This is one of those "I had a great time" Actual Play threads.

We’re playing a Changeling game set in Wellington using The Shadow of Yesterday. This is our third session out of (probably) four – and it was the first that I felt really rocked.

Reasons:

1) We aggressively pursued and unraveled the central mystery of the situation. In Maori mythology, Maui used a jawbone to fish the North Island out of the ocean. Now some Sidhe of the Native Court want to use that jawbone to rip the North Island out of our reality and fully into the Fae one.
2) The players all started grokking the system and loving both the idea of simple conflict resolution and using non-standard abilities in combat (Sway, Dancing).
3) Our GM is very clever and at least twice I out-thought him to our group’s advantage.
4) I can see a way to use my character’s abilities in conjunction with the Bringing Down the Pain system (which has so far been unused) to really hammer the Big Bad of the setting into the ground.
5) All the players got several moments in the spotlight.

Plus it was fun. We didn’t really find a groove until this session – a lot of mucking around wondering what to do. But after an OOC conversation, I think it helped me find my place.

Steve,

I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Did the Gift of Dice get used much in your game?

It's a defining feature, Clinton.

The Gift of Dice was the first thing that really made us sit up and go "Ooh, there's something cool going on here (with TSoY)," and that happened the first time we used it in our first session.

Last night thought, there was a lot of playfulness - and sometimes teasing - about when it was and wasn't awarded. Several times players (and I was chief among them) said they wouldn't award dice 'cos they were interested in seeing what would happen either way (succeed or fail). There was still a lot of giving when we were all invested in succeeding or we wanted to put the bite on an Antagonist Character. And there were quite a few times where a player requested Gift Dice and we could see they were serious about wanting to do something so some to most of us ponied up.

I'm finding Gift of Dice to be very bonding.

I also love the gift of dice! But here's the excerpt from my blog about this session:

Changeling was great fun last night, everyone was really into the game and we sussed out the story and most importantly my character was cool.

No, I jest...that wasn't the most important thing. The most important thing was that everyone was working together to complete the goal and there was awesome roleplaying and it felt like Changeling again. I really like the Shadows of Yesterday system now that I understand it. I adore the one roll resolution of conflict and I love how quickly fights work using that system.

Seriously though, my character Izzy Starlight did some cool things last night. It helped that Svend was rolling way bad for the mooks but I did some kick-ass stuf. My favourite moment was going into my bedroom, NOT being surprised by the assassin behind the door and quickly disarming him then beating him with my coat rack.

I also liked the not-quite-so-impressive moment of asking my childling ward if she'd be warm enough going out in the middle of the night and did she want to borrow anything?

She asked if I had any shawls?

Oh yes, what colour?

Rainbow?

Here. (The neat thing about this character is that she works at Supre - to combat the massive banality of the place. Of course that also means she's a fashion plate and shawls are in fashion, so....)

Maybe that's not cool to anyone else but I enjoyed it immensely.