if you wish take a point of Title for free. This stacks with the 2 dots you may have if you are Sidhe. You are not allowed to take rank 4 or above of this skill at the begin­ning of the game.

  Reawak­en­ing only: At the begin­ning of the game you are restricted to at most three dots of Title.

• Trea­sures: Num­ber and power of mag­i­cal trea­sures you posess.

Next you need to decide what kind of glam­ours the char­ac­ter can cast (Arts — 3 points in total) and what kind of things they can affect (Realms — 5 points in total).

• Arts:
  • Chi­canery: The art of guile and deception
  • Leg­erde­main: Sleight of hand and illusion
  • Pri­mal: The power of nature and liv­ing things
  • Sooth­say: Div­ina­tion and prediction
  • Sov­er­eign: The enforce­ment of pro­to­col, verges on mind-control
  • Way­fare: The art of effi­cient travel
• Realms:
  • Actor: Humans — higher lev­els mean less-well-known humans can be affected
  • Fae: Faerie things — higher lev­els mean stranger things
  • Nature: Nat­ural things
  • Prop: Cre­ated objects
  • Scene: Your sur­round­ings; also an addi­tion to other realms that allows an area of effect to be set
  • Time: An addi­tion to other realms that allows a time delay to be used

That’s just about it! Now all that’s left is to spend 15 free­bie points, at the fol­low­ing rates:

• Attrib­utes: 5 points per dot
• Abil­i­ties: 1 points per dot (note change!)
• Abil­ity Spe­cial­i­ties: 1 point each
• Back­grounds: 1 point per dot
• Arts: 5 points per dot
• Realms: 3 points per dot
• Glam­our: 3 points per dot
• Willpower: 2 points per dot

Feel free to use mer­its and flaws from any White Wolf book, so long as they’re appro­pri­ate, or invent some of your own. I shan’t list all the mer­its and flaws in WW lit­er­a­ture here, as there’s far too many!