Changeling: The Lost

This one felt like it took forever but I find that's the nature of game manuals for me. There's alot of information packed into those 340-odd pages!

Changeling: The Lost by White Wolf is a book I picked up because I like White Wolf's World of Darkness campaign setting. I'm more drawn to Werewolf than I am to the other products in the line but with the re imaging of the World I was curious what they'd do with Changeling.

Changeling: The Dreaming was sort of the weak sister of the previous World of Darkness. Vampire had the personal horror of being a blood-sucking fiend. Werewolf had the personal horror of having to deal with your own personal Rage that could destroy you and your loved ones. Vampire was a story of nightly survival. Werewolf was a story of environmental warriors. Changeling was well... Cute. There was no sense of the horrific. There was no sense that there was any sort of fight for survival. You just were these sort of cutesy fae creatures that were in the World of Darkness. Changeling: The Lost has found the horror.

The best thing that White Wolf has done with the new Changeling is realise that their games are dark. They looked for the dark in Faerie and came back with the old tales. The tales that didn't always have the happy ending. They really encourage the players to think of the old Brothers Grimm, not the sanitised, Disney-fied fairy tales. When their source material includes the works of Neil Gaiman and Pan's Labyrinth it's a good bet that they were really thinking about dark fairy tales.

Your character has been kidnapped into Arcadia where the True Fae rule. Capricious, cruel, and completely inhuman you were their slave, or their lover, or for whatever else they might have wanted a human pet. Your only hope was to try to remember what your life as a human was like and then pull yourself back through the Hedge to your memories. You might have spent years in Arcadia but have only been gone a few moments. You might have been gone for a few moments to return to years passed. The Fae might have replaced you with a creature called a fetch that your friends and family are convinced is you. Whatever the outcome, spending time in Faerie makes your character not human anymore. You can't just step back into your life and pretend like nothing happened. You see the world differently now. And there's always the threat that the True Fae will find you again and take you back.

When I first started reading I got several different ideas for characters but had no clue how to construct a story. I got ideas about what some of my friends might create given the chance. It wasn't until I was nearly to the end of the book that I started to get a feel as to how I might run a game. That was much different than my Werewolf: The Forsaken experience where I'm still not convinced I have a character idea but have several plots I'd like to try. I don't know if I'd ever get the chance anyway. I seem to be the only one in the group with even a little interest in playing a Changeling game. I think the original probably turned people off this title. This is a solid game book though. It's in depth and gives alot of ideas to get you started. I'm going to give it a 4 out of 5.