Specifically, which elves do you prefer?
>Beautiful, angelic creatures, like Tolkien intended it
>Haughty know-it-alls, who look down on humans, like in Skyrim
>Opressed minority, who lost their precious immortality, the underdogs, maybe even terrorists - like scoia'tael
>The otherwordly fair folk, who are not even from the same Earth as humans
inb4 the dead ones. Yes, very original, but let's talk for real.
Other urls found in this thread:
I guess 2 is the closest, but mostly I like them as another culture and race/species with their own quirks and norms (many of them stemming from their long lifespans) that set them apart from humans, but which still have recognizable motivations and reasons for doing things, and, like humans, are just looking to advance their place in the world.
Personally, I prefer mystical, long-lived humanoids who aren't actually a bunch of mary-sue pricks - you know, like D&D tries to do but instead invariably falls into the "Haughty Know-it-all" camp?
Personally, my favorite elves are those of the Nentir Vale setting, because they actually mix different archetypes. You've got Eladrin, the ur-elves, as otherworldly fairy folk with arcane magic flowing in their veins - especially the Winterkin, then you've got the Elves, who are primal wilderness spirits who have sacrificed much of their original fey nature and powers for a closer bond to the primal spirits, and finally you have Drow, the dark, corrupted hedonists from below the earth.
...
Actually, maybe this thread can help me figure out some details for two elven races I plan on using in my setting.
One group are called the Sun Elves, and the other is called the Moon Elves. The former live in a toxic, monster-infested jungle, the latter live on the moon.
Sun Elves are a degenerated ur-elven colony who have freakishly high fertility and physical prowess, by elven standards, but their minds have degenerated into primitivism; they're inherently more feral, and have lost the ability to create the advanced magical devices of their ancestors.
The Moon Elves, in comparison, are the "degeneration has left elves a dying race"; fatalistic, morbid and slowly fading into extinction on their icy tomb of a world, supplementing their numbers with ancient magitek devices and powerful spells.
Thing is... I want to go for a contrast between the two races - the old "Different as Night and Day" approach. Does this make sense in that fashion?
>Specifically, which elves do you prefer?
Dead ones.
I like my elves to be demihumans that in their heyday once had a great empire but now their time on the world stage has diminished significantly. Shorter than humans, great at magic, but otherwise squishy and clumsy.
mystical magical tree hugging murder hippy's
I've never liked the idea of immortal elves as a player race because it doesn't make sense to me for them to fuck around with regular mortals.
That said, life spans of, say, 300 years seems reasonable and having them talk about "Back in the day we used to be gods!" and some such is more my speed and flavor
flamboyant
Elves are druidic, militaristic forest dwellers who live in an empire that conquers and enslaved anyone they can. Basically, the Roman Empire mixed with the Vikings.
Have never played in a party where there was an elf I enjoyed being around. Fuck elves.
>Beautiful, angelic creatures, like Tolkien intended it
Those are only elves that have been to Aman and a few descendents of more prestigious elves like Elrond. The silvan elves are quite primitive wood elves.
Depends on the setting.
>>Opressed minority
I feel like this is so overdone at this point, maybe it's because of the witcher and dragon age and Veeky Forums shitposting as well. But no, it's not creative at all to take a cliche and do a 180° on it.
Big titty elves
Please don't bump a thread if you don't have anything to contribute.
>Beautiful, angelic creatures, like Tolkien intended it
This, as long as you recognize Tolkien didn't invent it.
If we want them to be playable races, I'd say the best idea is to just drop whatever Tolkien did with them and make them somewhat generic tree folk. It assigns a good niche to them and prevents them from encroaching on the niche of the already generic humans (being the city folk, great builders, conquerors et cetera). They can look down on humans if they want, but not in the "we objectively do everything better than you" sense, but in the "look at you: confining yourself to stone buildings like dwarves, living on top of eachother like ants, actually writing down on paper what you can and can't do. You're pathetic, you're apes who fell out of their trees and now see themselves as earth's masters" sense.
I also like big tiddy anime elves. I unironically like them. They're cute and silly.
My nigger.
I personally think the original Germanic elves work better as NPCs or enemies than playable races.
Skyrim managed to do elves absolutely right, the Thalmor should've been the main plot of the game instead of a generic ancient evil awakening.
Arrogant magical crackheads.
The absolutely batshit insane and dogmatic kind!
This is also a good answer.
>The average elf's idea of a good time is snorting magicdust from between a prostitute's buttcheeks
if I got to decide they would be petty isolated, paranoid nihilistic elf supremacists who have long since lost interest in anything other than more knowledge of the universe and hide behind massive walls and magic and fear any form of human contact as that could risk cutting their immortal lives short. It makes most sense to me that way.
>elves do you prefer?
"Ones who're dead and away from my realms."
>"I won't whore myself out to NIlfgaard"
>Whores himself out to Nilfgaard
What did hd mean by this
Elves that actually have their own unique lore and culture very distinct from most other works of fiction and aren't just the same old arch type you see everywhere else.
Then why call them elves?
I prefer them to not be in a setting. I've become sick of them.
>muh stats bonuses, forests, and immortality
elf immortality doesn't make sense. If a 200 year-old elf is as knowledgeable as a 20 year-old human, wouldn't the elf have to be outright retarded?
Why even have attributes bonuses be a thing that races have? Just let the player decide what they want +2 and -2 to regardless of what race they choose.
>lives in forests as a racial trait
Just use celts or iroquois or something then.
I don't really blame people who just play or GM games casually, but the fact that people spend dozens of hours on making a system and setting still put fucking elves in disgusts me.
Also, elves are the original and the most potent magical realm race
Either 1 or 4. Everything else is grotesque wish fulfillment for stupid and occasionally racist nerds.
Athasian elves.
Dark Sun had the balls to deviate from standard generic fantasy tropes to create a unique flavor.
Because "elf" is a very loose term that can apply to basically any magically gifted/supernatural yet humanoid in appearance species.
Just because Tolkien did something doesn't mean everyone else has to do the exact same thing.
And yet the only people who want Dark Sun to come back are the fags that fellate psionics.
Nobody actually likes Dark Sun.
>Durr I don't enjoy [thing] so no one else is allowed to enjoy [thing]
How's gatekeeping working for you, faggot?
I usually like having elves as a people.with a lost history shrouded in mystery. So I guess a mix between 1 and 3.
Dark Sun hasn't gotten a published adventure. I'd say it's going pretty well.
Plus you're the one looking down on 'generic fantasy'. Accusing me of Gatekeeping seems a bit thin.
>The otherwordly fair folk, who are not even from the same Earth as humans
Songs of Earth and Power by Greg Bear was a fantastic book.
Then why do you use the same word Tolkien used if you aren't trying to copy him or folklore yet you feel need to be special for some reason? Call them 'brownies' or something. You'll get a whole lot of new exciting things. Desert brownies, snow brownies, sea brownies, high brownies, wood brownies, dark brownies, blood brownies, void brownies, sun brownies.
It was the second most popular setting back when 2nd edition was a thing. Spelljammers was the first.
Ravenloft was hated and loved in equal measure, because like WoD which came after it, nothing you did could be good in the long run. It was truly Grim Dark
>Someone likes [thing], so the only logical conclusion is that he hates [entirely different thing]
How far can your head go up your ass?
I dunno, why call green skinned tusked monsters orcs when these are orcs? Why not call them Greenies?
To show your respect to the man?
I suspect that, in practice, if you call them "brownies" all anyone's going to think of is the baked chocolate dessert.
Which man? Certainly not Tolkien, orcs in his fiction were on average the size of hobbits, a "huge" Orc in tolkien's work was still shorter than a man by a little bit, and absolutely no one uses the term "Uruk" these days outside of Tolkien.
So by your logic, what everyone thinks of when they hear orc shouldn't be called an orc.
There's actually an active community supporting Dark Sun in 2e and many adaptations to different systems. That there's no content being currently produced by the IP's proprietors does not mean people don't play or enjoy it.
Also, we never used psionics while running our group's campaigns. While psionics as a core concept tie in well with the setting, they were so convoluted mechanically that neither me or my players ever cared to play a fully fledged psionic PC/NPC.
We just treated wild powers like 1 in 10 or so citizens could use a cantrip-like spell a few times per day, mostly for flavor or plot devices.
>Because "elf" is a very loose term that can apply to basically any magically gifted/supernatural yet humanoid in appearance species.
Not nearly as much as you think it is.
Declining but hanging in there champions of the world.
Do you really think everyone pictures them as green Warcraft orcs? Maybe in America.
My Sin'dorei
>Which man? Certainly not Tolkien
You would never think about using word 'elf' without him, certainly not as easily recognizable blanket term for tall and pretty magical human with natural talent in some area
If I recall correctly, in the pinnacle of its popularity the order was more:
1 Forgotten Realms
2 Dark Sun
3 Ravenloft
4 Dragonlance
Spelljammer was more a sidequest type of thing, almost always tied to Forgotten Realms, like Al-Qadim
>Do you really think everyone pictures them as green Warcraft orcs?
Warcraft
Warhammer
40k
D&D
Pathfinder
The Elder Scrolls
Just about every fantasy setting that actually has a significant presence, big, tusked, and green skinned.
Warcraft elves are amongst the best concepts out there, tbqh.
Such a shame the story is horseshit.
Cannibalistic anarcho-primitivist hunter-gatherers.
>has a significant presence
Where? I know dozens players who have very rough idea about the Forgotten Realms and most never heard about Golarion.
Elves in the trees, how do you get them down?
>I know dozens players who have very rough idea about the Forgotten Realms
And the orcs in D&D are large, tusked, and green skinned.
Again, if the modern idea of orcs can deviate so far from tolkien and no one cares, why are you getting so autistic about calling magically gifted humanoids "elves" because they don't perfectly fit into the Tolkien checklist?
The same way you get Dwarves out of trees
youtube.com
>Elves
Beautiful beings who established a slaver empire by subjugation of all other races with rampant superemist justifications. When Humans and Dragonborn first arrived through magical portals in the far east, the Ancient Elven Empire got buttfucked to oblivion as the slaves revolted. Now as oppressed minorities for the most part, they have rampant nationalism and goes full "WE WAZ" to establish a Pan-Elven Empire. Not to mention during the Fall of the Empire, most of the elves ended up as tree-hugging savages except for Drows.
>I know dozens players who have very rough idea about the Forgotten Realms
>And the orcs in D&D are large, tusked, and green skinned.
And this concept didn't influence them at all if you didn't notice.
>the modern idea of orcs
Tell where is this idea is common exactly? What region of the world are you talking about? There are a lot of people outside US and Canada, you know?
puck isn't technically an elf, Fae yes, Elf not so much.
>inb4 PUCK TRICKSTA GOD hur hur
>green dindu from Warcraft, Warhammer orc, greend dindu, Warhammer, orc from Lineage II, green dindu, some random orc, brown dindu, D&D orc
Pig orcs fans are going to have a stroke
god i wish the torrents for this had seeds... spent like three weeks trying for the 720p version and then 0.0kps for weeks after.
My current campaign has 2 types: Summer and Winter elves. The summer elves are more Tolkeinesque, with vast magical powers that live in an autonomous state within the human empire. They mainly use purely magic for most of their needs. The winter elves live on the other continent in the arctic circle, and have fused magic and machine to construct their kingdom. More haughty than the Summer elves, they have constructed large boring machines to mine for magic crystals to power their city, a practice that puts them in direct conflict with the people living above those tunnels. They of course, don't care.
Damn, I would love some blood brownie right now
>Tell where is this idea is common exactly?
I dunno, you google "orc" and like 80% of the image results are going to be green skinned tusked monsters no matter how far you keep scrolling, with most the rest being from the Peter Jackson movie and a small handful of actually unique orcs, and basically nothing that looks like the Orc's Tolkien made in his book.
Orcs aren't the main point of our discussion though, they're just an example to drive the main point of the topic home, which is if Orcs in fiction can almost completely veer off from what Tolkien envisioned, why can you only call a perfect 1:1 copy of what tolkien called an elf and elf?
Pic related is canonly an elf despite looking like a vampire cat, what stops the shows creator from calling it an elf if they want to?
Because orcs should never have done that?
Old, magical, and weird. There's a great deal of variety possible which I like. Fey Elves, Viking Elves, Dark Elves, Sea Elves are in my campaign world so far.
>high brownies
ayyyyyyyyyy
But they did, and now it's well established, and orcs to my knowledge basically no one uses the hobbit sized orcs as described by Tolkien.
Well, at least not under the name "orc," modern depictions of goblins are basically Tolkien orcs, just with green skin.
No one likes pig orcs outside of the Japanese for some reason.
And Eberron has a cult following.
>which is if Orcs in fiction can almost completely veer off from what Tolkien envisioned
They managed to get their own monicker like greenskins which is easily reconizable on its own. The point of the topic was why are you guys try your hardest to make something special and exotic, yet give it a name of something older? Maybe you should invent your own names instead of riding on coattails while subverting tropes to feel special. It's only natural and handy for different things to have different names. TES elves have their own names.
those are goblins
I prefer them as apparently haugty and aloof assholes who are actually murderous animals when the time is right. Like first they seem distant but somewhat open to dialogue ( despite their idea of diplomacy is hearing other people beg and then decide to grace them with their generosity), but when provoked they go full Feanor and consider genocide the first and last solution.
Also they're basically nazis, but only when they need to
>why can you only call a perfect 1:1 copy of what tolkien called an elf and elf?
That isn't true either and stems from people having huge misconceptions about what Tolkien's elves are. Things like TES mer are not that similar to Tolkien's elves. Even D&D elves weren't originally based on Tolkien elves
>Why not call them Greenies?
You don't?
>TES elves have their own names
And yet they're still commonly called elves in game, hell, I'm pretty sure in Skyrim and Oblivion they call them elves way more than mer, even in Morrowind they're commonly called elves.
And what's wrong with that? They're magically gifted humanoids; they just ride giant bugs, make city centers out of a crab shell, and use magic to grow houses out of mushrooms instead of the standard fare.
Daz racis' ya git
All 4 of those at the same time?
And yet their Mer names are commonly used to the point players can remember them. Dunmers, Altmers, Bosmers, Dwemers, Ayleid. Elves are usually used to refer to them as a group. Only underused local name is Orsimer commonly replaced with Orcs. This serves its purpose, it tells the player that these races are unique and different.
>Elves are usually used to refer to them as a group
Dark elves, high elves, wood elves, deep elves, heartland elves, etc...
Again, I don't get why you're so autistic about calling something an elf even if it's not Orlando Bloom with pointy ears.
And what about Christmas elves and the elves from Harry Potter, they have absolutely no resemblance to Tolkien's elves in the slightest but they're still called elves all the same.
Same here. I don't get why you feel the need to call magically gifted humanoids 'elves' if you are so original and special. Why not call them silfs, faeries, kobolds, Si? Most people don't know what are these either. The name doesn't matter, right?
>calling something an elf even if it's not Orlando Bloom with pointy ears.
Just as trivia, Tolkien confirmed that his elves have pointy ears in a letter, but nowhere else in his entire published work is it mentioned. If not for LotR and his constant editing of The Hobbit, there'd still be people thinking hobbits are bunnymen or that Gollum is a troll-like creature. Even now, a lot of things people think are from Tolkien are actually from later media which may or may not have been inspired by him
Because if you don't, some chucklefuck is gonna claim you just didn't want to call your elves elves.
Don't worry, it would be just one chucklefuck.
What a shit post accompanied by a shit pic.
>I don't get why you feel the need to call magically gifted humanoids 'elves'
If it has pointy ears and does magic, then it doesn't matter if they're pretty immortal people who claim to better better than anyone despite not being able to fix shit and always rely on humans or have rainbow coloured skin and live inside giant latex dildo's with a lifespan of ten years, everyone's still gonna consider them elves.
>have rainbow coloured skin and live inside giant latex dildo's with a lifespan of ten years, everyone's still gonna consider them elves
I can see people calling them rainbow dildo faeries or Dildokin
>I can see people calling them rainbow dildo faeries
But they don't have wings user, don't you know that it isn't a fairy unless it has wings? Unless you're a potatonigger I guess, in that case everything is a fairy.
They weren't winged in folklore, you faylord
And elves in folklore would dance around and create circles in the ground that would give you a venereal disease if you pissed in it, what's your point?
Humans-but-better is the only correct way. Contrarian hipsters may jerk off on their donutsteels all they want, but Professor's work is objectively superior.
Google search 'Karl Franz' and post the result please
Elves are Plants.
Here ya go user
Thanks, just wanted to see how your world written by Google looks like
protect that smile
...
Fascinating