Opinions on Changeling: the Lost?

[Fucks]

A friend of mine plans to start a C:tL game soon. Before I decide if I join or not, I'd like to hear opinions by people who actually played in a game or can provide a solid review of the setting, theme, and core book.

[Username17]

A friend of mine plans to start a C:tL game soon. Before I decide if I join or not, I'd like to hear opinions by people who actually played in a game or can provide a solid review of the setting, theme, and core book.

I was in a gaming group that had some old school White Wolf fans in it when Changeling: the Lost came out. There was a big push to start a game of it, and we tried to do that. We failed.

This wasn't the sort of "no one can agree on a time because we all have school and jobs" type of failure to get a game going, this was all endemic to the system itself. Perhaps the biggest hurdle was nWoD's ham handed morality bullshit. Players who were totally willing to overlook White Wolf's vast array of mechanical problems were sent into apoplexisms of rage by the idea that their fairies would get boned for stealing. That was a total deal breaker by itself for two die hard White Wolf fans in my group.

But what it probably ultimately came down to is that there really isn't anything to do in nChangeling. I mean, I have a mad hate on for oChangeling because it presented mechanical incentives to play underage furry seductresses, and that is over the fucking line as far as I am concerned. But nChangeling didn't engender that kind of animosity in me. It didn't really engender... anything. I was genuinely perplexed as to what the fuck you were supposed to do or care about.

Almost as much as Promethean, the game is attempting to get you to strive towards... not being a character in the game. You're a Changeling, and the goal is to build up enough Clarity that you stop being one. And that's a really bad goal for a role playing game. You could stop being a Changeling just by not playing the game any more. Similarly, your immediate goal of escaping your abusive fairy step dad can usually best be accomplished by ignoring the plot and going on an unscripted road trip.

Changeling: the Lost really fell flat to me. I have no idea what I supposed to do or why I was supposed to care. There's various seasonal fairy courts and shit, but as a player character I can't really interact with any of that and my presented goal is to not even try. It sort of stands in between nMage and nPromethean - the incentives run against actually interacting with the plot or even the magic and there really aren't handholds for the players to grab on to.

-Username17

[talozin]

If a game about playing a group of Auschwitz escapees in Switzerland during WW2 appeals to you, then you would probably enjoy CtL.

You might think I'm exaggerating -- not the case! Changeling characters are literally people who have been kidnapped by heartless alien psychopaths who think nothing of abusing, reshaping, and killing them for their own entertainment; it's basically a flashback to reading the Mengele chapters of "The Nazi Doctors." I am not even using "literally" in the stupid sense here, that's really how it is.

After you've been turned into some part-human creature by the fantasy SS, and escaped into the real world, the game is about trying to pick up the pieces of your old life while you have to worry about fantasy Christoph Waltz coming around town to drag you back to fantasy Auschwitz (a phrase so bizarre that I actually have trouble typing it). Also, your place in the world has been taken by a magic doppleganger, so none of your friends and family realize you were gone, so picking up the pieces of your old life may be more difficult than it seems.

There really is no overarching conflict waiting for you in CtL other than "don't get caught by the bad guys". Now, that in itself is harder than it sounds, because the bad guys are not bound by the laws of reality and can do pretty much whatever MC wants them to, and they often have agents with magic powers at least equal to yours who can track your ass down if some bad guy really wants them to. But like Frank says, the most effective way to handle that is to not do Changeling things in Changeling places with other Changelings.

So if you want to do something else either you or MC will have to provide some motivation. Maybe the story is about fighting off the bad guys' attempts to seize you all. Maybe it's about preventing them from kidnapping anyone else. Maybe it's something else entirely; I've seen people play Changeling games that revolve entirely around the different ways in which their characters are fucked up broken people and how they try to deal with that, and the "bad guys" are almost entirely offstage. Whatever. Mostly, if you're into the psychodrama that "concentration camp survivors in Switzerland" implies, then give it a go. If that sounds like the exact opposite of fun to you, then you cannot possibly run fast enough away from this game.

[TheFlatline]

I read through nChangeling twice and literally couldn't figure out the point of the game.

I guess you're all former kidnap victims on the lamb from your terrifying fae masters and you bond together because... fuck if I know, trauma support group?

I guess your doppleganger took over your life too so you can't go back, which means that you... fuck if I know. Hide? Hope the mental trauma recedes?

Even the introduction fiction leaves me at a complete fucking loss. Even in oChangeling if you shied away from child-fucking you could at least boil the game down to a feudal fantasy urban hybrid setting. If you wanted to boil things down to themes purely, oChangeling was about the dreams and nightmares of children. And that's something with some traction (other RPGs have covered this).

nChangeling? Fuck if I know. I don't even know what the coiterie or whatever it's called is supposed to do once they get together.

[Chamomile]

I do not think it is impossible to make a fun game where "stop being the sort of person the game is about because it sucks" is the basic premise. There's a lot of good drama to be had from recovering from and overcoming horrible trauma, and the end result is usually that my character has clawed their way into a life that is basically the same quality as the one I actually lead in real life.

That said, if you have made a party-based game where your character's pathos is immediately defeated by having a party or where the smartest thing to do is to move to Vegas and start over, that's obviously bad. The problem with nChangeling and nPromethean is less that the goal is to stop being the kind of magical creature you are as the game's premise, and more that this goal is either immediately achieved by playing the game at all (all Prometheans have friends because they are in a party) or by avoiding playing the game at all from an in-character perspective (all Changelings become difficult or impossible to track down if they avoid using magic powers, hanging out with other Changelings, or trying to reclaim their old life specifically, and instead just start over two towns over).

[FatR]

I do not think it is impossible to make a fun game where "stop being the sort of person the game is about because it sucks" is the basic premise.

Well, Shadowrun exists. And unless your Shadowrun characters are literally criminally insane, their default goal is to make enough dosh to set themselves for life and stop being shadowrunners. The same goes for any heist games and a large percentage of military-themed games independent of a system, really.

So the apparent accusation that CtD offers you an endgame goal of stopping being what you currently are and retirting for a better life is not valid.

The accusation that this "better life" is the life that players already led might be valid, from marketing standpoint, if not from artistical one, because you're trying to sell your game to escapists, after all. And to do this they should want to escape to your imaginary world, not from.

And what CtD is truly guilty of is that little problem, that the things into which the game wants you to engage do not and cannot make you any closer to the supposed end goal. The big bads are outright stated to be impossible to take out no matter what you do, you cannot prevent them from accessing the normal world, cannot put fear into them, and cannot strike deals with them. At most you can take out a couple (if GM really likes you), but as they are eldritch abominations, who says they are not respawning anyway. So if you want to ever return to normal life, your best bet is to fuck off, stop doing Changeling things, lie low and hope that the lightning won't strike the same place twice.

Also, if you don't give a fuck about the supposed end goal, and want to do Changeling things, the fact is, these things are not particularly interesting and rewarding. Did the world really needed yet another game about supernatural street gang warfare?

[Grek]

The difference between Changling and Shadowrun is that in Shadowrun, your retirement plan is "Pull off this big heist and then retire on the money" while in Changling it's "Stop doing interesting things." It's like a game about heroin withdrawal, where your goal in life is to try very very hard to avoid your dealer so you can get off the smack.

[Chamomile]

I've actually gotten an idea just now for a Changeling-esque game. For starters, the bad guys need a bunch of putties who are throwaway mooks that the main characters totally can defeat, however their main job is mostly just to discover and slow down the PCs. The big bads are, themselves, extremely difficult to defeat and do not die when they are killed anyway, so the game is fundamentally one of evasion.

The trick is, the bad guys can track you by your powers. Not by your using the powers, but by your having them at all. You can't just get rid of your powers, it takes time and effort and questing. Maybe there are special objects that act as power sponges, or special leylines that can suck up some of your power. Maybe there are magical beasts in the nightmarish Otherworld where your masters live, and you need to kill them for the ritual components to a spell that drains some of your power (which of course also means going into the place where your masters have more power, more influence, and keener perceptions, so you want to find out as much about where the monster is and how to kill it in the mortal world and only pop into Otherworld to do the deed itself if at all possible).

And of course, as the game goes on, you are shedding powers. So there's no need for enemies to scale up at all. At first you might be a fair match for the big fairy bounty hunters themselves, but after you bleed off a couple of powers, you hardly stand a chance any longer. Towards the end, even the minions will be a tough fight. That'd be a pretty neat game. I would play it.

[Ancient History]

I've been thinking about it, and Changeling: the Lost and Promethean are really the expression of one of the most minor - and early dropped - elements of Vampire: the Masquerade. With most of the rest of the supernaturals - faeries, mages, werewolves, wraiths - you're either born that way or you die and turn into a ghost, there's not a lot of middle ground. Vampire though is all about having once been human and having changed - and one of the minor elements of Vampire was a) becoming mortal again or b) achieving Golconda (which might make you mortal again). It was weird back then, and nobody really paid that much attention to it because I think they quickly realized there wasn't a lot of fun to be had in going from cool vamp with fangbanger groupies to the snivelling gothic punk asshole you once were, but you could sort of see how in a chronicle of one that the whole redemption/enlightenment story arc might have some appeal. And during Gehenna/Time of Judgment they revisited the whole golconda thing (with mainly a "fuck you lolz" approach, like everything at the end of oWoD). So I don't think this came out of the blue, I just think it's a terrible idea, especially if you want to play with friends.

[Voss]

I do not think it is impossible to make a fun game where "stop being the sort of person the game is about because it sucks" is the basic premise.

Well, Shadowrun exists. And unless your Shadowrun characters are literally criminally insane, their default goal is to make enough dosh to set themselves for life and stop being shadowrunners. The same goes for any heist games and a large percentage of military-themed games independent of a system, really.

Well, sort of. But those genres (and Shadowrun) have a lot of 'pull you back in' hooks, whether its old enemies looking you up, old allies calling in favors, or the 'one last run' cliche. To go with the military genre for an analogy; O'Neil can totally retire after nuking Ra in the face, but when Apophis comes waltzing in, the Air Force comes knocking on his door. And then Sokar takes up the next plot hook, Baal after that, and... well, maybe it is time to retire the campaign because everyone is burnt out, but there is still theoretical space to tell stories and keep playing. Having an end goal isn't necessarily a motive to stop playing, unless you're also shedding everything that makes the character viable, such as knowledge, skills and abilities.

[Fucks]

I do not think it is impossible to make a fun game where "stop being the sort of person the game is about because it sucks" is the basic premise. There's a lot of good drama to be had from recovering from and overcoming horrible trauma, and the end result is usually that my character has clawed their way into a life that is basically the same quality as the one I actually lead in real life.

Sounds reasonable... but wouldn't it mean that Frank Trollman wasn't able to grasp the basic premise of the game?

[Scrivener]

I was in a CtL game with a bunch of hipsters for about six months, it was strange. The group I played with didn't really play RPGs much, and that made it better.

It has some really weird things built into the system; you are basically playing a character that was molested by Cthulhu. Even weirder, you enjoyed getting diddled by the great old ones. This makes it work as an abuse survivor simulator/support group rpg, but to me, and I'd imagine many others, it was uncomfortable to play.

Also as mentioned by others, there isn't much to do, but that is helped by the fact that you can't do much. Never in my time playing CtL did I think "it would be great if I could use power X!" From my experience you sit around and talk to other changelings about how much you hates/loved being groped by Shub-Niggurath, and those changelings may or may not of hated/loved it as much as you.

There was one thing to do explained in detail; you could hunt down your fetch, and cause everyone at the table to feel uncomfortable. Your character literally stalks their old self, kills them. Then the rest of the group watches as this character tries to explain to their family how this experience with Uncle Nyarlathotep changed them in ways the family can't see, and how they didn't even notice that he person they had been dealing with was a hollow husk of a person, and how they lived through this experience and they are better and special now because of it.

So for a rape victim survivor game out gets 4.5/5 for a game you'd want to play it gets 1.5/5

[The Yann Waters]

Almost as much as Promethean, the game is attempting to get you to strive towards... not being a character in the game. You're a Changeling, and the goal is to build up enough Clarity that you stop being one. And that's a really bad goal for a role playing game. You could stop being a Changeling just by not playing the game any more. Similarly, your immediate goal of escaping your abusive fairy step dad can usually best be accomplished by ignoring the plot and going on an unscripted road trip.

That must have been either a house rule or some fundamental misconception, because Changeling: The Lost as written doesn't include any option for ever becoming human again, let alone focus on that. Clarity doesn't represent humanity or morality but rather sanity, threatened for the most part by subconscious triggers based on the character's traumatic past: basically, the changelings' grasp on reality is weakened by acting like their captors did, murdering or looting without care. The mechanic admittedly doesn't account for the sheer diversity of possible durances in Faerie as well as it could, but there's nothing inherently illogical about its premise. And maxing out the rating would only make a character exceptionally lucid and perceptive even by mortal standards.

Granted, the official theme of "finding your way home" is extremely open-ended, since it pretty much just means figuring out what to do with your life after coming back to Earth, but the choice of Courts provides at least some guidelines on how to go about that, each one promoting a specific approach. Want to enjoy the best possible life with a little help from your new abilities? Spring. Want to fight monsters and get some payback on the True Fae? Summer. Want to explore fae mysteries and the potential of magic? Autumn. Want to keep the changeling society hidden in plain view and yourself out of harm's way? Winter.

Also, the changeling politics in that system of Courts and freeholds not only offer protection against backstabbing through their magically binding oaths of fealty, but additionally constitute a mystical ritual which keeps the Fae at bay. So it's understandable that those who don't participate will commonly end up viewed with suspicion.

(I meant to mention something about this a month ago, but forgot.)

[JonSetanta]

White Wolf should stick to vampires. That was my fav.

[TheFlatline]

Almost as much as Promethean, the game is attempting to get you to strive towards... not being a character in the game. You're a Changeling, and the goal is to build up enough Clarity that you stop being one. And that's a really bad goal for a role playing game. You could stop being a Changeling just by not playing the game any more. Similarly, your immediate goal of escaping your abusive fairy step dad can usually best be accomplished by ignoring the plot and going on an unscripted road trip.

That must have been either a house rule or some fundamental misconception, because Changeling: The Lost as written doesn't include any option for ever becoming human again, let alone focus on that. Clarity doesn't represent humanity or morality but rather sanity, threatened for the most part by subconscious triggers based on the character's traumatic past: basically, the changelings' grasp on reality is weakened by acting like their captors did, murdering or looting without care. The mechanic admittedly doesn't account for the sheer diversity of possible durances in Faerie as well as it could, but there's nothing inherently illogical about its premise. And maxing out the rating would only make a character exceptionally lucid and perceptive even by mortal standards.

Granted, the official theme of "finding your way home" is extremely open-ended, since it pretty much just means figuring out what to do with your life after coming back to Earth, but the choice of Courts provides at least some guidelines on how to go about that, each one promoting a specific approach. Want to enjoy the best possible life with a little help from your new abilities? Spring. Want to fight monsters and get some payback on the True Fae? Summer. Want to explore fae mysteries and the potential of magic? Autumn. Want to keep the changeling society hidden in plain view and yourself out of harm's way? Winter.

Also, the changeling politics in that system of Courts and freeholds not only offer protection against backstabbing through their magically binding oaths of fealty, but additionally constitute a mystical ritual which keeps the Fae at bay. So it's understandable that those who don't participate will commonly end up viewed with suspicion.

(I meant to mention something about this a month ago, but forgot.)

Naturally Changeling would never address how to become human. All the way back to the original Vampire there was Golconda and becoming human again, and they only gave *very* vague ideas of how you reach Golconda. That's supposed to be "up to the storyteller".

And you still don't really answer why you wouldn't just say "fuck you I opt out" and go start your life again somewhere else. At least with Werewolves you have the whole wolf pack thing, and Vampires you can make an argument that isolation from other vampires ends up driving you a little batshit because you never get to "let your hair down" as it were, but if your whole purpose is to rebuild a new life, why get sucked into the whole fealty bullshit anyway?

And again, what's the fucking point to Changeling the Lost? As I said, I read the book twice and still couldn't figure out what the work flow of a game of changeling was supposed to be.

[Longes]

To expand on what do Changelings do. All Changelings are split into four groups (courts), each of which does a certain thing (I don't remember which one does which).

(Summer?) think that Changelings should live the life to the fullest, and are basicly hippies.
(Autumn?) think that Changelings should scare the shit out of humans, so that humans wouldn't go to the places where actual scary things live.
(Spring?) think that Changelings should go and kick the fairy ass.
(Winter?) think that Changelings should hide and study fairy ass in great detail.

[Koumei]

You got Summer and Spring around the wrong way, but basically that is correct and not even an exaggeration of Flanderism. That's all the thought that went into it.

[Longes]

The real fun starts when Changelings run into Acanthus mages, because Fate magic can fuck with Changeling's pledges.

[The Yann Waters]

Naturally Changeling would never address how to become human. All the way back to the original Vampire there was Golconda and becoming human again, and they only gave *very* vague ideas of how you reach Golconda. That's supposed to be "up to the storyteller".

And you still don't really answer why you wouldn't just say "fuck you I opt out" and go start your life again somewhere else. At least with Werewolves you have the whole wolf pack thing, and Vampires you can make an argument that isolation from other vampires ends up driving you a little batshit because you never get to "let your hair down" as it were, but if your whole purpose is to rebuild a new life, why get sucked into the whole fealty bullshit anyway?

And again, what's the fucking point to Changeling the Lost? As I said, I read the book twice and still couldn't figure out what the work flow of a game of changeling was supposed to be.

The Winter Masques supplement mentions in passing, in the optional rules for getting rid of kiths (the subtypes of the basic splats), that while the same methods won't work for removing whole seemings (the basic splats themselves), at the GM's discretion there might exist some way for a PC concept to revolve around an epic quest to remove Wyrd entirely, "effectively becoming human again" in the end. That's the extent of any published support for the idea. Changelings don't even have their equivalent of Golconda as a concept.

Just walking away is a valid choice, as long as you keep in mind that the supernatural won't leave the character alone simply because of that: facing, say, a group of privateer slavers by oneself poses a far more serious risk than banding together for security (especially after swearing oaths of camaraderie that punish betrayal by death). A significant minority of the Lost don't join Courts for various reasons of their own, after all, although that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't play their role in the activities of the local freehold. Building a new mundane life is as much of an option as trying to recover the old life from before Faerie, or preferring to concentrate as much as possible on life in the changeling society instead. There's no changing the fact that the characters are fae now, but that only means they have all the same options open as mortals do and then some. Strictly speaking, no changeling needs to earn a paycheck because they can all conjure wealth out of thin air, but a regular job with human co-workers would obviously help them to stay sane. So seeking to maintain a balance between the weird and the mundane isn't a bad idea.

The Courts of the Lost are purely a changeling tradition, founded by the fugitives on Earth by negotiating pacts of patronage and protection with aspects of the mortal world which don't hold sway in Faerie. (For example, the cycle of the seasons doesn't exist properly over there, because "summer" or "winter" only appears at the whim of whichever Fae rules the region.) They're one part philosophical movement, one part support group, and one part underground resistance. Aside from forming a massive ritual which helps to conceal the members of a given freehold from the Fae through allegiance to local leaders who agree to share their authority in a thoroughly un-Fae manner, they offer shelter, understanding, company of like-minded people, and access to exclusive resources. And there actually are more of them than the four for the seasons: those are merely the most prominent ones in North America and Western Europe. Sufficiently powerful PCs could eventually establish new ones, as well.

As said, the game's goal of rebuilding a life and finding out where you belong is all very open-ended. The fetches are probably the most common factor in any changeling's return, and even there you have a variety of alternatives: artificial people though they are, they are nevertheless still people, and not always worse than the changelings. Depending on the circumstances, your character might ignore the fetch altogether, kill it, strike some bargain with it, or figure out how to merge with it. Of course, for further complications, it's possible that, for instance, the fetch is currently in jail with a long criminal record which will cause trouble for the PC. For easier solutions, the fetch might have perished before the PC came back, or perhaps was never left behind in the first place.

The real fun starts when Changelings run into Acanthus mages, because Fate magic can fuck with Changeling's pledges.

It's a pity that Rites of Spring didn't elaborate on how that's supposed to function mechanically. The crossover rule only states that Fate magic can influence fae pledges in the same manner as it can do with its own oaths... but that doesn't explain at all how much leeway Alter Oath has for changing the balance of the pledge aspects in practice.

By the way, your description for the Autumn Court matches more closely the Scarecrow Ministry, a specific entitlement (a "noble" order which acts as an advanced splat option, although their actual nobility may vary). Autumn has an affinity for fear, like all Courts have their signature emotions, but as a whole they really are the scholars and sages of the Lost. Or if you prefer, Winter corresponds to Rogue, Autumn to Wizard, Summer to Fighter, and Spring to Cleric (all right, that last one's the most dubious comparison, but they do have social charisma and healing powers).

[Longes]

Autumn has an affinity for fear

I'd think "Court of Fear" would have that.

Really, I think Changelings are supposed to act for the same reasons all WoD characters do - investigate mysteries, fight the evil monsters in the closets, run from bigger evil monsters. Either someone gives you a quest, or you do it just because "Why not, I have time to kill". You know, like the real scooby gang does.

[The Yann Waters]

Really, I think Changelings are supposed to act for the same reasons all WoD characters do - investigate mysteries, fight the evil monsters in the closets, run from bigger evil monsters. Either someone gives you a quest, or you do it just because "Why not, I have time to kill". You know, like the real scooby gang does.

That's about it. Promethean is a rare exception in that it comes with a built-in endgame. Otherwise you're expected to make your own fun.

(That's not to say there isn't a possible endgame implied in CtL's set-up, though. Travelling back to Faerie and beating up your Keeper there is a perfectly viable conclusion to a campaign, as described in Equinox Road.)