A Mechanical Review of Changeling: The Lost's 2nd Edition (And What Went Wrong)

Regular readers around these parts know that if I'm not playing Pathfinder that I love me a good Chronicles of Darkness game. Of all the spheres I've played, Changeling: The Lost is my favorite. The combination of twisted fairy tales, beautiful madness, and cosmic horror is the perfect brew to slowly sink into and immerse yourself, and the game was flexible enough that you could make basically any concept you wanted to play. When I heard there was going to be a 2nd edition of the game I didn't rush in and follow every development as it was happening. I waited calmly and patiently for the smoke to clear, and to see just what had happened.

My current verdict is that if you have to choose between the original Changeling: The Lost and the newer second edition, just play the first one. It doesn't commit the sins I'm about to get into.

There's no beauty here... only madness.

For folks who want to check out some of my World/Chronicles of Darkness content, consider checking out my 100 Kinfolk Project, as well as my 101 Savage Kinfolk and 100 Stargazer Kinfolk for Werewolf: The Apocalypse, as well as my recent release New World Nights: 100 Ghouls For The American Camarilla. I've got some Changeling: The Lost content coming down the pipe, as well, and if you don't want to miss out on it then make sure you sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates sent straight to your inbox!

Soft Where It Needs To Be Hard, Hard Where it Should Be Soft

Similar to what I said a while back in my mechanical review Chronicles of Darkness Second Edition... What's The Difference?, the second edition of Changeling is pretty recognizable in a story sense. Changelings are still people who are stolen by the True Fae, their souls torn on the Thorns between worlds, and the gap filled with fey magic. They are still Other, altered to become whatever the True Fey needed. Escaped back to the Real they are creatures of two worlds, now, and they are hunted. Changelings still form courts for mutual protection, they still use Contracts as their magic powers, etc., etc.

If you're familiar with the first edition of the game, the broad strokes are still there, and still the same.

Now we get into what's different.

Aside from the difference in the core game that I already covered in my previous review (the beats system for gaining XP, the Doors system for achieving long-term goals, etc.), if I had to explain what's different in Changeling: The Lost now it's that the game has been over-scripted, and shrunk down, so that you feel like a character caught in a web of conflicting laws and promises, but in the worst possible way.

A concrete example of this is the changes made to Pledges. Changelings are creatures who can bind people to promises spoken, in keeping with fey lore and the themes of the game. In classic Lost there's one chart split into four pieces. You have the Task (what the person has to do), the Boon (what they get for doing it), the Sanction (the punishment for breaking the pledge), and the Duration (how long does it last?). There's a simple chart with attached numbers, and as long as all the numbers add up to 0, the pledge is ready to rock.

The second edition, rather than just having this single mechanic with a basic chart that lets you compose the pledge, has several different varieties of oaths, all of which are only applicable in certain situations. They each have their own caveats, and long-winded explanations, but there's never a chart explaining how to use them in a practical sense, or how they're supposed to function. Instead, it feels like reading a product user agreement read by a frustrated fantasy writer trying to spice up their day job.

And that's the new edition in a nutshell; it takes simple, functional, practical mechanics of the original and softens them until they melt like wax. Often to the point where, though I can see what the designers were trying to achieve, they just end up making a more limited version of the original game. Or, worse yet, they take aspects that were left vague and open-ended for players to fill in themselves, and create rules for how you have to play certain aspects that limits your freedom and options.

More Examples and Frustrations

While what happened to Pledges is emblematic of the changes made, there are a lot more examples I want to talk about, because I feel they're indicative of the direction the game was moved in.

First off the list, Clarity. While a lot of folks hate that Clarity was just a list of Thou Shalt Nots in terms of actions that forced you to roll, I'd argue that if any game will accept an arbitrary system of rules that characters have to follow even if they disagree with them, it should be those bound to the fey. That said, Clarity has become an absolute mess. The new edition treats Clarity checks as a mental attack, with a huge list of complications and modifiers that made my head spin just trying to figure out what it was trying to say. Not only that, but it enfolded the Virtue and Vice system from the previous edition, allowing players to (at least in part) custom make their own Clarity, what they draw strength from, and what triggers affect them. A nice idea in theory, but one which is so soft that it feels almost pointless because it leaves the players to do all the heavy lifting on their own with only a bit of guidance. It's a perfect example of an idea that was deemed too simple, then overcomplicated till it just became a confusing morass.

But what about stuff that was open-ended that's been codified in ways that hurt the game, since I mentioned that, too? Well, another thing that's changed is the Seemings themselves. The broad categories of changelings (Beasts, Darklings, Ogres, Fairest, etc.) are all still here. And as folks know in the first edition they could spend glamour to increase pools involving certain attributes or skills associated with their Seeming (Strength for ogres, Stealth for darklings, etc.). This created a system where certain varieties of changeling had certain mechanical strengths, but it was still loose enough that the line of changelings coming in an infinite variety that's sometimes hard to codify felt true. In the second edition that was done away with entirely, and from what I read there's now no abilities that increase your attributes and skills via glamour at all. Instead, every seeming gets one magic power. Darklings turn invisible, for instance. All darklings, of every variety, have this one power. Might just be me, but that feels like it's solidifying those lines pretty damn hard, and nailing down specifics of what you are and aren't in ways that were previously up to players.

There's also a third category of mechanical change... the Nerfing. And despite being some of the most mortal and vulnerable supernatural creatures in the Chronicles of Darkness, the new edition slapped changelings hard with the Nerf bat.

I'm still trying to compose my brain after some of it.

Contracts is where some of the biggest Nerfing took place (aside, of course, from the complete absence of the ability to increase your dice pools with glamour the way you could before from what I saw). Because the Beats system means you're getting less XP overall, and it takes a lot longer to acquire it, this system did away with the exponential cost for new dots. Now you just pay a flat XP cost for any additional thing you want on your sheet. So whether you had a Strength of 1 dot or 4 dots, buying the next dot is just a flat 5 XP now.

That sounds nice in theory. However, it meant that since Contracts can basically be purchased in any order a character wants (instead of having to buy a set from 1-5 dots to get to the really potent ones), that all of them had to be made roughly the same power level. And it was a bizarre experience seeing Contracts that were once big deals sitting there as a ghost of their former selves, hollowed-out husks of their old glory. The Lord's Dread Gaze (the Summer contract that let you shoot beams of solar fire that was usually only had by one or two people in the entire court) is a perfect example... it still lets you shoot lasers, but now they do bashing damage and aren't nearly as potent. You'd be better off just getting a gun and shooting someone with it. Even old standbys like Might of The Terrible Brute (a 1-dot Contract used by any melee bruiser that let you boost your Strength for a round) has now been made into something that only works for grappling, and has a bunch of other caveats attached to it.

Practically every aspect of the game has been made smaller, less potent, and in many cases actively punishes the player for attempting to use it (goblin Contracts, for instance, now incur phantom "goblin debt" which seems to only come into play if the ST remembers it's there, and is willing to do something with it, rather than the clear drawbacks of the earlier edition). Lastly, frailties (inherent, fey weaknesses in the character) are now something you pick up as soon as you hit Wyrd 2, when they used to not come into play until you surpassed normal, mortal requirements around Wyrd 6 or so. Changeling now get actively harmed by cold iron, as well, when they used to be able to wield it as their one, real advantage over the Gentry (it still cut through magical defenses, but it was mostly a single-edged sword).

It's still recognizably Changeling, but it feels like it's been in a major accident. It can't do the things it once could, and it's got a whole new list of weaknesses and day-to-day frustrations you never even considered before.

If you were wondering whether the second edition improved anything, I would be hard pressed to tell you yes. Unlike the core book for Chronicles, which at least had some ideas and systems I could get behind, Changeling: The Lost's second edition is just a frail shadow of its former self.

Play the first edition. It's still out there, and you'll likely have a more satisfying experience with the support and cleaner rules it offers.

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