Matthew McFarlandRezensionen

Detractors will say this book isn't that great; it's too dark, the hopefulness of Changeling: The Dreaming isn't honored here, it's mired in horror and degradation. Many claiming the title of abuse survivor says this is an insult to what they've been through.

All I can say is: Grow up.

Changeling: The Lost is a masterwork; people who simply say 'this is a victim' game doesn't look at the whole. They barely even skim the surface. No one sees how retaking one's life is a POSITIVE and EMPOWERING thing -- how the metaphor of enslavement and abuse and the retaking of one's life is a HOPEFUL thing, but one that also educates the unknowing to the dangers of the world. If Dreaming -- which is a game I loved (and have thousands of dollars in out of print books of!) -- is about youthful vigor and hope, The Lost is about the change that comes when we must realize that some old dreams must be put aside, so that new dreams may thrive. They gloss over the finer points to paint the game with a broad brush of horror and woe. The point has been missed.

We have to grow up -- yes, it will hurt. Yes, it will change us, and we may never go home again... but that doesn't mean that we will not learn to do more then survive, but THRIVE elsewhere.

Thankfully, from it being White Wolf's #1 seller for nearly a year, I'd have to say the majority of the world 'gets it'. To those who still cling to victimhood (as if you're the only one who has ever been
hurt) or wave their 'this book hurts me because it's just not hopeful enough' -- go back to your sugarfloss Dreaming, and I'll happily get Lost.

The writing is excellent. The legends portrayed sometimes miss, but the system, the fiction, and the fluff all deliver. This should be on your gaming shelf. Yes. Even yours.

Changeling the Lost est un des firmaments du Monde des Ténèbres, celui qui boucle la boucle ouverte par la première édition de Vampire la Mascarade. Le jeu qui réalise le mieux la promesse whitewolfienne de faire jouer du character-driven, en ville, avec des PJs monstrueux mais pleins d’humanité, avec des intrigues politiques à tiroir qui forment le cœur du jeu.
Mais CtL c’est beaucoup plus que cette promesse réalisée. C’est aussi un univers très évocateur, doté d’une ambiance et d’une identité extrêmement abouties, ce que WW a fait de mieux en la matière depuis VtM ou Changeling the Dreaming. On a à la fois l’ambiance lyrique et victorienne de la féerie, et le côté terrifiant de ces “Trues Fae” inhumaines qui chassent humains et changelings. Un univers riche également de cette magie “contractuelle” qui implique souvent un sacrifice (très whitewolfien, toujours), et foule d’éléments comme the Hedge (univers parallèle à la lisière du monde des humains), les hobgobelins, goblin markets, etc. Il faut souligner aussi que l’aspect métaphorique du jeu (le traumatisme subi par les changelins lors de leur séjour en Arcadia, très PTSD) est vraiment réussi et s’intègre très bien dans son esthétique.
Pour revenir à cette promesse whitewolfienne, c’est simple, tout marche bien dans ce jeu. On a un gros potentiel d’intrigue politique grâce aux éléments subtils qui séparent les changelings (courts, seeming, kith, relations avec les True Faes…), les relations avec les humains qui sont réellement intéressantes avec les changelings qui tentent de s’y retrouver une place, et la richesse de cet univers onirique et menaçant. Bref, s’il ne fallait en garder qu’un ce serait celui-là.

Promethean is the greatest roleplaying game you'll never play.

A game about playing abused children who have a few powers. Yes, I know it's wrapped around myths and legend, but that's what you're doing. White Wolf threw out all the whimsy and fun of the old version, to replace it with a terribly dark world where survival is the least of your worries, and growing in power will drive you crazy. The system is better; the setting is far worse.

Sharks rarely get any notification for there appearances if shapeshifter folklore and mythology today, so it is great to see them have a small place in the White Wolf's Werewolf the Apocalypse. The book nicely blends and weaves shark stereotypes in with shark fact while giving some really nice nods to actual folklore and legends about sharks. The sourcebook really helps set the reader up into how a rokea might see the world from there point of view despite it being so alien and unknown.

This is the second time White Wolf has attempted a roleplaying supplement centered around a time period within living memory for the New World of Darkness. Like with New Wave Requiem I was excited to check it out even though I didn't actively play the game it was based on. I own the Mage: the Awakening book but haven't read it all the way through, which may show in my review.

Mage Noir isn't just about setting your Mage game within the genre of the noir post-war film genre, it is very concerned with capturing the theme and mood of the time period. Before I read this book I had no idea noir film and that era of crime fiction in general was so thoroughly shaped by America's experiences with World War II, but Noir mentions the war so often you would think it was White Wolf's guide to that war. There is a lot of psychosocial dwellings on the scars left from war, it very much reminded me of watching Shutter Island a few weeks back. The other surprising aspect of Mage Noir was how little it was concerned with educating the gamer about noir movies. Usually there is a pretty good "recommended viewing/reading" in a White Wolf book but that was very brief here. Strange since the cinematic experience wrapped the book so tightly. But if you want to run a serious, dramatic Mage Noir game I guess the writer's figured you would do that research on your own, and check out criticism of the film genre to find out that The Third Man and The Naked City are really worth checking out. It was just surprising, considering the title.

What is there is a lot of great information for the storyteller and player. As with New Wave Requiem I liked the discussion of how technology and culture differ from the present day. Identity is much more mutable, for instance in the postwar period. A forged driver's license is your talisman allowing the move across the country and fulcrum to remake your identity, provided your fingerprints are not tracked to some past crime. Authors did a great job giving storytellers and players an understanding into the major social and political movements of the time and American's overall psychological philosophical relationship with the war's legacy.

Speaking of that word, the new Legacy in the book is worth the price of admission. Mage Noir succeeded as a book because it made me want to play Mage for the first time, and I don't think I would ever want to shoot for any other Legacy than The Quiescent. Nicknamed The Liars, the founders of this Legacy saw a truth about Magic that The Technocracy grasped in Mage: the Ascension did back in the Thirteenth Century, that technology had surpassed magic; antibiotics could save lives just as effectively without the risk of failure and Paradox and the atomic bomb could destroy with more vulgarity than the strongest Forces spell. They reacted in a much different manner, however. The Quiescent disdain any forms of vulgar magic, their spells are subtle and arcane but rarely can be proved to be an actual supernatural practice. They rely on their wits and mundane abilities more. One of the pre-generated characters is given a great quote that sums up the whole attitude quite well. "Who? Oh, right. He's dead. I shot him in the face while he was waving his arms around and looking like a complete idiot." These hard-boiled guys and femme fatale females have no use for cloaks, daggers and pentacles.

Lastly, I like the sample characters and how the illustrate the intent of the book and reflect the time period and genre of noir. Everything from a former USO entertainer turned nightclub singer to a Nietzsche spouting Thyrsus urban mystic, they all had a 1940s silver screen sparkle on them. Another big plus is the Bauhaus-inspired fonts that so well incorporate the 40's design of the book are the most readable for any Awakening book.½

This is an excellent supplement for any White Wolf and Vampire fan and it signals a trend the CCP-owned company has been taking lately of giving the fans the tools they want to play the game they want, whether the interest lies in the old or new version of the World of Darkness. After all, nearly all Vampire: the Masquerade titles are currently in print if you count the digital versions.

Here you have total freedom to plug-and-play game elements from Masquerade into Requiem, or visa versa to suit your tastes. I prefer the streamlined rules, claustrophobic lack of world-spanning organizations, and more versatile options of Requiem but I really miss playing Tremere. Now I am given enumerated options on how to include them and the discipline of Thaumaturgy using the current rules system in an officially published supplement. Likewise I think Masquerade would be so much more fun to play if I could add in the Meket, the revised version of Nosferatu, and the various political factions of Requiem. I can do that now without any arguments over rules.

If you want the freedom to play the vampire you want to play, or the ghouls who love them this is a wonderful collection for your library at a very fine price point. I hope they produce more of them for the other game lines. For example Geist/Wraith translation document would be a fine way to open up the limited library of the former while attracting a fresh audience to the latter.

I was a fan of the old Changeling: The Dreaming, but it had it's problems. First, the old type of changeling wasn't based on traditional Celtic and medieval legends of changelings at all. Characters were born different, rather than being stolen away by faeries. In the new edition, changelings are people--children or adults--who are kidnapped and taken to Faery, where their ordeal alters them and gives them magical powers. Second, in The Dreaming, characters had to be children or young adults, because age caused them to 'outgrow' the chimerical side of reality. This was an interesting paean to the lost innocence and imagination of childhood, but the royal courts of children fighting against imaginary monsters, that even other supernaturals couldn't interact with, seemed like they were playing at dealing with serious issues, rather than having true wisdom and hardships or the same life-and-death stakes as other beings in the world of darkness. In this edition, the Lost can be of any age (somewhat independently of the age at which they disappeared) and their Fae enemies are all too substantial. Changelings still have a dual nature--one appearance for public consumption and a magical mien that only Changelings and enchanted humans can see, but hobgoblins, unlike chimaera, are visible and deadly. This is a much darker, more myth-based version of the Otherworld, and it benefits greatly from that fact. Great fun alone or in a mixed party with other WoD character types.½

You were taken by the Gentry, otherwise known as the Fae. You were brought to Arcadia, and were abused in ways that are indescribable.

You escaped... only to find that no one missed you.

Do you attempt to take back your life, or make a new one? Do you hide from the Gentry, or fight against them? Will you rise to power among the Courts of the Lost, or will your ending be Grimm?

This is a book about modern fairy-tales, survival, and "beautiful madness". Those who enjoy reading Holly Black will love this book.

An intersting story line with action

I felt great excitement and trepidation when Changeling: the Lost was announced; excitement that White Wolf’s Changeling line was getting new life (after the fizzling ending in Time of Judgment (no disrespect to the authors mind you) and trepidation because I knew it wouldn’t be like Changeling: the Dreaming. And that is something you defiantly have to keep in mind. As soon as the cover was released I knew this was a whole different game, one with a less colorful palate.

A little recap since it is impossible to talk about this book without discussing Changeling: the Dreaming: In CtD, you play a human who shares part of an immortal soul of the True Fae from mythical Arcadia. That part of you was exiled to the material world when Arcadia closed its gates sometime in the late Middle Ages. The whole theme of the book is longing for this mythical heritage and surviving in a world where you feed off of imagination and creativity, but both seem to be ebbing from the world. By contrast, in Changeling: the Lost the roads and gates leading to Arcadia are obscure, but woefully open and the True Fae occasionally walk the earth. In fact, your characters have been there, and will do everything they can to keep from going back with anything less than an army at their backs. You play a human who for some capricious reason has been kidnapped by the Fae and brought to Arcadia for some period of time. It is a place of passion and madness, where the laws of physics and reason do not apply; only the will of your captor matters. There they may serve as baubles to be admired, subjects to be experimented on, slave labor, perhaps even a fairy bride or lover. Your characters escape back into the material world, and finds themselves changed in body, mind, and spirit. They carry the magical taint of Fairie, something which may excite or disgust depending on bent. The theme of the game is the struggle to grip onto your humanity, find a sense of self and community, and grow powerful enough to avoid recapture.

I adore the old Changeling, but I love the changes inherent in Changeling: the Lost. It is more true to the source material (world mythology). Some have criticized it as having too much of a culture of victimization, but if you look close the first one had that as well, it was merely not as dark a series. In the first Changeling you play a benighted being who has been brought low and feels that loss strongly. In the new Changeling you play someone who has been brought low by a benighted being. It is indeed a big paradigm shift.

Also, the two major things that were broken about Changeling: the Dreaming have been addressed in Changeling: the Lost; the character creation system and the fae magic system. Character creation is more open-ended and very liberating. I like the fact that one True Fae could make a whole gaming troupe of different changelings and they all would be different depending on the roles they played in his household (say one would train the hounds, and would become doglike; one could be the master’s callow lover; one could tend the crystalline garden and find herself developing quartz-like skin. You get the idea.) Also, you can take one type of changeling, say Ogres, and make anything from an Abominable Snowman to Hindi demons, to traditional Norwegian trolls. That is such a welcome break from Changeling: the Dreaming. It should be noted that all of the original "kiths" can be represented using this character creation system. The Contracts (magic) system it is so simplified and easy to use. Plus, it draws more upon fairy tales of how such magic would actually work and what costs it would take.

Is it too dark? I do not think so, particularly when I look at how strong a theme this is in fantasy literature. When playing this game you can ask the question what would have happened to Niel Gaiman’s Coraline if she had not been able to escape the Other Mother? What if Sarah had run out of time in Labyrinth and became part of Jareth’s harem? You can go to classic literature too, what if Alice became lost in Wonderland? What if Dorthy Gale had tarried too long in Oz? What would Wendy be like if she spent decades in Neverland under the watch of a far crueler Peter Pan?

Changeling: the Lost is a welcome re-imagination of the series, and deserves to stand on it’s own merits as a masterful work of the role-playing genre.

Wonderful book so far, filled with magical imagery and cool ideas throughout.
Makes me want to run the game stright away.
Its a hefty tome, so may take me a while to get through....

This is a sourcebook for White Wolf's World of Darkness game Werewolf the Apocalypse. The Rokea are one of the Changing breeds, the were-sharks. The Rokea have always been and will always be they are set by Gaia to survive.

The Rokea rarely interbreed with human stock and because of this they are not very attractive in homid shape. They tend to avoid walking around as homid becase they seem to have a strong urge to breed when they do. They have an extremly alien view on life with the Anasazi being more so.½

Jurgan finds himself pit against the Tzimisce and a Gangrel barbarian all the while trying to decide what he wants of and for his Toreador beauty.½