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Elves again..

jedellion

Dreamer
I saw several threads recently on elves, and I thought i'd share my spin. This was originally aimed at DnD players, but i think you could apply a lot of things in this article to Elves in a more general sense. I also have on on Dwarves, and I'm planning to write more.



The Elves have their own labours and their own sorrows, and they are little concerned with the ways of hobbits, or of any other creatures upon earth.” – JRR Tolkein

― Gildor Inglorion in The Fellowship of the Ring, “Three is Company

Foreward and fair warning.
The ideas presented below are my own opinions, shaped by forty years of gaming, running games, writing fiction and being an avid fantasy fan in all it’s wondrous shapes and guises. Your opinions may differ and that is wonderful. All I wish to do is present my own ideas and see if any of them strike a chord, or get you thinking in new ways about our amazing hobbies.

Introduction
I adore tabletop RPGS, I have done since I was a wee thing picking up my first RPGs, Traveler and Runequest from the old Games Workshop in Manchester. You know, back in the day when GW sold other people’s games and were owned by legends like Ian Lilvingstone. But the game that really inspired me to begin writing my own campaigns and made me a decent GM was MERP, Middle Earth Role-Playing. In fact, my online name I use a lot, ‘Jedellion’, was the name of my first MERP character, a Half-Elven Mage.

Tolkein had some very distinct ideas about Elves and, in many ways defined the current ‘shape’ of elves in a lot of fantasy fiction. The long lived, or even immortal creatures of the forest, graceful, wise and skilled. But over the years, something has happened to elves. They have become… dilluted. In fact, I would dare to say that, for many players of modern TTRPGs such as DnD 5e, Elves are seen more as humans with different statline when planing your path of best fit with a class template.

What has got lost is the sense of wonder, the wisdom, the benefits and drawbacks living a long life would have. With a lifespan of several hundred years, just think about the different ways you would look at the world, even if you were a human living that long. It gives you time. Time to learn, time to think and reflect. Patience would be inevitable, boredom a constant enemy.

I adore Ginny Di, and recently in one of her videos she presented three elf NPCs to use in tabletop campaigns. I would argue, with the utmost respect to Ginny, that these NPCs could have been human rather than elven and it would have made literally zero difference to the NPCs in terms of character, personality or outlook. This is one my my big hangups with elven characters in a lot of modern fantasy, what makes them elven? Bear in mind these NPCs are tons of fun, but they just don’t seem very…. elvish.

If you are designing an elven character, or introducing elves to your fantasy world, spend a little time thinking about the culture of elves. If you live so long, how might things be different? They have so much time to use they could afford to use some on what would seem like senseless acts to shorter lived races. Imagine spending a decade watching a tree grow, or taking years to plan the perfect home, or devoting many years to perfecting a skill, only to change your mind and work on something else. You would have many lifetimes to devote to your dreams.

Do your elves have towns in traditional sense, do they have commerce, coins and shops or are they things they adopt to better deal with other races? What do their homes look like? Are they built into trees, or grown using magic to shape the forest to pleasing forms? Do they form large communities at all, or is the forest filled with small enclaves of family units? Imagine how large your family could be, even with limited births. You would have many generations alive at the same time. Imagine being able to sit and have a cup of wine with your great, great, great, grandmother who still looks only few years older than yourself.

How would this shape an elf’s upbringing? How would your culture interact with others. Would they view humans with amusement, wonder or concern? To Elves it might seem like humans breed and spread like locusts, devouring the land and pushing the elves further into their forests.

So you want to create an elf character, great! But here are some things to maybe think about:

  1. Did your character grow up among their own kind? If so you have to build up from that cultural perspective; growing up with a patient, slow moving lifestyle. How did it make them feel? comfortable? welcome? or did it make them restless and eager to escape?
  2. What made them leave? was it just that restless spirit, or do they have a goal? a job?, a task?, a desire?
  3. How do they interact with other races? The world beyond is fast paced, almost frantic. The short lived races have to cram so much into so little time. You took a hundred years just to be considered an adult! and you have another 600+ years to look forwards to.
  4. How much do you know about the world? Are you recently joined to the rest of the world, what concepts are new and alien to you. Imagine the fun to be had playing with naivity, or sheer cluelessness over some concepts.
    So I give three gold coins to this woman and she gives me a fine dagger, she will then use those coins to buy more steel to make another dagger? Would it not be easier to give the lady some steel and not the tiny gold coins? it’s seems a waste of time for creatures that have to little time to waste.
Relationships

How would elves live and love with others? How painful would it be to watch your non-elven friends grow old, wither and die while you still look young? Would this make you more, or less likely to form such close bonds? What of love? Do you risk your heart with a short lived companion?

As a character option Elves have tons of advantages depending on the game system. In DnD it’s things like free cantrips, higher dex etc. But where are the cultural backgrounds that inform character development? How does a long lived child of an alien race end up a hedge witch in a human town?

So if you are considering playing an elf, consider these factors, how do you see elves fitting into the world, and start there. Think about your cultures, how they live, where they live, what drives them, anduse that to inform your characters.

Other thoughts

For some interesting takes on elves, I reccomend the following:

The Hound and the Falcon Trilogy by Judith Tarr – an elf raised by monks in Crusade era Europe.

Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry, Norse inspired lios alfar (light elves) and swart alfar (dark elves)

Elizabeth Moon’s trilogy The Deed of Paksenarrion, and the sequels… Tolkeinish, but still good.

An interesting article on Elven outlook.
Roleplaying an Immortal Elf
 

Queshire

Auror
Huh, I could see that as an article on the site's front page.

Hmm... let's see, there's a lot of fun stuff to be had playing around with the mythic-ness of Elves like that, but as always it's a matter of doing what's right for your story. For all of flaws of elves as pointy eared humans they're still eminently relatable. If the goal is to focus on the wonder and immortality of elves then that could affect how readers relate to them. I'm not saying it neccessary will, but that's something that writers have to decide for themselves. Sometimes you just want a pointy eared pretty boy and there's nothing wrong with that.

Other things I'd recommend considering when it comes to Elves (or really any race) is whether there's a singular nation of them or multiple, and what's life like for an elf living in a nation whose population is dominated by another race or a nation that's a true melting pot without one singular race dominating it.

As for my own setting the major magic system provides increased longevity and eventually immortality. While that particular aspect isn't as important for elves it does mean that they’ve got equally long lived peers among the other races.
 
I agree that this could very well be an article.

It reminds me of a novel I wrote. I started writing the main character as a dwarf (because reasons...). About halfway through the story I came to the conclusion that my dwarves were actually just short humans, with no real reason of being dwarves. So, I decided to change it and simply turn everyone human. Which required surprisingly little changes to the story, other than changing the descriptions of certain places and changing some word choices in dialogue and sayings.

So, I agree with the idea given above. If you're going with other races, then make sure they really are different, and not just short humans, or pretty humans with pointy ears or green humans. They have different values and ideas. Though at the same time (at this is where it gets really hard), mono-cultures don't exist. Not all dwarfs will be grumpy, axewielding ale-quaffers, and not all elves will be aloof esotheric magic wielders.
 

Malise

Scribe
My "elves" are actually Apsaras(f)/Ghandharvans(m), who are minor Hindu/Buddhist gods of the arts. They don't have pointy ears and are physically indistinguishable from humans, asides from having eyes with white pupils and shimmery irises, 2 to 3 times longer lifespans, and being universally attractive by human standards. So, they're just "better humans", which is a trope that I decided to deconstruct in my Buddhist cosmology-inspired world.

Humans (or aliens or some really, really good dogs) from the "earthly realms" reincarnate into apsaras (and other minor deities) if they have accumulated enough karma to ascend to the next plane of existence. It's also known that apsaras that they can potentially reincarnate back into a human (or worse) if something goes wrong in this life. So pretty much all apsaras are living an existential crisis where they know that they're only better humans, and the vast majority never visit the "earthly realms" (which suck anyways by their standards) because of it.
 

LittleOwlbear

Minstrel
Most of them are really just humans with pointy ears.

i use the DnD lore for elves that were created from Corellon's blood and everything about the trance is so interesting too and differs them from humans or not just making them humans with pointy ears, although they still feel very human and I like it that way, not some mythological creatures emotionally detached from any human(oid) emotions, or just growing cold over centuries.

I put from all species I got so far most research and thoughts into elves, because my main character is a 250 year old druid and director of a magic school, already lived a whole life from human perspective, had lost partners, one elven woman in a war / conflict, one human husband because of old age (and had few shorter relationships and bunch of one night stands), already had born a half-elven child fathered by their husband, and also has done stuff they are not proud of. And they will watch their son die before they die themselves, that might be the worst.
Imagine living through all again daily in trance very vividly, the best and the worst moments of your life. I think that's also what prevents most of them (but not all) going numb and tired of life over the centuries.
Including not using hours or minutes in daily life. They have six "hours" / times of a day. Humans counting minutes is to them like we would count seconds over the span of a single day, why would you use such a small unit for time in your day to day life. They just got used to using hours and minutes too to fit in with humans.

That's also why lot of them leave their homes for some decades or longer to collect memories, but there are no bigger cities that only consists of elves since they are quite rare. There is only a finite number of souls in that reincarnation cycle.
In the south there are a few smaller communities left that live more reclusive. Most live in towns and cities and are more likely to find community in other elves, but that's not exclusively, most do talk to and have friendships or relationships with other species.

The other thing is elven beauty (especially described as such by humans), which also comes with its own disadvantage too. They are sometimes / often objectified by humans and they are also more likely to accept polyamory, open relatonships and serial monogamy, one factor for that being their longlivity ofc (there is for most no "one true love" if you live up to 750 years) and their culture just differs a lot from most human ones in certain views and all.
Therefore quite lot of humans objectify them for their looks and openess towards relationships and sex, and some elves become more reluctant to form any connection with humans. Most are proud of their looks and some use it to flirt and get sex, but that doesn't mean you want to be seen and treated as a pretty piece of meat of course instead of your own person.
For my main character, they are bit androgynous and a bit more dark / brown skinned, so you know that "exotic beauty" stereotype in the eyes of some humans, men and women and other gender alike, while they don't care for the person they are and that they are a quite powerful spellcaster.

Most of the ones that are 150+ are quite prideful in general, imagine studying magic or taking part in your interests for over 200 years, of course you take pride in your abilities, but lot of humans view it is as arrogance.

Another thing I just headcanon for myself that I want lot of elves be neurodivergent from human point of view (for them it's how most of them tic), because I can relate a lot to certain traits from their very sensitive senses to their strong interests they pursue for decades to centuries and some other stuff.

Oh and pure iron is deadly to them, that will weaken my main character at the start of the story too and they almost died getting poisoned with pure iron or other metal. Aside that it will poison a human too, it weakened their access to their magic a lot. They have been quite powerful before and want to get their former strength and pride about their former magic abilities back.
 
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