@Sammi said:

The natural leaders have always been clumped more towards the Fairest. The concept of charisma as a divine gift appears in multiple traditions, and the Divine Right of Kings bit has been important from the Sidhe through the nWoD Fairest. The new conception of the Fairest is focusing heavily on this leader trope.

The Fairest weren't the Sidhe, that's sort of exactly my issue with this. This writeup is a writeup of the Sidhe.

Another way of putting it: this writeup makes those changelings who feel compassion and ethics more keenly than others into the Fairest.

But why? That's the exact opposite of the 1E Fairest. That's my quibble here.

You're disappointed that the game is getting reworked and, in the process, is becoming something different from what the first edition was.

Yes, as I said, I'm specifically disappointed that my favorite 1E splat has been given a complete 180 into something else. I'm perfectly fine with the game being reworked. I think this specific reworking is dumb.

Affect, not determine. A character's appearance is still going to be influenced more by their kith than their seeming. You could play a gorgeous, haughty Ogre.

That is really not what is suggested by the Kith document, at all. The Kith document basically has the Kith as a texture that's overlaid on top of a Seeming's physical archetype.

Every splat limits character concepts. It's part of the point of having a game with rules and theme in the first place, instead of a free-for-all. Like @HelloRaptor, I've been milling potential concepts with the released Seemings and have found no shortage of possibilities.

I'm sure there's no shortage of possibilities! But there are still fewer than there were in 1E, and to me that's a strange revision to make.

Yeah, Rose and Matt aren't working on Mage or Changeling, so I don't think one can blame Beast or Demon for the slow progress there.

What do people think of Beast? I really like the new revisions.

@Sammi said:

Except that it's not obvious. Ogres don't corner the market on being big and hulking. Fairest aren't the only ones who can be beautiful and terrible. You can skulk without being a Darkling (as I said, a lot of my Darkling ideas are more Beast with these changes). You just want to translate everything that would have been in each Seeming in the first version to this one.

In the first draft of the Kith document, they absolutely do. The physical description of each Kith by seeming is 100% in alignment with 1E Seemings.

@HelloRaptor said:

While I find your objection to the Fairest changes much more reasonable, and understandable, than most others (in that they are quite different than 1e Fairest, not that they're now Sidhe, which is not at all the case), your Beast example doesn't really make any sense.

You're addressing a different person's post! I only made the ones about the Fairest.

@Sammi said:

Because a designer wanted to do something new when reworking the game. Vampire and Werewolf have both been substantially changed, and Demon bears no resemblance except for a name. Did you expect Changeling to be any different?

Again, I'm just saying this is a change I personally don't like. I'm not saying HOW DARE THEY!!! or anything.

A better way to think of it: kith is the fabric, and the changeling's choice of Seeming cuts a pattern out of it. What you are in Arcadia is the raw material, and you forge yourself via your choice to escape (this falls in to one of six archetypes).

Okay, but my point is that if you want to play -- visually! -- a big hulking Ogre, or a terrible-beautiful Fairest, or a skulking Darkling, you now have to have a specific personality type. This was not the case before. If you can only cut out those 'patterns' if you're a specific type of person, it limits character choices. This just seems obvious to me.

The major change is that you have to make the choice to escape (no randomly being let go) and that this choice defines you as much as the whims of your Keeper. So changelings who don't fit their Seeming are out. I don't see any limitations other than that.

I like giving them some more agency. I don't like that -- and this is based on the Kith document, where Wizened are always patchwork people and Beasts are always animalistic and Fairest are always beautiful and Ogres are always big hulking brutes, et cetera, no matter which Kith you choose -- these very specific types of agency now define how your character looks.

@Sammi said:

The natural leaders have always been clumped more towards the Fairest. The concept of charisma as a divine gift appears in multiple traditions, and the Divine Right of Kings bit has been important from the Sidhe through the nWoD Fairest. The new conception of the Fairest is focusing heavily on this leader trope.

The Fairest weren't the Sidhe, that's sort of exactly my issue with this. This writeup is a writeup of the Sidhe.

Another way of putting it: this writeup makes those changelings who feel compassion and ethics more keenly than others into the Fairest.

But why? That's the exact opposite of the 1E Fairest. That's my quibble here.

You're disappointed that the game is getting reworked and, in the process, is becoming something different from what the first edition was.

Yes, as I said, I'm specifically disappointed that my favorite 1E splat has been given a complete 180 into something else. I'm perfectly fine with the game being reworked. I think this specific reworking is dumb.

Affect, not determine. A character's appearance is still going to be influenced more by their kith than their seeming. You could play a gorgeous, haughty Ogre.

That is really not what is suggested by the Kith document, at all. The Kith document basically has the Kith as a texture that's overlaid on top of a Seeming's physical archetype.

Every splat limits character concepts. It's part of the point of having a game with rules and theme in the first place, instead of a free-for-all. Like @HelloRaptor, I've been milling potential concepts with the released Seemings and have found no shortage of possibilities.

I'm sure there's no shortage of possibilities! But there are still fewer than there were in 1E, and to me that's a strange revision to make.

@Sammi said:

Where I disagree with Theno is that he thinks that isn't nuanced. I think that's hella nuanced. It cuts out some of the "pretty folk" and focuses more on the organizers, the orators, and the commanders.

I've talked with Theno about this and we're of one mind on it. My big issue is that those organizers, orators and commanders were Wizened in 1E, and the Fairest were something entirely different. They were the fairest in the sense of 'most fae', the most prone to the madness of Arcadia as much as they were the most pure incarnations of its beauty. Beautiful and terrible, like the queen gazing into the magic mirror.

Their cruelty, or at least propensity towards it, was their defining quality. Their coldness, their distance from human emotion -- whereas this writeup makes it so that they feel compassion and morality more keenly than other Changelings.

These 2E Fairest as written could be perfectly interesting characters, but they're the most enormous divergence from 1E so far and as they were my favorite 1E Seeming, I'm pretty disappointed. I'm hoping a second draft will present a broader spectrum of character options.

Generally speaking, I like the idea of uncoupling Seeming and Kith but I hate the highly restrictive way the new Seemings have thus far been written. If they were just designations that'd be fine, but it's implied they still affect your physical appearance the way they did in 1E, so at the moment it really limits character concepts.