Yeah Tolkien ruined elves. They're just not interesting. They excel at everything and have no flaws except for being too forward looking *cough humblebrag cough*. In my preferred style, the elves in the Shadow of the Demon Lord rpg are actually interesting. They are immortal, but their immortality has made them bored and decadent. They see other races as playthings to entertain them and to be experimented on.
Were I building an entire new homebrew world, I'd probably do one of two things with elves.
1.) Their lifespan is reduced to 150-200 years, rather than OVER NINE THOUSAND(!!!) Elves would have a deep-seated cultural predilection towards the arts and beauty, to the point where a (typical) elf that doesn't have anything beautiful in their lives is likely to grow very depressed. Elven predilection towards the arts has left them with a somewhat-deserved, somewhat-overblown reputation as both a superior culture and a bunch of horrific smug ponces. Elves are likely to be politely derisive of other species' artisans and craftsmen, scorning anything that isn't created for beauty as much as function, and while their dedication to artistry and perfection allows them to push the upper limits of what a craftsman can do they're also much slower and less productive than other species in that regard, as their preoccupation with form takes a great deal of extra training, time, and work.
2.) Elven society is stagnant, stratified, and generally close to dead by the standards of younger, shorter-lived species. Elves are ferociously isolationist, defending their Groves with small numbers of supremely trained nigh-supersoldiers and generally considering the rest of the world beyond their sylvan homes to be utterly unworthy of anything but contempt. Elven adventurers are vanishingly rare and often considered with startlement and even wary suspicion by other species, as elves are not considered above sabotaging the affairs of nearby non-elven nations to prevent them from becoming powerful enough to encroach upon a Grove. Their exceptionally long lifespans predilects most elves towards sharp avoidance of threat or risk, as elves considering cutting a life hundreds of years short to be a terrible waste of beauty and potential - and further, they see nothing wrong with ending the lives of lesser species, since they're not robbing the world of anything but a scant handful of years of ill-tempered, poorly-washed nastiness when they do.
Yeah Tolkien ruined elves. They're just not interesting. They excel at everything and have no flaws except for being too forward looking *cough humblebrag cough*. In my preferred style, the elves in the Shadow of the Demon Lord rpg are actually interesting. They are immortal, but their immortality has made them bored and decadent. They see other races as playthings to entertain them and to be experimented on.
Tolkien just returned elves to their folklore origins as the Fair Folk who were stronger, smarter, and gifted in magic. If it weren't for that, the only elves we'd have today would be making toys for Santa and baking cookies for Keebler.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The Fair Folk don't get to be a PC species. Not without severe restrictions. Same reason dragons don't get to be PC species without the severe restriction of being a dragonborn, instead.
Of course not, but Tolkien drew heavy inspiration from them for his elves when the late 19th and early 20th Century elves had been reduced to Wee Folk who were silly beings in childrens' stories.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Another problem is that in contemporary views you can't tell anyone they can't do something.
So elves are supposed to have baggage. The baggage I remember is that they have a deep dislike for dwarves, and vice versa. They also hate going underground. They are isolationist, as are dwarves.
But today none of these things are part of the lore, or at least a PC can ignore all this and play their character any way they want. So players shrug off the parts they don't want.
As for every book having a new subspecies of elf, well that is because elves inspire the most imagination I guess. Write you own dwarf sub species and maybe it will catch on. Write your own Dragonborn sub species; there should be as many as there are colored dragons. Write your own Tieflings. There are plenty of demons to blend to come up with new versions and differences in tieflings.
The world is your oyster.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I don't know but in Tasha's they got taken down a peg for being racist so now any race can be a Bladesinger lol, I remember 2nd edition when the Complete Book of Elves came out and not even a half elf could become one wasn't allowed. Now I am just waiting for WotC to drop racial requirements for the racial feats, you know cause racism. But no in all seriousness I think lots of races do require more subraces variety is cool.
There is no aesthetic that Elves have that Vampires don't do better, and in nicer clothes, while being more interesting.
What about shopping at the market on a spring morning? Or a duel at high noon?
Solid clothes and wide hats, appropriate for either setting I'd think.
To actually add to the discussion: I don't actually hate elves in the sense of rolling my eyes if a player or myself think they're a good PC / idea. I do have a lot of issues with how they're handled inconsistently across every scene they're in. In an ironic twist I suppose I don't really mind the Tolkien-esque elves, but that's probably my LotR bias, I don't like them, but they're alright
"I once knew this fella, Aasimar raised in the Underdark. Was like a brother to me. When he escaped we couldn't take much with us. Poor, emaciated husks of the living we were. 'ts okay though. We survived and made our ways. I'll never forget the way the people from my home looked at us when we walked in the archway. Though, I'm frighteningly certain the feelings they would have, had they but the opportunity ta see us leave." --Manolovo the Traitor, Memoirs of a Scoundrel
Another problem is that in contemporary views you can't tell anyone they can't do something.
So elves are supposed to have baggage. The baggage I remember is that they have a deep dislike for dwarves, and vice versa. They also hate going underground. They are isolationist, as are dwarves.
But today none of these things are part of the lore, or at least a PC can ignore all this and play their character any way they want. So players shrug off the parts they don't want.
As for every book having a new subspecies of elf, well that is because elves inspire the most imagination I guess. Write you own dwarf sub species and maybe it will catch on. Write your own Dragonborn sub species; there should be as many as there are colored dragons. Write your own Tieflings. There are plenty of demons to blend to come up with new versions and differences in tieflings.
The world is your oyster.
I do not remember them ever having a hatred of the underground. And hatred of the Dwarves is old school colonialist race hatred, the kind of thing that the world is attempting desperately to move away from.
Isolationism still happens depending on campaign. However any race or culture can be isolationist.
Elves clearly have enough baggage. Again, how many of those variants are actually getting significant play? How many are playing Elves at all?
It would be interesting to see character statistics. Badeye used to speak to, rarely, like subclass stats on the Dev Updates. I'd love to see a segment like that come back after Van Richtens about characters actively edited in the last year. When fivethirtyeight did it in 2017, Elves were #2 behind Humans.
Yeah Tolkien ruined elves. They're just not interesting. They excel at everything and have no flaws except for being too forward looking *cough humblebrag cough*. In my preferred style, the elves in the Shadow of the Demon Lord rpg are actually interesting. They are immortal, but their immortality has made them bored and decadent. They see other races as playthings to entertain them and to be experimented on.
Tolkien just returned elves to their folklore origins as the Fair Folk who were stronger, smarter, and gifted in magic. If it weren't for that, the only elves we'd have today would be making toys for Santa and baking cookies for Keebler.
There's a third route: make them actually interesting. Legolas is the least interesting member of the Fellowship because he has no weaknesses. Nobody is ever concerned that he's going to make a mistake, be corrupted, show any real emotional development. He's just a super soldier that can run fast, fight with anything, see a mile away, etc... and he's not even that old for an elf.
As I've said, elves can be interesting if you really consider what immortality can do to a person beyond making them all perfect.
Yeah Tolkien ruined elves. They're just not interesting. They excel at everything and have no flaws except for being too forward looking *cough humblebrag cough*. In my preferred style, the elves in the Shadow of the Demon Lord rpg are actually interesting. They are immortal, but their immortality has made them bored and decadent. They see other races as playthings to entertain them and to be experimented on.
Tolkien just returned elves to their folklore origins as the Fair Folk who were stronger, smarter, and gifted in magic. If it weren't for that, the only elves we'd have today would be making toys for Santa and baking cookies for Keebler.
There's a third route: make them actually interesting. Legolas is the least interesting member of the Fellowship because he has no weaknesses. Nobody is ever concerned that he's going to make a mistake, be corrupted, show any real emotional development. He's just a super soldier that can run fast, fight with anything, see a mile away, etc... and he's not even that old for an elf.
As I've said, elves can be interesting if you really consider what immortality can do to a person beyond making them all perfect.
Feanor would like a word. Seriously, though it doesn’t come through in LotR, Tolkien’s elves definitely have a dark side. Check out some of his other writings.
I don't hate Elves, but yes, they get a lot of play.
Treebeards poem in LoTR describing the various races, first one? Elves.
You ask someone to name fantasy races? First one most of the time? Elves.
Google search Fantasy Race, click the first article, whats the first image? Elf.
So when you think of it that way, there's an inherent understanding of why Elves are so prevalent. They're also easy to explain. Classic Elf 101: Fairer than a human, prettier than a human, more long lived than a human. Still very much a human, but just "All the best parts" and throw in some magic. It's lazy, but back when fantasy as a genre really started taking off? It's all we had, it was the farthest reaches of the imagination for most. Now, with 100 years of fantasy under our belts we have all of these other whimsical lineages, but since Elves have been around the most, it's what gets used the most.
I don't think there are different "races" or "sub-species" or Orc in D&D.
Half-Orc, Orc of Exandria and Orc of Eberron all are different races of sub species, but to the OPs point, they don't exist beyond that and I honestly agree that there should be more love. Why are elves the only ones officially influenced by their surroundings?
You do make a good point but id still consider the orca of different settings to be just orca, but from that setting.
Half orcs are pretty cool although I wouldn’t really consider them to be a subspecies either. Though I suppose they are. Can’t remember off the top of my head if they are considered a subspecies of orc or not, so I can’t argue that point lol.
I actually like half orcs, though strangely I tend to use them more as NPCs when I DM, rather than as a character when I’m playing. It’s just the way that half orcs tend to be made that puts me off playing them. Though I suppose that doesn’t have to be true.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
The Lord Of The Rings movies are wonderful, but they aren't kind to any of the non-Humans in the Fellowship. Legolas got off easy. He's just kinda over-the-top silly. Gimli is played for laughs. Poor Gimli. He's not at all laughable in the books. Perrigin Took is constantly doing foolish things and he gets reprimanded for it. None of the characters come off all that well. The biggest hero is Sam. Boromir is only there to die in a properly heroic manner to show that humans are weak but not beyond redemption. Gandalf isn't Human, and comes off well enough for someone who dies. Merry doesn't do a whole lot, he's mostly there as a foil for Pippin. Aragorn is only mostly human. He's a Dunadain, blessed with long life. He's almost an Elf. The movie is supposed to be about Frodo, but he's a coward. He shows is mettle on Weathertop. The other Halflings at least make an attempt to get in the way. Frodo drops his weapon and tries to run away and hide. He does the one thing Gandalf told him never to do and puts on the Ring. In the end, he falls to the Ring's evil, and would have been Sauron's puppet had not Golum bit his finger off.
I don't think Tolkien "ruined" Elves. His mark is stamped indelibly on the entire swords and sorcery fantasy genre. Without him we wouldn't have D&D as we know it.
I can do without the explosive proliferation of Sub-Races. None of the races need them. Elves are just the worst in that respect. In my own setting there aren't any Elven sub-races. The Dark Elves aren't really *Elves* They are more like like Planetouched. Fiends. They are only vaguely related to real Elves and you will insult the hell out of an Elf by calling them a Dark Elf, or gods forbid, a Drow.
Whilst I agree that elves have a bit too much info compared to everyone else (they are the D&D equivalent of Spez Mehreens), I can't consider them being elegant and long-lived to be favoritism. In fact, it's a breath of fresh air that this hasn't turned into something where people call favoritism and the elves get ret-conned to be no better than anyone else. Being a different species, they have different lifespans and being a different culture they have different mannerisms. It so happens that they are predisposed to be noble and aloof and all that jazz, but that's just what they're like.
It would be interesting to see Orcs change in lifespan to be as long as the elves, though much more likely to be violently cut short. the LOTR orcs were supposedly elves once, which gives a precedent for Orcs to live long lives if they aren't killed on the way. Such a change would stop elves having the monopoly on super-long lives and would make Orcs an interesting enemy, where the chiefs are likely to be several hundred years old and very skilled warriors.
Yeah Tolkien ruined elves. They're just not interesting. They excel at everything and have no flaws except for being too forward looking *cough humblebrag cough*. In my preferred style, the elves in the Shadow of the Demon Lord rpg are actually interesting. They are immortal, but their immortality has made them bored and decadent. They see other races as playthings to entertain them and to be experimented on.
Tolkien just returned elves to their folklore origins as the Fair Folk who were stronger, smarter, and gifted in magic. If it weren't for that, the only elves we'd have today would be making toys for Santa and baking cookies for Keebler.
There's a third route: make them actually interesting. Legolas is the least interesting member of the Fellowship because he has no weaknesses. Nobody is ever concerned that he's going to make a mistake, be corrupted, show any real emotional development. He's just a super soldier that can run fast, fight with anything, see a mile away, etc... and he's not even that old for an elf.
As I've said, elves can be interesting if you really consider what immortality can do to a person beyond making them all perfect.
I'd just like to point out, in one of Tolkien's books, Legolas is in the Fall of Gondolin. And he's already fairly old in it. That means, with the exception of Galadriel and his dad, he is the oldest thing in Middle Earth. In the fall of Gondolin, Elrond's dad is only a toddler. As NaivaraArnuanna said, you should read more of Tolkien's books. The elves are more interesting then any other race. They just didn't have the time to portray it in the movie.
If you don’t like it then DM and create a world that corrects it for you. In my world the green skin races (orc, goblinoids, etc) are as varied as humans in terms of alignment and how they live, but are massively oppressed. One nation in particular has been trying to eradicate them much in the same way the Spanish eradicated the Aztecs. This has resulted, over the 300 years this has been going on, in largely aggressive, violent, green skins surviving to procreate. They don’t trust outsiders and assume anyone not green is there to kill them.
This nuance to the race is something my players are loving, it also allows me to have variations in tribe types, with different proficiencies and even regional languages.
In regards to elves, a race that lives happily for 750 years will always have a different world view to the short lives races. They will have an opportunity to focus and specialize more and have a broader and wider differences in types. They will look at life differently and have an opinion that will seem superior and arrogant, but, is also based on the fact that after 700 years, they have probably seen it all many times and so know that this thing will end horribly.
I mean, elves are hugely influential in the genre. Blame Tolkein, I guess.
The issue that elves pose isn't "preferential treatment." It's that they don't make any sense in a rational world. They live too long and with high magical affinity, probably shouldn't have any technology at all. Like not even metal working. Why would you develop technology when all of your issues can be solved by magic. Beyond this, we have difficulty as portraying different races in D&D as ... different races. We makes them all human with some cosmetic changes. Of all of the races in D&D Elves should be completely alien to us. They probably wouldn't see humans as people, rather viewing us as we view dogs or cats. Properly done elves would be a joy to behold. However, as it stands, they're just humans with pointy ears.
Interesting topic. I personally am not fond of elves in D&D or LotR, but there is a type of fantasy elf very similar to them that I love. For those of you that have not read the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series, I cannot recommend it enough (even though it's technically a YA novel, as are practically all D&D books, like Dragonlance), but I will explain one of the main characters in the series for you: Hearthstone (more commonly referred to as "Hearth").
In the world of Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Elves are fairly similar to the typical fantasy elves of Lord of the Rings, but they're more modern. They love perfection, beauty, and are generally arrogant and judgmental of both other fantasy races for being "lesser" than them, but also judge each other even more harshly. Hearthstone was born deaf, and his parents always preferred his younger brother Andiron, because he had no disability and they viewed him as their "only true child". Hearthstone was never physically abused, but the judgmental actions and horrible words of his parents were so abusive that it pushed him into a mental shell and made him reject everything that Elves stood for (perfection, beauty, and supremacy). His parents hated him even more when his younger brother died, blaming him and saying "you should have died instead", and forcing him to pay for his younger brother's death through doing chores and labor for his parents, and having to pay whenever he ate a meal or went to the bathroom.
Basically, his story shows the very dark sides of elven society. He eventually ran away from home and began to study how to use runic magic. He can't talk, due to him being deaf, but he can communicate with his "party members" using sign language and can read lips.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
You seem to be ignoring the part about the Elves diminishing 'fading' and leaving the world. Or about Legolas being a supporting character who is barely developed or focused upon. Most of the fellowship were just NPC supporting cast for the Hobbits (and possibly for Aragorn).
I'm not ignoring that at all. The "fading" made the elves even more boring. They were torn between doing something to help save middle earth, but instead spent all their time defending their own homes until their folks had all moved west. In the books, Legolas was the only elf at Helm's Deep, which makes this point more stark.
Yeah Tolkien ruined elves. They're just not interesting. They excel at everything and have no flaws except for being too forward looking *cough humblebrag cough*. In my preferred style, the elves in the Shadow of the Demon Lord rpg are actually interesting. They are immortal, but their immortality has made them bored and decadent. They see other races as playthings to entertain them and to be experimented on.
Tolkien just returned elves to their folklore origins as the Fair Folk who were stronger, smarter, and gifted in magic. If it weren't for that, the only elves we'd have today would be making toys for Santa and baking cookies for Keebler.
There's a third route: make them actually interesting. Legolas is the least interesting member of the Fellowship because he has no weaknesses. Nobody is ever concerned that he's going to make a mistake, be corrupted, show any real emotional development. He's just a super soldier that can run fast, fight with anything, see a mile away, etc... and he's not even that old for an elf.
As I've said, elves can be interesting if you really consider what immortality can do to a person beyond making them all perfect.
I'd just like to point out, in one of Tolkien's books, Legolas is in the Fall of Gondolin. And he's already fairly old in it. That means, with the exception of Galadriel and his dad, he is the oldest thing in Middle Earth. In the fall of Gondolin, Elrond's dad is only a toddler. As NaivaraArnuanna said, you should read more of Tolkien's books. The elves are more interesting then any other race. They just didn't have the time to portray it in the movie.
I've made the slog through the Silmarillion. I'm just ignoring it because it clearly wasn't meant to be read by anyone the casual fantasy reader. I'm basing my opinion on the Hobbit and LotR alone because those are what shaped the rest of modern elf fantasy.
I mean, elves are hugely influential in the genre. Blame Tolkein, I guess.
The issue that elves pose isn't "preferential treatment." It's that they don't make any sense in a rational world. They live too long and with high magical affinity, probably shouldn't have any technology at all. Like not even metal working. Why would you develop technology when all of your issues can be solved by magic. Beyond this, we have difficulty as portraying different races in D&D as ... different races. We makes them all human with some cosmetic changes. Of all of the races in D&D Elves should be completely alien to us. They probably wouldn't see humans as people, rather viewing us as we view dogs or cats. Properly done elves would be a joy to behold. However, as it stands, they're just humans with pointy ears.
Not all Elves use magic and magic is not infinitely powerful. Why wouldn't they also use technology? Moreover why not enchant technology?
Correct. In econo-speak, magic would only increase the marginal productivity of technology. Imagine how much more powerful steam engines would have been if we had an infinite source of dense energy more easily collected than coal?
Yeah Tolkien ruined elves. They're just not interesting. They excel at everything and have no flaws except for being too forward looking *cough humblebrag cough*. In my preferred style, the elves in the Shadow of the Demon Lord rpg are actually interesting. They are immortal, but their immortality has made them bored and decadent. They see other races as playthings to entertain them and to be experimented on.
Were I building an entire new homebrew world, I'd probably do one of two things with elves.
1.) Their lifespan is reduced to 150-200 years, rather than OVER NINE THOUSAND(!!!) Elves would have a deep-seated cultural predilection towards the arts and beauty, to the point where a (typical) elf that doesn't have anything beautiful in their lives is likely to grow very depressed. Elven predilection towards the arts has left them with a somewhat-deserved, somewhat-overblown reputation as both a superior culture and a bunch of horrific smug ponces. Elves are likely to be politely derisive of other species' artisans and craftsmen, scorning anything that isn't created for beauty as much as function, and while their dedication to artistry and perfection allows them to push the upper limits of what a craftsman can do they're also much slower and less productive than other species in that regard, as their preoccupation with form takes a great deal of extra training, time, and work.
2.) Elven society is stagnant, stratified, and generally close to dead by the standards of younger, shorter-lived species. Elves are ferociously isolationist, defending their Groves with small numbers of supremely trained nigh-supersoldiers and generally considering the rest of the world beyond their sylvan homes to be utterly unworthy of anything but contempt. Elven adventurers are vanishingly rare and often considered with startlement and even wary suspicion by other species, as elves are not considered above sabotaging the affairs of nearby non-elven nations to prevent them from becoming powerful enough to encroach upon a Grove. Their exceptionally long lifespans predilects most elves towards sharp avoidance of threat or risk, as elves considering cutting a life hundreds of years short to be a terrible waste of beauty and potential - and further, they see nothing wrong with ending the lives of lesser species, since they're not robbing the world of anything but a scant handful of years of ill-tempered, poorly-washed nastiness when they do.
Please do not contact or message me.
Tolkien just returned elves to their folklore origins as the Fair Folk who were stronger, smarter, and gifted in magic. If it weren't for that, the only elves we'd have today would be making toys for Santa and baking cookies for Keebler.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The Fair Folk don't get to be a PC species. Not without severe restrictions. Same reason dragons don't get to be PC species without the severe restriction of being a dragonborn, instead.
Please do not contact or message me.
Of course not, but Tolkien drew heavy inspiration from them for his elves when the late 19th and early 20th Century elves had been reduced to Wee Folk who were silly beings in childrens' stories.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I like elves. A lot of my characters are high elf wizards. Wood elves and eladrin would be my next favorites.
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Another problem is that in contemporary views you can't tell anyone they can't do something.
So elves are supposed to have baggage. The baggage I remember is that they have a deep dislike for dwarves, and vice versa. They also hate going underground. They are isolationist, as are dwarves.
But today none of these things are part of the lore, or at least a PC can ignore all this and play their character any way they want. So players shrug off the parts they don't want.
As for every book having a new subspecies of elf, well that is because elves inspire the most imagination I guess. Write you own dwarf sub species and maybe it will catch on. Write your own Dragonborn sub species; there should be as many as there are colored dragons. Write your own Tieflings. There are plenty of demons to blend to come up with new versions and differences in tieflings.
The world is your oyster.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I don't know but in Tasha's they got taken down a peg for being racist so now any race can be a Bladesinger lol, I remember 2nd edition when the Complete Book of Elves came out and not even a half elf could become one wasn't allowed. Now I am just waiting for WotC to drop racial requirements for the racial feats, you know cause racism. But no in all seriousness I think lots of races do require more subraces variety is cool.
Solid clothes and wide hats, appropriate for either setting I'd think.
To actually add to the discussion:
I don't actually hate elves in the sense of rolling my eyes if a player or myself think they're a good PC / idea. I do have a lot of issues with how they're handled inconsistently across every scene they're in. In an ironic twist I suppose I don't really mind the Tolkien-esque elves, but that's probably my LotR bias, I don't like them, but they're alright
"I once knew this fella, Aasimar raised in the Underdark. Was like a brother to me. When he escaped we couldn't take much with us. Poor, emaciated husks of the living we were. 'ts okay though. We survived and made our ways. I'll never forget the way the people from my home looked at us when we walked in the archway. Though, I'm frighteningly certain the feelings they would have, had they but the opportunity ta see us leave." --Manolovo the Traitor, Memoirs of a Scoundrel
It would be interesting to see character statistics. Badeye used to speak to, rarely, like subclass stats on the Dev Updates. I'd love to see a segment like that come back after Van Richtens about characters actively edited in the last year. When fivethirtyeight did it in 2017, Elves were #2 behind Humans.
There's a third route: make them actually interesting. Legolas is the least interesting member of the Fellowship because he has no weaknesses. Nobody is ever concerned that he's going to make a mistake, be corrupted, show any real emotional development. He's just a super soldier that can run fast, fight with anything, see a mile away, etc... and he's not even that old for an elf.
As I've said, elves can be interesting if you really consider what immortality can do to a person beyond making them all perfect.
Feanor would like a word. Seriously, though it doesn’t come through in LotR, Tolkien’s elves definitely have a dark side. Check out some of his other writings.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
You do make a good point but id still consider the orca of different settings to be just orca, but from that setting.
Half orcs are pretty cool although I wouldn’t really consider them to be a subspecies either. Though I suppose they are. Can’t remember off the top of my head if they are considered a subspecies of orc or not, so I can’t argue that point lol.
I actually like half orcs, though strangely I tend to use them more as NPCs when I DM, rather than as a character when I’m playing. It’s just the way that half orcs tend to be made that puts me off playing them. Though I suppose that doesn’t have to be true.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
The Lord Of The Rings movies are wonderful, but they aren't kind to any of the non-Humans in the Fellowship. Legolas got off easy. He's just kinda over-the-top silly. Gimli is played for laughs. Poor Gimli. He's not at all laughable in the books. Perrigin Took is constantly doing foolish things and he gets reprimanded for it. None of the characters come off all that well. The biggest hero is Sam. Boromir is only there to die in a properly heroic manner to show that humans are weak but not beyond redemption. Gandalf isn't Human, and comes off well enough for someone who dies. Merry doesn't do a whole lot, he's mostly there as a foil for Pippin. Aragorn is only mostly human. He's a Dunadain, blessed with long life. He's almost an Elf. The movie is supposed to be about Frodo, but he's a coward. He shows is mettle on Weathertop. The other Halflings at least make an attempt to get in the way. Frodo drops his weapon and tries to run away and hide. He does the one thing Gandalf told him never to do and puts on the Ring. In the end, he falls to the Ring's evil, and would have been Sauron's puppet had not Golum bit his finger off.
I don't think Tolkien "ruined" Elves. His mark is stamped indelibly on the entire swords and sorcery fantasy genre. Without him we wouldn't have D&D as we know it.
I can do without the explosive proliferation of Sub-Races. None of the races need them. Elves are just the worst in that respect. In my own setting there aren't any Elven sub-races. The Dark Elves aren't really *Elves* They are more like like Planetouched. Fiends. They are only vaguely related to real Elves and you will insult the hell out of an Elf by calling them a Dark Elf, or gods forbid, a Drow.
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Whilst I agree that elves have a bit too much info compared to everyone else (they are the D&D equivalent of Spez Mehreens), I can't consider them being elegant and long-lived to be favoritism. In fact, it's a breath of fresh air that this hasn't turned into something where people call favoritism and the elves get ret-conned to be no better than anyone else. Being a different species, they have different lifespans and being a different culture they have different mannerisms. It so happens that they are predisposed to be noble and aloof and all that jazz, but that's just what they're like.
It would be interesting to see Orcs change in lifespan to be as long as the elves, though much more likely to be violently cut short. the LOTR orcs were supposedly elves once, which gives a precedent for Orcs to live long lives if they aren't killed on the way. Such a change would stop elves having the monopoly on super-long lives and would make Orcs an interesting enemy, where the chiefs are likely to be several hundred years old and very skilled warriors.
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I'd just like to point out, in one of Tolkien's books, Legolas is in the Fall of Gondolin. And he's already fairly old in it. That means, with the exception of Galadriel and his dad, he is the oldest thing in Middle Earth. In the fall of Gondolin, Elrond's dad is only a toddler. As NaivaraArnuanna said, you should read more of Tolkien's books. The elves are more interesting then any other race. They just didn't have the time to portray it in the movie.
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If you don’t like it then DM and create a world that corrects it for you. In my world the green skin races (orc, goblinoids, etc) are as varied as humans in terms of alignment and how they live, but are massively oppressed. One nation in particular has been trying to eradicate them much in the same way the Spanish eradicated the Aztecs. This has resulted, over the 300 years this has been going on, in largely aggressive, violent, green skins surviving to procreate. They don’t trust outsiders and assume anyone not green is there to kill them.
This nuance to the race is something my players are loving, it also allows me to have variations in tribe types, with different proficiencies and even regional languages.
In regards to elves, a race that lives happily for 750 years will always have a different world view to the short lives races. They will have an opportunity to focus and specialize more and have a broader and wider differences in types. They will look at life differently and have an opinion that will seem superior and arrogant, but, is also based on the fact that after 700 years, they have probably seen it all many times and so know that this thing will end horribly.
I mean, elves are hugely influential in the genre. Blame Tolkein, I guess.
The issue that elves pose isn't "preferential treatment." It's that they don't make any sense in a rational world. They live too long and with high magical affinity, probably shouldn't have any technology at all. Like not even metal working. Why would you develop technology when all of your issues can be solved by magic. Beyond this, we have difficulty as portraying different races in D&D as ... different races. We makes them all human with some cosmetic changes. Of all of the races in D&D Elves should be completely alien to us. They probably wouldn't see humans as people, rather viewing us as we view dogs or cats. Properly done elves would be a joy to behold. However, as it stands, they're just humans with pointy ears.
Interesting topic. I personally am not fond of elves in D&D or LotR, but there is a type of fantasy elf very similar to them that I love. For those of you that have not read the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series, I cannot recommend it enough (even though it's technically a YA novel, as are practically all D&D books, like Dragonlance), but I will explain one of the main characters in the series for you: Hearthstone (more commonly referred to as "Hearth").
In the world of Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Elves are fairly similar to the typical fantasy elves of Lord of the Rings, but they're more modern. They love perfection, beauty, and are generally arrogant and judgmental of both other fantasy races for being "lesser" than them, but also judge each other even more harshly. Hearthstone was born deaf, and his parents always preferred his younger brother Andiron, because he had no disability and they viewed him as their "only true child". Hearthstone was never physically abused, but the judgmental actions and horrible words of his parents were so abusive that it pushed him into a mental shell and made him reject everything that Elves stood for (perfection, beauty, and supremacy). His parents hated him even more when his younger brother died, blaming him and saying "you should have died instead", and forcing him to pay for his younger brother's death through doing chores and labor for his parents, and having to pay whenever he ate a meal or went to the bathroom.
Basically, his story shows the very dark sides of elven society. He eventually ran away from home and began to study how to use runic magic. He can't talk, due to him being deaf, but he can communicate with his "party members" using sign language and can read lips.
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I'm not ignoring that at all. The "fading" made the elves even more boring. They were torn between doing something to help save middle earth, but instead spent all their time defending their own homes until their folks had all moved west. In the books, Legolas was the only elf at Helm's Deep, which makes this point more stark.
I've made the slog through the Silmarillion. I'm just ignoring it because it clearly wasn't meant to be read by
anyonethe casual fantasy reader. I'm basing my opinion on the Hobbit and LotR alone because those are what shaped the rest of modern elf fantasy.Correct. In econo-speak, magic would only increase the marginal productivity of technology. Imagine how much more powerful steam engines would have been if we had an infinite source of dense energy more easily collected than coal?