Changeling: The Lost

[kyrielle]

Disclaimer: I have now read bits of this including bits of character generation, but not everything, and I have not played it, run it, or constructed a character in it.

The book is readable, printing-wise, and still looks nice. I didn't know WW knew how to do that. Yay!

The setting is gloriously fascinating.

And it is hamstrung by the rules, as per usual. Start with a world that is malleable and flexible and magic could have done almost anything. And then create patterns of magic so rigid that it's like slamming iron bars (metal chosen on purpose!) around your characters. Never this without that, never this at all, etc. It's begging to be house-ruled. Or just discarded entirely and run in some variant of Hero. (I say that, btw, as someone who doesn't enjoy using Hero, at least for Champions, because I find the flexibility of character creation daunting. But it would be appropriate to this setting.)

I'd say Deliria, but Deliria would need a slathering of house rules to do this as well (or more accurately, new Legacies, Wyrds, and possibly Accords).

This may, in part, be my mind taking games where they was not meant to go, the same way I can happily envision using Deliria to recreate the world of Jane Lindskold's Changer. It may be intended for urban fairy-tales, but it can do urban myth. Only in this case, I went drifting off into the setting, and then got yanked back to reality (not quite the one I'd expected) by the anchor-chain of the rules. *frowns* I suspect it's very playable as-is, but it doesn't fit its setting as well as I'd hoped.

Comments

[oneira.livejournal.com]

My group agrees. I enjoy the setting and background. We'll steal those, and some of the magic and stuff, but apply our own rules and system.

[kyrielle]

Hehe. Yeah, that makes the most sense to me also.

[nix-guru.livejournal.com]

I don't like it that they have made Kith optional.

But, I was a bit of a fan of Changeling: The Dreaming.

[kyrielle]

I like CtD and will probably continue to play it. CtL is really an entirely different game, IMO. I thought the fact that they included kith at all was silly - it didn't really 'fit' with what they'd shown, IMO. (Note that you still have a 'type' which is sort of a meta-kith anyway, as I understand it.)

[(Anonymous)]

There are seemings, and each seeming has a number of associated with. So the Beast seeming incorporates all kinds of part animal fae, with kiths that are very broad sub-types.

At least according to the writers, there's nothing stopping you from taking the kiths of one seeming and applying it to another seeming. So you could have an Ogre Dancer, or a Fairest Waterborn and play the lady of the lake.

[unseenlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Thing is? I think the 'weird laid out powers' form of the magic fits how it was designed, actually. The basic, in setting conceit for magic is that you, or your Keeper, or other Changelings like you, or whatever, made a contract with something esoteric. It could be a season, it could be something like 'smoke' or 'darkness' or an abstract principle. The clauses of this contract lay out the powers you get by calling on this contract, and each power has a loophole you can use to get around paying the price in glamour. The True Fae's vulnerability to Iron is tied in to this; they made a contract with iron, and broke it, and -now it is pissed at them-. I think that's awesome, personally.

Besides contracts, there's another much more free form magic style in the book as well; the pledge-crafting system. IT's sort of like making a mini-contract of its own. Each side of a pledge has to add up to zero, but in return you might get anything from a minor skill bonus, to being better looking, to turning someone completely inept into a master of Kung Fu. It has greater benefits if it's being used on a mortal, but you can enter into pacts with other Changelings as well.

I want to see it in play, but I'm going to try it as is.

[kyrielle]

Yes, I do understand that. But the contracts are pre-defined, rigid, and if you take dot 3 (as usual with WW) then you have dots 1 and 2. This really doesn't match their description of the fae magic which suggests the contracts are variable in nature. These are very flexible within their bounds, but the "within their bounds" seems very out of place.

If someone I know runs it as-is, I'll try it. My local groups don't play White Wolf, so that may or may not happen. But on first blush, it is (as with CtD, for that matter), White Wolf presenting a very flexible world and then immediately de-flexing it.

Maybe it's just because I like more creative latitude. But to me, what they presented system-wise is a weak shadow of what they presented setting-wise.

[unseenlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Only for the basic contracts, seeming contracts, and Court contracts. Goblin Contracts can be purchased individually. You can buy a two-dot Goblin Contract without ever buying a one dot, or a three dot Goblin Contract without ever getting a 1 or 2. So yeah, th basics are standard, but with the Goblin contracts and pledges, I think it's a lot more flexible than C:tD.

Plus, I expect we'll see more Contracts and ways to make your own contracts in the later books in the line, since that's how the limited splats tend to work.

[eevieivy.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting and makes me wish I could read through it without buying it. ;)

[theroguex.livejournal.com]

In the World of Darkness (both classical and new), Mages were those blessed with dynamic magic. Changelings magic has always been rigid and structured, as has all other magical systems in the game. Magic really can do almost anything in the WoD, it's just that Changelings don't have access to it. They have access to their own little type of magic, but it's static, not dynamic like that of the Mages. Even they suffer by using their magic too blatantly. That's the whole point of WoD - an infinitely shapeable world constricted by a collective conceived reality into a finite container.

If that doesn't fit how you'd want to run the game, then by all means, house-rule away! :D But then again, at that point, you're no longer in the WoD...

[kyrielle]

You misunderstand me. I am not saying you should be able to buy a power that can do a lot, very flexibly, as you do in mage.

I am saying that the setting, AS THEY DESCRIBE IT, suggests that magic is very flexible in terms of what it can be (that is, it would still be small discrete abilities, but they'd be flexiblein how they can appear and what they can be).

I am saying that, in my opinion, the system they wrote is badly matched to the setting they wrote.

If I just wanted a more flexible game, I'd go play Deliria, which is a better system. But I want their setting, what I understood it to be when I read the setting bits - and IMO, the system is horrid for that.

[(Anonymous)]

Admittedly, I haven't read the new Changeling yet. I do acknowledge, however, that White Wolf is very good about making those sorts of mistakes.. heh.

The people who write their novels are particularly fond of having characters do things that aren't technically possible by the rules. And then, WW goes and writes a supplement for those novels, with those events being canon, but without adjusting the rules to make those things possible.

[theroguex.livejournal.com]

That anonymous reply was from me.. haha.. it apparently didn't log me in.

[kyrielle]

Hee. Whups! And it's so true. It's possible that after they release 10-15 supplements it will do what they described, but - they described it in the main rulebook. And it sounded so cool. And after you strap the system on, some of the things that sounded cool just aren't there any more. If the fae magic really has no rhyme or reason but contracts, then how come you always have to have the 1-dot contract to get the 2-dot contract (in some types of contracts, if the other commenters are correct; I still haven't fully read the system, I got disgusted and wandered off)?

They describe a world where there might be an infinite variety of little magics, some common, some uncommon, but no two people quite alike. Then they write a standard WW system. This doesn't mesh well. The setting begs for not dot-driven powers but some kind of merits system where you just buy what you want, with some guidelines of what point level certain things are. IMO. Ahwell. I'll probably get used to it, if I play it, I'm just grouchy because the setting made me want to play and the system didn't seem to me to back it. :P

[eberg.livejournal.com]

The individual powers in each list are "clauses" in the same contract. So the five powers on the Darkness list are all aspects of a single contract with Darkness. So, they are flexible as described, you just don't get access to all aspects of the contract at once. In a sense, you slowly master it. The catches provide an added complication, loopholes in each clause of the contract to avoid payment.

Overall, I think it is a nice setting conceit to describe the usual Storytelling power structure.