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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8683121" data-attributes="member: 6796468">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.Oh, probably.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.But it's also meant to apply to a Campaign Setting. So Elves in, say, Forgotten Realms. How much -weight- should they give to a random assortment of adventurers begging for aid because their scrappy little kingdom that they forged out for themselves in an unoccupied portion of the Sword Coast is going to get ransacked by an orc horde sweeping the Sword Coast to specifically wreck this one kingdom that really upset them?Now these adventurers are pretty famous. They did some adventuring up around Ten Towns and helped out in Waterdeep and maybe even fought a Dragon in Neverwinter...But who the heck are they to an elf in Silverymoon? You're High Lord Methrammar Aerasumé, Lord of the Silver Marches spanning from Anauroch to the Evermoors, from Glimmerwood to Turlang's Wood. You have hundreds of thousands of lives in your hands every day and you have to deal with recurrent threats against your people routinely.Do you send your legions out to help these people, or like a Movie Elf do you not bother 'cause it's not your problem? Well, y'know, unless it BECOMES your problem at which point obviously you act.But do you preserve your way of life, or do you seek to go out into the world and do things to change the world?Elves in most media preserve, rather than try to change. It's, like, their driving goal in most narratives to be the stodgiest sticks in the mud they can manage while the protagonists beg for help and it falls on largely deaf pointed ears forcing the protagonists to go out and do it themselves.Even in books, even in D&D, Elves are often portrayed as the people clinging to "The Old Ways" and "The Old Traditions". Trying to preserve what once was.</blockquote>

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