Will you make transsexual Elves canon in your games ?

[Eltab]

We also don't know the details - are elven children born one gender, or agendered? Is the ability to switch always there, or only appears at puberty?

Heck, are there secondary sexual characteristics at all? Or cultural/behavioral ones? Can humans even tell a "currently male" from a "currently female" elf without close examination?

This really pushes forward the ideas of gender and orientation fluidity... but it's fundamentally different from the human experience of many.

I haven't read Mordenkainen yet to absorb all the details, but my rough-sketch idea:

- Elven children are born androgynous: neither sex. And they don't have interest, either. That comes at puberty.
- At puberty, an elven child becomes a hermaphrodite: both anatomies develop. This is a biological trigger. Which is dominant, may be a cultural influence. Or a personal influence ('I like mom more than dad so I became female also.')
- Sort of like Vulcan culture, certain rituals can trigger the change back and forth. An individual decides to change because -reason-, or the community decides that more individuals of a particular sex are needed, and when the ritual is complete both the individual and the community accept that individual as being the sex the ritual is intended to create. Meantime, the anatomy changes to suit.
- Not sure how to handle "a draft" situation, but unwilling participants likely will result in the ritual backfiring physically and culturally, so everybody involved has motive to avoid this situation ahead of time.
- This does have the benefit that you will not see Elves who are unhappy with their essential nature because of their mind and body disagreeing as to what sex they are / should be.
- After a certain age, the Elf's body naturally becomes androgynous (or hermaphroditic) again; physically the reproductive tract is shutting down for permanent. This can be induced or delayed by other rituals.
- This doesn't get into how Elves reproduce - eggs, young in a pouch, pregnant, other. So I guess the D&D fanbase will just have to get themselves out and learn about potential IRL models, earning themselves a +1 INT from their Downtime: Study (Sage, biology).

 

[gyor]

Btw the thread title reminds me of the rocky horror picture show.

Maybe the Seldarine can do the Time Warp again.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think you need a new term.

 

[Yaarel]

According to Mordenkainens Tome,

Elves are gendered − masculine versus feminine.

‘Occasionally’ an individual elf is androgynous, and is considered sacred. The phrase ‘blessed of Corellon’ refers to these androgynes (who cannot change sex). They are sotospeak a third gender, defined by the sacred symbolism. ‘Many’ of the priests are these androgynous individuals.

Only ‘rare’ individuals from among these ‘occasional’ androgynes can change sex. (The DM decides if so.)

In other words, sex-changing is super-rare among elves.

 

[Yaarel]

I think we are watching the same process by which pan-British culture transformed biblical male angels into popculture female angels.

Now it is happening to elves.

Heh, for some reason, this culture is unable to entertain the idea that masculine men can be ‘beautiful’. The impaired thinking is kinda hilarious.

 

[Zardnaar]

No I play genders as fairly binary in my games, yeah olde medieval world etc. Magic and things like shapeshifters can do it normal flesh and blood races nopes.

Last I looked Elves are not shapeshifters.

I often base my cultures on RL ones as well or real life norms. Most of my world lacks a modern (read tolerant) mindset. Being gay can get you the death penalty, so can being the wrong religion, or the wrong political viewpoint, insulting the king, having sex with the wrong person can also get you killed as my world has the equivalent of the inquisition. All these things that can get you killed and tortured happened IRL.

My Elves are not very nice generally (individually they tend to be mouch like most races), but they are imperialistic I kind of based them on the east india company, they are imperialist slavers, and much like the Raj they are heavily outnumbeed by their subjects.

However they are socially liberal if a bit racist towards non elves. They don't care if you're gay and a few of them are pansexual (lots of half elves and they are involved with the creation of the Yuan-Ti via breeding).

The elves are opposed by the Knights of Vanya who are not very liberal at all. They vary from (at best) LN types who are honourable through to the inquisition who enforce the Vanyas faith. They are modelled on the Inquisition and the Teutonic Knights.

So yeah Warcraft II and Warhammer + real life is more of an influence. There pockets of somewhat liberal places but mostly its based on ye olde medieval Europe and the middle east/Egypt. Slavery exists, torture s legal along with the death penalty, there is an inquisition, and in Tyatis is basically imperial Rome and paternalistic, the Elves are more maternal but their Empress was killed by a Paladin on the field of battle so they are weakened.

PCs tend to gravitate towards the free city states for some mysterious reason If you want to make the world a better place fight for it and go found a domain.

Basically death, taxes and slavery.

 

[cbwjm]

Only in games where Corellon exists because it doesn't really affect anything. In settings where Corellon isn't the elven good then this would not be an option. It wouldn't be an option in my last homebrew world since there was no concept of an elven deity to begin with, there current god is one of their own who achieved immortality 10,000 years ago.

 

[Lanefan]

No I play genders as fairly binary in my games, yeah olde medieval world etc.

Me too, even so far as to have three great universal dualities define the actual* deities: Good-Evil, Law-Chaos, and Male-Female; with Law-Chaos being the least significant of those. That said, at the mere-mortal level I've a race - Orcs - that change gender on the fly just as a natural part of their lives.

* - as opposed to all the hundreds of other "deities" that are in fact just aspects of the 21 core deities.

Magic and things like shapeshifters can do it normal flesh and blood races nopes.

Magic, curses/blessings, some items, etc. can all cause (or reverse!) a gender switch.

If I ever put any deeper thought into it I'd probably have a few more monster types be switchers.

Lanefan

 

[Mouseferatu]

This concept doesn't require Corellon, it just requires you give a reason for it. It could be some other elven god. It could just be a magical ability some elves happen to develop.

And let's not pretend the idea of non-binary gender is anything new. Many cultures have had "third genders" or "unmatched souls and bodies" for centuries upon centuries.

 

[Bacon Bits]

This will never come up in our D&D group. It would be difficult for me to think of a less important lore element to our group.