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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8862309" data-attributes="member: 85555">While I think we do have to use our own experience as a baseline or analog (since none of us have lived as an elf), I don't see this as a thought experiment on what humans would do with long life spans (a much more appropriate approach to that thought experiment would be a science fiction setting where humans achieve longer life spans and you play out what that leads to). I've done immortal elves in my own campaigns, and for me, it definitely wasn't a thought experiment of what would humans do with long life spans (though as I said I obviously had to draw on human experience). It was very much what would happen if you had a race of beings who didn't die, and whose lives only ended if they were infected with a terrible disease or violently killed. I found that interesting and figured maybe there are three basic cultural answers that emerged to that, and played out those answers in different elven groups. Obviously there can be more than three answers, but just for simplicity I kept it to the three that I was able to see clearly. Can something like that be an exploration of human psychology and culture? Yes. Star Trek does this a lot (where it answers very human problems by positing alien races, often to deal with issues in the real world). That is one way to approach these thought experiments. But the re are other approaches where you take a more 'lets see how far away from human' this can get psychologically. I think both are fine, both are enjoyable. Both have their purpose. And again, every thought experiment is limited by the fact that a human mind is conducting it. But I don't think that means all thought experiments come back to human. Sometimes the fun is trying to imagine beyond those limitations to the best of your ability.</blockquote>

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