[UA] (OT) Elves, Elves, Evles (was OT WW bashing)

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- James O'Rance <jorance at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The only problem that I have with elves in RPGs is
> that I quite like the 
> different portrayals that I've seen done by
> Katherine Kerr, Tad Williams, 
> and the like, but people don't seem to play them
> that way. I don't know if 
> it's too hard, I've never tried.
> 
> 
> I agree with what you say about mood, BTW.

I don't have a problem with elves, actually, but I do
have a problem with the way they are portrayed which
is BOR-R-Ring.  

I like seeing elves pop up in urban fantasy from time
to time because, God Help Me, I enjoyed De Lint's
Greemantle and Jack the Giant Killer back in high
school.  I kept thinking "oooh, there's some scary
stuff in faerie."

I'm also pat with the idea that fantasy fiction is
stronger if you give it a little chunk or two of the
real world to play off.  Narnia and Flash Gordon both
have protagonists from "everday reality" and Tolkein
has a very "homey" spin, like history from the
underside.

I like the idea of a fantasy world superimposed over
urban reality and White Wolf puts out the only version
of this which has a flashy enough cover to attract
players (though if I keep losing my top over maturity
complaints -sorry about that-, I'm not gonna get any.)

UA fills that nitch well enough. Using monsters from
the id instead of imps or elves, crazy beggars instead
of mad hermits and shoot-outs in abandoned warehouses
instead of seiges works okay. But I still get this
longing for an invisible world where swords are more
practical than bullets and impossible tasks come a
dime a dozen.

I keep getting sparked by Wagner's "MAGE" comics,
particularly the old series (with worse art but a more
humanistic story line.)  I think I want to get up a
campaign of "MAGE: the Hero Reanimated" using the
Avatar rules from UA (okay, pretty much ALL the rules
from UA), but with the explanation that the players
have all become Avatars in order to fight the
Cthulhoid unseelie.

So I got no right to dis anybody.

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua