Changeling: the Dreaming

A role-playing game by White Wolf Game Studios, Changeling is part of the World of Darkness and is about being balancing the wonder of being a changling with the banality of real life. Too much wonder leads to bedlam and insanity while too much of real life can lead to being nothing more than a normal human and forgetting your glamourous past.

• Boggans are homebody fae who master the arts of the household. They are excellent craftsmen, and take pride in their work. Many of them are also incorrigible gossipers and rumormongers. Inspired by the legends of brownies and boggarts.

• Eshu are fae who embody the spirit of the wandering trickster. The path they walk down is not always safe, but always the most interesting and most direct. Named for an African trickster god of the same name.

• Nockers are unusually cynical fae. They are craftsmen like the boggans, but are more interested in steampunk-ish, weird science-y chimerical gizmos. They find fault in everything, even their own work. This habit of near constant fault-finding often alienates them from others. Named for the knockers, a type of faerie that dwells and works in mines.

• Pooka are the tricksters and mischief makers of the fae, but are also very empathic, able to get just about anyone to open up to them. They all possess some sort of animal affinity, reflected in their features, and they can change themselves into an animal of the appropriate type. Also, as part of their trickster nature, they all compulsively speak in lies, half-truths, and riddles. Names for the pwwca, a shapechanging faerie from Celtic mythology.

• Redcaps are wild, violent fae born from humanity's darkest dreams. They enjoy nothing better than a good fight, except maybe scaring the living daylights out of people and/or other Changelings. Named for the Redcap, a creature from Scottish mythology that dwells in haunted castles and old battlefields.

• Satyrs are hedonists to a man (or, in this case, fae), but are also philosophers and thinkers. They enjoy the pleasures of both mind and body, and are supposedly great in bed. Named, of course, for the half-goat, half-man creatures from Greek mythology, though Satyrs in Changeling are not exclusively male.

• The Sidhe are the supposed rulers of the fae. Noble and regal at best, and arrogant and arbitrary at worst, they are mostly unaccustomed to the banality of the real world. A bunch of them showed up on Earth after the moon landing, and were unpleasantly suprised to find a lot of the commoners (the other fae) didn't really want the Sidhe lording over them anymore. Their name comes from the Gaelic word for "hill" that also refers to the Celtic hero-deities, the Tuatha de Dannan.

• Sluagh are silent, secretive fae who, due to some quirk of The Dreaming, are unable to speak above a whisper to other fae. They are born from the often disturbing dreams of things that go bump in the night. Named for a malevolent spirit from Irish folklore that travels in flocks.

• Trolls are steadfast warriors, protectors of The Dreaming, whose strength of body is matched only by their strength of will. Named for the mountain-dwelling, incredibly strong humanoid monsters of Norwegian folklore.