In Lost, they pretty much come out and say "being a Changeling is what happens after you remember what humanity is in spite of having your soul fall off after you were taken to the Bad Place."
So, Changeling: the Lost. Does it have anything worth stealing in it?
Changeling the Dreaming was one of the worst things ever put out by White Wolf and I haven't been able to bring myself to read through the nWoD material. I do know that the fairies get morality fucked for lying and stealing, so the Lost is obviously unpalatable as a whole entity. But the question remains as to whether something in there is salvageable for aWoD. And honestly, I just won't read it closely enough to know.
I do not in principal have any problem with people coming to a WoD game playing the elves from Hellboy 2 or the Satyr from Pan's Labyrinth. That sounds in abstract like it could be fine, and they certainly count as appropriate source material for a World of Darkness game. The problem I have is that the fairies in Changeling the Dreaming got saddled with such an incredibly disruptive and appalling set of gimmicks that I just don't see it as working under player control. I mean, they had an entire faction of sexy underage foxes. Do I have to draw you a diagram about how completely inappropriate that was?
So, for people who've read it or played it, is there anything that Changeling the Lost does that redeems the setup and manages to get people to not talk in baby talk, spam dadaist image macros across serious roleplay, or put childlike qualities into characters in sexual situations? The old stuff straight up tasked the changelings with the binding duty to keep the people around them (who were by definition trying to do immersive roleplaying in a gothic horror game) from becoming "too serious" and also had a team of seductresses who were seriously required to hold on to their childhood in order to continue being allowed to use their sex powers.
Does the nWoD have some kind of magic bullet that wipes the stain of disruptive pedophilia away from the Changeling concept such that t could actually be playable?
I only perused it, but they changed Changeling rather drastically. You play the human that was stolen by the fae, having recently escaped back to the human world an indeterminate time later. You're different because of this, not being used to how humanity changed in the interim and the time you spent with the Fae is vague & hazy (and decidedly unfun, which is why you escaped), along with the fact you've got some of the 'taint' of faerie within.
They stressed that the True Fae are alien creatures, and are the antagonists. From what I saw, the writers encouraged you to think of your character as a refugee trying to integrate back into society. The fact you appear fae-ish in your true form (antlers, burning hair, etc) is supposed to be indicative of a form of scarring on your soul, if that gives you a hint.
Now, it's written by multiple people, so there was some conflict in expectations. I saw a few sections that gave the impression that you would treat your nature as something to strive to perfect, to work around the disadvantages while getting the niftiness of faerie power.
So yeah, they use the inspiration of Hellboy 2 and Pan's Labyrinth for their fae, and you play an escaped PoW.
Of course, this is from a light read through everything but the mechanics around the time it was released; so I might be a bit hazy.
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From myth to Pickman's Model, changelings are a great concept for horror. I'm not familiar with White Wolf's Changeling games, but it seems like a bad idea to leave them out just because they've been done poorly before.
The main change that they made to Changeling the Lost to make it not so happy funtime la la la blarghlearghle is by recontextualizing the struggle to remain sane, balanced, and "together." So instead of having Glamour be the magical cure-all that flows from highly imaginative people only and banal "drones" chase it away, with the faerie realms being wonderful places? What were once "banal drones" can just as easily provide Glamour because in many cases it's still about inspiring awe and wonderment in mortals. However you do this because you want more faerie energy so that when you get into a facedown with one of the Gentry, who are severely weakened by coming out into the mortal realm, as opposed to going into the places where they hold power? ... that they don't just greasespot you and you can either fight or hide or even just die on your own terms instead of being taken away. And, of course, there's the group that pretends that time will never come.
The major differences I'd have to hit on would be these.
#1 - You're Not a Child: Every Changeling character in The Lost was once mortal. In fact, the longer they were a mortal person, the more likely they are to be able to make the trip back home... children who have no memory of the mortal world anymore once they've spent their small eternities in Arcadia are the ones who are damned forever to remain in Arcadia. As a general rule time has still passed (though sometimes oddly) so even though the faeries rarely take those who are older than young adults, the cast of characters is also still mature... the youngest Lost character would still be into their teens at worst, most likely. There is some fuzziness admittedly... time in Arcadia does not flow 1 to 1 for time on Earth, although that just as easily means that when the Changeling returns, he's spent 10 years to the mortal 1, and is no longer capable of returning home.
#2 - You Chose Mundanity: All Lost spent some time in Arcadia, where the True Faeries, or Gentry, or simply their "Keeper" took them. This is a wonderland. It can seem futuristic, or fantastic, or whatever. It is where imagination can become real. Unfortunately it is also a place where imagination can become real. This is played for horror, not hilarity. It is a world where fire does not warm you unless it agrees to do so, but it can still burn you for free.. while still not warming you. The Keeper protects them from destruction in a nonsense world where they have no place as a creature of reason, but also enslaves them thereby. All Changelings become something... else, not human anymore, while in their master's durance. Some of them gain animal features, others become terrifying ogres, and others become elemental flames. This varies. The animal-featured one might have enjoyed a curiously idyllic life in the woods... and been run down and eaten every day, like a beast's existence on eternal repeat. The fire-being might have been set aflame and used as her master's lantern, to burn forever. And there are also those who were kept for some facet of.... beauty. You can imagine what pretty, elfin princes and princesses they are, and why that was unsettling. The likely background of the Fairest, mostly alluded to in the text, is probably one of the most uncomfortable elements for me, since you can at least look in the eye the fact that the reason the ogre at the table became a monster was because she was brutalized until she became brutal herself in turn. All of these remembered the human world and chose to return to it instead.
#3 - More Mythic, Less Peter Pan: While the infinite variations of Arcadia and the liminal beings in the Hedge are quite limitless, they are always presented as being more representative of mythic archetypes. So you still have your fantastic hounds of Ulster, but unless I'm missing something the "Nevers" aren't there anymore. It's less silly. Dreams are less silly.... more awe-inspiring, or possibly just uncomfortable, like that joke you know is funny but you don't really want to laugh at. When Changelings invoke magic powers, they use such things as the elemental and spiritual strengths of the four seasons, with abilities more often named things like "Baba Yaga's Tale," rather than "Hopscotch." They also no longer have an "illusionary" reality that they can just stamp their foot and disbelieve. Their faerie selves are the true parts of them... they do still have mortal masks, but those are illusions that they naturally project in order to not get noticed. If a faerie uses magic, you get fucked up, no bones about it, no "you can shut your eyes and wish it all away." The point at which they are more mythic is really emphasized by the fact that one of their strongest forms of magic is the ability to make a promise that is binding on them lest their sight grow dark (or whatever other penalty) and become more able to fulfill that promise. They don't do this all the time because it costs resources out of their pocket to make these promises, and can really severely bitch them over, but they can even entangle mortals in these (with their consent obviously) and play wish-fulfillment-genie, in a sense.
Sorry, I'm a bit stream-of-consciousness-rambling today.
Also, as an afterthought, I think the fact that changelings get "punished" by Clarity for lying and stealing is not because the designers want them to not do that. See, the main tension point of the game is that the Lost escaped, in a sense, from abuse. The forms of abuse vary, and they wear that on their skin. But they also escaped from Arcadia, a fantastic wonderland where everything could come true... for a price. So the main reason Changelings have a roleplaying challenge when confronted by tricksy, whimsical behaviours, is so that you feel your character going insane as they start acting more like one of the faeries, so that you can feel them playing with fire. The same of Humanity in Vampire. You aren't supposed to hold on to your Humanity... even if you're a Golcondite, there's a strong impression temptation to lose it at every turn, such that you are supposed to lose a dot of Humanity at some point and have to start all over again, even if you're on the path to enlightenment (as opposed to the Paths of Enlightenment). You're supposed to feel them go a little crazy, because that's what playing a vampire (or other monster) is about in the World of Darkness.
In order to port that sort of Changeling over to aWoD, you would need a place which corisponds to Arcadia. Currently, we have Limbo, which has the "It is hard to leave" and "There are Fey creatures that abduct humans" aspects, but not the "nothing here makes sense" aspect. We also have the Wilds, which lacks the fey creatures, but does have the "nothing here makes sense" aspect.
We could add faeries to the Wilds, or we could make Deep Limbo full of Demons that keep stolen humans around, chain them to the wall and set them on fire to serve as lamps. Either works.
Arcadia makes perfect sense when you realize that nothing really happens without the agreement of the entity (including, yes, background objects) in question, and that most of the entities there aren't constrained to things like flesh. So most prisoners of Arcadia do in fact consent to calamity at some point, wittingly or unwittingly, probably under duress as they realize how terrible this world is for them.
It's important to remember, however, that Changelings only go there once, and they escape from there once.
The ones who arrive in Arcadia a second time are not heard from again.
Last edited by TavishArtair on Fri Jul 17, 2009 6:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
Yeah unfortunately Dreaming basically made it kiiinda creepy from the get-go when it encouraged you to make child characters because they had more magical power, and then included things like seduction spells in the powersets, as well as "stay young forever" as a merit. At least if you get a Claudia in Vampire the system doesn't really encourage it. Lost is more or less in the same boat as Vampire on child characters - actually a bad choice and thus not thought of first thing, although I didn't follow the post-corebook material.
C:tL has no redeeming features. It is the same old "your character should suffer before the might of the Storyteller - through living in a world without any nice spots or good sides, being oppressed (hunted, in C:tL case) by all-powerful elders and being fucked right in the ass by Morality stat for doing things that the game demands from you" crap as the rest of nWoD. Seriously, I've played a game of "your old mundane life was taken away when you were thrust in the scary world of the supernatural" and ran another one back in V:tM. This theme is not good for more than one game. And C:tL does not seem to offer anything particularly interesting besides that.
As a side one, considering that the most common age category of changelings in C:tD is, IIRC, from 13 or 14 to mid-twenties, accusations of "pedophilia" and assumption that sexual themes would be somehow inappropriate in a game about people of this age, elicited serious "what the fuck?" reaction from me.
Last edited by FatR on Fri Jul 17, 2009 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
The themes of getting dicked over by elders and living in a terrible world have been in the game since 1st edition Vampire. I don't think anyone really is going to actually complain about that since this is the World of Darkness. Indeed, I have noticed nothing in aWoD so far that is not, rather, perpetuating and reinforcing these themes, rather than eroding at them. Since in part this discussion is in context of that, I dunno what you're trying to say here, FatR, other than "I dislike the WoD."
Last edited by TavishArtair on Fri Jul 17, 2009 9:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
TavishArtair wrote:The themes of getting dicked over by elders and living in a terrible world have been in the game since 1st edition Vampire. I don't think anyone really is going to actually complain about that since this is the World of Darkness. Indeed, I have noticed nothing in aWoD so far that is not, rather, perpetuating and reinforcing these themes, rather than eroding at them. Since in part this discussion is in context of that, I dunno what you're trying to say here, FatR, other than "I dislike the WoD."
I hadn't read any aWoD threads past the first page, but doesn't its stated design goal is creating the game about politics, and being able to do something meaningful through your politicing and intrigue, and such stuff? That's sort of incompatible with "your character is here to suffer and be screwed with" attitude.
I don't see how the mere presence of overwhelming power obviates political maneuvering in the real world, even between nuclear and non-nuclear powers. Sure, you may never really wind up pushing back hard enough to really upset things, but sometimes even a shitty little caught-in-the-late-medieval-period country can wind up becoming a technological power seemingly overnight. There's various kinds of power. If you really want to upset the established order, it'll probably be by convincing players in that order to side with you, not striking it alone like some kind of North Korea.
It's not like it's Exalted and you're playing what is supposed to be one of the biggest superpowers in the game but finding out that you might as well play tiddlywinks for what-all you matter. In WoD, it's okay for the players to feel a bit small in the pants when they face off against Dracula or whatever, because it's fucking Vlad Tepes, OF COURSE he has an advantage due to seniority. So you have to engage in elaborate plots to even have a hope of harming him, and then you're really just looking to gain enough purchase to foil a specific plan that would screw you over rather than necessarily eliminate him per se. We only promised to make you monsters of the night, as it were, so we don't really have to make you the most important monsters in the night.
Should the players feel empowered? Sure. But it's not really WoD if they don't feel like shadows standing against a backdrop of sun-blotting night. The sinister conspiracies that darken the world need to... well, be persuasively sinister, conspiratorial, and darkening.
To be honest C:tL best feature is probably introducing the fey as antagonists.
Psychotic elves who live in a dreamland whose morals are so far removed from ours they might as well not have any and are very powerful in our world and practically gods in theirs?
Getting players involved in WoD politics is tricky. It has to be a rational choice to want to try to move up in the Order rather than just walking away and starting the No Homers Club. So here are some points that I think that should be hit:
The Sabbat has to have things you want. Magic tomes, ancient maps, bank accounts, mystical weaponry, and so on and so forth. If being a servant in the Camarilla gives you an expense account you can understand why players might want to do that instead of jetting off to become the "ruler" of the 37th Street Toughguys.
The World Crime League has to have goals you are sympathetic with. Evil and paternalistic organization or no, there has to be some kind of silver lining to the group's activities or the players are just going to treat it like a very powerful D&D villain group to be taken down piece by piece.
Change from within has to be possible and feel possible. If there aren't goals you can accomplish politically, no on is going to take the politics seriously.
The organizations have to have some inertia. If you can fire a rocket launcher at a clubhouse sometime and have the Carthians just cease to exist, the players are going to want to do that.
In short, the game must carefully balance Leviathan with Opportunity, and it must carefully balance Hope and Despair, and it must carefully balance carrots and sticks. Otherwise the players are rationally spaking going to say "fuck this!"
oWoD Pentex was simply too evil, the players were never going to bother working with them or talking to them. They showed up, you stabbed them, and life moved on. nWoD Invictus isn't big enough to bother working for. I'm not going to put up with being a vassal just to eventually have my feudal lord let me use the car. I'm a fucking Ventrue, I have mind control, I can get my own damn car. oWoD Camarilla is run by fucking vampire gods and there's no way to do anything about it because they don't even have rules. nWoD Forsaken are apparently like thirty dudes and you can take them all out by throwing a molotov cocktail party in one of their moot raves.
Walking the line between those is non trivial. But it's doable.
No Thymos, Elf-[EDITED] are bad enough as it is. Giving them material to go on and on about how cool Elves are is bad.
They're the furries of D&D, and... I actually don't mind furries as much as I mind Elf-[EDITED]. People can easily undestand a new animal-like race than they can understand a new Elf race.
A panther-girl that rips people's skulls open is kind of cool, and you know that they're probably solitary, and eat meat. They're also easily contrasted by a lounging minotaur that sits in the shade and eats flowers like a moo-moo cow. You don't really need to have the fact that the Minotaur is really a vegetarian explained to you, you already know it, since he's a cow.
Those work as archetypes because it's not a "panther-girl" or a "minotaur" that you see; really they're a "panther" that you can talk to about guiding you through the jungle, and a "bull" that wants to hang out and snack in the shade. You already know what those things are, so interacting with them is actually pretty easy.
This ties in with the discussion that was going on about "setting". You don't say a "desert planet" without the second assumption that this is "the Sahara" that you are describing.
You don't describe a "great plains", without also describing "The north american mid-west".
The problem with Elves is that you really don't need to describe "slender, pale, delicate, magical, aloof, long-living humanoids" more than once. Any further differences are probably pretty minor, and nearly useless.
Having yet another race of elves that are... "elitist" "isolated" "magical" "special" and the like doesn't actually do anything new. It's just an other bullshit elf race.
Honestly, what do people really need to know about elves that a new species can possibly introduce?
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.
While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
I'm not sure where you're going with this Judging Eagle.
In CtL the Keepers are as likely to appear as the Devil or alien greys as they are as unearthly, pale, faerie mistresses, because their individual natures are very much particular to them. They are unique magical entities, each, although in the games they play in Arcadia some are defeated and have some or all of their panoply subsumed into that of another Fair One. They aren't a "race" any more than the Great Old Ones are a "race," there aren't really unifying statements you can make about Azathoth and Cthulhu and Nyarlhotep, aside from "ancient and very bad to run into." Changelings each appear fairly differently as well because their unifying qualities are thematic more than anything else, as not every Lovecraftian monster looks the same.
As to entities like Pentex, Frank is right in that they're useless as factions you can interact with in direct political terms, and thus should not be treated as such, however you can still make (hostile) political (or, well, martial really) actions that keep them in check. Just because an elder being exists doesn't mean the world is over. In practice the Gentry in particular are much more limited than any Methuselah because they acquire character sheets with somewhat reasonable statistics once they enter the real world. It's only in Arcadia that they are unquestioned masters.
Last edited by TavishArtair on Fri Jul 17, 2009 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I must say that Changelings as Fallen seems a perfect fit, and quite simple to include (the fallen were somewhat lacking). You have weird mirror-demon powers, and are ostensibly either a mirror demon agent or an escapee (because it's even easier for humans to escape the Reflection than for goblins). Either case makes things interesting, and it probably won't be clear which a changeling is.
So go for it. You'll find nothing but Gloom down the rabbit hole, but there's a veritable Wonderland of humanity's sinister echoes through the looking glass.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
Having yet another race of elves that are... "elitist" "isolated" "magical" "special" and the like doesn't actually do anything new. It's just an other bullshit elf race.
The Elven race as in C:tL isn't just those. DnD elves can be what you described, but they are good elves whose morality exceeds humans, and are better than you in every way, and to be honest their downsides are almost never brought up.
C:tL aren't goody tooshoes who love the environment and hug trees. They're evil kidnapping vindictive fey who have a completely different concept of morality. They aren't a playable race, they are the villains. I think that Fey's whose morality is alien to our own and live in a twisted dark alternate world make pretty good villains.
I think that there might even be more than one type of Drow.
Changlings as Fugitives isn't bad, it also means that most of them will not want to act like Fey at all.
All this because I was talking about the AWoD project with someone else, and he asked about Changelings.
The whole... "baby talk" thing isn't one that he was familiar with though, probably b/c he has the other book for it; or that he doesn't allow that sort of stuff at his table. I'm not sure.
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Sat Jul 18, 2009 1:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
The Gaming Den; where Mathematics are rigorously applied to Mythology.
While everyone's Philosophy is not in accord, that doesn't mean we're not on board.
How's this for a start? The Fallen
“There is only one thing worse in the world than to be talked about. And that is to not be talked about.”
Those luminaries whose souls are scoured out to beyond the possibility of recognition by the harsh infernos of Limbo are left ageless shells, they are The Fallen. Sometimes a man can become so by coming into possession of some demonic trinket that slowly or calamitously steals away their existence. But more commonly this is the result of a child being stolen as away into the Dark Reflection by mirror goblins to toil away in the edifices of the dark king. These changelings usually are worked to death, and never see home but sometimes a luminary child will grow hard and strong, and bitter like long steeped tea. And they will someday find way to escape their soot covered prison and return triumphantly to their parents, to be clasped again by loving hands and to walk again amongst mothers and friends. But this is perhaps the cruelest aspect of fairy captivity, for the children so taken are not long sought after for powerful magics are wrought to remove the Fallen from the thoughts of those who care for them. It is an alienating experience for those lucky enough to escape servitude back to the mortal world – while the family they remember like as not still exists, it is rare indeed that this family has any familiarity with them in return.
A Fallen has an Infernal power source and a Ritual power schedule.
Fallen Starting Disciplines
- Core Discipline: Presence -
Awe (Basic Presence)
Dread Gaze (Basic Presence)
- Basic Disciplines -
Deny the Gauntlet (Basic Progress of Glass)
Mask of a Thousand Faces (Basic Obfuscaton)
Patience of the Mountain (Basic Fortitude)
Learn the Heart's Pain (Basic Names of the Blasphemies)
-Advanced Disciplines -
Majesty (Advanced Presence)
Desire Reflection (Obfuscate / Presence Devotion)
Story Inspiration: Portrait of Dorian Gray, She, Rip Van Winkle
Thymos wrote:To be honest C:tL best feature is probably introducing the fey as antagonists.
Psychotic elves who live in a dreamland whose morals are so far removed from ours they might as well not have any and are very powerful in our world and practically gods in theirs?
Sweet. Now if only DnD elves were like this.
This is where I disagree. One more bunch of demons, this time reskinned as creatures from the bleakest fairy tales and urban legends? Boooooring. They exist only to be stabbed in the face. Or to stab you, because I don't even know how much XP you need to have a chance against a sample fae from the corebook. After nWoD have already introduced two or three groups that are demons in everything but aestethics, this is not even original.
My sister likes old Changeling because it can be played non-serious (in other words, she likes it because it's the non-WoD WoD game, and thus it would probably function better not in the WoD) and is basically Magic Tea Party already.
However, she couldn't tell me what Frank was referring to by:
FrankTrollman wrote:
I mean, they had an entire faction of sexy underage foxes.
or put childlike qualities into characters in sexual situations?
and also had a team of seductresses who were seriously required to hold on to their childhood in order to continue being allowed to use their sex powers.
So what exactly are you referring to? Please tell me it's just hyperbole on your part (she says, while fully prepared to believe that White Wolf said "let's make a paedophile game, YEEEEEEAAAAAH!!")
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
