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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3570452" data-attributes="member: 2020">Let me answer posts as I read them, starting with this one.    Did you read my post marked (long post) at the bottom of page 1?  I am explaining my frustration at a conceptualization within the game.  As a young person, I would never have done so ('I have the character rolled up:  let's play, and let's go kill something!' <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )  Now, knowing I'm speaking to older and experienced players and designers, I am simply expressing frustration at a concept that I can't, and never could, seem to make fit.  I honestly think that elves are looked down upon, partially because the concept doesn't fit.  But you could take the problem I expressed in my (long post), and apply it to dwarves just as well.  And to gnomes, even more.  And especially to halflings, who seem to survive only because other races protect them.    For that matter, you could apply it to paladins, any exalted characters, rangers, and other good characters.  For the Bad Guys can kill anyone, any time they feel like, and get the goods (in 1E, we would have said:  they can get the gold, and thus the experience points, whenever they please.)  In a game based on killing, the Bad Guys seem to have a built in advantage.  Well, orcs are Bad Guys.  Ditto kobolds.  And gnolls.  And drow (and they should have exterminated the surface elves long ago ...)  And illithid (snackthings should not protest their lot!)  And phaerimm.  And dragons.  And undead and fiends.  And a million other monsters.  The Bad Guys have no moral compunctions as humans know them.  Just a lot of firepower to throw on the hapless Good Guys.  And throw it they do.  My interpretation of elves?  Yes, it is my interpretation.  I see so many interpretations of elves ... most of them very humanlike.  I prefer elves to be more alien.  That's just me.  But yes, my interpretation makes elves especially vulnerable as Good Guys, to a world full of Bad Guys.  It does.  Should others bow to my intepretation?  Of course not.  This is a philsophical discussion, or meant to be one, about fantasy concepts.    I did create my own version of elves.  Haldendreevan types.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  I respect the concept of elves for the settings and the books for those settings as laid forth, just as I respect the authors who have written for those settings.  If the Qualinesti are like they are, then so be it.  I respect that.  And my players are welcome to play Qualinesti as Qualinesti.  My NPC Qualinesti will act like Qualinesti.  I would be true to the setting.  The same goes for the Olvenfolk of the Flanaess, the Gold, Silver, and Green Elves of Faerun, the cosmopolitan elves of Zakhara, the elven tribes of Athas, and the elves bothering (well, they once bothered) Lord Soth in Ravenloft.    If any of *my* elves showed up in these settings, they would definitely be outlanders, and I'm sure the native elves would consider them so, and then some.</blockquote>

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