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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreyLord" data-source="post: 8808834" data-attributes="member: 4348">Today...you are right.  D&D elves are just humans with pointy ears.  Orcs are just Humans with pointy teeth.It's a shame.Originally, I'd say D&D elves had a LOT in similarities with Tolkien elves.  They were supposed to be radically different than humans.  This wasn't just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well.  They had different aspects to them which is where they were resistant to charm and sleep in a natural manner.  They might have lived forever in comparison to humans.  However, as written, they also didn't have the attention span to focus like humans did, their entire emotional state was different.  They could be the most powerful beings collectively (a bunch of fighter/magic-users) doing things no human could do, and yet, they were restricted in how far they could actually advance (level limits, and quite low comparatively to what people think of today in some aspects).So originally, just like hobbits....er...halflings (look up the connection, it's not that hidden, in fact it was blatantly obvious at first), Ents...er...treants... and other things...elves and dwarves were definitely influenced by Tolkien in the TSR days.Not so much with WotC...but the way people actually played them (humans that look a little different) instead of how they were originally meant to be played changed that over the years with TSR D&D as well.  (And, one can look solidly at Dragonlance for examples of this where Elves acted more like humans that look a little different rather than alien creatures of a different psychology).So today, I grant you that this is absolutely the case, elves and other races are little more than humans with slightly different looks.But originally...it's more like Elric's as a being in comparison to humans if we are going for something different than Tolkien than anything...humanlike.</blockquote>

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