Runequest: Elves

I am more of a Runequest 3 player; that is when I started back in the Avalon Hill days. If there is one thing that I change about the new rules, it is the look and nature of the elves and, to a lesser extent, dwarves. Elves and dwarves in Runequest have always been closer to the Tolkien-style ones that earlier editions seemed to embrace rather than the more alien ones in the newest edition, at least to my group.

They look like the above, more like plant people than elves. In my world, this "tree form" is a magic the elves have that gives them excellent camouflage. It also explains the art since very few see them around. This is all they can say an elf looks like to human artists since this is all they have seen.

This is not a lore-breaking change; it aligns the game with the versions I am used to and makes the elves more traditional and mysterious. The tree form is also very cool. A lot of the lore about them can be kept, like them being vegetarians and vulnerable to iron, and even skin colors can be preserved, making some brown, others green, and some yellow or blue.

Why can I do this? The book gives me the right to the Maximum Game Fun (MGF) rule. If my group and I have more fun with traditional elves with the magic ability to shift into trees, then as the rules say, "We go with it."

Just remember, all art is interpretive and in the eye of the beholder. Speaking of which...

Runequest was cross-published in Japan in the late 1980s, so if I wanted every race and character to look like manga or anime, that is within the lore since the books exist and the art was used. I can have manga elves in my game if I want, I just declare MGF, and it makes it so. I frankly love this anime-style art in the books, and I wish Chaosium had an edition of the game with 100% manga and anime-style art. The art is already amazing as it is!

...but just imagine. "Manga Game Fun" Runequest would be awesome.