We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

[Ragnarok]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

It sounds intriguing. Do you allow PCs to be elves from this nation?

 

Also, just because a race is fading doesn't mean it isn't still dangerous -- especially if it tries one last time to regain it's former status though conflict.

 

Also, "fading" doesn't have to mean the race in toto. Perhaps their arcane might is fading, but they are increasing their might of arms to balance that loss.

 

 

Yes, they do have that option but none of them have chosen it.

 

I didn't mean to imply fading meant harmless. I was speaking mostly in a global context, where fading means a lessening influence. I've always been frustrated in many RPGs or fantasy literature where the elves or dwarves (or basically anything other than humans) were things of the past and were fading away. Not so in my game.

 

In my game, the elves are generally more frail in comparison to humans and dwarves, so this military nation has tried to overcome that by using more organized tactics and spears. Think elven phalanx, with archers in the middle and spearmen front.

[Manic Typist]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

I once had a player who wanted to play an elf. I was fine with that. He even wanted to play a spy/saboteur who was a part of a larger organization established by his elven nation to bring down the human empire in which the game was taking place.

 

Hm, a complication. I intended this empire to (more or less) be a "Good Guy." You know, a source of civilization, light, law, and order in an otherwise fairly tyrannical/dog eat dog world. That didn't mean the empire couldn't be brutal at times, but in general I was intending for something you could look at and at least respect.

 

Still, I was ok with it.

 

Then I watched how the elf got played. In the end, his actions led to be filling in some history for the region...specifically, about a genocidal nation of elves who were largely destroyed by the nascent human empire largely because "they needed killin'." These elves were so arrogant that they couldn't stand these humans (who'd recently been freed from slavery to orcs), and decided to use forced eugenics programs to see if they could BREED something more palatable from the human females.

 

Put the other elven nations in an awkward position, since they saw how utterly twisted these guys were becoming (literally and figuratively). They couldn't directly confront them, since that could lead to a massive elf on elf war... but they couldn't help them either. So now they quietly pretend to know nothing about them, for fear that calling them to the attention of the humans might stir xenophobia from the humans who might ask "Why stop with just THIS group of elves? How are these OTHER elves any more trustworthy?"

[CTaylor]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

I think if you mess with the tropes of fantasy too much you risk losing immersion and the players get confused. If the Orcs are good guys with a bad reputation and the Elves are secretly vampires and people ride mosquitos and magic is actually psionics while humans are more like elves etc etc people start going ... uh, you have a book about all this or something? I can't keep track, what am I supposed to be doing, again? So if I kill the orc that holds this land, I'm the bad guy? Who are bad guys, then?

[SteveZilla]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

I think if you mess with the tropes of fantasy too much you risk losing immersion and the players get confused. If the Orcs are good guys with a bad reputation and the Elves are secretly vampires and people ride mosquitoes and magic is actually psionics while humans are more like elves etc etc people start going ... uh' date=' you have a book about all this or something? I can't keep track, what am I supposed to be doing, again? So if I kill the orc that holds this land, I'm the bad guy? Who are bad guys, then?[/quote']

 

Didn't you get the memo? You've stepped into the "Morally Ambiguous" game where there is no true Good or Bad.

 

Games like that tend to make me sick and not stay long.

[Shadowsoul]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

I'm all for moral ambiguity and messing around with genre conventions.

 

The only thing to be careful about is that you need to warn people to expect things to be different. If a player signs on to a campaign with a full understanding of what to expect then it's up to them to get their heads around it of it deviates from the norms.

[Ragnarok]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Another thing I'm trying in my campaign is the replacement of the orcs. Instead, trolls fill the orcs' traditional role. Granted, I did tweak the traditional concept of trolls a bit. Instead of the giant, lumbering beasts like the cave troll in Lord of the Rings, the typical troll in my campaign is about the size of the Predator, and about as muscled. Instead of Predator's weird jaw structure, trolls have extended lower canines, like Warcraft orcs. They have hair, often arranged in almost Caribbean styles (dreadlocks, etc). They have a more organized social structure, best described as tribal, with a shaman or warlord at the top.

 

Essentially, they have roughly the same social structure and numbers as the orcs, but they're bigger and tougher. Should be an interesting challenge for the PCs.

[Chris-M]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Another thing I'm trying in my campaign is the replacement of the orcs. Instead' date=' trolls fill the orcs' traditional role. Granted, I did tweak the traditional concept of trolls a bit.[/quote']

 

'Rok, have you read Poul Anderson's "The Broken Sword?" It's a good read, although somewhat overrated IMHO (Moorcock raves about it being vastly superior to Tolkien, which I just don't see), but given the Nordic bent of the campaign you're putting together, absolutely worth reading.

 

His use of elves, trolls, goblins, and such are interesting and original (and he wrote this before Tolkien had been published in the US, IIRC, so you're not getting fantasy filtered through Tolkien or the post-D&D authors, which is often a good thing). You should check it out.

[Ragnarok]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

'Rok, have you read Poul Anderson's "The Broken Sword?" It's a good read, although somewhat overrated IMHO (Moorcock raves about it being vastly superior to Tolkien, which I just don't see), but given the Nordic bent of the campaign you're putting together, absolutely worth reading.

 

His use of elves, trolls, goblins, and such are interesting and original (and he wrote this before Tolkien had been published in the US, IIRC, so you're not getting fantasy filtered through Tolkien or the post-D&D authors, which is often a good thing). You should check it out.

 

 

No, I haven't read it. Sounds like an interesting read, though. I'm always looking for new ways to break up the stereotypical mold of fantasy races. Thanks, man.

 

Maybe I'll have a chance to look through it when I return from the U.K....

[Markdoc]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

'Rok' date=' have you read Poul Anderson's "The Broken Sword?" It's a good read, although somewhat overrated IMHO (Moorcock raves about it being vastly superior to Tolkien, which I just don't see), but given the Nordic bent of the campaign you're putting together, absolutely worth reading.[/quote']

 

I love that book. OK, not better than Tolkein, but it's by far my favourite Anderson book. Interesting, because he said it was the book of his that he'd most like to rewrite: I suspect it's because in that story he captured the flavour of the original stories, so it has an edge, not the softer-focus take of most of his writing.

 

I'd second the recommendation.

 

cheers, Mark

[Legatus]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Maybe a bit late, but still no thread necromancy:

 

I've almost always played in a Tolkienesque world and never did I have any doubts that this was the most satisfying style of play. In all the novels that I read I never found a race that I was digging so much that I longed for a character race built after that. I was content with Humans, Elves and Dwarves.

 

This has changed with reading Steven Erikson's Malazan Books of the Fallen:

it contains so many races and cultures. I just love it. Though some may argue that the Tiste-races are somewhat elvish, I think with their history and their society explained, they stand out from every other elven look-alikes.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_of_the_Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen

[Shadowsoul]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Got to agree, the Malazan setting is one of the finest I've ever come across.

 

I've been meaning to post a write-up of the various Tiste races. One problem being that there aren't many 'normal' Tiste-Andi around in the books, they all tend to be pretty hard core.

[Legatus]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

As with almost all the characters in the books, they'd be pretty high powered.

Heck, some of them would even be pretty scary supervillains or -heroes (e.g. Icarium or Anomander).

[Shadowsoul]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Just the 'normal' Andi assassin mages are quite capable of talking casually about the last time they killed a god.

 

When you actually try to define people like Korlat they start sounding like some kind of D&D Munchkin's dream character. Eg. 'Immortal Weredragon Assassin-Mage.'

 

Icarium would be an absolute nightmare.

[Legatus]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

When you actually try to define people like Korlat they start sounding like some kind of D&D Munchkin's dream character. Eg. 'Immortal Weredragon Assassin-Mage.'

 

 

or Karsa Orlong: giant warrior, immune to magic, rapid healing factor, killed two Deragoth and a K'Chain, refuses the position as a God's Knight

[Shadowsoul]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

He's not stupid either, which is rather unfair.

 

But if we're going to continue a discussion of who's hard in the Malazan world we might want to start a new thread.

[Legatus]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

sure!

 

But as far as races are concerned, I absolutely like the idea of a whole race choosing to exist as undeads to hunt down another race. That is a scary thing.

T'lan Imass! Would they be eligible as player characters?

[Shadowsoul]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

In a Malazan setting I'd say that you could easily have a party that was powerful enough to make a T'lan Imass a legitimate option.

 

They'd need immortality, the usual Undead extra defences and some neolithic style PSs. Not sure how you'd do the dust flight though. Possibly some kind of desolid linked to flight.

[Legatus]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

I'd really like to launch a campaign it that setting.

But although I've read all the books up to Reaper's Gale, I still do not know enough about the different races.

And then there's the question of how to simulate the magic of the warrens.

[Vondy]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Unless it is a pseudo-norse culture, environs, and mythos themed game I want nothing to do with them. They're fine in the right context, or in small doses, but I don't want them as a regular diet. I know Tolkein is popular with many, but I don't enjoy him (I much prefer the Eddas themselves), and the lasting impact his fans have had on the hobby is for the worse in my opinion. Fantasy has limitless possibilities, but the hobby takes a narrow, uninspired, derivative view of the genre. Personally, I prefer low-fantasy, hard fantasy, sword and sorcery, sword and planet, and historical settings with a dash of the supernatural thrown in. There are numerous cultures with mythos that could be used to produce races, monsters, and the like. For our hobby the "D&D Genre" is the gateway drug, and as recent studies have shown, marijuana users are actually less likely to try other drugs - contrary to popular opinion thirty years ago. As a result, we get a lot of ad hoc Tolkein clones, even when people create their own settings. If people enjoy it, more power to them, but I've become bored with elves, dwarves, and orcs. They're just ho-hum. Its like going into the pantry and finding that can of Spam that has been sitting there for 20 years. It just doesn't make you salivate. On the other hand it could surprise you: maybe you'll find Hoffa in there.

[DusterBoy]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Michael Moorcock never lost the chance to criticise Tolkien, accusing him of the "brutes and cutes" style of story-telling, amongst other faults, both real and imagined.

 

I would agree with Vondy that the post-Tolkien and post-D&D fantasy market has been far too slavishly imitative of the old professor and that the genre has a far wider scope than that . . . as wide as one wishes it to be, in fact.

 

I've read the books, enjoyed them and have multiple copies of LotR on my shelves . . . but it's time to move on and do something new. Like a campaign in an African setting maybe, like Charles Saunders' "Imaro" stories, originally meant to be a black version of Conan.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

... Charles Saunders' "Imaro" stories' date=' originally meant to be a black version of Conan.[/quote']

 

Holy crap, that looks pretty cool.

[gojira]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Michael Moorcock never lost the chance to criticise Tolkien' date=' accusing him of the "brutes and cutes" style of story-telling, amongst other faults, both real and imagined. [/quote']

 

Interesting....

 

http://www.swordandsorcery.org/moorcockwizardry.htm

[Curufea]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Yes, well - we can't all get our inspirations from drugs like Mr Moorcock

 

That being said - I would like to see more non-Tolkein and non-bastardised-Tolkein (ie D&D) style fantasy. Settings that are original for a change.

Roleplaying companies, like Hollywood - are often scared to be original, and want to stay with what is familiar in the vain belief that familiar sells. It may sell, actually - adding to the RPG world of mediocrity just a little bit more.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

. but it's time to move on and do something new. Like a campaign in an African setting maybe' date=' like Charles Saunders' "Imaro" stories, originally meant to be a black version of Conan.[/quote']

 

 

I love those stories.My "Africa" in my fantasy/steam punk campaign is based on those books plus Robert e Howard and a little Tarzan.

[Shadowsoul]

Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Michael Moorcock never lost the chance to criticise Tolkien, accusing him of the "brutes and cutes" style of story-telling, amongst other faults, both real and imagined.

 

I would agree with Vondy that the post-Tolkien and post-D&D fantasy market has been far too slavishly imitative of the old professor and that the genre has a far wider scope than that . . . as wide as one wishes it to be, in fact.

 

I've read the books, enjoyed them and have multiple copies of LotR on my shelves . . . but it's time to move on and do something new. Like a campaign in an African setting maybe, like Charles Saunders' "Imaro" stories, originally meant to be a black version of Conan.

 

I agree. Terry Pratchett calls this kind of Fantasy writing EFP, Extruded Fantasy Product, basically Tolkien with the serial numbers filed off.

 

As to the African setting. I've been considering a 'Spear and Sorcery' Campaign for a while now but just yesterday I met up with Bismark who kindly showed me, (among other cool stuff), a D20 High Fantasy setting based on African legends and history called Nyambe It has some interesting stuff although the way they've turned various African Legends into Elves, Dwarves etc is a bit awkward.