Episode Details

Settle in, because this is a long one... the raw audio for this recording was the longest we've had by far. But that's because Nobles: the Shining Host, the first Changeling book to delve into Kithain nobility, covers a lot of bases. It's not quite "Kithbook: Sidhe," but there's enough about them in there to satisfy most players and STs who want to know more about the kith; on top of that, you have plenty about the social structure and cultural dynamics of nobles from any background. We get bits of history, an epic tale, political parties and secret societies, information about Concordia's monarchs, some new Traits (including two new Arts), a new House, character templates... the book really packs it in. We cover it in this episode as briskly, yet thoroughly, as possible—but even so, this is almost our longest episode thus far. (This is also the reason why it's going out a bit late this week. Nostra maxima culpa.)

how to play a sidhe

Just kidding—we're not going to tell you the exact answer to that, because there really isn't one. Ultimately, you do what you want to do. But, since the book focuses heavily (not entirely!) on this kith, we are going to point out a couple things about trends and possibilities. See, the traditional roles for sidhe in CtD games have tended towards: 1. pretty Mary Sues who are (or demand to be) able to do anything (especially when people just want to play a sidhe for that extra Boon), 2. uptight patricians who treat egoism and sucking all the oxygen out of a room (or gaming session) as a virtue, 3. as Josh put it, the real-life protagonists of soap operas (for the viewing pleasure of the commoners), or 4. all of the above, which is doable because the first three are stat-, personality-, and narrative-based, respectively. The exact shape of these things has waxed and waned over the years—"mysterious warrior-sorcerer with Appearance 7 and/or an ethereal presence" seems to be a common expression of (1) these days—but the common threads are quite visible.

The unfortunate thing is that the early books, at least, set up a lot of alternatives to these archetypes, even as they also provide examples of them. And yet somehow, the alternatives seem to have faded more and more into the background. Maybe this is due to real-world ideals working their way into the game: commoners are moving front and center with progressive, anti-aristocratic ideas, and the sidhe have flattened more and more into these Tolkien-elf types with little variation. The sidhe are a kith; Title is a Background; nobility is a quality; and while the three may overlap more than most other kith-Trait-characteristic combinations, it is not a necessity. (Remember, those in the back: your sidhe does not have to have a Title/be part of a House.)

We mention this because the sidhe fall into the trap most often, maybe, of becoming one-dimensional characters, with the only variation being the specific Trait build that represents their particular snottiness. It's true that kiths tend to shape characters; it's also true that more and more, especially with C20, there is pushback against such determinism. (Old fogies' note: it was always there, e.g., you could play soft-hearted Seelie redcap who liked macrame, but the game's willingness to foreground that varied.) So why would you not make a sidhe who is more interesting than the typical [insert Title here] [insert elaborate faux-Sindarin name here] [insert House here] [insert optional florid moniker here], knight and/or wizard and/or courtier par excellence? One of the first canon sidhe in fiction is Leigh from the Immortal Eyes trilogy, who is a teenage redhead knight struggling to reconcile her newly-discovered nature, princess memories, and swelling sense of honor with her upbringing as a working-class cop's daughter, as well as her fervent desire to be a