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Giant in the Playground Forums > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > I've lost that Fantasy feeling
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JellyPooga
Whilst thinking about roleplaying, in the process of re-writing some rules/creating a new re-hash of a certain popular fantasy RPG, it occured to me that there is, at least for me, a decided lack of the fantastic when I play and run games.
Elves are ten-a-penny and meeting one is about as mysterious and rare as meeting a Bristolian in Cardiff. Dwarves have lost that sense of being an almost reclusive race of master craftsmen, because every village has a dwarven smith and dwarf-run bars can be found in every market-town. Heck, even Orcs are just slightly unruly neighbours instead of the bestial marauders they should be.
Q: What's gone wrong?
A: All those 'fantasy' elements have become far too 'normal'.
Q: Why have they become 'normal'?
(My) A: Those fantasy elements were given to the players to do with as they please.
Allow me to explain. In literature, the author has licence to make X race or Y culture whatever he pleases. If he wants Elves to be just another aspect of a multi-cultural region and common as the next guy, then he just writes it that way. If he wants them to be a rare and dying breed that only has tenuous relations with human nations, then so be it.
In an RPG that allows Elves as player characters (to continue the example), the "author" is several people; the GM and the Players. The GM has a greater say in the plot of the tale, but the Players have (largely speaking) absolute fiat regarding the protagonists of that saga. If one of those protagonists is of a race that has been written into the plot as untrusted by humans, supposedly rare, etc. then all of those aspects are marginalised (at best) or ignored (more common) because a member of that race is present in practically every scene and nothing the GM says, at the end of the day, will stop the player playing that Elf however he likes (e.g. the GM says Elves are aloof and arrogant, the Player says that his Elf is gregarious and friendly). The 'fantasy' Elf has become 'normal' and there's only so many times you can emphasise (as a GM) that characters unusual heritage before it starts either a)becoming dull and repetitious or b)looking like penalising the player for choosing to play a character of that race.
Q: What, then, is the answer?
(My) A: Ban non-human characters.
Take away the ability for Players to compromise the fantasy elements of the game and you preserve said fantasy element by making that fantasy integral to the plot, rather than an aspect of the protagonists. I'm saying this from the point of view of both a GM and a Player.
To look at it another way; Players have the option of playing several different races, but really all that option gives them is a slightly different set of abilities. The actual character they play is not dependant on their race, but upon the players themselves.
Am I being too harsh in my estimation and solution?
Is my solution a potential 'fix' for the problem I'm perceiving?
Am I just playing the wrong game? If so, have you any other suggestions?
Rallicus
That is honestly the worst solution I've ever read.
You don't "preserve" a fantasy feel by limiting the players' options when it comes to characters.
If you've grown tired of elves not being fantastical, make another race like them instead. Use races that the PCs aren't playing so you have more control of their culture, attitudes, so on and so forth.
I think that, yes, your best option might be to play a fantasy game where fantastic elements aren't quite as commonplace. There's plenty of them around.
If you want to stick to D&D and other tolkienesque fantasy, I would allow players to pick non-human races for their characters - provided they can prove they can play them as more than just their stat modifiers.
Craft (Cheese)
The problem here has nothing to do with the players and everything with the conception of what a fantasy race is. "Elves are aloof and arrogant and are universally good at using bows, Dwarves are drunk and scottish and hide underground all day" is an absolutely ludicrous conception how how cultures different from our own work, let alone what are supposed to be different species.
These aren't races, these are cardboard stereotypes and your problem really boils down to "Unless people who play these races have their character follow the stereotype to the letter, they're doing it wrong!"
TheThan
While the OP's solution A works and one I actually like, I think its a good idea to explore other options. So here's an option "B".
Thethan's option B:
Play up these fantasy troupes. Make dwarves an almost reclusive race of master craftsmen (actually make their work BETTER than the work of elves). If someone wants to play a dwarf, fine let him.
But don't put more dwarves in your human/elf whathaveyou settlements. So that that dwarf character is unique in the area. Maybe people (read NPCs) that have never seen one rush out and meet him as he comes into town. Have characters ask silly questions like 'where do baby dwarves come from?" and the like. Make the character into a spectacle. Try to make scenes like this one ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip5T89jfJoA) happen.
Then flip it around, when the party travels to the dwarven stronghold high up in the mountains, make them the outsiders and strangers, the spectacle.
I think that will greatly help in bringing back that fantasy feeling.
Yora
The reason that I found that made me lose interest in Forgotten Realms and that makes Eberron interesting, but not fun for me, is that many RPG settings just explain way too many things.
The crucial part of fantasy worlds to me is, that you have to face things you don't understand and have to find ways to deal with them without ever really knowing what's going on at a larger scale.
When you can name, quantify, and calculate everything, the fantastic element is lost. At that point you are the master of the world and you have the means to bend everything to your world. There is no mystery when you know all your options and can make nummerical estimations for which one is the most likely to succeed.
The solution is settings in which the inhabitants simply do not know everything and neither do the players (which also means the GM).
You don't need to know who build a dungeon and what purpose it originally had, and you don't need to be able to break down a magical ritual into the individual spells it is composed of, and you don't need to know life cycle of the weird abomination that haunts the place.
To a fantasy hero, weird otherworldy things happen that are beyond human understanding, but the hero overcomes fear and finds a way to get out of it alive anyway.
Devils_Advocate
Why is your post written as though demihumans are the only "fantasy elements" that exist? That's a rather odd thing to single out. Isn't magic the thing that's quintessentially fantastic, and the primary thing to keep out of the hands of players in order to keep it mysterious, should that be your desire?
Also, you kind of seem to be suggesting including fantasy by, um, not including it. That is to say, if Mysterious Fantastic Things aren't encountered by the protagonists because they're all in Mysterious Far-Away Lands (of Mystery!), then said Things aren't part of the story, are they?
I guess you're saying that things are only fantastic if they're just barely part of the story, and anything much more than that renders them boringly familiar?
But why would you want to reclaim this status for things specifically because they have traditionally held that status? Aren't e.g. hidden elven villages themselves familiar to audiences precisely as a result of being, well, cliche? Seems to me that if you want something to be excitingly mysterious, the way to do it is to come up with something new that hasn't been seen before.
Thanks for all the replies; I have a few comments.
@Rallicus: Creating a new 'fantasy' race can work, I'll agree, but only for so long. Once a "new" race becomes understood and 'normal', then you need to make another "new" race. Eventually you'll just end up with too many races and a world that looks overcrowded and unworkable (where are all these "new" races coming from?). Surely a better solution is to try and recreate the fantastic elements of the races you're already working with?
@Morty: How do you get someone to 'prove' they're good enough? I don't disagree that you have something there, but without appearing to have 'favourites' or insult anyone, it's tricky to implement such a system of proof. Better to blanket ban than pick and choose, surely?
@Craft(cheese): Hmm, yes. Culture and Stereotype and the way they relate to actual people or characters is a more complex thing than can easily be explained and expecting every character to fit within the stereotypes the game-world establishes is not what I'm trying to achieve. However, when talking about non-human races, you can take things to more of an extreme than you could when talking about other human cultures. So saying that "all elves are expert archers" is a ludicrous stereotype (to quote your good self), true, but it's also one that could be established if the entirety of the Elven people live in one community in a small forest in an otherwise much larger world.
It's also less about "doing it wrong" if you don't follow the stereotype that I have a problem with; I myself am guilty of playing characters that specifically go against stereotypes; intellectual half-orcs, dwarves with weak constitution and the like. It's more about what that does with relation to making those characters fantastic as regards to their race. A Dwarf that walks into a village who is pale, weak and feeble should be something totally outside of the norm, not only because Dwarves are rare and unusual in human lands but also because the stereotype says he should be rough and tough. In my experience, this rarely happens; that the character is weak and feeble is the thing of note, not that it's a Dwarf who's weak and feeble.
@TheThan: Your solution B is what I tend to do anyway and I'm finding it doesn't work well enough. As a GM, constantly reminding players of their oddity or 'differentness' does not quite have the same impact as coming across a fantastic element only once in an entire campaign. An Elf (player character) who is constantly being questioned and gawked at is merely a player being put upon for being an Elf. An Elf (NPC) who is the only Elf the Player Characters have ever met and is the only one they're ever likely to meet is a different, exciting, memorable and (above all) fantastic character.
@Yora: I think you have a very valid point. I also think that my reaction is an extension of this point. By allowing a fantasy race as a Player Character, you enforce familiarity with that fantasy race and lose the fantasy element, turning it to nothing more than a different kind of normal.
@Devils Advocate: You are correct that I am specifically targeting Fantasy Races in my OP. This is not to say there are not other fantasy elements that will also contribute; as you say, Magic is a big one, but those other elements I have an easier time reconciling within the games I play/run than races.
I am not suggesting that fantasy races should be entirely removed from the game, only that they should be removed as an option for the Player Characters. In trying to establish a setting and a plot, a GM must (as mentioned by Yora) preserve a certain amount of mystery. Without it, you may as well be playing something contemporary or historical. If we identify a fantasy setting by the races that inhabit that world, then the ones that are different from our own, human, perception must fall into this "mystery" category. The more about the mystery that is revealed to the Player Characters, the less of the fantasy will be present. In order to play a character of a fantasy race, one must know a great deal about that race, so by learning that information, the mystery is revealed and the fantasy element removed.
By preserving fantasy races as part of the setting rather than as protagonists, you can introduce those races as fantastic. You don't need to introduce new races that are completely unfamiliar when the ones at hand are fantastic enough. Why should I invent the Scidhe Fax, a race of 6" tall fairies with draconic features to enhance the fantasy element of my game, when compared to the Human player characters, stumbling across an Elven village is fantasy enough; the inhabitants of the village seem distant and unknowable, aloof from the affairs of the short lived and violent monkeys blundering through their territory. Compared to the PC's, the NPC's in this village have superhuman reflexes and cat-like grace, they casually notice things the humans cannot even hope to perceive and the one guide that escorts them to the dragons lair appears to know more, even, than the Druid in the party about the local flora and fauna.
When describing this village and its inhabitants, as the GM, I can elaborate and embellish to my hearts content because it's a situation unfamiliar to the characters and because none of those characters are Elves, I can have certain aspects remain hidden or obscure. If one of the players were an Elf, I would have to concede that such elaboration and embellishment is unnecesary because if I have done a good job (as GM) in providing sufficient background for what it means to be an Elf in this setting, then he already knows this. So the Human PC's might experience a certain amount of fantasy (assuming their Elven companion has not spoken about it either in or out of character), but the Elf PC does not and because I am conscious of this, the amount of fantasy I inject into the scene is lessened so as not to impede the enjoyment of the Elf Player. I would also be limited on the amount of things I can keep hidden; an Elf Player might already know that the King of the Elves is really the secondary power on the throne after his Queen and so prevent the GM from using this information to mislead the PC's for the greater benefit of the plot or character interaction.
Is any of this making sense, or am I just deluding myself that my proposed fix will achieve more than I anticipate?
the problem their is those elves arnt fantastic their just mary sues and that's far more common in fiction than elves being integrated of human society.
the pcs wont see this elven village and say wow look at this magical and mysterious place they will see just another cookie cutter hidden elf city and start making jokes about how you cant argue with elves and elves are always better. ect.
now of course you could change their culture so thoroughly that they become mysterious again but at that point you might has well have just made a new race.
OK, perhaps it was a bad example (I knew I should have gone with Dwarves!). Seriously, though, it's not that the Elves are better than the PC's that makes them fantastic, it's the fact that they're different, outside of their (the characters, that is, not the players) normal experience and not just a bunch of tree-hugging hippies of the kind you see strolling through the village every sunday afternoon. The Players may well just joke about Elves having sticks up their rear and such, but at least 3 months down the line when looking back on "that campaign that had the Elves in it", the Elves stood out from the crowd, were memorable solely for being Elves and not just another "cookie cutter hidden elven village", because it was the only hidden elven village the player characters ever came across and ever will.
PaintByBlood
If you can find players intersted, or convince players to be interested, I think a campaign of humans in a world like D&D could be very interesting indeed. Or maybe get them all to agree on being one or two races that would be fairly familiar with eachother. A party entirely of elves, a party of humans and halflings, etc.
I can absolutely see how the overabundance (or apparent overabundance at least) of unusual examples of elves communing with humans or dwarves cavorting about on the surface could injure the perception of those races fantastical elements. The traditional approach of fantasy novels is often for a single human or party of humans (or very nearly humans, like the hobbits of Lord of the Rings) to be the protagonists and essentially act the part of us as they make their way through a vast world of magic, and mystery as well.
D&D certainly moves away from that, and I see no reason to not try shifting back - so long as you have players you don't have to browbeat into doing it.
Though, it may be worth trying a new setting, or even system, to do it. Perhaps something more solidly rare-magic, because another thing that detracts from the typical fantasy experience, I think, is the ability to quickly become powerful wizards and clerics, and in great numbers.
Zerasen
I understand where you're coming from but I'm in agreement with awa. Even if you take the races away from the PCs, it won't change that they already know what the races are like. They would already understand the setting you described of the secluded elf village, unless they're very new to fantasy. Things like Lord of the Rings and fantasy RPGs have made us fantasy lovers painfully familiar with these elements without us ever having to actually play them in D&D.
Despite race, players usually just end up playing themselves in a different skin unless they're truly devoted to the role-playing aspect of D&D, anyway. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with that; it's simply an like interpretation of the race or personality filter.
I suppose what I'm trying to say, in the end, is that, your solution wouldn't truly solve the problem, and I'm not sure that there's a solution that allows you to retain classic fantasy races and their sense of fantasy or uniqueness. Personally, I've avoided this feeling by near exclusively playing my friend's setting which features a whole new set of races, each with their own features separate from classic fantasy :smallbiggrin:
Hope some part of this helps you out :smallwink:
Your solution makes no sense.
You, the DM, need to add the fantasy feeling. For example, most of my elves in My Game are strange and mysterious. They act 'weird' to humans. They have very different ways and customs and even more so magic to an extreme. Even a simple elf will have all sorts of 'special elf magic'.
And most of the time, when a player is non-human, I will have them be an outcast, so they don't get the 'cool stuff'(You need to be a good player to get 'cool stuff').
You don't 'have' to make the races like they are in the book...
Why? (asked purely in the spirit of inquiry)
So what happens when a Player comes along and plays an Elf who doesn't fit this model? The "fantasy feel" you've created has evaporated because a player didn't feel like 'playing ball' with your setting.
Does it not seem harsh to say "Hey yeah, you can play an Elf" and then turn around and say "Psh, you're not playing an Elf right, so you don't get the tasty ice cream of deliciousness. You have to eat the boring flavour"?
By limiting the field, you increase the potential for making things more fantastic. Perhaps PaintbyBlood has it right, I'm thinking; I need not to limit players to Human only but rather to campaign appropriate races only. If I want to feature Elves as a big NPC aspect, then no Elves in the party (for example).
Of course I'm right!
More seriously, I think the main thing to do is to capture the sense of characters that are as unnaccustomed to the realm as you want the players controlling them to be (or the readers in the case of the books I'm getting these thoughts from). If there are other ways to do it consider those as well, but limiting the races to some degree is definitely a way to do so, I think.
A band of humans and halflings that crosses fabled elves, a group of elves venturing into the lands of dwarves where the two races have always held the other at an arms-length. Perhaps you could even have a full mix, and send them into the wilds to mingle with fae or into some depths to find drow, or somewhere else entirely to speak with beings of pure liquid. Anything where the characters are finding something they have only heard whispers of - or less - and perhaps preferably that the players have no knowledge of as well.
I think a new setting may be the strongest way to do this, but a bit of homebrew could be powerful too. Personally, I'm relishing the chance to soon introduce a group to a world of vampires not a one of them should know a lick about beforehand - past the stereotypes and myths we already have, and that VtM essentially expects from new initiates. But that's not quite here or there, I'm just excited.
Jack of Spades
Does it not seem harsh to say "Hey yeah, you can play an Elf" and then turn around and say "Psh, you're not playing an Elf right, so you don't get the tasty ice cream of deliciousness. You have to eat the boring flavour".
By paragraph:
1. As she (oh wow I feel really dumb for checking gender on that username) said, they don't fit the model because they're outcasts or just strange. Sometimes, people in a given culture are weird. They don't generally stick around. Obviously in your hypothetical setting the elves don't get out of their forest villages much. Thus, a PC elf is already weird for an elf. Allow them to be weirder.
2. Well, first of all, you phrase it, "Sure, play an elf, but..." And second of all, most adventurers are outcasts. That's just how the business of adventuring is. They don't get the crazy elf magic because they skipped town before the initiation, the magic comes from the stone in the middle of town or the water in the area, or because of whatever other caveat you feel like throwing out. The characters have class levels. They'll end up special enough. It's fine that they're not quite the same kind of special as the special NPC's.
You can't bring back the fantasy feeling by removing the fantasy.
Well, not exactly. Unless the player is really into the idea, they won't be a 'true' elf in the setting. This is common with 'optimizer builds' who just want 'elf' for something. And most players are an 'outsider' type elf by default, but that is fine as typically an outsider type is an adventurer.
I also have a complex setting, so other then just the couple of sub races, there are lots of communities, tribes and groups. So there is not 'just one way' to play an elf. Often, I'll know the player well enough to fit them to a type.
I do it opposite, I over saturate the field. And it works great. A lot of PC elves come from the 'Treeless Elves'. This type of elf is from a fallen house and has had no choice but to leave the normal elf way of life and live with another race, often humans. Then the PC is a second generation, and elf born in a human city.
ScubaGoomba
I'm going to go ahead and echo the sentiment that you may want to try a new setting or system entirely. Since you play D&D, why not try d20 Modern? By setting it in the modern day, your players will already have a sense of familiarity with what's going on. The only playable races as per the Core Rulebook are Humans, so you wouldn't have to worry about breaking any rules to get in there. Even the magic classes are relegated to Advanced Classes provided only through setting supplements in the Core Book or rule expansions.
Start the game off in a modern setting with the players playing as modern heroes. You see Modern Fantasy in so many different mediums; James Bond, Oceans 11, Rush Hour, 24, etc. These are all modern day tales, but the scope of what happens is the realm of fantasy. No Elves, no Dwarves, just a common setting with no preconceived notions of what a "Dwarf" should be or what an "Elf" should be.
So after a few sessions, you start to work in the mystical. The players won't expect it and you can even rename things. The Elves are no longer called Elves, despite acting exactly as you would treat an Elf. The players have something new in a setting that they already know (meaning they won't be making false preconceptions). The fantastic stays arcane throughout.
And, for the record, I don't think banning all races but Humans is a terrible idea at all.
Hm... You say d20 modern, but you're basically describing Shadowrun (another excellent system, from what I hear). :smallbiggrin:
That's just it, I'm not removing the fantasy, I'm shifting the source. I get it that players want to play non-human characters (I don't think I've ever played a Human in a fantasy game, myself) and by taking away that option, many players will feel like they're losing an element of what makes the game 'fantasy'. However, what I'm suggesting is that by enforcing just that and shifting that 'fantasy' element into a more stable and controllable medium (i.e. the setting and plot) you enhance how fantastic that element can be. Which gives a greater sense of the fantastic; a novel or an rpg? Typically, the former gives a greater return. By placing the fantasy elements in the hands of the GM, an rpg could become something more akin to a novel because he can use those fantasy elements to a greater degree to shape the game, instead of just chucking them out there for all and sundry to use.
Well, not exactly. Unless the player is really into the idea, they won't be a 'true' elf in the setting. This is common with 'optimizer builds' who just want 'elf' for something.
Ah hah! This is exactly where the fantasy element is being lost. "Elf" to many players has become just a set of stats that he can hang his or her character on (or, even worse, just a way of getting the best attack bonus or a means to get into such-and-such Prestige Class or whatever). What I'm saying is that if Players cannot be bothered to play an Elf and everything that entails within the setting, then they should not be allowed to play an Elf at all. To play an Elf you should be "really into the idea". If you're not, then why roleplay at all...why not just play Risk or Monopoly?
I do it opposite
As you say, this works great for you. I'm trying something similar; the current game I'm running has a kind of 'oversaturation', as you put it. Every session, though, I'm losing a little bit of what makes the game 'fantasy' to me. The first couple of sessions, the player of the Catfolk Scout character was really emphasising his Catfolk traits, as were the Halfling and the Warforged respectively. As sessions go on, repeating the same emphases of traits is swiftly becoming tiresome and I can't help but think that eventually, it will just become boring to mention for the hundreth time that "the shopkeep looks nervously up at the 7ft man of metal, wood and stone, unsure of what to expect as his eyes dart nervously between it and the Catfolk lounging in the corner cleaning his nails with a dagger". If that Warforged was an NPC, involved for a couple of sessions and then moved on, then I can't help but think that his being a Warforged would actually mean something beyond the stats he has written on his character sheet.
Yes and no. One of the key conceits to the more "traditional" fantasy settings in d20 Modern (Shadow Slayers, Agents of PSI, and Urban Arcana) is that the fantastic is still very much fantastic. It's not the kind of thing that people encounter regularly, so a setting that's just D&D in the future isn't quite there, although I can see the similarity.
What I'm getting at, basically, is that by changing the setting to modern day (or just not the traditional pseudo-middle ages that we've come to expect), you instantly create a setting that the players don't have preconceived notions about. Using the modern setting just lulls them into a false sense of security.
I'm not suggesting that, once the fantastic is established, it becomes the norm, but that it is a pervasive threat or, at the very least, a poorly understood nuisance. Watch shows like Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer to get what I mean. When people that aren't convinced that the fantastic exists come face-to-face with it, they rationalize it off as something else. When the players first encounter an Elf, it wouldn't be a moment of "Oh hey, there's an Elf and there's also a whole civilization of them running around everywhere," but that it's a new intrusion on their home. Just because something exists doesn't mean it's pervasive.
BootStrapTommy
You kinda reminded me of Drizzt Do' Urden from R. A. Salvatore's works. No one trusts the Drow. On the surfaces the Drow are hated. Yet when people build Drow they rarely think of this. They usually build a Drow for the abilities the Drow get naturally. They rarely realize that in only a very few towns in the world would a Drow be tolerated, let along accepted. We need more people who go "It doesn't matter that your Drow is Neutral Good, everyone hates Drow, even if it is out of ignorance. Go sleep in the woods."
Another solution, one which I have found effective is to allow anything which even has the slightest chance of being within the rules. Give the players points for creativity and thinking outside the box.
If they figure out how to make the party a three-stage human rocket, let them. If they figure out how to actually nuke a battlefield, let them. If they can make a character who does some quirky-ass **** like throw Colossal arrows with mage hand and use a impossibly big weapon, let them do it and succeed. The best way to restore fantasy to the fantasy is the restore the absurd. Willfully suspend disbelief. Stop saying "That does even make sense" or "that's absurd" or "that's ridiculous" and let the players (within the rules, of course) be creative and stupid, because the creative and the absurd are the very foundation of fantasy.
Knaight
Drizzt Do'Urden is a disliked character for a very good reason, and that centers around how the drow being hated appearing over and over quickly became tedious (as well as bad writing, particularly in the diary entries). It was predictable, it was repetitive; these things are not conducive to a sense of fantasy. If anything, the fantasy feel is largely centered on the unpredictable and the novel, where there is a pervasive sense of whimsy and a world that is much bigger than the understanding or knowledge of it.
The problem, then, is not one of elves, dwarves, and such being mundane. It's one of elves, dwarves and such being overused. The fantastic elements seem to always draw from the same few sources, where parts of Tolkien's work; a bit of Greek, Norse, and Irish mythology, and early sword and sorcery blend. These things have simply been used too much to be fantastic anymore. So, why not try something fundamentally different, where the things really are new?
I'd actually recommend reading a fantasy trilogy, simply because it is very different from most fantasy and as such seems fantastic. Find Alan Dean Foster's The Journey of the Catechist. Observe how it has a more fantastic feel than most fantasy, and note how the hallmarks of D&D style fantasy (and for that matter european fantasy in general) are conspicuously absent.
NichG
I don't think the OP's solution would fail, but I do think it would tend to alienate players. The way I would phrase this fundamental problem is something like this:
For there to be wonder, the players and their characters must encounter things that lie outside of what is normal for them. Therefore, the more exotic the players' characters become, the more exotic anything wondrous must be in order to be so.
A human might find an elf wondrous, but an elf will not find one of his own kind wondrous. An elf might find a dragon wondrous if you're lucky, but a half-dragon Vecna-blooded illithid probably would not.
One solution is to introduce things that are novel or strange to the setting. Be unafraid of homebrew, and use it extensively, and don't explain it to the players - make them figure out what's going on in character. Over time though, you can get into an arms race: the players have a set of growing and increasingly fantastical options, and the DM keeps having to introduce thing N+1 that is more special than everything else.
This can be awesome for awhile but it tends to wear thin after a few campaigns. Often the solution is to change up the game system to something people aren't accustomed to for a campaign or two, so that everything is new and wondrous.
In general though, I think the solution basically has to be 'new content must be introduced at a constant rate'. Even if everyone is forced to play a human, once the players are familiar with how your elves work they'll no longer be fantastical, even if they're new to their characters.
Elves are ten-a-penny and meeting one is about as mysterious and rare as meeting a Bristolian in Cardiff.
I had the same feeling until one time I played in a campaign (GURPS) where you really did rarely see elves, and no players really played them because they were so expensive and had disads that made them hard to have in a party. That and they lived for 1000 years and would just accumulate points and eventually become these 600+ point value characters (our characters were super strong, rocking a total of 250 points each). You never knew what an elf could pull out because they usually had exotic magic and strange martial training.
To put it into 3.5 terms, all elf NPCs were high level wizard gestalts and you could never be sure what the other half was.
So the reason why things are becoming less wonder and more familiar is because they're becoming more familiar. You have the elf racial stats memorized. You know the strengths and weaknesses of orcs. When the unknown becomes known everything is much less scary and awe inspiring.
I was a HUGE fan of the journal entries, mainly do to there philosophical nature and their real world commentary. I'm inclined to believe (though likely wrong) that you may have simply not liked them do to Salvatore's overt conservative commentary contained within them. They were intented as a way for him to channel himself and his ideals into Drizzt.
As for the hatred of the Drow becoming tedious, I'd beg to differ. My point was that there are the ways things are meant to be played and then there are the ways we play things in our familiarity. I think it would be hard pressed for any of us here to claim that we are familiar with playing characters who are outcast from society because of what they are innate and not who they are. That is a feeling and a style I'd say we are all unfamiliar with. but that is how a Drow on the surface should work. Yet we don't do that. this is something that exists throughout fantasy based RPGs. Players become familiar, but in doing so they often rob the roleplaying elements from what they are doing in favor of doing as they please. I mean, who here actually pays that much attention to the roleplaying requirements of a monk? Of a cleric? We pay attention to the paladin, but only because the paladin is roleplaying requirement hyperbole.
A good way to restore the fantasy is to reintroduce those things which makes elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings novel, things which we have forgotten and seem to have even forgotten that we've forgotten.
At this point I would like to make a plug for the wonderful, even if complicated, system that is GURPS. The way GURPS's disadvantages and advantages system works, your characters have a level of novelty which is not only custom designed by each player and vast in its possibilities, but also enforceable by the GM, making the novelty of each character something which innately part of the game, not just the Player. The very unique ways in which you can make insanely inept parties who face complex and isotypical situations makes GURPS insanely fun, and allows the GM to be insanely original and open.
At least in my humble opinion. But that could be biased by my positives feeling for the system.
Milo v3
That's just it, I'm not removing the fantasy, I'm shifting the source. I get it that players want to play non-human characters (I don't think I've ever played a Human in a fantasy game, myself) and by taking away that option, many players will feel like they're losing an element of what makes the game 'fantasy'. However, what I'm suggesting is that by enforcing just that and shifting that 'fantasy' element into a more stable and controllable medium (i.e. the setting and plot) you enhance how fantastic that element can be.
From this, I'm guessing players wouldn't be allowed to use the Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, or Wizard classes.
Ah hah! This is exactly where the fantasy element is being lost. "Elf" to many players has become just a set of stats that he can hang his or her character on (or, even worse, just a way of getting the best attack bonus or a means to get into such-and-such Prestige Class or whatever).
Then that is the fault of the setting, or you if you made the setting.
For my players, elves aren't just stats. They are children of Kephrana who wander the grim and dark rainforests of Estikar with their souls physically manifested by their side. Because of this one of my players checks for the familiar whenever they see an elf.
May I ask how you make races like Warforged and Catfolk more than just statistics? What actually makes them a proper race in your world?
Totally Guy
Ah hah! This is exactly where the fantasy element is being lost. "Elf" to many players has become just a set of stats that he can hang his or her character on (or, even worse, just a way of getting the best attack bonus or a means to get into such-and-such Prestige Class or whatever). What I'm saying is that if Players cannot be bothered to play an Elf and everything that entails within the setting, then they should not be allowed to play an Elf at all. To play an Elf you should be "really into the idea".
I hear you. This is the fault of the setting as implied by the game rules.
If being an elf is a big deal to the kind of game you want to run/play then I would recommend playing a game where the implications of being an elf imposes some restrictions that are in themselves a big deal. The concept of elveness can give you legitimate feedback.
Check out the Burning Wheel for Elves and Dwarves that are mechanically shaped by their society and play differently as a result of that. I'm talking about Dwarves that become fixated by and act in the pursuit of riches and craftsmanship and Elves that are slow to go to war because of the toll it'd take on their souls and those of their people.
zz78q5
I completely Agree with the author of this post.
I dont know how long have any of you been GM'ing, but I have been doing it for quite a long time, and I really miss the fantastic elements around non-human races we had back in AD&D 2° ed (for instance).
I can only share my opinion and experiences on this subject since I have encountered quite different reactions to this very same problem.
In MY opinion, non-human races should not be banned from being player characters, but limited (i will elaborate on this point), for instance, to 1/3 of the party. That means, in a group of 6 players, 4 would be human, and only 2 non-human races.
Why? WHY?!!!! would you say. The answer is not simple to explain, and it is even difficult for players (and those who have never GM'ed) to understand.
Lets see if I can make a point without too much jibber-jabber.
In my experiencie with all of D&D products, I've seen how non-human races have evolved from rare and occasional to common over the different iterations of the game. In 2 ed, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc they had a strong concept for their cultural features, and much of the details were left to the GM to "create" (of course, those details would have to complement the already strong concept). For instance, Elves were long lived beings of magic and grace, that lived in armony with nature and appreciate art and knowledge above all else. Being an Elf was a lot more than "having a +2 to Dex and -2 to Con and being proficient with a bow". Only players that liked "that concept" of elves would play elves. When the game moved into 3.0 and later to 3.5, the non-human races suffered (yes, in my opinion they "suffered") a "cosmopolitanization" (dont even know if that word exists, but if it didnt, it does now) that made them more "user friendly". That meant a lot to the game; players how would otherwise never play elves because of their "magical and artistical nature-oriented cultures" had now the option of being part of a "small community of elves that branch out of the "now" "typical" elves" (aka tree hugging hippies). That encouraged players to start thinking of their characters in terms of "what I want it to look like" instead of "what I means to the Campaing World".
Also, when the game moved from 2 ed to 3 ed, the Race+Class combination limits were removed, which meant now there could be Dwarven Mages (which was unthinkable in 2ed since one of the pilars of the Dwarven Culture concept was the way they just dont trust magic - and are hence resistent to most of their effects).
I cant say this change was entirely a bad thing, but it helped killing the "fantastic elemts" around non-human races.
With the proliferation of Suplements (The Complete Series, the Races series and so on), more and more options where available for the players, which meant, GM's were forced to add elements to their campaings they some times dont even liked just to prevent players from abandoning the tables. A GM with a Good Campaing, but without Players, is just a guy with a cool story to tell but no one there to hear it.
After some years of playing "the new way" things started to balance out. GM's found ways to integrate undsired elements into their world settings, they made peace with new races (sometimes; I still struggle with most non-human races outside PHB1) and the game turned into "all about the players". The GM was forced to adjust their campaing settings to the players' desires of playing this or that race.
In my experience, whenever I would say "i have a campaing, but these are some of the "limitations" the players have" (for instace, there could be no gnomes in the party) I would face extreme rejection; and I've always been running 2-3 tables at the time, so facing this rejection from 3 unrelated players' groups made a point clear: It is all about the players now.
So, what does all of these have to do with the Fantastic elements of the game being missing in action?
Well, this shows that the Fantastic elements are not actually lost, but players are the ones that prevent those fantastic elements to be really fantastic. Yes. THE PLAYERS. I said it.
Of course, you can always stumble across some old school player that would give you a high five, to the face, with a hammer, if you ever prompt him with the idea of Dwarves being Mages, but most of those guys are married now and they rarely have enough time to play.
I am not saying that "new generation" players are bad, but that they percieve the game from another perspective.
Ok, with all that background, I can now elaborate on the "limit the amount of non-human races in the party".
What I've found rather successful is this: when you start a new campaing, the first thing you say is: there can only be "x" non-human races in the party, i dont care wich, but i need to know which races. You guys figure out who will play which race.
How does this "fix" the fantastic elements? Well, by limiting the number of non-human races in the party you prevent the following from happening:
- A complete non-human party. I've played with this, and it literally ruined the flavor of the campaing. Completely.
- Races being too common. Why, if they are so rare, would be 1 member of 3 different races traveling around the world in sort of a halloween-kids party? And of course, there needs to be a strong motive to have those 1 or 2 non-human races in the party.
- Out-shine from members of the same race. This is fairly more difficult to prevent, but by limiting the number of non-human races, players tend to diversify instead of having the only 2 non-human being of the same race.
As a final appreciation, all of this considerations only serve players and GM's that like playing mystic and fantastic worlds/campaings and are less "casual" players than most of the players.
If you are a player who thinks of your character as "I can get a +1 bonus from this racial trait" then all of the above will make no sense to you.
If you are a player who thinks of your character as "I am a member of a culture that upholds certain values, and I like to play a character instead of a statistics block" then you my find yourself agreeing with maybe some of my points.
As a side note: I've been working on a solution for this same problem for a time now, let me know if you would like to get into a more detailed discussion about what can GM's do to "fix" the fantasy in fantasy RPGs.
Rather than banning certain races as playable, or forcing players to "earn" it via either accomplishments or roleplayng skill, why not make racial selection random by dice, in proportion to how often the races show up in your world?
{table=head]Race|D100 Roll
Human|1-50
Dwarf|51-55
Gnome|56-62
Halfing|63-66
Elf|67
Orc|68-79|
Goblin|80-86|
Kobold|87-91|
Lizard-folk|92-96
Yaun-ti|97-99
Minotaur|100[/table]
Ideally you would also have some sort of system so that races got a continous benefit as they leveled up, so the abilities that are designed to be balanced at level 1 don't get eclipsed by levle 10. For example (and this is just off the top of my head) Dwarves get a scaling version of either DR or magic resistance, and elves get a few SLAs every couple of levels, but that obviously takes a lot more work.
Urpriest
Part of the issue is that Elves and Dwarves simply don't fill this sort of role anymore. Rather, in more recent fantasy D&D-style Elves and Dwarves are just another urban minority. Look at Terry Pratchett's Dwarves, for example.
In D&D, it's not just a matter of how Elves and Dwarves are played, or that they can be played, rather it's a matter of the system. Elves and Dwarves per recent editions of D&D can exist even at low levels and have at best limited magical abilities. There simply is no logical in-setting reason for them to be any more mysterious than an isolated human culture.
Lots of systems handle it differently. From what I've heard, Burning Wheel Elves have a very different outlook from humans, and one that's built into the setting, as do Orcs. But if you pick D&D, you've chosen a system where Elves and Dwarves are not the fantastic elements. That's what Aboleths and Dragons and Demons are for.
i dont think its an eddtion thing second eddtion elves and dwarfes were still tolkin knock offs. the fact that elves had a bunch of wierd abbilities like not being able to be raised didnt change the fact that at the end of the day a hidden elf village is a hidden elf village.
In fact i would argue that i tended to see a lot fewer humans in second eddtion then i see in third eddtion becuase the non humans had features while a humans features only came into play at high level.
the fact that human was the default and you needed moderatly high scores to play a non human made pepople think of humans as that race you played if you werent lucky enough to play something good.
Humans could be of any Class, and advance max level.
Humans could Dual Class
Humans were the only Race able to be Paladin, which was really Good in 2 Ed.
Non-human races were limited in the Class selection and rarely could level to max level in their classes. Sure, they could Multiclass, but it was not always a good choice considering the weak low level characters are in AD&D.
Calimehter
I get where you are coming from with this, and its arguably even worse in D&D than in real life due to the presence of magic and common langauges making the barriers between cultures easier to cross.
Still, in real life isolated human cultures can be pretty mysterious and fantastical in real life in the eyes of those first discovering them, despite the (presumably) even smaller racial 'mechanical' differences between the inhabitants of such cultures when compared to groups of D&D humaniods. I think its familiarity that plays a bigger role in the loss of the sense of 'fantasy' in fantasy games. Its hard for anything to be fantastical if it is also familiar . . . and lets face it, most D&D players have read a lot about Elves and Dwarves over the years.
In my own recent D&D campaigns I've done just what the OP has suggested in terms of limiting the races and regions from which the PCs are to be drawn. I've also felt free to modify and/or homebrew other races and monsters to suit the needs of the campaign. Some would find it terribly restrictive and boring, I'm sure, and there's settings in which it just plain wouldn't work (Sigil, anyone?) . . . but in my campaigns it has reinstilled a sense of wonder, uncertainty, and I daresay 'fantasy' when it comes to my players interaction with their character's world, even with elements that would be considered downright mundane in a place like FR or Eberron.
For the OP, I'd suggest you run it by your players, and if they are all feeling the same way you are, then I can say "Go for it, its worked for at least one gaming group before!" :smallsmile:
That's something about presentation. Don't just call them elves and expect the players to be awed by that fact. Let them encounter Grugach, or Dunmer, or Umbragen and tell them that there is very few known about them and they live hidden in an ancient forest, avoiding contact with foreigners and are hostile to visitors. They don't need special powers or actually that original societies. They just need to have a relationship with the PCs society that is difficult and clouded by secrecy and misunderstanding.
When you say elf, the players think they know what they are dealing with. If you say grugach, which are an elven people, things change instantly.
Forum Explorer
I would suggest not automatically biasing yourself to human only. If you are going to do this then build the world first. Then restrict the players choices to races that actually make sense. For example if halflings are known to be traders from across the world then being a Halfling wouldn't be bad.
Make it clear to the players that the fluff presented inside the books will generally not be used at all before hand.
Honestly I would like to see a D&D world where the humans barely exist at all due to being banished or killed off by the Elven/Orc alliance due to their evil demon summoning ways or something like that.
I work on a setting where humans are the newcommers that ended up in the region because the elves and lizardfolk needed additional caravan guards for the goods they bought from the far west and just hired some of the barbarians that live in the plains the trade road passes through.
Because that worked really well, whole clans resettled to new villages along the trade road.
They are just 10% of the whole population and have just villages and some small towns, but those are in a central location to allow new players ro start as humans in a small human society, where they can either stay and have entirely human-centric campaigns, or spread out into the lands of the big nonhuman powers that surround them.
Which gives a greater sense of the fantastic; a novel or an rpg? Typically, the former gives a greater return. By placing the fantasy elements in the hands of the GM, an rpg could become something more akin to a novel because he can use those fantasy elements to a greater degree to shape the game, instead of just chucking them out there for all and sundry to use.
UGh. Novels are a horrible example...they cheat. They have worlds that are the size of postage stamps. And then all races have to be of one type from one area. Just look at Middle Earth, or Krynn or Ebberon.
I can agree with not letting a bad role player play in My Game. I do it all the time. Many people hate me.
But I hope your not just trying to force players to do things. Like ''all elves dance'' so if you are an elf character you must max out the dance skill.
If that Warforged was an NPC, involved for a couple of sessions and then moved on, then I can't help but think that his being a Warforged would actually mean something beyond the stats he has written on his character sheet.
This is up to the DM, not the players though. The Dm makes the setting. Sure lots of DM's ignore 'weird' races as it would 'bother the game too much'. It just ruins the plot if the folk react badly to 'monster player' every couple of seconds.
And as I said, my way is not to have the traditional racist world with 99% humans and 1% everything else.
They generally have much larger worlds, it's just that large parts of them are irrelevant to a particular story. Sometimes all that matters is a city, or a province, or an archipelago - I don't see how this is a problem. If anything, RPG settings could benefit from a tighter focus in many ways, and a good setting could be made that was essentially just a city, or a few provinces, or an archipelago. The fantasy kitchen sink is overrepresented, as is the expansive world and contained travelogue. It's high time that we started seeing some variety in both of these, and that means a tighter focus.
Thanks everyone, for the replies; it's all been very useful material and certainly given me some food for thought!
To those of you that have taken the 'counter' argument; I appreciate the criticism. Having read the concerns you've aired, I don't think I'm going to be quite so extreme as to outright ban non-humans, but rather make them rarer; perhaps by using a system akin to earlier editions in which you must have X stat to be of a certain Race (e.g. you must have higher than average Dex to be an Elf), or percentile roll (though I'm not insanely fond of randomly generating race).
Partially on the back of some of the comments here, I'll definitely be putting a lot more work into the social aspects of my world. Thus far, I've put more effort into geography and politics and perhaps the fact that I've not put that much thought into the social side of things is partly the fault for my disillusion. I'm definitely a fan of using alternative names for different cultures within a race; as you mention Yora, simply changing a name is enough for you to pick up your ears and listen.
@Milo v3: I have indeed toyed with the idea of severely limiting the presence of magic-users in the party, for much the same reason! I haven't quite taken that step yet, because I really do think I'd have a player strike on my hands! If limiting the racial field works, though, then perhaps I might swing my players round to the idea of lessening the amount of magic present too, in time.
As for making races more than just stats, it's a matter of perspective. In my particular setting, the Warforged are ancient and rare. The ones still knocking around today are holdovers from an ancient and more glorious past, only recently come into their own sentience and independance. As such, very few people know what to make of them; city guards watch them closely, normally glib traders can't quite fathom how to haggle with them and superstitious villagers alternately run screaming in panic or stoically ignore them. In the case of this particular character, he has the Mithril Body Feat, so anyone who knows what mithril is (and its value) will also have the potential to look at him with an avaricious gaze...after all, it's only a machine, right?
As for the Catfolk in my setting, they are a nomadic people with no 'nation state' to speak of. The particular area the adventure is set is rife with wandering tribes of them, so they are not so unusual a sight to the more metropolitan locales, but they do keep to themselves. Having said that, they are and are seen as predators; most people do not trust their casual grace and usually laconic attitude. They are also notoriously whimsical, which does not help engender any kind of trust. Shopkeepers put up their prices and mothers bring their children in and hold them close when a Catfolk comes a-calling. The only exception to this are those of a more gregarious and mischievous nature; many Halflings, especially, are fond of teasing Catfolk; offering a bowl of milk instead of a pint of ale in the tavern or a ball of wool to play with and the like.
Jay R
One of the enjoyable aspects of some (not all) fantasy stories is ordinary people finding themselves in a strange world or country, and then exploring its strangeness. Obviously, Dorothy's story would not be so fantastical if she was already used to munchkins, witches, talking lions and scarecrows, etc.
Similarly, Wonderland would have been Ordinaryland if Alice were already familiar with cats who grin and disappear, rabbits with pocketwatches, and living cards.
If you want your game to have the feel of wandering through strange lands, then the lands have to be different from their homes. There are several ways to do that - the Shire was mostly isolated from the rest of Middle-Earth, Arthur grew up far from the marvels of Camelot, and Hansel and Gretel could find a fantastic gingerbread house just by walking into the nearby forest.
But make whatever rules you find necessary to give your games the feel that you and your players want.
Similarly, I won't have magic markets in my worlds. I think magic items should be fairly rare, and there is rich role-playing in slowly learning more about your mysterious sword. I enjoyed the climax in which Dorothy finds out that her magic ruby slippers could have taken her home at any time.
I'm not suggesting that you should follow my specific example. I will play the game to suit my goals, and you should play the game to suit yours.
Just be fair to the players - make sure they know what your game is, so they can choose to accept it or not.
The fantasy kitchen sink is overrepresented, as is the expansive world and contained travelogue. It's high time that we started seeing some variety in both of these, and that means a tighter focus.
"Okay, so you arrive in the city of Elnias, where the entire campaign will take place..."
"We get back on our ship and head somewhere else."
"******!!!"
Dude, you got everything warped around. In game when somebody wants to pme race, you work with them to inject that race into your setting and keep it climatic and you work with them to make sure you are on the same page how members of that race are. Second, no race is "always x, y and z", if you want Elves be bunch of jerks, fine, but what stops player from playing guy who isn't like this? Most humans are honest and hardworking, does that stop bunch of people from being liars and drunktards? And seriously, banning non-human races? I don't even get the logic behind this. And why should humans be the only ones who are allowed to act differently? It all sounds not like you lost sense of fantasy in your games but you want to have total control on everything.
i think their might be some confusing between mysterious and fantastic.
A gritty real world consperiacy story may be mysterious but if realistic wont be fantastic.
On the other hand the darksun setting where every thing from the culture to the races to the equitment and even the animals is widely diffrent both from reality but generic fantasy in general is fantastic but not particularly mysterious.
magic dosent need to be rare to be fantastic
fan·tas·tic /fænˈtæstɪk/ Show Spelled[fan-tas-tik] Show IPA
1. conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable; bizarre; grotesque: fantastic rock formations; fantastic designs.
2. fanciful or capricious, as persons or their ideas or actions: We never know what that fantastic creature will say next.
3. imaginary or groundless in not being based on reality; foolish or irrational: fantastic fears.
4. extravagantly fanciful; marvelous.
5. incredibly great or extreme; exorbitant: to spend fantastic sums of money.
it just cant be generic having a merlin clone pop in to exposit dialouge wont make the magic more fantastic just becuase the pcs arnt allowed to be mages it becuase it's been done before. For the magic to be fantastic it cant just be rare it has to be in some way innovative.
making +1 swords rare also does not make them fantastic becuase at the end of the day it's just a sharper sword, again to make magic items or anything really fantastic you need to do something innovative with them either in the fluff or the mechanics.
1337 b4k4
Roll for scurvy?
Doesn't really matter, though. If the players don't want to play the campiagn, there is no campiagn. Doesn't matter if there are names for the settlements and nations outside the city.
I agree, just saying, this is the reason published campaign settings (at least the ones WotC puts out) either define the entire planet to a reasonable degree, or they define nothing. If you imply that something exists, some player somewhere is going to want to interact with it.
(Of course, you could argue that once the materials have created parts of the map where the players want to go and see, it's done its job and the rest is up to the GM. That's not really WotC's design philosophy though.)
Some of my favourite paragraphs about elves... :dreamy sigh:
Elves rarely go to war as a people. There is no Elven nation or even single kingdom. Immortal grief makes Elves an inward focused people. Entanglements in the affairs of Men, Dwarves and even other Elves lead inexorably to tragedy. It is better to remain aloof in petty dealings than to risk becoming ensnared.
However, they are not without a moral center. When their great enemy rises, so too do they rise. And the Elven people at war is a fearsome sight.
In body they are hale, in mind sharp. And every one of them capable of wielding powerful magic.
While not as skilled in craft as Dwarves, they are well armed and harnessed.
In the art of battle, they are unmatched:
The young bend bow-staves and let loose cloth-yard shafts.
The daring, the grief-wracked and the strong take their ranks among the spear-bearers, sword-singers and lancers.
The cunning and the fleet of foot wear the gray mantles.
Their heralds rally their friends and send terror into the hearts of their enemies.
Their spies know what lies within every door.
Their leaders communicate through dreams, look into the hearts of traitors, and lead from the front with crushing pugnacity.
And every Elf that is too grief-stricken, or too young, to fight becomes a potent healer, an enchanter of blades, a weaver of magics.
On the field, Elves stand in proud regiments: Sword-singers, lancers, spear-bearers and bowyers comprise the main body, while rangers and outriders protect the wings.
At dawn, one of princes rides up and down the ranks reciting the Anthem of Courage, ensuring that no Elf in the army leaves his or her place in rank.
Meanwhile, aided by their Seconds and Attendants, Sword Singers chant fell litanies over their blades, preparing for battle.
The lancers give their mounts the Gift of Speed, and then slowly channel their grief into rage…
Grey mantles filter out to the flanks, singing softly, working their way to the enemy rear.
Another prince, the most fearsome, mounts his steed in the first rank of the lancers, invoking the Ballad of Rage.
The bowyers are given the sign to shower the enemy with their deadly darts. The outriders canter forth, feeling out the edges of the enemy position.
And then, a pause falls on the ranks. A hush floats over their mithril clad forms, and dread fills the hearts of the enemies. Cantering to the fore, come the proudest, fiercest Elven warriors, lead by a puissant prince. Desperate, the enemy turns his archers and artillery toward this deadly phalanx. But to no avail. As one with a cry, the lancers launch themselves into the fray, bursting into lambent flames, hurtling across the pitch…their enemies, unable to bear the sight, flee and are run down.
The clever prince signals to his captains, who then sing forth the Hymn of Victory. As the cavalry wheels and reforms for a second charge, the Hymn transfixes their opponent. He cannot run, he can only stand horrified as he is cut down by the marauding horsemen. Thus the enemy center falls.
As the shock of the cavalry still reverberates in the enemy ranks, sword singers and spear-bears advance in support of one another. There is no match for an Elven sword singer in all of his glory. Protected on his flanks by redoubtable spears, they undertake the grim labor of cutting through the enemy rank and file. It's bloody, but necessary work.
And as Elves fall in the press as is inevitable, Seconds rush unflinching to their aid—to stand in their place and hold while their bonded master makes his way to the rear.
Outriders and bowyers thwart attempts on the flanks.
Gray mantles assault the artillery crews, assassinate leaders and burn supply.
Any Elves who are wounded are conducted to the care of a soother who sings over them the Song of Soothing, Lyric of Healing and Doom of Strength, and plies them with Elven mirror-wine. Already fortified by their ration of Elven bread and fresh from the Monody of the March, the wounded are quickly ready for the fight again.
Thus, even few in number, the Elven force is more than equal to a host many times its number.
Eschewing the main force of artillery and war-machinery, Elves do not siege. They take fortifications by assault and infiltration. Grey mantles move unseen across the field, and enter into defended positions either assassinating leadership or throwing wide the gates for the main force.
While they are clearly formidable on land, Elves are also incomparable sailors. The weather is ever in their favor, and their navigators and pilots are the most skilled. Thus supplies, transport and reinforcements are delivered efficiently. Their navy grants them the ability to choose the time and place of battle, making their magic and force all the more potent.
Of course, their greatest strength in war is also their downfall. Grief fuels their prowess, but it also takes its toll. Some cannot bear the toll of carnage and, as their friends and loved ones are cut down, so too do they die with them under the burden of immortal grief. But worse are those who succumb to the lure of rage and hate, channeling their wrath into spite—falling to darkness. These fell creatures become the enemy within, and are inevitably the undoing of the Elves.
Credit to Luke Crane.
what is that from? is it supposed to be a parody?
Sounds almost like something from one of the Warhammer Fantasy books, but they have a dozen different kinds of elves. So I'd guess it's some other wargame.
Also, almost definitely not parody. They didn't make any "elves are gay" jokes.
Jerthanis
So recently I read The Eye of the World again for the first time since I first started reading the Wheel of Time series, and what I was surprised at was how strange and fantastic the Trollocs and Myrdraals were to the characters... how strange and foreign the One Power was... I hadn't read the series in years, since about when book 10 came out but I remember these elements being extremely commonplace and unremarked on and thus unremarkable.
However, in book 1, people didn't really believe Trollocs even existed. Aes Sedai were legends, known mostly from stories. The existence of these things were marked and commented on as being unexpected and unknown, and just being told these things went a long way toward making them true.
So rather than just disallow them, I'd say tell the fantasy race people that they will stand out among human cultures... that there will be some who will only understand the stereotype and will treat them as demons interested in stealing their children, because a story is all they have to know you by. Have people laugh in the faces of wizards when they make the claim of their power, and then react in terror when they demonstrate their power is legit. Make it clear that if they don't hide the fact that the Elf is nonhuman, they will attract unwanted attention and the people after them will be able to track them by the rumors of their passing. When something is mentioned out loud and changes how people react, it makes that thing seem exceptional. If it's like, "A half-orc, a dwarf and an elf walk into a bar, the bartender says, 'what'll it be?", they won't seem fantastic. "A half-orc, a dwarf and an elf walk into a bar, its patrons will be telling people about this event for a year" however, will. If all the PCs are human and that remains true about them all walking into a bar without a raised eyebrow, that will still feel unfantastic.
This might be a bit radical, but if you're not finding "fantasy" in elves and dwarves and the nonhuman playable races, it might be because most of then aren't very fantastic. Tolkien-style elves, dwarves, hobbits halfings, orcs are just humans with a few exaggerated traits by design, because they're basically allegories in species form. There are a few fantasy authors who have added some cultural depth to that characterization, but in D&D in particular the fantasy races are slightly wonky humans with stock personality characteristics latched on. Their profusion or scarcity doesn't really change their "wow" factor, because the tropes involved are factory-standard.
You can travel around the real world globe and find hundreds of cultures with astounding differences in aesthetics, philosophy, and the way they talk about the world. People's view of the world (physical and spiritual) is a product of their environment and the summed experience of past generations and collisions of worldviews with peoples of different environments and experiences. If fantasy races seem shallow, it's because their entire being is pretty much a mission statement, and rarely blossoms into something more complicated.
If you want to make them more fantastic, think about making them less anthropocentric and anthropomorphic. Take the accepted premises and attack them, rearrange them. Look at them from different angles and rebuild fantasy races as something more alarming, less comfortable. Make societies that have context, that have worldviews with quirks of perception and strange idioms and different value systems such that a dwarf isn't just a greedy short dude and an elf isn't just an infinitely prolonged emo dude.
i agree with that in general dwarves for example are depicted as far more relatable than more exotic human societies like say aztecs and really that's the problem when the aliens are less alien then the humans how can they be fantastic.
Commiczar
My own solution(s) to this problem aren't typical, so take my findings with several shakers of salt.
As it is relevant, I must add the caveat that my games are run online:
Every member of my party has a general outline of all the cultures of the (known) races for my setting. A few sentences of their general cultural outlook, and if their character has background justification sometimes a bit more (e.g. a party member playing a Trader has more knowledge of the economy of a given group than one playing a scholar; the scholar knows more of the group's academia, etc.)
However, the specific details, the things that make a group Fantastic in nature and completely different? To know those details, any given party member must either experience it (which preserves the 'feeling' you're describing, as it allows me to emphasize the foreign-ness of the group) or be part of it. My solution to party members being a part of a group that is meant to be 'strange' in a given setting (e.g. a dwarf in dwarven lands with the rest of the party human) is to describe the scene as it is to the party (not attempting to emphasize how strange it is, merely presenting it and letting the details of the given group's culture define it as strange) as a whole...while informing the relevant member of details that their character, as a part of the group, would know e.g. any deviations. The human members thus would see only a baffling scene, while the dwarf player would know that the scene is fairly normal. Thus far, it's worked very well: often the party-member belonging to the group is able to blend in very well to the scene, being able to pick out and go to the people in charge/that the party wants to deal with, while the main party must puzzle the situation out for themselves.
However, I do the same thing in (to continue my example) human-lands. The dwarf player receives little additional information, the humans all get bonus information.
In short: the Fantastic members of the party are given information so as to be able to fit in with Fantastic situations; the opposite is also true in more mundane situations.
This is helped somewhat in that my games, a character's race in mechanics and fluff need not be identical. E.g. I have one character that uses Elf stats but is story-wise human (with descriptions concerning the Elf mechanics altered as needed for them). Another is Human stats-wise but a Skeleton story-wise. Thus, the only characters that belong to the Fantastic groups are those that know the cultures and the like of the group, and want to be part of it for that reason. And with the extra information they receive relevant to that group, they are able to fit seemlessly while the more mundane party-members are still unaware of the specifities and trying to figure out what they're supposed to do.
I've found this system works very well, at least for my group, and gives the players of Fantastic characters excellent time to shine in the times where it would most make sense narrative-wise while simultaneously playing the character (and culture) they want to play.
I apologize for any errors and/or general communication failures.
Kitten Champion
One of the more elaborate fantastical elements in Wheel of Time was in the ability to make humans as imaginatively different from each other. The Aiel, the Seanchan, the Tinkers, and a dozen other fictional nationalities and unique cultural identities which can be as alien to each other as Elves are supposedly meant to be. Even in the background you've still got the enigmatic Shara. The Ogier, the nominal non-humans in the equation, are half-mythological halt-mundane depending who you ask. Then you have the Green Men, who are assumed to be legend even by the wise, until the protagonists meet one.
That sense of discovery, of alienation from your world and complete injection into the fantasy one, starts by throwing off your frame of reference. Entering a fantasy world should feel uncanny, sublime, incomprehensible -- Dissatisfied with the mundane nature of your once enigmatic fantastic race? Then denaturalize the regular every-day vanilla humans in your setting in a hundred different ways.
Granted it's difficult to accomplish this, but it does make it more fulfilling when your world is full of vibrant diversity.
Its true that not all mysteries are fantastic, but most things fantastical have an element of mystery to them. Part of the problem the OP is having is that things that would otherwise seem fantastic to them have become too familiar.
I would argue there does need to be at least some form of rarity, even if it isn't so simple as saying "magic is rare". That which is commonplace is pretty much not fantastic anymore. A Boeing 747 is really an amazing thing when you stop to think about it, but an airport maintanance worker is a lot less likely to consider it 'fantastical' than an isolated tribesman (lets say Amazonian) who was suddenly whisked away to an airport to see an airplane for the first time. Even if the inner workings of such a plane are still 'mysterious' to the maintanance worker, the planes are no longer 'fantastical' to him.
Its tough to use magic as an example, because it can come in so many different forms and cover so much ground. For example, consider a D&D setting where Adepts were common but Wizards were nigh-unheard of. In such a setting, "magic" is well known and the mere mention of it wouldn't raise any eyebrows . . . however, casting some spells of the Sorc/Wiz list that Adepts didn't have access to *would* suddenly introduce an element of the fantastic. Such a character can do amazing eye-opening things that noone had seen or maybe even heard of before.
just cant be generic having a merlin clone pop in to exposit dialouge wont make the magic more fantastic just becuase the pcs arnt allowed to be mages it becuase it's been done before. For the magic to be fantastic it cant just be rare it has to be in some way innovative.
I do agree with this - kinda falls back to the 'not all mysteries are fantastical' idea. But here you do say yourself that it can't be "just rare" . . . that sense of mystery and rarity may not be the only component to making something fantastic, but it is a necessary component.
[Edited for poor HTML skills]
reading my own words in qoute just make me realise how god awful my puncuation is when im writting in a hurry.
JellyPooga, you seem to want a fairly specific sort of setup in which you can describe a fairly standard Hidden Elven Village or whatever, and then the player characters feel impressed by the thingy that they encounter, and this allows the players to feel impressed by proxy, which in turn allows you to feel impressed. Or something along those lines. And if you're GMing for a group of players who are capable of appreciating fantasy genre conventions in this way, then great!
But some players may hear a description of a standardized fantasy thingy and find that they do not feel impressed because they've seen it a million times before. And thus they will be unable to related to their own characters whose reactions are different from their own, which destroys their immersion in the story.
I guess that basically what I'm saying is that what you want only works with players without a lot of experience with fantasy or whose empathy with their own characters is automatic. Outside of that, the things that many people have been saying about the importance of innovation become pertinent.
Upon reflection, I think that veteran players being unable to satisfyingly play inexperienced characters in a given setting or type of setting is kind of a common roleplaying problem. (Or, for that matter, veteran players being bored with the mechanics of low-level play in a given system.) To which the solution I guess is for those players to play more experienced characters instead?
Um, just to be clear, this wasn't purely rhetorical, I was asking for conformation that I was understanding you correctly. I mean, this seems to be what you're saying, but I'm not 100% sure.
I have indeed toyed with the idea of severely limiting the presence of magic-users in the party, for much the same reason! I haven't quite taken that step yet, because I really do think I'd have a player strike on my hands! If limiting the racial field works, though, then perhaps I might swing my players round to the idea of lessening the amount of magic present too, in time.
Dungeons & Dragons doesn't seem to be the best game for the sort of setting you want.
You seem to want a world which is pretty much like ours for humans except that there are otherworldly things that humans infrequently interact with. (And of course human interaction with such things must be infrequent in order for human life to be largely the same.)
The typical D&D setting leans much more towards being an alternate universe in which human life is significantly different. And the only reason that this is merely a leaning is that the typical D&D setting doesn't really do a good job of taking into account the implications of many of its fantastic elements.
By placing the fantasy elements in the hands of the GM, an rpg could become something more akin to a novel because he can use those fantasy elements to a greater degree to shape the game, instead of just chucking them out there for all and sundry to use.
GM says: "OK, so I want to limit player options and keep a lot more stuff than you might be accustomed to under my control as game master, in order to make the game more like a novel."
Player thinks: "DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!"
See, you acknowledge in your OP that the GM and the players are all authors of a campaign's story, but you seem like you might be maybe kinda sorta just a little... um, treating that as a problem to be corrected, rather than as the entire point of the exercise. Which might not be such a good idea.
Someone who wants to absorb a story dictated by someone else can just read a book or watch a film or whatever. Someone who wants to do this while playing a game can play a variety of video games. So it seems to me that many people who play tabletop RPGs do so because they want more control over what happens in a story. I guess that there are also a bunch who just like having a structured form of social interaction with their friends and are perfectly content with a pre-written plot. But it seems unwise to assume that all of one's players are of this variety.
And thus it has become fairly standard thing to say to a GM who wants to tell a story like a fantasy novel: Just go ahead and write a novel. The plot of an RPG campaign is meant to emerge from the interaction of multiple participants in a way that allows each one to be both author and audience.
You're probably right in this. D&D is a game that has cultivated, over the many years and editions, a fairly particular type of game and trying to mess this this is not something done lightly!
Having said this, I should clarify that part and parcel of the reason for my inquiry on this topic is that I'm trying to design something similar to D&D but distinctly different. I should also mention that I'm not only having this problem with D&D, but rather with roleplaying in general (though D&D is the main culprit).
I'm hearing you! This is exactly the kind of reaction I want to avoid, because I know that some players are almost paranoidly (if that's even a word...I'm not sure it is!) averse to any kind of limitation on their character, whether that be during character creation or during play.
Hmm, I can see how you would think this from what I've written, but it is far from my intent to give all the creative control to the GM. As you say, the point of an RPG is that it is a collaborative effort and not just "storytime", so I don't want to change that.
Having said that, there is a definite divide in where that creative control lies. As I've already mentioned, it's up to the GM to provide the setting, plot, antagonists and secondary/minor characters, whilst the Players provide the protagonists and drive the action. Now, if a Player comes along with a character that flies in the face of the setting (e.g. he makes an android space-soldier for a Tolkein-esque fantasy game), then there's obviously a problem. Why? Because using that character in that game would ruin the theme and feel of the setting. It's not a limitation of that Players creativity to say that he can't use that character in this particular game. If the game was a comedic multi-dimensional romp, then the character would fit and in fact only add to the quirky nature of that setting, but that's besides the point; he doesn't fit in this game.
Now replace that "android space-soldier" with (to use my standing example from previous poosts) with "Elf". For most fantasy settings, elves are pretty par for the course. Great, thinks the player, I can play an elf because they exist in the setting. He's really into the idea of being an elf, so he goes to the GM, who then lays out all the details required to understand what being an elf in this setting entails. He knows a bunch of stuff about elven civilisations, the various elven cultures, the peculiarities of the way they look on life, etc. etc. The Player takes it all in, thanks the GM and tells him he'll be back with a character concept. Three days later, the Player turns up to the game with his Elf character, ready to play. He's followed all the rules guidelines that the GM required, but decided that he wanted to play a 'rebel-Elf'; his personality bears little resemblance to the more reserved and peace-loving trope that the GM wanted elves to have, he's clumsy and impulsive where every other elf in the world is graceful and thoughtful. He's even decided that his elf knows nothing of magic, even though the GM has told him that Elves have an innate racial knowledge of it in this setting.
Now, by a certain outlook, this Player is well within his rights to play this character. After all, the character is his to play and as I've mentioned, creative licence for the protagonists is the purview of the Player in question. He's taken on board all the setting information and made his decision about what he wants to do with regards to his particular character in that setting. However, if he's the only Elven protagonist, then the experience of Elves the party as a whole, the Players and the GM have over the course of the game is this "rebel Elf" who is nothing like the Elves the GM wanted to inhabit the setting. After all, this Elf is present in every session of every adventure, whilst the GM's Elves only crop up every now and then. Has this Player, then, impinged on the creative purview of the GM in subverting the setting by playing this character?
Whilst you're thinking about that, allow me to present a more extreme example. If, instead of an Elf, the Player wanted to play a character who was once a member of the Evil-Bad-Guys personal bodyguard, or the like. The inside information this character would have of the EBGs lair, weaknesses, etc. would make it harder for the GM to spring something unexpected on that Player, without completely disregarding all of that characters prior knowledge by changing everything about the EBG. The Player wanted to play that character for more reasons than just the advantage of knowing about the bad guy; he had a well written, well thought out, interesting and compelling backstory and personality all planned out. As a character, a GM couldn't ask for more enthusiasm, but at the end of the day, the very presence of that character as a PC in the game is going to have some very particular implications that the GM is unlikely to be willing to accomodate. This character is more suited to being an NPC than a PC and I don't think I really need to explain why.
What I'm seeing is a parallel between playing an Elf and an ex-henchman. If I allow the Elf, why not the henchman? Or indeed, vice-versa. Allowing a Player to be an ex-henchman is going to impinge upon certain aspects of the plot, but similarly, playing an Elf is going to impinge upon certain aspects of the setting (i.e. what elves are in that setting). It doesn't matter if the Player plays the "rebel elf" or a perfect example of an Elf from what the GM has told him, the fact that Elves are part of the Fantasy setting, just as ex-Henchmen are better suited as part of the Plot, means that they are under the purview of the GM to control and thus innapropriate as characters. Does that clarify the way I'm thinking about this any?
I think part of the answer to this is to not tell players anything at all at the start about those things you want to be fantastical. Players won't revolt if they don't get to play a Etir at the start of game if they don't even know what one is. They can then hear rumors of the Etir during play, etc, building up that feeling of 'this thing must be important because it keeps recurring' without ever actually meeting one, etc.
If you want a magic that is mysterious, it shouldn't be one that is already built into the system, laid out with all its rules available to be browsed, memorized, and mastered. It should be something the players don't even know about until they encounter it. Even better if when they find it they can play with it and there's actually a system hidden there rather than the entire thing being made of handwavium (which makes it feel like a hollow McGuffin rather than something deep and unknown which was actually there the whole time and they just didn't know).
This is part of why this is so hard in D&D though. There's so much stuff in the D&D books that experienced players will be familiar with that there isn't much conceptual space left for things that are 'fundamentally' mysterious. If you took, say, psionics, and made that your hidden system and just didn't include the books on the permitted list at character generation, then players who knew D&D would say 'oh, he's a psion' rather than 'how's he doing that?'. This generally applies to more experienced and jaded players though. One solution there is to take from sources outside the experience of your player base - if your players have only ever played D&D, pull stuff from World of Darkness, Legend of the 5 Rings, 7th Sea, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Torg, whatever. If your players are young, pull stuff from 2ed D&D and reshape it a bit to integrate better into the game - they could encounter someone with, e.g., an effect that ages them whenever they use it, something which is conspicuously absent in 3ed.

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Napier: Seamer Mohammed Shami on Wednesday became the fastest Indian to claim 100 wickets in One-day Internationals, reaching the mark in the opening match against New Zealand here.
This was his 56th game in the 50-over format.
Shami' wicket number 100 was New Zealand opener Martin Guptill, who played onto his stumps a delivery that moved in after pitching on a good length.
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Before Shami, Irfan Pathan reached the 100-wicket mark in 59 ODIs, while Zaheer Khan (65 matches), Ajit Agarkar (67) and Javagal Srinath (68) are the other Indian bowlers to complete a century of wickets in the quickest time.


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Boston, Mass. - The Albertus Magnus College men's soccer team played to a 1-1 draw with Emmanuel (Mass.) on Wednesday evening in Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) play at Roberto Clemente Field.
Emmanuel (Mass.) opened the scoring in the ninth minute of play as Travis Cole scored his second goal of the season to give the hosts the early 1-0 edge. On Cole's tally, Cameron Messier picked up the assist with a nice pass to set the play up. Albertus Magnus attempted to tie the game at three different occassions, including a shot on goal from senior Justyn Broderick (Orange, Conn.), but the visitors would trail by one heading into halftime.
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Albertus Magnus held an 18-12 edge in shots, including an 11-8 advantage in shots on goal.
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Sophomore Matt Cotto (Startford, Conn.) and freshman Jonathan Beaucejour (Wallingford, Conn.) paced the Falcons' offense with a four shots a piece, while a trio of players added two shots the visitors total.
Emmanuel's Eymar Principe recorded a team-high four shots and three shots on goal.
Albertus Magnus keeper Joe Russo (North Haven, Conn.) registered seven saves, while Emmanuel's Jonathan Ferrarini recorded 10 saves between the pipes.
The Falcons finished the game with 12 fouls, compared the Saints seven.
Albertus Magnus returns home this Saturday, Oct. 7 as the Falcons welcome Lasell College to Celentano Field for a GNAC showdown beginning at 1 p.m. Emmanuel (Mass.) also returns to action on Saturday and will host Suffolk University at 12 p.m.


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