Okay, since there's actually someone disagreeing with me, let me actually start laying out my disagreements with psychic vampire Changelings.
Now, let's start with the really simple, really obvious objection that is so patently obvious that I feel almost silly saying it. Vampire the Requiem exists. If you want to play vampires, you can play Vampire: The Requiem, and if you wanted you could even pretty easily create a bloodline/new Clan of Psychic Vampires if you wanted. So one could argue that replicating this again, with minor changes and variants is problematic.
The stronger, more interesting argument I will be getting into is that it is deeply unthematic for what Changeling tries to do at least in 1e, and that what it tries to do in 1e is a good thing.
But first, regular vampires....
Vampires (And their Requiem)
Let me start by saying,
@cmwatford , that I actually totally like Vampire 2e, which means by-default I don't hate all of nWoD 2e.
So, one key difference to start with is, Vampires *have* to take in Vitae. They spend a point of it every night to live, and so like
@EarthScorpion says, their sympathy and complex personal-moral (personal moral because on a large scale killing them all is obviously good, but *individual* vampires that a person knows can seem like the 'exception' in the sense that people dealing with them might have more ambivilent feelings about 'this vampire' than they do 'vampires as a whole) issues all hinge on the fact that they must be evil to live, and they must live in order to do anything in 'life' that isn't evil or bestial or base or simple at all.
I think there is room for a small number of NPCs or 'haha, you compromised your morality and you didn't have to' characters that stick only to animal blood and just enter torpor whenever forced to do so or drink blood, but they'd exist entirely as a sort exception to the rule that is in no way an actual path forward for vampires as a 'race'.
So the fact that they are damned and don't have a choice, or even chose it (for the Embrace is complex, yet even those who choose it probably wouldn't if they knew everything), and so their question is how do they live with this. (Note, I'm saying 'live' and 'life' this whole time because it's easier, so please don't point out that it's unlife or whatever). They provide justifications, they create societies, they do so many things to live with what they've become, and I think all of this valid and makes good storytelling.
Yet ultimately, a vampire's method of feeding and gaining power is deliberately and pointedly unambiguous, with the ambiguities coming after the fact and contextually, on a personal level. This is, as I said, made easier to deal with as a personal-moral issue because at the base, the terms being weighed are *lives*.
Changelings and Glamour
Changelings don't need Glamour. No, Mr. 'Ling, no. 'Really, Really wants' doesn't count. And the fact that they feel vague and blah and out of it if they have no Glamour (it's mostly narrative, that part, because 1e knew that sometimes things didn't have to have a full network of rules), and the fact that they do need it to use their magic all doesn't matter. Because a Changeling could in theory live with 0 Glamour for the rest of their lives forever. Now, being realistic, the threats they face, the things they want and desire, and the requirements of society make that just as hard as being the BP 1-Forever Vamp who has never even bitten a human.
So, obviously that makes it a good parallel and this is great and Changeling 2e is game of the year, right?
Haha, no. First point against the psychic vampire thing. When it is done to allow you to live, to continue existing as a being, we can all sort of understand it. The desire to live is strong, strong enough that we have special admiration or horror for people capable of totally switching it off. Not just being willing to risk their lives, but being willing to, say, throw themselves on a grenade...or blow themselves up with C4, in pursuit of something.
We call these people fanatics or heroes or 'the bravest person I've ever met.' Most people, by default, are not that. So there is a deep moral (or rather immoral and yet complex) center at the heart of vampires. If Changelings are literally doing the same thing to people just for fucking kicks and magic tricks and because it's like a drug and glamour is the best drug of all...most people aren't able to understand, comprehend, or sympathize with that. Hurting another to save your own life is all too human and, in this case, also inhuman. Being willing to hurt someone every time you want to literally go through the basic motions of playing the game/living/interacting without NEEDING to makes Changelings who harvest emotions worse people than vampires are--
Not more harmful, since vampires kill plenty more and plenty of vampires are worse than Changelings, but let me remind you.
Literally every single court in existence ever feeds on emotion. When (and I'll get into the second part of this in a bit) this is reasonably harmless, or rather has complex and interesting outcomes that aren't 'We're just horrible people, plain and simple', this is fine and dandy. But when it's not, then you have...
Imagine if every single Vampire Covenant was Circle of the Crone, devoted to basically being the bad guys and hurting people because 'fuck it yolo.' That's what making Courts *about* an emotional philosophy and then making the harvesting and connection to that emotion fundamentally an evil and unforgivable act without even the bare justification of self-preservation does.
So why As It is?
Now, all of this could be understood if Changeling 1e and how it treated Glamour was so completely shit that they needed a new, grand idea to fix it and stop it from being horrible. Now, it'd be a *failed* fix, but at least that wouldn't be 'changing something for no good reason.'
But there are complex and subtle moral ambiguities that rest at the heart of how Changelings interact with glamour.
First, in how they harvest it. They can cause it, or they can soak it up, either works, but think about the sorts of strong emotions it takes to harvest it, and then think about, for instance, the four Courts. People in Summer Court are pissing people off or going amid a crowd of angry people and just taking and taking. People in Fall Court are *scaring* people and maybe worse, and what about Winter Courtiers? One of the canon examples of how to get glamour as a Winter Courtier involves crashing someone's funeral. And, as sex positive as I am, teasing with someone else's emotions (when they might be in a relationship, or might assume too much) is sometimes a bad thing, and there are plenty of dickish Spring Court ways to gain glamour, like 'offering' a bunch of food to a homeless person and then drinking deep of their desire and then playing 'yoink.'
And that's not counting the way the Fleeting Court Contracts directly can incentivize actions that are both positive and negative. And because Glamour-harvesting doesn't itself inherently hurt people, you can focus more on the moral hazards of drawing forth emotions. With Fleeting Spring 3, a Changeling could literallly commit rape-by-fraud. With Spring 2 they can toy around with people's desires, and it gets more powerful from there. In other words, there's the question of what you'll do for a fix. And because it *seems* harmless and is *mainly* harmless, the moral conflict is stronger because you're not damning yourself to be a monster by having a one-night stand with someone to harvest glamour. But you're defining and deciding just what you would do and what you wouldn't for magic, you're setting your limits on what the power of whimsy, the strength of your well-being and the accomplishment of your goals (from 'overthrow the unjust king' to 'survive the gobllin assault' to 'Get rich or die trying) are worth.
Are you willing to get into a fight with your best (mortal) friend just for that sweet, sweet hit of glamour, Mr. Summer? Are you willing to genuinely make a woman terrified beyond reason for her life just for a big harvest, Ms. Autumn. Sure, she's not been 'harmed' but do you think there are no consequences to what you do? And Winter Courtiers can give people depression if they want in pursuit of glamour.
By having glamour-harvesting not be inherently evil, you give people more rope with which to play around, with which to define and choose and maybe even grow worse or more callous as the years go by without it being some slippery slope into Psychic-Vampire monsterdom. Or to hang themselves with. Because it's easier to justify it when nobody seems to openly be harmed, and yet that just makes the moral peril veiled and complex.
Thus the question is 'How bad of a person are you willing to be, just what are you willing to do, for power and influence, for the ability to affect the world' rather than 'By the very act of harvesting this, you are an evil monster. What now?'
The second way in which there is a complex schema of ambiguity related to Glamour Harvesting is the possibility, which also exists with vampires, being fair, of starting to see people as bags. As outputs. And when they aren't even harmed, why shouldn't you start to see people as 'She looks spooked, easy target' or hug your mortal mother as she finds out her best friend died of cancer and just...drink of the sorrow. Just a taste, just a nibble, it doesn't hurt her, it doesn't hurt anyone--
But the danger there is becoming the sort of person who sees others as outputs. As sources for things. Who continually pisses off someone with anger issues until they up and attack someone and get sent to jail and surely it isn't your fault, just because they were always angry. Who winds up giving a child a crippling phobia just because they wanted a little Halloween Glamour. Who leaves a string of angry and bitter and mistreated lovers in their wake, each of whom can't even remember *why* they ever desired the Changeling. Betrayed for a hit of glamour.
There is more to say, but this is already long, so I will try to move towards a close. These aren't stories that can be summed up in a few words, the stories that can be told with how a person and why a person and who and so on...harvests glamour from emotions. They aren't simple, and that's why I love them.
They're complex, they capture the heart of the social, philosophical, and moral complexities that I love Changeling 1e for, in which you can be a good person and do bad things, in which you can be a hurt person who can hurt others, but also help them...
Because what Glamour harvesting also has is the power to be used responsibly and safely and as part of an inherent My Character Is statement. The chef who loves the look on his patron's face, who harvests their desire for his great creations, the Changeling who truly *believes* in protest movements, and for whom harvesting the wrath is not, to them, an act of exploitation. The Changeling who loves Halloween and gives people small frights, or is a horror movie buff, or the Changeling who is a pastor, whose sermons on loss and change and grief are famous.
A Changeling can be more than just a monster who has to find out what they want to be as well as being a monster, and that is what is lost, most of all, when Changeling 2e changes the way glamour is harvested.
*****
I apologize for being so wordy and taking up anyone's time who has read this, but I felt the need to write it.