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

Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
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.

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.
Oh, I like this. I like this a lot.
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
Elves exist in worlds with humans. And orcs. Halflings. Gnomes. Every D&D race. They don't get to be absolutely isolated from other cultures, and the point is that those cultures would be dizzyingly swift to change by comparison to elves. The entire point is that compared to humans, Elves should be stuck under the weight of time, of personal history on a scale no human can ever actually experience.

A human who plants a palm tree may never enjoy the coconut, while an elf can plant a dozen, each one after eating the last, and enjoy them all.

(Coco De Mer takes 20-40 years to flower, and the coconut takes 6-10 years to ripen)
I mean, or the opposite could easily be true.

It'd be maladaptive to be stuck in the past, like literally maladaptive. If you lived potentially hundreds of years but got stuck in your ways in your, say, 40s or 60s or 100s or whatever, you'd probably die before you made it to 300, because you were unable to keep up with change, not just to society, but to environments, methods of warfare, the beings who are around, and so on. Only being incredibly magically powerful might prevent that.

This fits with a lot of fantasy ideas of elves as flighty or capricious, because honestly, unless they were a bit, they'd get locked into mindsets which passed their "best before" date millennia ago.
Yes, an elf that was -utterly- blind to the world around themself beyond an idea of the past would be maladaptive. SOME adaptation is needed just to deal with changes to environment and major societal advances in technology...

But also... uh... Look at Forgotten Realms.

It has been at the same High Fantasy Quasi-Medieval Borderline Renaissance technological level for about 3,000 years. So I think they'd be mostly okay. What they would be out of touch with is social customs of the younger races that advance faster than they do.
But ignoring that:

No. You're confusing "conservative thinking" in the small-c sense with very specific ideologies inaccurately labelled "conservative", which emerged extremely recently and are actually not at all "conservative". None of the Founding Fathers of the US would be "fiscal conservatives" by 2020s standards (or 1980s ones). Nor even the right-wing politicians of the 1940s and 1950s, for that matter. Just look at Eisenhower. It was him who warned us about the "military-industrial complex", not hippies, and advocated for social welfare programs. The whole modern idea of "fiscal conservatism" is just that - modern. It's just as modern as LGBT rights, for example, literally, it's from the same time period - the 1960s and 1970s!
Fair point. Very fair point. Though that particular example was tied up in the "Modern America Setting" and constrained by our systems which, y'know, favor the endless personal acquisition of wealth.
You're talking about people who would PREDATE CAPITALISM. Your logic might hold to some extent for beings who lived 200 years, and whose views got set in stone in their 50s, say, but 500? 700? That's BEFORE CAPITALISM. It's before money was a huge thing at all. They'd think Adam Smith was a dumb whippersnapper, and would have prevented his ideas getting anywhere if they could manage it.
Ea-Nasir has some complaints about his copper business on tablets written in cuneiform that might kind of undermine that idea... It's not the -modern- idea of capitalism, but the exchange of goods and services, the idea of individuals owning means of production, the division of labor largely determined by class, etc are way older than Adam Smith. S'why he wrote about it and codified the idea, but it had already been happening before him.

Debt, too. In which the wealthy lent land, resources, or straight up cash to others and expected prompt repayment with interest. And in the Code of Hammurabi there were lines about how debts were to be repaid and -whether- a debt needed to be repaid if circumstances made it impossible.

It may not have been named "Capitalism", yet... but what's in a name? A rose by any other would smell as sweet.
You've got to think about this in a less "in the box" way. Everything post-3000 BC is potentially "off the table". That very much includes things like physical money. When money/wealth is like, a physical thing someone can make off with, that's disadvantageous to a very long-lived being, if it's using that money. They'd want to crack down on that sort of thing. They'd also want to crack down on any middle or mercantile class appearing, or on any religions which weren't their religion and so on.
Physical money is just a representation of value as a form of abstraction. The actual source of the wealth comes from resource control and control of means of production. So long as the elf owns the mine or the forest or the farmland the money they use to represent the resources that are produced isn't disadvantageous at all.

Wealth and estate -can- be taken by force. S'why kingdoms fall and empires crumble. But whether that wealth is land, gemstones, coins, paper, or floating numbers the same remains true. And unless the elves are willing to destroy the systems of other races in the worlds (Humans gonna human after all) and have religious pogroms and so forth... not a lot to be done about it.

Also in 99% of campaign settings GODS ARE REAL so whether you like their religion or not is kinda irrelevant since they can drop lightning, plagues, or curses on you for getting uppity.
I'm not a big fan of the Malazan setting and I don't think it's well-handled in a lot of ways, but the author does at least attempt to grapple with some of this stuff, and it becomes clear that older mindsets, older ways of making way and so on are often just extremely dumb, and only work if you're incredibly magically powerful so that overrides the stupidity.
You're not wrong. You're not wrong at all.

I'm not saying that modern American Elves 300 years old who grew up in the colonies would be openly outright racist and sexist and get scandalized by a woman wearing a skirt short enough to see her calves.

I'm saying that what they have experienced, the full breadth of it, should be considered in roleplaying them. And while some of it, like Firearms being a constantly advancing thing, is really important... some of it, like Slang or what is the most current political debate about people's rights or how to use an ad blocker to keep malware from getting downloaded...

That stuff gets lost in the "Minutiae" pile of irrelevancies for someone who has seen -so much- change in regards to all those things.

Because what weighs more on a 300 year old mind? Whether 8-Tracks or the Civil Rights Movement? Which one are they more likely to remember and care about? PROBABLY not 8-tracks...

But they might complain about the changeover from Vinyl because records were around a lot longer than Laserdiscs were.
 

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Cadence

Legend
Supporter
Was out in our small patch of woods again today, laying waste to the fast growing invasives. The Wisteria, Nandina, Ailanthus altissima, etc... all grow almost as much in a month as the native sumac I put in have grown in two years.

Sometimes when I'm out doing it, I've wondered how Treants would react to some fast growing invasives spreading. Or what Treants on an island would do the second time they've experienced folks on a boat come over bringing who knows what insects and pests.

And now I'm wondering about it with Elves.

Also trying to remember how the old vampires were portrayed as far as memory and cultural stasis in VtM 2e.
 
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Do Dragonborn heal better? Ive never seen anything about that.
They did in 4e. Dragonborn add their Con modifier to their Healing Surge value.

What is strange to me is the idea that they develop so quickly and it doesn’t change their end point when they reach maturity.
I mean, dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals all mature at different rates but form very similar bodies at adulthood, similar enough that some diseases can naturally spread between them.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
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.
This post is doing the same thing that @Steampunkette's posts do. It assumes a human mindset and outlook on life. Who is to say how long it would take an elf to become bored with something, if they ever do. A human living for 800 years would crave new things and try to light things on fire to see something new, but I doubt elves are like that.
 

darjr

I crit!
This post is doing the same thing that @Steampunkette's posts do. It assumes a human mindset and outlook on life. Who is to say how long it would take an elf to become bored with something, if they ever do. A human living for 800 years would crave new things and try to light things on fire to see something new, but I doubt elves are like that.
I assume nothing. Nothing I say. What human would care about teaspoons and salad after 800 years?
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
I assume nothing. Nothing I say. What human would care about teaspoons and salad after 800 years?
You fight one of these in 800 years with a teaspoon and see how much you care!

31917522728_04196f26ef_b.jpg
 

darjr

I crit!
OK. An attempt at alien.

All elves know the entirety of their future and past. They see all of it as if they were vivid memories. At least that’s how we could explain it.

They act the way they do because it’s as good as the past for them, it’s just the way it is.
 

Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
This post is doing the same thing that @Steampunkette's posts do. It assumes a human mindset and outlook on life. Who is to say how long it would take an elf to become bored with something, if they ever do. A human living for 800 years would crave new things and try to light things on fire to see something new, but I doubt elves are like that.
They act like humans. They create societies in the same way as humans. Their language is fungible with English (or any other language it has been translated into) with the same conceptual structures and very few, if any, nontranslatable ideas less so, perhaps, than various human cultures on earth, today... because they were written by humans and their mindset is constrained by human ability to conceive of a mindset.

What I'm putting forth is a stepping stone towards a different mindset. Taking what we experience and know (nostalgia, discarding irrelevant information, etc) and applying it to an experience that we cannot have (300+ year lifespan).

Y'know... roleplaying advice.
OK. An attempt at alien.

All elves know the entirety of their future and past. They see all of it as if they were vivid memories. At least that’s how we could explain it.

They act the way they do because it’s as good as the past for them, it’s just the way it is.
Reminds me of Krull! I like it!

But why don't they ever tell anyone what is going to happen with perfect accuracy? And the answer is dice rolls and fickle players, of course... but... narratively speaking, an Elf that remembers every moment of their life has the ability to share the future, and in the process perhaps -change- their memory as things shift...

Though it also creates the uncomfortable prospect of an abjectly deterministic universe if there's nothing the elf can do outside of their life-path-memory and free will goes out the window.
 

Oh, I like this. I like this a lot.

Elves exist in worlds with humans. And orcs. Halflings. Gnomes. Every D&D race. They don't get to be absolutely isolated from other cultures, and the point is that those cultures would be dizzyingly swift to change by comparison to elves. The entire point is that compared to humans, Elves should be stuck under the weight of time, of personal history on a scale no human can ever actually experience.

A human who plants a palm tree may never enjoy the coconut, while an elf can plant a dozen, each one after eating the last, and enjoy them all.

(Coco De Mer takes 20-40 years to flower, and the coconut takes 6-10 years to ripen)

Yes, an elf that was -utterly- blind to the world around themself beyond an idea of the past would be maladaptive. SOME adaptation is needed just to deal with changes to environment and major societal advances in technology...

But also... uh... Look at Forgotten Realms.

It has been at the same High Fantasy Quasi-Medieval Borderline Renaissance technological level for about 3,000 years. So I think they'd be mostly okay. What they would be out of touch with is social customs of the younger races that advance faster than they do.

Fair point. Very fair point. Though that particular example was tied up in the "Modern America Setting" and constrained by our systems which, y'know, favor the endless personal acquisition of wealth.

Ea-Nasir has some complaints about his copper business on tablets written in cuneiform that might kind of undermine that idea... It's not the -modern- idea of capitalism, but the exchange of goods and services, the idea of individuals owning means of production, the division of labor largely determined by class, etc are way older than Adam Smith. S'why he wrote about it and codified the idea, but it had already been happening before him.

Debt, too. In which the wealthy lent land, resources, or straight up cash to others and expected prompt repayment with interest. And in the Code of Hammurabi there were lines about how debts were to be repaid and -whether- a debt needed to be repaid if circumstances made it impossible.

It may not have been named "Capitalism", yet... but what's in a name? A rose by any other would smell as sweet.

Physical money is just a representation of value as a form of abstraction. The actual source of the wealth comes from resource control and control of means of production. So long as the elf owns the mine or the forest or the farmland the money they use to represent the resources that are produced isn't disadvantageous at all.

Wealth and estate -can- be taken by force. S'why kingdoms fall and empires crumble. But whether that wealth is land, gemstones, coins, paper, or floating numbers the same remains true. And unless the elves are willing to destroy the systems of other races in the worlds (Humans gonna human after all) and have religious pogroms and so forth... not a lot to be done about it.

Also in 99% of campaign settings GODS ARE REAL so whether you like their religion or not is kinda irrelevant since they can drop lightning, plagues, or curses on you for getting uppity.

You're not wrong. You're not wrong at all.

I'm not saying that modern American Elves 300 years old who grew up in the colonies would be openly outright racist and sexist and get scandalized by a woman wearing a skirt short enough to see her calves.

I'm saying that what they have experienced, the full breadth of it, should be considered in roleplaying them. And while some of it, like Firearms being a constantly advancing thing, is really important... some of it, like Slang or what is the most current political debate about people's rights or how to use an ad blocker to keep malware from getting downloaded...

That stuff gets lost in the "Minutiae" pile of irrelevancies for someone who has seen -so much- change in regards to all those things.

Because what weighs more on a 300 year old mind? Whether 8-Tracks or the Civil Rights Movement? Which one are they more likely to remember and care about? PROBABLY not 8-tracks...

But they might complain about the changeover from Vinyl because records were around a lot longer than Laserdiscs were.
you are still assuming a direct human able to experience a 1000 year life span elves build societies of nothing but said individuals they are likely very good at understanding problems as they are noted for high magic which tends to take a high intellect so genuses who can have great Forethought must be far more common to them than humans, then you add in the fact that these are not normally the product of evolution but made by a demented everchanging paracausal force of nature named Corellon Larethian who is by nature completely insane to us so we are dealing with something utterly incomparable to us.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
How would that interact with long-lived races? Elves are usually portrayed as being at basically 100% until shortly before they die, mentally and sometimes physically, so presumably they wouldn't suffer from this - so would be less likely to get stuck in their ways.
I've never been a fan with the 100% healthy and young until right before you die and then suddenly everything changes. I can't remember which edition it was, but in one edition elves were immortal. Their age range was just how long until they got the urge to go and dwell with their gods forever. Basically they became Tolkien elves who after say 1000-1500 years decided to sail over the ocean to Aman. That's how I've run my elves since then.
 

Cadence

Legend
Supporter
you are still assuming a direct human able to experience a 1000 year life span elves build societies of nothing but said individuals they are likely very good at understanding problems as they are noted for high magic which tends to take a high intellect so genuses who can have great Forethought must be far more common to them than humans, then you add in the fact that these are not normally the product of evolution but made by a demented everchanging paracausal force of nature named Corellon Larethian who is by nature completely insane to us so we are dealing with something utterly incomparable to us.

Except they are bounded by the need to be able to be played by us in an RPG - and so they must be comparable and comprehensible to a great extent.

If they are turned into NPC/monsters only, that constraint can drift quite a bit, right?
 
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Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
you are still assuming a direct human able to experience a 1000 year life span elves build societies of nothing but said individuals they are likely very good at understanding problems as they are noted for high magic which tends to take a high intellect so genuses who can have great Forethought must be far more common to them than humans, then you add in the fact that these are not normally the product of evolution but made by a demented everchanging paracausal force of nature named Corellon Larethian who is by nature completely insane to us so we are dealing with something utterly incomparable to us.
See my previous post about how Elves are written by humans to have a largely human mindset, societal structure, language system, etc.

If they were utterly alien then no one would ever, or could ever, roleplay an Elf appropriately.

Or look at @Cadence's response to your post right before I made this one 'cause he sniped me like a -boss-.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
They act like humans. They create societies in the same way as humans. Their language is fungible with English (or any other language it has been translated into) with the same conceptual structures and very few, if any, nontranslatable ideas less so, perhaps, than various human cultures on earth, today... because they were written by humans and their mindset is constrained by human ability to conceive of a mindset.
They do not act like humans or create societies in the same way as humans. They have some similarities, yes, but that doesn't make their society or thought processes the same as human.

A lot of what you are using as your proof are designs from humans that wrote about elves. It can be really hard to imagine and write down what an alien elven society would look like, so these designers have taken the easy path in some instances. A good way to understand the differences is to read the books on elves from 2e and 3e. They take the time to delve deeply into the differences of the elves and how those differences shape their society.

" We do not even need sleep, instead deriving our rest by dwelling within our memories and hopes of the past: the act of Reverie. Some claim this stagnates us and causes us to live in the past. This is not so. We learn for the future by reliving the past.

We are the overlords of the forest, and for good reason. We are intimate with the very soil on which we walk, for our souls are tied to the soil. The ground beneath our feet holds us up, never betraying us to the enemy. Our forests embrace us by hiding us in their branches, ensuring that we do not inadvertently betray ourselves.

We can adapt to any environment anywhere, and there are members of our race in places most have deemed too inhospitable. Although you may not see our brethren, you may rest assured that they are there watching you . . . making sure you do not do anything to offend them.

We are, in short, the guardians and keepers of this world. We do not try to prove that we are naturally better than everyone else. We only know that our abilities far exceed those of most, and our long lives give us the perspective to use these abilities to their fullest extent.

This is not to say that the world should sit at our beck and call. To the contrary, we do what we can to ensure that we do not interfere with its workings too greatly. Indeed, we see our mission as one of restoring the world after you others are done with it. Unlike you people, our lives are not devoted to the idea that we must change the world, for we are fully aware that the world will change itself when it must needs."
 


Steampunkette

Rules Tinkerer and Freelance Writer
Supporter
They do not act like humans or create societies in the same way as humans. They have some similarities, yes, but that doesn't make their society or thought processes the same as human.

A lot of what you are using as your proof are designs from humans that wrote about elves. It can be really hard to imagine and write down what an alien elven society would look like, so these designers have taken the easy path in some instances. A good way to understand the differences is to read the books on elves from 2e and 3e. They take the time to delve deeply into the differences of the elves and how those differences shape their society.

" We do not even need sleep, instead deriving our rest by dwelling within our memories and hopes of the past: the act of Reverie. Some claim this stagnates us and causes us to live in the past. This is not so. We learn for the future by reliving the past.

We are the overlords of the forest, and for good reason. We are intimate with the very soil on which we walk, for our souls are tied to the soil. The ground beneath our feet holds us up, never betraying us to the enemy. Our forests embrace us by hiding us in their branches, ensuring that we do not inadvertently betray ourselves.

We can adapt to any environment anywhere, and there are members of our race in places most have deemed too inhospitable. Although you may not see our brethren, you may rest assured that they are there watching you . . . making sure you do not do anything to offend them.

We are, in short, the guardians and keepers of this world. We do not try to prove that we are naturally better than everyone else. We only know that our abilities far exceed those of most, and our long lives give us the perspective to use these abilities to their fullest extent.

This is not to say that the world should sit at our beck and call. To the contrary, we do what we can to ensure that we do not interfere with its workings too greatly. Indeed, we see our mission as one of restoring the world after you others are done with it. Unlike you people, our lives are not devoted to the idea that we must change the world, for we are fully aware that the world will change itself when it must needs."
Yes. What humans have written about elves.

Because Elves aren't real. Elves don't -actually- have a mindset. They don't have brain chemistry. They don't exist. All we have is the fantasy of what has been written for a given campaign setting.

And based on what we have, which is not "Evidence" but the sum totality of all that exists in relation to elves, they're largely "Human But" because, again, it cannot be stressed any harder, they are inventions of the human mind.

They have kingdoms. With the same positions. With the same ideals of "Royal Bloodlines blessed by the Gods". Divine right to rule and all that. Guardians of the world? Who appointed them to that position? Right. Gods. Of course. Like Arthur was ordained by God to be the keeper and protector of England.

Because we are human. Elves that exist in media, whether comic books, movies, TV shows, Lord of the Rings, whatever else, have the same emotions and ideas and lives that we do, just on a grander time scale. Even when we create mythical magical explanations for how they interact with the world, like being 'One with the Forest' it is always described in human terms and in ways that humans can comprehend because it would be impossible for a human to describe something in terms that are not human and in a way that is incomprehensible to humans because it would be a human saying it.

Now if you wanna -create- an Elven mindset that is more alien, I am 100% down for it. I'm -eager- to see new mindsets that aren't just "Human but"... But.

It won't be an elf. Not in the way they exist in culture or media. It'd be something new you'd slap the name "Elf" on to. And that's not a -bad- thing, just, y'know. Recognize our limits in the face of cultural momentum.
 

Cadence

Legend
Supporter
Now if you wanna -create- an Elven mindset that is more alien, I am 100% down for it. I'm -eager- to see new mindsets that aren't just "Human but"... But.

It won't be an elf. Not in the way they exist in culture or media. It'd be something new you'd slap the name "Elf" on to. And that's not a -bad- thing, just, y'know. Recognize our limits in the face of cultural momentum.

Is it too late to grab back the Eladrin name for that?
 

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
They did in 4e. Dragonborn add their Con modifier to their Healing Surge value.


I mean, dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals all mature at different rates but form very similar bodies at adulthood, similar enough that some diseases can naturally spread between them.
Bodies, sure. I'm talking about their minds, though. Scientists are fairly sure that humans are as intellectually advanced as we are, in significant part, because of how long we take for our brains to finish cooking.

And I'd say that dragonborn and humans have a much greater difference than wolves and coyotes.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
Yes. What humans have written about elves.

Because Elves aren't real. Elves don't -actually- have a mindset. They don't have brain chemistry. They don't exist. All we have is the fantasy of what has been written for a given campaign setting.

And based on what we have, which is not "Evidence" but the sum totality of all that exists in relation to elves, they're largely "Human But" because, again, it cannot be stressed any harder, they are inventions of the human mind.

They have kingdoms. With the same positions. With the same ideals of "Royal Bloodlines blessed by the Gods". Divine right to rule and all that. Guardians of the world? Who appointed them to that position? Right. Gods. Of course. Like Arthur was ordained by God to be the keeper and protector of England.

Because we are human. Elves that exist in media, whether comic books, movies, TV shows, Lord of the Rings, whatever else, have the same emotions and ideas and lives that we do, just on a grander time scale. Even when we create mythical magical explanations for how they interact with the world, like being 'One with the Forest' it is always described in human terms and in ways that humans can comprehend because it would be impossible for a human to describe something in terms that are not human and in a way that is incomprehensible to humans because it would be a human saying it.

Now if you wanna -create- an Elven mindset that is more alien, I am 100% down for it. I'm -eager- to see new mindsets that aren't just "Human but"... But.

It won't be an elf. Not in the way they exist in culture or media. It'd be something new you'd slap the name "Elf" on to. And that's not a -bad- thing, just, y'know. Recognize our limits in the face of cultural momentum.
I love how out of all of that quote on elves I pulled from D&D, you focused on "Guardians of the world" and ignored everything else. You ignored where it explicitly says that elves are not mired in the past and stagnant, but use what they relive the past to learn for the future. And you ignored where elves don't change the world because the world will change itself, not because they are against change. The conservatism you mention in your OP doesn't exist in D&D elves as a race, though certainly there can be some individuals who are that way.
 
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