Seelie & Unseelie Courts?

[Mythmere]

If you want something truly odd, beautiful appearance vs. ugly appearance.

 

[crater]

If you want something truly odd, beautiful appearance vs. ugly appearance.

I go with this interpretation too. The Unseelie court can be shocking, like a fey freak-show, without actually pinning it down in terms of alignment. The diversity of its bizarre looking members might indicate a chaos tinge however. The Seelie court represents idealised beauty, and has every negative aspect that those who value beauty above all might display.

 

[Wombat]

I always place the fey outside of human labels, thus Good, Evil, etc., are not their way of looking at the world. Then again, I think only a minority of the fey are aligned with courts. Is this based on a particular set of tales? Nope. Just an aggregate view of tales from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Most fey are unaligned -- just as there are thousands upon thousands of peasants for every medieval baron, so too are there thousands upon thousands of non-court fey for every courtier.

Yes, the Brian Froud/Alan Lee book Fairies is fantastic; so too are the Ars Magica supplements Faeries, both the original and the revised editions. But above all else, beg, borrow, or steal a copy of Nancy Arrowsmith's A Field Guid To The Little People, sadly long out of print, but one of the single best works of faerie lore ever produced.

 

[Ghostwind]

Snapdragyn is right. Laurell K. Hamilton's three "Merry Gentry" books give an interesting take on the whole Seelie/Unseelie thing that is ripe for RPG use. The three novels are: A Kiss of Shadows, A Caress of Twilight, and Seduced by Moonlight. They all have strong sexual themes and content, so be warned if you find it offensive.

Another resource to look at is Faeries from Bastion Press.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I go with this interpretation too. The Unseelie court can be shocking, like a fey freak-show, without actually pinning it down in terms of alignment. The diversity of its bizarre looking members might indicate a chaos tinge however. The Seelie court represents idealised beauty, and has every negative aspect that those who value beauty above all might display.

That difference seems almost like the difference between my group of friends (geeks, goths, punks, potheads, hippies) and those who try to be popular and trendy, like TV and other things tell them to be like.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I tried thinking of Changeling: the Dreaming's interpretation of the courts, and it seems like it's like many of the points above, except that it sort of could be a little bit of law & chaos.

Anyways I haven't really checked out Bastion Press's Faeries, considering the last book from them I checked out was Airships which was a little too complicated rulewise. However I don't think it has much of a need to make new rules mechanics so it looks like something that would be easier to implement.

Finding Ars Magica stuff is probably going to be hard, but I've heard it was quite a good book to get in the past...


Anyways in my campaign there's only one nation that is declared to be of the Seelie Court and only one nation that is declared to be part of the Unseelie Court. Most of the population of those two nations are elves followed by every other variety of fey, who are by default aligned to the courts. But there's about 50 other nations in the world, and most of them have some form of an elven or fey population who probably wouldn't bother aligning themselves to any of the courts.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I tried thinking of Changeling: the Dreaming's interpretation of the courts, and it seems like it's like many of the points above, except that it sort of could be a little bit of law & chaos.

Anyways I haven't really checked out Bastion Press's Faeries, considering the last book from them I checked out was Airships which was a little too complicated rulewise. However I don't think it has much of a need to make new rules mechanics so it looks like something that would be easier to implement.

Finding Ars Magica stuff is probably going to be hard, but I've heard it was quite a good book to get in the past...


Anyways in my campaign there's only one nation that is declared to be of the Seelie Court and only one nation that is declared to be part of the Unseelie Court. Most of the population of those two nations are elves followed by every other variety of fey, who are by default aligned to the courts. But there's about 50 other nations in the world, and most of them have some form of an elven or fey population who probably wouldn't bother aligning themselves to any of the courts.

While not particularly true to the mythology (read 'bloody dang wrong') Changeling is a fun interpretation. (And is my favorite of the ST games, barring possibly Vampire: the Dark Ages.)

You can order Ars Magica's Faerie supplement through the internet, or direct from Atlas, it is still very much in print - though I prefered the older version. And you can get Ars Magica 4th edition free from RPGNow.com . The good folks at Atlas Games are working on 5th edition and decided to see what would happen if the gave the older version away free. The answer sdly is they lost sales...) Ars Magica is a great game.

The Auld Grump

 

[ShaggySpellsword]

I ran a game that had a Seelie/Unseelie court in it. I took obvious traits of Summer/Spring (Seelie) and Winter/Fall (Unseelie) and personified them into two courts.

Things Seelie: Life, Food (Gluttony!), Heat (Fire!), Beauty (Vanity), Rebirth, and Work (Planting Season) among others.

Things Unseelie: Cold, Death (Repose too), Rest, Frugality, Hunger, and Patience among others.

I liked to take each aspect of the seasons and figure out what the aspect is when taken to a good extreme (such as Frugality of Unseelie) and have a Fae that represents it (All about conservation and planning) and a Fae that represents the evil extreme of the same attribute (all about greed and hoarding).

All of them I aligned NE or NG. N tends to denote a close tie to nature, following nature's laws, while still being free of civilizations laws-thus neutral. This also tied them very closely to the druids who had to have a neutral alignment, this is a plus!

I always played them as very aloof and misunderstanding (or not caring) of human limitations, not really worrying about mind controlling or even hurting humans if it serves there in-born fae purpose: this makes all mortals very wary of dealing with them.

As a complete side not, the Courts (ruling councils) themselves in my game were based on the pieces of a Chess set: in fact the game in my campaign world was a game based on the "struggle of unseelie versus seelie". There were always a queen and king, each with an advisor (bishop), champion (knight), and Devoted Problemsolver aka assassin/spymaster/chief bodyguard (Rook). Each court also had eight lesser lords that oversaw the affairs of the courts subjects (the pawns). The court of the Seelie ruled 6 months out of the year, and the Court of the Unseelie ruled the rest.

Hope I've given someone some good ideas.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I recommend Emma Bull's War for the Oaks. It's modern day, but an excellent story involving fey. I also hear good things (but have never read) Kenneth Flint's Champion of the Sidhe series.

I've got a campaign going now where the Seelie Court are the "beautiful people" and the Unseelie are the "ugly." However, the Unseelie fey are far more honorable and true, whereas the Seelie are often twisted and deranged. I liked the inner/outer conflict of that vision.

 

[Wolv0rine]

I ran a game that had a Seelie/Unseelie court in it. I took obvious traits of Summer/Spring (Seelie) and Winter/Fall (Unseelie) and personified them into two courts.
--snippage--
Hope I've given someone some good ideas.

That was pretty cool, Shaggy. Each of the the pieces was alright, but you did a nice job layering them together.