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It makes a little sense given what they were going for. Elves have always kind of been woodsy elves and sparkly elves in simultaneous superposition, and 4E tried to separate that by making the sparkly elves into eladrin, leaving the remaining elves 100% woodsy. You want them all looking a bit red in tooth and claw, as it were.
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Apr 9, 2024 02:34
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Glazius posted:It makes a little sense given what they were going for. Elves have always kind of been woodsy elves and sparkly elves in simultaneous superposition, and 4E tried to separate that by making the sparkly elves into eladrin, leaving the remaining elves 100% woodsy. You want them all looking a bit red in tooth and claw, as it were. Splitting elves into woodsy Elves and sparkly Eladrin exists to solve a long-standing problem in 3.5, which is having Way Too loving Many elf subraces. For an extremely dated example, people would joke "There's an elf for that" on account of the dozens and dozens of flavors of elf for every setting and sub-setting, for every biome and every element. The basic reason was because the stats and ribbons you'd want to support a woodsy hunter elf are totally different from the ones you'd want on a sparkly wizard elf, and the best example on the d20srd is how Wood Elves have +2 STR, -2 INT, and Gray Elves have the exact opposite in +2 INT, -2 STR, on top of their usual elf qualities. And sure, a better game with better-unified writing might be able to square the circle, but then it wouldn't still be D&D, would it.  And I don't even disagree with you, in the sense that I think it would be really rad and cool to have a posh society of sparkly elves that are one blue moon away from donning wooden masks and saddling up to terrorize unfortunate woodcutters or something, but it was a real tension that players really felt when they question why their Elf Wizard has a random bow and longsword proficiency, or why their Elf Ranger that lived their life as a nomadic hunter-gatherer would have a special talent for finding secret doors. So no, splitting them into sparkly wizards and woodsy rangers was definitely what they were going for.
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Apr 9, 2024 03:05
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It's also not a solution unique to 4e D&D. There's a long standing tradition in all sorts of games and fiction of having like, Wood Elves are the ones that hang out in trees and shoot bows, and High Elves which are the ones who are magical, even putting aside the 3.5 million types of elves.
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Apr 9, 2024 05:45
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Reminds me of the ot Talislanta ads in Dragon Magazine. Of course Talislanta has like 3005 species that are somehow blandly weird.
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Apr 9, 2024 06:04
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The easier solution would just be tying stuff like bow use to culture rather than species, and letting elves have more than one culture.Bucnasti posted:Reminds me of the ot Talislanta ads in Dragon Magazine.
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Apr 9, 2024 06:04
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It's kinda embarrassing that if you search for Talislanta, the first result is their homepage saying "Still NO ELVES!" Like, that's literally the only thing they have going for them after however many decades, that they don't use the word 'elves'.
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Apr 9, 2024 06:17
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I assume they have "Elves in all but name, and perhaps pointy ears"?
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Apr 9, 2024 06:18
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I assume they have "Elves in all but name, and perhaps pointy ears"? Many times over.
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Apr 9, 2024 06:53
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I assume they have "Elves in all but name, and perhaps pointy ears"? No, Talislanta really is much weirder than that.
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Apr 9, 2024 06:54
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I assume they have "Elves in all but name, and perhaps pointy ears"? More or less. I have the 1992 edition of the rulebook and there's 118 "Archetypes" which are basically race as class, and there's 1 to 3 archetypes for each race/culture. They have a single paragraph describing them, rarely mention what they look like and each has a tiny black and white line drawing of the character. A lot of them could just be humans, orks or elves with weird skin, a few look a bit more exotic like bird folks and big beastial brutes. I have never in my life met a Talislantia fan. I feel like have met gamers who love every specific goofy game out there at one point or another, but I've never met anyone who's like "Talislantia is my jam".
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Apr 9, 2024 06:54
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The only person who ever told me Talislanta was a good idea for a world was someone who doesn't really do fantasy. I had to try to explain to him that while yes, it's interesting to give people the unfamiliar, at some level you need to have enough to relate to that they're not spending too much time in the 'dumbfounded by everything' stage. Also, as someone who did dive into that setting based on the recommendation, it absolutely has elves. It has a lot of weird stuff but it's mostly in taking something very mundane and giving it an unpronouncable name. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 10:29
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There are so many species that the world only makes sense as like a Samurai Jack pastiche. Like no one species has more than one chunk of land to themselves, and most have at least one nearby mortal enemy species unique to them. So everywhere you go it's like "Ah, you have entered the land of the noble Hergolbs. They are proud and forthright. However, within the shadowed swamps of their land reside the Nerbolts. They are savage, cruel, and hate all art and culture. But hey, if you turn left and walk fifty feet well now you're in Ushmi territory! They're forthright and proud! Shame about the sky Flarches that hate them, and also all culture and art."
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Apr 9, 2024 15:27
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Glagha posted:It's also not a solution unique to 4e D&D. There's a long standing tradition in all sorts of games and fiction of having like, Wood Elves are the ones that hang out in trees and shoot bows, and High Elves which are the ones who are magical, even putting aside the 3.5 million types of elves. "Long standing tradition" here being that Tolkien did it and trapped us forever in the cursed dichotomy prison of being either "Derivative of Tolkien" or "Trying too hard not to be Tolkien."
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Apr 9, 2024 17:30
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I mean if you're having tall humanlike elves who live a long time and have pointy ears and bows/swords and cast spells etc. etc, they're tolkien-derived elves. Before tolkien, elves are the sidhe, maybe, or leprechauns, or similar. Which, hey, why not do your fantasy heartbreaker and use pre-tolkien mythology exclusively? Answer: because it's much less of a cultural touchstone today, so people have to immerse in your fiction to know what you mean by "elf" and if you're not hanging your game on a familiar IP, you're asking a lot out of your customers. The GM who bought your book and read it on the toilet is fine maybe, but who are they going to rope in to play? Someone who will be confused and reluctant to do the homework, probably. So we get those familiar cultural touchstones stuck in place forever. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 18:00
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Talislanta has quantity weird, but I still think Jorune hits almost as close.
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Apr 9, 2024 18:04
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I would say it would be interesting to do a take on fantasy elves that are more Santa's Workshop elves or magic shoemaker fairy tale elves (or possibly Keebler elves) but that's basically the niche filled by D&D gnomes now, isn't it
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Apr 9, 2024 18:16
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Asterite34 posted:I would say it would be interesting to do a take on fantasy elves that are more Santa's Workshop elves or magic shoemaker fairy tale elves (or possibly Keebler elves) but that's basically the niche filled by D&D gnomes now, isn't it Yeah if you were doing a d&d setting that would work a lot better. I did make a Sidhe pregen for a ww2 commando game where i got a lot of inspiration from Dominions elves, where they have the full glamour capability but: they have to make difficult familiarity checks to actually convincingly pretend to be a human of 1943 and also they can't use or even really carry firearms due to the iron restrictions.
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Apr 9, 2024 18:25
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Panzeh posted:Yeah if you were doing a d&d setting that would work a lot better. I did make a Sidhe pregen for a ww2 commando game where i got a lot of inspiration from Dominions elves, where they have the full glamour capability but: they have to make difficult familiarity checks to actually convincingly pretend to be a human of 1943 and also they can't use or even really carry firearms due to the iron restrictions. The elves-in-WWII thing sounds like Three Hearts and Three Lions in reverse (although it’s implied that the elves in that book would be on the side of the Nazis, which I assume these elves weren’t).
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Apr 9, 2024 18:31
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Leperflesh posted:I mean if you're having tall humanlike elves who live a long time and have pointy ears and bows/swords and cast spells etc. etc, they're tolkien-derived elves. It sucks that this incredibly stupid surface-level read of Tolkien's elves is the thing that so much of 70s/80s fantasy decided to steal instead of the cool thousand-year grudge wars and kinslaying.  It's funny that Warhammer turned out to be one of the only fantasy setting from that era that actually did its homework when copying. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Apr 9, 2024 |
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Apr 9, 2024 18:39
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Lemon-Lime posted:It sucks that this incredibly stupid surface-level read of Tolkien's elves is the thing that so much of 70s/80s fantasy decided to steal instead of the cool thousand-year grudge wars and kinslaying. I mean even the lord of the rings movies didn't get into the ancient grudge wars and kinslaying much, right? Imagine if D&D elves were based solely on elves from Silmarillion and, emphatically, not Legolas.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:02
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Silver2195 posted:The elves-in-WWII thing sounds like Three Hearts and Three Lions in reverse (although it’s implied that the elves in that book would be on the side of the Nazis, which I assume these elves weren’t). Yeah the idea was that this kind of elf would be from Northern Ireland and committed by ancient pacts to fight against cosmic injustice, which, in the scenario would be the Nazis trying to resurrect Napoleon's ghost from Elba Island.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:02
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Panzeh posted:Yeah the idea was that this kind of elf would be from Northern Ireland and committed by ancient pacts to fight against cosmic injustice, which, in the scenario would be the Nazis trying to resurrect Napoleon's ghost from Elba Island.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:09
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https://arcdream.com/home/2024/04/the-black-company-role-playing-game-in-development-at-arc-dream-publishing/ So this could be interesting. quote:Frequenty Asked Questions
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Apr 9, 2024 23:11
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I spent a couple decades craving a Black Company / Myth 2 RPG, and then Stras Acimovic made Band of Blades and perfectly nailed it. I would be deeply, deeply surprised if this comes anywhere close, but it’ll be interesting to see how they approach it.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:11
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Kestral posted:I spent a couple decades craving a Black Company / Myth 2 RPG, and then Stras Acimovic made Band of Blades and perfectly nailed it. I would be deeply, deeply surprised if this comes anywhere close, but it’ll be interesting to see how they approach it. The thing about Band of Blades is that it is an incredibly well-designed, immersive game that totally nails the feeling of the Black Company and also an absolute slog to play. Indie Games Reading Club got it right https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/band-of-blades-a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-never-do-again/ There probably is a market for a faster, less exhausting military fantasy RPG.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:24
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TheLoneAmigo posted:The thing about Band of Blades is that it is an incredibly well-designed, immersive game that totally nails the feeling of the Black Company and also an absolute slog to play. I think making the game not a slog really requires certain understandings as a DM that just don't go said anywhere in the text, and a couple of rules changes to make the this not result in a mechanical death spiral. Also, part of the reason it's a slog to play is because it takes a lot of running against type to avoid every scenario being skirmish after skirmish check, and combat in a FitD is always itself a bit un-exciting.
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Apr 10, 2024 00:33
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I thought I was going crazy but I'm not. Green Ronin put out a D20 Black Company ttrpg back in 2004. Schwalb was lead designer on this thing? And apparently Shane Ivey was a researcher on it back then so it's got him probably doing similar work here. And the cover of this was done by Wayne Reynolds. This industry really is like 6 white dudes sharing a basement apartment. Ravus Ursus fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 00:48
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Lemon-Lime posted:It sucks that this incredibly stupid surface-level read of Tolkien's elves is the thing that so much of 70s/80s fantasy decided to steal instead of the cool thousand-year grudge wars and kinslaying. Elfquest had to have a lot of influence on the wilderness elf stuff too, the era's about right.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:32
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TheLoneAmigo posted:The thing about Band of Blades is that it is an incredibly well-designed, immersive game that totally nails the feeling of the Black Company and also an absolute slog to play. "Slog" was certainly isn't my experience with it, either in my time playing it with my home group or in seeing other people run the full campaign in a rather good AP. Then again, my home group are Burning Wheel and Blades in the Dark veterans, so it clicked with us rather well. xiw posted:Elfquest had to have a lot of influence on the wilderness elf stuff too, the era's about right. Man, speaking of things that need a decent adaptation. Poor ElfQuest, talk about a property that's ripe for adaptation in TYOOL 2024. Meg Baker was actually in talks with Wendy Pini about doing an RPG for it years ago, but nothing ever came of it.
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Apr 10, 2024 01:59
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Was Elf Quest ever any good? What are the must read Elf Quests that make you want to read more?
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Apr 10, 2024 02:18
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ninjoatse.cx posted:Was Elf Quest ever any good? What are the must read Elf Quests that make you want to read more? I'm biased in that I ran into ElfQuest early on and it was extremely important to me as a closeted kid in the 80s/90s (ElfQuest is Very Gay), but yes, it was good when it came out, was massively influential on people you've heard of, and IMO it still holds up. Wendy Pini's art starts out pretty good and becomes absolutely beautiful, the story is heartfelt and well-paced, and it's shockingly progressive not just for its time for now, and it has one of the great villains in comics. The dialogue is never amazing, it's always a bit stilted. That said, it was first published in 1978, and compared to what it was being put up against, the writing is fine. As for the must-read ElfQuests, it's all one continuous narrative until pretty deep into the story when it splits up, so it's best to just start from the beginning - although I actually started on Volume 2 as a kid and had no idea there was anything before it, and it was still perfectly comprehensible. The whole thing is actually up on their web site for free, in their reading room. Start with the Original Quest and you can see if that grabs you. If you have a tolerance for late 70s / early 80s comics, it's worth a shot. And yeah, if you want elves that aren't inspired by Tolkien or faerie lore, ElfQuest is it.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:42
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The art is stunning, and the story is hosed up, and I really liked Elf Quest. It is the anti-Tolkien elf story.
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Apr 10, 2024 02:45
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To bring EQchat back around to RPGs in a roundabout way, and explain what I meant by how it needs a decent adaptation, if you like generational stories or stories taking place over an immense span of time, you should check it out. There's not a lot of stories anywhere that have characters grow up, have children, grow old, and then we watch their kids do the same, and it's really compelling. There's a reason people love Downton Abbey, Centennial, and The Silmarillion. In the RPG space, Pendragon does this, the generational play is core to the system, but it's so difficult to execute well that I struggle to think of another game that has tried to mechanize it. A good EQ RPG would embrace this, let you play out adventures or a whole campaign in one generation's heyday, then roll history forward and see in a mechanical way how your actions affected those who come after you - and then you pick up those characters whose lives have been shaped by your earlier characters' actions, and you play those people. Repeat as many times as you like.
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Apr 10, 2024 08:56
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Weirdly enough I got the idea that Battletech could work with a generational kinda campaign, since it has a long set timeline and mech pilots are more or less medieval knights.
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Apr 10, 2024 09:14
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Ars Magica also kinda works like that, with the difference between the wizards and their longevity rituals vs their mortal companions.
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Apr 10, 2024 10:34
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The Microscope RPG does this really well too, with the bonus that instead of doing everything in order you move the narrative (not the characters, they stay where they are) back and forth between the different timezones as you wish so it's not just "what impact did this dumbass have on future generations?" but also "what dumbass caused this horrible thing we just saw happen?"
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Apr 10, 2024 11:21
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Whybird posted:The Microscope RPG does this really well too, with the bonus that instead of doing everything in order you move the narrative (not the characters, they stay where they are) back and forth between the different timezones as you wish so it's not just "what impact did this dumbass have on future generations?" but also "what dumbass caused this horrible thing we just saw happen?" 13th age had a cool history creation tool in a supplement where you could develop the previous 12 ages together as a crew.
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Apr 10, 2024 11:44
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Kestral posted:To bring EQchat back around to RPGs in a roundabout way, and explain what I meant by how it needs a decent adaptation, if you like generational stories or stories taking place over an immense span of time, you should check it out. There's not a lot of stories anywhere that have characters grow up, have children, grow old, and then we watch their kids do the same, and it's really compelling. There's a reason people love Downton Abbey, Centennial, and The Silmarillion. IIRC Legacy and Legacy 2E are doing an okay-ish job at it. I dimly remember that there was an OSR-inspired zine game that also did something generational with heroic death and descendants but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called... Edit: A RASP OF SAND! Mr.Misfit fucked around with this message at 12:43 on Apr 10, 2024 |
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Apr 10, 2024 12:40
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Weirdly enough I got the idea that Battletech could work with a generational kinda campaign, since it has a long set timeline and mech pilots are more or less medieval knights. Isn't this early Battletech more or less?
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Apr 10, 2024 14:51
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matt mercer and brennan lee mulligan both played elves in the official elfquest podcast did you know there's an official elfquest podcast?
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Apr 10, 2024 14:58
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