How do we make elves cool again?

Don't let them be a player race.

Elves ala Tolkien, which is what everyone is ripping off, are a standing for the older superior civilization cranked up to 11. Elves are supposed to be Better Than You. They shouldn't be on the same level as the rest of your party.

Like, Aragorn was a superhuman destiny-chosen king with a legendary sword. Legolas was just some elf. Not even an important one, and in many cases he was still carrying that party.

That should be the default power disparity. A human has to work their ass off to get to level 10. Elves START at level 10. Its not their fault you don't have multiple centuries worth of accumulated skills. Humans think that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master at something. Like getting really good at making swords of quality.
Elves call that the tutorial phase, 80,000 hours is where you start to get to the fun stuff, like makings words that are so fucking well forged they glow when orcs are near. That's not magic, its just really good blacksmithing.

I fully support this idea

well excep for the weird kneecaps, the oddly triangular limb segments, the undersized arms and facial features, the lack of expressiveness and detail in the facial features, the sameface, the lack of different textures and the general goofiness of the result.

Make them uncivilized savages while retaining their beauty

They should hate Iron.

And?

Still don't see the issue.

Perfectly acceptable art

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while thats a nice pic I always preferred Tolks pure legendary rage character
Whats that? your a dark god? dont care gonna hurt you
your an invincible dark lord? dont care gonna hurt you, im going to make you bleed and make your minions question your divinity as you hobble around around a shitty cripple for the rest of your loserish tale

and he got a kickass song too
youtube.com/watch?v=Rry4Pqpo3Og

>Legolas
>regular elf
you know the fucker was a goddamn prince right?

acceptable =/= nothing wrong with

it's entirely possible to accept things that are wrong

> 5% bodyfat
> J cupsize breasts

Also, make them like the Fae. Immortal, magical, but consistent logic is not their strong suit.

All I can see in this is the big dude falling over and the white dude catching his fall with the shield like "I gotchu bro"

But for aragorn his heritage actually made him physically different, he still carried undiluted blood of numenor, while legolas was, genetically, a regular elf dude.
I mean, Gimli really does just tag along with the two fuckers who do things. How much does Gimli actually achieve, when compared to Aragorn and Legolas? The fact that he still manages to become fast friends with Legolas speaks volumes about his character, and tolkien was probably making some point about class divide or something (intentional or not, same with the whole "series is a metaphor for WWI deal")

Is the wrong way 100%, that is an orc. Elves' weird, transcendental and inhuman features should be emphasized, and yeah bringing race levels back would really help distinguish dnd races better, fucking dragonborn have to start at level 1.

>i need my elves to become orcs in order to be cool
>but fuck orcs because ???

I would like to fuck orcesses yes user.

ah yes, and heres fingolfin being fitted for his new prescription

nice chaps these fellows

>How much does Gimli actually achieve, when compared to Aragorn and Legolas?
He becomes Lord of the Glittering Caves and reinforces the gates of Minas Tirith with mithril.

Listen to youtube.com/watch?v=3aB6CPyO0Ww and look at all the pictures of Fingolfin.

Then do that.

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i beat you to it u slo boi

I dont see any orc in the op pic. This is an orc.

What. What IS this?

You can't really have too much of a good thing.

Hell, I'll post it again. youtube.com/watch?v=3aB6CPyO0Ww

Why is Fingolfin so fucking perfect?

Make them Samurai.
Or ninjas.

>I dont see any orc in the op pic.
Friendly reminder: just like elves vary in culture and appearance from setting to setting, so do orcs. Trying to enforce your headcanon of "this is what an orc look likes" will get you nowhere.

because the concept of a mortal(comparatively) bitch slapping an uppity god is a fairly gratifying concept when pulled off correctly

but as for the original thread topic, elves got the bland desaturation with d&d and other settings as weird arrow hippies who live in trees and occasionally have druid tendencies, but generally fucking fail at all things compared to the human protagonist empire/character/whatever
just bad writing and shit all over

Variant elves. Cause they need to be weird.

Then the reverse is also true, and statements like "don't make your elves, orcs" are equally as useless

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Phone posting is suffering

Keep your shit on /a/.

Whoops was for

>Noldor vs /aco/ fetish cancer and anime elves
Imagine this board being purged of these pale fap-bait copies. They wouldn't stand a chance. Imagine only peole that read a goddamn book talking about elves.

>I only enjoy mature fantasy for mature gamers such as myself

I'd kill to have a campaign end like this.
>my players standing against an evil that they know will destroy them
>no expectation of victory, no expectation of beating the Dark Lord
>but true heroism nonetheless
>they rally and fight to the last, spitting curses in his eye and wounding him again and again
>he cannot die, but each cut is another century gained, each slash is another generation born that can stand against him
>in the end, as the last one falls, there is silence, as the Dark Lord limps away, and no cheers rise from his monsters as the songs of celebration of sacrifice and heroism rise from the ranks of those the heroes saved
>and then we fast-forward to the next generation of heroes, when the Dark Lord next rises, in the aftermath of the PCs' efforts
>the players begin in a small town named after one of their NPC cohorts...

Fuck.

>we fix elves by making them big titted bimbos

>genetically, a regular elf dude
He was a descendant of the Eldar, same as Aragorn.
>Gimli
He was the single finest dwarf warrior any of them had ever seen.

You don't. Just play a dwarf instead. Instant cool.

Have them make dragon/human hybrids to save our sisters.

Read Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett.
His elves seem beautiful and sound melodic... but there power comes from making humans believe they are worthless mindless animals, barely fit to hunt. They treat people and creatures like toys for their amusement.
"...call to the lady, tell her to come out or we will play with you some more"
" what will you do if I don't..."
" oh, we will play with you anyways. But it will be more fun!"

Have them all embrace the edge.

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”

brilliant quote

>Have them all embrace the edge,
isnt that how Drow/Dark elves in general became a thing?

Its how the Drow in my setting behave

Which is why the git posted a dark eldar.

That's concept art for HOMM V by Oliver Ledroit, king of edge when it comes to visuals. Sadly, final product is pic related.
A shame he never did anything for Warhammer.

Hey, I play my neutral good drow druid as a normal dude who thinks that the edgelord drow are retarded.

I did an Elven Race that was dangerously self-aware once.

In effect, imagine an entire species of nutjobs who became aware of their faults, pertaining to the fact that they are unnatural beings with no relation to nature whatsoever because they have no natural predators, live extraordinarily long, and attract horric cataclysmic incidents in the process or attempting to achieve perfection only to be constant shielded and protected by their racial pantheons and the non-ordial laws of the universe.

And they ARE Aware of this. They are aware of the fact that- at any moment, they could fuck up, sink a continent, nuke a city, erase their species, rewrite their entire ecology and way of life, or let some horrible cosmic aberration in from beyond space and time to fuck them to death wit tentacles and conceptual autism so concentrated it blows their greymatter all across their handwoven silken funiture.

So how did they handle this?
Easy.
Evey-Single One of them.
Every Single One.
Become Sociopaths.
They started manipulating these memetic effects to such a degree that they could present themselves to any race, under any context at any time and place as a means to completely avoid these things from happening.

The reason why there are so many Elven Races, Racial variants, and Sub-Races? Many started to reincarnate and abuse this through engineering using whatever ammounts to a celestial-trust fund to do this sort of thing, effectively plaguing the multiverse with Berti-Botts Every-flavoured Elves for any setting or campaign.

After this, they began purposely setting up their kind to cause these horrific events, and they called it God-fishing, because any horrible space warping abomination, once under context of it's defeat, could be abducted ans studied to further their kind and they furthered this tenfold.

Elves are in actual fact, horrific Demiurges that play with the strings of the universe because they have cosmic privlege and violate the base ordial laws of nature as an existence alone. They are a glitch in the matrix, a fucking anomaly. Their true forms are the very definition of Sldender and lithe, you'd mistake them for white lined growths in the ground before you notice the shifting skin, glistening lidless eyes, and fucking Foxes smile taken to angles that should not be supported by it's facial muscles.

And they're baiting the likes of starspawn with the promises of the flesh of their lesser-kin because they see it as an amazing game of fucking with Nature.

>I'm gay

Have them be a dead race.

More manliness.

Amazonian elves is the true path to life.

>Amazonian
>No muscle just big cow tits and shitty clothes
how do you sleep at night?

You are the cancer that is killing elves.

He did Requiem: Vampire Knight though.

That's basically French Warhammer.

Yes to this. Respect their origins. Treat elves like Terry Pratchett does in 'Lords and Ladies'

If you actually wanted to improve your perception of elves, you'd go watch Hellboy 2 and stop posting your shitty cheesecake commissions

Che's clearly a young mage or artisan, not a seasoned front-line warrior.

Not all amazons are musclebutts.

No bully cowtits

so not an amazon
got it

>cowtits on elves
Good job for screwing this one up.

Elves were never not great. You might be thinking of dwarves, which TES taught us the only way to make dwarves cool is to make them elves.

>t.moviefag

7-8 foot tall women is amazonian. In mythology they had fancy wear unique to them, not the rags of savages. They clearly had artisans.

Cowtit elves are clearly biologically intended to be stay-at-home members of society, with smelly outsiders like humans only seeing our lovely twiggies since they're more suited to work a bow and easier to hide their streamlined bodies.

>Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
That's not how words work you senile dead fuck

What's wrong with your faaaaace

Unfortunately your fanfiction collides with the aesthetic of elves we are supposed to play around here.

>fancy
all i see is a shit tube top
random buckles and some cruddy boots and glovebracers
but by all means your shit taste is "fancy and artisinal"

its literally apart of the definition of terrific
i mean...did you even try user?

Stop playing settings that turn every race into "Human, but [blank]".

That's actually the original definition, it's even derived from a latin word meaning "causes terror and fear". He used the unexpected definition as a narrative device, like with every other line in that quote.

Make them muscle-waifus with big titties. Unlimited cool points.

Elves were never cool

If you close that /aco/ tab, zip your dick and actually engage in the hobby of fantasy beyond mere masturbation, you might, depending on your taste, some will never like them, find elves out there are actually cool, whatever that ultimately means for you.

Kill them off and let nostalgia handle the rest.

>Aragorn was a superhuman destiny-chosen king
Aragorn had angel-elf blood in his veins, and that is where his superhumanliness comes from, like his power to heal

that's too pretty to be an orc

for all their variation in appearance they have consistently been monsters, ugly, and ,well, monstrous looking, from folklore to fiction.

They only became barbarians with a different skin tone when hacks tried to get snowflakey with them >oh my orcs are so different and special from all others

By turning them into Orcs.

More emphasys on the supernatural bit.

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>Respect their origins. Treat elves like Terry Pratchett does in 'Lords and Ladies'
These are contradictory statements.

>speaking ill of Based Pratchett
Wtf?!?!

You heard me, faggot.

Stop with the idiotic Japanese rape victims with donkey ears first.

Elves are a race of what you could call superhumans.
Fucking all of them are trainded in weaponry, magic or magic-like abilities.
They have better coordination than anyone.
They have enhanced perceptive abilities.

If your Elves aren't apex militant humanoids then
you are doing their conceot wrong.

Indeed

>What idiots think being civilized means
Prissy, perfumed faggots who run away at the sight of dangers and sometimes hug a tree or two

>What being civilized means
Arrogant conquerors with severe disdain for lower races who sometimes exterminate a village or two

You can combine supreme arrogance and military prowess with a moral compass that's been horribly skewed by centuries of being alive, to the point where they don't even understand why shorter lived races value their lives so much. To them, killing an orc is like killing an ant. When faced with an orcish village full of babies, they don't concern themselves with the question "can an orc raised properly become good? Should we kill them?". They concern themselves with the question "how do we properly beautify this tainted land after we've exterminated the pests?".

this goes beyond elves and it's one of my pet peeves.
People making what is essentially an OG race and then calling them with the name of something else that is completely different
>Oh in my setting I have [name of race] but they are completely different because I'm creative and original
just name them something else then

you must be in the wrong thread, we were talking about elves

Yes.

An entirely mediocre-to-bad artist that receives too much attention for what they are simply because they pander to people with no real taste.

Remove them.

That is said about literally every artist on the internet who is popular enough to be recognized on Veeky Forums.

Wow hour quick to the draw, do you just furiously lurk and wait in ambush for THICCC elves?