Sell me on fey!

[Klaus]

Unfortunately, WotC has made so many fae creatures non-fae (for example: goblins, elves, and bugbears) that any book about them would be fundamentally flawed in its very foundation, potentially dooming it before it is even published - at least IMHO.

That's a chapter in a possible fey book just waiting to be written: turning "demihumans" back into the fey that inspired their creation.

One of the Ravenloft Gazeteers by Arthaus had a "Folkloric Fey" template to be applied to goblins, ogres, trolls, bugbears, elves and what have you.

 

[pawsplay]

Fey are strange. Fey are powerful. Few are whimsical.

At any moment, a fey creature could be friend, foe, wonder, annoyance, scrapper, dreamer, child, sage. Because of their agelessness, ties to magic and nature, and different values than humans, their strangeness isn't tied to any particular alignment, which is nice, in D&D. Like mind flayers, they are useful for presenting a touch of madness in a way that isn't tied to Chaos.

 

[Particle_Man]

There are also the Fey Heritage feats in Complete Mage.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[Desdichado]

Seems to me if people aren't 'getting' fey, then fey are the ones *most* in need of a book.

I don't think it's quite that simple, at least in D&D. D&D has mixed up creature categories quite thoroughly to the point where creatures that should be fey-like are instead PC races, for instance.

Also, fey are so varied in appearance, folkloric source, motivation, etc. that "getting" fey is hardly something that you can claim, even if you know all kinds of old stories about "the Wee folk" from Ireland.

I think a fey-themed D&D book would be a great idea, but if they do one, the first thing D&D needs to do is decide on exactly what kind of role fey actually play in the game. It seems to me that it's a kind of mixed back "trash bin" where anything that's vaguely folkloric in source goes regardless of any other consideration.

 

[Nellisir]

... I'm not sure I see the overarching idea that pulls it all together (unlike, say, abberations or dragons).

Aberrations have an overarching idea?

Anyways...TSR and WotC have never really, IMO, done right by fey. You're right, they don't have an overarching theme, and they should.

Fey in D&D generally fall into one of two categories: nature spirits or emotional spirits. I've toyed with a planar setup that places celestial planes above, fiendish planes below, elemental planes "outside", and "conceptual/emotional" planes "within" the Prime Material. Elementals come from outside, Fey come from inside.

In traditional British folklore, fairies are usually categorized as trouping fairies or solitary fairies, and then again as members of the Seely and Unseely Courts. Brownies, buckawn, redcaps, and spriggan are solitary fairies, while sidhe and more closely human fairies are generally trouping fairies.

The eladrin are, frankly, TSR's best fey - except that they aren't.

I think what's too often missing is the sense of fey being unhuman. They're played for laughs, but fairies in folklore weren't laughing matters. They might look human, they might act human, but it is all sham and mockery - and even the kindest fey doesn't understand real emotion.

I enjoy fey, but use them sparingly in my game. They tend to be creepy "guides", in a metagame sense, directing the PCs and providing roleplaying encounters (that can occasionally degenerate into violence). Most recently, the PCs encountered a number of nixies - unnaturally pale, ("fish-belly white", to be exact) with bloodless lips and shark-like teeth, that hoarsely and repeatedly warned the characters "There's blood in the water" (a clue to a slaughter upstream - where the nixies had been severely corrupted by the exposure to blood and violence.)

(I like nixies. Few things seem to creep out characters and players like a boat surrounded by 5 or 6 nixies whispering "I love you. Don't you love me? Why don't you love me?" in little-girl voices as they try to charm the PCs and drag them under the water. I think it works because the nixies are so -close- to being human, unlike some tentacled aberration, and they are sincere. Severely twisted from the human perspective, but sincere.)

 

[GreatLemur]

Another thing that kind of turns me off about most conceptions of "fey" creatures is the whole nature connection. I'm generally pretty uninterested in Druids and Rangers and nature magic and all that to begin with, but furthermore I tend to think of the basic essence of nature as being unthinking, with survival its only purpose. Playful, capricious intelligent beings don't really strike me as part of "nature", even if they live in the woods and stop people from cutting down trees.

I think what's too often missing is the sense of fey being unhuman. They're played for laughs, but fairies in folklore weren't laughing matters. They might look human, they might act human, but it is all sham and mockery - and even the kindest fey doesn't understand real emotion.

I think this would be a good time to bring up the brilliant and horrifying Discworld incarnation of elves/fairies: essentially a race of sadistic, sociopathic immortals armed with telepathic might that effortlessly dominates humans with fear, reverence, and self-loathing. I've gotta say, I really do like that vision of the fey.

On the other hand, I also dig the idea of fey that aren't even biological creatures, but mercurial spirits that represent themselves however they please, meaning that all the different fey creatures are essentially individuals of the same "species" (if that word can be used here) trying out different roles and lifestyles. Obviously, though, this idea suggests a lot of problems for game mechanics. D&D is actually kind of weird in that it lacks a "spirit" creature type (requiring fey, elementals, and other things to be shoehorned into this category for the sake of the Spirit Shaman class), so it doesn't deal well with that kind of thing. Even demons and angels are extremely physical, nearly biological beings, according to the mechanics.

 

[freyar]

First off, I'm going to link to this thread, which has some d20 fey resources, since it just seems so timely for some reason.

I think a fey-themed D&D book would be a great idea, but if they do one, the first thing D&D needs to do is decide on exactly what kind of role fey actually play in the game. It seems to me that it's a kind of mixed back "trash bin" where anything that's vaguely folkloric in source goes regardless of any other consideration.

From what I've seen in this thread (and what still remains confusing to me), is that the RL definition of fey is also a kind of "trash bin" or "grab bag" for any kind of folkloric mystical creature. Really, should fey in D&D just include everything except mundane animals? I'm happy with keeping goblins, etc, separate from fey (and even elves -- I like my Tolkienesque PC elves ). But I would like to see something to unify the fey, as presented in D&D so far, a bit. So what's a good D&D definition of fey?

Razz: Thanks for the list!

Iuz: Yeah, I didn't figure you really hated fey violently or anything.... Seems like you're expressing a lot of the same kind of confusion I feel.

 

[freyar]

Aberrations have an overarching idea?

I'd say that the overarching idea for aberrations is that they are something from beyond experience, completely unnatural. Don't get me wrong, there are some aberrations that just don't do a thing for me, but the total alienness is something I like and works across the board.

Anyways...TSR and WotC have never really, IMO, done right by fey. You're right, they don't have an overarching theme, and they should.

Fey in D&D generally fall into one of two categories: nature spirits or emotional spirits. I've toyed with a planar setup that places celestial planes above, fiendish planes below, elemental planes "outside", and "conceptual/emotional" planes "within" the Prime Material. Elementals come from outside, Fey come from inside.

...

I think what's too often missing is the sense of fey being unhuman. They're played for laughs, but fairies in folklore weren't laughing matters. They might look human, they might act human, but it is all sham and mockery - and even the kindest fey doesn't understand real emotion.

These ideas, like some of the other ideas posted here, I really like! I'm going to have to work some fey into an adventure soon, I think...

 

[pawsplay]

A few things that are in D&D that would classically be considered fey but aren't:

elves
dwarves
gnomes
goblins
trolls
bugbears
derro
genies
hags

A few things that fit into the D&D scheme (nature oriented, animal parts or odd features) but aren't:

centaurs
mephits
various CG outsiders, especially eladrin