I'll be even more Frank: death to all the silly races in rpg's that are there only because they are in other games and the writers lack the creative thinking ability to create original races and species that make good and proper sense in the world.
high elves, low elves (ya never hear of those!), wood elves, fey elves, white elves, drow elves, swan elves, silvan elves, etc, all make me wanna puke up my lunch. 1000 shades of the same thing, most with no origin story, all munchkins delights. I'm not saying all munchkin races are bad either. Warforged and Transhumans were down right cool. Of the two, transhumans were far cooler.
Same goes for halflings, gnomes (though I really liked the way gnomes were provided some story in Arcane Companion), dwarves (hill, mountain, iron, rock, whatever) and most attempts at monsters as PC's.
The inability to wring out any drama from a human is pathetic and laughable.
That said, my recent DnD 3.5 character is a NG Asimarishwhatchamacallit Spirit Shaman/Rouge.
Elves in the RM rule books, mostly because they lack a game world (yet SW is a perfect example of a world were elves make little to no sense), are pointless characatures of what are now rpg stereotypes. As such, they tend to be dull and boring. Elves live for centurys? Of course they do, elves MUST be long lived for god knows why, sometimes even immortal, which is rather moor since if they live to be 1200 years old, to any humans perception they are effectively immortal.
Back on topic, if Sd is indeed important to the use of firearms, and elves are used as is in the RM rule set, then assuming a solid story of origin to even have them in the game world, the idea certainly builds on the theme that technology leads to the waning og the "ancient" races...geez, did this conversation come around yet AGAIN to tolkien?
Note: I have played elven PC's and had a great time.
