Changeling the Podcast

What does it mean to be a monster? While the Lost might certainly have an opinion or two (whether about themselves, their Keepers, or the other nightmares that stalk the Hedge), we turn this week to one of the more classic expressions of the concept: the constructed person, à la Frankenstein. It's time to open up the game dedicated to all their messy glory, Promethean: the Created , and see how we...

A century and a half of full episodes! Or perhaps more appropriately, this is episode CL in Roman numerals, which obviously stands for "Changeling [the] Lost". And our theme today is to step back from our deep dives into the books for a minute, to look more generally about Storytelling Lost for novices and veterans alike. Reading the text is one thing; putting it into action at the table is anothe...

So, you've gone through the corebook for Changeling: the Lost's second edition and you want an adventure to run for your table. Or maybe you're not yet ready to snag that chomker of a tome and you'd like something lighter to dip your toes into the setting and systems. Or you're putting together a convention one-shot and/or podcast episode, because who wouldn't be? Whatever the reason, if you're in...

One more, for our sins. Or at least, for the Thorns. We wrap up this trilogy of episodes today by talking about second edition changes in the corebook for Changeling: the Lost, from the handling of themes and the role of the Courtless, to the way Contracts work and the nature of the True Fae. There are so many hundreds of little tiny alterations that we couldn't hope to cover in a single recording...

Part the Second! This time, we circle back once more through the Lost corebook as we examine new stuff in Second Edition (compared with the first). This is new stuff in the corebook sense: some of the material here is similar to and/or derived from what we covered in the supplements for First Edition, and some of it blurs the line between new material and updates (which we'll cover next episode)....

And so we arrive at the Tome of Tomes, the Volume of Volumes, the Boondoggle of Boondoggles, that is the Changeling: the Lost Second Edition corebook . Because there's way too much here to discuss in a single standard-length episode, we are splitting this into a trilogy. First is just a basic walkthrough: if you are new to Lost, or even the Chronicles of Darkness in general, we hope this will be a...

We live again.. again! In the spirit of the Autumn Court and their occasionally ill-advised sense of discovery, now that their season has come, so too has the moment where at last we dive headlong into the second edition of Changeling: the Lost. The thorny glory that is this game will need a slow and winding path of exploration, and thus we begin with the relatively easy lift of tie-in fiction. Re...

Halfway through! Now that the actual play trilogy has concluded, it's time for us to treat ourselves to a bit of a break... but of course, that doesn't mean we're putting everything on pause. Today's discussion of the state of the podcast for mid-Season Five covers where we've lately been, where we presently are, and where we'll eventually be (or so we suspect). Plans for the book dives that will...

And so we come to the final act, part three of our actual play , wherein the heroes make a last-ditch effort to accomplish their goals. What will success look like? What will they learn or gain? Where does the story go from here? All the usual questions, and a fair number of answers, will be dealt with in this installment. Thanks for sticking with us through this experiment; if you haven't yet che...

The legend continues as we present part two of our actual play run by Fetch, to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Changeling: the Dreaming. In this installment, our intrepid band of heroes (and we use most of those words loosely) conscript allies for their meetcute plan. The place and time are set, the subjects have been lured into participating, and the Dreaming is scintillating with expectation—...

Long foretold and lately managed, we finally present our three-part actual play of Changeling: the Dreaming as part of our ongoing-if-sporadic series of things for the game's 30th Anniversary year. Storyteller Fetch leads players Elerus, J, and Medi through the chimerical landscape of Phoenix, Arizona as their Kithain characters set a plan of midsummer courtly romance in motion. What could possibl...

Before the sun finally goes down on Changeling: the Lost's first edition, we've got one more text to talk about. What's that you say? We've gone through all the books and all the Dark Eras, so what could possibly be left? Well, as we prepared those final episodes, author Thomas McVey released Twilit Eildon , a homebrew title on the Storytellers' Vault. It was a surprise out of nowhere, especially...

It's been a while since we stepped into the old World of Darkness, so today we take a quick look back for one more in our series of crossover book dives. We flipped through both the original and Revised editions of the Fianna tribebooks for Werewolf: the Apocalypse. These are the most fae-adjacent of the Garou, often in the same families as Kithain and Kinain. The first book came out before Change...

With apologies for last week's delay, we are back on track with today's readthrough of the last Changeling-focused Dark Era in the first collection, A Grimm Dark Era . The Dark Eras' not-quite-second-edition-ness stands out most of all in this offering, and it's... noteworthy. Set in early 19th-century Germany with the publication of the Grimms' faerie tales as a backdrop, we get some curious Cour...

To welcome in the Seelie half of the year, behold! a surprise minisode. The original Dark Eras were accompanied by a fiction volume, Tales of the Dark Eras , featuring a number of short stories associated with the modules in the supplement. The entry "Of Ravens and Roses" is set in the 17th-century France of Lily, Sabre & Thorn , so it seemed fitting to include that in the mix. (If only it had...

Il était une fois... as we proceed through the historical dives in the first Dark Eras volume, we arrive at the next one for Changeling: the Lost—and the first one that is only for that game, though certainly no one could object if an enterprising Storyteller felt like squeezing in a random Promethean. In this installment, Lily, Sabre & Thorn , we're headed to 17th-century France and the court...

Time to hop in the ol' time machine as we open (at long last) the first Dark Eras book for the Chronicles of Darkness...! These smaller modules cover specific moments and places around the world through history, presented through the lens of one or more gamelines. The first collection, released in 2016, offers 16 of these chapter-length settings, with four containing material for Changeling: the L...

Another week, another exploration of nWoD/CofD crossover. This time, with an eye to the upcoming Dark Eras, we're taking a look at Vampire: the Requiem and approaches to integrating it with Changeling: the Lost. There are some thematic similarities: both vampires and changelings are parasites in different ways, both have a tricksy relationship with time and memory, and both are deep into politics....

The time has come to put aside the old new World of Darkness and move into the Chronicles of Darkness, as we read through the God-Machine rules update . This is the back half of the God-Machine Chronicle released in 2013, which revised and expanded the rules for nWoD's first edition and would later become the basis for the second edition ruleset in Chronicles of Darkness (which is also lightly bei...

A wild CROSSOVER appears...! Soon enough, we'll be getting into the historical Dark Eras settings for Changeling: the Lost, some of which involve pairings with other games in the new World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness line. We'll be moving through this semi-chronologically, and the first one on our list involves Geist: the Sin-Eaters , our topic of discussion for today. This game of mediums...

This week, we turn once more to the wonderful world of media as we consider ten films for Changeling: the Lost inspiration. We did this previously with Changeling: the Dreaming (check out episode 50!), so it seemed like the right time to pull a similar for the other fae game. There are a couple crossover titles whose themes and plots and aesthetics work equally well in both, in our opinion... but...

Rounding out our series of "blue books" from the first edition of new World of Darkness, today we're covering Glimpses of the Unknown , a rather brief assortment of story hooks, crunchy tidbits, and setting expansion for all the extant game lines at that point. And when we say "brief," we mean 48 pages, with lots of recycled art, so this episode is on the shorter side. We're considering the book t...

Through the looking glass we go, as we consider other shapes the World of Darkness might take. A collection to spark ideas along the way is World of Darkness: Mirrors for first edition nWoD, whose pages we're riffling this time around. Alternate systems, alternate settings, and a whole lot of Storyteller insights fill these pages, from the genius to the puzzling. Nearly everything can be adapted t...

Good things come to those who wait... so forgive us for the day of delay, but we are back with a discussion of Proverbial Monsters . This slim bestiary of creatures inspired by sayings and superstitions seemed like a natural follow-up to our dive into Urban Legends. It's not specifically a Changeling book, but most or all of the options in here can fit easily into a Lost game, so it's through that...

And so, with some variable amount of fanfare, we are taking a deep breath and plunging into Season Five. Taking a machete to the wilderness of nWoD, we are beginning by carving a path from the last books of Changeling: the Lost's first edition towards the Hedge of the second, tackling various other books and general concepts along the way. At the top of our upcoming slate of episodes on crossovers...