More Contracts?

[Tessie]

Semi-related lore/flavor question for Changeling STs. How do you tend to deal with homebrew Contracts lorewise when you allow them, especially those made by your players for their characters. Do you just make them canon parts of the Regalia in your game and thus also part of the True Fae repertoire from the beginning? Do you allow Changeling to in-universe create/negotiate new Arcadian Contracts? How does that work and does that make them now available to other fae?

Kith & Kin might go into the subject when it gets out, but personally I'd just say that any homebrew Arcadian Contracts always existed in the most fitting Regalia. Lorewise Arcadian Contracts were made by the True Fae in the early days of Arcadia. Changelings merely tap into preexisting pacts and bargains. And as far as I'm concerned, the ones in the book (soon to be books) are just a tiny minority of all Contracts out there. Rather, they're probably representative of the most (lowercase) common Contracts for changelings to have.

Quick edit: If changelings want to create brand new Contracts, they would do so through Bargains with Court patrons (see OAT), or possibly make a novel deal with a goblin.

[Unahim]

I disagree. There's no requirement for learning Contracts from any of the six preexisting Regalia, even those you don't favour, so I don't see any reason (either for gameplay purposes or in-setting) for additional Regalia to be gated. As seen in their latest games, Onyx Path really prefers freedom of choice to personalise your character as much as possible.

The new Regalia are going to be different than the ones who have no matter what. Either they will be the only ones that no Seeming has favoured by default, or something else, but they'll break the mold in some way or the other.

I don't see prerequisites as infringing the freedom of choice. After all, we have plenty of merits with prereqs, and plenty of prereqs in other splats and aspects of the game. I don't see Onyx Path as favouring "freedom of choice" to the exclusion of everything else, rather you are free to choose within the narrative dimensions set by the splat and the gameworld. And there are definitely plenty of ways new regalia could tie into existing ones in a way that feels completely organic. Sometimes it makes sense to have to learn A before B, and that's in no ways limiting, it's just about making a cohesive whole.

You're free to disagree, naturally, and I'm sure whatever they have come up with will be wonderful! ^^

I'm curious exactly how you see it though, because so far me and others have brainstormed on this a bit and offered potential avenues, which you've all shot down, but I don't feel I actually know how you see it yet! ^^

Stick your neck out and let's hear it! xD

Of course the simple path is "Here's extra regalia, you can pick them as your optional second favoured regalia, but nobody favours them.", but that feels thematically unbalanced to me Why is there a Seeming that "always favours" for every other Regalia but not these ones if they're on the same level? Why are these Contracts thus less represented amongst Changelings in general than the others are? Those are the type of questions that make me think about making them "advanced" Regalia, because then there's a thematic reason as to why they are slightly more rare than the other Contracts, while otherwise it just feels like "that's just how it is". YMMV, of course!

Anyway, you say you "see no reasons", but there's some here. ^^ Maybe you don't think they're good reasons from your approach, but it's not like there are none possible. ^^

[Tessie]

If we follow the development of games and updates of old games by OPP, it's a pretty consistent theme.
Early games like Vampire ties certain powers directly to their x-splats, making them close to unique and much more difficult to learn outside your x-splat. Mage does a weird thing and instead has un-favoured powers for their x-splats, which changes costs (both in amount and type of XP) as well as requires teachers to learn above really low ratings.
If we forward to Changeling 2e we find that Kiths are no longer Seeming-locked and all Contracts are available for everyone with no gatekeeping at all (except for the small difference in XP costs, which is alleviated by letting you choose a second favoured Regalia freely).
If we then look to a game they made from scratch rather than updated, like Deviant, they've now removed even the XP cost difference. Now you need at least 50% of your power dots to be from you x-splat specific powers and/or from a huge list of universal powers, but in practice you'll never encounter that limit due to how few powers there are that are tied to the x-splats. The freedom of choice is just about complete at this stage. In the next game (if there will be one) I wouldn't be surprised if there no longer are x-splats, but rather just a list of things you can freely pick and choose from for your character.
(And as a side note, they've also broken up the five dot structure of powers in many 2e updates and all the new games so that you often can get the individual powers without getting the previous dots, which is another way to increase the freedom of choice to personalise your character.)

To me it's very difficult to believe Onyx Path would take a 180° turn on this theme. Now there could be fitting prereqs for more advanced Contracts, but I don't see why they would be categorised in new Regalia (rather than being a third category alongside Common and Royal, or use any other kind of division) if they're in any way based on preexisting Contracts/Regalia.

In-setting there's a correlation between Seemings and Regalia, sure, but no established causation. That there is one Regalia for each Seeming is primarily for gameplay purposes rather than anything established in the setting. If we turn the thing around and assume that the Regalia never were meant to be an exhaustive list, then it makes total sense that we first get rules for the Regalia that are more relevant to the characters, just like how in Werewolf we only get the Shadow Gifts that are favoured by at least one Tribe but it would make absolutely no sense there wouldn't exist Gifts that aren't favoured. These new Regalia doesn't have to be as relevant for the characters because they're simply less common by virtue of being favoured as much as the Seeming-connected Regalia. The Seemings are all archetypes so they gain a favoured Regalia that corresponds to that archetype; the new Regalia are probably more narrow, specialised or weirder than the six original Regalia, which explains why no Seeming favours them. They're still most likely going to be favoured by individuals through their personal choices.
And it's not like there isn't any precedent for it. In VtR 1e core we only got rules for the Disciplines tied to the major Clans of the game, but later we got (though admittedly only a few) Disciplines that weren't tied to any Clan at all, like Blood Tenebrous and Breath-Drinking.
This is my guess and my reasons. It's what makes the most sense to me, given the trends of OPP and the existing setting material.

...

Or we could also just get additional Seemings to cover the new Regalia.

[Draconis]

My money's on a new Seeming with the new Regalia as favored. Maybe a proper 2e update of the Grimms from DE1?

[Tessie]

Multiple new Regalia would mean multiple new Seemings if all of them are to be favoured by a Seeming.

[Omegaphallic]

That'd be six new Regalia. I think it's more likely the new Regalia aren't tied to Seemings. That way they also wouldn't have to rewrite the rule about how many favoured Regalia you have.

If they aren't tied to Regalia, what would they be tied to? Gentry? Some sort of Fae Arcadian beings besides Gentry?

[FallenEco]

If they aren't tied to Regalia, what would they be tied to? Gentry? Some sort of Fae Arcadian beings besides Gentry?

Gentry can already take ANY Regalia for their Titles. So yes, they are going to have ties to the True Fae unless stated otherwise.
Seemings don't anchor Regalia, they access them through the Gentry.

[Tessie]

If they aren't tied to Regalia, what would they be tied to? Gentry? Some sort of Fae Arcadian beings besides Gentry?

*Seemings. Well, nothing in particular. As I explained in a later post there's no in-setting reason (that I know of, at least) for all Regalia to be favoured by a Seeming. They'd just be rarer because people would favour them on an individual basis rather than 20% automatically favouring one of them, which is a good reason for them not to be included in the core book.
In this case the Gentry would definitely be able to favour them (or whatever the terminology is) just like they do with the six Regalia in the core book. The Gentry are more closely linked to all Regalia than any Seeming because they're the ones who negotiated Arcadian Contracts in the first place.

Or, just an idea, these Regalia represents Contracts originally written by changelings rather than Gentry but without falling into a Court system as per OAT. That could lead to Regalia that aren't favoured by anone, thus requires teachers to pass them on since they're not naturally developed by anyone, but still have XP costs as if they were favoured as a compensation because they were written for changelings rather than something changelings happen to be able to tap into.