Token-Making
Token Crafting
Crafting tokens is, more or less, an art form with a great deal of unexpected results. Sure, you can pour your heart and soul into the work, but your circumstances, your attitudes, your Court and the stories going on around you in the process are all going to influence just what the drawback and catch of the thing end up being.
In effect, while you are creating a token, that token is your life.
You are working on the bugger for 8 hours a day. You don't HAVE another job. Not unless you want no social life. And, speaking of a social life, you'd better make sure to keep the stories around your work in line with what you want the end result to be, or you're going to end up with who knows what Bad Stuff.
Basics
Most tokens are crafted by the Fae or found in the Hedge and put to use by changelings clever enough to realize what they are. An uncrafted token, in essence, is a sponge for twisted faerie magic. Something gets lost in the Hedge, absorbs weird amoral powers, et voila.
See the Tokens page for details on a token's basic anatomy.
Howeeeever... there are those rare, few, extraordinarily devoted souls who learn to create tokens themselves. It isn't easy, and it isn't quick.
Tokens may be common, but they're prestige items for a reason.
Token Maker (•••)
The long and short of it: if you don't have this merit, you can't craft tokens. Period.
Accidental Magic
It is entirely possible to toss an item in the Hedge and hope that it becomes a token over time. The problems with this are sticky ones, however:
- If you toss something down on a trod, chances are good somebody else will grab it before you do.
- The Hedge is a psychoactive realm with a very tenuous grasp on little details like 'geography' and 'consistency'. If you toss something OFF of a trod, finding it again is not going to be easy.
- You have no control over what happens, how powerful it is, or what its traits will be.
On the bright side, anyone can do it! You'll still have to pay the xp cost if any of your token-making efforts actually do create something, but that's a long shot.
If you do choose to attempt this option, staff will choose characteristics for you, which your character will have to learn the hard way. Find some friendly Autumns or an amenable hob to help! It is entirely possible, and quite likely, that what you get will not be something YOU will love with all your heart, but that's not to say that somebody ELSE won't salivate over your newest acquisition...
Random Token Mechanics:
- Send up a +req/fae. Staff will allow you to attempt creating 3 of these each month.
- Note the word 'attempt' there. If you fail, that still counts as one of the three.
- Roll 5 dice to your +myjob. If you get the equivalent of a flush, congratulations, you've created a token.
- For non-Poker players, a flush is a sequence of connected numbers. 2 3 4 5 6 would be a flush, as would 6 7 8 9 10.
Optional Merit: Token Maker (•••) Most tokens are crafted by the Fae or found in the Hedge and put to use by those clever enough to recognize their potential. Some changelings, however, learn the ability to create tokens themselves, a useful skill that often puts them in great demand by their peers (and by the True Fae who would prefer such craftsmen remained in their own “employ”). Creating a token is a long and arduous project that requires not only great skill but a commitment of personal energies as well. First, the character must be able to accurately create some sort of plans, recipe or blueprint for the creation. Creating a recipe from scratch is an extended Intelligence + Occult roll, with one day required per roll and total successes required of five per dot in the token. This research cannot be interrupted until complete, or all successes are lost. In some cases, the crafter may be able to discover a plan that some other changeling has created, and work directly from that. Such a discovery may be the focus of a story — and may result in an object with unforeseen quirks reflecting the unknown author. Tokens are created as an extended action (Wyrd + Crafts) with each roll representing two weeks of work and a target number of 25 per dot of Token. Thus a twodot token such as a Lantern of Ill Omen would require 50 successes to create. Token Makers must expend at least one point of Glamour per two weeks into their work, and may expend up to five per month. Each point of Glamour above the first counts as an automatic success toward the total. The character must work for at least eight hours each day; working 16 or more hours a day adds an additional two dice to the roll per week that the character can maintain this schedule. If the crafter leaves off in the middle of her project, accumulated successes remain — but if she fails to pick up her tools again and resume work within two weeks, the successes are lost as the Glamour flees and her inspiration leaves her. Changelings possessing the Workshop Merit below may additionally halve the time per roll (if working on a token made of a material which falls within one of their Workshop’s Specialty areas) should any points in Workshop focus on that specialty. Example: Annie Bumble wants to create a Curious Paw Token (p. 207 of Changeling: The Lost). She’s a passable taxidermist and has a nicely appointed taxidermy table set up in her Hollow (one dot in Workshop: Taxidermy). She sequesters herself in her Hollow to work on it. Because she has a dot in Taxidermy allocated to her Workshop Hollow, she halves two weeks, making her time per roll one week. At the end of the first week of work, she spends one Glamour for the required investment and five more toward automatic successes. Her player rolls Annie’s Wyrd (3) + Crafts (4) + Crafts Specialty: Taxidermy (1) + Workshop (Taxidermy) (3) and gets 4 successes on the 11 dice. Adding in her automatic successes, Annie has now accumulated nine successes toward the 100 required to complete the Curious Paw. At the end of the next week of work, she spends another Glamour (with the option of spending up to five more) and makes another roll, accumulating the successes until she has reached 100 and the Curious Paw is complete. Drawbacks: Token drawbacks are not within the control of their creator. They are a result of the cagey nature of Glamour, and cannot be guided by the token’s maker’s hand or will. As tokens are forged in part out of the maker’s own Glamour, however, the drawback often reflects a connection to the maker in some way. One Darkling craftsman’s token might cause temporary blindness after being used, while another item by the same artisan might attract spiders to the user’s home. For already published tokens, such as those found on pp. 202–209 of Changeling: The Lost or in Chapter Four of this book, Storytellers have the option of using the listed drawback or creating one that more closely ties the token to its creator’s nature.
