So this is something I've been thinking about for a while, especially with the new Star Wars High Republic books coming out where Yoda is referred to as 'ancient' 200 years before the events of the movies - from what I've seen, most of the sourcebooks and things are written with human lifespans in mind, but how different is this to what would actually happen since you have races living between 60 years (goblins) and 750 years (elves). Disclaimer: This might get pretty long.
First: Long-lived adventurers
Many people will have played as an elf, or a dwarf, or a gnome, etc. If you think about how the pace of their lives differs to humans (eg. elves maturing at 100), how would it psychologically effect them to gain massive amounts of power in such a relatively short space of time? How would they deal with their close friends, who they have shared so much with, dying while they are in their prime (assuming the group has a mix of races)? If it is so easy and quick to get to higher levels, and they have however many hundreds of years to do it in, why are there not more supremely powerful adventurers?
Second: Life among other cultures
This mainly concerns NPCs and lore, but may affect PCs with urchin or orphan backgrounds. In the PHB it says that to a dwarf the difference between an acquaintance and a friend is 100 years - given how many races don't live that long, how does this affect politics and business? Are dwarves and elves more likely to remain among their own kind because of their long lives? How do these races affect the world's knowledge of the past - if you apply this to our world, the 1300s would still be in living memory.
Third: Cultural impact
Take the example in the last section - how much would an elf born during the height of the feudal era have been affected by the changes in society? Eg. if we take the start of the journey towards gender equality and the rise of feminism to be the 60s, that change would have taken place during 1/15th of an elf's life, equivalent to about 5 years in our lives. To put it another way - 750 years is 25 30-year human generations. So how does the fact that most races live longer than humans affect the rate of societal change? How did developing in this world affect the culture of humans?
Fourth: Half-elves
This is something that seems very simple, but there are countless examples of love between elves and humans, and most of them end up with some form of suicide, either through actual death or the acceptance of a mortal life. Elves that have half-elf children or find their love among other races know they will probably see their partner, their children, and their grandchildren die before they do. Why would they choose this?
If you read to the end of this, thanks fo sticking with it. It's just an issue that I don't think gets considered too often when making fantasy things, which is fair enough given they are being written by humans, and it does raise a lot of questions about how somewhere like the Forgotten Realms actually functions on a micro and macro level.
Long-lived Races will likely be very slow to change, but also would likely not forget the lessons of history like shorter lived races do. For Humans, 600 years ago is almost ancient history, and easily lost to the annals of time. For Elves, that could have been childhood, or at most their parents’ childhoods.
Think of it this way, most IRL people have forgotten the lessons learned in the 1790s during the French Revolution, and again in the 1860s-‘90s Durocher Russian Revolution. That’s why things like wealth distributions in America have hit the same ratios as those countries had back then, because the oligarchs have forgotten what may happen. But for many Elves, that total timespan is less than half a lifetime, are how a Human might consider something that happened in the 1980s half a lifetime ago.
Also, a concept like “‘til death do us part” would take on a whole new meaning for for such a long lived race. As such, elves would likely only mate for as long as it takes to raise a child (or two) to the age of majority, so 100-150 years in their culture depending on how spaced out the births would be. A lifetime commitment to a single individual like that would likely be very rare for them.
Heck, half of the Human marriages don’t last until “death,” but instead end in divorce once the kids are at least in college or graduated, about 20 years, or 1 generation. (Human generations are measured around 20 years.) Of course, in “ye olden times,” humans considered 13-15 as the age of majority. (Romeo was 15 and Juliette was 13 if I remember correctly.) Even in D&D’s pseudomedieval setting I think the my recognize it as around 17-18. As such, I calculate an Elven generation to be about 150-190ish years, give or take a decade or two.
If you want to reference published lore within the sourcebooks, Mordekanian's Tome of Foes gives a pretty extensive layout of the elf life cycle, including childhood/adolescence which to my reading seems reminiscent of the "dreamtime" tradition sometimes attributed to the indigenous peoples of Australia.
It's mentioned in the Monster Manual that Silver Dragons are particularly humanoid friendly, despite having lifespans somewhere in the ballpark of 20-fold in comparison to humans. They tend to befriend a humanoid family while polymorphed into human form themselves, then disappears for a generation or two to deal with dragon stuff, but tend to return and reacquaint as a long time family friend. Would be interesting if one befriended a particularly long lasting noble line and could serve as that advisory role to bring up
Love and marriage, I wouldn't necessarily place things strictly in a human ideal or failing framework regarding lasting love or life partnering. Sure, if you want to anthropomorphise the psychology of long lived beings, you may wind up with beings who have multiple love relationships over their lifespans. A contrary, outside of D&D lore would be the Jim Jarmusch vampire movie "Only Lovers Left Alive" where the two protagonist vampires have been together for centuries, their love for each other and their love for "art" being largely indistinguishable.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
This is one of the main reasons why affairs between humans and elves often end in tragedy in my homebrew world. In fact, for many years, relationships between the two were outlawed (though this was also partially because neither race fully trusted the other). An elf and a human ended up falling in love, even with though it was against their laws, which was one of the major factors that led to an alliance between the elves and humans. However, half elves that are born of an elf and human are still exceedingly rare, because they almost always end in death. Half elves that are the child of two half-elves or a half-elf and a human are far more common.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
There is definitely a nuance to playing races that look at age differently. In the heat of the moment, not necessarily as much... it's more in the downtime attitudes and activities and thinking about conversations for campfires. This is why I have a timeline for my longer lived characters, so that I can see what all they lived through (Spellplague, etc.) and how it impacted their outlook or the stories they were told by family. One could certainly be pedantic about that kind of information and always make mention of things like that, but I find that if I just sprinkle it in to the conversations we have around campfires or in a tavern that it brings in the notes of long life without throwing it in other's faces. And, sure, there are a lot of things that make elves and dwarves and gnomes both stereotypical and racist, but you can play into that or away from that with ease. In the end, the toolbox for playing these characters just has some different wrenches and drivers than humans do... cause let's face it, playing a human in a game can be just as challenging unless you are just playing yourself in any game. I guess I spend too long in community theatre trying to work out why this character does the actions they do that go along with the dialogue I have to speak, and what their voice sounds like. It's very similar... the key is to spend some time in developing it and find that inner character and what makes them tick. Once you do that, age is just one of the sockets in the toolset.
Members of a long lived race would usually have a different perception of the flow of life and what it means.
For example, there are people who have pets that feel they are members of the family. They still have dogs and cats as friends even though they know their life span is significantly less than ours. These folks mourn the passing of beloved friends but usually move on valuing the years of friendship and companionship. Humans would not be pets to elves but they would be friends and companions with much shorter life spans. They could value and deeply love those people even though they know that they won't live as long and will eventually be lost.
Anyway, I think it would come down to the longer lived species taking a long view on interactions and relationships. They might also have had a much broader set of experiences with many more people over centuries of existence. However, if the long lived species did not travel or remained within their own society, I would expect that their society would evolve slower than the outside world, new ideas would likely take longer to develop and grow - while for elves that traveled and lived within the outside societies the rate of change would likely be much faster. Makes for an interesting dichotomy and likely a good source of role play ideas.
However, most campaigns only last a few years of game time, so the realities of these long lives will not be an issue in the short span of a characters campaign life. If you are in a long established campaign setting as DM, you might want to express this in some of the NPC back stories.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
If you are in a long established campaign setting as DM, you might want to express this in some of the NPC back stories.
One reason I made sure that the secret mysterious events of the past in my Roman Empire campaign happened 2,000 years ago... so that no living elf could have been a witness, nor that elf's parents. They wouldn't know any more about it than I know about WW I that came directly from my grandmother... which is almost zilch. She rarely mentioned it and I never asked.
However, most campaigns only last a few years of game time, so the realities of these long lives will not be an issue in the short span of a characters campaign life. If you are in a long established campaign setting as DM, you might want to express this in some of the NPC back stories.
Oh yeah, this question was definitely not in terms of one campaign, just a larger range thing I was thinking about because I've recently been filling out a bit more lore on my homebrew world as the PCs get to higher levels, and when you have both an elven kingdom and fairly wide ranging travel it was something that was cropping up a lot.
Here is a max age chart I came up with using what I know about 5E lore. If the adult has some like 18/100. It means you are mature at the first age but not legally an adult to the second. The age difference fiction wise is always hard to over come, and I can think of a story which did it well.
I think this would be a good reason for the Half-Elven community to be close knit. They would understand the impact on the Elven and Half-Elven community members, and they would likely advise each other about looking ahead to these realities before marrying.
In my campaign setting there is a community in the Human lands near the border with the Elven lands that has a significant Half-Elven population. So the population is split about one-third each way. Originally it was all Human when it was an encampment for travelers. The community grew from a military encampment into a village and then a town. As Elves decided to marry into the community, Half-Elves were born. So the numbers of Elves and Half-Elves began to grow. However, the Humans die off early or relocate for whatever reasons and the Elves remain. They go on to live a long time as you point out. Many of the Elves leave the community and reintegrate into the Elven community. The Half-Elves remain behind and many marry other Half-Elves. Over time, the largest segment of the population will be Half-Elves because they live longer than Humans and are more vested in the community than the Elves that come to live there. I think the ultimate mix would be 10% Elves, 60% Half-Elves and 30% Humans. This community is developing its own cultural identity because of the mix of Elven and Human influences while the town itself is within a Human dominated realm.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
So this is something I've been thinking about for a while, especially with the new Star Wars High Republic books coming out where Yoda is referred to as 'ancient' 200 years before the events of the movies - from what I've seen, most of the sourcebooks and things are written with human lifespans in mind, but how different is this to what would actually happen since you have races living between 60 years (goblins) and 750 years (elves). Disclaimer: This might get pretty long.
First: Long-lived adventurers
Many people will have played as an elf, or a dwarf, or a gnome, etc. If you think about how the pace of their lives differs to humans (eg. elves maturing at 100), how would it psychologically effect them to gain massive amounts of power in such a relatively short space of time? How would they deal with their close friends, who they have shared so much with, dying while they are in their prime (assuming the group has a mix of races)? If it is so easy and quick to get to higher levels, and they have however many hundreds of years to do it in, why are there not more supremely powerful adventurers?
Second: Life among other cultures
This mainly concerns NPCs and lore, but may affect PCs with urchin or orphan backgrounds. In the PHB it says that to a dwarf the difference between an acquaintance and a friend is 100 years - given how many races don't live that long, how does this affect politics and business? Are dwarves and elves more likely to remain among their own kind because of their long lives? How do these races affect the world's knowledge of the past - if you apply this to our world, the 1300s would still be in living memory.
Third: Cultural impact
Take the example in the last section - how much would an elf born during the height of the feudal era have been affected by the changes in society? Eg. if we take the start of the journey towards gender equality and the rise of feminism to be the 60s, that change would have taken place during 1/15th of an elf's life, equivalent to about 5 years in our lives. To put it another way - 750 years is 25 30-year human generations. So how does the fact that most races live longer than humans affect the rate of societal change? How did developing in this world affect the culture of humans?
Fourth: Half-elves
This is something that seems very simple, but there are countless examples of love between elves and humans, and most of them end up with some form of suicide, either through actual death or the acceptance of a mortal life. Elves that have half-elf children or find their love among other races know they will probably see their partner, their children, and their grandchildren die before they do. Why would they choose this?
If you read to the end of this, thanks fo sticking with it. It's just an issue that I don't think gets considered too often when making fantasy things, which is fair enough given they are being written by humans, and it does raise a lot of questions about how somewhere like the Forgotten Realms actually functions on a micro and macro level.
Long-lived Races will likely be very slow to change, but also would likely not forget the lessons of history like shorter lived races do. For Humans, 600 years ago is almost ancient history, and easily lost to the annals of time. For Elves, that could have been childhood, or at most their parents’ childhoods.
Think of it this way, most IRL people have forgotten the lessons learned in the 1790s during the French Revolution, and again in the 1860s-‘90s Durocher Russian Revolution. That’s why things like wealth distributions in America have hit the same ratios as those countries had back then, because the oligarchs have forgotten what may happen. But for many Elves, that total timespan is less than half a lifetime, are how a Human might consider something that happened in the 1980s half a lifetime ago.
Also, a concept like “‘til death do us part” would take on a whole new meaning for for such a long lived race. As such, elves would likely only mate for as long as it takes to raise a child (or two) to the age of majority, so 100-150 years in their culture depending on how spaced out the births would be. A lifetime commitment to a single individual like that would likely be very rare for them.
Heck, half of the Human marriages don’t last until “death,” but instead end in divorce once the kids are at least in college or graduated, about 20 years, or 1 generation. (Human generations are measured around 20 years.) Of course, in “ye olden times,” humans considered 13-15 as the age of majority. (Romeo was 15 and Juliette was 13 if I remember correctly.) Even in D&D’s pseudomedieval setting I think the my recognize it as around 17-18. As such, I calculate an Elven generation to be about 150-190ish years, give or take a decade or two.
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If you want to reference published lore within the sourcebooks, Mordekanian's Tome of Foes gives a pretty extensive layout of the elf life cycle, including childhood/adolescence which to my reading seems reminiscent of the "dreamtime" tradition sometimes attributed to the indigenous peoples of Australia.
It's mentioned in the Monster Manual that Silver Dragons are particularly humanoid friendly, despite having lifespans somewhere in the ballpark of 20-fold in comparison to humans. They tend to befriend a humanoid family while polymorphed into human form themselves, then disappears for a generation or two to deal with dragon stuff, but tend to return and reacquaint as a long time family friend. Would be interesting if one befriended a particularly long lasting noble line and could serve as that advisory role to bring up
Love and marriage, I wouldn't necessarily place things strictly in a human ideal or failing framework regarding lasting love or life partnering. Sure, if you want to anthropomorphise the psychology of long lived beings, you may wind up with beings who have multiple love relationships over their lifespans. A contrary, outside of D&D lore would be the Jim Jarmusch vampire movie "Only Lovers Left Alive" where the two protagonist vampires have been together for centuries, their love for each other and their love for "art" being largely indistinguishable.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
This is one of the main reasons why affairs between humans and elves often end in tragedy in my homebrew world. In fact, for many years, relationships between the two were outlawed (though this was also partially because neither race fully trusted the other). An elf and a human ended up falling in love, even with though it was against their laws, which was one of the major factors that led to an alliance between the elves and humans. However, half elves that are born of an elf and human are still exceedingly rare, because they almost always end in death. Half elves that are the child of two half-elves or a half-elf and a human are far more common.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
There is definitely a nuance to playing races that look at age differently. In the heat of the moment, not necessarily as much... it's more in the downtime attitudes and activities and thinking about conversations for campfires. This is why I have a timeline for my longer lived characters, so that I can see what all they lived through (Spellplague, etc.) and how it impacted their outlook or the stories they were told by family. One could certainly be pedantic about that kind of information and always make mention of things like that, but I find that if I just sprinkle it in to the conversations we have around campfires or in a tavern that it brings in the notes of long life without throwing it in other's faces. And, sure, there are a lot of things that make elves and dwarves and gnomes both stereotypical and racist, but you can play into that or away from that with ease. In the end, the toolbox for playing these characters just has some different wrenches and drivers than humans do... cause let's face it, playing a human in a game can be just as challenging unless you are just playing yourself in any game. I guess I spend too long in community theatre trying to work out why this character does the actions they do that go along with the dialogue I have to speak, and what their voice sounds like. It's very similar... the key is to spend some time in developing it and find that inner character and what makes them tick. Once you do that, age is just one of the sockets in the toolset.
Members of a long lived race would usually have a different perception of the flow of life and what it means.
For example, there are people who have pets that feel they are members of the family. They still have dogs and cats as friends even though they know their life span is significantly less than ours. These folks mourn the passing of beloved friends but usually move on valuing the years of friendship and companionship. Humans would not be pets to elves but they would be friends and companions with much shorter life spans. They could value and deeply love those people even though they know that they won't live as long and will eventually be lost.
Anyway, I think it would come down to the longer lived species taking a long view on interactions and relationships. They might also have had a much broader set of experiences with many more people over centuries of existence. However, if the long lived species did not travel or remained within their own society, I would expect that their society would evolve slower than the outside world, new ideas would likely take longer to develop and grow - while for elves that traveled and lived within the outside societies the rate of change would likely be much faster. Makes for an interesting dichotomy and likely a good source of role play ideas.
However, most campaigns only last a few years of game time, so the realities of these long lives will not be an issue in the short span of a characters campaign life. If you are in a long established campaign setting as DM, you might want to express this in some of the NPC back stories.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
One reason I made sure that the secret mysterious events of the past in my Roman Empire campaign happened 2,000 years ago... so that no living elf could have been a witness, nor that elf's parents. They wouldn't know any more about it than I know about WW I that came directly from my grandmother... which is almost zilch. She rarely mentioned it and I never asked.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
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Oh yeah, this question was definitely not in terms of one campaign, just a larger range thing I was thinking about because I've recently been filling out a bit more lore on my homebrew world as the PCs get to higher levels, and when you have both an elven kingdom and fairly wide ranging travel it was something that was cropping up a lot.
Here is a max age chart I came up with using what I know about 5E lore. If the adult has some like 18/100. It means you are mature at the first age but not legally an adult to the second. The age difference fiction wise is always hard to over come, and I can think of a story which did it well.
Race Adult Old Venerable
Aarakocra 3 25-30 31-35
Aasimar 18 155-160 160-175
Bugbear 16 70-80 80-90
Deep Gnome 18/40 200-250 250-300
Dragonborn 15 60-80 80-100
Dwarf 18/50 300-350 350-400
Elf 18/100 700-750 750-800
Firbolg 30 400-500 500-600
Genasi 18 110-120 120-130
Gith 18 75-100 100-125
Goblin 8 50-60 60-70
Goliath 18 75-100 100-125
Gnome 18/40 300-350 350-500
Halfling 20 200-250 250-300
Half Elf 20 140-180 180-220
Half-Orc 14 60-75 75-90
Hobgoblin 18 75-100 100-125
Human 18 75-100 100-125
Kobold 6 110-120 120-135
Kenku 12 50-60 60-70
LizardFolk 14 50-60 60-70
Orc 12 40-50 50-60
Tabaxi 18 75-100 100-125
Tiefling 18 80-110 110-130
Tortle 15 50-60 60-70
Triton 15 180-200 200-220
Yuan-Ti 18 75-100 100-125
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I think this would be a good reason for the Half-Elven community to be close knit. They would understand the impact on the Elven and Half-Elven community members, and they would likely advise each other about looking ahead to these realities before marrying.
In my campaign setting there is a community in the Human lands near the border with the Elven lands that has a significant Half-Elven population. So the population is split about one-third each way. Originally it was all Human when it was an encampment for travelers. The community grew from a military encampment into a village and then a town. As Elves decided to marry into the community, Half-Elves were born. So the numbers of Elves and Half-Elves began to grow. However, the Humans die off early or relocate for whatever reasons and the Elves remain. They go on to live a long time as you point out. Many of the Elves leave the community and reintegrate into the Elven community. The Half-Elves remain behind and many marry other Half-Elves. Over time, the largest segment of the population will be Half-Elves because they live longer than Humans and are more vested in the community than the Elves that come to live there. I think the ultimate mix would be 10% Elves, 60% Half-Elves and 30% Humans. This community is developing its own cultural identity because of the mix of Elven and Human influences while the town itself is within a Human dominated realm.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
This is why I shortened long-lived races' lifespans for my setting.
Except for halflings. Those guys don't care.
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