Horde of dark elves

Thanks! :)
kaldheim is a new series with elves?

Kaldheim is new set based on norse mythology...but they have some cool new elves that might fit with your deck. Check out the spoilers online!

Sounds fantastic. I looked at the spoilers and it looked cool.

Right?! New planeswalker!! and other black elves

Ondrasek:
In case you are wondering why a lot of your decks have suddenly been upvoted out of the blue, it's the downvote troll who upvoted you to bury my newest deck designed to taunt him :)

I guess he's a sensitive type ;)
He will also downvote this comment the second he sees it.

The svartalfen (blackelves) in norwegian myths are pretty evil. I like how close to the myths that they've gotten.
I've been roleplaying for more than 35 years and my own lore on the myths is pretty wast, though I must admit I don't know much about the elves.

If you got questions about any characters in the set I can dish out some stories about them.

I guess a lot of norwegians will try to make decks that cover one or several stories about the gods.

How do you mean: He will also downvote this comment the second he sees it?

I have no questions about cards from Kaldheim, you must wait for the series to comes out ;). But to North mythology, I have two questions. The first is: Are in North mythology some dragons, if yes what are their stories? (because I love dragons) And second is: Do you know about some interesting creatures (for exemple interesting kind of magic), that can be use to D&D, or to amateur story?

If you look up at my comments to you, you will see he already downvoted it to -1
By doing so he's turned my reputation into -900.

I am quite familiar with the creatures and the magic of the north.

The norwegian dragon is called lindorm (thin worm) it has no legs, and no wings and spew lethal poison. It's blood is equally poisonous. Some powerfull persons use them as guardians because they are so deadly, and they also have the ability to make a treasure hoard grow in size. (They somehow generate treasure when they grow) the god Odin once gave a lindwurm to a rich merchant to make his household become a sort of hero magnet.

Norse magic is heavily based on runes, and galdring (a sort of throat mumbling spells)
Runes were carved into everything to make them magical, weapons, shields, doors, poles, tattoos, skin.

Vikings were obsessed with shape shifters.

What kind of roleplaying material do you need in general ?

Oh, I voted for that comment for a plus one, so you have zero on it :) I hope it helped you.

That is interesting kind of dragons I will surely use them. Magic is interesting too, maybe can be use by forest druids in my stories (D&D, or write story). Thanks for much!

I don't need anything specific, just sometihing original :), so that my D&D and writing stories could be more original and different.

Well, there is sleipner, steed of Odin, a black horse with 8 legs which can ride through all worlds, so it's sort of an inter dimensional being. Vikings had a bunch of badass creatures. The draugir that are used in mtg kaldheim could not be seen by ordinary sight, many creatures could only be seen when you were in touch with a silver object. The fairiefolk were among these. In general "the little people" preferred the humans that have resided nearby for generations, myths tell that they will rise and come to the aid of the settlers if any enemy tries to invade. Nykken is a dryadlike being that dwells in lakes, luring people in by resembling a naked young man/girl and drowning them. Bornholm has a variant that resides in wells and try to look like a person about to drown in the well, too weak to climb up a rope. It's terribly strong but prefers attacking a single person who enters the well. Another kind of horse, the hel-horse was an undead horse with only three legs. If you caught it's gaze you would be marked for death. It is a messenger of death, so anyone seeing it without seeing its gaze would know that someone would die within a short period of time. usually you could hear it's awkward gait from a distance and close your eyes to avoid death.

The magic system of Vikings have been exploited a lot, each rune in the norse alphabet had several traits, and the game diablo nailed down the essence of it through the socketing system. There are plenty of books on the topic.



Vikings would also place rune poles nearby their settlements, some "manepæle" were made to ground undead and spirits, others would curse or bless the land or add strength to the village. Removing the poles would sort of break the magic so everything would turn back to normal.

Many creatures in viking lore had intelligent giant versions, sort of living totems.

A lot of the mystical beings also had some sort of need to strike odd deals, sort of like rumplestiltskin. Loki the god of lies (halford really) once promised some dwarves his head, but when it was time to cash in on the deal and one of the dwarves raised an axe to take the head of him, Loki pointed out that his neck was not part of the deal.

The jötun were a race of giants, often with elemental powers and origin, and most of them were smart or skilled in sorcery, a few were even smart sorcerers.

In an ad&d scenario runes will mostly be based on elemental magic as either attacks or protections. Runes could be carved into practically any surface, though silver and perhaps gold would be very hard to describe with runes. Silver and "cold steel" were usefull against magic beings, especially faeriefolk.

Runes and bones were used to throw on the ground and a runecaster could prophecise events from the way they would fall.

Few things are known about the galdre song magic, except that it was guttural. From a game point of view the better a galdrer is, the longer they could sing out a spell, so they could be time based enchantments. Interrupt the galdrer to disrupt the spell. Again it's mostly elemental powers. Vikings didn't have much more than nature to weave their myths around, so viewing them as different druidic classes might be a thing. Vikings also used bards, called skjalde, which were musical poets that often were used to taunt others into doing something.

I can also give you a lot of wild rpg ideas.

How about a spell that can be used to turn a scroll into a small will-o-wisp like being that can cast that spell each turn ? The first catch is that the being has it's own will. The second catch is that one day a curious mage cast this spell on a scroll version of the spell, creating the first wisp able to create more wisps. The result is that all spellbeings rebel as one, and the mages start up a war to get rid of them again, putting a ban on scrolls. Will the wisps be able to create a wisp that can create scrolls, or will their rebellion die out ?

Wow, that's a lot of material for roleplay. I already knew some of them, but most of them were interesting news.
That is amazing ideas! ;)
Thank you very much again.

No problem :)
I've got a lot of tips stored. Might write a book about it :)

I have three specialities:
1 building random tables that seems logical.
2 mass producing ideas by using tables.
3 designing systems close to working as with magic cards.

I got wast archives of spells/items that are pretty unique.

Here's a spell:
Spherecubism:
Transforms all spherical objects into cubes, and all cubes into spheres as an area effect.
A mage can have walls built of cubes and may use the spell to bring the walls down on someone. Or adventurers attired of being pursued by a gigantic rolling stone may stop it with this spell.

That spell is funny! But can be really uses in game! :)
I don't know what am I should say...
Again Thanks very much :)

What other unique spells do you know?

I'm pretty creative, and try to make all of my spells unique.
I got thousands.

In my universe mages spend a lifetime selecting spells that make them masters at what they do at their territory, but if they move outside of that area they are mostly doomed.

Some of my spells are more cool than others though.

"Transfer physical trait": (leaves almost no magical traces, so can't be discovered by normal detect magic)
This spell copies a physical trait from one object to another, for example you can transfer the clearness of a glass object to a clay brick, or you can take the trait of a piece of ice to melt in heat and put it on a door, or if you are an assassin smuggling in a weapon you need only to give the solidness and weight of an iron bar to a rose.
You can also use wood to make a sword or an entire armour float on water.

The uses of that spell are limited by player intelligence only, and they will likely adapt all the tricks that you yourself can think out.

I prefer spells to be just as versatile as this one, but it is a record holder.

Here are some other traits.
The burnability of paper/wood.
The softness of a sponge.
The magnetism of a magnet.
The scentyness of a flower.

In general the quality of a material is copied, so a sorceries blacksmith could give an iron bar the ability of being like paint until it dries (but may dissolve in rain)

Practical jokes like turning a chair as soft as a sponge will be widely used by mages.

Someone with not enough iron in their blood content will be able to sniff it up through the nose by making it grainy as flour.

The effect is always permanent, and cannot be dispelled, but you can always revert the spell by copying the original traits from an original version of the material.

The spell is rather simple and costs very little but usually can't be used on objects larger than a door. It cannot copy some traits that a living material or an undead material possesses. Otherwise the players would have access to any mutation unthinkable, like medusa stone-glare or a wraith level drain.

It does take about 10 minutes to cast so it's not good in combat.

It can be used to breach hard materials by making them soft, which also allows for new types of undetectable trapdoor (can be seen by beings with infrared sight)

I'll advise you to really think of ways to use this spell before introducing it as the players will be in total awe of it.

Make it a level 2 spell and your mages will likely fill their level 2 slots with nothing else but this.

Be prepared for a new type of mage that will carry around a lot of different materials in small boxes so they have a variety of traits to apply to whatever problem they face.

these spells and such seems pretty cool, if you make the book then please make it a e-book so it is easy to get :)

I didn't know we had so many roleplaying gamers :)
I'll start up a line of decks with rpg style tips.

Oh sorry, I haven't been here a long time :)
That spell is fantastic. I know, I always say that :)
If you know about some next interesting inspiration, please write ;) (it doesn't must be a spell).
Again Thanks.

How about an inspiration engine ?
In the past when I needed to come up with an idea, I'd use dice and a list of rpg words, like, druid, catapult, prison, skeletons, cloverfield or other words.

I'd then roll the dice twice and try to figure out as many interpretations of the "idea" as possible.
Take catapult and prison for example, if we roll prison first, and then catapult, then we got this prison that has a catapult. Where is it aimed at? The prison yard or outside the prison. What does it catapult ? Boulders or prisoners ? What if the catapult is the way to get into the prison ?

The "reverse" a prison catapult, is obviously a catapult that launches prisons. How large are these prisons ? Are they temple size, and launched into orbit or are they jar sized and launched against armies. What's in those prisons ?

Instead of using dice, you can sleeve some lands with strips of papers in front, and on those strips you write the inspirational words.

Now think of the other words.
Druid catapult
Skeleton catapult
Cloverfield catapult (a bit extreme, but think about how the players will react)

Then we just keep drawing into ideas:
Druid prison (a prison for druids or one runned by druids)
Cloverfield skeletons (skeletons on a cloverfield or giant skeletons carrying cloverfields around)

Just using a single idea to it's extremes can create an entire world on it's own.
Think of a world with giant skeletons carrying these cloverfields on their heads or in their hands.
The skeletons walk aimlessly around but rarely collide.
Sometimes cloverfields are carried nearby each other, sometimes for longer periods of times.
Does the inhabitants celebrate, exchange population to avoid inbreeding, invade ?
Are all cloverfields alive?

The more words you choose to put in your collection of ideas, the more ideas you will get.
Caravan aquariums (maybe merfolk trading on land)
Firefly gloves (glowing gloves or can they release a swarm?)
Trapdoor honey (a honey pitfall ?)
Fungus werewolf (does it eat the fungus or is it covered in them)

Legends tell that on rainfull nights the firefly fungus is beautiful to behold because of the many fireflies taking shelter in it.

Rumours quickly spread in the village when their crazy mayor installed a werewolf trapdoor in his office.

Once you get the hang of this, your mind will simply start to generate things on it's own. You walk down a road and suddenly you see two things that give you the idea of something totally far out.
I no longer use this tool because it's like breathing to me now :)

Some people take a bit longer to develop a sense for using this intuitively, so spend as long time as you can on each draw when trying to figure out how many ways you can use them in.

Using magic cards this way to help you create a storyline can also a way to do things.
You can build up a deck with random encounters for your dark forest, or you can create a deck with treasures.
Or a deck with additional spice to add to encounters.

You might also want to use the real cards. The art and the flavortext can sometimes be enough to trigger a new idea.

If you want it, I can make up 60 words for you to start with.

Sometimes your card pile can be determined by events in your universe.
If your universe is having an Orcish army roaming the realms, then words like knights, orcs, patrol, ambush and messenger can be shuffled into the deck and then removed when it's all over.

You can have an encounter pile and a location pile, where the location will add spice to the encounter. Does the players have to face a swarm of rats on a narrow rope bridge or in the nasty sewers, or at the side of an erupting volcanoe ?

Each paperstrip can hold up to several possible ideas so when you draw a card you have several opportunities.

You may also give your strips the ability to connect themselves with other piles.

One pile of cards can have encounters for an orcish invasion while another can have encounters from the dark forest, or the wet swamp or the boring village.

Just like magic, theres no limit to how you can combine it all :)

How about a random deck for each level of wizard spells ?
If the players encounter a powerfull wizard you just draw some spells from each pile based on his level, and perhaps you give him a couple of items from the treasure pile ?

Interesting idea. I will definitely use it sometimes.
Thank you

When you have achieved mastery in this, I'd like to hear about what you've made.
The creativity generator is good at one thing.
The next level will be how to pour all that creativeness into "smart" random encounter tables.
The secret of random tables is that they buy you time to build up more world while the players are trying to figure out how the world around them works. Random tables can be used to make the world seem truly alive if it's done thoroughly.

A lot of game designers have sworn that the random encounter table is the one thing that kills a good roleplaying session. I say the opposite is true.

Random tables can be used to make an rpg much more alive than otherwise.
Your world can be run by random tables from events like avalanches earthquakes, meteors, mudslides and other natural disasters, to the lives of your npcs and their destiny, down to actually building new rpg areas.

A note on the random treasure deck. My players are given mtg collectors albums for the items they find or buy,
Even down to their gold coins, so that whenever something happens to their equipment, instead of asking them to cross it from their sheets of paper, they hand things over physically. I've had a lot of sheet heaters in my games, so I dealt with it.

This increased the number of unique items I could create and let the players find. Sometimes finding a very old item with a new character could make some interesting things happen. My players even went so far as starting to personalize items, enchanting them or writing things on them or trying to build up legends around them.

Oh I am not mastery in that ;)
and I havn't got much times for RPG or vault now so...
Random combinations with cards aren't my style, but you definitely gave me many, really many inspiration and random tables with events like avalanches earthquakes, meteors, mudslides and other natural disasters sounds cool. Maybe I will use it modified to my style of game when time it allows ;)
Thank for inspiration and everything other.

No problem :)
Recently I've been toying with two projects in this direction.
I'm creating a "design devil" which will basically be a bunch of cards with different notes on how to improve something, like a roleplaying adventure.

Example:
"The devil strike up a shrilly laughter, tears raining from his eyes. Your work seems to have spirit, but it does not hold up to the spirituality of beasts. You need more totemism, and animism. Next time you work with your material, try to incorporate that"

Then with enough inspirational notes I can always renew my point of view when I need it.

I'm also figuring out ways to give agency to some of my random tables.
Imagine if characters in a game were able to influence your reality.
Or perhaps even magic characters.

How would garruck react to your room or house ?
Would he fill the house with trophies and pelts ?
Hang up his favorite axe collection on the wall ?
Paint tribal sigils on every door to summon his inner beast ?

How would jace do it ?
Or liliana ?

Imagine a random table system where you gave them the means to decorate your room, would they cooperate ? Fight about it? (Who would win?)

I'm thinking really hard about creating systems that can take over and make my home into something noone else have decorated before...

I'm talking really radical moves here, like having a branch sticking out from the wall with apples on it, or a table built out of beer cans. Getting a glass floor with a giant hamster maze beneath it, stuff like that...

Designing structures to think out of the box is the first step.
To design structures that alter your way of thinking and keep inspiring you into new more amazing ideas is next level stuff :)

Any human is capeable of altering the world, but sometimes we've been beaten so much into conformity that we forget that we are really just as limitless as our imagination.

Without odd thoughts, noone would have invented the water mattress.

This level of thought can be brought into your roleplaying game as well.

If your world has magic, what would your red light districts be like? Would some mage design an elemental house of love? How would each elemental bring you what you wanted ?

Imagine how an air elemental could take you out on a really intense flying trip, influence the weather, pelt you with ice, take you through clouds. Blow wind on just the right spots on your body.

A fire elemental on the other hand wouldn't tough a costumer, but could flicker with hypnotic images, heat you up into the trance that firedancers can sometimes experience, and make you sweat and dehydrate into an hallucinatory state.

The way a water elemental could caress you all over ?

The earth elemental will probably be a bit messy on you, but I'd bet you probably never went this way with the elemental magic before...

It doesn't end there.

Any household experience can be thought upon.
Cleaning the dishes ? Water and air elementals.
Washing your clothes ? Water and air elemental laundries.

If you like this way of thinking, try out Terry pratchett and his discworld. Not only does he offer interesting ways to think about magic, but he also gives you new ways to even think about stuff.

I know Terry pratchett, but I didn't read any of his books.
That ideas with magic for common needs is interesting, but in my world is magic pretty rare, and most of mages are so powerfull for doing that :). Maybe some smaller mages do it, but if yes that will be extremly rare, if you know what am I mean ;).

Even rare magic will have an influence, think of how new technology is first used by the very rich.
Perhaps you can have the equivalent of a magical powerplant. Wizards taking on the roles of unruly scientists who use the powerplant as their own playground, but have to produce serious stuff for their sponsoring king.

The key is to think with modern eyes

Interesting ideas, but I'm not sure. Maybe it can be used in my another world ;)
I will think about it.

Did you mean Skemfar Shadowsage?

Yeah

Oh, I'm not sure if I understand that card :(
that have a creature type in common. - they think with that - creatures with rarity in common, or creatures with same creature type, or something another?

For this deck you would just say elves, and you get to choose either to gain life equal to the number of elves yo control, or the opponent loses that much life, I say that it's better, because although it's 1 more mana it'll save you against burn better.

Sounds cool.
He's there for two times ;)