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I hope I got the right forum for this. I have run a fey-themed game for a few months now and I'm still not sure I'm hitting it. You see I've run generic D&D for years, so I've got the giants/dragons/humanoids thing down. I've read 2 essays on horror and run a decent though short-lived undead horror campaign. But I don't know if I'm getting the whole fey thing.
I've only had one mischeivous fey in the whole game; otherwise there's been some mites that, lets face it, were just blue kobolds with bugs instead of traps. Then there's been a witch but this was a random encounter and some wererats but this was ad-libbed and without flavor.
In 3 levels I haven't had any fairy tales, fey bargains, broken true love or whatever that I'd say are the hallmarks of a fey experience. There also hasn't been any wierd lights/giggles in the woods, cryptic riddles by talking animals or really anything fantastic that the fey would do. I feel like kind of sham to be honest.
What elements do I need to make a good fey game?
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You might need a background on the fey - who are they? Why are they there? What do they want?
Keep in mind that fey in most real myths were not just merry pranksters. Some of them could be quite evil. At least one group was into human sacrifice (the story of Tam Lin). Others could cause milk to curdle in a cow's udders, cause strange accidents, or do all sorts of other nasty things.
On the other side, you had benign fey that would help clean and maintain the house (brownies), mend or create clothes (the story of the Tailor and the Elves), or even do the fairy godmother thing.
Decide what fairy tales you want and work things around them. There are several well known ones like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Red Riding Hood, but there are others like the Seven Swans, the Fool of the World and His Flying Ship, Snow White and Rose Red that are less well-known but no less interesting.
Enchantments in the form of shape-shifted princes or magically asleep princesses are fairly common stock. Other common things include the rule of three (in some versions of Cinderella she goes to the ball three times, each time in a dress more beautiful than the last), three brothers, three items that help a hero or heroine, and so on.
The difference between a witch and an ogress is often blurry. Some stories, like Jack the Giant killer or the Brave Tailor involve giants.
I'd need more of an idea about what you want to see, though, to be helpful.
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Read some of the Arthurian legends (which I believe are true). I grew up on the faerie stories and was warned not to eat things faeries give you, don't go with them under their mounds, don't follow wisps, and always carry something iron on you. The Courts aren't always clear cut good/evil. There's so much that I can't put here...mostly because it'll sound like rambling...remember, just because it is of the Seelie Court, doesn't mean that it is benevolent. looking at a glamored faerie through a hag stone (a stone with a NATURAL hole in it) will reveal its true form. Looking at it from the corner of your eye will allow you to see through its glamour. Faeries CANNOT tell a flatout lie, but they can bend the truth. Faeires will NOT tell you their true name unless tricked into in some way. Speaking a faeire's true name will give you command over it, which it will probably seek revenge for...just to name a few things...need more info just send me a PM.
EDIT: On a side note, too many cultures have faeries in their legends/stories for them to be dimissed as fantasy. I believe in them with my whole heart. If I've lost something, say...my keys, I place a small shotglass of milk with honey in it and a tiny plate of cake out as an offering to the faeires that pester my home. After that, they usually give me my keys back. They won't take the food...though there are exceptions. When they gave me back the keys, I took the offering and put it outside. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, EVER EAT A FAEIRE OFFERING. You DON'T want to make them angry with you. Just acknowledge their presence, be respectful, and go about your business.
I suppose I hadn't thought about what they want. Faeries in the Grimm stories (that's where I got my inspiration originally) seem to want nothing or one very specific thing. The other thing I've realized is that there's never a ton of them and not everyone in the story sees them.
Now I've had fey touches here and there; a wive's tale about faerie magic, several different kinds of rings (a stone ring, a mushroom ring and a garden with flowers in a ring) and a footprint on a scattered piece of parchment that was a foot on one side of the paper and a hoof on the other. I guess what I'm missing is that unknowable thing.
I think I lost something when the fey went from being individuals scattered in separate tales to monsters in potential fight scenes. As for fairy tale elements they're definitely there but with none of the drama, the romance of the fairy tale. Maybe its my medium?
You know, it's worth noting that there are a few fey based modules released by Paizo that might serve as good inspiration for how to integrate the feeling of a fairy tale or harrowing legends of the fair folk into a Pathfinder context.
Carnival of Tears is a top one on the list for me because it goes pretty far to tell a story about why people were afraid of the faeries; what they're capable of doing if riled. It weaves a horror adventure about what most modern folk only see in the context of bowlderized cutesy pixy stuff.
Realm of the Fellnight Queen is another excellent one, written by a Superstar author who spoke on the Superstar boards about really interested in old stories about how dangerous and alien the fair folk are in their motivations and mores. I think he did a good job of writing an adventure about the machinations of a cruel faerie queen and her grief-ensnared mortal pawn.
While this may count as spoilers for the Kingmaker Adventure Path; Sound of a Thousand Screams
And finally, there's The Harrowing. While there's nothing inherently fey about this module, the entire module takes place inside of a demi-plane created from all of the fairy tales, folk stories, and nursery rhymes of Golarion. It is a literal story book realm, and rather successfully captures the idea being lost in a mystic world where the rules of theatrics and narrative are stronger than those of nature.
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Hey, this is a great thread. The OP asks a great question.
Would it be helpful to outline some adventure ideas, with each entry tying to some aspect of the fey?
I'll offer a bare-bones adventure idea--and if you think fleshing out this example would be helpful, participate by adding to it, tweaking it, changing it, developing the idea.
In fact, when it's all done, I'd love to run the adventure, so in many ways I have the same question as the OP.
ADVENTURE IDEA
I. The PC enter a large port town at the edge of a barony or dukedom within a larger kingdom.
II. A commotion is heard near the Everful Tankard tavern. The PCs see a dead young man (about 20 years old), shot by an old crossbow that some patrons were admiring. The crossbow hung on the wall, and even though they were careful handling it, it fired and shot the man dead.
III. The PCs investigate to learn the man's family owns a lumberyard and exports lumber via ship to other territories. His felled treeline has recently encroached upon "protected fairy lands".
A. The PCs search the man's house and learn he never married, and his father died when he was young, not having a chance to pass down the "Fairy Warning" about the woods. Long ago the dead man's father made a bargain with the fairies that helped his family become prosperous lumber merchants, but the father died before he could pass along his writings on the subject to his son. The PCs find a hidden safe and learn about the pact. Every 20 years the lumber merchants would make a human sacrifice to the fey, and vow never to encroach upon their lands.
B. The PCs learn that the father was too cowardly to sacrifice a stranger, and also too greedy to wiggle out of this old pact made by his grandfather. They also learn that 20 years ago, there was a great fire in the port town, along with many other catastrophies. The father tried to get out of the pact once the fey had their revenge but it was too late, and the fey killed the man's father as well.
C. While the PCs are investigating, the local constabulary arrives to "take over" the lumber business. They care nothing about this fact, and arrogantly boast that " if there be fey in those woods, we'll cut every last timber, until we smoke them out of their hiding places and groundholes."
IV. The PCs meet an old sage who knows of the fey, and urges them to go parlay with the fey, and agree to whatever demands they have, just long enough for the old sage to petition the constabulary to allow him to buy the lumber business himself, enabling him to protect the town from their wrath.
...
Well - that's a start. If you don't like the idea that's cool. But if you do, perhaps those more expert in the fey can now take the outline copy/past it forward in this thread and add the types of creatures encountered, details about the fey within the context of an adventure. And the collaborative output would be a "fey module" that captures the feel of the fey so GMs like the OP and others don't "feel like a sham" as the OP describes. Go for it.
I suppose I hadn't thought about what they want. Faeries in the Grimm stories (that's where I got my inspiration originally) seem to want nothing or one very specific thing. The other thing I've realized is that there's never a ton of them and not everyone in the story sees them.
Now I've had fey touches here and there; a wive's tale about faerie magic, several different kinds of rings (a stone ring, a mushroom ring and a garden with flowers in a ring) and a footprint on a scattered piece of parchment that was a foot on one side of the paper and a hoof on the other. I guess what I'm missing is that unknowable thing.
I think I lost something when the fey went from being individuals scattered in separate tales to monsters in potential fight scenes. As for fairy tale elements they're definitely there but with none of the drama, the romance of the fairy tale. Maybe its my medium?
As Drakli, there are ways to include the fey, but what you might need is a reason they'd end up in a fight scene. Or, more importantly, what really draws you to such tales to start with.
There's nothing wrong with tales of fey being around, but you could use such tales to your advantage: maybe they're becoming more common. Something is causing feys to manifest more frequently, and as a result things are starting to get a bit odd.
Most folks might dismiss this, possibly including your adventuring group, until some encounter with a fey convinces them that something weird is going on.
Perhaps the fey homeworld is drawing closer to the Prime again and it allows more frequent travel. Perhaps some of the fey have decided to make the Prime more like their home or want to invade for some reason. Don't forget that changelings were originally fairy children left in place of human children in the stories. There could be a reason for this that you can weave in. Just imagine a town where every child has been replaced by a fairy changeling. The adventurers would have to find all the human babies and get them back somehow.
Things can hit even closer to home if a relative of one of the adventurers ends up under a spell of the fey (enchanted sleep, talking animal, whatever).
Does this help?
Mark, I called an ex girlfriend and she recommends the book 'Tithe' and it's sequels. They're supposedly about faeries.
I'm going to try and adapt Carnival of Tears for a 3rd level adventure. I have the game set for where level 3 is about (among other things) the arrival of a band of gypsies for the harvest. So now, at the beginning of their 3rd level adventures I'll have outriders from the carnival arrive. Then as a background to their quests I'll have the gypsies and the carnies mingle, creating a new spectacle this year: the Twilight Carnival. It can be a farewell to the year past but performed before the winter weather gets too bad to travel and its mundane purpose would be to send off the gypsy caravan to their winter haunts further south down the coast.
Now how about this for fey motivation and some background. I've been toying with this idea of Twilit Realms - areas of the first world that have been stabilized but where a nebulous force known only as the Shadow has sort of tainted everything. So the fey flee to our world for asylum or release. The Shadow has of course followed them and taints the PCs region as well. So...
The Twilight Carnival, the Cold Rider and everything would then be yet one more attempt to claim a beachead here in the PCs home town. I like the idea that there's a nymph queen built in. Before the party has even gotten to the carnival they will have dealt with a gold-hoarding pixie sorceress and a boy-stealing fauna bard. As well there's some sort of hunt going on involving one of the PCs parents being killed.
Oh man, this is cool. I don't know if its fairy tale material though. Still it will have plenty of pathos; I'll throw in Spring-Heeled Jack as one of the dark fey to make an epic fight, I can play up the broken love story thing and since Quinn is trying to recover his wife that can provide a way to explain to the PC whose sister was bequeathed to the Shadow that she too might yet be saved.
Ok, so it won't be mother goose. Still this will be a nice step in establishing a Pathfinder-esque fey tale. Thanks for the suggestion!
What about the Leannan Sidhe (sh-ee)? They drink blood (Add blood drain attack to a nymph and give her levels in bard to replace the druid spells they already have) and live by the sea. They make pacts to give artists inspiration and make them great, but at the end of an appointed amount of time, the Leannan Sidhe gets their soul. You could have an adventure about a famous bard who made a pact, but is whussing out of the deal. Who would the PCs side with?. Even the Bean Sidhe...you'll recognize as Banshee...and the Changling race was inspired by the fey...I've got more. This is what you almost inspired me to run. ;)
I'd also redo some of the DR/Cold Iron that a lot of Fey have and give them Cold Iron Vulurability (sp). Have them take an extra 1-2 dmg due to the cold iron burning their skin/flesh. Trolls were part of the Unseelie Court. Make a troll subrace with the fey type...goblins too. Give them a fey typed subrace too.
Slight correction, the blood-drinking sidhe were the Baobhan Sidhe (spelled Baobhan Sith in the books - they're in Tome of Horrors III and Kingmaker Book 2). The Leanan Sidhe were more like possessive, obsessive, enslaving Muses - see Fairy Godmother Leah in The Dresden Files.
Slight correction, the blood-drinking sidhe were the Baobhan Sidhe (spelled Baobhan Sith in the books - they're in Tome of Horrors III and Kingmaker Book 2). The Leanan Sidhe were more like possessive, obsessive, enslaving Muses - see Fairy Godmother Leah in The Dresden Files.
Ahh, forgive me for my lack of knowledge. Orthos, we need to distinguish the differences between the courts...although there really isn't a clear line. We need to detail some of the not-so-good "good" faeries...Where to begin..OH! What about the Great Hunt and Queen Mab?! She could be a deity.
There are some great resources one can dip into for inspiration here. On the gaming front, of all the books on fey I've seen, the one I've thought was deepest and most interesting was a d20 book called Faeries, by Bryon Wischstadt at Bastion Press. It does a great job bringing to life a vibrant fey world that is familiar enough to be recognizable but alien enough to be disturbing/dangerous.
I'd also recommend some novels: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke, and Little/Big by John Crowley, both of which are serious adult fantasy novels which depict fey as dangerous beings who follow a different set of rules than we do. And the movie Pan's Labyrinth is really good and flavorful too!
Slight correction, the blood-drinking sidhe were the Baobhan Sidhe (spelled Baobhan Sith in the books - they're in Tome of Horrors III and Kingmaker Book 2). The Leanan Sidhe were more like possessive, obsessive, enslaving Muses - see Fairy Godmother Leah in The Dresden Files.Ahh, forgive me for my lack of knowledge. Orthos, we need to distinguish the differences between the courts...although there really isn't a clear line. We need to detail some of the not-so-good "good" faeries...Where to begin..OH! What about the Great Hunt and Queen Mab?! She could be a deity.
It really does vary from source to source. A large majority of my exposure to fey, and thus coloring the way I portray them, comes from their depictions by Butcher in the Dresden books. From what I can see there, you have a small handful of fey "races" that are always part of one court or the other - Trolls are apparently always Winter Court, and Nymphs always Summer Court, for example - but in other cases you'll have certain types who can have members in both courts, and some races that are neither - the "Wyldfae" - until they choose to join a court or are called to one in times of war. The Great Hunt/Wild Hunt is the largest "collective", to use the term loosely, of Wyldfae, and is led by The Erlking/Stag King/Cernunnos/Lord of the Hunt.
At least in my homebrew setting, Mab and Titania are the rulers of their respective courts and are at the least Demigod level if not greater.
Read Grimm´s Fairytales.(That is if your parents haven´t read them to you as a kid:)
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These are all really good suggestions. I want to have some twisted bargains factor into my games. In my GM fantasies I'd love to have the PCs make these but more than likely it'll have to be NPCs or villains who make the deals.
@ Clean: I have a PDF of Faeries and also one of the Ravenloft 3.5 Van Richten's Guide to the Fey. I've stolen some ideas from these and adapted them for my game.
See what you think of the next arc of the game:
Level 3/Adventure 1 - Female PCs youngest sister (surrogate Red Riding Hood complete with red cap) succumbs to evil dreams and is lured to "Granny's House" in a Twilit Realm (a fey realm tainted by an evil called the Shadow). The party meets a runty worg there named Frostbite that helps them track the girl but eventually tries to off her in the end.
Level 3/Adventure 2 - Returning to the town (which I've already established is surrounded by worgs) the party finds that local fey have been tortured to death in some desperate search of the countryside. The PCs have a contact who will have been charmed by a fey creature and sent into their clutches, thus compelling the heroes to deal with the beasts.
Level 3/Adventure 3 - The heroes will have discovered the existence of a Goblin Queen, a woman from another Twilit Realm who was directing the actions of the worgs, however they have no leads on her as of yet. With that in the background they hit the Carnival of Tears (adapted for level 3) for some R&R and end up sucked into the drama of that module. The party will make an uneasy alliance with one of the few powerful fey who have as of yet not given in to the temptations of the Shadow and will have to do what they can to restore true love in order to break a faerie curse.
Do these sound "fey" enough?
Read Grimm´s Fairytales.(That is if your parents haven´t read them to you as a kid:)
How smug of you :)
No seriously, that was my inspiration for this whole campaign. I knew the first couple levels would just be breaking in a few new players I'd never met before and I'm running a homebrew, so it was more about the honeymoon phase. But now that that's over I've read and re-read a handful of stories like Little Red Cap and The Boy Who Wanted to Learn to be Afraid and a few others to try and adapt them for games.
But that's been the GM block: they're inspiring and all, but I just can't seem to get the weird, random quality with the moral overtones into my adventures. Imagine that you're taking the story of a girl who meets a talking frog, takes it home, essentially ignores the thing until commanded not to THREE times, and then gets so annoyed with it she smashes it against the wall, only to have it THEN transform into a handsome prince to whom she's wed, and then you're trying to make it something for 3 random strangers and one guy you sorta know that they can play as a game. Do you put them as the frog or the girl...or as the audience? If you have them interacting with the frog, how in the HECK are they going to know they have to bash its brains on a wall to save it, or do you make some other completely bizarre cure?
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I highly recommend a couple books to get some good inspiration for running a fey campaign. They aren't even War and Peace size books :)
War of the Oaks by Emma Bull is an excellent Seelie (light) vs Unseelie(Dark) fey resource. Not a bad read either.
Summer Knight by Jim Butcher. Harry Dresden book, excellent read.
Kenneth Flint I believe also has some that are good, offhand I can't recall their names however.
The main thing IMO to get is that Fey don't think like humans, being immortal and having a completely different value system. Their codes of honor are somewhat different as well. If you can capture these two aspects, I think it helps when you are running a campaign, because it is alien to the players.
A final resource I can recommend is the Changeling book from White Wolf, though without the context of previous reading, some of it might not be as helpful.
I ran a Moonshaes game with a bronze age, druid/bard centric feel and had drow be the Unseelie noble fey and elves be the Seelie noble fey. Clan and personal honor was a very big deal in that game, and the party ended up allying with the evil fey to deal with another threat that was less honorable and untrustworthy (Formorian giants).
In a weird sort of way, the River Freedoms from the Golarion River Kingdoms are sort of what Fey rules might be if they ran a kingdom, though I am not sure if that helps any either :)
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Perhaps the fey homeworld is drawing closer to the Prime again and it allows more frequent travel. Perhaps some of the fey have decided to make the Prime more like their home or want to invade for some reason. Don't forget that changelings were originally fairy children left in place of human children in the stories. There could be a reason for this that you can weave in. Just imagine a town where every child has been replaced by a fairy changeling. The adventurers would have to find all the human babies and get them back somehow.
I really like this as an adventure idea, I might steal it. I'm about to run a fey-heavy (though not fey-centric) game myself.
Definitely remember that the fey do not have the same value system as mortals and that even those who are generally benevolent might have very odd ideas about what a favor might entail. For example, a fey might make a favorite human immortal, then fail to understand why the human is upset by his friends dying around him.
Also consider that many types of fey prefer to avoid direct combat and instead will mislead or confound mortals with magic, or will send controlled creatures to fight on their behalf. In many cases you can use this to control the tone. A clear toe-to-toe fight against a powerful fey creature might be dramatic, but having something toy with you from the shadows is creepy.
As for trying to induce your PCs to fit the fairy-tale patterns - don't. You can include motifs like the rule of three that they can interact with more loosely, like a trio of witches or talking animals, or three magic items that must be located. You can also have them face fairy-tale tests in which a specific outcome is not necessary. For example, they come across an old beggar woman who asks for help crossing the stream. If they help her, she reveals herself as a fey creature and helps them on their quest. If they do not help, she curses them somehow (possibly in a way that provides a further quest hook to remove the curse).
Mark, I called an ex girlfriend and she recommends the book 'Tithe' and it's sequels. They're supposedly about faeries.
I've read the first one and although its portrayal of the seelie and unseelie courts and the wild fey is quite interesting, its main strength is its ability to tie those elements into what is otherwise a fairly typical modern-day teen romance. Decent book, probably not the best inspiration for a PF game.
Katherine Briggs, Encyclopedia of Fairies is one of the best sources of primarily British/Celtic lore. The 'color books of Fairies'; ie: Red Book of Fairies, Blue Book... etc (look them up online, I've seen whole books viewable online for them.)
Fey impose rules on humans like keeping promises, never lying, following oaths, being polite - which they can fully break themselves, but will punish any human who does so at their expense. The tricksters of fey are often trying to use their pranks to force humans to breaking their oaths/promises/geas.
Fairy food is extremely delicious and addicting to humans even though it provides absolutely no nourishment, and may cause humans to refrain from eating normal food, thus starving to death. Never accept food from a fey.
The portals between this world and the fey world use gates between standing stones, between the arches of two great trees, most are hidden unless you know what to look for in avoiding.
Time is flexible in the fey world. You could wander through it for years, even though only a day has passed in the real world. It could work the other way around, though, like being in fairy land for a day being equivalent to a year or a century on our plane.
I would use Haunts in the vicinity of fey, to add to the otherworldliness of a fey encounter.
Dotting. Always wanted to run a fae/fey game but never had the inspiration or where to start learning enough to do it right. Great advice here!
Thanks G-P. Not only are these good suggestions but thanks for the bullet points about what the fey DO value. Everyone tells me they don't have the same values as mortals, but they don't actually say what the values should be.
I've read in several stories where the fey enjoy personal honors. Much like myths about dragons they want to be told how they're the fairest, the cleverest, the most pure...etc. Since I'll be dealing wih hags, a worg and a nymph queen among other fey, so I'll have to decide if there's any flattery that will advance their cause.
Dude, you should run your faerie campaign here in the forums. Not only would we get to see your world, but we could critique for you so that your RL game can flourish. I've got Fey on the brain.
@Wierdo
I haven't read them personally, but she came to me one day asking all sorts of questions saying she got her info from those books. She was spot on with most of them. I was honestly afraid she was making fun of me before she told me that she got it from a book.
My buddy just gave me print outs of the Faeries book by bastion press...nice stuff, though I'm not prone to use 33pp stuff as it usually has balance issues.
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Half if not more of the Arthurian tales are actually fey tales that have migrated into stories about humans. The Green Knight is a classic fey tale - Knight visits the round table, challenges Arthur to single combat, and promises anything, if he can be beaten in combat. However demands to take his challenger as a slave in fairy land if he wins in a year and a day. Sir Gawain offers himself as combatant instead of Arthur. Green Knight says Gawain can give the first blow without Green Knight's defense. Gawain cuts off the head of the Green Knight. Green Knight picks up his head, (head speaks), I will be back for you in a year and a day...
Some say Guinevere is actually a fey. The romance between Guinevere and Lancelot is a human/fey love affair.
Brownies were originally men of the forest (possibly bronze age people that weren't wiped out by iron age people) who come out of the hills seeking work. They will accept cream/milk and bread and honey as payment for chores on the farm. If ever 'thanked' or given gold, the brownie considers that a threat and never returns. Giving gold or a thank you for favor is considered binding fey into a contract, which they consider anathma to their kind. Contracts are human things.
Some fey are actually human ghosts who have degenerated into faireis. Some are river deities and other ancient Celtic deities, still remembered by the locals, but have become fey in later times. Some were the people of the land before the conquerors came.
Knowing a given fey's true name gives over of them - hence Rumplestiltskin.
Queen Beatrice and her yellow and black knights can be run into on the road, heading for their castle - actually a beehive as Queen Bea and her yellow and black bee knights. They try to recruit humans to come along and get turned into bees.
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The party hears stories of something killing sprites in the forest, the sprites have made it known that any who attack, kill or eat sprites will be duly cursed. The party finds an old woman on the road hefting a huge sack of turnips (bag is actually larger and heavier that what any old woman should be able to carry.) She claims to be sore, having just got away from an attack by ogres. Party seeks out ogres and defeats them, but learns that they were already bested by the old woman. Upon finding her again on the road, she offers her turnips as payment. After eaten, are discovered to be altered bodies of sprites not turnips. Now the party is cursed. Old woman was a hag.
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Thanks G-P. Not only are these good suggestions but thanks for the bullet points about what the fey DO value. Everyone tells me they don't have the same values as mortals, but they don't actually say what the values should be.
I've read in several stories where the fey enjoy personal honors. Much like myths about dragons they want to be told how they're the fairest, the cleverest, the most pure...etc. Since I'll be dealing wih hags, a worg and a nymph queen among other fey, so I'll have to decide if there's any flattery that will advance their cause.
Mark, here is what I think of Fey as valueing:
Secrets, beauty, new experiences, an epic battle, honor, riddles and puzzles, longstanding relationships, even with an archenemy, artwork and craftsmanship (see beauty), cleverness, feuds, magic, ancient land boundaries, flattery.
Heres what they don't value:
-gold and treasures, insincerity, lies, greed, blabbermouths, oathbreakers, mediocrity and blandness, meaningless destruction or battle, tawdriness, stupidity, arrogance and pride among non-fey, weakness of character (ironic, since this is rampant among fey), human titles and nobility, gods and religions, human land boundaries, human laws, the promises of most humans.
Other Notes:
-Fey are immortal.
- Fey think in non-human lengths of time.
- Whey a fey dies, it can often be a shocking upset, sort of like Superman dying.
- Fey are not necessarily chaotic by their own terms only by ours.
- Humans are not the equals of Fey.
- Fey are tricky.
- Debts are upsetting.
- What did you call me?
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Love your stories gamer!
An example of a Fey encounter from my own game:
I ruled that brownies need a home or a residence with a family to bond to and take care of in order to thrive (DC 12 Knowledge:Nature check). If the family or residence is home to evil, callous, or cruel people, who have negative energy or mistreat the brownie, they slowly weaken and degenerate, using their powers to cause malicious accidents, spoil food, break things, etc (DC 20 Knowledge:Nature check). Eventually the brownie becomes a redcap and seeks vengeance by killing the people who were cruel (DC 25 Knowledge:Nature check).
Fast forward to the party at 4th level. This redcap comes back and threatens to wreak havoc on this character unless he rescues another brownie that the redcap knows is being abused. This leads to a side trek where the party saves a female brownie from a band of nasty hunters, and she turns invisible and disappears.
Only later did the mage discover she took up residence in his backpack and secretly turned it into a Handy Haversack so there would be more room. Now the party (who has no idea about this) wonders why he is always saying how nice his backpack looks or how neat and orderly all his gear is inside out loud!
PS - In case anyone wonders, pixies have french accents and brownies and redcaps speak in scottish brogue :P
A stroke - the condition of damage to the brain causing partially paralysis comes from 'elf stroke', an invisible fey just shot you with their magic arrows, and victim suffers a stroke. We still use the word, despite it's fey origin.
If you let a brownie or other fey to work your fields, sometimes your fields provide great bounty, at the expense of surrounding farms that suffer a blight. This make the farmer's life in danger, but from other local humans for having dealings with fairies.
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Giving fey blue and orange morality could help. Although this article on the Fair Folk might be useful too.
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Giving fey blue and orange morality could help. Although this article on the Fair Folk might be useful too.
The Blue/Orange morality diagram is IMO a perfect representation of how humans understand Fey motives. :)
I'd like to create some powerful fey as a witch's patron.
Originally witch's were women (mostly) who dealt with fairies. Only from around the Elizabethan period forward were witch's considered having dealings with the devil - as by that time, anything that is not the providence of God, meant you're dealing with the devil. The idea that witch's are Satan worshippers is actually kind of 'new'.
So the witch, as a class, is the one having the closest relationship to fairies and fairy magic. Knowing this, is probably why I like them so much.
Guest Law is extremely important to fey (this is related to Celtic Brehon Laws). A traveler has the right to be an overnight guest in your home, you must feed him, (perhaps share your daughter for his pleasures) and give him a place to sleep. He does not have to give you payment, his name, nor his business, but must usually provide outside news, and a story or song to share after dinner. If the guest offers a visit to his home, you must accept - and he maintains Guest Law at his home.
This leads to cases of King Herla, and the premise to Rip Van Winkle, where going to Fairy Land as a guest for a day and a night, but when you return home, a century has passed and everyone you know is dead.
Not just time anamolies, but nearly all fey encounters deal with social rules to follow, attempts to break them, and fallout for failing to maintain these laws.
This is awesome, terrifying and in some cases overwhelming. It will take me some time to process all of this and work it into my games. For example I have an encounter planned with some pixies in the Twilit Realm; nothing more than a CR 4 frustration to their progress. Instead of thinking (as I'm running the sprites) "murder these interlopers b/cause they're in our woods" now I might be thinking "trick these interlopers but also that one's a really good dancer and the other one's good looking so maybe we'll just lead them to a dark bower and make them ours but then the other 2 have to go but one was very polite and knowledgeable for a talking dog and ooohhh...a talking dog too!"
I guess what I'm saying is I have a certain trajectory and play style that I'll have to incorporate this all into.
@ Little Redcelt: at the risk of insulting you...thank you. The values you list out were an excellent articulation and your sample encounter was awesome. Ironically the PC whose parents were killed by fey in my game; those parents were named John and Merri ("Mary") and were "hunters" who made a deal with the very monster they hunted. The player is really into Supernatural too so now he's got a personal quest to find his dad's journal.
Now I do have ONE fey I could start these new ideas with. Her name (at least to the human sheep of the town) is Elsa Van Tassel. She's currently stolen the handsomest blacksmith in the town, Brohmm Bones as her boyfriend. She's sent another boy off into a worg wilderness and gotten a third (a political dissident) arrested on trumped up charges.
Now Elsa was originally going to be using the smith and the others to enact some fey rite or possibly as a revenge thing against the PC who is going out w/all 3 boys. Truth be told however I didn't have a solid plan for her when I ad-libbed her in over some PBEM with the female PC whose boyfriends Elsa stole.
I think I need to rack my brains, come up with some off-hand remark or something and say this vengeance is from some random "insult" that the PC might have issued.
Elsa steals her boyfriends, helps her little sister into a twilit realm to become fodder for a hag, and maybe even attacks her when she gets back. When they finally confront her I want the pleasure of her saying something like "Why am I doing all this? Because you had the AUDACITY to THANK me for my help in Rannavine! You presume to think that I would be a sister to YOU, talking monkey that you are?"
But thank you all. @ Luna: I don't think I'll run my games twice, but I really appreciate the offer. I've learned from hard-won experience that I work best in collaboration; it's why I like RPGs more than any other kinds of games. In the past I've always had a bunch of other GMs to tap in the real world for collaboration, but I've moved away from them and my current bunch of friends, well, they're idea of GMing is: APL = 1, so 6 encounters CR1, 3 encounters CR 1/2, 3 encounters CR 2, BBEG CR 3, 4 APL appropriate treasures.
If however you're offering, I'd love to keep collaborating online. I've asked for such help in multiple threads over the past year: sometimes I've gotten hits, other times people have ignored them. But I can say with certainty that every scrap of advice I've gotten here has always been considered and most have found their way into my games in some way.
So again; if you're offering I WON'T say no.
As proof I gave you the synopsis for the 3rd level adventures I have planned. Another thing I wanted to do was have the trip through the Twilit Realm affect them in some permanent way. How would evil faerie magic affect the PCs? Right now I'm thinking a curse on their weapons, but should it be more subtle or personal?
As long as I'm here, you can tap me for inspiration anytime. I actually made a steed that the Seelie Faeries can ride. I'd have to be an attachment to an email though.
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Mark,
You could also use as her motivation something like the PCs great-great-great-great grandfather spurned her advance and she is just now getting her revenge. Perhaps some Fey business kept her occupied before this?
Or, if you want the player motivated to get her, have it be that the Fey's mother was killed by the PCs great-great-great great grandfather(or grandmother) and the PC comes from a long line of hunters. The Fey waits for each new generation to be born and evaluates them. If they are not worthy opponents, she conspires to bring them together with a mate, then waits for the next generation to be born before killing the parents. Your PC is the first hunter born worthy of her mettle, so instead of outright killing her, she has begun "The Game".
Or, possibly even better, the town, specifically the PCs house was built on the spot her favorite flower patch used to be, and she is pissed.
These types of motivations drive my players crazy, and they sometimes dread dealing with Fey because of this. In my Kingmaker game, there is a main road with a bridge that goes across a river, semi-critical path for their kingdom. A river nymph demanded it be removed for 99 years and a day in return for her help! Why? Because it blocked part of the scenic view when she sat on nearby rocks to enjoy the sunset off of the water. The bottom line is, the bridge is now being relocated :P
@ Luna - will do. I appreciate the offer and may ask for the steed, but don't know that I'm there yet. However I may PM you if you're up for tossing ideas around.
@ Redcelt - again; thanks. I like this. The PC getting her boyfriends stolen could be guilty of lots of things. Or rather, her family could. Her grandmother is a green hag - this opens plenty of avenues. I don't know if I'll call them seelie or unseelie, but there's definitely 2 kinds of fey in my game - those tainted by the Shadow and those not so tainted. Could be that some ancestor of the PCs caused her sister to fall into Shadow and she's finally getting around to vengeance.
But I like the forced mating thing too. In real life 2 of my players are married. In the game their PCs are in an arranged betrothal, but since the boy disappeared for years and has now returned, there's no one really pressing them to go through with it. Maybe the fey is eliminating the competition to their betrothal? Of course, that would mean that the female PC's cousin (my NPC) who has now publicly declared her love for the betrothed groom would be next on the list...
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That could work. It plays with the pattern of behavior a bit and thus makes the whole deal a little more twisty, which is a plus.
Instead of thinking (as I'm running the sprites) "murder these interlopers b/cause they're in our woods" now I might be thinking "trick these interlopers but also that one's a really good dancer and the other one's good looking so maybe we'll just lead them to a dark bower and make them ours but then the other 2 have to go but one was very polite and knowledgeable for a talking dog and ooohhh...a talking dog too!"
Having the positive attention of a fey could be almost as scary as incurring their wrath if done right.
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@ Redcelt - again; thanks. I like this. The PC getting her boyfriends stolen could be guilty of lots of things. Or rather, her family could. Her grandmother is a green hag - this opens plenty of avenues. I don't know if I'll call them seelie or unseelie, but there's definitely 2 kinds of fey in my game - those tainted by the Shadow and those not so tainted. Could be that some ancestor of the PCs caused her sister to fall into Shadow and she's finally getting around to vengeance.
Yeah the main thing is to establish Fey as "very different" in the sort of way that HP Lovecraft is very different. How they behave is less important than the fact players should be saying "WTH is wrong with you?" and shaking their heads a lot. You know your own style and your players preferred story tropes, so you can craft your own "Blue/Orange Morality" to match these. In fact, having your own mythology for Fey is probably much better since the players can't read up to figure stuff out. I was just too lazy and too attached to my heritage to go there myself :)
I'm up for it Mark. Anytime you want.
Having the positive attention of a fey could be almost as scary as incurring their wrath if done right.
I concur.
Ok, so my next game is coming up this weekend. Here's what I've got:
1. PC's little sister is missing
a. there's a missing seed cake taken from the sideboard
b. her cap and walking basket are gone
c. in her room are drawings of evil granny (hag), a white-furred worg and a weird cottage in the woods
2. Skills indicate that there's a crumb trail leading into the woods
3. Encounters in the woods
a. a trio of malicious muddlers; reskinned brownies with some spells swapped out
b. a bunch of muddler traps; the brownies will use their spells to lead the party to them or trigger them
c. a pair of dire moles used as guards by the muddlers
4. a fey mound will have to be surmounted by walking backwards up it; clues include:
a. although it's ringed by hedges there's a secret entrance, size small
b. the secret trail has the girl's footprints and a worgs, but they appear to be coming down off the top
c. a tough search reveals a scrap of her nightgown torn going up, even though her footsteps show coming down
5. party enters a fey realm tainted by the Shadow; encounters:
a. the worg Frostbite (with white streaked fur): offers to help track the girl whose trail is now lost
b. a falling tree trap
c. a wicked huntsman and his stag
d. crossing a troll-haunted bridge (since the party has to go over the river and through the woods to granny's house)
6. at granny's house they see the girl on the edge of the open door but then she's stolen inside by a clawed hand; door slams and locks
7. once they bust in "granny" is spitting Shadow taint down the little girl's throat; fight ensues, in the midst of which the worg goes after the little girl, not the hag which should divide the party's attacks.
8. returning with "red" they find her comatose and unresponsive until they approach an old ruin where the PC's actual grandmother hag's bones are buried; Shadow-taint spits out of her and goes somewhere into the bowels of the ruin for later adventures.
Critiques?
I think the key to making a fey campaign fly in a combat focused game is to make the environment seem like a strange and terrifying place. This is the background of traditional folklore, where the wilderness and the unknown in general were filled with strange forces and dangerous creatures .
Check out the Fey template from Bestiary 3 to help fill out your stock of monsters.
Often in old folklore the Church was the direct counter to the fey and other spirits. Hallowed ground, churches and holy items often feature as islands of safety and civilization in stories. Such a contrast may help you as well.
uses some haunts.
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I think the key to making a fey campaign fly in a combat focused game is to make the environment seem like a strange and terrifying place. This is the background of traditional folklore, where the wilderness and the unknown in general were filled with strange forces and dangerous creatures.
Hostile plant monsters - treants, assassin vines, etc. - hidden amongst the wood can help with this. Make the forest come to life around them, literally, after describing it in as creepy terms as you can. Don't tell them what's attacking them (Other than "you think the tree/plant/ground/whatever did something"), and have it go back to "normal" when PCs try to study it closely ... leaving their backs turned to other threats, of course.
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Here's a custom haunt of mine, I plan to include it in an upcoming product (as one small piece), but see no problem with posting it here. I think it fits the fey style woodland haunt concept well. For best use, have a combat encounter in the round immediately after this haunt manifests.
Field of Mangled Ravens Haunt CR 5
XP 1800
NE medium haunt, persistent
Notice perception DC 23 (to notice the raven corpses beginning to writhe)
Knowledge check (nature or planes) DC 17
hp 15; trigger proximity; reset 1/hour
Caster Level: 5
Effect: scattered across a 30' x 30' area are dozens of mangled raven corpses lying on either side of the path, the result of a folk magic ritual sacrifice. The dead birds suddenly lift their broken heads and caw loudly at the intruders, having the effect of the spell *cacophonous call, mass affecting all in the area.
Destruction: collecting the mangled corpses burning them on a pyre after consecrating their remains.
*APG
You could do a CR2 version with cacophonous call spell (not mass)