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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 2623191" data-attributes="member: 2020">How do you create a race of generally merry, frivolous, noble, kindly, loving, gentle people, in the cold harshness of a typical D&D campaign setting?  And make it believable and enjoyable?  I most certainly could not do it.  My Haldendreevan concept was meant as humor, silliness, and fun in game, but it only offended or annoyed.  Only one gaming group tolerated it (the character everyone loved to hate, but they loved her anyways.)  I have seen a lot of elves roleplayed in 20 years of gaming.  But I haven't seen very many frivolous, merry, noble, kindly, loving, gentle elves roleplayed.  Those I saw that came close to being like this were the source of scorn and derision, and the butt of crude jokes.  I have seen many fine authors deal with elves in their books.  I have seen them make elves noble and tragic, powerful and mysterious, deadly and frightful, arrogant and proud, but never generally merry, frivolous, flighty, noble, kindly, loving, and gentle ... not in fantasy worlds cold and hard, constantly beset with perils and monsters and the occasional world-ending menace.  (I do not mean disrespect by this.  I respect those authors I've read.  I think those authors I have read did some very great things with their elves, and would say so now.)  I have witnessed the creation of many elven races and nations in the D&D settings, but I could not honestly say that any of them were ... flighty, frivolous, noble, lofty, loving, caring, gentle, and so on.  And how could they ever be so, when the settings in question imposed so many threats upon those elven nations?  And yet ... my first experience with elves - my very first of all - in literature was with elves who were very much indeed flighty and frivolous, noble and lofty, merry and loving, gentle and kindly.  No, I do not refer to Santa Elves (lol)  I refer to Tolkien's High Elves in The Hobbit.  That made a deep impression on me that has lasted ever since that 4th grade day.  I mean, after all, do I have to go further than their song?  That ... where are you going, with beards all a-wagging, no knowing, no knowing ... song?  How to duplicate that, and make it even half believable, given the context of a fantasy setting?  Logic inevitably leads the other way, down the path towards those paranoid wood elves who vanished in a poof of smoke whenever the dwarves or Bilbo stepped into their midst.    I ... took it upon myself to attempt the impossible.  I attempted to create a race of elves that was truly flighty, frivolous, merry, gentle, kindly, 'good', and even innocent, despite the  fact they lived in an immensely hostile world.  The result was Haldendreeva.  Silly, ridiculous, even offensive, but I followed my own particular path of logic to see if the end I sought was possible, and it was ... in a odd sort of way.  Thus the jaw dropping drivel given in my first post above.  And you look at that, and say:  that is absurd.  Elves are not like that.  Elves could never be like that.  In fact, nobody could be like that!  (at least, no civilized, non-evil culture could be like that, certainly.)  But I am coming  forward and saying:  yes, there are these elves, and they are 'good' elves, and their culture is a 'good' culture, they are lofty and noble, they are classic elves, and they do behave like this.  (They are NOT High Elves in the Rivendell (Tolkien) sense ... that end could not be achieved through any logic process I applied, given the realities of a harsh campaign world environment.  But they are as close as I could come using logical processes.)   If you are interested in how I took normal elves and turned them into such monstrosities, and then had the gall and audacity to still call them 'normal' elves, I will relate the tale of Haldendreeva.</blockquote>

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