D&D 5E MTOF: Elves are gender-swapping reincarnates and I am on board with it

I am reminded of Donald Glover's recent take on Lando . . . in a universe with an endless variety of sentient life, some guys are just going to flirt with everything.

I dunno . . . I'm glad they are trying to look at some of these classic fantasy races through a different lens (gender fluidity and souls that actually don't follow the same rules as human souls), and I'm glad that this lens is one that in 2018 is going to make this game seem a little more open.

Cool. So more in line with Corellon? Pretty neat.

I like the idea of elves being non-human and alien. We even get a bit of this in Eberron where we are told that some Aerenal elves marry within their own families without any fuss because "inbreeding" is something that affects human biology but not elven biology. But this naturally weirds out humans from Khorvaire. As if the death cult of living dead elves were not creepy enough for humans.

gyor said:

I honestly never understood the difference between a soul and a spirit honestly.

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Depending on which reallife nomenclature you are using.

• The soul (nefesh, psukhe, chi) is the bodily lifeforce. So, animals have souls, for example.
• The spirit (ruakh, pneuma, hugar) is the emotional and intellectual inner life of a person, the self-identity, often understood as a kind of personal mental force. So, the spirit of a pep rally, is a kind of presence of emotion, intellect, and self-identity.

In some traditions, there is a higher level of a persons life, involving pure consciousness (neshama, atman), being the best version of oneself, ideal altruistic and eternal. Even a higher level transcends the sense of a particular self, and encompasses all beings as aspects of oneself (khaya, anatman). And some traditions relate there is an aspect of a human that has never separated from the divine infinite (ykhida, brahman).

The first two levels, ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ are the aspects of oneself that people normally exhibit in ordinary daily life − the sense of a self as being a body and an inner life. The higher aspects are more existentialist and the discussions of mystics and philosophers.

Because the term ‘soul’ is often used to mean all these levels of a person, and because the term ‘spirit’ is used to mean many different kinds of things, these terms are often used in ambiguous ways.



In reallife folkbelief, elves are nature spirits (of fate and fertility). To claim that elves lack a ‘soul’, is the same thing as saying they lack a physical body, and obviously cannot physically resurrect. To claim that elves are a ‘spirit’ means they are an emotional-intellectual presence.

In D&D, heh, I doubt D&D really knows what it is talking about when using these terms. In the 1e Greyhawk setting, the terms probably mean that human ‘souls’ go to a celestial plane or an infernal plane after the death of the body, while elf ‘spirits’ keep on showing up in the material plane, via reincarnation.

delericho said:

I don't think that's the point. I think this is about saying, "you are welcome here."

My only concern with the approach taken is the risk of trivialising the experiences of the relevant minorities. But I'll leave that for them to say if there's an issue or not - they're better qualified.

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As only one of the resident trans gamers her, I won't speak for everyone else. However, for me, fluid elves are rad as hell and should become the default in future publishings. The bigger thing to me, though, was that aside from calling Corellon a father figure (and a couple lines that seem more like slip ups than deliberate), they made great lengths to avoid referring to the god by a given gender in this book. This seems in line with the concept of mutability the book goes for and in some incredibly small way validates the NB friends I have.

JPL said:

I dunno . . . to me, Red Sonja being simulaneously hypersexualized and sexless is pandering. Old-school half-orcs where the default origin story was "rape" is pandering. As much as I love Robert Howard, all of these stories where the purest-blooded white guy crushes the enemy and hears the lamentations of the women are pandering. Lovecraft's paranoid obsession about racial corruption is pandering. Tarzan and the Phantom showing the people of Africa how it's done is pandering.

And a lot of stuff that could have been written off as "pandering" at the time, or that looks clumsy or cringey in hindsight, might be the first step towards something more substantial. Maybe Uhura was tokenism, but the lead of the new series is a black woman.

This game is not thriving by keeping us middle-aged grognards in our comfort zones, man. It's supposed to be about telling stories . . . there are more stories to be told than "white guy's Hero's Journey," with non-white guys as flavor or opponents or sidekicks and women as the prize.

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Somehow I doubt you complain about African fiction or Asian fiction featuring characters that look more like their majority population. I also assume you are well intentioned.

i saw several female character in Conan stories and even the movie as quite capable. I am thinking of the pirate captain as wel as his party member in the film.

I don't know if it is pandering per se but have a strong suspicion that gender changing elves are not archetypal and desirable for most players whether they speak up in a forum like this or not. If that is the case what is the point?

Chuck Ocenasek said:

More WotC pandering. Way to go.

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Well how else is WoTC going to get those groups $?

Leatherhead said:

So, how does reincarnation work with selling your soul (a la warlock)?

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The agreement trumps the normal spiritual processes.

Shiroiken said:

Oh, and as a grognard, elves don't have souls, they have spirits

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That was actually a fairly large plot point in a pair of 3.0/3.5 campaigns I ran. Immortal beings (my elves and dragons didn't die of age) had spirits, but that also meant that their base nature was immutable. One of the reasons why chromatic dragons were always evil. (And that my orcs were NOT irredeemable and just murderhobo fodder).

Elven spirits returned to a great vessel of spirits, and newborn spirits were dipped from the Pool of Souls, combining bits of lots of other ones. But I had multiple elven "court" demiplanes that went in and out of conjunction with the prime material plane, and for all of the first campaign none were connected - so the elves were all ones exiled/abandoned. And they had a really small vessel of souls - literally an elf had to die for another to be born, and those around a while would voluntarily suicide to allow enough souls in the vessel to allow "mixing".

In the second campaign a new Court was in conjunction, and the party actually found the Pool of Souls and used it effectively as supercharged material components. They also swam through it to get to the Pool on the prime material to return home, absorbing bits. (Many learned elvish or some other skill, and picked up quirks).

delericho said:

I don't think that's the point. I think this is about saying, "you are welcome here."

My only concern with the approach taken is the risk of trivialising the experiences of the relevant minorities. But I'll leave that for them to say if there's an issue or not - they're better qualified.



And what about the person who wants to play a transgender character but doesn't want it to be a big deal? After all, I get to play a male character and nobody bats an eyelid.

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I suggested the big sex charging quest to simulate a fantasy equiviliant to the challenges of surgical sex changes, but its an entirely optional thing, especial of changing the physical sex to match the gender is something the character doesn't want to do.

I did have a weird idea, should The Blessed of Corellon count as Shapeshifters for the purposes of game mechanics that effect shapeshifters?

JPL said:

I dunno . . . to me, Red Sonja being simulaneously hypersexualized and sexless is pandering. Old-school half-orcs where the default origin story was "rape" is pandering. As much as I love Robert Howard, all of these stories where the purest-blooded white guy crushes the enemy and hears the lamentations of the women are pandering. Lovecraft's paranoid obsession about racial corruption is pandering. Tarzan and the Phantom showing the people of Africa how it's done is pandering.

And a lot of stuff that could have been written off as "pandering" at the time, or that looks clumsy or cringey in hindsight, might be the first step towards something more substantial. Maybe Uhura was tokenism, but the lead of the new series is a black woman.

This game is not thriving by keeping us middle-aged grognards in our comfort zones, man. It's supposed to be about telling stories . . . there are more stories to be told than "white guy's Hero's Journey," with non-white guys as flavor or opponents or sidekicks and women as the prize.

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How can a character be both Hypersexualized and Sexless? And trying bash people for having white characters and male leads is just as bad as bashing trans, female, and none white characters for being what they are, just let people people write and play the characters they want to without the guilt trip.

Personally I'm fine with all of it and I'm fine with hypersexual characters too, its a freaking fantasy for goodness sakes.