D&D General Alien Character Mindsets: Elves should be pretty conservative about almost everything.

[darjr]

The way I see it is they are bored out of their gord, they have seen it all. They crave new things. But they know they’ll never live down any untoward behavior. Elves remember these things, and they judge. So it’s a constant struggle to light everything on fire just to see something new and being civil and polite because god forbid any elf forget they used the tea spoon to eat their salad one time.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yeah, honestly, I'm not getting the disconnect in this conversation we're having, Bill, so I'm gonna let it drop before either of us gets aggravated, or more aggravated as the case might be.

You are clearly not understanding how the internet works. This is where you are supposed to double down by wildly mischaracterizing my position and resorting to ad hominem attacks.


….


Good call. I was just feeding my OCD.

 

[Stormonu]

"I've forgotten more than you'll ever know."

One of the things I've noticed as I get older is not only the time compression, but also that vivid memories I had year ago have settled to the point I can't recall them without someone else remarking on them or contemplating them for a day or so. It's something I've always thought happening to elves. They "forget" past memories so they can live anew. They may only actively remember the last fifty or hundred years or so and might have to "trance" to dredge up old memories they've long consigned to the dust bin. It's tough to live for eternity if you remember all those regrets or cling to past happy memories. You'd probably be more "in tune" with the modern age if you could throw away all those unneeded or unwanted memories. You could have had a past life as a warrior, tired of it and shaken off the memories - and now you've become a hometown cleric whose chosen to cast off all those old battles and combat training - along with memories of the lives you took so long ago.

Also, in some campaigns, elves don't develop the frailties of old age, and find themselves slowing down. When your that eternal 23-year-old (or younger) for centuries you might not suffer time compression either. Eternally, you are Peter Pan.

Or at least, that's how it works for the elves in my homebrew.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

"I've forgotten more than you'll ever know."

One of the things I've noticed as I get older is not only the time compression, but also that vivid memories I had year ago have settled to the point I can't recall them without someone else remarking on them or contemplating them for a day or so. It's something I've always thought happening to elves. They "forget" past memories so they can live anew. They may only actively remember the last fifty or hundred years or so and might have to "trance" to dredge up old memories they've long consigned to the dust bin. It's tough to live for eternity if you remember all those regrets or cling to past happy memories. You'd probably be more "in tune" with the modern age if you could throw away all those unneeded or unwanted memories. You could have had a past life as a warrior, tired of it and shaken off the memories - and now you've become a hometown cleric whose chosen to cast off all those old battles and combat training - along with memories of the lives you took so long ago.

Also, in some campaigns, elves don't develop the frailties of old age, and find themselves slowing down. When your that eternal 23-year-old (or younger) for centuries you might not suffer time compression either. Eternally, you are Peter Pan.

Or at least, that's how it works for the elves in my homebrew.

I love the idea of a level 1 elf who is 600 years old, but has only been a wizard for about 20 years. Before that she was a baker, an athlete, a carpenter, and a schoolteacher, depending on the century.


I really want to play that, now.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I love the idea of a level 1 elf who is 600 years old, but has only been a wizard for about 20 years. Before that she was a baker, an athlete, a carpenter, and a schoolteacher, depending on the century.


I really want to play that, now.

It's kind of funny, pathfinder 2e plays with that a bit with their ancestry feats for elves. Some of the feats include the ability to spend part of your daily preparation "remembering" a skill you used to have, so maybe you might choose to include the baker's skill for a day, the athlete for another etc.

I forget what all it's called, but I like to think of it as "the power of nostalgia"

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's kind of funny, pathfinder 2e plays with that a bit with their ancestry feats for elves. Some of the feats include the ability to spend part of your daily preparation "remembering" a skill you used to have, so maybe you might choose to include the baker's skill for a day, the athlete for another etc.

I forget what all it's called, but I like to think of it as "the power of nostalgia"

the new elves in MMoM have a similar thing with their Trance! I like it!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I actually enjoy a good laugh every time someone asks if a 30 year old Elf wears diapers and sucks their thumb.

yes

 

[Voranzovin]

But it's not about "Conserving" society. It's about preserving their personal lifestyle the way they like it in a world that is changing around them. I used the US as an example because it's easy to see just how drastically our society has changed in the last 200 odd years. It's easy to see the disconnect between people in their 80s and people in their 20s and elves in this society would be even -more- out of touch because they'd be pushing 400 in the modern day.

I rather like the idea that elves are incredibly conservative, but not in a way humans would recognize. The world they long for is so old, it goes right through human ideas of conservatism and back out the other side. The Elder Kingdoms didn't have judicial systems, or monetary systems, or even commerce as we'd understand it. They didn't have anything we'd recognize as laws. Instead, they had a bewildering web of esoteric customs and ancient pacts so old that their original import had been forgotten even by the elves. Occasionally, one of the Elvenlords would just suddenly draw their enchanted blade--probably named eldarion letharniel, the blade of strife or something--and behead a seemingly random onlooker, and every elf present would know exactly what subtle infraction that person had committed. That world was cruel, but it was also full of passion and beauty and tragedy and life, so much more then the drab grey world we know today.

The elves, as elves are wont to do, mourn their fallen kingdoms in songs of such beauty and power that anyone who hears them is transported to that long-lost time, and loses themselves in the sorrow of the elves, never to see again the majesty of...wait a minute. Stop singing! That sucked for literally everyone who wasn't an elf! Yes, it did! That's why you don't have majestic kingdoms of whatever anymore. No, I don't want your pamphlet.

I would add that it seems nearly impossible to imagine that elves don't stay "young" for longer than humans do, anyway. Otherwise, they'd space out thinking about old friends and next thing realize a year has passed, and that just isn't a functional model for a creature that has to eat and upkeep their physical body.

That's actually pretty much how I do treat elves in my world. They don't actually starve to death very much, but they do lose track of time, and they mostly can't function very well in human society. Most elves live out in the woods and are never seen by humans--the ones that are are vagabonds, rarely capable of holding down a job or maintaining friendships with shorter-lived races--I mean, you turn your back and they up and die while you're not looking.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There's an interesting reverse of this same concept, applied to dragonborn.

That is, dragonborn generally have lifespans equivalent to humans (or at least they did in 4e, and I don't really care if that's changed.) But...dragonborn also mature more quickly than humans. Much more quickly. Shockingly quickly, in fact.

Dragonborn gestate in their eggs for something reasonably similar to human pregnancy times, but this allows dragonborn women to, y'know, do things instead of being stuck pregnant. This also helps alleviate many of the rather serious issues with giving birth since dragonborn lay their eggs at least a few months before the child is ready to hatch. IIRC, dragonborn children are even semi-aware of their environment in the weeks leading up to hatching.

As soon as they hatch, though, the developmental differences set in. Dragonborn children can stand and walk within hours of hatching. Not just crawl, walk. Can you imagine how different it would be for human development if infants were standing and walking within their first few hours? Children would be both much more dangerous (being, y'know, way more mobile) but also much better able to protect themselves and far less dependent on their parents for survival. Though unlikely, it is actually plausible that an abandoned dragonborn "infant" (if that's even the appropriate term) could legitimately be raised by bears or whatever and actually have a decent chance of survival.

But it doesn't stop there. The mother nurses her child for the first few months of life as their teeth grow in, and then gradually transitions the child to soft food, then ordinary food. By the end of the child's first year, it has the development of a three-year-old human, meaning many dragonborn are fully capable of speech at least by six months of age, possibly younger. Again, imagine a six-month-old human that can walk unaided and talk. That's crazy!

We're also told that dragonborn "mature quickly throughout [their] youthful development" (which presumably means puberty). By 12 years old, most dragonborn have reached adult height and simply need to "fill out" their imposing form over the next three years or so. Meaning, dragonborn have the development of a 3-year-old after one year, and the development of roughly a 16-year-old at 12, being fully physical and mental adults at 15, where humans take three to six additional years to get that done.

Now, to put that in some context: Incredible prodigies among human beings generally hit their stride in their mid-teens, aka the time the average dragonborn becomes physically and cognitively mature. Truly unbelievable masters, like Mozart, begin their impressive feats before they even hit double digits.

This means a "Dragonborn Alexander the Great," who was commanding armies and winning battles etc. at a mere 16 years of age, would probably be closer to 12-13. Dragonborn literally are anime protagonists. They legitimately could have full careers and impressive accomplishments under their belts before officially becoming teenagers. And this developmental head start will stick with them their whole lives, and (for women) be compounded by not having to waste so much time unable to do things because of pregnancy, on top of having far lower infant and maternal mortality due to far lower risk of puerperal fever and other postpartum infections. Dragonborn settlements will hit self-sustaining populations about 30% faster than human equivalents. Dragonborn societies will have (effectively) double manpower because their women are fully fit to participate in as much combat as their men in most cases. And, other than their higher dependency on protein-rich diets (and thus, most likely, their need to depend on pastoralism and/or aquaculture much more than irrigation-based agriculture), they generally have the same psychological and physiological needs as humans. Oh, and they heal better and faster than humans do, so even if they suffer injuries or illnesses, they're more likely to survive and bounce back.

Dragonborn, in practice, should be an incredibly scary group to see roll into an area. They would be primarily limited by dietary concerns and socioeconomic conditions, not by developmental ones, because in an environment where dragonborn and human(oid)s have their needs equivalently met, dragonborn should absolutely outcompete humans. It wouldn't even take that long, from a historical perspective: if dragonborn generations are about 15 years while human generations are about 20 years, then even if the human population started out 100 times larger than the dragonborn one, in 400 years the dragonborn population will fully catch up. And that's ONLY counting the generational-turnover factor; the lower death rates (particularly among "pregnant" dragonborn and infants) and higher resilience against injury should prop those numbers up even more. (Of course, this assumes purely exponential growth, which is a fallacious assumption, but we're talking about small foothold societies where logistic concerns shouldn't affect things TOO much.)

I find all of this incredibly fascinating, from both a pure physiological standpoint and from a cultural-impact standpoint. Childhood is a brief and fleeting thing for humans; for dragonborn, it's practically "blink and you'll miss it." And yet they have essentially just as much lifespan ahead of them as humans do. They get started early and the dragonborn train does not stop.

 

[Tonguez]

... is that 4e lore, @RoughCoronet0? 'Cause... I do not remember any of that...

Reverie was a form of meditation with mental exercises that elves could choose to do instead of sleeping, and it helped with their memory... but what you've written, there, sounds way more involved than anything I read about it.

Yeah... uh... I get what the writers -say- Elves are like... but when you compare them to the worlds they're in and the media that is shown about them, they much more often ascribe to the kinds of mindsets I've written about above.

Even in FR they're written as CG or NG their whole societal structure is LG AF, with strong central governments (Monarchies, mostly, but occasionally Religious or Druidic rulership) and almost always a class system which puts specific elves above other elves in a hierarchy of citizenship.

Mostly because it's all based in high fantasy feudalism, but still.

Actually Chaotic (Free spirited, independent) elves? Would probably not have a society in short order... instead, they'd be rugged individualists off on their own living in the wild lands, farming, hunting, fishing, building their homes. Coming together only to mate and raise a child before going off on their own, again. Unattached to people, places, or identities beyond their own weird enjoyments out in the woods. They might swing by a friend's place, now and then, or entertain the occasional visitor... but mostly they'd just be alone.

Oh, sure, they might come to town now and then to take in the local Art Scene and see what's changed in theatre and music every couple decades...

Which is why there's a big bolded section in the middle to separate the example from the actual point.

But since you chose philosophy and art:

Why should elves care about art? Art, by it's very nature, is more ephemeral and fleeting than a spear or a shirt. A spear kept well can last multiple human lifetimes, but within a generation we see art change a dozen times into a dozen new permutations with one of the latest being DEEP FRIED MEMES.

You hung out with Eugene Delacroix and posed for this masterpiece:

And new artists are mass-producing THIS weirdness.

In just a handful of generations art can go from something beautiful and representative to something abstract but full of meaning to something freaking awful on the eyes made up entirely of pop culture references and in-jokes within sub-communities.

Not that that should be significantly different from Eugene's art, which is an image of something that happened in the wider world that you don't actually care about.

Because art is a reflection upon or a rejection of a given society, sentiment, or period of time.

Why would an elf who cares nothing about society care about art?

but again your basing that on human art styles which because humans only have 30 years to express themselves before another generation wants the limelight means that styles change quickly.

Maybe Elves spend there years crafting a single seed into a 1000 acre espallier woodland, where everything from the deep humus layer to the species of birds in the canopy is part of a grand design. Trees change significantly over 1000 years and a Elf has the time to appreciate that adaption, even more so when they have the ability to guide the change.

and noone said elfs were interested in society, its there view of whats important is likely quite different