So... what do you do with fairies?

[Aus_Snow]

Hm. Pretty much what Jurgen Hubert said. Especially GURPS Faerie. It's really very good.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Exalted Fair Folk are a very good example of the nastier kind of faeries. They litterally feed on emotions. They crave being in the minds and hearts of people, especially powerful ones. And it does not matter to them whether the emotions others feel about them is Love or Hate. They will seek either with equal abandon, even when it goes contrary to their sense of self-preservation.

 

[arscott]

You could also take a cue from shakespeare. Puck, from midsummer night's dream, is a pixie. So "Good" fairies could be servants to much more powerful and much less benevolent faerie lords.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Come on, fairy, a wish is a wish!

What do fairies, pixies and satyr's want anyway? As far as I can tell, if they get their hands on some adventurers, they'll make them cavort and frolic with them. With just about any other creature I can figure out some need that pushes the beast into interacting with a party (creature needs food, needs habitat, is competing for something, needs the party to do something for it etc.), but since fairies and what not spend their whole lives dancing in faerie rings or having tea parties or whatever, they don't seem to have any real needs that would make them DO anything.

Why do succubi tempt mortals? Because it's hard-wired into their very being. Same for fairies. They are compulsive mischief makers. Plus, as has been said, their mindset is very alien to us. Man cannot fathom why fairies do what faries do. He just can know not to eat that apple.

"Come out to play, lady. Come out to play."

"Won't you play with us, lady? We'll all have lots of fun."

I love Lords and Ladies. The Gentry has never been portrayed better. You think D&D elves are annoying flower-sniffers? Tree-shagging pixies? Be happy you have them and not the Fair Folk from... Over There. Your lifes would be so ...interesting then.

 

[Lizard Lips]

Thans for all of the input everybody, this is very helpful.

 

[sckeener]

Since you are working with D&D, the first resource I would recommend is WoTC's retired Fey Feature. I think you will find it has many good suggestions for working with D&D and the Fey.


Another product I would recommend is Ars Magica's Faeries

A couple of concepts I'd recommend is not viewing the fey by their alignment and instead focusing on whether the fey is Seelie or Unseelie, Summer or Winter.

 

[kitoy]

Read "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" for another great example of how to use Faerie Folk. It has a great depiction of what happens when people come to the attention of the Fair Folk. A Faerie King becomes fascinated with three mortals and gives them the lives that he thinks they should have, much to the horror of everyone else.

The book is full of great ideas in general to run a campaign off of.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Some Links:

http://www.enworld.org/article.php?a=121
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=169480
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=86637

 

[taliesin15]

Some outstanding suggestions on this thread...there are some scholarly books I could recommend on Faeries of Ireland and such, if anyone's interested...but one novel (and author) nobody's mentioned yet is Little, Big, by contemporary novelist John Crowley.

Satyrs I don't think of as faerie per se, but let's not forget they love good wine...I think that pleasures of the flesh (and sybaritic pleasures of all sorts) go a long way with most faerie kind...

I like Hypersmurf's idea with the haunted wood...another angle similar to that is some of the faeries are miffed that a certain kind of flower (let's say Honeysuckle) no longer grows in the meadows, and the pixies can't make their tiny little pies right without the honey that comes from bees feeding on this flower

 

[el-remmen]

In my "Out of the Frying Pan" campaign, at one point the party dwarf had to forge a sickle in a certain glade under a full moon for use in certain ceremonies. However, at that same time, local fey had a frollicking dance in that same glade and were not happy to find in use by a dwarf for forging stuff - esp. since they were not on the best of terms with the evil druids that had sent the party there to do the task.

The whole arc starts in Session #30: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=194344&highlight=thorns#post194344

But, the specific encounter with the fey (pixies, dryads and satyrs) is here: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=316117&highlight=pixies#post316117

Maybe that will help. . .