The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Let me begin by saying that I love Changeling: the Dreaming, I am a die-hard, grinning-till-the-end Changeling fan. That does not mean, however, that I like every supplement, or that I think Changeling has gotten anything like the treatment it deserves. I don't want to make judgements without knowing all the details, but I must look askance at Ian Lemke when I read many Changeling books. Riddled with editing errors, confusing statements and illogical and hypcritical metaphysics, the entire line is an angel beaten with an Ugly Stick.

I should also say that there was no book of 1998 (and the Year of the Lotus "line" in particular) that I was anxiously awaiting more than Land of Eight Million Dreams. I had to sit on my hands before I got this, and I damn near ran the last block to the store where I bought it once I had money. I'm terribly sad to say that I was disappointed, nay, devastated even. Land of Eight Million Dreams failed to deliver. The book is packed with ideas and wondrous possibilities and at the same time completely shackled by a lack of editing a blind man could see.

Too be fair, I should mention two things. One, from what I've heard, this project was rushed and didn't have the time it needed to stew and simmer and become the feast I know it can be, and a lot of information was apparently cut out. And two, it seemed that the authors had little guidance and direction for the book. It was written with a very loose hand.

Still, that doesn't soften my disappointment much.

Reading the back of Kindred of the East, the Vampire Year of the Lotus book, I got the impression that the hsien (Eastern fae) were like their counterparts, but they had a different viewpoint. They harvested yugen (which I learned in my Japanese Civilization class means "hidden or implied mystery") instead of "Glamour," and they were associated with animals (for the commoners) or elements (for the nobles). I was expecting a new take on an old theme, a new breed of Gallain, like the inanimae or the nunnehi. That's not what I got. The hsien of Land of Eight Million Dreams are radically different from their Western "kin."

In fact, they are so radically different, that I wonder why they bothered claiming that this is a Changeling book at all. In addition, unlike Kindred of the East which also introduced an entirely new "breed" of supernatural beings (although they are thematically akin to their Western counterparts), Land of Eight Million Dreams has neither hardcover nor long. 151 pages compared to Kinred of the East's 220+. Compound this with a lack of editing and understand that the hsien of Asia differ from the kithain of Europe even more drastically than the Kuei-jin do from the Kindred and you begin to see the pit into which this book fell.

The opening fiction has its moments, as most does, and it's about average, so there are no complaints from me. It was actually somewhat amusing. The story lacked direction and a truly moving style, but I was not buying the book for the fiction.

The introduction chapter tells us that the changelings of the East are called Shinma and that they are broken into kamuii and hirayana (nobles and commoners) distinctions. Then we are given the standard elf-explanatory "How to use this book" section. That is followed by all the myriad of terms introduced into the game. It is here, in the very beginning of the book that one of the major problems of the book arises. Are the Eastern changelings Shinma or hsien? Later in the book, I came under the impression (apparently correct) that the Shinma are merely the largest "court" of hsien, but far too often the terms seemed much to interchangeable.

The first chapter, The Duties of the Gods, is pretty good. It reveals that the hsien, like the Kuei-jin, have fallen from their formerly divine positions. Apparently, the hsien were the messengers of the Gods, delivering notes and answering prayers. They were go-betweens. Now in the modern world, they must work at their old mandates, hoping to be released from this mortal and corporeal prison. This is also the first mention of the Mu Courts, other groups of hsien: the Daityas and the Kura Sau. This is also one of the last mentions of them. This chapter is full of great ideas, but suffers from what I see as the problem of Werewolf and to a lesser extent Kindred of the East: the hsien know exactly what they are supposed to be doing in this Gothic-Punk World of Darkness. They have a very intense and over-riding sense of purpose that I find chafing. Their history is much too clear-cut for me.

In addition, the distinct lack of information on the Mu Courts is unforgivable. Cut out from the book, they were simply dropped, even though they had been completely done up. It is a situation similar to the one that Vampire 2nd Edition faced, putting only the Camarilla Clans in the book did not help anything. Both Vampire: the Dark Ages and Vampire Revised have rectified this, but I have no illusions about a Land of Eight Million Dreams Revised, especially now with the Arthaus debacle.

The second chapter is setting, and it is sparse and underdeveloped. The Provinces that the hsien have divided Asia into are poorly organized and glossingly described. I was at a loss about details to relationships. A map would have been nice, and kind of map. They could have even been arranged geographically. This is also the chapter that reveals that the hsien have no connection to the Dreaming and cannot enter the spirit worlds without great power, when they start travelling the Yin and Yang worlds familiar to any Year of the Lotus player. The hsien have no connection to the Dreaming? Why is this a Changeling: the Dreaming product? If they are going to have no connection, why make them changelings? Even the nunnehi had a connection to the Dreaming, though they lost it in the Shattering.

Simply put, the hsien bear no resemblance to the kithain in really any way at all. They do not gather Glamour, they do not have any care about Banality (again, why make them have anything to do with Changeling) and dreams are nothing more than passing fancies. The hsien survive off of religion and answering (although not necessarily fulfilling) human wishes, and so the authors take to discussing religion. In doing so, they make the mistake of calling animism animalism, which is an entirely separate beast, so to speak.

Trying to fit all of Asian religion into three pages will fail, plain and simple, and it did. I would not complain if this was Kindred of the East, where mortal religion is often little more than tangential to characters, but this is supposed to be the heart of the hsien. It would be like giving 3 pages total to the idea of dreams and the Dreaming in Changeling.

Following that is a section on Asian culture, which is just a short as the religion bit, but that is not a problem because it is not culture that is the hsien's soul. That is followed by a mention of crime in Asia, and the information on Tongs and Triads spans nearly as many pages as the information on religion. Does that strike anyone as odd? Then there are the other dangers of Asia, including Strike Force Zero, which is described as a monolithic and powerful entity, not the same impression I got from Demon Hunter X.

Chapter three, ironically misnamed Spirits of Dreams, details the seemings and kwannon-jin (kiths) of the Shinma (and one would assume the other hsien). hsien are not born into human bodies, their souls slip into dying humans just as the mortal's own soul fades away. A very interesting idea, I think. I like that. The hsien also do not have to worry about the distinction between seemings, as they do not deal with the Mists or making people enchanted, they can simply shape-shift into their wani form (true form). They can use magic easier and can employ a bluff to scare people off called Mask of the Shintai. I cannot say that I totally like all that. The kwannon-jin themselves are, for the most part, marvelous. They are among the best parts of the book. Some of the blessings and curses (birthrights and frailties) seemed a bit off to me, but nothing major.

The character creation chapter is a mess. Horridly organized and often seemingly poorly thought-out, it is a maze that it rather unsatisfying to complete. There are some interesting ideas, like varying freebie costs for "childlings" and "grumps," but they don't seem to be very polished. In addition, the sub-courts of the Shinma are mentioned - with a few paragraphs each. Reading the descriptions I kept thinking "Wow, these guys seem neat and important, is there more information later?" Of course there wasn't. Further character creation (like the rules for determining Yin and Yang scores) came across only as forced and restricting, emphasizing stereotypes over concepts. The Tao trait I found superfluous and almost annoying at times. Overall, the chapter served to ram home that the hsien are not kithain or even fae, but it did not serve to tell me what they are.

The next chapter is the magic system, Wu Tan. It is here that the true dichotomy of Land of Eight Million Dreams shows through. The system is a brilliant and flexible one, superior to the basic Changeling use of Arts and Realms, in my opinion. I love the possibilities and ramifications of it. However, it is among the most poorly organized pieces of writing I have seen in an RPG. Only Immortal really beats it in that regard. That is very sad, really, because this could have been so much. It inspired an entire Mage character to me, using magick based on the same elemental correspondences, but the chapter is poorly done. Wu Tan is done according to 5 elements that affect different aspects of the world.

The effects themselves are based off of Yin or Yang, depending on their natures. It is somewhat complicated, but beautifully elegant once you grasp it. I also rankled at the execution of Nei Tan, which is a special Wu Tan that almost serves to track the hsien's enlightenment. I was specifically angered by the fact that neither the Daityas or the Kura Sau could use it. The entire chapter reads like the development notes for first edition Mage magick at times.

The Setting Systems chapter and the last Storyteller's chapter were, for the most part, useless, toss-away bits. They made Yin and Yang into role-playing tracked Renown-like traits. We get rules for spirits and discussions on how to run games (the exact same text as from The Fool's Luck: Way of the Commoner except for Asia-specific references, by the way). The only other really informative mentions of the Mu Courts is here, and we get no more on them than the Garou get in the back of Vampire 2nd Edition. There are rules for just what happens when a hsien manages to enter the spirit world, and it is certainly not comfortable. We get antagonists. For the most part, the chapter is empty and truncated. Only some of the information is remotely interesting, and most of it is either bland or bad. The repetition of the Storyteller's hints angered me to no end (although they were originally printed in this book, I read Fool's Luck first).

All in all? This book is full of wonderful, wonderful ideas - but only buy it if you are willing to put a lot of work into making it into what it should have been. I wanted changelings in Asia. I got something totally new. A brilliant idea and a worthy cause, but poorly executed and developed.

One final problem with Land of Eight Million Dreams was the distinct lack of a character sheet, which would have been immensely useful in understanding character creation. One of the authors, Wayne Peacock, made one available on the changeling-l mailing list, and I've linked it to my webpage, you can find it here. It is nicely done, and has summaries of Wu Tan as well, to help players and storytellers unfamiliar with the system.

Style: 1 (Unintelligible)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Land of Eight Million Dreams
Author: Deena McKinney, Jim Moore, Wayne Peacock Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Game Studio Line: Changeling: the Dreaming Cost: $18 Page count: 151 Capsule Review by Derek Guder on 05/06/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Modern_day Asian/Far_East	Let me begin by saying that I love Changeling: the Dreaming, I am a die-hard, grinning-till-the-end Changeling fan. That does not mean, however, that I like every supplement, or that I think Changeling has gotten anything like the treatment it deserves. I don't want to make judgements without knowing all the details, but I must look askance at Ian Lemke when I read many Changeling books. Riddled with editing errors, confusing statements and illogical and hypcritical metaphysics, the entire line is an angel beaten with an Ugly Stick. I should also say that there was no book of 1998 (and the Year of the Lotus "line" in particular) that I was anxiously awaiting more than Land of Eight Million Dreams. I had to sit on my hands before I got this, and I damn near ran the last block to the store where I bought it once I had money. I'm terribly sad to say that I was disappointed, nay, devastated even. Land of Eight Million Dreams failed to deliver. The book is packed with ideas and wondrous possibilities and at the same time completely shackled by a lack of editing a blind man could see. Too be fair, I should mention two things. One, from what I've heard, this project was rushed and didn't have the time it needed to stew and simmer and become the feast I know it can be, and a lot of information was apparently cut out. And two, it seemed that the authors had little guidance and direction for the book. It was written with a very loose hand. Still, that doesn't soften my disappointment much. Reading the back of Kindred of the East, the Vampire Year of the Lotus book, I got the impression that the hsien (Eastern fae) were like their counterparts, but they had a different viewpoint. They harvested yugen (which I learned in my Japanese Civilization class means "hidden or implied mystery") instead of "Glamour," and they were associated with animals (for the commoners) or elements (for the nobles). I was expecting a new take on an old theme, a new breed of Gallain, like the inanimae or the nunnehi. That's not what I got. The hsien of Land of Eight Million Dreams are radically different from their Western "kin." In fact, they are so radically different, that I wonder why they bothered claiming that this is a Changeling book at all. In addition, unlike Kindred of the East which also introduced an entirely new "breed" of supernatural beings (although they are thematically akin to their Western counterparts), Land of Eight Million Dreams has neither hardcover nor long. 151 pages compared to Kinred of the East's 220+. Compound this with a lack of editing and understand that the hsien of Asia differ from the kithain of Europe even more drastically than the Kuei-jin do from the Kindred and you begin to see the pit into which this book fell. The opening fiction has its moments, as most does, and it's about average, so there are no complaints from me. It was actually somewhat amusing. The story lacked direction and a truly moving style, but I was not buying the book for the fiction. The introduction chapter tells us that the changelings of the East are called Shinma and that they are broken into kamuii and hirayana (nobles and commoners) distinctions. Then we are given the standard elf-explanatory "How to use this book" section. That is followed by all the myriad of terms introduced into the game. It is here, in the very beginning of the book that one of the major problems of the book arises. Are the Eastern changelings Shinma or hsien? Later in the book, I came under the impression (apparently correct) that the Shinma are merely the largest "court" of hsien, but far too often the terms seemed much to interchangeable. The first chapter, The Duties of the Gods, is pretty good. It reveals that the hsien, like the Kuei-jin, have fallen from their formerly divine positions. Apparently, the hsien were the messengers of the Gods, delivering notes and answering prayers. They were go-betweens. Now in the modern world, they must work at their old mandates, hoping to be released from this mortal and corporeal prison. This is also the first mention of the Mu Courts, other groups of hsien: the Daityas and the Kura Sau. This is also one of the last mentions of them. This chapter is full of great ideas, but suffers from what I see as the problem of Werewolf and to a lesser extent Kindred of the East: the hsien know exactly what they are supposed to be doing in this Gothic-Punk World of Darkness. They have a very intense and over-riding sense of purpose that I find chafing. Their history is much too clear-cut for me. In addition, the distinct lack of information on the Mu Courts is unforgivable. Cut out from the book, they were simply dropped, even though they had been completely done up. It is a situation similar to the one that Vampire 2nd Edition faced, putting only the Camarilla Clans in the book did not help anything. Both Vampire: the Dark Ages and Vampire Revised have rectified this, but I have no illusions about a Land of Eight Million Dreams Revised, especially now with the Arthaus debacle. The second chapter is setting, and it is sparse and underdeveloped. The Provinces that the hsien have divided Asia into are poorly organized and glossingly described. I was at a loss about details to relationships. A map would have been nice, and kind of map. They could have even been arranged geographically. This is also the chapter that reveals that the hsien have no connection to the Dreaming and cannot enter the spirit worlds without great power, when they start travelling the Yin and Yang worlds familiar to any Year of the Lotus player. The hsien have no connection to the Dreaming? Why is this a Changeling: the Dreaming product? If they are going to have no connection, why make them changelings? Even the nunnehi had a connection to the Dreaming, though they lost it in the Shattering. Simply put, the hsien bear no resemblance to the kithain in really any way at all. They do not gather Glamour, they do not have any care about Banality (again, why make them have anything to do with Changeling) and dreams are nothing more than passing fancies. The hsien survive off of religion and answering (although not necessarily fulfilling) human wishes, and so the authors take to discussing religion. In doing so, they make the mistake of calling animism animalism, which is an entirely separate beast, so to speak. Trying to fit all of Asian religion into three pages will fail, plain and simple, and it did. I would not complain if this was Kindred of the East, where mortal religion is often little more than tangential to characters, but this is supposed to be the heart of the hsien. It would be like giving 3 pages total to the idea of dreams and the Dreaming in Changeling. Following that is a section on Asian culture, which is just a short as the religion bit, but that is not a problem because it is not culture that is the hsien's soul. That is followed by a mention of crime in Asia, and the information on Tongs and Triads spans nearly as many pages as the information on religion. Does that strike anyone as odd? Then there are the other dangers of Asia, including Strike Force Zero, which is described as a monolithic and powerful entity, not the same impression I got from Demon Hunter X. Chapter three, ironically misnamed Spirits of Dreams, details the seemings and kwannon-jin (kiths) of the Shinma (and one would assume the other hsien). hsien are not born into human bodies, their souls slip into dying humans just as the mortal's own soul fades away. A very interesting idea, I think. I like that. The hsien also do not have to worry about the distinction between seemings, as they do not deal with the Mists or making people enchanted, they can simply shape-shift into their wani form (true form). They can use magic easier and can employ a bluff to scare people off called Mask of the Shintai. I cannot say that I totally like all that. The kwannon-jin themselves are, for the most part, marvelous. They are among the best parts of the book. Some of the blessings and curses (birthrights and frailties) seemed a bit off to me, but nothing major. The character creation chapter is a mess. Horridly organized and often seemingly poorly thought-out, it is a maze that it rather unsatisfying to complete. There are some interesting ideas, like varying freebie costs for "childlings" and "grumps," but they don't seem to be very polished. In addition, the sub-courts of the Shinma are mentioned - with a few paragraphs each. Reading the descriptions I kept thinking "Wow, these guys seem neat and important, is there more information later?" Of course there wasn't. Further character creation (like the rules for determining Yin and Yang scores) came across only as forced and restricting, emphasizing stereotypes over concepts. The Tao trait I found superfluous and almost annoying at times. Overall, the chapter served to ram home that the hsien are not kithain or even fae, but it did not serve to tell me what they are. The next chapter is the magic system, Wu Tan. It is here that the true dichotomy of Land of Eight Million Dreams shows through. The system is a brilliant and flexible one, superior to the basic Changeling use of Arts and Realms, in my opinion. I love the possibilities and ramifications of it. However, it is among the most poorly organized pieces of writing I have seen in an RPG. Only Immortal really beats it in that regard. That is very sad, really, because this could have been so much. It inspired an entire Mage character to me, using magick based on the same elemental correspondences, but the chapter is poorly done. Wu Tan is done according to 5 elements that affect different aspects of the world. The effects themselves are based off of Yin or Yang, depending on their natures. It is somewhat complicated, but beautifully elegant once you grasp it. I also rankled at the execution of Nei Tan, which is a special Wu Tan that almost serves to track the hsien's enlightenment. I was specifically angered by the fact that neither the Daityas or the Kura Sau could use it. The entire chapter reads like the development notes for first edition Mage magick at times. The Setting Systems chapter and the last Storyteller's chapter were, for the most part, useless, toss-away bits. They made Yin and Yang into role-playing tracked Renown-like traits. We get rules for spirits and discussions on how to run games (the exact same text as from The Fool's Luck: Way of the Commoner except for Asia-specific references, by the way). The only other really informative mentions of the Mu Courts is here, and we get no more on them than the Garou get in the back of Vampire 2nd Edition. There are rules for just what happens when a hsien manages to enter the spirit world, and it is certainly not comfortable. We get antagonists. For the most part, the chapter is empty and truncated. Only some of the information is remotely interesting, and most of it is either bland or bad. The repetition of the Storyteller's hints angered me to no end (although they were originally printed in this book, I read Fool's Luck first). All in all? This book is full of wonderful, wonderful ideas - but only buy it if you are willing to put a lot of work into making it into what it should have been. I wanted changelings in Asia. I got something totally new. A brilliant idea and a worthy cause, but poorly executed and developed. One final problem with Land of Eight Million Dreams was the distinct lack of a character sheet, which would have been immensely useful in understanding character creation. One of the authors, Wayne Peacock, made one available on the changeling-l mailing list, and I've linked it to my webpage, you can find it here. It is nicely done, and has summaries of Wu Tan as well, to help players and storytellers unfamiliar with the system. Style: 1 (Unintelligible) Substance: 3 (Average)