I was wondering why elves start with only 4 SA's to begin with. It doesnt make much sense to me, and i would even argue that because of their age they would even have more SA's because theyve had alot of time to nurture passions (or hatreds), contemplat etheir faith, and persue their drives and destinies. What are your thoughts on this? Also, will Sorc. and the Fey be giving stats for different kinds of elves (dark/drow, sylvan ect...) or is that something we have to think up on our own?
1. Elves and SAs: The reason, I'm sure, has to do with their long lives. Elves and the Fae in general, have often been portrayed as creatures of strong habit, overwhelming ennui, and a somewhat lackadaisical attitude toward goals. They've got almost literally forever.. so they rarely feel motivated the way we humans, with our itty-bitty lifespans, do. Why should they be driven to become king, when their long-term idle manipulations will probably get them there someday? Why should they passionately hate someone who they've got all eternity to either kill, or outlive? And even the brightest flame of love is muted when you have all of time to enjoy it.
This longevity also explains the lowered MA. They aren't as concerned with learning, because it can always be done... later.
2. Elf variants in SatF: By all that is holy, I hope not. These are the elves of myth, not the elves of D&D. All elves should be somewhat sylvan, and I've always disliked the very concept of "dark" elves. Not in color mind, because elves in my mind can have any coloring imaginable as creatures of Fae, but in that a whole culture of elves are "evil". If you want evil elves, then you've got the Unseelie Court. Use it as you wish.
This is, as always, simply my opinion.
Quote from: Wolfen...I've always disliked the very concept of "dark" elves. Not in color mind, because elves in my mind can have any coloring imaginable as creatures of Fae, but in that a whole culture of elves are "evil". If you want evil elves, then you've got the Unseelie Court. Use it as you wish.
This is, as always, simply my opinion.
For evil elves (or "Ahlvsees," check out Wick & Denmark's ORKWORLD. Not only are they immortal, magically powerful, but also universally amoral, revering only Strength.
To quote: "Elven culture has no code of laws. None. Not a single law to break. Not a single law to uphold. Why?
Because laws are the tools of the Weak to protect them from the Strong.
Think about it.
'Thou shall not steal.' Why? Because I'm too weak to keep the things I own myself. 'Thou shall not lie.' Why? Because I'm weak and other people are better at lying than me and I want to know when someone's lying because I can't tell on my own. 'Thou shall not kill.' Why? Because I can't protect myself."
You get the idea. And the current TROS rules work just fine for these magnificent bastards.
hmm...elves seem suddenly sooo boring in ROS now that they dont really care about anything...oh well, i think ill revise them for my campaigns just to make them a little more exciting to play.
Individuals care, but your character doesn't really become "someone" until you begin play. They're just another nameless, faceless guy. When play begins however, SAs can raise dramatically within a single session. Those original 4 points really don't matter so much, as good roleplaying of the character will raise them quickly.
I agree with what Wolfen said about Elves & personal beliefs.
All of this is all my opinion, and IIRC, several people disagreed with me last time I brought it up, so take me with a grain of salt :-)
On the subject of Elven society, however, I have one and only one hope for them: Don't make them human. In many fantasy games & fiction, a perfectly valid choice is made to make Elves another intelligent humanoid species, albeit it a very advanced & magical one.
IMHO, This shouldn't happen in TROS. Elven culture should be alien. The folklore about their courts should be left contradictory, not because humanity doesn't have all the facts, but because it is incomprehensible. Gols, Elves, Dwarves, Vilkolak, and everything else... we shouldn't think about these 'biologically.' They are all expressions of magical forces in a humanoid form. They are nature or hate or rage or whatever in the form of beings. This also means that things are very variable. I suspect that the hierarchy of faeries & their general attitudes in, say, Taveruun will be very different than those in, say, Picti. The fey are not other human-like societies, their 'society' is an expression to the nagic, nature, land, and human attitudes of the region in which they are from.
In my view, this means all kinds of fey are rare, and PC fey should only be allowable in very specific circumstances / campiagns. As a GM, I'd think twice about a wizard, a human who uses magic, in a TROS game. As a GM, I'd think three times about a fay PC, a character that is not human, but is magic.
PC supernaturals of all colors are a shade more 'human' than the rest of their ilk. The player should during character creation explain why. Maybe he/she is an exile. Maybe the PC was sent to observe humanity. Maybe he is protecting another PC, or shares a goal with the rest of the party. The point is he's different because he's not chilling in the faerie court. This ties in nicely with Wolfen's comments about the Player Character 'becoming' someone by being played.
Here here, Nick. I agree.
Jake
QuotePC supernaturals of all colors are a shade more 'human' than the rest of their ilk. The player should during character creation explain why.
Truthfully, I'd probably not allow fey PCs. I'd have to have a really tight group concept amongst all the players to explain how it works out.
What I mean is that it seems to me that the Fey are so rare and reclusive that they are almost never seen. Reclusive enough that they avoid being seen whenever possible. So what would a PC fey be doing out in the open if no other Fey do it? And what kind of a reaction would they cause? They'd probably be feeared at any first contact, and perhaps attacked based on superstition. If they managed to survive that, to the point where they became known and accepted as non-dangerous, I'd think that they'd achieve a near celebrity status just based on their novelty. I imagine people trying to touch the character to see if he's real.
How does such a character get to know the other PCs? How will they be able to react on an ongoing basis? It's just all far too weird.
Now, all of this would actually make for entertaining play, potentially, assuming a player who wanted it. I'd allow it in the case of the player who wanted to play out some story like this, and had a strong concept for being out in the open. But if the player just wanted a human with pointy ears, well, then I'm with Nick and Jake, and I don't want to have any of it. So, IMO, Fey PCs should be rare to non-existent.
Great NPCs, however, for the PCs to stumble upon.
Mike
I, on the other hand, LOVE running fey PCs. *But* there has to be significant focus on Fey culture, especially in early games, where the PC must interact a lot with his own kind to get the idea how it works, and to help "tell the story" to the players. If I ever finish S&F, this will be an important part of the book.
Jake
QuoteIf I ever finish S&F,...
You mean
when you finish it.
Mike
A whole lot of 'if statements' have to get answered a specific way for a Fey character. The right group, the right campaign, the right player, right character. I guess that means that in theory, I agree with Jake, but in practice, I'd probably act similar to Mike.
But then, I have similar issues with all things magical for TROS *shrug*
What I don't have a problem with are quirks that make characters standing right next to Magic. Maybe someone was born under a certain night sky. Maybe training was given by a fey teacher (in combat or whatever). Maybe you've inherited something that Uncle Jed got after being a guard in those Stahlnish mines ("Jed never spoke about those days..."). Assuming, of course, everyone is on the same page about what is ok and not ok, what 'fits' and what doesn't.
Nick-
That's really gold. I'm seeing all kind of star-born mechanics creeping around in there. Something to fill in the other race priorities...
Jake
And I, for one, would LOVE to see those two gaping holes filled. They just bug the you-know-what out of me! :)
Hm. What about one being like "During the Day and Night of the star you were born under, you receive a +1 die to all checks" and a second for during like full moon, new moon, etc?
One occuring once a year, the other once a month, basically? (of course with 6 moons it would be a different story, but you see where I'm driving at).
Also, maybe just a +1 per year is too weak. But I'm just trying to trigger a conversation here.
Those are the lines I'm thinking on. Or something allowing glamour 1 or some other colorful little bit, but it has to drive story somehow, too.
Jake
Quote from: Jake NorwoodThose are the lines I'm thinking on. Or something allowing glamour 1 or some other colorful little bit, but it has to drive story somehow, too.
Jake
Well, when you / someone writes S&F, there kind of needs to be a section on Magic & SAs. Magical characters (especially Sorcerers & Fey) can't have purely human motivations & drives. They just can't. Actually, a better way of wroding it is their expression of their beliefs cannot be the same way as mortal humans.
I would have no problem with people born under various moons having as their 'big thing' a bonus to their destiny SA (Kinda like how Fahal gets a bonus on faith)
I just read LXG (league of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and one of the characters in it is am immortal. Like the way fey are described, he is really laid back, and doesnt seem to care about much anymore simply because he has an eternity to see things happen. it was some good insight onto how to roleplay and look at the fey in ROS. Now in really understant why they lack those SA's.
The LXG movie was surprisingly good. Stewart Townsend's portrayal of Dorian Grey (the immortal) was right on the money. Perfect Fae resource.
There's a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that offers one viewpoint on where a potentially discrepancy between human thought and some fey thought might be. It obviously loses a lot in translation, yet I found the following, which strives to preserve the tone and meaning over literacy:
--------------
I shudder with fear for the human word.
Everything they proclaim is so precise.
This is called Dog and that is called House,
and here is the beginning and there is the end.
I worry about their sense, their play with mockery,
they know everything that's been and shall be;
no mountain is still to them wonderful;
their gardens and goods border directly on God.
I want always to warn and resist: Stay away.
To hear things sing is what pleases me most.
You touch them: they are stiff and mute.
You cut to the ground everything that is dear.
---------------------
I.e. the conflict between a rational, calculating, classifying outlook at the world vs. an intuitive, empathic, outlook concerned with the individual properties of each thing rather than with what classifications it fits in, with the rationalistic, strictly defining view of the world which defines anything strange and incomprehensible (such as sorcery) as undesirable more and more confining the magical 'habitat' of the fey.
Where one side strives to do justice to each individual thing, the other takes similarity for equality and uses abstraction in order to facilitate assessment. This, in part, can also be seen as a consequence of lifespan: The shorter lifespan needs to go about assessing its surroundings efficiently and quickly, whereas immortality can invest the time to pay attention to the details.
Interesting to read is also Landauer's 'Skepsis und Mystik' where he talks about the 'killing, voiding and desolating abstraction'.
On the one hand, we have humans regarding anything they can't explain with superstition and loathing. On the other hand we have the fey who simply reply to any concerns by humans 'You don't understand' - not out of arrogance, but because the short-lived human really DOES NOT understand...he's like a little child which has a lot to learn and which frequently breaks things out of sheer lack of knowing better -only that this infantility is what the human takes for maturity, and considers it the measure of the world. The fey, on the other hand, had the time to watch every single leaf fall of a tree not only last fall, but every fall since the tree sprouted from a seed, and has understood the deeper levels of meaning behind it.
Thoughts?
I think you've stumbled onto one of the big problems in fantasy & sci-fi RPGs: how do you roleplay something that works off alien, inhuman logic? This is the other side of the jam: on one side there runs the danger of making non-humans stylized humans (i.e. the Path of Star Trek), and on the other how do you, assumably a human, roleplay something that is not? I mean, we have a hard enough time trying to roleplay people who don't have modern Western values.
I'm not an expert on how to deal with this, but there are definitely some 'cheats' out there, each with its own problems.
Quote from: Nick PagnuccoI think you've stumbled onto one of the big problems in fantasy & sci-fi RPGs: how do you roleplay something that works off alien, inhuman logic? This is the other side of the jam: on one side there runs the danger of making non-humans stylized humans (i.e. the Path of Star Trek), and on the other how do you, assumably a human, roleplay something that is not? I mean, we have a hard enough time trying to roleplay people who don't have modern Western values.
I'm not an expert on how to deal with this, but there are definitely some 'cheats' out there, each with its own problems.
That's one reason why I tend to avoid having the likes of (pre-)first age Elves running around in third-age Tolkien campaigns, or having to portray someone like Galadriel for an extended period of time.... I think that 10,000 years and the likes old beings are so far removed from our lines of thought that it is next to impossible to portray them as anything but what could justly be called a mockery. With short blips, it doesn't show that much, but facing them over a long time, usually there's a plethora of lose threads showing that can unravel the suspension of disbelief easily if someone just bothers pulling one.