"What are the elves like?"

[Ninja-Bear]

Chris Goodwin I might have missed if any one else’s pointed it out but Three Hearts and Three Lions do have elves on them. And Poul Anderson’s other book I’ve read the Broken Sword has elves and they’re definitely not Tolkien at all.

[Chris Goodwin]

22 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Chris Goodwin I might have missed if any one else’s pointed it out but Three Hearts and Three Lions do have elves on them. And Poul Anderson’s other book I’ve read the Broken Sword has elves and they’re definitely not Tolkien at all.

 

It's been long enough since I've read it that I obviously need to reread it.  My mistake.

[Ninja-Bear]

6 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

It's been long enough since I've read it that I obviously need to reread it.  My mistake.

They were alien in nature but not the main protagonist. The Broken Sword elves were to be deliberately more akin to the Norse elves and are very alien in nature.

[assault]

4 hours ago, TheNaga said:

You made me think of the Smurf.

"Smurf" is the English translation of the original "Schtroumpf".

[Ninja-Bear]

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

It's been long enough since I've read it that I obviously need to reread it.  My mistake.

No problem. Iirc there’s a line about the elves where the hero wonders if the elves even know why they do the things they do.

[DShomshak]

16 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

No problem. Iirc there’s a line about the elves where the hero wonders if the elves even know why they do the things they do.

...Do humans know? Freud said we often don't -- not the real reasons -- and I believe him. (Even if I have my doubts whether Freud diagnosed the real reasons.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

Anyway... Since elves (and others) usually appear in a setting where humans numerically dominate, one might als0o ask, "What are humans like?" Assuming you mean your elves to be more than just pretty humans with pointy ears.

 

Back when I ran my 3rd ed D&D campaign, I thought the text in the "racial template" for humans was dull, so of course I wrote my own. For your amusement, here are the sections in which I tried to describe what I see as the most essential features of human mentality and society.

------------------

HUMAN

...

Personality: Status drives many human endeavors. Humans are the most political race in the Magozoic Age, which probably accounts for their continued dominance: No other race can organize into vast, structured hierarchies the way humans do. Only humans build empires.

 

Humans invent many ways to symbolically assert power over each other: aristocratic lineages, rules of precedence, money, religious taboos, gossip, law courts, potlatches, elections, ethnic jokes, professional guilds and dozens of other methods. Humans also feel the biological drives for sex, sustenance and survival, of course, but even the most basic desires tend to get mixed up with issues of pride and prestige.

 

Beyond that general concern with status, human personalities vary widely. Humans range between smart and stupid, brutal and kindly, fanatical and feckless, or any other polarity you can imagine. Many humans combine wildly incongruous mental traits -- the psychopathic killer who loves children; the brilliant savant who’s a fool for a pretty face; the liar who thinks he’s an honest man. Humans follow every moral code imaginable — sometimes two or three at once, depending on the subject or the company. Individuals manage the contradictions in their own souls by ignoring them, and may grow angry if anyone else points out their inconsistency.

...

Relations: Humans fight a great deal against their traditional enemies, other humans, or anyone else available. Strangely, they also get along with all the other sapient races better than most of those races get along with each other. Human attitudes are, as usual, diverse, ranging from genocidal hatred to idolization -- but are rarely consistent even within a society. A line often heard in human societies is that "Some of my best friends are [insert name of marginalized group]."

...

Human Lands: Humans occupy most of Pangea Ultima, from the vast interior deserts to the south polar mountains. They organize in a wide variety of social structures, from nomadic bands to vast empires. Some regions change quickly, with new ideas and customs appearing and disappearing in decades; others remain stable for centuries. Politically, however, the boundaries of human societies shift constantly as one culture presses against another. Humans sometimes amaze other races by re-inventing their societies in a single generation, as the ignored nomadic tribe suddenly explodes to conquer an empire, or the brutal despot gives way to an enlightened reformer.

 

Human societies often tolerate nonhuman minorities better than nonhuman societies tolerate other racial minorities. Humans seldom want to exterminate or expel their minorities (human or nonhuman). Most of the time, the dominant group simply wants to rank the minorities, assigning them their own ghettos, villages or provinces, with their own small privileges to compensate for a second-class status overall.

...

Quote: “Yeah, last year I was for Law, too, but this year Chaos is paying better. Hey, I got kids to feed, y’know?”

-------------------

Dean Shomshak

[SCUBA Hero]

2 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Quote: “Yeah, last year I was for Law, too, but this year Chaos is paying better. Hey, I got kids to feed, y’know?”

 

Heh.  "I was for Law before I was against it." 😆

 

[I would *really* like to play in one of your games...]

[Christopher R Taylor]

For my upcoming Jolrhos Player Guide I built humans with a couple of twists.  Humans have strong wills (innate mental defense), are naturally inclined toward spiritual things (so they get a free Invocation roll to use priest rituals at 8-), and a complication set making demonic and undead mental and presence attacks more effective against them.  Humans are spiritual, strong willed, and naturally superstitious and frightened of evil creatures in the night.  Since they lack night vision of most other races, it kinda makes sense.

 

Each race I've tried to give distinctives and unique drawbacks that set them apart, without being too extreme in their effect.  And all of them "balance out" to 0 points including Complications so they don't apply to the cost of building a character by house rule.

[Ninja-Bear]

If I get a chance to play an elf again, I’d play up the more-I’m bored cause I live so long so let this entertain me. Especially if I played in a more D&D style game.

[Lord Liaden]

5 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

If I get a chance to play an elf again, I’d play up the more-I’m bored cause I live so long so let this entertain me. Especially if I played in a more D&D style game.

 

Stories of the immortals in legend, like elves/faeries and the Olympian gods, frequently play up this point. They have great power and endless lives, all their needs are met, they have no serious challenges. So they scheme against each other and meddle in the lives of mortals just for diversion from boredom.

 

Recent political events have illustrated that this is a pretty accurate outcome from giving vast power to a spoiled child.

[Christopher R Taylor]

My take on the long life of what humans call "high elves" in Morien is that they're like ancient Egyptians: fixated on death because in their case it happens so rarely and is such a monumental event for an elf.

[DShomshak]

When I looked at the D&D 3e elf template, my fist thought was that it packed in a lot of picayune powers that really weren't that interesting. Immune to magical sleep? Small bonus on Listen, Search and Spot checks? Somewhat useful, I suppose, but not what makes me think of a nigh-immortal creature of myth.

 

My rewrite played up elven esthetics and perfectionism. When you live 700 years, you have time to do things right -- and you won't want to put up with slapdash squalor for that long. My elves were prone to turn anything that held their attention into a work of art, which they strove to perfect. (I borrowed a bit from the Aurorans in the Ruby radio serials.) When faced with surprises, elves were prone to withdraw and ponder their response. But when they had time, they could do just about anything well. 3e had something called "taking 20": If a character could take all the time they wanted on a task, the player could assume a 20 on the die roll for the task. When an elf took 20, though, they got an automatic +4 bonus. In a sense, they embodied crystallized intelligence: the skill that comes from experience, of knowing what to do because you've done it all before.

 

In Hero terms, this would be a skill level for all skills, applied only if you took extra time. Given the 3d6 bell curve, even a +1 ain't nothing, and +2 gets seriously impressive.

 

D&D 5e doesn't have "taking 20," and for various reasons I also resolved not to rewrite everything I found dull, so the elves in my current campaign stick to the published template. I still try to play up the esthetics, though, and the patience. (And the "subraces" are cultural, the result of early training, rather than biological/supernatural, as I find the subrace concept actively irritating. Or more than irritating, but I would like to avoid politics.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

On 3/4/2022 at 11:29 AM, Chris Goodwin said:

Really, what is it about elves and other races that you're going to explore, that hasn't already been explored in the approximately nineteen thousand other settings that have them?  (Note: that is hopefully obvious hyperbole.  I haven't actually counted.) 

 

Nothing.  But one of my friends plays elves exclusively, and I've heard of other players with a similar preference for dwarves.  There has to be something in the setting to cater to these players or you risk losing them.  I don't know about you guys but I have a hard time finding good players.

[Lord Liaden]

This poster gave input on the "Turakian Age" thread linked in my signature:

 

  

On 12/12/2019 at 11:28 AM, ibenny said:

While I certainly understand many of your feelings concerning elves, dwarves and such, fantasy without them - for me, strictly - is not fantasy. Heck, I don’t even read a fantasy book without them, usually - I especially need them in a high fantasy setting, cliched or not. So that’s the other side of the coin.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

12 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Nothing.  But one of my friends plays elves exclusively, and I've heard of other players with a similar preference for dwarves.  There has to be something in the setting to cater to these players or you risk losing them.  I don't know about you guys but I have a hard time finding good players.

 

I have heard of individuals like that.  In fact I've heard of some who insist on it to the extent that even in settings that are otherwise inappropriate for it (i.e. modern settings taking place on our Earth with no fantasy races) they'll still try to sneak in characters that are elves and dwarves.  

 

I would be okay with not playing with those people.

[Duke Bushido]

You remind me,of half a thread I stumbked,into in the way back,machine a few nights ago.

 

One person had ripped the core system,out of an old school game and was,working on doing a swords-and-sorcery thing with it ("sworcery?  Hmmm... Has potential...)  Anyway, think Conan meets Thundar for tone and setting.

 

He and some,other forumites hash out a few issuws he has, and he starts a nrw thread for playtesting so that the folks who helped him could,play if they wish.

 

For the record, I hunted all through the way back,for bits od this, because I had fotten interested in his project. 

 

Everyone was sort of familiar with it at this point, and he had established in a prior thread that there were three races in this world:  humans from the norther lands, reptilians from the equatorial regions, and avians from some geological hotbed of activity and jagged mountains.

 

About thirtt people express interest, and out of fairness he takes the first five to pipe up.

 

They do character gen and poat the characters.

 

One human.

Three elves.

One half-elf.

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

11 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

This poster gave input on the "Turakian Age" thread linked in my signature:

 

 

Author N.K. Jemisin once received an email from a reader saying, “When are you going to write some real fantasy, y’know, with orcs?”  Same energy.  

[steriaca]

29 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Author N.K. Jemisin once received an email from a reader saying, “When are you going to write some real fantasy, y’know, with orcs?”  Same energy.  

Orks? We don't need no stinking orks!

[tkdguy]

Some thoughts on why many people love Tolkien's elves. It's a 90 minute video, so watch it when you have a lot of time to spare.

 

 

[Old Man]

9 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

I have heard of individuals like that.  In fact I've heard of some who insist on it to the extent that even in settings that are otherwise inappropriate for it (i.e. modern settings taking place on our Earth with no fantasy races) they'll still try to sneak in characters that are elves and dwarves.  

 

I would be okay with not playing with those people.

Mileage varies, I can’t blow off one of my good friends of thirty years or so.  
 

I do gently mock him for his weird elf obsession though. I’m kind of tired of Tolkien fantasy myself, but it’s much more convenient in many ways. 

[Ninja-Bear]

I too am not a fan of sub group of races. For a Basic Fantasy I thought up of an order called Silver Elves (insert a Latinish name) The silver refers to the order having silver weapons to be able to combat magical monsters. As I understand it in D&D (& the clone I have) that is how it’s works. The Order started because the elves  were the ones that had the magical radiation accident and caused the monsters. 
 

The Drow are are evil cause they feel the elves should rule the world by any means necessary.  They don’t think that they have to be the only race, as as you accept their rule.

[Lord Liaden]

I'm annoyed by the habit most of these Tolkien-esque games and books have of referring to Elves, Dwarves etc. as just that, no matter where they come from. They might deign to specify a place name, e.g. "Dwarves of the Iron Hills." But nobody refers to the "Men of America" or "Humans of England." I always try to give a name, or use a name already given, to a country or region dominated by one of these races, as the basis for a designation for all its people. For example, in the Turakian Age setting, I call the Elves living in the Nevarro Jungle, "Nevarri." If there were representatives of other races living among them as citizens of the state, they would also be Nevarri. In that circumstance it would make sense to sometimes draw a distinction between Nevarri who are Elves or Men.

 

But sometimes the writers make that extrapolation harder. For instance, in the Turakian Age setting, Steve Long named the largest forest kingdom and original homeland of the Elves, "Elvenholme." I expect that's partly because Steve chose to fill his Elvish language with long-winded polysyllabic names, so Elvenholme's human neighbors probably call it something they can remember and pronounce.   But the king of Elvenholme is considered the symbolic High King of most of the other Elves in the world, so I figure Men would refer to his subjects as "High Elves." In this case that D&D-ism applies to a geopolitical division among the Elves, not a sub-race.

[Duke Bushido]

Funny.

 

Except foe the elves thing, I tend to so the same thing.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I'm annoyed by the habit most of these Tolkien-esque games and books have of referring to Elves, Dwarves etc. as just that, no matter where they come from.

 

I agree.  Tolkien did it for the most part; elf is elf, human is human, etc.  They had minor differences (Rohirrim vs Gondor) but they didn't really show up much or have much impact.  Take a Spaniard and put him next to a Canadian, you'll instantly know the difference and language barrier and foods and clothing etc.

 

I have made elven languages similar enough that they're like Portuguese and Spanish -- two elves from different parts of the world can kind of, roughly, communicate (1 point of shared language) but they're pretty different place to place.  Humans come up with these names like "high elf" and "wood elf" because its easier to pronounce and refer to them, but the elves have their own names for themselves in various parts of the world, with distinct cultures and languages and behavior.