/CofD/ &/wodg/ Chronicles of Darkness and World of Darkness General

>Monday Meeting Notes

TFW Changeling 2e "demoted" back to "Development" from "Editing," Signs of Sorcery and Dark Eras Companion still in "Development" and "Art Direction," respectively, and Tome of the Pentacle not even in first draft.

>TFW no mention of new POD from the back catalogue since 2014

you probably wont see any action on that until its clear what will be happening with the rights to that shit.

I liked it.

No. Otherwise you'd always count as Sympathetic Yantra using yourself as the Yantra.
It's to help get over the Withstand.

>why is Onyx Path not talking about republishing books they have no ownership of

In all honesty, Changeling still needs a lot of fucking work, given some of the shit I'm looking at.

Though really I doubt they're willing to redo some of the design decisions I take issue with.

>Changeling gets the Beast treatment
>people hate it forever

I'm ok with this

What do you dislike? I've really liked the drafts so far.

>I have no idea about who was adapting old layout formats to new POD, they appeared online by Phil "Satyros" Brucatto's blood magick alone

Who did you think was adapting the scans? Who else was digging through the archive room, buying old macs to convert old file formats to something newer Drivethrurpg could use? They even discussed the process at Gencon. There has just been nothing to show how much effort is being applied there.

What are you talking about?
So far the only thing I've hated is "The Hedge is suffering and misery and pain and sometimes it's a nice pain that you look back on fondly but it's pain pain pain"
It's the Hedge, not Silent Hill. It should be dangerous, but still whimsical.

Whats not whimsical about Pyramid head?

Just look at him playing with his uh oh that nots agh moving on

Anyone have something akin to an abridged version of how werewolves work mechanically on old world of darkness?

I'm running a game of vampire the masquerade and we've finished the first story. I plan on introducing a couple mages, and I all ready know exactly how they work. One player has aura of the wyrm flaw and another is looking for an oil tycoon with in his backstory so werewolves seem like they should be included eventually as well as pentex.

Im thinking a few black spiral dancers, bone gnashers, and glass walkers. I've read like 80 pages of the core rulebook but I highly doubt I need to know all too much about how they work to make it fun in a vampire game.

>Anyone have something akin to an abridged version of how werewolves work mechanically on old world of darkness?
>I'm running a game of vampire the masquerade
However you want them to work.

Trim it down. Don't worry about the Dire Wolf form unless you need to. When they're not in warform but using transformation powers, use Protean mechanics (I assume in oWoD Protean lets you have claws). When they're in Warform, use Zulo stats. Give them lots of soak. Use vampire mechanics, except, you know, they heal. Make it a point of lethal each turn or something, and in warform they heal it all each turn. Silver obviously deals Agg, and can't be healed except by waiting.

Their powers work however the fuck you want them to. I'd say focus only on a little of the spirit things. Know that they can do that, but it's unlikely that you'll need to figure out which ability lets a Werewolf talk to this or that spirit. Don't even bother reading the Werewolf corebook. Skim the Wiki, take what you want to apply to your Vampire game.

These are also the general advice guidelines I'd give to anyone asking "How do I use [the splats of a different gameline]", so it goes for Mage as well. If you do know Mage well enough, though, feel free to use some of those rules to help you build Lycan antagonists. And it might be good to think of them not as Werewolves but as Lycans. Helps get you out of the "but I need to know what the book says" mindset.

The only real gifts or spirit things i plan on using is shit that lets them fuck with technology. Beyond that I just need to know how they work well enough that my players won't later go "hey you fucking cheated" but I can design the NPCs so that they aren't fucking pushovers.

One of the players is an 8th gen with 3 dots of celerity. I know theres some mechanic that lets werewolves get stupid amounts of turns in combat amongst other batshit stuff. Ideally they won't have to see much combat (trying to get the players to stop being murderhobos) but if someone tries it I'd like to really be able to push home the horror aspect of those things being unstoppable. From what I gather all I really need are the mechanics of gnosis and then the basics of how other stats work (My GM for mage told me that werewolves can have like fucking 8 strength.) Mage's fine, I can let them do their stupid shit and understand how it works, and the time sphere is more than sufficient to balance out the fucking 9 turns of celerity that 8th gen player can get.

You're absolutely right though, it doesn't have to be perfect. I just want it to be close enough that it doesnt feel like I'm making up shit so often that there's no real reason to even have rules.

>I just need to know how they work well enough that my players won't later go "hey you fucking cheated"
You should tell them "duh".

I know you're clearly an oWoD player, but grab the Demon STG out of the Mega and jump halfway through Chapter Four, to page 123. It's basically "how to run NPCs from the other gamelines using Demon: The Descent". I really hope Hunter 2e does something similar. Something about "just wing it" for using the other splats just resonates so well to me, and it's good advice and food for thought for oWoD as well. I actually think a few oWoD splats actually *did* do that. I seem to recall stats for Werewolves in Mage, though I also think I recall Baba Yaga's Vampire sheet in a Werewolf splatbook.

Also, in reference to Gnosis: Like I said, don't worry about specific mechanics, just cobble together whatever's simple for you from the info on the Wiki. Remember KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Chalk it up to my own personal bar of quality then.

It's not that I don't want to spend the time learning more, I fully intend to read the whole core rulebook. I've played games in world of darkness where the GM is using the mechanics and bits of lore here and there from other games in the setting, and I feel it really adds something to it.

I'm not saying not to, just that you shouldn't feel shackled to mechanics your players will never see. Games like PbtA and such have really shown me the great secret: The only thing that matters is what the players experience. They don't need to take the skin off the animatronics and see that the werewolf is made of wires and gears.

I like old werewolf, its one of my favorite splats. That said, the rules are a confusing mess.

You have Rage and gnosis which you can only use either one in each turn but sometimes powers ask you for gnosis other times for rage, extra action will ask you for rage always and regeneration is obtuse. Aside from a vampire designed for combat is gonna wipe the floor with any werewolf barring elders or certain builds.

If you want the feeling of big bad werewolf that Masquerade sells you, use the rules for Werewolves in the Vampire core. That is, a lupine (Werewolf build with vampire rules).

The new role of a Changeling's Seeming in maintaining and harming their Clarity. To the exclusion of its influence upon other aspects of the character (as far as we've seen).

The entire concept of Huntsmen. Making them immortal is the single biggest fucking stupidest mistake I've ever heard of. Make them relentless by all means, replaced by their kin who'll take different approaches. But don't force the PC to fight the same one over and over again, until they sell out another Lost to get a slight reprieve.

The depiction of the Hedge, and likely thus any depiction of Hobgoblins and Hedge-craft items which shall come from that.
The original suggestion was so badly received they had to immediately water it down to not get flayed alive.
And yet it still sucks.

Plus, every fucking Huntsman kills at least one innocent when he enters the world, and potentially many more hunting the Changeling down.

I mean, I can imagine many kind-hearted Changelings would return to Arcadia with a Huntsman, just knowing that he will kill over, and over, and over again to get them to do so. And even if they manage to get him to piss off, the next one will just kill another person.

And that leaves a horrible fucking taste in the mouths of every other Changeling. Your freedom has been bought with the blood of potentially dozens or even hundreds of innocents. You didn't kill them, but they're sure as shit dead because of you.

>To the exclusion of its influence upon other aspects of the character (as far as we've seen).
What? I mean, it's not like there was anything Seeming really did in 1e, but it basically does *more* in 2e (since Seeming benefits on Contracts are better than just a cost reduction now).

Seeming was also directly related to Kith, making it part and parcel of your durance and directly related to your time in ARcadia.
Now they're separate, and related to emotions and paths of escaping Arcadia. Which now somehow Warp appearance.

Which is an internal logic is greatly dislike.

If you're going to focus on your character's mentality of survivorship, don't bastardize an existing game element to do it.
Ogre? Fairest? Elemental? Beast?
Those aren't the names of escape plans, those are categories of creature.
And even if you completely disregard their influence upon character elements such as appearance, saying you only entered one as you escaped is needlessly restrictive.

While arguing Seemings, don't forget that they do indeed have other bonuses than just the clarity stuff. They are just a bit harder to find.

Hey guys, I've been thinking about playing a gargoyle in a new V20 campaign. Is it actually viable? I really like the idea behind them, but they seem to be quite hard to play. I'm not necessarily going with Camarilla though, I may go with anarchists instead. Also are they all necessarily dumb as fuck? I don't want a genius, I just don't want a character like the gargoyle from the Bloodlines game.

Gargoyles are not verry fun for anyone :S Your DM will hate your char and you cant interact with mortals. Not fun for anyone

Ask your DM, depending on what he has in mind there could be no problem or you could be dynamiting his whole plot.

By asking I don't mean just asking if he let's you play it. Some DMs will allow anything only to discover later they can't handle it. Try to inform yourself about what he wants to DM and then see if a gargoyle protagonist fits. Remember the bloodlines guy was an NPC.

I'm 100% sure that the basic vampire book includes werewolf stats abridged/adapted for Vampire.

Or are you talking about lore?

;_;

Well you did ask, sorry if I was harsh but its better that you are prepared imo

You're right though. I'll still talk to the DM and see if it would affect the chronicle too much, I hope he doesn't hate me for it.

Any tips for playing a gargoyle?

Figure out how your char will feed I guess, and maby get obfuscate asap. More than that I dont know I am afraid.

From what I've seen of CtL 2E so far, the things I like about it begin and end with the new Contract system. Elsewise, there's far too much of Hill's "muh vision" in it for me to like. Hill's thematic and setting changes simply shift Lost 2E too far away from what I liked about 1E.

Which is interesting I like the shift to the focus on coping mechanism, from what I have seen. The Seemings and your escape are all about coping. The seeming is your coping mechanism.

You know, I really wish Hill would keep his 'Vision of 2e' confined to that shitty "Tokyo by Night" mini-setting, rather than screwing up my favorite CofD splat.

>The entire concept of Huntsmen. Making them immortal is the single biggest fucking stupidest mistake I've ever heard of. Make them relentless by all means, replaced by their kin who'll take different approaches. But don't force the PC to fight the same one over and over again, until they sell out another Lost to get a slight reprieve.

Thats just the Fae Hunt from 1ed but kicked up a few notches. The fae are effectively immortal, and they hunt down their old slaves i.e. the PCs

Loyalist were also a part of the 1ed core, but now it's less of a identifiable faction and more personal. Sure they can be spys and infiltrate, and their is the paranoia aspect. but this just seems like a further move into the personal horror vein, that Chrod wants to go with. It's one thing to say a spy got yah. it's another to think a friend couldn't make it one more day, and betrayed you.

>Plus, every fucking Huntsman kills at least one innocent when he enters the world, and potentially many more hunting the Changeling down.
This is indeed way more heavy than previous editions, sliding into grim dark. But I can see what they're going for. With the survivor's guilt theme. And you do bring up a very reasonable response to that stimuli.

Overall Has a very terminator vibe to it. I would be sorely tempted to not include death toll aspect, brings a big downer to an otherwise lighter splat. Butlost of innocent and 'death' happens as a part of changeling creation.

Does anyone have the source links? I wish to do more research on this

>Elsewise, there's far too much of Hill's "muh vision" in it for me to like. Hill's thematic and setting changes simply shift Lost 2E too far away from what I liked about 1E.

Same here, hills vision is not something i like so far. Fortunately 1st ed changeling is still a viable game.

>Hill's "muh vision"

Ugh that guy and his yes man/woman/ tranny arcanearts keep pushing their shitty vision at the expense of anything else.

It doesn't seem like it's be too hard to play a 1e style game with the 2e rules, to be honest. I know I'll be using the 2e Contracts, at least.

Could be, unless the final version has some kind of theme enforcing mechanic like werewolf with the hunt.

But i doubt i would do that. Player expectation for changeling 2nd would be playing 2nd edition with hunter and hills vision, unless completeky new.

If i were to use 2nd edition but then run it like the warriors it would feel like a bait-and-switch.

And just swiming in the cesspool that 2nd seems its becoming to find 2 or 3 good mechanics when 1st is perfectly functional is to much work imo.

good good

bitterness leads to pettiness
pettiness leads to anger
anger leads to edition wars
edition wars lead to derailment

The core mechanics of 2ed work pretty good. Some of the specific splat mechainic are weird and dumb (looking at you satiety ) But hey man every GM needs to do their own style. Use what you like ignore what you don't. It's good to know what you like. Because if the gm is happy every one has a better night

Can someone tell me how someone should spend experience in old world of darkness and new? It seems like even if you have 100 experience which is a lot to my knowledge. You're really going to go through them faster than you'd expect and still be not that much better.

Like, should you focus on powers over attributes and skills? Virtues, willpower, etc?

Unless you are munchkin, it doesn't really matter. Just ask yourself in which area do you wish your character to develop.

It'll also be very very nice for once to get a straight answer on how large your dice pool should be in general. I find it hard to believe that 10d10 is what you should always aim for?

Depends on the splat. And whay you wanna be good at.

Eh, I mean for general world of darkness things. If you want specific lets go with the tried and tested vampires?

Legit questions,how do you find people to play these games together?Do you play on the internet,and if so,which website?

There are some play by post fora out there, but I wouldn't recommend any of them. They're usually incestuous and clique-ish affairs.

Best is to get a few people in your own are to become enthusiastic about playing

are there any good pregen adventures for Requiem available?

Too bad I live in a country that could count as a third-world country so I don't even know where to search.

Those people don't like to play pretend with dice?

Well the best I can do is persuade some people that know jack about rp,but I have 0 GM experience and to be honest I'm not really interested in being one too,so let's hope I bump into somebody who wants.

With blood buffing, in VtM I end up having 4 dice in things I generally don't care about, 6 in things I'm kind of skilled in, and 8 in my primary skills.

>So far the only thing I've hated is "The Hedge is suffering and misery and pain and sometimes it's a nice pain that you look back on fondly but it's pain pain pain"
Wait, what? Jesus Christ, the Hedge was like the one thing I actually LIKED in 1e Changeling, because it was
>dangerous, but still whimsical.
Yes, this.

It's something to do over beer and pizza with my buddies.

Most people, myself included, preferred Seeming not being connected to Kith. I've always preferred the "optional" rule in Winter Masque where you can be of any Kith, and when I couldn't do that, I'd just take Dual Kith.

I agree that the naming scheme has a bit of baggage, though.

But Hill's "muh vision" seems to be... actually playing to the themes of Changeling instead of wallowing. Clarity being able to be gained and lost and actually playing to the theme of working through and coming from trauma is great. It's much better than 1e, where you basically just kind of moped about your Durance. I mean, I have no doubt that's going to still happen in 2e games, but at least you're encouraged to do positive things.

I mean, there's stuff I don't like. The Hedge being Silent Hill, for one, and the Huntsmen aren't as interesting as the Idigam or Strix (neither of which I'd use anyway, but Huntsmen seem more integrated into the setting). But I don't understand the hate for "muh vision". I mean, if you hate the "vision" (which I'm really only making guesses at), why? What do you prefer about how 1e handled it? And just what "vision" are we talking about?

>1st ed changeling is still a viable game.
I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one who thinks Changeling 1e is a buggy mess with shitty rules that I can't believe anyone playtested.

>If i were to use 2nd edition but then run it like the warriors it would feel like a bait-and-switch.
I'm pretty sure playing Changeling like The Warriors is 100% acceptable in Changeling 2e.

Shit, that city is made up of a hundred different Courts, isn't it? Those gangs would make for great Courts. Or at least Motleys.

I'm exaggerating, but, yeah, The Hedge is kind of Silent Hill.
It's not all bad. I mean, the general mechanics are fine, and I like that the Hedge is psychotropic to the point that even mundanes could fuck it up, but it's got this fluff that feels *tangential* to good, where the Hedge wants to remind you of your first girlfriend or your dead grandpa or those nightmares you have. The Hedge's primary emotion is pain.

And I don't like that. I like World of Darkness stuff where ostensibly if everything was nice and happy, the magical psychotropic landscape would be nice and happy, but we live in the World of Darkness. I want a Hedge that's got barbed wire because the Hedge is a dangerous place that wants to lure you in. I want it to be a pitcher plant.

It's not a huge problem, though, and it's a thing I'm sure will get fixed in playtesting. I mean, Hill changed it quick when people first grumbled about it.

>I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one who thinks Changeling 1e is a buggy mess with shitty rules that I can't believe anyone playtested.

You probably are, yeah. 1e's janky, especially with the mechanics the splats added, but it's still a decent game that had a pretty strong mechanic to theme cohesion for the time and an aesthetic and identity that established itself firmly from its predecessor. It didn't win awards and become the fan favorite line for nothing, even if we can look back at it almost a decade later and more easily see its mechanical flaws.

2e looks like it's going to smooth out some problems while adding some brand new problems in, which seems to be the theme of this edition. It's just that this time, the developer touched the third rail of Lost and that's going to make it more contentious by default.

I don't really feel like 2e has introduced any real problems. Though I know that other people feel that way.

But it's like... I assume you play video games, right? Have you played Metal Gear Solid? It's basically fucking *impossible* to go back to MGS or Sons of Liberty after playing Snake Eater. Changeling is one of the games that had me feeling like that even before they started releasing 2e stuff. Promethean, too. I think that Hunter might be the only one that holds up well, and even then I'd already felt that the way the (very sparse in the corebook) Dread Powers were ranked was pointless.

There are just so many mechanics in Changeling that flat out don't work in my opinion. A lot of the Contracts are weirdly leveled (Oddbody, for instance having a four dot effect that other games would have at two or three, then having a capstone that's fucking useless and dumb except for gimmicky things, or Mirrors having the very pointless Riddlekith even though "Kith" didn't have a unified aesthetic), the contract mechanics themselves rely on your power stat being as high as possible (which is increasingly difficult in 1e) even more so than Mage, while also using only an Attribute *or* a Skill. Any power that relied on successes was going to be weaker than expected, *especially* on Contested powers, where the Defender might be rolling more dice.

And don't even get me started on the "you will fucking fail terribly" mechanics of Talecrafting, which is an otherwise great idea.

I think a lot of RPGs get awards and become fan favourites despite bad mechanics. As long as a game is playable, it's fine. You only really see complaints when the mechanics are utter garbage, and praise when the mechanics are really good (like everything RPGesus Greg Stolze has done)

>I don't really feel like 2e has introduced any real problems. Though I know that other people feel that way.

Ok.

1e changeling was Response to Trauma.
2e Changeling seems to be Dealing with your Trauma.
Kith = Traumatic Life Changing Event
Seeming = Coping Mechanisms
Huntsman = Looming consequences to your life and choices from Depression, to being remitted to a mental health facility (being caught by huntsman).

That's pretty heavy handed

Put with a bit of levity. Has anyone accused White Wolf's writing team (other than Eddy with Pugmire) of being anything but?

Playing mage for the first time with some friends over winter break. Here is my character sheet. Any advice on what I should change?

Well you only get 1 Paraxes per dot of Gnosis. So your two to many. Other than that you look good.

The whole point of the Hedge is being the exciting and fascinating and wondrous part that lures you in to the actual danger of Arcadia before you've realized what's happened.

Well, there was the person who got really mad that Disciplines were not scientifically accurate and that's why Dominate had to be someone shooting neurons out of their head into other people's brains to work.

So, I'm the forever GM of my group, and recently they've all been asking me to run a game of Vampire the Masquerade. I would like to run this game, as the WoD setting seems quite neat, although I'm not sure if I should run a published adventure for them or come up with something on my own, either way, any tips for a DM new to WoD?

Huh, for some reason I thought you started with three.

...What???

What about Vampires is remotely scientifically-accurate, let alone their magic superpowers?

Well to fair, some people actually think they're vamps. So nutters happen

>some people

"full ass-rape stiffness"

Dealing with your trauma is the response. 1e wallowed in it. You were *supposed* to be getting over a traumatic event in 1e, it just wasn't written well.

Not really. No more so than "vampires are domestic abusers" or "Promethean is about finding yourself".

The Hedge *has* always been about badscary, it's just that I don't like *how* it's badscary in 2e. I mean, it was always a place that Changelings wouldn't want to go due to the dangers of the Hedge itself, but I don't like the focus on *pain* as opposed to *emotion* as a whole. Because Book of Spirits starts out with a really good, if silly, look at how even too much Happiness can be bad.

That's Rotes.

Beyond publicity stunts of course

Don't be afraid to let your players be ambitious (but put up good obstacles, of course), some of the best experiences in Vampire is the schemes players can pull off.

I'll keep Quantum Flux. It sounds like something I'd like to spam. As for familiar I was thinking about a blood spirit. I figure it would almost always be useful.

>But I don't understand the hate for "muh vision". I mean, if you hate the "vision" (which I'm really only making guesses at), why? What do you prefer about how 1e handled it? And just what "vision" are we talking about?

Comments like all changeling are morally dubious because the wyrd is gonna push you and there is no promises that you would never break because changeling put not going back above everything, give us a idea of what "muh vision" is for the game.

Personally i like from 1st edition the urban fantasy elements, i like the hedge to be a place wich get molds by your court and city....maybe your mental state but that wasnt always.

The problem with "muh vision" to me, in the context of changeling is that it feels the whole game is remade to fit A particular character concept that the author seems to think thats how "it should be played" that is a morally bankrupt fickle creature that just wont go back.

I like from 1st edition that the game didnt enforce mechanically many of its themes so it give me breathing rooms to make my own or give my spin to it.

Also a dislike some of the stuff thats over complicated like fae-touched mortal used to be people who escape before lasting transformation. Now they are some convoluted fluff piece about people who once made a promise to a changeling before they were taken and 3 more pages of useless fluff.

I like the court were this set-in stone set of courts and with their special contract instead of a "do it yourself kit" that makes some of the contracts feel generic with a different paint job each.

And i sure like that the whole "talecrafting" thing was in a easily ignorable source book where it belonged, instead of a core mechanic.

>The problem with "muh vision" to me, in the context of changeling is that it feels the whole game is remade to fit A particular character concept that the author seems to think thats how "it should be played" that is a morally bankrupt fickle creature that just wont go back.
On the upside this'll make them fun you-don't-have-to-feel-guilty-about-fucking-this-guy-up antagonists for other gamelines?

I guess?

>Personally i like from 1st edition the urban fantasy elements, i like from 1st edition that the game didnt enforce
many of its themes so it give me breathing rooms to make my own or give my spin to it.

Not who you're taking to, but I thought Changeling 1e enforced its themes pretty dang well for a mainstream mid-2000s RPG. Clarity's a great prototype for the 2e morality meters, for example. I think there's an argument to be made that it might have been too loose or that 2e is being too tight, but I don't think I'd ever say that it didn't enforce many of its themes.

That's how Hunters certainly saw them in HtV 1e, so at least there's some kind of coherence, I suppose.

>Comments like all changeling are morally dubious because the wyrd is gonna push you and there is no promises that you would never break because changeling put not going back above everything, give us a idea of what "muh vision" is for the game.
I don't have a problem with that, really. Changelings had a bit of a woobie problem in 1e. I mean, they were still treated as shitty, but a lot of people basically ignored that.

Also, the Hedge was always a scary and dangerous place. That's not a change. The change is that the Hedge is *pain* as aside from anything else.

>I like from 1st edition that the game didnt enforce mechanically many of its themes so it give me breathing rooms to make my own or give my spin to it.
See, to me that's one of the negatives of 1e.

>I like the court were this set-in stone set of courts
But that wasn't true. In fact, that's one of the things I like most about Changeling 2e. Changeling has always had THE MOST social groups of any game, yet it's always been treated as if ONLY the Seasonal Courts existed. And the Seasonal Courts didn't even fit for most of the world, which always bothered me. Even the suggestion of *different* seasons (like the Rainy Season) wasn't great.

Every character in the World of Darkness has the potential to be morally bankrupt. I don't really think user is being fair when he argues that as a negative, because it was always true. It's written right into the Seeming write ups. There's even a mechanic for it in Equinox Road. Changelings are abuse victims, and abuse victims have a higher potential of becoming abusers. It's a dumb cute phrase, but "hurt people hurt people".

Clarity is kind of good, but a lot of other stuff is really bad. Like, Pledges are meant to be like the Geassa of stories where characters ended up with five or six magical compulsions that brought them low. Like CuChullain. But they're so easy to just... cheese out free dots.

This is why I like that harvesting Glamour from emotions robs the victim of a point of Willpower. Changelings have always had a sort of subtheme of being emotional vampires (which was even a suggestion in the ST section) and Hunter played that up, but there was no actual mechanical reinforcement to it.

I mean, people argue that Vampires taking 1L from someone every two days is just perfectly safe and healthy, because mechanically it is, logical consequences of losing a large quantity of blood every two days.

>The change is that the Hedge is *pain* as aside from anything else.
Isn't the Hedge also explicitly the way via which Changelings interact with dreams?

This implies that Changeling oneiromancy is probably universally pretty fucked up.

>The problem with "muh vision" to me, in the context of changeling is that it feels the whole game is remade to fit A particular character concept that the author seems to think thats how "it should be played" that is a morally bankrupt fickle creature that just wont go back.

Ahh, but is it moral bankrupt? From what I remember in 2e Huntsmen might be looking for you but they aren't constantly crossing into reality. Heck there is a time limit between when they can be summoned. So you kill one now. and 5 years later your ex-abuser can send another one after you. Or 20 years, or some other block of time that I'm not sure what it was but it seemed long.

>Or 20 years, or some other block of time that I'm not sure what it was but it seemed long.
Not even fucking close.
It's however long it takes the Huntsman to return to Arcadia by the most direct route.

̶I̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶2̶e̶.̶ ̶O̶n̶e̶i̶r̶o̶m̶a̶n̶c̶y̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶m̶e̶c̶h̶a̶n̶i̶c̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶1̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶e̶d̶.̶

It says a fortnight. I'm going to look up exactly what that means, give me a second. Not that you will notice reading this after I look that up. 14 days. It must stop and heal it's self and reform it's body for 14 days.

So i am very bad at symbolic shit but i am the forever DM of my group and they wanna play mage awakening. How difficult or how much it would mess up by entirely removing astral from the game?

Pretty easy. But symbolic shit in general is pretty important.