Guide to Hedgespinning
The Hedge is alive — not in the way a bear or a tree is alive, but in the way a dream is alive. It breathes the emotions of everyone inside it. It reflects what you feel, what you fear, what you desperately want. Savvy travelers learn to stop fighting that and start working with it. That's Hedgespinning: the art of deliberate, practiced give-and-take with a landscape that wants to become whatever you need it to be — for better or worse.
What It Is
Hedgespinning is the ability to shape the Hedge by channeling genuine emotional states into the environment around you. You aren't casting a spell. You're entering into a negotiation — with the terrain, with the people near you, and with yourself. The Hedge responds to authentic feeling, not performance. You can't fake your way through it.
Any fae creature can make subtle shifts. Only changelings, the Gentry, and Huntsmen can enact the more dramatic paradigm shifts. The Hedge also shapes itself autonomously: any time a character rolls to navigate, investigate, or interact with something in the Hedge, the ST rolls eight dice and may spend any successes beyond the first to react to what just happened — possibly against you.
Hard limits apply. Even the most gifted Hedgespinner can't make the Hedge betray its own essential nature. A river can become a rougher river. It cannot become a parking lot — not without a paradigm shift, and even then the river is still underneath it. The wilderness is always there.
How It Works
Before making any action in the Hedge, you declare whether you want it to generate shaping successes. If you do, you take a dice penalty based on where you are:
| Location | Penalty |
|---|---|
| On a trod | −3 |
| In the Thorns | −2 |
| Elsewhere in the Hedge | −1 |
If your roll succeeds and you generate excess successes beyond what the action required, you may immediately spend 1 Glamour and allocate those extras to Hedgespinning effects. A dramatic failure on a shaping-designated roll triggers Bedlam in everyone present.
Important: You can only use rolled successes for Hedgespinning — not automatic successes from weapons or other modifiers. When successes matter for the action itself (like an attack), you must choose how to split them: damage or shaping, not both from the same success.
Teamwork helps enormously. Reliable access to large numbers of successes — which is what the bigger effects cost — is much easier when your motley works together. Extended actions in the Hedge can also contribute to shaping, but each roll's excess successes must be spent immediately; they don't carry forward.
Subtle Shifts
Subtle shifts are the day-to-day vocabulary of Hedgespinning. They represent small-to-moderate changes to the immediate environment, achievable within the normal flow of action.
| Successes | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1+ | Grant any character an equipment bonus to their next roll equal to successes spent (max +5) |
| 1+ | Grant any character armor (general and ballistic) equal to successes spent for one turn (max +5) |
| 1+ | Create weapons from nothing, total Availability equal to successes spent |
| 1+ | Increase or decrease a Hedge object's Durability by successes spent for one turn (max +5) |
| 1 | Minor aesthetic change to an object, structure, or terrain (turn a house purple, put a rainbow in the sky) |
| 1 | Decrease a target's Speed or Initiative by 1 for the scene (cumulative) |
| 1 | Learn the direction to an unstated location type that isn't hidden ("any Hollow," not "Juliet's Hollow") |
| 1 | Introduce a minor beneficial twist of luck or complication for any character |
| 2 | Introduce a personal Tilt for any character |
| 2 | Introduce a hazard to the scene (carnivorous grass, a swarm of bees) |
| 3 | Learn the direction to a specific location that isn't hidden |
| 3 | Minor location change (move the action outdoors, onto the roof, etc.) |
| 3 | Create a new localized terrain feature (a bridge, a tree, a swamp) |
| 4 | Introduce a temporary Condition for any character, as long as a current Hedge feature could impose it; fades when target leaves |
| 4 | Turn any character's failure into a dramatic failure (no Beat granted), as long as a current Hedge feature could cause it |
| 4 | Automatically gain the Edge next turn while navigating |
| 4 | Change one physical property of an unused Hedge object or terrain feature (increase/decrease Size by 1, change material) |
Effects described in terms of narrative should reflect what's actually happening in the environment. A sword grown from a tree. A hammer forged where two rocks grind together. Information revealed through a door you convinced yourself — and everyone else — might open onto a threat.
Paradigm Shifts
A paradigm shift is something bigger. It requires an exceptional success on a shaping-designated roll, plus 2 Glamour. When you trigger one, you spend all rolled successes on Hedge effects rather than the action's usual exceptional success benefit.
Once per scene, if a paradigm shift aligns with your Thread, gain one bonus success to add to your next Hedgespinning action that scene.
| Successes | Effect |
|---|---|
| 2+ | Bank successes for a later shift this scene: bank (successes spent −1), max 5 banked |
| 3 | Transform an unused Hedge object or terrain feature into something completely different of similar size/mass |
| 3 | Introduce a major beneficial twist of luck or complication for any character |
| 5 | Create any one goblin fruit |
| 5 | Introduce an Environmental Tilt |
| 5 | Force a Clash of Wills if another character attempts a Hedgespinning action; failure wastes their Glamour and excess successes |
| 6 | Learn the direction to a hidden or protected location (must win Clash of Wills if another's magic conceals it) |
| 7 | Introduce a Persistent Condition for any character, as long as a current Hedge feature could impose it; fades when target leaves |
| 7 | Completely change the scenery (parking lot to sewer, volcano erupting beneath a street) |
| 8 | Ignore the effects of a single attack, or ignore a Tilt's effects for one turn |
| 8 | Perform one impossible action tied to the environment (leap 100 feet, breathe underwater, throw a thorn spear to knock a star out of the sky) |
| 9 | Add one enhancement to a Hollow you're in, or one ability to your Fae Mount, for the scene; purchase with XP to make permanent |
| 9 | Shift your immediate environs (radius: Wyrd × 10 yards) up or down one step: trod → normal Hedge → Thorns |
| 9 | Transfer an emotional Condition onto another character present |
Note: If you already have a Contract, token, or power that would let you make a change, you don't need to spend successes to do it. Paradigm shifts are for things beyond your normal capabilities.
The Cost of Paradigm Shifts
Pulling this kind of change out of yourself has consequences.
Emotional Condition. At the end of any scene in which you enacted at least one paradigm shift, you gain an emotional Condition reflecting the shape and outcome of what you did. If you summoned fire, you might come away Berserk. If that fire killed bystanders you didn't intend to harm, you might come away Guilty. These emotions are real — they may dredge up memories of your Durance, or make you feel more fae than human, potentially prompting a breaking point.
You draw attention. Paradigm shifts are loud, in the way the Hedge understands loudness. Locals notice. They come to investigate — or to punish whoever just rearranged their liar's apple tree. The more paradigm shifts you enact in a scene, the more you become a person of interest to whatever lives nearby.
You can read the echoes. Using your kenning (with a bonus equal to your Empathy dots), you can detect the nature of any paradigm shifts that occurred in an area within the last week.
Reading the Hedge
The Hedge responds to emotional authenticity. You can't just think about something terrifying and expect a result. You have to engage — push against the landscape, let it push back, let what's happening around you actually affect you. A bridge doesn't appear because you want a bridge. It appears because you guided the events of the scene toward cooperation and progress until the Hedge agreed that a bridge was the honest conclusion of this moment.
This is why Hedgespinning is hard to fake and impossible to rush. It's also why it's most powerful when your motley is working together — not just mechanically (though the dice help), but emotionally. The Hedge notices when people actually trust each other.
Quick Reference
- Declare shaping intent before rolling; take the location penalty
- Spend excess successes (not action successes) + 1 Glamour to trigger subtle shifts
- Exceptional success + 2 Glamour = paradigm shift (all rolled successes go to shaping)
- Dramatic failure on a shaping roll = Bedlam for everyone present
- Thread alignment once per scene: +1 success to next shaping action
- Paradigm shifts attract Hedge locals and grant you an emotional Condition
- Kenning + Empathy dots lets you read the history of paradigm shifts in an area (up to one week back)