>"In MY setting, elves are 12-foot-tall, subterranean-dwelling mutated mushrooms with obsidian armblades!"
Why do writers do this instead of christening a new name upon the creatures, so as to avoid misleading expectations?
The source is "Gods of the Fall," the Cypher System's much worse and clunkier attempt at copying Godbound's exact same premise.
Same reason you get autists making threads on Veeky Forums about "Why are elves so boring? Let's make them not-elves instead."
Autism.
Because people want something familiar to work with, but at the same time they want something new.
This could be a part of something interesting - like elves that live underground and use mushroom armor or something, with super-mutated versions used as knights - but I don't have the context to know that.
who cares. call them something else then
In fiction, audiences generally expect three types of consistency. Internal consistency, external consistency, and genre consistency. None of the three are hard and fast rules, of course, but audiences expect all three to be consistent unless specifically noted for a narrative reason.
>Internal consistency
A work should always be consistent with itself. That is to say, a work shouldn't contradict its own established rules, unless such contradiction is intentional and an intended part of the work. For instance, if a setting works off Vancian magic, don't suddenly have someone else using Rule magic unless there's some relevant narrative reason why that one character is different.
>External consistency
A work should be consistent with reality. Violations of external consistency are what we tend to call "unrealistic." Of course, reality is a nebulous concept in a setting with elves and shit, but we still expect a given setting to act like reality unless specifically excepted. For instance, even if your setting has dragons that breathe fire, we expect fire to spread to flammable items and be combated with water or sand, unless we're specifically told that this fire doesn't work that way for some reason.
>Genre consistency
This is the one you're talking about. Audiences expect a work to be consistent with other works in its genre. You can read a dozen western fantasy books from a dozen authors and dragons are going to be giant flying reptiles that usually breathe fire. Like the above two, genre consistency can be violated, but it should only be done so if it's important to the narrative. The problem the example you gave has is that it violates genre consistency for no narrative reason.
Basically what you're asking is why some writers violate consistency without narrative purpose, and the answer is because they're poor writers who have mistaken uniqueness for creativity.
>"In MY setting, elves are 6-foot-tall, forest-dwelling graceful ancients with pointy ears!"
Why do writers do this instead of christening a new name upon the creatures, so as to avoid confusing it with mythological elves?
48698991 get!
>"In MY setting, elves are 3-foot-tall, CITY-dwelling female only race that lust the cock of mankind for the express purpose of getting impregnated"
Why do writers do this instead of christening a new name upon the creatures, so as to avoid confusing it with mythological elves?
>"In MY setting, elves suck!"
Why do writers write accurately?
wtf I hate elves now
>"In MY setting, elves are 3-foot-tall, very cute and industrious, and they help a man named Santa Claus make toys!"
Why do writers do this instead of christening a new name upon the creatures, so as to avoid confusing it with mythological elves?
It says in the sidebar, when they communicate fungi hive mind gives impressions of elves. Its a hook for GMs to make an adventure revolving around "what happened to the elven civilisation? Why is there only mushrooms now?"
The creature might be a transformed elf, might not.
>It says in the sidebar, when they communicate fungi hive mind gives impressions of elves.
You're reading it wrong.
What system is this
I don't think so. It's open to interpretation
OP's spoiler
If real folklore is allowed at the table and not just D&D stuff, slightly Lovecraftian mushrooms probably fit the title "elf" better than anything Tolkien wrote.
They don't, shithead. Your strawman argument has never been true and still isn't today.
you realize Tolkien codified fantasy right? Lovecraft invented cosmic horror, but his shit had nothing to do with fantasy elves
>dude REAL FOLKLORE lmao
Why is this always posted by people who think elves should be shit like lovecraftian mushrooms?
>people who think elves should be shit like lovecraftian mushrooms
God I wish I could run ONE GAME without one of them showing up. Fuck those guys.
Seriously
Seconding this.
Elf debate aside the art looks nice and stat block is nicely laid out.
I think the term elf seems to refer to hallucinations caused by the spores rather than the creature itself. As the sidenote says.
Why did Tolkein call his fair folk elves? Thats just confusing bullshit when alfar are already a thing. What a hack.
I think there was something on Veeky Forums with that specific thing going on.
Except it was space.
Makes me wonder if space elves with bunny ears would be this kind of ... "misleading name/expectations" kind of thing.
I admit I dig the "Fantasy Trope but twisted in a different way" thing. Its when its pushed too far like in op's pic that it bugs me because yeah, you're right, what makes that thing elfy at all?
I think a good example of "alternate take at elves would be the MTG Lorwynn elves. Basically nature loving critters with horns, but kind of dicks about it. until shadowmoor, where they turn into tolkeinesque righteous defenders.
I can't really call Lorwynn elves to be an alternate take. It's just booting back the clock to when they were more fey.
Closest I've gotten to this is my Not-Dwarves: The Khazram.
4 to 5 foot tall, bipedal, very stocky. Fight in heavy armor with spears and stabbing sword. Have a tight clan system. From there they diverge from the standard model.
First off, they have a single grapefruit size sensory organ in the top-center of their face that handles vision, smell, and a kind of sonar-like sense. This organ allows for amazing close detail and sense, but is poor past a few dozen feet, rendering they all basically moderately nearsighted. Owl-like ears and an unnaturally wide mouth.
Though clearly evolved for the underground and quite capable in the dark and in confined locations, they have a species-wide pathological fear of being underground. The deeper, the worse, and no one knows why as their history before their exodus to the surface is lost, some believe purposely destroyed. They mostly live in heavily walled cities terraced into hills, cliffs, and mountains, and prefer to stripmine to gather the materials for their high quality goods.
They still resemble dwarves in many respects but are also a bit different. They hate the setting's elves, but those guys are several brands of crazy and dangerous that NO ONE can work with. They love booze and song, as well as poetry and especially theater (specifically trageties).
Technically speaking, it could be an elf mutant, in the same way that a bunch of monsters that aren't obviously humanoid were once human.
Isn't that a bit off either way? Usually if it's not just called a "mutant elf" or something similar to that I'd think it would have its own name
Special snowflake syndrome mixes horribly with knowitallism
Bait and switch.
Awww yisss, Lorwyn elves a best
>how dare people desecrate the One True Fantasy Setting created by our Lord and Savior Tolkien back in the 1940's over which no improvement is possible
I think subverting tropes is interesting and has been done to good effect already. For example Drow are dark reflections of Elves and the Halflings in Dark Sun are cannibalistic forest tribal people rather than happy go lucky country folk.
And of course Hobbits initially were created by Tolkein as a subversion of Goblins as a respectable creature that lived underground and Orcs in middle earth are simply corrupted Elves so there's a long tradition of this in fantasy.
Your example however I can agree is a shitty one as the creature doesnt resemble the original in any way beyond the name so it's a way to try to make a myconid type creature somehow more interesting but fungus people are already interesting enough as their own thing.
in my setting elves are tall, extremely thin but in humanely strong creatures with large solid black eyes and noses that slope directly off the forehead similar to Enchantress from Dota. They look kinda ayy lmao. 7-9 feet tall, pale, and extremely xenophobic. They cannot touch iron and grow weapons and armor magically from trees. Powerful Druidic magic and long lived, because of their affinity with magic, magic hurts them significantly more than it would a human, and a spell that would kill an elf would have almost no effect on the magically inept Dwarves. Of course healing magics are much more effective on them too.