For many years, the Changeling community has longed for a better take on the hsien of East Asia. In our previous episode on their introductory 2e supplement, Land of Eight Million Dreams, we discussed at length how these fae were portrayed in… not the greatest fashion, and it’s a characterization that the 20th Anniversary didn’t really fix. But! The latest release from Hsienfan on the Storytellers’ Vault, In the Realm of Gods and Dreams, breathes new life into what was a sometimes confusing, often cringey group of changelings, and manages to re-write many of the assumptions about the game along the way, both systems and setting. We had the opportunity to sit down with the author and walk through the book in its entirety. The open dev process used for its creation means that you may have seen glimmers and drafts along the way; now we have a 300+ page chomker in all its glory to digest. lf you’ve been eagerly looking for some thorough information about its contents, well, here goes…
(Hsienfan’s appearance on our show is also dedicated to his wife, Coco Vanille, without whose publishing prep and prowess this book would not exist. Forgetting to mention this in the outro is purely on Pooka, who is terrible at reading everything in emails, and missed this request. Many thanks from us as well to Coco for helping make this tome a reality!)
You can pick up the book at the Storytellers’ Vault by visiting https://www.storytellersvault.com/product/492660?affiliate_id=3063731, and here are some other internet places to check out on the side:
- The RPG.net forum thread to ask author questions: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/in-the-realm-of-gods-and-dreams-q-a-on-asian-urban-fantasy.922068/
- Reddit Q&A: https://www.reddit.com/r/WhiteWolfRPG/comments/1f115so/in_the_realm_of_gods_and_dreams_qa_hsien_nostalgia/
- Our episode on Land of Eight Million Dreams, for reference: https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-54-land-of-eight-million-dreams/
And as usual, you can bother us via:
- Discord: https://discord.me/ctp
- Email: podcast@changelingthepodcast.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699
- Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPod
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChangelingThePodcast
your hosts
Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) has waiting been waiting too many years already for the film Moderate Trouble in Sensible Canada.
Pooka G (any pronoun/they) journeyed into the West and all they got was this lousy T-shirt.
Half of the poetry of life would be gone, if we did not feel that life was either a dream, or a voyage with transient travelers.
—Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living