For those who are more hands-on, Alden Loveshade joins us with his character Lemissa, from GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves. This is a role-playing supplement for the GURPS system (Fourth Edition). The book is currently in pre-release, so the cover presented here is from a previous GURPS book.
Lemissa felt flustered. She absentmindedly finger-twirled her long red hair in circles, wondering where on Earth — or whatever world — was her cousin?
“Okay, I can do this by myself, sure,” she thought. “I survived that killer whale fiasco, made that elf lord laugh when I tripped on his cloud, and danced at that ball where nobody but me knew that human noble was really a dragon. I can do this.” She smoothed her red, short flounce-skirted dress, and curtseyed in front of the throne.
Character Questions
Who is your closest friend? A bigger question, Queenie — I mean your Majesty, sorry! — is where is my closest friend? Cousin Leyim is the one who usually makes these reports to the Cabal. She’s our by-the-book half; I mostly wing it. I’m the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants half.
Are there intelligent races other than yours, and do they get along? Intelligent races? Oh, you mean of the elves, the real ones. These aren’t my real ears, of course, but we had to blend in. So we got our ears temporarily sharpened.
Let’s see. You’ve got your Standard Elves, but we found three different types of them, so I guess that’s not very standard! Oh, and there’s Wood Elves besides that. They’re all foresty.
Then there’s two different types of Dark Elves, although Leyim thinks they aren’t different races than Standard Elves, just different cultures. I don’t know; they seem very different to me! In any case, they don’t like non-elves.
Mountain Elves usually live on mountains and hills, of course, and Deep Elves like living under the mountains in caves, just like Dwarves. There’s two different kinds of Sea Elves you can also find in caves–if those caves are underwater! But they mostly live in underwater communities. They can bob on the surface, so watch out for their sea bows!
Oh, and High Elves? They aren’t high in the sense of mountains, but kind of high-and-mighty acting. They’re usually not the merry type; they’re more serious and mysterious. If you ask me, though, Shadow Elves are even more mysterious; even many other elves aren’t too comfortable around them.
Oh, if you want to get really high, there’s Sky Elves who live in clouds! And there’s Winged Elves who can fly up and visit them! And elves of several types are even higher, and live in space!
Of course where elves and other races meet you can get Half-Elves! There’s more than one type of human-elf cross, but I can’t even begin to tell you how many possible varieties there are. You can even have crosses of different types of elves, but I haven’t met any of them–yet!
Author Questions
Fantasy has many genres. How did you choose yours? In this case, I didn’t have to choose! GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves is a roleplaying resource book that can be used in any fantasy genre–or in horror, science fiction, wild west, steampunk, etc. While the elven racial templates and some of the elven items are written in GURPS roleplaying game terms, much of the book can be used for any roleplaying game that includes elves. It deals with elves in literature and, according to some believers, real life. It describes elven cultures, languages, arts and sciences, weapons, garden agriculture, and descriptions of all the races of elves Lemissa named.
How do you know that your story is ready for submission/publication? As GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves is being written under contract, I’ll know when the editor tells me so! I first made a query with Steve Jackson Games. When that was accepted, I made a proposal, then an outline, then a first draft, then a second draft which is undergoing playtest/peer review. That leads to my making changes and improvements based on editor and reader suggestions for the final draft. Then publication!
It’s rare that an author gets that much valuable input. I certainly made some mistakes along the way, primarily with formatting. Fortunately, SJ Games has very patient and helpful people. Steve Jackson Games has wanted this book for a long time. I have too. I just didn’t know I’d have the honor of being the one to write it!
GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves
Watch for the official release here.
About Alden Loveshade
Alden is a self-proclaimed “keybard.” He wrote his first professionally published piece when he was 16; it mentions the world’s most famous elf. A professional journalist, columnist, reviewer, playwright, and fiction author, in his spare time he practices elven garden agriculture. While not working, he earned a couple of college degrees and received an honorary one he didn’t earn. A lord of Sealand, he denies any rumors he got his title through leading a sea elf revolt. http://alden.loveshade.org
Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my website, Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram.
This sounds like a fascinating project. I enjoyed role-playing games in my high school and college years and now one of my children has discovered them as well which has renewed my interest. One of my favorite parts of the writing process is creating the world and background for my characters, but in a novel, you don’t always share all your world-building. This sounds almost like pure world building. I know a lot of gamers whose characters have found their ways into stories. Do you find yourself wanting to tell more complete stories with the types of characters you’re creating for the handbook? Do you play test as part of your process for creating the supplement?
The book has a number of ideas for world building, as elves could be found in virtually any fictional genre. I did do some “pre-playtest playtesting” with a gaming group who were very helpful, so many of the things in the book were tried out as I was writing it. I also researched and consulted with a few experts including a master archer.
I had fun writing the vignettes, and yes, those shorts did get me thinking about sending those characters on more adventures!
Very cool project. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Glad it sounds cool to you!
That’s marvelous Alden! I can’t wait to see the final book. Now that we got vaccines, our gaming group can get going again!
I can hardly wait for the final book either!
I love long-distance gaming; as I live in the middle of nowhere, most of my roleplaying for the past many years has been from faraway. But I do miss getting together in person, so look forward to visiting your group again!
Had some great adventures in GURPS. Haven’t played or reffed it in a long time, though.
You didn’t mention the military. Elves in fiction often use some form of guerilla tactics, not to mention their missiles weapons.
Thanks for asking!
While the book is going into final draft, some things may of course change. But as of now, the book does touch on military matters, and mentions elves using guerilla tactics. It includes descriptions of a couple of bows (one of which adapts a rarely seen type of real-life bow so it can be used in a completely different environment). It has some info on underwater combat, and features a couple rather unusual war mounts.
I hope you have a chance to get back into GURPS! The Generic Universal RolePlaying System can be used for virtually any type of roleplaying campaign. I’ve done science fiction, medieval fantasy, early gunpowder fantasy, wild west, steampunk, anime, horror, supers, not to mention traveling with Conan the Barbarian, visiting ancient Egypt, joining a rock and roll band, adventuring in the worlds of several television programs, etc. In fact I have one unaging dimension-traveling character who’s done most of those!
I am totally happy about your book! GURPS is fun cuz you can play anything. I cannot believe your book has a stanza of a poem I wrote when I was 14!
You were a talented poet even then! I was looking for something to use to show the contrast between a serious high elf and a cavorting wood elf, and that stanza made a great intro.
As frequent Steve Jackson Games artist Lar deSouza created your fantasy portrait, it fits that a bit of your work be included in an SJGames book.
[…] GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves (Queen Titania’s Court) […]
Thanks for sharing this–I really appreciate it!
You’re welcome!
The *GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves* supplement is now available! And it twice mentions a certain author whose initials are “D.F.”
http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-fantasy-folk-elves
That’s great!