What's That Game's About?

[Miss Demeanor]

I'll say right off, referencing something mentioned earlier in the thread... you can very much play a Vampire without engaging overmuch in the politics and manipulations. There's a reason that there are two notable Clans that are generally considered -bad at social interactions-. I tend to play Gangrel for just this reason. I don't have to be all politicky and manipulative. I can just be a walking beatstick and have fun with that while still having a position within the Praxis and still being involved in the sphere.

That said... Changeling still offers the MOST options, to me. They have a wide variety of Seemings and Kiths to pick from. Entitlements abound. There's... so many possible Courts. To me its like the difference between booting up Borderlands, where you would have 4 different characters to pick from with a few possible different heads or skins that could be applied for a bit of individuality, and Skyrim, where there's like 10 playable races PLUS an almost limitless ability to customize from there.

[The Tree of Woe]

The core of Vampire: the Masquerade is the Jyhad, the game that vampires have been playing with each other since time immemorial for various reasons, up to and including being really freaking bored. You might have personal reasons for playing in the Jyhad, or you might have obligations from on high, but everybody plays. Or gets played.

In D&D you are adventurers, but it's the reasons you adventure that define the game.

[Thenomain]

@Miss-Demeanor said:

you can very much play a Vampire without engaging overmuch in the politics

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

everybody plays. Or gets played.

That these two statements are not exclusive nor contradictory means I think you two are onto something.

[Wizz]

@Thenomain said:

(Pulling this over from an advertising thread that is, really, about classic Changeling. As you can see in a moment, this isn't.)

@Wizz said:

@Thenomain said:

I like playing nChangeling because it offers a low-power campaign type that I miss, where what you are messes up what you want to do. Vampires are Vampires. Werewolves are Werewolves, Mages are Mages. These are their job descriptions.

Just as an aside, this is definitely true of oMage/Vamp/Werewolf, but nWerewolf-- to me, when it's played well-- definitely dials back on "I am noble monster, I fight evil" and is more "regular dude/dudette who has some bizarre part-time obligations, struggles to find a normal place in society against new and unfamiliar instincts" as well.

Really, they all have exactly as much depth as you give them.

That is interesting (honestly interesting, as the kind that makes me want to respond), considering that in another thread someone (@Coin) said that in nWerewolf, you were either doing the things that Renown demands or you aren't playing Werewolf.

I think that's more true than what you state. You can play someone who is Joe Blow, Sudden Werewolf. You can even play in a troupe with the same goal, just like you can play a Changeling chronicle about storming the gates of Arcadia, but I don't see these games being about this. It's an option, not the thrust.

But that's my point exactly. In Werewolf 2.0, the Wolf Must Hunt. Yep. Werewolves are much more driven than other supes. But something I think has been overlooked in these discussions is the new Harmony mechanic, which is very different from other morality sliders in that it's actually of most benefit to you when you're in the middle-- Harmony 5 or 6, which represents living in both worlds (High Harmony meaning you are too human and have issues changing shape, entering the Shadow, etc. while low Harmony means you are too spirit-like and pick up taboos, get trapped in the Shadow, are penalized for interacting with people, etc.). You are actually encouraged to be Joe Blow.

So yeah, a lot of your life revolves around the Hunt; the Pure raze your brother's bar, your brother declares Siskur Dah and your pack disappears for a week into an alien realm to seek vengeance. But then you come back, and your neighbors don't look you in the eye anymore and you suddenly just want to rip some arms off on the subway. So you do human shit-- spend time at a ball game, hang out with your old school buddies, go dancing-- and the edge comes back off. You have to be a normal dude sometimes, or you become a monster.

Both things are now, mechanically and socially, playing Werewolf.

[Thenomain]

@Wizz said:

You are actually encouraged to be Joe Blow.

It looks to me like you're encouraged to be Joe oChangeling, neither too much in the Dreaming nor too much in the Banality, pulled in two directions at once. This, also, informs "what the game is about".

To me, Joe Blow is an everyman. Already it looks like nWerewolf v2.0 Chronicles (kidding) is making it even harder to be fight the role given to them by simply being a Werewolf.

[Wizz]

So how is that really different from nChangeling, where True Fae/Privateers and Clarity loss can and do interrupt your barrista's every day life and drag them back into the weirdness?

And yes, it is meant to be harder. But, it no longer takes away the option to fight. Just being a werewolf and doing werewolf things are breaking points towards Spirit, yeah, but you can play a low-Renown, high-Harmony dude who goes out into the woods once a month to run around in wolf skin. There's nothing forcing you to participate in Uratha society other than mutual protection and strength, which is really the same idea behind Freeholds and Courts, right?

[Miss Demeanor]

You're trying to form opinions based on partial information. Until the book is released, anything you say is conjecture at best. You can't quote nwod Changeling then attempt to match it to 2E Werewolf. Pick a format, man. nWoD or 2E?

[Thenomain]

@Wizz said:

So how is that really different from nChangeling, where True Fae/Privateers and Clarity loss can and do interrupt your barrista's every day life and drag them back into the weirdness?

Werewolf v2's is codified; you cannot escape it any more than you can escape not having a "Cast Fireball" ability as a thief in D&D. It's encoded as what your character is.

Changeling's is a decision of the GM or the players based upon what part of the setting they want to engage. You're not penalized—in fact, you're rewarded—for not engaging in the weirdness. This should tell the GM: All Weirdness, All the Time, but it's a decision of the table, not of the game.

In a bit I'll explain some of where the game doesn't particularly care.

There's nothing forcing you to participate in Uratha society other than mutual protection and strength, which is really the same idea behind Freeholds and Courts, right?

Theoretically. The number of times I've read the Changeling book, the whole Freeholds & Courts idea lives in a duality, ideas hidden in larger sections. Others obviously needed edited out but never were.

Did you know that where trods lead to the real world is where glamour tends to pool? Which should immediately set off alarm bells, as this has nothing to do with how glamour works, but this artifact is still in the fluff text about Freeholds.

Did you know that you could tell which Court's territory you're in by the psychotropic nature of the part of the Hedge that you're in? If you went "buh, what?", then you're right. This, plus the way the Fealty Pledge is written, and you can tell that the game at one point was a tweaking, not a re-writing, of oChangeling.

nChangeling also suffers a lot of telling-but-not-showing. Privateers and Madmen! They are briefly talked about, supported by one Entitlement, and Madmen themselves are pretty much ignored in the Autumn Nightmares book, the one about antagonists.

What I'm saying here is that, more than the other books, Changeling needs read with a grain of salt. If you distill down the engagable parts (not the parts we engage, but the parts that we even can), and the "Freehold = Protection" is a boogyman, Courts are either purely social or a mix of social and metaphysical, and there doesn't seem anything in particular to fear or fight.

It's not until one of the last books written, Lords of Summer, before we're given a clear idea of why Freeholds, and even that's mostly to help us write our own settings, to give us ideas what they intended.

That it took over three years for them to say anything about that, well, I love Changeling but I don't think it's well-written as a rulebook.

[Miss Demeanor]

Theno's right. If you ever have doubts about nChangeling? Look at the years long debate on how Separation 5 works. >.>

[Wizz]

@Thenomain said:

@Wizz said:

So how is that really different from nChangeling, where True Fae/Privateers and Clarity loss can and do interrupt your barrista's every day life and drag them back into the weirdness?

Werewolf v2's is codified; you cannot escape it any more than you can escape not having a "Cast Fireball" ability as a thief in D&D. It's encoded as what your character is.

Changeling's is a decision of the GM or the players based upon what part of the setting they want to engage. You're not penalized—in fact, you're rewarded—for not engaging in the weirdness. This should tell the GM: All Weirdness, All the Time, but it's a decision of the table, not of the game.

...What? WoD books, all of them, lay out the setting as written and then tell you "go nuts, take this or leave that." It's not specific to Changeling. The Storyteller system is supposed to be a toolbox.

And aren't you penalized? Not doing Changeling stuff and raising Clarity means your Wyrd falls and keeps falling, IIRC.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you here?

And I'm not going to argue at all against the idea that Changeling has been and probably will always be kind of a mess, haha. For the record, I absolutely love both games and think you can get just as much out of either one without stretching at all.

[Arkandel]

@Wizz said:

...What? WoD books, all of them, lay out the setting as written and then tell you "go nuts, take this or leave that." It's not specific to Changeling. The Storyteller system is supposed to be a toolbox.

nWoD on table-top and nWoD on a MU* are different games.

[Thenomain]

@Wizz said:

And aren't you penalized? Not doing Changeling stuff and raising Clarity means your Wyrd falls and keeps falling, IIRC.

What? No it doesn't. First: Raising your Clarity in Changeling is moving away from the unusual and strange.

Secondly, your Wyrd can't fall unless you do so intentionally, outlined in the very last seasonal book: Equinox Road. (There were three books after it, but ER was the last planned one.)

The Storyteller system is supposed to be a toolbox.

I have never seen the core rules used as a toolbox. As these are the jumping-off points of all major templates in the Storytelling System (yay, I get to know something! 'storyteller' was oWoD), I'm going to assume that the writers were blowing smoke.

Maybe you meant all the books, but I think it's a dick move to consider anything but the core book as a requirement for an online game, just as I think it's a dick move to tell people who know the core rules to shove off because they don't know something buried in a splat somewhere.

(Or even buried in the core rules. Did you know that there are rules for finding portals in the core Changeling rules? And yet people get pissy if you want to "wing it" with combat. Why isn't hard to imagine. Consistency, as @Ganymede would say, is king.)

There was a point to this not having specifically to do with Changeling, but I can't remember what it was.

edit: Interestingly, I have a personal rule when judging scenes: What I remember or think is interesting is the rule at the moment. If you have a problem with that you can tell me once, and I will make a decision and then the scene will move on. I am not a fan of all-or-nothing consistency because it's nearly impossible to attain. but I more than understand the reasoning behind it.

I am all for breaking rules as long as it fits the requirements of "it's internally consistent to the game" and "it's interesting for those involved". (Notice I didn't say fun. Fun is what we want before our tastes become more nuanced. Engaged, interested, those are the classifications of "fun" that I want.)

---

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Look at the years long debate on how Separation 5 works. >.>

Hey, I told Gany at the time that I could abuse it either way she wanted to rule it. And abuse it I did.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Thenomain Doesn't mean I can't still grump about one sentence of fluff text being used to insist that the mechanic means invisibility. Cause, y'know, stating definitively that you are intangible multiple times and 'effectively in a state of Twilight' once while in the obvious context of how you're treated by ghosts totally means you're invisible as well. >.> /endgrump

Edit' And yeah, even just the intangible part allows for serious abuse.

[Coin]

@Arkandel said:

@Wizz said:

...What? WoD books, all of them, lay out the setting as written and then tell you "go nuts, take this or leave that." It's not specific to Changeling. The Storyteller system is supposed to be a toolbox.

nWoD on table-top and nWoD on a MU* are different games.

This is a cop-out. They aren't different games, they are different playgroups. The difference is that MUs are much larger than your average tabletop, and if you want a game of a decent size your best bet is to go with the rules as written because if you change anything too much, you might lose a large amount of players. It's a lot easier to convince your five friends you have beers with than the 50 jackasses online who have their own vision of the game.

So they're not different games; they're the same game, played differently due to societal constraints and a need to satisfy a larger amount of people.

[Wizz]

@Thenomain said:

What? No it doesn't. First: Raising your Clarity in Changeling is moving away from the unusual and strange.

Secondly, your Wyrd can't fall unless you do so intentionally, outlined in the very last seasonal book: Equinox Road. (There were three books after it, but ER was the last planned one.)

I know Clarity is moving away, and lowering your Wyrd is intentional. I was probably just assuming the two were linked, but I could have sworn it mentioned lowering Wyrd in the core book... I am too lazy to actually look for it though, so whatevs.

The Storyteller system is supposed to be a toolbox.

I have never seen the core rules used as a toolbox. As these are the jumping-off points of all major templates in the Storytelling System (yay, I get to know something! 'storyteller' was oWoD), I'm going to assume that the writers were blowing smoke.

And you're free to do so, but it's still something they mention in literally every core book. Probably the splats as well. Toolbox is their term, not mine. Whether or not people actually use them as such is kind of irrelevant to me because that's the point. You can play them out of the box or break them down into itty bitty pieces and they encourage you to tackle it either way.

There was a point to this not having specifically to do with Changeling, but I can't remember what it was.

The original discussion was whether or not you're given as many options for play in Werewolf 2.whatevs as in nChangeling (there aren't, due to Kiths and Seemings and Entitlements and so on) and you feeling like Werewolves are more restricted and defined as characters, which I disagreed with. But like most of these types of discussions it's all a bit waffly.

edit: Interestingly, I have a personal rule when judging scenes: What I remember or think is interesting is the rule at the moment. If you have a problem with that you can tell me once, and I will make a decision and then the scene will move on. I am not a fan of all-or-nothing consistency because it's nearly impossible to attain. but I more than understand the reasoning behind it.
I am all for breaking rules as long as it fits the requirements of "it's internally consistent to the game" and "it's interesting for those involved". (Notice I didn't say fun. Fun is what we want before our tastes become more nuanced. Engaged, interested, those are the classifications of "fun" that I want.)

+1

[Thenomain]

• Irraka: There's a role these people are expected to fill. This is a facet of the core game, its settings and its rules and its abilities.
• Fairest: There is not a role these people are expected to fill. Neither the setting nor the rules reinforce this point, save for a very slight xp savings on otherwise common powers. (The only exceptions are Beasts and Elementals, who are reinforced due to some potent xp savings available mostly just to them.)

Yup, that's it. That's about as close as my point as I think I can make. In the classic debate, it's Nature vs. Hammer.

Waffles.

[Wizz]

Fairest are the Faces. Ogres are the Muscle. Darklings are the Sneaks. Wizened are the Crafters. They have roles they slot into just fine, you just have more options for mechanical refinement, which again, I wasn't arguing. You originally said:

I like playing nChangeling because it offers a low-power campaign type that I miss, where what you are messes up what you want to do. Vampires are Vampires. Werewolves are Werewolves, Mages are Mages. These are their job descriptions. Changelings are baristas and taxi drivers and lost mothers and have to decide, themselves, what they are. Are they monsters? Are they heroes? To me, a ton more interesting than another revisiting of Victorians telling us what we are and who we can be. That's just me, mind.

That's what I disagreed with. We wandered off into a few tangents, haha, but what originally inspired my comment was the idea that Werewolves are Werewolves, that that is who they are as characters. I still maintain that won't be the case in 2.0, but proof'll be in the pudding.

[Thenomain]

@Wizz said:

Fairest are the Faces.

Are they? Hm. A small Social advantage ... mmmnnhhhh. A tiny xp discount. Nnh. I mean. Yeah, I see what you're getting at, but it's ... well, it's this:

Darklings are the Sneaks

Some of the most game-breaking builds have Elementals as the Tanks and Darklings as the Strikers and Wizened as the Healers, and these builds are so easy even I can make them. What you're saying aren't roles, they're ... well, they're options.

In D&D, Elves gets a +1 Dexterity, but they're not the Sneak. Halflings get a stealth bonus, but they're not the Sneak. Nobody's "The Sneak". It's not a class, and it's not a role. In D&D, "race" is an option to enhance the role, with some theme/setting fluff as a rider.

in Changeling, Seeming is an option that may lead you to a role (Kith, and barely even that) but itself is just an option. I feel informed by the game that Changeling is meant to be a game of a hundred lego blocks of pluses and minuses to create whatever you want, using the glue of "Arcadia Has Everything".

And that's the thing. If you want to play Changeling as "this Fairest is a damn fine Tank", you're breaking no boundaries or assumptions. If you want to play Werewolf as "this Irraka is a damn fine Tank", you're going to have people looking at you funny. Because an Irraka is an Irraka, while a Fairest gets +1 Social and some hints at what they once were.

Which is cool for making up character histories, but isn't what I'd call a "role".

(edit: I'm coming off more antagonistic that I'm intending, probably due to being tired. Consider how much support that most of the game lines give in defining the role of a character. Changeling barely has that until you hit Entitlements. I consider this almost a weakness in Changeling, but likewise I consider it a weakness in Mage, as most options seem too rigid. Not enough waffles.)

[Miss Demeanor]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaah. The last Fairest I played never actually used her slight Social bonus. She didn't have any of the social Contracts, either. She was, however, absolutely fantastic in combat. Oh, and she could heal decently well. Pretty good with tracking. Had a knack for finding and growing goblin fruits. Was a pretty damn good sneak later on, too.

Hell, I remember back on HM, one of the most sociable people for the longest time was an Elemental. Mechanically, he didn't get 10-again for a few important social skills. Didn't matter, though. Or the Darkling that was focused more on hand to hand combat while also being one scary motherfucker when he felt like it. Seen a Wizened that was a beast in combat.

The point being, @Wizz, in Changeling, your Seeming does not define what you do, even Kith and Court are really more like suggestions or possibilities than hard and fast roles. I played a Spring, Fairest Dancer/Skitterskulk/Lurker. She was pretty much anything BUT a Face. But if you play an Ithaeur in Werewolf? You're the ritualist, the knowledge seeker, the ritemaster. All your affinity Gifts that you can get for free from dots of Renown are going to be geared towards that. Even the Tribes are geared towards fulfilling a role. Five auspices, five tribes, five roles within the Werewolf world. The books do everything but bludgeon you over the head with it. And yeah, I think its largely in part to what Theno pointed out about Werewolf being so very pack-centric.

And now I want waffles. Damn you both! fistshakes

[Coin]

One of the things that Changeling 2E is going to do, from what's been talked about by the developers in the forums, is change the way Kiths and Seemings works.

As a quick explanation:

Kiths are now at the forefront of your character, while the Seeming influences the Kith. For example, lets say you pick, as your Kith, the Draconic. Your character is a Draconic; that's their Kith. Their Seeming is how they go about being a Draconic. So you might have Draconic Fairest, Draconic Darkling, Draconic Ogre, each with changes in how they go about being draconics, and cheaper access to some powers while being disallowed from obtaining others.

You can find the developer´s thoughts on the subject here. I actually really like the ideas in the developer's outline, which was linked in this forum thread. I only have a slight concern for the way they are pitching their sub-splat (i.e. their M+ variant), and the fact that the main antagonists seem to be Hunstmen who run around hunting Changelings which means there is yet another parallel to Demon (on top of Pacts and Pledges). But this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I can see a lot of points of contention between the two that separate them (can you imagine what a Changeling might think of a being that makes a deal with you for your "soul" and can then just up and decide to take over your life and identity, and you cease to exist? Yikes).

I really like their take on how Courts will work. It looks like the Seasonal Courts will be mostly an exercise in exemplification in the book, but that Courts are actually unique things that pop up and are based on stories; so you create a society that protects itself by forcing your enemies into the confines of the rules set by the type of story your Court aligns with. Or something.

More information and detail in the links provided!

TL;DR Changeling seems to be working on changing the way you build the character so that you can get exactly what you want without having to futz around with Dual and Triple Kiths. I love it.