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Post by hengest on Oct 31, 2019 20:47:47 GMT -5
These are thoughts, not a description of any race for Evening Bell—or not yet.
Tolkien says his elves are men with some of their creative faculties turned up. And they have the apparently enviable trait of living as long as the world does.
To be very brief, they're attractive because they're like us—they are us—with some of our problems erased and a romantic-seeming set of their own difficulties: one of these, as we see in Lórien, is that they watch the world age and see all its features pass away from them. ("All Things Must Pass," "Watching the Wheels," "The Fool on the Hill"...)
Tolkien's elves, however, are clearly in the world, and don't leave it, even in death.
What if there were someone who only had one foot in the world, who watched it while keeping one eye on something else?
Men are often in the "middle" in cosmologies that we encounter in our favorite contexts.
What if there were someone else who thought they were in the middle? Who observed part of our world and part of something else, while carefully maintaining their own place between them?
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Post by hengest on Nov 1, 2019 19:59:58 GMT -5
The races in OE are fairly Tolkienian. Those in AiF are inspired more directly by medieval legends. Those in 3E, as far as I can remember, are largely interchangeable templates. Since I love Tolkien, I don't love seeing Tolkienian races in an RP setting. Not against it, would happily play in such a game, but not my thing. And I don't dig the 3E races, either. So what I like most is the AiF-style. At least the gist of it, if not all the mechanics and all the choices. But I want them alien, so I'm thinking only NPCs. And I'm thinking largely apophatically: what don't I want. I don't want - something trivial
- a "master race" of NPCs to railroad events
- a race undeniably stronger than PCs in desirable ways
- a race that easily interacts with Men once discovered
- a race with its own inscrutable language
- a race linguistically undifferentiated from Men
- a race with the same goals as Men
- a race that understands the central threats and mysteries in the same way as Men
- a race so unspeakably different that no one can grasp them at all
So what I think I'm getting close to here is - very broadly like Men
- reversed in some way, nocturnal and aerial, I think
- "skewed"—that is, not some vanilla difference, but we should see them as fundamentally flawed or even incoherent in some way. However, "shock-horror" should be avoided.
- strengths are also weaknesses—can walk through clouds and fog but their bones break if they touch denser material like earth and stone.
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Post by hengest on Nov 1, 2019 20:18:40 GMT -5
Drop meteorological modernity. If someone lives in "the clouds" nearby, that doesn't mean that there's cloud cover 24 / 7.
Looking at a foreign human culture with little knowledge of them, we see them as possessing some one emotion or feature very obviously. They're humorless, sexy, proud, friendly, gossipy. Maybe use this, but if so, avoid the well-trodden roads and the sadness of Tolkien's elves. Maybe a feature that to Men seems not like a feature to have all the time. They seem groggy to our eyes. Something like that, but not to be played for humor.
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Post by mao on Nov 2, 2019 7:36:18 GMT -5
Traveller 2300 has 2 utterly unique Races, The most alien are the Eber, if your looking for something out of the ordinary, I cant recommend it too much!
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Post by hengest on Nov 2, 2019 11:45:49 GMT -5
Traveller 2300 has 2 utterly unique Races, The most alien are the Eber, if your looking for something out of the ordinary, I cant recommend it too much! I will try to check this out! |
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Post by mao on Nov 2, 2019 12:27:16 GMT -5
Traveller 2300 has 2 utterly unique Races, The most alien are the Eber, if your looking for something out of the ordinary, I cant recommend it too much! I will try to check this out! the Eber have 4 external brain lobes each w a diff personality, one is "mother" and another is "warrior" cant remember the other 2 |
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Post by hengest on Nov 2, 2019 12:54:16 GMT -5
I will try to check this out! the Eber have 4 external brain lobes each w a diff personality, one is "mother" and another is "warrior" cant remember the other 2 That's kind of wild. Are they playable? |
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Post by mao on Nov 2, 2019 13:28:07 GMT -5
the Eber have 4 external brain lobes each w a diff personality, one is "mother" and another is "warrior" cant remember the other 2 That's kind of wild. Are they playable? Um... I suppose....They are very alien and kind of need to stick together(long story<good story>) |
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Post by hengest on Nov 2, 2019 17:34:40 GMT -5
mao, I took a look at Traveller 2300 and I see the Eber, but can't find the extended description. I do want to see more what you mean about them. I'm not really looking for an "alien" alien race for this setting, but I do want to see more what you're talking about. It's been a long day here. I'm not sure I have so much to add right now to my notes on this thread, but I hope to revisit it later. Exhausted.
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Post by hengest on Nov 2, 2019 19:36:17 GMT -5
mao , found the full description. The Ebers look difficult to use but like a lot of fun. I like them and their back story. I am thinking more along the lines of a variation on the usual get races, but these guys give some food for thought. That they are at a Renaissance level of tech but still talk about when their ancestors sailed between the stars reminds me of something Tolkien said about Beowulf—that it was composed when the Anglo-Saxons had ceased to be a seafaring people, but still remembered that they once were. There is also the sci-fi story I can't remember well at all...the protags encounter some people who seem to use super-tech but can't explain how any of it works. It is assumed they are technological illiterates using the leftovers of their ancestors. Then it is revealed that the super-tech is so trivial to them they don't even have the words to explain it, and they are actually beyond advanced... I suppose it was a bit like that in the 1950s when they always dressed kids up as cowboys. The frontier days were over bit still on the edge of memory and I guess being fast transformed into legend.
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Nov 4, 2019 0:13:18 GMT -5
Drop meteorological modernity. If someone lives in "the clouds" nearby, that doesn't mean that there's cloud cover 24 / 7. Looking at a foreign human culture with little knowledge of them, we see them as possessing some one emotion or feature very obviously. They're humorless, sexy, proud, friendly, gossipy. Maybe use this, but if so, avoid the well-trodden roads and the sadness of Tolkien's elves. Maybe a feature that to Men seems not like a feature to have all the time. They seem groggy to our eyes. Something like that, but not to be played for humor. Perhaps a touch of Brigadoon? You can only travel too or from the clouds when you can see them. |
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Post by hengest on Nov 4, 2019 20:30:01 GMT -5
Drop meteorological modernity. If someone lives in "the clouds" nearby, that doesn't mean that there's cloud cover 24 / 7. Looking at a foreign human culture with little knowledge of them, we see them as possessing some one emotion or feature very obviously. They're humorless, sexy, proud, friendly, gossipy. Maybe use this, but if so, avoid the well-trodden roads and the sadness of Tolkien's elves. Maybe a feature that to Men seems not like a feature to have all the time. They seem groggy to our eyes. Something like that, but not to be played for humor. Perhaps a touch of Brigadoon? You can only travel too or from the clouds when you can see them. I like that a lot. I'm going to keep thinking about that. |
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Post by mao on Nov 5, 2019 6:31:01 GMT -5
mao , found the full description. The Ebers look difficult to use but like a lot of fun. I like them and their back story. I am thinking more along the lines of a variation on the usual get races, but these guys give some food for thought. That they are at a Renaissance level of tech but still talk about when their ancestors sailed between the stars reminds me of something Tolkien said about Beowulf—that it was composed when the Anglo-Saxons had ceased to be a seafaring people, but still remembered that they once were. There is also the sci-fi story I can't remember well at all...the protags encounter some people who seem to use super-tech but can't explain how any of it works. It is assumed they are technological illiterates using the leftovers of their ancestors. Then it is revealed that the super-tech is so trivial to them they don't even have the words to explain it, and they are actually beyond advanced... I suppose it was a bit like that in the 1950s when they always dressed kids up as cowboys. The frontier days were over bit still on the edge of memory and I guess being fast transformed into legend. Traveler and Traveler 2300 have a bunch of amazing races. The more human dog men, the Varger and the lion like Aslani. If your looking for alien then the Hivers ar way cool.Since you love the Eber I strongly suggest the rest(although the Eber are the most alien). |
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