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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9572060" data-attributes="member: 7737">Commentary:Ah, the long-lived J.R.R. Tolkien style elves -- the bane of D&D world-building since its inception.You can't build up a mysterious past that no-one understands when there is a centuries old elf lady handy who was present when all the mysterious stuff went down.And at age 200, Estla is still a spring chicken. According to the AD&D DMG (page 12), wood elves can reach the "venerable" age of 1,101 - 1,350 years old. 200 years old makes Estla on the low end of "mature" -- just out of young adulthood, in fact. She's about the equivalent of a 30 year old human. Thus there should be plenty of older elves running around, including her parents and grandparents.In the context of this book, there should be no mystery about what happened to the Empire of Bhukod because 500 years ago is less than middle aged for every elf subrace in the AD&D DMG.To take a real-world analogy of a time "pretty long ago, but definitely within living memory of a middle-aged human": it would be similar to asking me, Joshua, what it was like growing up in the 1980s. I could tell you about the most dramatic things that made the news, the general tone of the Cold War between the USA and USSR, major political developments in the USA, etc. All from memory. All without looking at a single written document.If your story's plot depends on no-one remembering the 1980s, Joshua blows up that plot all by himself.If your gamebook's plot depends on no-one remembering Ancient Bhukod, one middle-aged elf blows up that plot all by herself.Fantasy races who live much longer than a normal human lifespan ruin your worldbuilding and book plotting.</blockquote>

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