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Systems & Settings => Rolemaster => Topic started by: RandalThor on December 08, 2007, 04:47:14 PM
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This is one of the biggest game-setting problems I have had with RM:
IMMORTAL ELVES
Yes, I know it was a carry-ver from ME, and is wickedly-cool-awesome man. But I feel that the thought process of an immortal being - even one that is still a physical entity - would be too alien to understand.
Of course, these games/settings/stories are being created by us, normal humans (as far as I know......... :confused:) so we can't create them to be understood unless we humanize them some-what. But just imagine, if you would, you are immortal. Some being that will be dead next week wants you to risk your life for it. "Uhhh... be right with you. Just a sec, my tea is almost done...wait. Where did you go? Oh, died of old age, huh? Too bad. Well, there's always next time."
Of course, you could always go with the totally random responses to reflect an alien mind-set. Just imagine the Confusion spell from the game-that-shall-not-be-named being expanded to encompass a myriad of responces:
GM: Barak, the elf stands with a twig of some plant in one hand and his longsword in the other. What do you do?
Barak's Player: I rush to the attack with my broadsword!!! Aaaarrrgggghhhh!!!!! (rolls dice)
GM (rolls some dice of his own): Ok. The elf dances away from your attack with an inhuman grace, and (rolls some more dice) quickly rushes in and plants a bit kiss on you - right on the lips!
Barak: Uuuhhhh...WHAT?!?!
GM: Then it does a complicated math problem in the dirt while simultaneously patting it's tummy.
Barak (Player leaves the table - and room): ..........
Ok, so I am really pushing it a bit, but I feel that having elves and other special beings having lifespans in the hundreds of years is enough. Making them immortal takes them too far away from the other, mortal, beings - which probably explains Elrond's and the other elves leaving Middle-Earth.
Sorry if this is a topic I have started before. I have a mind like a papermache (sp?) bear-trap - after the rain.
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Ok, so I am really pushing it a bit, but I feel that having elves and other special beings having lifespans in the hundreds of years is enough.
You will notice that in HARP, elves aren't immortal. ;D
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You will notice that in HARP, elves aren't immortal. ;D
Ah, pfff, they are ... elves ARE immortal, and that's it! ;D
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They aren't immortal in The Echoes of Heaven either, even in RM. :)
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They ought to be immortal. I think it adds to their character overall. Elves shouldn't just be short, tree-nuzzling humanoids with big pointy ears and a centuries-long lifespan. They should be more like the Fae from old folktales: timeless, powerful, amoral, and perhaps just a bit mad as well. They should be more beings of spirit than flesh, having little in common with humanity beyond appearances. Makes them much more interesting as characters, IMHO, and a much greater challenge to play than yet another Legolas-wanna-be.
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Dear Sirs,
Elves Stink.
All elves should be dead, which makes the point of how long they woulda lived mute.
Sincerly,
Grundin Elf Killer
2nd Regiment Commander
Hells own Army
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As a joke in a game the GM ruled that Elves are so perfect they do not go #2. Thier bodies are so advanced they convert all the solids into usful stuff or it is washed away by liqueds. He did it just because a prevous player hated Elves so much. But it sure did make us all laugh at the time.
MDC
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My players often labour under the misconception that I hate elves. I don't, I just think they're far more interesting as human sacrificing, blood thirsty, fiends who live under hills and want to cut your heart out to apease their gods.
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While I was in the process of creating HARP, I would often bounce ideas and stuff others who I happened to be talking to.
One fellow, upon discovering that I planned on HARP elves only living 500 years or so, really kinda lost. He started complaining on how I was nerfing elves, and all sorts of other comments (he was a huge tolkein fan as well).
There is a problem with immortal elves.... They can have been around so long that they might have actually witnessed the historical events. And that could be a bad thing for a GM.
It was also a major factor in in regards to the timeline involved with Cyradon, as we did not want there to be anybody alive who was part of the what happened (or who was around at the time).
Additionally, I have actually seen immortality be abused. I know of one guy who abused the hell out of some optional rule that allowed a couple of skill ranks every 10 years or so. SO he made a 500 year old, 1st level character, who had skill in almost everything. Very abusive.
In concrete game terms, immortality doesn't really count for much cause it doesn't have much of a game effect, at least not in play....
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Generally, realisticly, an immortal would choose low risk choices. . .why fight a guy who'll be dead in a few subjective hours and risk getting hurt. . .a solo game with a smart PC playing an elf would consist of a lot of "And I wait". . .and likely they'd rule the world before you got done. . .
Most games wouldn't allow for that.
500 years is effectively immortal anyway. . .In doing the RLO calculations for CT we called immortal 1000 years in terms of calculations of value.
Consider the current world. . .do you think a person born at any single point in the world in 1507 would either have had an easy time surviving to 2007, or would feel in any way comfortable in this modern world?
How about someone born in 1007 living today?
They both represent almost absurd potential time frames. The only thing that lets me GM with races like that in frame is the fact that living from 0 AD to 1000 AD is almost as freaky as the examples above, but living from 7,000 BC to 6,000 BC isn't actually all that bad.
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They ought to be immortal. ... They should be more like the Fae from old folktales: timeless, powerful, amoral, and perhaps just a bit mad as well.
But doesn't that essentially delegate them to the realm of NPCs?
Not that that's a bad thing but ...
DonMoody
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Consider the current world. . .do you think a person born at any single point in the world in 1507 would either have had an easy time surviving to 2007, or would feel in any way comfortable in this modern world?
How about someone born in 1007 living today?
They both represent almost absurd potential time frames. The only thing that lets me GM with races like that in frame is the fact that living from 0 AD to 1000 AD is almost as freaky as the examples above, but living from 7,000 BC to 6,000 BC isn't actually all that bad.
Unless you are talking about a member of a *very* static society that is *very* isolated from the rest of the world who is then 'tossed' into the 'rest of the world', in each of these cases, I do not see any 'comfort level' problems because the 'changes' the individual experienced would be gradual.
I mean, we're not talking about taking someone from 1507 and bampfing them into 2007.
They were born in 1507, were, more or less, 'grown up' by the mid 16th century, had a wide variety of experiences in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, all of which 'prepared' them for living in the 21st century.
The problem I have with immortal PCs, is 'Why are they doing what they do?'.
Why are they risking their immortal lives?
And even if they want to take such risks, why didn't they spend the last century or so training and accumulating wealth which is turned into items that increase their survival *before* they went out and risked their lives?
Unless they are a bit mad or bored with live (which might count as 'a bit mad'), individuals that 'live until slain' generally aren't willingly to take an action or pursue a goal that has a serious risk of 'getting slain' unless something *huge* is at stake ('huge' defined as 'stopping a rampant god', 'defeating the last lieutenant of the disposed rampant god', 'avenging my family/friend/name/...', saving the world, or the like).
DonMoody
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One of the worst things I can think of is being imortal but being bedridden and feeble by 60. So you spend the rest of time being spoon fead and having people clean up after you. IMO that is the very hot place may talk about.
MDC
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The longer lived and individual or race the more likely it becomes that an unnatural death will result. ;)
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DonMoody
I'm going to go with two presumptions here:
That the immortal has huge hard drive space in their head. If it's not true, you'd get fuzzy/fade issues with old or unimportant data. . .like your 1,000 year old in 2007 has only vague recollections of the minutia of life in 1600. some Vampire fiction is written this way, with the immortal remembering about 100 years of their life, the rest only remembered via written diaries, which they read as if in the third person, having no actual recolections of the events in the diaries. Let's assume they can in fact remember a 1,000 year span like we can recall a 100 year one, so the fuzzy problem is limited.
That the immortal is immensely adaptable. . .Most old people get terms like "Set in their ways" applied to them for a reason. a minority of people truely adapt to a new world, mostly they die off, so the average population adapts to the new world. . .my parents have finally grasped e-mail, but they both wrote letters and knew how to type, both can hit record with the VCR and leave the house, but neither can program the VCR to go off at a set time regardless of how well it's explained to them. Neither has any real "gut" understanding of computers or an appreciation of 99% of the music written after 1970 either. Some old folks do adapt well, my boss is the same age as my parents, is a joyful technophile, is intimately "gut" familiar with computers, and even he falls short of "getting" conversations of a group of 40- year olds. There are exceptions that surpass him. . .
I don't have any problem with beleiving one single individual could be so exceptional as to have total recall of a lifespan measured in millenia and also so adaptable as to be able to fit in and keep changing to fit in, over and over and over again.
I find it less beleivable, but still can manage to imagine an entire race of such people.
The problem lies in mixing them with "normal" people. . .even a small ratio. . say 50,000 actual elves in the real world, who live such long, adaptable lives. . .I may be cynical, but I only see three possible scenarios.
1) The elves are in charge. An entire race of super beings, it wouldn't actually be too hard to take the long view and take over humans.
2) The elves are extinct. Humans may not be immortal, but we are the best killing machines on the earth. Ask the Cro magnons, or the Neandertals. . .they don't even exist on some small island, or in some sheltered valley. . .our ancestors utterly out competed with them and/or exterminated them. (this is also the logic behind #1, with the elves being the ones out competing or exterminating the humans.)
3) Elves and humans are seperate. For whatever reason, they keep their affairs seperated enough to not have 1 or 2 happen.
#3 is the standard fantasy world answer to the problem. . .I find it the least likely of the three, and likely only a temporary thing. (Even in Middle Earth, the elves eventually had to exit stage right.). . .it's fantasy, I can accept the least likely solution, or accept that the time frame we are looking at is the one gap in time where this weird seperated but still in contact situation exists.
But "realisticly", I don't see how the situation could last.
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I think the option of keeping them separate from humanity works best, and it can work just fine if you use the concept of Faerie. Again, they wouldn't be handled as just another variety of humanoid that parallels humankind...they are spirit beings, native to another plane of existence that intersects with the mortal world in places. Elves, and other of their kind, may venture over at times, but are limited in the ways that they can interact with mortals. They have odd weaknesses, such as being harmed by cold-forged iron, not being able to cross a line of salt, or being turned to stone by daylight. They handle immortality the way that they do because they are not human, they don't think like humans. Time means little to them....past and present tend to get mixed up in their minds. Human concepts of wealth and power might not mean much to them, so it really wouldn't be in their nature to use their immense age max out their skills. Perhaps they venture into the mortal world out of curiosity, or because somebody's cut a deal with them to lend some of their 'manpower' to help fight a crucial battle. So there'd be some reason for them to be hanging around humans. And as far as being afraid of death and being overly cautious....perhaps if an Elf dies its spirit just returns to Faerie to be reborn. Tolkien had a similar concept as well, with Elves returning to the Halls of Mandos upon being killed. Even bodily death is little more than an inconvenience to them, so they wouldn't fear death in the way that mortals do.
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Two basic problem exist with the immortal elves...
1) Players what to start game as thousand years old elves...how else should they capture being a high elf. Solution if of course the answer that the other players would then want to start out as conan or gandalf instead of being a newbee. If entry level of the game is level 1 then your elf must be a young one.
2) Elves born at dawn of time have experienced nearly infinitly many things, making them great plot spoilers. Solution is to decide that elven memory is just as good as human memory. Unless the elf has spent DP on a piece of knowledge they can not remember it for more than a few years. The elven warrior might recall that his teacher told him the secret about the dungeons years back, but if he did not memorize it will be forgotten.
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Two basic problem exist with the immortal elves...
1) Players what to start game as thousand years old elves...how else should they capture being a high elf. Solution if of course the answer that the other players would then want to start out as conan or gandalf instead of being a newbee. If entry level of the game is level 1 then your elf must be a young one.
2) Elves born at dawn of time have experienced nearly infinitly many things, making them great plot spoilers. Solution is to decide that elven memory is just as good as human memory. Unless the elf has spent DP on a piece of knowledge they can not remember it for more than a few years. The elven warrior might recall that his teacher told him the secret about the dungeons years back, but if he did not memorize it will be forgotten.
So that's really up to a responsible GM to get out the old yard stick and rap some knuckles with a sharp retort of "NO!" when a player tries something so twinkish. But then, just because an elf is a thousand plus years old doesn't mean that he has spent all of that time building up skills, or even participating in human affairs enough to know much of anything.
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I never liked the idea of an immortal race as Tolkien/RM elves. I got two reasons as to why not. The first is my feel of fantasy logic. If a race are immortal they shouldnt be availible for players for all the reasons listed by others before me on this topic. If a race are immortal there are also certain biological issues which arises. Reproduction would be at a all time low (the race doesnt need it as such), maybe they dont reproduce as other mammals do, and how do they get nutrient from? I agree with RandalThor (and the others) which claim it makes elves unplayable.
The second reason is a gamebalance concern. If a player?s character is 1000 years old, he could know a lot of ancient history as he was actually alive when it happened. And if he doesn?t have this information, whats the point in being so old.
Then we got the "I rather not" concern. I too feel that an immortal wont be so eager to jump down into a potential lethal fight, when he can just wait a while then his enemies are dead (unless they are other elves). Mortal beings have a drive to get things done, that I feel immortals wouldnt have. Of course I have absolutely no basic for this other than my warped sense of logic. How do you at both times play your immortal elf and participate in adventuring with the rest of the party.
At one point I had my own setting where I had elves (I like elves, just not Tolkien?s version) and even though they grew to great age they matured almost as fast as other mammals. An elf was considered adult when he had reached 30 years. They were no immortals and biologically were just as any other mortal mammal.
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Hmm A 2000 year old Scholar or Magus? What a frightening thought for the GM, since they have the lowlevel spells (Study 1) to remember something that they have read with perfect recall and you can read a LOT of books in 2000 years.
I think that the greatest problem with Elves is that we as GM's and Players tend to look at them as immortal humans with pointy ears.. and they are not.
The best explanation on Elves that I have ever seen, is from a book where the Hero realise in a flash of understanding why the elves doesn't react like she thought they would: Elves are made for Harmony and they endure conflict only in brief encounters, resolving such discord quickly, in victory or defeat. Humans are shaped for conflict and in their brief mortal lives, humans meet challenges no elf could meet, learned strategies no elf could master and chose between good and evil in a way more direct and dangerous than any elf could preceive.
It is not cowardice or weakness that made elves withdraw from conflict again and again, it's the fact that they were shaped for another purpose.
For me that explains a lot of things.
An elf as a person can and will take part in adventures, mostly to wipe out a potential danger, but will otherwise tend to use negotiation and manipulation before taking up arms. However the concept of war and armies are not part of their mind as it is with humans. Oh they understand it, but on a distant scholar-like fashion. Kinda like the difference between a General and someone that are really good at playing tactical wargames.
Elves are good at tactics in small groups, but not as an army. (That is actually more or less like Tolkien as far as I remember. None of the armies in middle earth were ever commanded by elves.)
So in my opinion, Elves not only dont WANT to take over the world, They CANT, since Humans are not easily rule and armed conflict are sure to emerge. The one possible 'solution' to this is to have Elves as rulers and humans as Warlords, but history have learned us that said warlords sooner or later will dispose of the rulers and take the throne themselves. However it IS a possible solution.
In game play however, there's really not that bit a difference on Humans and Elves. At least as long as the GM does not allow characters that start out as 1000 years old, which I dont. And please remember that Elves mature in almost the same speed as humans (At least according to Shadow World :) ).
The problem comes with the connections such a char might have:
Human: "I wonder what happend here a thousand year ago? How can we find out?"
Elf: "I dont know, but lets go ask my uncle. He was 200 at the time and ought to remember that."
Ofcause the other way around is also possible. Some of you might have read The Wheel of Time where the long-lived Ogier comes into the world of humans with charts that are hopelessly outdated.
Elf: "I dont understand this. My uncle said that there was a bridge here!"
Human: "Yeah. See the ruins! That was a at least 200 years ago!"
:)
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Tangential, but worth considering, this one was a plan expressed by an Elf PC in a game I was in, that thankfully wasn't adopted.
Mean old elves want to get rid of humans.
Disease list.
Now, if those 50,000 elves among the 5 billion humans were casting 1,000 lethal super contagious diseases into existance each day. . .and relying on their +100 RR vs Disease immunity to get through it. . .
That's one rather obvious, once you think about it, method for elves to get rid of all the other mortal races. (Other than the other fey races, who also have a +100 RR vs Disease.)
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Elves are good at tactics in small groups, but not as an army. (That is actually more or less like Tolkien as far as I remember. None of the armies in middle earth were ever commanded by elves.)
This is *very* different from Tolkien elves.
Yes, in Tolkien's Third Age, there were few 'active martial forces' led by elves.
But in Tolkien's Second Age, there were many such forces (e.g. The Last Alliance of Men and Elves).
And in Tolkien's First Age, for *many, many* years, all of the 'good' forces were exclusively [made up of and led by] elves.
IIRC, ShadowWorld elves are quite like Tolkien elves.
And it maybe elves as in Tolkien's works that are the 'problem'.
Slightly different than above ...
If you have a very low reproduction rate society of immortals, what type of social pressures would there be to keep all offspring 'at home' and 'free from harm' (i.e. within the protection of the community)?
"Yes Johnny, I know you're a hundred and eighty but you're still not going over to that human town."
"But Grandpa did it!"
"True, but Grandpa was almost a thousand years old before he left the elven conclave. Keep studying and practicing and we'll consider a short trip in a few centuries or so."
DonMoody
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Hmm I guess that it's been a very long time indeed since I read those books.. and I'm not planning to do it in the near furture. :)
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Ofcause the other way around is also possible. Some of you might have read The Wheel of Time where the long-lived Ogier comes into the world of humans with charts that are hopelessly outdated.
Elf: "I dont understand this. My uncle said that there was a bridge here!"
Human: "Yeah. See the ruins! That was a at least 200 years ago!"
:)
Read them numerious times - love them. Going with that example, the reason the Ogier did not know about all the changes to the world was due to the fact that they very rarely ventured out into the human lands from their stedding. Even then, only those certain crafts"men" who were there to repair some structure or another that they, themselves, helped build centuries ago. The fact is they had great memories for those things they saw, heard, smelled, etc.. so the only reason they have for not knowing certain things is that they weren't there to learn them.
Also, remember the one ogier that is a main character in the series is a young ogier (Loial / 90 years old), was not even concidered an adult by the other ogier, and yet he is constantly amazed at the pace of life set by humans. They do things with such haste to him. I think that a Meeting of the Stump (an ogier 'village' council) could last years. They would be thought hasty if they only debated for months! Of course, that is not solid months/years, they slept, ate, etc.
In most typical fantasy worlds, the elves have much more interaction than the ogier did in The Wheel of Time setting. Even those that are supposed to be "isolationist" have much more recent interaction with the mortals.
Having the point of view above that Balhirath quoted would just help make them enough different to be pretty-much unplayable as PCs. As well as, hard to run as a GM.
In all "actuality," the only reason that elves and other similar beings don't look upon humans and other similar beings as pets, is because we share similar features (more so than apes/humans) and have the ability to truly communicate complex ideas. Otherwise we would be relegated to the roles of pets or insects - do you swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting the cockroach in the road? So I wouldn't imagine that an elf would bother helping out humans with thier dangerous problems - unless it was a problem for the elves as well. [This is, of course, other than the real reason: playability. We need to make them as human as possible, while still retaining somewhat of a difference, so that they can be played by a human.]
Now a being that uses life-extending magics/powers to live for these incredible lengths of time we are discussing is another matter entirely. With their original mind-set (that of a mortal) they wouldn't have such a different outlook on things - at least, not at first. Eventually, though, they would begin to think differently about things to the point as to not make sense to normal mortals. The ancient wizard that has lived in the tower in the next valley for as long as anyone can remember would seem truly alien to the common villager. He might as well not be human anymore. It is at that point that they become an NPC. Actually, they probably would have become one loooonngg before.
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Generally, realisticly, an immortal would choose low risk choices. . .why fight a guy who'll be dead in a few subjective hours and risk getting hurt. . .a solo game with a smart PC playing an elf would consist of a lot of "And I wait". . .and likely they'd rule the world before you got done. . .
Most games wouldn't allow for that.
500 years is effectively immortal anyway. . .In doing the RLO calculations for CT we called immortal 1000 years in terms of calculations of value.
I once calculated a set of life tables for elfs, and I found that even if you took the lowest death rate in a modern population (that of 16-20 year olds), and lowered it a bit for older elfs (to reflect increasing skill and caution) the average life expectancy of a 20-year old (I also assumed maturity at ~20, like a human - I've never liked the idea that elfs manage to be 'children' for decades, though there's something to be said for adventuring elfs being 'teenagers') was only 300-400 years. It takes a very, very low death rate to get life expectancy up to 1000 years.
Because of this, I've never been too concerned about 'immortal' elfs - finding one that witnessed events from more than 600-700 years becomes an adventure, and and what they have to say a convenient plot hook.
Consider the current world. . .do you think a person born at any single point in the world in 1507 would either have had an easy time surviving to 2007, or would feel in any way comfortable in this modern world?
How about someone born in 1007 living today?
They both represent almost absurd potential time frames. The only thing that lets me GM with races like that in frame is the fact that living from 0 AD to 1000 AD is almost as freaky as the examples above, but living from 7,000 BC to 6,000 BC isn't actually all that bad.
This assumes that an immortal becomes as set in their ways as many middle aged and older humans do. I expect that if they did they'd advance so much more slowly than other species that they'd be 'left behind' and end up pushed into marginal lands or just wiped out, as has happened to all the stone-age cultures the Europeans (and others) ran into in the last couple of centuries.
It seems more reasonable to me that they'd retain the mental flexibility to learn and adapt, even if they cease to innovate after the first century or so of life and that, combined with actually living through that thousand years of change, would allow an immortal born in AD 1007 to be comfortable in AD 2007.
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not necissarily. . .
if you assume elves take say to 30 to reach maturity, live to 1,000 and die.
Vs an average population of "Threescore and ten" humans.
Human lifespan of 70 years, presume that they consume more than they produce from age 0-15 and from age 60-70. (The latter is VERY generous for pre-moderns.)
That's 25 non productive years out of 70, or 25/70= 36% of the population. . .so only 64% are productive.
Vs the elves 30 non productive out of 1,000...30/1000 = 3%. . .so 97% are productive.
So, two villiages of 1,000 inhabitants.
640 Humans are working.
970 elves are working.
The elvish villiage has 152% productivity on pure man/hours.
If you consider experience, most benefit is early then little late. . .So say masters are 20% more efficiant than journeymen, who are likely around 500% more efficiant than apprentices.
The human villiage's 640 workers are like 60 aprentices, 520 journeymen and 60 masters. (3,030 work units)
The elvish villiage's 970 workers are like 5 apprentices, 9 journeymen and 956 masters. (5,788 work units)
That pushes them from 152% productivity to 191%.
That's nearly a 2 to 1 advantage (And the experience factors are probably way conservative.). . .the reality is that there's also a "Maintainence per person" level of work, subtracting that out gives the net profit. . . almost all the elvish improvement is in the profit margin, so while they might be 2x as productive, they'd be more like 10x as profitable.
As to advances. . .how much faster do you think a sandal maker from 1,650 AD was compared to one from 5,000 BC? Perhaps 5-10% more efficiant due to slightly better tools? If that? Same of farming and all other crafting skills. Advancement compounding advancement at the scales we're used to seeing don't crop up until 1800, well into the "Modern" period.
A villiage of 1,000 elvish farmers would far surpass the best efforts of their human neighbors, even if the elves were using bronze age technology and methods while the humans were using late reinnesance methods and technology.
There really isn't all that much push to fit in, adjust or update until the mid to late modern era and industrial advances accelerate the improvement rate of technical production faster than the rate at which experience improves productivity. The humans would never understand how that backward villiage of elves with bronze tools could always produce so much more food per acre. . .must be magic!
This is assuming the elves didn't figure out in that 1,000 years that there's more money in being the landlord than in being a farmer and use their surpluss production to buy the human's lands (The very definition of "Out competing"). . .The early agricultural revolution saw a trend in which tech adopting farmers saw increases of efficiancy around 50% and they ended up buying out all of their neigbors who stuck to the non-competative "old ways".
Cost benefit analysis along those lines would indicate that it's essentialy impossible for humans to beat elves in any economic endevor the elves choose to compete in. In a confrontational competition, the humans could devote more workers to reach the same production levels, but they could never match the elves on efficiancy or cost per unit.
Of course, there's one exception, due to population sizes and birth rates, humans can far more efficiantly replace casualties due to war. If the only way you can compete with your neigbors is to kill them. . .what kind of interaction does that lead to?
Situations like that usually resolve in violence, at least, historicly neigbors with that great a level of productivity variation tended to conquer each other using military or economic methods.
And those elvish villiages would be islands of conservatism way beyond the parochialism of human villiages. . .the Ogier example above covers that aspect well.
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I once calculated a set of life tables for elfs, and I found that even if you took the lowest death rate in a modern population (that of 16-20 year olds), and lowered it a bit for older elfs (to reflect increasing skill and caution) the average life expectancy of a 20-year old (I also assumed maturity at ~20, like a human - I've never liked the idea that elfs manage to be 'children' for decades, though there's something to be said for adventuring elfs being 'teenagers') was only 300-400 years. It takes a very, very low death rate to get life expectancy up to 1000 years.
Because of this, I've never been too concerned about 'immortal' elfs - finding one that witnessed events from more than 600-700 years becomes an adventure, and and what they have to say a convenient plot hook.
I think there are some flaws in your methodology.
Not sure what they would be (the vagueness of the method used didn't giver me much to go on but my first guess would be you used a 'generic' death rate instead of actually determining causes of death and basing a death rate upon that) but the fantasy literature with 'live until slain' immortals I am familiar with has numerous individuals of an age that is 'many, many centuries' or 'many millennia'.
DonMoody
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In the world I'm creating there are two kinds of Elves:
1) High Elves servants of the Goddess Gaia.They are immortal,but it has to do with living in the land of Fey.If they leave Fey for long periods of time they begin to age.
2) Low Elves (Sidhe).Who are exiled & live in the "real" world.They live longer than humans & are more resistant to both magic & disease.They are made up of Clans/individuals who who were exiled from the land of Fey for some reason.I'm considering having them being a half-Elf race.I'm still thinking this out.
My favorite Elves are from Poison Elves , Elflord & Elfquest comix. I'm not a big fan of Tolkien Elves.
Djivan Yera Ashkali
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I just found this conversation, so excuse me for back-tracking a bit. I seem to remember reading somewhere that immortal elves adventure because they tend to view life as a game to be played. Imgine how dull life would be if nothing ever changed----excitement from any source would be preferable to another century of the same old thing.
In Celtic mythology, the Sidhe (elves) were immortal. They often kidnapped (ie 'borrowed') humans for use in their games and plots, took mortal lovers, etc.... and generally invaded our privacy whenever they liked. However, the penalties for humans invading the privacy of the 'Good Neighbours' was usually quite severe. This is a double standard if I ever heard of one, but there you go.
Also, English legends are full of people who I would describe as being half-elven. The most notable of them are Thomas of Ercldoune (Thomas Rhymour) and Robin Goodfellow. There are also legends of an elf named the 'love-talker' who delighted in seducing human virgins.
I tend to use Elves as NPC's and plot devices rather than heroes in my games.
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I tend to use Elves as NPC's and plot devices rather than heroes in my games.
Which is what I thought was a main point of the OP:
Immortal Elves are NPCs, not PCs.
DonMoody
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Generally, realisticly, an immortal would choose low risk choices. . .why fight a guy who'll be dead in a few subjective hours and risk getting hurt. . .a solo game with a smart PC playing an elf would consist of a lot of "And I wait". . .and likely they'd rule the world before you got done. . .
Most games wouldn't allow for that.
500 years is effectively immortal anyway. . .In doing the RLO calculations for CT we called immortal 1000 years in terms of calculations of value.
Consider the current world. . .do you think a person born at any single point in the world in 1507 would either have had an easy time surviving to 2007, or would feel in any way comfortable in this modern world?
How about someone born in 1007 living today?
They both represent almost absurd potential time frames. The only thing that lets me GM with races like that in frame is the fact that living from 0 AD to 1000 AD is almost as freaky as the examples above, but living from 7,000 BC to 6,000 BC isn't actually all that bad.
Keep in mind that you're not talking about somebody who was born then and all of a sudden randomly ended up in our time. If someone actually had life experiences spanning all that time, I believe they'd have no problem coping with things in whatever time frame they inhabit currently. Anybody living that long would have to be extremely receptive to changes around them. Humans, with our short lifespans, can be stubborn and hate change all we want, but somebody witnessing such drastic changes in technology, culture, language, and the like would have to be adaptable. Such a being would presumably be possessed of vast years of youth; thus the mind stays sharp and receptive to new information. So yeah, if a humanoid, sentient being were to live that long, I think they'd be used to their surroundings because they would have essentially "grown up" in them, so to speak.
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I'm not denying the possability. . .merely saying that an elvish society would have a lot of internal inertia, based on the logic in my later post. . .and would change very slowly. . people don't change for no reason.. . the external factor of how elves and humans rub against each other sounds like a recipie for war to me. . .that being a seperate problem. (And one that's a problem with Dwarves too.). . millenial lifespans encourage risk aversion. . .which inhibits innovation and change.
Even evolutionary logic would be conservative. . .
Germs change within our lifespans, since they cycle generations so fast.
a human generation is on average 20 years. . .do elves live to see their great/great/great/great/great/great grandchildren? Or is their rate around the 20% mark also, say 200 years?
Huamn beings have actually changed in the last few thousand years. . .taller, slightly longer and thinner fingers. . . .if elves lived 10,000 years you'd get "Hmm, your people used to be a lot shorter, and you had more hair."
The vast variation is that in 200 years you go from one human to their 10th decendant. . .and a lot of change in human society is picked up by the young generationally. . so 10 re-boots and chances to pick up new things without preconceptions. . . .vs a continuous learning process layering on preconceptions.
They're fantasy, so there's no right answer, but modeled on humans, they'd be the stickiest sticks in the mud ever.
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In Terry Amthor's Shadowstone Chronicles (Shadow World) he described the elven memory in an interesting way. Elves may be immortal but they do not have an ever-increasing memory capacity. Elves would have a difficult time remembering things from a long time ago, to the point where they would completely forgot about some things entirely.
If this is the case then it could effectively control levels for immortals. If I ever got to a point where I'd have to treat this in-game I would remove the character's lowest level of development every 100 years or so. So, a 5000 year old elf might have gained 100 levels in his life, but he only has the experience/memory of the last 50 of them (and thus is effectively 50th level).
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Heh. . .makes me think of HERO, and re-tasking your variable power pool. . .
Like. . .You have a DP limit. . .say 1,000 DP total. . .when you hit it, when you go up a level and have 40 DP to spend, you have to jettison 40 DP of skills to make room.
Hmm, no wonder they're so nasty. . .you could re-spec your character over time.
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The problem I have with immortal PCs, is 'Why are they doing what they do?'.
Why are they risking their immortal lives?
And even if they want to take such risks, why didn't they spend the last century or so training and accumulating wealth which is turned into items that increase their survival *before* they went out and risked their lives?
You assume that everyone analyses everything, figures out cost-benefit, and then takes the best action for him. The truth is, that doesn't work. Of course some elf (the more rational, long-term sighted ones) will take such a path, that of accumulating wealth, or accumulating knowledge and skill, before taking on risk. But there's always those who love risk, those who can't see beyond meeting their day-to-day needs, those who like to "waste their time" on social endeavours or cultivating their private garden of flowers, etc. Just look at the world arround you. There are those who drive through school to get good grades, get into their program and pass with speed and excellence, then enter the market and make a million before they are 30. Surely that sounds optimal, but how many take that route? Why do some people with great potential end up in drugs, low-level crime and prostitution? While a few, with barely their clothes on their back, decide to go out and travel the world without a single worry, when 90% of the society is busy about meeting their bills for the end of the month...
You ask "why do they do what they do?" and look at optimal alternatives, that any logically-minded sane individual would follow. Trying to figure out who they are as individuals (because surely, someone who lives for several centuries has developped a personality, at least one would hope so) might be a better way to figure out why there are elven adventurers, and why the elven race as a whole hasn't outcompetted the human race as a whole yet. Immortality doesn't make for perfection, but I agree that the perfectionist, driven and ambitious immortals are going to be scary...
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The problem is that even at sub optimal career choices, elves would be masters.
As to risk aversion, as above, elves would evolve slower than humans, but they would still evolve.
And Cost Benefit Analysis merely lets you make informed choices, assuming you have good data.
The real world actually enforces them. . .they are merely a study tool to try and figure out the world.
Individual elf life value is worth 10x what a human's is, on span. . .it might be worth far more on "replacement value" due to a low reproduction rate.
Essentially, over time, the non risk taking elves would end up being the only ones having kids, so that would become the dominant trait.
In biology, long lifespan, low fertility species tend to have either evolved themselves out of danger, or exibit behaviors of risk aversion, while short lifespan, high fertility creatures exhibit loads of risk taking behavior.
It's not really an opinion issue, it just seems to be the way nature works. Of course, we only have humans as a template for sentient behavior, and this is fantasy, so who knows.
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Dutch206,
Are you shure the elf was not a dragon in disguise?
BTW, I have to disclose that I am taking money from the pro-elf lobby and it may bias my oponion on this subject. If I was a true politico I would change the font sze to 1 point and the font to someting you could not read.
All in all I love elves in almost any form,mostly. I also generally prefer to play an elf, 1/2 elf, spirit etc.
MDC
Modify,
Another one who just poped into my mind from ye old Deities snd Demi-Gods, Hiemdal gardian of the Bright Frost bridge. People and gods out thier, please for give me if I buthchered the spelling of his name.
MDC
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A topic about stinking elves >:(
Oh the agony.
I hates elves, alls of em.
lynn
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I believe the hate against Elven origins in that big, unnamable RPG-system.
I never played it, but I believe there it is simply the munchkin race.
So any good roleplayer with such experience would have a "gut feeling" against them.
Good points are stated and I will reconsider them for use.
I'm also one of the Elf-lovers (and could easily play S*m G*mgee ;))
I was the first in our group who played an elf, in a not so good RPG system (not D*D).
Later while GMing I let an Elf stated (take over the PC): "Oh a dragon guards the pass ? We wait until it died of old age and then go ..." Today, 20 years later it is still quoted.
"Nobody knows how an immortal being thinks"
I heard this quote often, it must be stated in a famous RPG-network.
Here I heard it again and I have to reject.
But let me first ramble a bit (not much).
We now play some mages with a kind of implanted second mind (like in some Perry Rhodan books, sorry don't know more). It gives us some special abilities (mainly for centration on spell while casting others and a chance to hold concentration even if attacked) and it makes us emotionless, total logical - a sociopath (hope it is the right translation).
As I'm an very emotional, I tried to avoid it (OK, this is lame of me)
And I told them:
"You think playing an Elf is difficult ? It is more difficult to play a sociopath !
Any human believes s/he is immortal, but I can't imagine to kill a child w/o hesitation."
That is it, human as a being believes in its own immortality.
LordMiller summarizes "the curious vs the cautious Elf" problem,
but it might be questionable if the cautiousity is a genetic factor.
As I was told it occures even with rats: some are curious some a cowards,
but it doesn't seem to follow Mendel's rules. (cautious parents, curious off-spring)
The other points are the starting level and here I want to state another quote:
"Old swords are desirable, because only good swords get old ..."
So there is the issue with the 1000 year old Elf who has many skill ranks in every skill.
Of course the PC are one of the curious kind and of young age.
But would this mean that Elrond would has to be a master in every skill ?
RM has dimishing returns and we could go the way for rank reduction for unused skills (a possible resolution: NPC and PC need DP to hold the number of skill ranks
maybe first DP-cost for each dekades of skill ranks).
Why didn't Elves outnumber the other races ?
Surely there are some races hunting them and because they just reproduced at low level.
The half-elves are proof that they can reproduce with other races successfully.
The T*lkien kind of Elves are 'good' they help the humans and don't want to kill their younger brethen with diseases.
IIRC: Glorfindel lead an elven army to defend Gondor. (Maybe dutch206 can confirm this).
I don't have any problems with Elves and won't reject if a player wants to create one (depending on the background). And even if the starting age is about 1000 years she would have the same starting level.
One of the last campaign should start with humans, but one girl ;) wanted to play an elf and I let her roll on the M**p race table and got an half elf. The other also want to roll and got silvan elves. This way it got a better plot and I even can't remember the planed story line with the humans.
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I know Glorfindel was the one who made sure The Fellowship made it to Imladris with the Ring, but I can't remember who helped defend Gondor. (Sorry, but I haven't read JRRT since college)
Gil-Galad, the elf king who formed the Last Alliance against Sauron, got involved in human affairs and died as a result of it. IMHO, this is why elves in middle earth are reluctant to involve themselves in human affairs any more.
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They're fantasy, so there's no right answer, but modeled on humans, they'd be the stickiest sticks in the mud ever.
I agree there is 'no right answer" but think 'modeled on humans' is, inherently, by definition, a flawed perspective for 'live until slain' immortals.
Similarly:
Just look at the world arround [sic] you.
I thinking looking at, by definitions, individuals who live a handful or two of decades at most is not a sound methodology for imagining 'live until slain' immortals (who would commonly be hundreds and thousands of years old).
... I agree that the perfectionist, driven and ambitious immortals are going to be scary...
This, amongst other items of note in this thread, is why I said "Immortal Elves are NPCs, not PCs."
At least, the 'realistic, believable' immortals are either high powered or not leaving home without a high powered relative/companion escorting them (and elves escorting one or more of their kind from point A to point B is a common fantasy theme).
DonMoody
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It's rather difficult to envision elves as risk takers in general, or there would be no elves.
As to the "Well I'm an exceptional, curious elf!"
It's purely personal, but explainations set of a cringe factor likely associated with:
"I am a regade Drow, just sufficiantly dark and mysterious to be cool, but yet truely striving against my culture and nature to the light."
There was a point as that Grazit phase peaked where I knew people who would just kill dark elf PCs the moment they laid eyes on them in their first session before they could explain themselves in a soul searing speach.
"Hell, he's a dark elf, how was I supposed to know he was that freak one in a million good guy."
I like unique, off stereotype characters, I do object when you have a standard, "unique", off stereotype character you keep seeing over and over and over. It works, but it gets stale, then it gets annoying.
It's much easier just to accept it than to try to logic it out. . .in a racially mixed culture it gets worse. . .with humans ready and willing to take risks, why risk your precious, irreplacable self?
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I just found this conversation, so excuse me for back-tracking a bit. I seem to remember reading somewhere that immortal elves adventure because they tend to view life as a game to be played. Imgine how dull life would be if nothing ever changed----excitement from any source would be preferable to another century of the same old thing.
In Celtic mythology, the Sidhe (elves) were immortal. They often kidnapped (ie 'borrowed') humans for use in their games and plots, took mortal lovers, etc.... and generally invaded our privacy whenever they liked. However, the penalties for humans invading the privacy of the 'Good Neighbours' was usually quite severe. This is a double standard if I ever heard of one, but there you go.
Also, English legends are full of people who I would describe as being half-elven. The most notable of them are Thomas of Ercldoune (Thomas Rhymour) and Robin Goodfellow. There are also legends of an elf named the 'love-talker' who delighted in seducing human virgins.
I tend to use Elves as NPC's and plot devices rather than heroes in my games.
Thank you, I'm glad somebody else in this thread is on my wavelength here. The Celtic Sidhe are a much bigger inspiration to me as of late than Tolkien's elves....they're vastly more interesting as characters with their penchant for mischief. And I still think that they can be handled as PCs if the player is talented enough to portray 'em right (and the GM is careful to keep 'em under control). But as far as trying to apply modern ideas of biology, anthropology, sociology to them is entirely missing the point of what elves, or other fae, should be.
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See how Oberon and Titania behave in A Midsummers Night Dream for a view of the Sidhe and Unsidhe (Oberon is lord of shadows)
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Here's a flaw in the "I'm a young, curious elf" out in the world of wacky fast-paced humans, concept:
You are the parents of such elf (the only kid you have had in the last 500 years btw), when do you allow them to leave the nest? When they are just old enough to handle a sword, or after they have significant ability (with elves this will usually be both physical & magical ability) and the greatest chance of survival?
We humans - with the benefit of not living in a world with dragons, bugbears, orcs, bulette, proof of evil gods, etc... - still wait until they are about 2-decades old (around 2/7th of their lifespan). Even hasty humanity is conservative on a world like Greyhawk/Faerun/Kulthea.
When an individual is ready to meet the great-big world is not only determined by genetics, but by the society they live in, elves may not believe that their children are ready until they are the equivalent of 5th or level higher - heck, maybe not unitl 10th level or so (using game terms). This does double duty; gives the individual elf the greatest chance of survival, and gives the impression to all the other beings out there that elves are, by nature, a race too powerful to mess with. If all the elves that came to your town could out swordsman your fighter and/or out magic your mage, than you would be reluctant to attack them too. (I know I would.)
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That about sums up the issue, as well as I see it also.
I tend to go with elves as asocial beings. . .so they rarely live together, rather existing in scattered rural communities. (As in, if 1,000 elves live in a 1,000 square mile forest you likely won't find more than 1 per square mile.).
My comment above about bronze era elves getting along better than reinessance era humans actually translates to stone age elves with a completely different mindset and tech track more oriented on biologicals and essence magic.
Beyond that, once an elf is adult. . .they are far more self sufficiant than humans, with very little external needs. (If you can live on your own well enough, and never get sick.)
They avoid metal use, they seem like aboriginal hunter gatherers, but their wooden weapons and armor are as hard as steel (thanks feist!). . .sort of like an entire culture of hermits who limit interaction and look like elfquest elves to the outside observer, but actually have deep lore and culture, which most humans fail to ever understand or appreciate.
Casting almost all elves in the hermit mold, with little interest in the outside world, at least cuts back the menace of a 400 year old character asking if they recall what was going on while this castle the party is trying to sneak into was being built 250 years ago. "Do I recall the shape of the foundation holes?" ugh.
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Really? 'Cause I think of elves as being asocial in relation to other species. In my worlds, elves tend to live in communities that consist primarily if not entirely of elves. This could mean they live in scattered thorps throughout a forest, or in grandiose, glittering cities that are huge but nevertheless hidden from the rest of the world. Maybe my experiences reading Tolkien as a child have colored my view of elves too much, but I tend to think of them as living in medium to large communities consisting entirely of their own kind, and the actual physical architecture of the community depends on location (in a forest, near water, etc.).
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it's a campaign specific fix. . .to each his own. . .I've seen elves with mohawks, tatoos and nose piercings talking street slang, so I doubt any possibility is beyond being workable.
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We see all the weird elves because in the end, its a fav of munchkins and meta gamers who seek out the most advantagous races.
After all, when your GM lets you play so called "humanoids" with no real impact on how you behave, well, why take the race with no inherient talents like night vision, immunity to disease, immortality, great stat mods, etc?
So, we all agree. Elves should be banned from RPG's.
I am glad we had this discussion.
lynn
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I can speak for myself and say I have never played an elf in any game besides D&D that did not have some balancing factor for having non-human abilities.
MDC
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We see all the weird elves because in the end, its a fav of munchkins and meta gamers who seek out the most advantagous races.
After all, when your GM lets you play so called "humanoids" with no real impact on how you behave, well, why take the race with no inherient talents like night vision, immunity to disease, immortality, great stat mods, etc?
So, we all agree. Elves should be banned from RPG's.
I am glad we had this discussion.
lynn
So, do you hate vampires also (I think they have the same PR firm. :))
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I think there are some flaws in your methodology.
Not sure what they would be (the vagueness of the method used didn't giver me much to go on but my first guess would be you used a 'generic' death rate instead of actually determining causes of death and basing a death rate upon that) but the fantasy literature with 'live until slain' immortals I am familiar with has numerous individuals of an age that is 'many, many centuries' or 'many millennia'.
I didn't have good data on death rates by cause handy, so I took the late adolescent rate from a set of insurance life tables and used that - it's the lowest rate in a modern human population. Even when I chopped it back quite a bit the life expectancy just wasn't that high. However, as there's no point at which immortals start dropping like flies (unlike humans), you get what amounts to a half-life, so there's a very long tail.
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It's much easier just to accept it than to try to logic it out. . .in a racially mixed culture it gets worse. . .with humans ready and willing to take risks, why risk your precious, irreplacable self?
I go with the idea that elfs you meet out in the world are young adults, the elfen equivalent of adolescents really, and they have a kind of wanderlust. Once, there were more such elfs than today, whether because there are fewer elfs now, or whether because those with wanderlust seldom live to breed (or whether it's both factors) is a world-dependant question.
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Absolutely detest Vampires. Who can love a monster that feeds on humanity to survive?
And all you "but I can drink animal blood" types, stop fooling yourself. No vampire would WANT animal blood. They are VAMPIRES you idiots.
lynn
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As a joke in a game the GM ruled that Elves are so perfect they do not go #2. Thier bodies are so advanced they convert all the solids into usful stuff or it is washed away by liqueds. He did it just because a prevous player hated Elves so much. But it sure did make us all laugh at the time.
MDC
So what you are saying is that elves are full of it? Reminds me of the thread where someone misread 'elves don't get scarred' as 'elves don't get scared'. Apparently he never met a blood elf in Earthdawn.
This came up recently in our SW campaign. A dwarf in the party actually knew an opposing army commander when he was much younger and told stories of great 'historical' battles to the common troops. I also had a high elf mageant (even he didn't like elves) whose father fought against Rhankaan. So immortality can make good background stories & plots. Just don't look at it too closely and decide to monkey around with the rules.
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MB,
Yes and no. I love Elves and the GM ruled the way he did just as a dig on a past player who was an elf hater to the N'th degree. After he said it he came up with the idea that thier bodes are so advanced they dont have solid waste. It was ment as a joke and still is..and has had some sticking power. I do not know how far it will go as it is not a RM campain but a storyteller camapain. I can say in my RM campains I take a different tone game wise on races but crack jokes on the side that have no in game effects.
I am also thinking of changing my sig. to say I love elves, because I do. Even including the disadvatages that some RPG's give them even if they are imortal or long lived. Just like I enjoy playing spirt characters from the RM2 oriental comp. It is something farout but something I can still get my mind around.
Yamma,
We eat dead animals, people are animals, vampires in general do not kill thier food source as just drain it so they can come back later to feed. Now this is the oposite of the pure inhuman animal vampire point of view and is the way I generally play vampires in my game.
BTW, I was contacted by a vampire PAC and I hope the check is in the mail.
MDC
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I had a long running game where Iron was slaying to elves. . .tied into the whole fey problem with Iron.
That worked out to be a really good balancer, since just about every weapon was iron or steel, along with a lot of the armor.
Had an elf, crowded into the corner by a room full of metal armor wearing allies, eventually freak out, jumping out a window into an ornamental tree just to get away from all the "Death metal" in the room.
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I posted on the "Real" Fantasy World about another aspect of how imortal elves could affect the world they live in. Here it is (for those who don't want to go to another thread):
LordMiller wrote:
Do Elves assuming that they are more advanced assist humanity (In most of my worlds they just watch as other sentient species evolve)?
This statement works to help put the immortal elves (see Immortal Elves thread) into some perspective in a setting. Perhaps individual elves help, ignore, or hinder as they see fit. Imagine a world were an already 1,000 year old (i.e., high-level) elf-mage/animist/whatever decided to assist a group of early humans. They would probably develop a religion around him/her and if/when they finally come to realize (or learn) the truth, it could lead to some very interesting campaign/setting situations. All the gods they knew are actually just representatives of another race living on the same world - only much more advanced/powerful. Could be very cool.......
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Only for clairity, I wrote your quote, not LM. Just FYI.
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He's right, and I didn't even steal it on purpose.
Elves as the "watchmen". . . .another amusing variant we disucssed. . .
Elves and Humans can cross breed. . .an empire run by half elves, with humans below them as commoners. (Seen that a few times in both lit and RPGs.)
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LM,
Wrote "Elves and Humans can cross breed. . .an empire run by half elves, with humans below them as commoners. (Seen that a few times in both lit and RPGs.)"
Maybe have 1/2 elves are those who stayed or are more closely related to elves and RM's High Men be those who stayed or took on more of human parents genetic make up.
Just another game twist if someone needs it.
MDC
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True, high men always struck me as 1/4 elves, or perhaps less. . .a line of men with a few elves back there somewhere. . .the elf genes certainly seem to be good ones (This whole thread seems based around the supposition that they're too good.)
Anyone get RMC Creatues & Treasures yet?
The RLO option might moderate the elf problem a bit.
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LM,
I liked how RMSS dealt with elves and other high stat races. They gave them less talent points. In my game if a person want to play a arcane user they pay 1 level since IMO arcane is powerful. I can do this as I start PC's at 3rd to 5th level and it seams to have worked ok. Also in a SM:P game I let PC's convert 1 level to TP's so they could buy social talents, contacts ect if they wanted to. It also worked out well.
I do have to note that I rewrote the talents and the costs from the main book and from Talent Law to tone them down and get rid of the ones that did not fit the story.
IMO, if their is a benifit then it might require a sacrifice.
MDC
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That adjustment was in RM2 also, via variable levels of Background Options. Talents seem to me to essentially be the "point buy" version of BGOs from one of the companions, but expanded out a bit more.
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Grumph grumph. Elves good. Roasted with apples in the "bip". Or rotten after a month or two... Should try.
Mickey, space mountain troll.
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Yeah...hate to say it, but DnD doesn't have that problem. Sure, elves have great longevity in that game (several hundred years), but they're certainly not immortal, and in many ways they're not even the "best" race to play, though that's entirely a matter of opinion.
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I think the problem is not "immortality", but long lived races: having a race that live for 500 years or one that never die of age is not very different, IMHO.
Still such long lived races (and not only elves) are part of many fantasy setting and yes, they give a lot of problems but since many players love to roleplay them, I think the best thing to do is stop bothering and just have fun ;)
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Well, the issues that I have had with immortal elves are memory, family/marital structure and ennui. Immortal elves pose the problem for if they are that old it makes lost civilizations and great secrets of the past difficult. This is when their negative twenty to Self-discipline comes handy most are just too distracted and flighty to focus. I really play up on that the average Elf has stats from 40 – 60 and they would have a self-discipline bonus of negative twenty. Their racial bonuses represent the average stat bonuses for the race. The average core rules Elf has a bonus of five for memory. On a purely percentile basis, it is arguable that they only remember five percent more than the average human. So, they are very undisciplined and really don’t remember much more than other races limiting how much information that they have. Add in a few quirky social limitations: Isolated communities, coming form other realms (plans), and the issue of memory for me is solved.
In modern times, nearly fifty percent of all American marriages end in divorce. How many Elven marriages end in some kind of Elf divorce, especially considering their Self-discipline? In most of my campaigns, Elf marriages are fluid and ever changing. Parenting becomes a community based commitment and duty. This causes societal diffusion and isolation with no strong family unit. While it may endear a greater sense of racial and community identity, it would weaken the society as a whole.
In my current game, ennui is the secret that Elves do not talk about with outsiders. In this game, I have no dark Elves, but the Elves warn their young, “Fear the Elf with no lust for life! For with those all deeds are possible.†How does an immortal entertain himself for millennia without sinking into depravity as a diversion. The great and powerful evils are ancient bored Elves.
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Well...common, honestly, in most games, age is never a factor. Really, how many have as a GM or had their GM apply age modifiers to stats? Skill loss after not using a skill for a long period of time? Even bothered to routinely keep track of a characters age and then be forced to retire the PC because they grew old?
Yeah, me neither. At some point the GM just needs to say character concept only goes so far. You wanna be a Noldo who is 15, 50 or 5000 years old, great, but you start at level one and I expect your background to reflect that...or i will make your background for you.
The only time I have ever been in a game were age mattered was an ADnD game where the DM used the age tables AND aged PC's for Speed Potions, Wishes and the like. Of course, I simply paid a trusted NPC to wish Gwen young again, so no big whoop.
lynn
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Well, I have played RM2 games set latter than the last game in the same world where old PC had grown old and died. We did not play them that old just as long as the story required. With Ars Magica, I have played games where pc's have grown old and died. Age is very important to Ars Magica - so that is one game that I have seen age matter. I would hope to see aging rules for RMC at sometime and might even work on some. It's not the age of the PCs that I am conserned with but the NPCs.
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Lifespan is almost useless in play. . .like how many DP would you pay for +10 years lifespan. (In real life, probably a lot, in game, it's a waste, unless your character starts at 100 and is human.)
I have a feeling that people who live 500 years would be really ALIEN. . .as in forign to our experience in such a great manner that commonication between us would be annoying and/or difficult on both ends.
Generally, races in FRP are star trek "alien". . .humans with pointy ears and wrinkly foreheads. . .
It goes from really REALLY hard to frankly impossible to play an actual alien that actually thinks and behaves not like a human. . .I know very few people who'd be willing to go to the effort or deal with the hassle of doing it.
And if you're not, well, we're talking minor adjustments to the pointy ears and wrinkly foreheads here. . .really taking on a non human mindset is probably more work than it's really worth. (And rampantly speculative.)
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LM,
As to your "alien" remark I agree that having a common frame of reference for races is a good thing and that truly playing a race can be very difficult for the player. I can think of a tournament I went to that I played a CoC game where i was to be a sweeting, very overweight, bald man who was allways hungry. I did not read the notes the GM game me as we started at 8am and you could say I enjoyed my vacation too much the night before. Any way after the game finnished the GM and talked about the point score he gave everyone for playing. Then and thier I learned that it is very important to play the role you are given.
As a GM I try and make sure that players are capable of playing a specific race based on the paramiters I have set for the race and the campain. If a new player walks in and says I want to play an X because they have the best bonuses, I also give them a background on what I expect them to be like or at least a frame of reference. If thier is a problem later on I talk to the player and we work something out so they are not just humans with pointy ears, wrinkeled forheads or different skin color.
I think it is a big part of the GM to set the tone of the world and story and make sure the players are on board. But then again you are thier to have fun so do what makes you and your players happy. Just be sure everyone is on the right page at the begining.
MDC
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Yeah, me neither. At some point the GM just needs to say character concept only goes so far. You wanna be a Noldo who is 15, 50 or 5000 years old, great, but you start at level one and I expect your background to reflect that...or i will make your background for you.
I do exactly the same: you can be what age you want, just explain me why you're still 1st level (or the level we're starting at) and no, you won't remeber things happened X time ago unless you have payed DPs (or BOs) for it!
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Immortality can matter in Rolemaster, if you allow downtime for level up and taking training packages. I've had that experience... humans will "budget" the time of the training packages, because past a certain point, you end up middle-age and get aging checks. Elves don't have that problem, but they also take a lot longer time to complete their training due to differences in Self-Discipline.
Alternatively, if you roleplay the time of the training package, you'll find an elf taking hermit will have to roleplay it for quite a while...
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We used this downtime levelling only once and it did not really matter as everyone did it beyond level twenty which meant that even the human characters had ways to push back old age ... of course most of them would die several years into the future but they seemed still pretty young when the group met again.
The Elves on the other hand had real problems levelling up as much as the humans as they due to their immortality in the tranquility of Elven lands or even their own workshop lacked the discipline to move on that quickly.
Immortality has proven interesting though as some of our old characters have resurfaced in recent campaign where they have become advisors, people giving quests or granting support usually without the former player knowing that his old character would play a role in the recent adventure. Was fun most of the time although I have to admit immortality really became an issue when some of the fromer characters had proven to turn out bad over the time being a threat to the actual characters and the world ... nice situation to be up against your former character knowing what he was able to do years ago ... really scary sometimes.
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You should have a look on H?rn Elves. They are very interesting.
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Bloodelves in Earthdawn are a little 'off' as well. While not immortal they do have thorns growing from their skin causing them constant pain. And yes they did it to themselves on purpose. On thinking on this further I wonder if the idea came from yamma's subconscious...
In Terry Amthor's Shadowstone Chronicles (Shadow World) he described the elven memory in an interesting way. Elves may be immortal but they do not have an ever-increasing memory capacity. Elves would have a difficult time remembering things from a long time ago, to the point where they would completely forgot about some things entirely.
Similar thing happens to Nathan Brazil who is millenia old. There simply isn't enough room in his brain to remember everything so he forgets his early years. As I recall Methos still remembered his first head, but then again he was a putz.
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Elves in constant pain? Sounds fair since they put ME in constant pain (in my ahh...right, family board).
lynn
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A 1000 year old Elf will be 16th level even if he has only averaged 1 experience point a day. So much for starting a campaign with a 1000 year old character (unless he has slept through most of it, solving most problems) unless you are generating a high-level character, in which case you should be able to deal with 1000 year old characters.
As for thousands-years-old NPCs having a lot of knowledge, they still have less than gods do. If your game can survive having Clerics in it, it can survive having Elves. Even if they like you and know the answer you seek, they'll still likely couch their answer in a riddle. Old and wise equals cryptic in fantasy cliche land.
Arguments against risk-taking Elves actually seemed to be based on making them humans-with-pointy-ears. Or at least assuming they are like Tolkien Elves in one respect: low birth rate.
How's this: Elves follow an unusual biological strategy of long life and prolific reproduction. Since Elven health prevents childbirth woes, a female Elf can produce hundreds of offspring. Furthermore, given the low death rate, there is little need to worry about replacing lost population. Young Elves are risk-taking to the point of recklessness. In battle, they can make human berserkers look like chess players. They tend not to parry and they aren't afraid of risky spell-casting either. Most don't survive to become adult, careful Elves. This is okay because few adult Elves are needed. In wars, they send out their scary young folk, so even then the adults rarely die. Adventuring Elves are allowed out alone because the young are expendable. It isn't that Elves don't care about their children. They do, just with a sort of detachment that humans find hard to grasp.
And by the time a PC Elf would get out of hand due to immortality, he achieves adulthood and goes off to join the serious folk and ignores the ephemeral mortals. In the unlikely event he lives that long in the first place.
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How's this: Elves follow an unusual biological strategy of long life and prolific reproduction. Since Elven health prevents childbirth woes, a female Elf can produce hundreds of offspring. Furthermore, given the low death rate, there is little need to worry about replacing lost population. Young Elves are risk-taking to the point of recklessness. In battle, they can make human berserkers look like chess players. They tend not to parry and they aren't afraid of risky spell-casting either. Most don't survive to become adult, careful Elves. This is okay because few adult Elves are needed. In wars, they send out their scary young folk, so even then the adults rarely die. Adventuring Elves are allowed out alone because the young are expendable. It isn't that Elves don't care about their children. They do, just with a sort of detachment that humans find hard to grasp.
Very cool concept! Have an idea point!
BTW this would also give a good reason for their low SD!
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heh... young elves == tadpoles (or maybe baby sea turtles)
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Amazing...This conversation has been going on for eight months now, and we still haven't reached a consensus.
I have always considered High Humans to be "Mortal Half-Elves" (ala Elros Tar-Mianstir). I consider RM Half-Elves to be Elves with a little human blood in their family tree. (What the drow of the Forgotten Realms would call "Not-People").
I would say that the "Race penalty" for being an elf is fairly clear: a (-20) penalty to Fear resistance rolls. I am sure the elves would rather it was described as a 'healthy sense of self-preservation', but dwarves would call it cowardice.
However, none of this answers the original question: What to do about 'immortal' characters? Nobody seems to remember that human arch-mages have a lifespan of 3000+ years according to the rules in RMC I. Why isn't anybody pitching a fit about that?
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Nobody seems to remember that human arch-mages have a lifespan of 3000+ years according to the rules in RMC I. Why isn't anybody pitching a fit about that?
How many GM's have ever used this in thier game seems a more precise question? I have played in many games and have never seen a GM use an arcane dragon spell user as anything other than an NPC, not counting my own games, were I have allowed two PC's to go through the "ritual of acension."
Age hardly ever enters into games that I have seen. Few care about such minutia.
lynn
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In wars, they send out their scary young folk, so even then the adults rarely die. Adventuring Elves are allowed out alone because the young are expendable. It isn't that Elves don't care about their children. They do, just with a sort of detachment that humans find hard to grasp.
Ok you got an idea point,now here's a laugh point. "scary young folk...." hilarious!
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The Adept in the Alchemy Companion could not only gain Elf-equivalent immortality, he could cast off the shackles of the body and Ascend (to use Stargate SG-1 speak).
I imagine a human being who went to all the trouble to become immortal-unless-killed would be quite cautious.
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The Adept in the Alchemy Companion could not only gain Elf-equivalent immortality, he could cast off the shackles of the body and Ascend (to use Stargate SG-1 speak).
I imagine a human being who went to all the trouble to become immortal-unless-killed would be quite cautious.
Not if he knows the level 95 spell BODY WISH.
lynn
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Doing some research in the vast hall of academia which is my RPG book collection, I came across a discussion of this topic. (ie. why don't long-lived races rule the world?) I found it, in of all places, 2nd edition dnd (TSR, 1989).
They came up with two alternatives to encourage people to play humans:
1) artificial level restrictions. (IMHO :cry2:) Dwarves, elves, halflings, etc.... can't progress past level 20 in the professions favored by their races.
2) different XP requirements for level advancement. (IMHO :idea:) Races with a lifespan of less than 150 years advance at the normal rate. Races with a lifespan of 151-600 years advance at twice the listed rate (20,000 to go from level 1 to 2). Races with a lifespan of over 601 years are considered effectively immortal and advance at four times the normal experience rate. (40,000 to go from level 1 to 2).
Either of these situations would end the "I want to play a one thousand year old elf!" problem. (Especially when combined with the (-20) fear RR modifier I mentioned earlier.)
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As for the options:
1) A very archaic & out-dated method (IMO) for dealing with the situation. Totally meta-game.
2) Maybe realistic, but very hard (or impossible) to deal with in a game - unless you have players that want to see the other players rocket past them in levels. (If you do, you have a more laid-back gaming group than I have ever had in my 30+ years of gaming!)
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Elves are not immortal, but they usually don't die from sickness or old age.
Like everything else in the physical world they will eventually die and crumble to dust. It's not a matter of 'if', but a matter of 'when'.
As for the concept of immortality in roleplaying, I find it very interesting from a philosophical point of view. One that was also explored in the roleplaying game Vampire. Immortality is one of those things one can only discover the true meaning of through years of roleplaying.
For example, and this is only a few aspects:
If you are immortal, why risk your life going on adventure? It turns out that is the wrong question.
If you decide to live forever and in doing so take no risk - and going new places and meeting other people always carries an element of risk - what is the point of living?
Elves are passionate beings - they care about something. Maybe that something isn't danger and riches, but something else. They will to some extent take risks to seek, protect, or destroy that something.
If you don't care about anything, what is the point of living?
I seem to recall it was written somewhere that elves who lose their passion for living - not living as in staying alive, but the true sense of knowing how to live - will in fact wither and die from old age.
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I think the problem lies in RM background from where they originally took the races (halfling, highmen, immortal elves). It carries a certain flavor with it that may not always be what you are looking for in a particular setting. I always made my own races so if I had immortals (I didnt) it would be of my own design ;D
I don?t know how to "fix" the situation or even if its meant to be "fixed". All I can suggest is to leave immortals out of your game/setting if thats what you want ;)
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I think the lack of consensus here is due to the fact that elves are different in each campaignworld, which leads to problems with agreeing on how they think or develop.
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I think the lack of consensus here is due to the fact that elves are different in each campaignworld, which leads to problems with agreeing on how they think or develop.
OTOH this gives us a lot of interesting considerations and new ideas for our campaigns ;D
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too true, I suspect that reading this thread expecting to hear new ideas you'll be happy. . .but a search for consensus will lead to disappointment.
If we want to delve odd angles, the last time I used elves extensively:
(Credit for the original inspiration to Orson Scott Card "Speaker for the Dead"
Elves are plants, not animals.
First life
they are mobile humanoids (The pointy eared tree huggers you'd expect)
When they die, their body, which is actually a mobile seed form, attempts to root and become a tree.
Second Life
As sentient, but immobile trees, they can communicate telepathically by touch.
Mobile first life elves tend them, they send out roots and branches to touch other 2nd life trees to form a vast interconnected network/community.
The interconnected network of 2nd life elves form the "Enchanted forest" type setting the elves live in.
Reproduction is done between a mobile form and a tree form.
So. . .as first lifers, generally the form a PC would choose, they are curious and adventurous, they explore and live life to the hilt. . .they have no fear of death at all in first life. . .mostly they fear dying too far away from the forest, where they'll be stuck alone without anyone to talk to, tend them, or reproduce with when in 2nd life. Elves end up being less concerned with dying, and more concerned with being sure someone collects the bodies of the dead to be moved to a proper planting location . . .2nd life elves, as essentially immortal trees, end up with the long-perspective, risk averse personas normally associated with elves.
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Thats not a bad idea LM! That deserves an idea point ;D
I shall promptly proceed to stealing it ;)
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Absolutely detest Vampires. Who can love a monster that feeds on humanity to survive?
And all you "but I can drink animal blood" types, stop fooling yourself. No vampire would WANT animal blood. They are VAMPIRES you idiots.
lynn
You are a wise sage, good sir. I shall refrain from going off ata tangent at ranting about how we Liches are infinately superior to Vampires because this is the Rolemaster boards so I know everyone here must be smart enough to know that already...
Me, I like immortal Elves. They scream so much more satifiyingly when you gut the-
Erm, I mean, I am a blatent Tolkien fan, so I always in any game system have the immortal Elves. That said, my campaign world have a nasty tendancy to be based on a realistic time scale (lacking most game and fictional fantasy worlds "and then a thousand years passed an nothing happened" - even Tolkien was guility of this). So they don't have to be tens of thousands of years old. And I get the Tolkien feel of "Elves are better than you" by having more of the veterans of the previous wars surviving meaning "Elves are better" by the simple expediant of being higher level than you... (PCs aside!)
That and the fact I get round Elf-rule with low birth rates (volentary pregnacy coupled with less or a desire to procreate except recreationally) and more emphasis on the death-by-violence (i.e. bad guys). And of course the older the Elf, the more 'alien-y' and mysterious (and Tolkien-sque) said Elf will get.
So I guess they are more plot-point NPC than PC for me. Because no game I run, unless composed exclusively of Elves and Dragons or something, would last in-game chronologically long enough for immortality to make a difference.
And if a player asks, "Can I play a 1000-year old level 1 Elf" I smack them over the head with a rocket launcher. Seventy-four times.
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And if a player asks, "Can I play a 1000-year old level 1 Elf" I smack them over the head with a rocket launcher. Seventy-four times.
Maybe he was a late bloomer ;)
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An old GM I had a great idea IMO when a player wanted to create an old elf. He had the elf enter a stasis for a long time during which he forgot somethings and some of what he knew was now useless. I think the time in stasis was 10,000 years or so and the player had no idea at the time that that was what the GM was going to do. The GM just asked the player to skip the first game and arive for the second when they got him out of stasis. He was a little shocked to say the least.
MDC
Oh BTW, go elves.
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Seventy-four times.
Just like a Lich to be thorough. Gotta love that :D
I know I would most certainly rather be a Lich than a stinkin, whiney, limp wristed Vampire. What respectable Lich wouldn't know an "Orb of Daylight" spell?
lynn
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Suddenly, I get the distinct feeling that this thread has become an outpost of "Now I am Sage". ;D
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I do not read or look at the Now I am Sage, so I missed the joke :(
lynn
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That, in itself, indicates a highly developed level of innate sageness. :-)
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The longer the natural life span the more likely an unnatural death.
Elves IMHO are not immortal (well Tolkien types anyway) not sure about the Sidhe and Unsidhe. (it was fun in a kind of wierd way when in one of my games the player turned out to be a daughter of Oberon and Titania), they are however unaging once maturity is reached which is not the same thing as immortality at all.
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I admit I didn't read every single post so I hope I'm not repeating someone else's ideas. I used to run a Vampire- the Masquerade chronicle and immortality is a significant issue even if it is adressed in a darker, more gothic mood.
Some points are imo interesting:
1) a human, reaching his 40s knows he's declining and tends to look backwards considering what he has achieved in his life if anything. Thus there's a urge at a some age to do something, it's not true for everyone but, as a whole, the human race may progress. An immortal being could be an eternal teenager. That is, I guess, the point of considering that elves tend to develop at slower pace.
2) the social ladder: irl people retire and die, this is both a bane when we talk about people we loved and a bliss because the youngs may climb up the social ladder and occupy the jobs of their elders. In an immortal society that's not an option: your boss will be your boss in 10 000 years. If you wanna climb up you'll have to fight your way up. Considering this the elvish society might be way less peaceful that we imagined.
3) In most fantasy settings deities are not a matter of belief but a matter of fact. Once an Elf accomplishes what he thinks to be his destiny it is possible that he wishes to die and live again in the afterlife.
4) There's a well known sayings that says "in the long run we'll be all dead", this is defintively not an elvish saying ^^. Humans may ignore long run issues or consider them to be irrelevent, after all in the real world we've benn waiting a long long time before considering pollution an issue. An immortal society will be more concerned about long run issues because there are not about some remote and foggy future it is about you in 100 years or so. I guess the society would be lead a very different way.
5) Elves and humans: everybody who've got dog/cat will tell you that animals or lovely but losing them is terrible. Just imagine the average PC elf, adventuring with his humans fellows, living countless adventures with them and seeing them dying of old age. In 50 years or so the elf will still be young and all his good fellow adventurers will be dead or very old, a shadow of their former selves. Will he go adventuring with humans again ? How will his former parteners react seing their friend as young as they were 50 years ago while they are old and sick ? It's true that it is generally not relevent in a campaign since they tend to take just several years, but you might consider that immortals rarely mix with mortal races since they die too soon and a friendship between a mortal and an immortal is likely to end up bad.
Just a few ideas.
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Then if you assume half elves have a longer than human but not unaging life span, perhaps a few centuries then they are out of sinc with both elves and humans, loneliness and a sense of not belonging anywhere could become overwhelming for them. Only other half elves would understand and only those of the same age and thus on the "same time line" could avoid watching their friends age and die.
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All excellent points and ideas to concider when trying to put together a relatively realistic elven society. If I may be so bold as to add some thoughts/ideas/questions to your points:
1) Would being an "eternal teenager" mean they are progressive or concervative? The way you word it makes it seems as though humans get progressive as they get older, but that is not usually the case. There's some quote about being born a democrat and growing up into a republican........
2) This one, I feel would have to have been dealt with for the race to survive and still be a community, instead of a bunch of very small groups - or even killed off (by themselves). Something like term limits would probably have been instituted, say 100 years or so. When your term is up, you step down and the next (chosen, voted, in-line, whatever) leader is instituted. Maybe a challenge system - though I doubt it would be anything combat related unless they are a particualrly violent elven tribe.
3) Exactly. When you have proof of the soul and life after death, everyone changes how they deal with dying - not just elves. That, right there, would necessitate a change in the basic cultures of every species on (or in) that world.
4) Long term planning would be very typical of elven society. So long term that many of the other races would think they don't have any plan(s) at all. In this situation, selfishness (which is what I believe lies behind the vast majority of our problems: economy, ecology, etc...) actually helps in making - or maybe more appropriately: keeping - the world and society "better" places. (I put society in quotes because, as we all know, one person's idea of good/better is not necessarily anothers.)
5) The big difference here is that these would be "pets" that you could form real....REAL...relations with. (Please, no cracks about animal lovers, it creeps me out :-[) That throws a bit of a monkey wrench in the whole business. But would be a great explanation as to why the elves hold themselves apart from the other races. They have learned the hard way that feeling that loss, repeatedly, is nothing to seek out. Maybe some of them go further and victimize the other races to force themselves to think about them differently - less somehow. A defense mechanism of some kind. Or maybe why some human (or other race's) families are watched over by an elf - they are decendants of his/hers.
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Elves are plants, not animals.
First life
they are mobile humanoids (The pointy eared tree huggers you'd expect)
...
Reproduction is done between a mobile form and a tree form.
Tree huggers? I think what you've described is a little more than hugging!
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Male elves and female trees, female elves and male trees. . . .but recall, they are plants, so it's a lot less smutty, and a lot more like bees polinating flowers than one might think.
The concept of Elves as an Ecology, rather than a society, made for a lot of changes. . . .once I slotted the faries and other bits into place to fit the overall "Elven Forest is made up of elf-trees" concept, it actually made for a very different result than usual. (i.e. elves as mobile units of an immobile forest, which is not their home, but actually the vast majority of the elvish population in tree form.)
It worked out well, I found it interesting how the PC elf dealt with deaths of his companions as an opportunity to expand the borders. (you fight elves near the edge of their land, you kill 50, if they take those bodies and plant them along or outside the fringe, the border is moving outward, the elves are expanding.). . .end result, killing elves resulted in elves behaving expansionistly. . .the way to keep them at status quo was to leave them alone. . .and the way to hurt them was logging or otherwise attacking the trees.
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#%&#^&#^*#&^# !!!!!!
In giving LM an idea point I promptly erased my whole post!!! ^@$^&*#%@^^#$%#
OK, the gist. Great idea (have an idea point (@#$#%&#&@^@^@$^)). Have only the trees being able to mate and the sprites and such act as bees in this situation.
A great story for newer PCs (no elves) can be where they get embroiled in a human-elf conflict around some logging. Ultimately they find out the elf/tree secret (which the elves do not want getting out). They will be allowed to live by the elves as either they have proven themselves friends and/or will be given an important task by the elves (like transporting an important elf/humanoid corpse to another elf clan (forest) to help cement ties between the two - sort of like intermarriage for the elves). This would be a great way to insitute an elf/humanoid PC into the group; though there could have been one from the start...
PS: It could be that only elves that attain a certain spiritual rank (which could be reflected in experience levels, of course) become a Great Tree upon their death, which is why the elf/humaoids go out into the world (among other, more mundane, reasons). All those that do not attain the rank may either go on to the "regular afterlife" or may become another type of fey (sprite, brownie, etc..).
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Elves IMHO are not immortal (well Tolkien types anyway) not sure about the Sidhe and Unsidhe.
Considering Cirdan woke up on the beach to the light of two lamps before taking a walk west I will take being as old as Middle-Earth close enough to being immortal.
Slowest job in Middle-Earth - Elvish barber. You would only have one customer who needs a shave.
Tree huggers? I think what you've described is a little more than hugging!
(Insert subtle walnut vs. oak vs. coconut joke here)
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Side note: All this talk about elves and trees made me think of the blue giril on Farscape. I guess i will put that on my move list of TV shows to rewatch during dinner.
MDC
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Slowest job in Middle-Earth - Elvish barber. You would only have one customer who needs a shave.
And IIRC, some elven bows in ME supplements of old have unbreakable bow strings made of elven hair... So your barber would also have to use eog tools or something like that in order to effectively cut anything ;D
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Man, you guys are pumping out excellent ideas!
Reading this thread got me thinking about how I'll do elves in my campaign world. One of the important themes in my world is that the world is about Humans. Humans are more important than all the other races (even though they're not as "interesting", being something from real life). With this in mind, I thought about Elves and magic.
So at the moment, I'm going to rule that Elves are a magical race (Dispell Magic, anyone?). As far as using magic, they're natural casters, but they are NOT masters of the Arcane. Elves are limited to one Realm of casting (I haven't thought through whether or not they're restricted to a certain realm, but at the instant I'm going to say they have access to any of the three), but Humans are the only ones that can *know* what they're doing, and know how to manipulate it further (Maybe Spell Mastery will be restricted for Elves and not for humans?)
I'm rewriting magic for my campaign world, so I'm working more with premises than crunch. But some thoughts are there (Restrict Spell Mastery, limit to One Realm, maybe limit the amount of spell lists to only their realm, etc. etc.).
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Another take on elves could be Michael Moorcocks Melniboneans from the Elric cycle of his eternal champion series. Here we have a very long lived race (few of whom die of natural causes) who move from educators of humanity to rulers to considering the humans as playthings as they as a race become more and more introspective. Until finally the few remaining from the fatal intriges of their race betrayed by one of their own find their city sacked by humans and the race all but destroyed.
Gives a different impression on jaded elves who have already been everywhere and done everything.
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In my campaign world elves are air elementals (dwarves are earth elementals, dragons are fire elmentals and orcs are water elementals). A well kept secret around the dwarves are that these too have imortal life span. The orcs are also imortal, but they tend to live such violent life that they never has understood this.
Another feature are that these races have a limited number of souls. They can't have children unless some of their kind has been slain and is ready to be reborn.
The age aspect is not really a problem because they have the same kind of memory as all races and only remembers fragments from old times.
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Amazing...This conversation has been going on for eight months now, and we still haven't reached a consensus.
I have always considered High Humans to be "Mortal Half-Elves" (ala Elros Tar-Mianstir).
I thought it was pretty obvious that High Men were Dunedain with the serial numbers filed off.
As for Elves, I loved them. They are my race of choice, and Tolkien elves are probably my favourite of them.
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There is a series of books by mercedes lackey that include long lived/immortal elves that deals with longevity in an interesting manor. Their culture becomes extremely ritualized, formal and polite as a way to deal with the friction of living with the same people for centuries. They also "fight" for position in elaborate competitions with complicated and expansive rules designed to eliminate bloodshed and the detrimental efects on society that would result in an immortal culture. It is a good reference for an alternate elven culture. In RM terms you could probably have "old" starting characters as high level with all but the last level's dp's spent on elven culture lore, elven language, and various "flower arranging" skills. Of course you would have to either use a skill based rather than level RR system or declare them to have level 1 RR by fiat.
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I was getting ready to do an "immoral Elves" joke, but it keeps coming out questionable for a "family-friendly" board.
Seriously, though, an argument could be made that immortals would just become more and more jaded and thus more and more exotic in their tastes in the pursuit of something (or someone) they hadn't already done a million times, so humans might find the life of the elder Elves quite shocking.
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I was getting ready to do an "immoral Elves" joke, but it keeps coming out questionable for a "family-friendly" board.
Seriously, though, an argument could be made that immortals would just become more and more jaded and thus more and more exotic in their tastes in the pursuit of something (or someone) they hadn't already done a million times, so humans might find the life of the elder Elves quite shocking.
This makes me think of Elves coming across as complete foreigners for the fantasy genre, and taking on some sort of modern ideals. Like a hippy commune. Let's face it, they're frilly tree-huggers. No amount of R.A. Salvatore will change that.
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A lot of the mythos has elves as pretty vile, nasty buggers. . .the kind to steal your baby and leave you a changling and all that. . .or take you in for an all night party that turns out to last 100 years.
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. . .or take you in for an all night party that turns out to last 100 years.
I think I went to that party. (Or, at least it felt like I did the next morning.) ;D
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Also don't annoy Oberon or Titania if you know what is good for you.
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Great thread. I'm another of the Tolkienophiles, and I love elves. But they can be a pain in the posterior.
Somebody already mentioned H?rnic elves, which are essentially M.E. elves though debased somewhat. Like some other interpretations, their memories fade with time, leading to what N. Robin Crossby called a rather "stoned" behaviour. An ancient elf might THINK he remembers coming to H?rn with Siem, but in reality, it's what he read in a book last century.
With regards to elven "passion", a mainstay of Tolkien's elves, one could always explain an elven adventurer as being in that "passionate" stage... since they're immortal, that phase (as in "he's just going through a phase") might last a good 50 years. After which he grows up and settles down.
Another nice take on elves was done by Poul Anderson. That was a key influence on Michael Moorcock's Melniboneans. Basically immoral (well, more like amoral) immortals.
It all comes down to what you like in a setting. If you've got mature players, then someone who really likes and "gets" what elves are all about in your setting is going to do a good job, and everyone is going to enjoy it.
Elves rock. All elves, all the time. That's my motto. Or it is for this thread. ;)
-Mark
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1) Would being an "eternal teenager" mean they are progressive or concervative? The way you word it makes it seems as though humans get progressive as they get older, but that is not usually the case. There's some quote about being born a democrat and growing up into a republican........
"Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart;
to be one at thirty is proof of want of brains."
- Georges Clemenceau, Former Prime Minister of France
I had immortal Elves as being extremely individualistic, so much so that the basic unit of Elven society (equivalent to the nuclear family in most human societies) is the individual Elf. They may have a hierarchical political structure of some sort, I would expect the ties between members to be very loose indeed. The main reason for that opinion is that, being immortal, they can afford to be patient when making their environment what they wish it to be. The purpose of ANY government is to provide as high a standard of living and as safe, predictable an environment as possible for the largest number possible. But if you personally can tweak the local ecology over several generations to do what you want, you can accomplish all that by yourself given enough time. Likewise if your 'tweaking' took the form of creating new species, "teaching the plants how to grow", and other things of that nature, your idealized environment is relatively permanent, you can one day get it to the point where it is self-maintaining. At that point, the only societal purpose to government is to referee disputes between members of the governed society. If the birth rate is low enough, population pressure will be likewise low enough to make the need for such a referee fairly uncommon. Such a governmental/societal structure would be roughly equivalent to modern Americans' and Europeans' going to church: Regardless of how seriously you personally may take it, for most people it's really just a way to keep a sense of cultural continuity, and a way to keep in touch with the neighbors.
I could quite easily see an Elf getting very cautious, as he doesn't have to die EVER if he's careful enough.... but I can just as easily picture an Elf engaging in risky behaviors out of sheer boredom. Think about it, most of the things we consider exciting rely on the perception of personal danger for their sense of excitement. At the very least, there must be a feeling of challenges overcome. To quote Mel Gibson in the movie 'Air America':
"We're trouble junkies. We've been mainlining danger and adrenalin so long nothing else gets us off."
And yes,
. .the kind to steal your baby and leave you a changling and all that. . .or take you in for an all night party that turns out to last 100 years.
that makes perfect sense to me. This is an Elf we're talking about, not some ephemera who has to check the mirror every morning to see if he got old while he wasn't looking. Why should he care, or even think about, the problems a 100 year party will cause for some mayfly species that barely lives that long? Why would he consider taking a human baby any more worthy of note than a human taking a wild dog's "baby" and domesticating it?
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My players never actually abused the "Elvin" trait of immortality so I haven?t had to deal with that much. I typically ask for a background idea, and if some historic fact comes up then that particular character wanting to use the information or use the knowledge better have purchased "Region Lore" or "History" for that part of the world... else the character didn?t make note of the event and/or was off dreaming about ponds lilly's or something...
Additionally, I did have a character with a 2000 year old elf play in a game. He was STILL first level after that long... he spent most of his time doing odd Elvin jobs like thinking about existence, planting forests and making small talk with squirrels. There was a time in my previous campaign where one of the other players asked, ?Weren?t you around for so-and-so major event?!? The Elvin player rolled his History lore and failed. The dice never lie? the character simply didn?t remember the event in enough detail. Kind of like you having to remember what was the Daily paper headline for the morning of July 2nd 1992. Anyone remember off the top of your head??? No? see my point?
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I admit I didn't read every single post so I hope I'm not repeating someone else's ideas.
Same here...
3) In most fantasy settings deities are not a matter of belief but a matter of fact. Once an Elf accomplishes what he thinks to be his destiny it is possible that he wishes to die and live again in the afterlife.
...but this, I think, is one of the central issues about the difference between (Tolkien) elves and humans. Humans live, die, and then pass out of the spheres of the world, which is their main gift from Eru Iluvatar. Elves are immortal, but typically die of violence or tire of the troubles of (Middle) Earth, thereafter to gather in Mandos' Halls (located in Valinor, a place quite a few elves have actually been to) until the end of time. Their souls do not pass on into some kind of afterlife separate from existence, rather, they simply have to sit and wait (which may be extremely boring?).
Note that this also implies that immortal elves are so only w.r.t. the time frame of the existence of the world, which seems to be limited (both in terms of space and time). Only human souls are truly immortal, whereas those of elves cease to exist once the world disappears - at least that's how I understand it. The fate of the elves is tied to Arda/the world and the battle of the deities there (or rather, the angels aka Valar vs. Melkor/Morgoth, the fallen angel), but humans really get to leave - something that elves may even be envious of, considering all the losses they experience...
3) Exactly. When you have proof of the soul and life after death, everyone changes how they deal with dying - not just elves. That, right there, would necessitate a change in the basic cultures of every species on (or in) that world.
What proof??? :o
As indicated, the souls of (Tolkien) elves and humans are different, therefore their societies/cultures would certainly develop different attitudes towards life, death, and what to do in between!? Isn't the cause of the fall of Numenor the failure of humans (aka the Edain) to realize Iluvatar's gift as such, rather trying to extend their (personal) lives, pondering their ancestry, and other useless things like these? In short, a lack of trust or belief in Iluvatar? They definitely have no proof of the existence of their souls, or what will happen to them after death - it is a question of belief!
As for the elves, they're pretty directly involved in the battles by design, as the fallen Melkor wants to rule the world and supersede them with his own creatures (in a contest with Iluvatar himself!). They don't have much of a choice in the conflict (whereas the humans do, and they even have the above guaranteed escape option...), at least many of them believe that they must defend themselves (or regain the stolen Silmarils) and try to defeat the evil Melkor represents.
Also, there seems to me no problem with the motivation of elves to go adventuring. In the battles with Melkor, large armies regularly are defeated by masses of orcs led by dragons, balrogs, even Sauron (which simplifies the population control issue...). The next generation must prepare for the next battle, so adventuring is simply training (for those who strive to be a leader in that battle - I assume the ranks of the armies aren't adventurer types!). This argument may easily be used in other settings, as "enemies" of the elves will certainly consider them more dangerous (due to their potential from their lifespan) than puny humans, plus the latter are typically more gullible and can be duped into service...
To me, such a basic difference goes a long way in explaining away all the elf vs. human issues. So much for the theories...
Now, in game terms, it's always seemed to me that there is a certain elf racism among players, which is why only few ever play an elf (I admit not having a large statistics to back this, though). This seems directly related to the longevity issue, i.e., envy. As a GM, this plays into my hands in the sense that there is a "natural" antagonism towards a different race/culture, which to my mind goes rather well with the above differences.
Considering motivation to go adventuring, well, the players don't really ever worry about this, apart from the first few session where they prepare and explain their background. Mostly, that background loses importance as a common memory develops from the situations mastered (or not ;) ) in the game.
Currently (playing in the Shadow World), I have two half-elves - for both of which there is a clear min-maxing tendency: The players chose their race only to benefit from better bonuses and resistances. I sometimes wish they would make more of their characters in the light of the above... :(
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Ah, in addition, I believe that most Elves will get bored of life after a few thousand years (and like the post above) will seek to find out what is in the "beyond".
We tend to think in "human" terms... I believe that if I was on this earth for 1000+ years I would be filled with this life and want to experiance something else.
Just a thought. Good post from above! :)
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We tend to think in "human" terms... I believe that if I was on this earth for 1000+ years I would be filled with this life and want to experiance something else.
For that matter, if I had been born in the time of Julius Caesar and was still alive, I'd probably be heartily sick by now of humans so predictably acting like humans. I could easily picture opinions along the lines of, "You guys are idiots. I saw Hitler comin by the mid 1600s, and saw Saddam Hussein comin by WWI."
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Grump, another excellent point! Being immortal would mean seeing the same patterns over and over and it would (to me at least stepping outside my mortal shell) get routine or mundain.
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This may have been mentioned before, but one of the side effects of the long term view of an immortal race would be the need to cover up past mistakes. In the US our ancestors in a very real sense committed genocide against the Native Americans, but as mortals we can distance ourselves from those actions; after all we weren't alive then to have any say in the decision making that led to those events. An immortal on the other hand wouldn't be able to think that way. That village he quietly helped wipe off the face of the map when he was young and foolish would need to stay safely lost to history or he'd have to deal with being regarded as hitleresque by society for... well the rest of his life. Such a character might go to great great lengths to cover up such a past mistake no matter how noble or good he might be regarded.
In addition a previous post pointed out that in a level one start campaign an immortal, by virtue of being level one, would be young. Perhaps in my above example the elf having realized what he had done gave up the sword, and worked as a potter for the last 1000 years trying to hide from his own past. Now he has taken it up again to protect his homeland from a great threat, and maybe finally atone for his past wrongs. Having not lifted a weapon in a millenia, while he might have a really high pottery making skill, he'd effectively be a level one fighter. The GM has a great deal of leeway in deciding how to factor in the skills of a centuries old being, the most obvious necessity being a need to make the character level one in their 'party job' skills. Their highly developed past life skills can simply be things that make up the characters unique persona. Perhaps the evil that threatens the world eventually leads back to the immortals past mistake. How does he handle the situation? Does he sacrifice himself to make amends? or does he begin murdering his companions in their sleep to cover it up? A good GM would find ways to encourage him to make a well role-played decision.
Tolkien's works also had a variety of established elven communities not all of which were involved in / aware of the goings on in Middle Earth, or even each other. Once again a GM has latitude in deciding how to manage the potential for knowledge of historical events that are supposed to remain lost to history till the time is right for the the GM to spring them on the players. Just because a player is 1000 years old doesn't mean he has witnessed or even paid attention to all of recorded history. Consider the staggering number of Americans who only read the sports page, and forget the rest of the paper. An immortal might well have spent that century too involved in his own affairs, learning a new art form, etc. to notice whats was going on in the world. Perhaps his political party was on the loosing side of an election and he stopped paying attention out of frustration. After all he's immortal he can always read about it later, and then the next thing he knows later is too late and people are too busy burning the books to stay warm to worry about the knowledge they are destroying. This too can become a part of a characters motivation in the present day. He sat it out once, and the world went to hell around him, so now he's taking an active hand.
I think immortality can be role-played properly it simply requires care on the part of the GM in designing the world and it's PC"s, and a willingness on the part of the player to run the persona correctly.
In some campaign settings immortality could be a useful trait. In a middle earth setting immortality could be used a vehicle to allow the players to participate in minor events surrounding the major chapters of world history from the first to the 4th age. The GM simply skips ahead a few hundred years after the last quest in order to set the stage for the next one e.g. the pc's go from the destruction of Angband forward in time to the destruction of Numenor. An alternative might be a campaign that involves flashbacks like in the film 'Highlander,' with the players acting out events they participated in centuries ago in their own past.
Immortality is simply another character trait that needs to be managed in the world system. Magic isn't exactly a 'realistic' thing either and necessitates lots of rules and limitations that the GM must manage in order to make it playable.
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Great post jmsrober!
I agree with almost everything you have stated!
I do disagree however on the line of thinking that a level 1 MUST be young. I tend to think that levle 1 is when the character decides to journey into life. To branch out and experience new things in life. To go beyond their "Adolescence" skills.
Here is an example. I have a 3402 year old Elf. She has traveled but never really paid attention to where she was going. She used her adolescence skills to make crafts or find food. Using the starting money to survive on or to use the basic skills to help out general society (cooking, tailoring, etc) but was always a drifter. Never really buckling down and accepting life and its challenges.
I have MANY friends like this. They neither improve themselves or try to achieve something better they just live off society's graces and drift. Pisses me off but that?s another story...
So, at level 1 the character actually makes a decision to apply themselves harder, to achieve or try to experience all that life has to give.
Take our lives, some people in our world simply choose to "exist". Never trying to achieve better, never to try harder or "work" at life . . . if there was a group of people that only lived 5 years... don?t you think they would see those people as almost immortal? To someone that only lives 5 years they would have a hard time comprehending why that 70 year old wasted her life.
So, to US a 3400 year old elf that simply drifts along her life would seem ridiculous to us but to an immortal elf would just be a short amount of time.
I don?t know if I properly conveyed the way we play elves in my games or if I gave you a good example of the way I believe an immortal elf would think. its just my 2 cents! :D
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So, at level 1 the character actually makes a decision to apply themselves harder, to achieve or try to experience all that life has to give.
The only problem I have with that is that people, even drifters with no ambition, motivation or energy, learn *something* every day. Granted, the aimless ones learn a tiny fraction of what those who are out and doing learn. Nonetheless, I can't see someone having lived for 3400 years and having NO skills or expertise they did not have 3398 years before. They may only gain a level every 500 years or so, but they'd have learned *something*.
I suppose the reason I feel that way is because I consider "adolescent skills" to be largely the things you can't *help* learning by growing up in your parent culture. It's not as if small children are legendary for being motivated to succeed and improve themselves.
But then, part of the delight of RPGs is that 2 GMs don't have to agree on everything, or indeed anything, for their players to all be having fun.
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Perhaps in my above example the elf having realized what he had done gave up the sword, and worked as a potter for the last 1000 years trying to hide from his own past. Now he has taken it up again to protect his homeland from a great threat, and maybe finally atone for his past wrongs. Having not lifted a weapon in a millenia, while he might have a really high pottery making skill, he'd effectively be a level one fighter.
That's D&D thinking. He's a low- or mid-level (depending on how much he challenged himself with his crafting and other non-adventuring activities) Fighter who just hasn't developed many ranks in weapon skills. He may fight no better than he did at first level, although even that is unlikely, as his stats have probably improved a bit, but that's because Rolemaster is skill-based rather than class-and-level based.
Consider the staggering number of Americans who only read the sports page, and forget the rest of the paper.
Thereby developing the skill History (Sports).
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How about this...any immortal is meant primarily as a plot devise, NOT as a pnp character for players to play.
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How about this...any immortal is meant primarily as a plot devise, NOT as a pnp character for players to play.
Why should players not be a plot device?
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Why should players not be a plot device?
I had a player whose character's parents were both famous arena fighters. In point of fact, his mom had killed his dad in the arena when he was an infant.
He was a plot device for nearly his entire career.
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3) Exactly. When you have proof of the soul and life after death, everyone changes how they deal with dying - not just elves. That, right there, would necessitate a change in the basic cultures of every species on (or in) that world.
What proof??? :o
Please, remember when I started this thread (oh, so loooonggg agggoooo.....) I was not referring to Tolkein elves (though, they are the original version of immortal elves). For the most part, I was referring to the Rolemaster elf. In the generic fantasy world there are elven gods along with gods for most of the races, and their ideals of an afterlife were very similar (just the somantics were different).
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As for the level/age thing consider this:
You were born in the age of Christ (or a thousand years before) and you are now (still) living. Do you know anything about the modern world? Or is all you knowledge/active skills related to the opening of the first century?
The only way it makes sense is if the person was in some sort of stasis. Just the general day-to-day living teaches, you have no choice but to be in situations, some dramatic, some dangerous, even without trying - specially if you live for millenia! Things happen. (The edited version of the statement).
And Players are the ULTIMATE plot device.
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I would point out that Tolkein drew heavily on Norse legends in creating his books. I don't really know where the elves figured into that. There is a pretty good chance he was not the originator of the idea of immortal elves, but rather it came from our own myths and legends.
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He also drew heavily on Celtic mythology as well, perhaps that's where he got it.
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I disagree with the assertion that it's D&D thinking to say that a fighter who hadn't touched a sword in a thousand years would forget the skill. Martial artists must train constantly just to maintain their skills let alone see any improvements. Real skill improvements in martial arts take a considerable amount of dedication and practice above that of someone who just wants to retain what they have learned. This is especially true of the swords arts which require enormous discipline. A black belt in Akido once commented to me that in life he had forgotten much more than he currently knew, and he was good enough to have been invited to teach Akido in Japan. It would be perfectly reasonable for a GM to remove skill ranks from a person who didn't use a skill or practice it for a very long time. A player might also reasonable decide that he or she wants to discard a skill in favor of learning a new one. You could in effect bar them from putting any development into that skill from that point forward, and then let them add an additional skill in it's place. They wouldn't loose all knowledge immediately, but you could remove ranks from the old skill as they add them to the new one to reflect their lack of practice as well as any limitation the brain has on storage and retrieval of knowledge. It wouldn't need to be a 1:1 ratio either.
In life I have chosen to discard skills. I could no more do Algebra II today than fly without an airplane. I haven't used it in 20 years, and Algebra II is less demanding than the study of the sword which requires both physical and mental conditioning.
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Maybe Elves who have had a very tough life can regress so to speak. To do so they meditate and forget many things. So in effect they can lose levels by the act of forgetting. The only problem I see with this is the losing of Body Dev Points but then again a lot of the PC "hits" can be thought of as the PC's ability to just power on and not let little cuts and scrapes bother them.
[I think someone said the same thing above OOO So Long Ago.]
MDC
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Tolkien's Eldar are not distinct from a lot of traditional ideas of Elves in their immortality, but they are original creations and he more than once wrote of regretting using the term "elf" with respect to them (as he bemoaned the use of "goblin" for orcs and really kicked himself for the gross error with "hobgoblin", but likes "dwarves", JRRT changed the language so that most people these days think of a "hobgoblin" (literally "small goblin") as being (if they think of it at all) as being a large goblin).
For all their immortality, the Eldar are much more human-like than most folklore elves.
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I disagree with the assertion that it's D&D thinking to say that a fighter who hadn't touched a sword in a thousand years would forget the skill. Martial artists must train constantly just to maintain their skills let alone see any improvements.
Now you are talking real-world factors, not game realities. In the real world, there is no such thing as a "level" or a "fighter", either, in the RPG sense. Don't use gamer-speak if you want to switch subjects. For that matter, if the elf has really lost his martial skills and thinking, he'd be better modeled as a low- to mid-level Layman, rather than a Fighter at all.
Frankly, if he's forgetting his skills and all, what makes you think he'd necessarily recall events from that long ago? Or identify himself with that prior version of himself. Humans disassociate themselves from previous actions over a vastly shorter period of time. Certainly, an immortal race will have a statue of limitations even for the worst crimes. It just isn't worth keeping cold case files open forever.
In life I have chosen to discard skills. I could no more do Algebra II today than fly without an airplane. I haven't used it in 20 years, and Algebra II is less demanding than the study of the sword which requires both physical and mental conditioning.
You don't entirely lose old skills, though. You can relearn "lost" skills more quickly (assuming no actual damage to the brain) than you can learn new skills. Games generally don't try to model the need to maintain skills in detail, but the increasing experience cost for higher levels makes a fairly good approximation. Any attempt to model in detail will wind up a mess fairly quickly, with minimal, if any, gains in realism.
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Actually Math in general helps you with solving all types of problems. From balancing, moving things around to solve the problem, thinking about subtracting instead of adding, etc.
IMO a lot of people do not understand just how much science and math help them in day to day life.
MDC
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markc, That was one of the points I used to make back in the day when people were scared of RPGs being 'dangerous'.
My argument was hat no, on the contrary, RPGs teach people constant, automatic use of simple math, and innovative problem solving.
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And Players are the ULTIMATE plot device.
I disagree. PC's are meant to unravel the plot, not act as a plot device. I might have a plot device murdered, or possessed, or crippled with no cure, or whatever, but never a PC. Players get to determine thier PC's fate. If that is not so, then at the game I'll just bring a 12 pack, some pizza and sit there while you just TELL me the story. That should take maybe 20 minutes, then we can all do something fun.
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I might have a plot device murdered, or possessed, or crippled with no cure, or whatever, but never a PC. Players get to determine thier PC's fate.
Fine and good, but the PC's history that the GM and player worked out (and for that matter, that occurred during previous games) is still the best source for story hooks, as you can fairly well count on their motivation. I mean, they already decided on that motivation before you chose to use it as ammo to move the story, so you know going in they won't say, "Yeah, but this guy would never think that way." It's because the player already said he thought that way that you decided to use it.
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But then, part of the delight of RPGs is that 2 GMs don't have to agree on everything, or indeed anything, for their players to all be having fun
Yup, good point Grumpy! :) I totally agree with this! I have seen many different perspectives on the topic (and what a great topic this has been!) and have learned and considered more depth in the way I present immortal elves in my games. Great posts by all and hurrah to the author - RandalThor!!!!!
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In no way shape or form would I dispute that math is valuable in the real world. To my recollection Algebra II was fundamentally about learning to solve Quadratic equations, and while I remember that much I couldn't tell you what a quadratic equation is or how to solve one. In order to relearn that I would probably have to take Algebra II again. I might have to go back and relearn Algebra I and Geometry. Now you can certainly make an argument that having once known it I might learn it faster than the people who were learning for the first time. You can also make an argument that I might be able to regain a degree of proficiency that I once possessed above that of basic learned knowledge given enough time to practice and relearn.
It isn't always a question of learning or relearning a skill. Physical endeavors often require a person to hone a set of reflexes specific to the skill they are learning, or development themselves physically to a degree that makes the endeavor possible to them in the first place. In many skills it's necessary to practice till proficiency in an action is so instinctive that it can be performed without thinking. In combat if you stop to say to yourself "He's swinging his sword at my head so I should counter by swinging my sword at his chest" by the time you finish the thought and before you started the action his sword would have cloven your skull in two. Warriors trained themselves to a point that action and counteraction were instinctive responses that could be called up in a split second without any unnecessary thought involved. Musicians do the exact same thing. A violinist needs their mind free to interpret music, and the violin is an extraordinarily difficult instrument to play. Violinist train their bodies to play the instrument instinctively, so their mind can be free to creatively interpret the music they are playing. Typically we don't worry about that level of detail outside of a backstory in FRP, but rather rely on our perfectly serviceable rules for innitial skill allocation.
Now we could argue all year about the level of detail necessary in a rule system, but the fundamental point is you would have to spend some effort to retrain a complex skill for it to be usable if you put it down for a long period of time. I think perhaps I didn't state my position clearly enough. A person who put down combat skills for a millenia wouldn't be a level 1 fighter at all. He would have to redo a part of his apprenticeship before he possessed the proficiency of a level 1 fighter. Now this might mean he accomplished returning his skills to a level 1 proficiency in 4 years as opposed to the 8 - 12 that a full apprenticeship might take. Regardless of whether you agree that a person would loose a skill from disuse the point of my original statement remains valid. The GM doesn't have to fall victim to a player exercising some esoteric rule to give his 1000 year old 1 level character the skills of a level 10 character. Ultimately the points we are debating are probably most useful in that they give the GM's who read this information they can use in making judgement calls appropriate to their campaign when these types of esoteric rules pop up in an inconvenient way.
I do have to ask a question though. Why do you think real world comparisons have no place in discussing FRP rules systems? I happily agree that there is no real world parallel to concussion hits, experience points, levels, etc. FRP's however tend to include elements of both fantasy and reality. Spell Law is pretty much pure fantasy where ARMS Law is clearly an effort to take knowledge of real world weapons and armor, and turn that knowledge into a rules system that allows you to as realistically as possible resolve armed combat in an RPG. Arms Law could not have been created without considering real world weapons, armor, fighting styles, methods of construction and the skills necessary to use them. Any debate about rules in ARMS Law would likely also have to draw on such knowledge. Obviously in real life if someone smacks you with a two handed sword you don't tally the concussion hits, but the form and function of a Scottish two handed sword as opposed to a Japanese Katana is relevant to FRP rules.
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I disagree with the assertion that it's D&D thinking to say that a fighter who hadn't touched a sword in a thousand years would forget the skill.
Actually, in D&D there isn't. So long as the number is on the characte sheet, they have the ability/skill/power/etc no matter how long it has been. It is only in real life that that happens (or maybe not losing it completely, but to such as degree that it might as well be lost completely :D).
Great posts by all and hurrah to the author - RandalThor!!!!!
Thank you, thank you. No applause, just throw $$$$$.
:worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy:
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IMO people tend to like some RL stuff in there RPG because it gives them a solid ground to stand on. Or IMO in story terms you take something they know well and then change a few parts to make them think it is entirely new world. It also makes it easier when describing some of the tasks. Such as eating, drinking, swiming, running etc.
MDC
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Well when I ran games I used a number of settings including Middle Earth, Shadow World, and some of TSR's world settings converted to RM. Shadow World was really the only setting which was new to most of the players. All the various worlds were connected in some way. That was least true of Middle Earth which was part of the universe system, but segrated away from it by divine intervention. I pretty much used the Tolkien elf concept in all of them, but the in the TSR world settings they were dwarf elves. ;D The players mostly ran humans though with only one or two elves in the bunch.
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A person who put down combat skills for a millenia wouldn't be a level 1 fighter at all. He would have to redo a part of his apprenticeship before he possessed the proficiency of a level 1 fighter.
OK, but what is he? He didn't sit in a dark room with no other sensory imput. He did other things during that time, so he would be something (in terms of an RPG: some profession/class). The fact that he was alive and active in the world for the thousand years means that he was doing things and living life, which means that he learned something of some profession, which means he is some levels of some profession, even if it isn't the one he started out in.
I do have to ask a question though. Why do you think real world comparisons have no place in discussing FRP rules systems? I happily agree that there is no real world parallel to concussion hits, experience points, levels, etc. FRP's however tend to include elements of both fantasy and reality. Spell Law is pretty much pure fantasy where ARMS Law is clearly an effort to take knowledge of real world weapons and armor, and turn that knowledge into a rules system that allows you to as realistically as possible resolve armed combat in an RPG. Arms Law could not have been created without considering real world weapons, armor, fighting styles, methods of construction and the skills necessary to use them. Any debate about rules in ARMS Law would likely also have to draw on such knowledge. Obviously in real life if someone smacks you with a two handed sword you don't tally the concussion hits, but the form and function of a Scottish two handed sword as opposed to a Japanese Katana is relevant to FRP rules.
I totally agree here; we live in the real world so everything we draw from is from the real world. Gravity makes you fall - unless you use a spell or other power to counter act gravity (real, then fantasy)
Personally, I do not like systems that go so abstract that they loose any feal of realism. Big example: D&D - in just about any form - you are totally fine until you take the one hit that drops you, way too unreal for me. Yes, you can be stratched then hit so well that you drop, but not everytime! In all of the various dangerous situations that the characters will get into, many times they will get hurt so that they will have limitations on what they can do. (Just a pet peeve, sorry for the rant.)
I would say that even in Spell Law much of the description is based on how they imagine it happening for real. A Fire Bolt streaking across the battlefield and boiling a warrior's flesh off while melting his plate armor. Things we all know fire capable of doing. It is just the delivery system that is fantasy.
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I totally agree here; we live in the real world so everything we draw from is from the real world. Gravity makes you fall - unless you use a spell or other power to counter act gravity (real, then fantasy)
Yeah, that. No matter how far off the deep end the GM goes in designing his setting, it's a near certainty that dropped objects fall toward the ground at 32'/sec/sec, it's a near certainty that you're on a planet with a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, it's a near certainty that the most common liquid is water, it's a near certainty that the world you are on orbits a G2 yellow dwarf star, it's a near certainty that you, your fellow party members, and the vast majority of the monsters you face are all carbon based lifeforms, etc. Not that the GM is likely to have *decided* such things, chances are he never thought about them at all. A world setting that changes even one of these basics tends to be thought of as "very different", and I don't think I've ever seen a setting in which all 5 of the above were changed. To be fair, there are many SF scenarios in which you aren't on a planet at all, or spend *some* time in places where one or more of the above is changed, sure. But how many scenarios, even in SF settings, are based on the premise that the major characters' species evolved in an environment where few or none of the above are true? Chances are that even in such settings, the players' "home base" is a place where most, if not all, of the above apply.
All but a vanishingly small percentage of world settings are earthlike worlds dressed up in new clothes. In light of that, to deliberately ignore real world effects when designing chargen/skill/magic/action mechanics for an RPG strikes me as simply irrational.
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Using terms with no real world meaning is not a useful way to talk about matters of realism. That is what I claimed and that is what I stand by. I have no objection to discussions of realism (although it should be noted that they are generally useful only in the most general terms and any research done on the Arms Law tables was largely a waste, given that there has been endless debate about the realism of combat compared with Arms Law). We pretty much can agree that bigger weapons hit harder -- beyond that, even actual experts tend to argue.
By the way, "the proficiency of a level 1 fighter" means something in D&D. It means nothing in either the real world or in Rolemaster, especially in RMSS/FRP, where Profession bonuses are not level-based. Conflating experience level with combat ability is D&D thinking not Rolemaster thinking. A Rolemaster character can be very high level without much combat effectiveness simply by not developing ranks in combat-related skills.
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Well my D&D experience may predate proficiency. I used the original redish box set, and the AD&D 1st edition rulebooks, and that was about 20 years ago. In point of fact it was at a Con and I was the only one at the table with a 1st edition chracter. :-\
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And Players are the ULTIMATE plot device.
I disagree. PC's are meant to unravel the plot, not act as a plot device. I might have a plot device murdered, or possessed, or crippled with no cure, or whatever, but never a PC. Players get to determine thier PC's fate. If that is not so, then at the game I'll just bring a 12 pack, some pizza and sit there while you just TELL me the story. That should take maybe 20 minutes, then we can all do something fun.
PCs are not meant to unravel the plot, they just happen to do so. PCs are meant to be the central element of the story. Whether they unravel a story-driven plot, or drive the story themselves depends from games to games, the important thing is that the game is (as you note) fun. Personally, I got tired of stories that have railroads with obstacles in it to be overcome over the years. If in the middle of a story, my character decides to stop going for the evil badguy in a moment of selfdoubt and instead relocate to a place he deems safer to settle down for a while, or whatever, I expect my GM to roll with the punches. Mind you, its not for all games. Party games tend to be more suited to constant adventuring lifestyles, and are easier to railroad because one player should not hijack everyone's storyline. Solo or duo games (where there is 1 or 2 players, even games with only 3) tend to be easier to morph into a different shape over time though, and its one of the reason I prefer small groups more and more.
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I have to admit that when I ran games I really tended to have a core group of 3 players, and then a few sometime extra's. Among other things it made it easier to mix things up when needed.
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Maybe Elves who have had a very tough life can regress so to speak. To do so they meditate and forget many things. So in effect they can lose levels by the act of forgetting. The only problem I see with this is the losing of Body Dev Points but then again a lot of the PC "hits" can be thought of as the PC's ability to just power on and not let little cuts and scrapes bother them.
[I think someone said the same thing above OOO So Long Ago.]
MDCÂ
I had brought this up some time ago, perhaps even earlier in this thread. It was based on a couple sentences hinting at the elven thought pattern from Shadowstone.
Elven brains are similar in size to humans and do have a finite capacity. Memory fades just as with humans except even more so with the passage of very long times. However, even just a fading memory is not enough. The elven brain must actually purge some memories in order to make space for new ones.
In game terms, this means elves do lose levels over time. The beauty of this approach is that you needn't treat an elven PC any different than a human PC. They can advance just as quickly. Except over time (and elves also tend to go through long periods of "downtime") they lose levels, starting with the oldest ones obviously. Therefore for an old elf his "Adolescence/Apprenticeship" development is not actually his adolescence, but rather represents the things that he remembers before level 2.
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Vroomfogle,
Using your idea even if it is from Shadowstone in a RPG game would be great but I just hope the player has kepted good records so the GM knows just what skills are to be lost.
[I almost fealt like using face but resisted the urge.]
MDC
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Removing skills is also effectively stripping DPs from a character. Few players I know would stand for this even if it was a skill they had never used. (They would never miss it until it is gone then they would complain)
Remember Elrond Half-Eleven reminiscing about the battles before the gates of Mordor in the days of the last alliance comparing the forces to those of the elder days during the wars against Morgoth. (I'm sure most people could find the passage in Lord of the Rings), it is one reason why in my games players do not play elves or half elves.
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Skaran,
I also played in a game where the GM would only let his wife and maybe one other play an elf in his game as nobody else had played for 20 years in his game world. That is one tough requirement to play an elf.
MDC
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I was not suggesting elven PC's ever lose skills. Rather I was attempting at an explaination of why all old elves are not level 100+. The effect of level loss should only happen on the scale of centuries, certainly not in game-time (unless you are running a game that runs over several centuries which is doubtful).
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Ah that's clearer now. Tolkien of course took the easy way out and had Morgoth's and then Sauron's orcs wipe out most of the elves leaving only a few who remembered the old times. (Not including the silvan elves here who may have a lot of ranks in nature skills but didn't get out much) :)
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Vroomfogle,
I think that is a perfect way to introduce level 1 (1000 year old elves) into a game! I will use that myself. I like the idea that you can play a lolly-gagging, non-determined elf that is 1000 years old (or longer) and he/she still be at level 1! They could have been level 10 but that could have been over 700 years ago... and now they are back to level 1 when the player starts playing them.
Good call!
In addition, I tell my characters that they can play a 5000 year old elf if they want... when they argue or debate that they should have more skills or extra points because of it I simply do a GM override and say "no". ::)
If they happen to persist then I would just say... you don?t like the idea of a 5000 year old elf that is only level 1? Then you play a 30 year old elf. ;D
Logistics as a GM are so easy sometimes! :book2:
Drev
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Yes. I am resurrecting this thread--but specifically for Shadow World. Should SW Elves (one type, some or all) be Immortal? Given that Elves and other sentient beings were brought back to Kulthea in the early interregnum, are the major Elvish NPC's 100,000 plus years old?
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Yes. I am resurrecting this thread--but specifically for Shadow World. Should SW Elves (one type, some or all) be Immortal? Given that Elves and other sentient beings were brought back to Kulthea in the early interregnum, are the major Elvish NPC's 100,000 plus years old?
We already know that a number of Loremasters have been there since the beginning of the Second Era at least (notably Kirin T'Thaan). We also know from Emer II that Prince Elar of Namar-Tol has held his title since the Loari came to the isles in c. SEI 3000.
Not to mention that the Master Atlas [Master Atlas IV pp59+] classify all elven races as "immortal" (Linaeri, Loari, Dyari, Erlini and Shuluri).
I think it's safe to say that they are.
Of course, immortality never stopped a blade. The longer you live, the higher the chance of an "unfortunate accident", especially given the troubled history of Kulthea.
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Yes. I am resurrecting this thread--but specifically for Shadow World. Should SW Elves (one type, some or all) be Immortal? Given that Elves and other sentient beings were brought back to Kulthea in the early interregnum, are the major Elvish NPC's 100,000 plus years old?
Considering SW doesn't really go into demographics (such as birth and death rates) there really isn't any way of knowing. What age is the average Elf character what starting? 18? 25? 75? Older? I usually start characters out at about 16, no matter the race, and build on that.
An Elf at 1,000 years of age as the opportunity to have more skills at higher levels than an Elf at 100 years but not everybody takes advantage of their opportunities -I'd even venture to say that very few do as Adventurers make up a tiny fraction of the population. Most Elves would lead a passive, day to day life for 100,000 years, and be happy with it. Not every Elf wants to become an Elrond or Galadriel.
Skill loss: My grandmother taught me how to cook in the 1960s. Even after decades of not cooking at home (my time in the Army and living in New York) I can still make biscuits and bake bread without looking up a recipe or even measuring ingredients.
Knowledge is a funny thing. Can you remember a time when could not ride a bicycle? Or drive a car? Or read? There are some skills we learn that we cannot imagine not having them.
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I doubt that humans completely forget skills. You might be out of practice but retraining is easier than starting from scratch. Still, I used to be able to converse in Spanish and I've definitely lost some ranks there from disuse. Getting back on a bicycle after many years is not as easy. I'm not sure I remember any calculus at all. And I'm way younger than 1000 years.
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What if you are 50,000 years old, or 100,000?! You might have forgotten some things..or perhaps the Elvish brain is structured differently. Either way, is there any need or point in making Shadow World Elves immortal? Does it serve any purpose or just raise issues or is it irrelevant?
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Elves aren't immortal. They die if you cut off their heads, just like anybody else. What they are is ageless. And you don't live past a thousand by being stupid or clumsy or naive or failing to adapt. All the less-capable are weeded out by the hazards of life, until the older Elves are also the most capable Elves. They shouldn't just be high-level, they should have excellent stats.
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Elves aren't immortal.
Even the gods aren't mortal...and can be fallible.
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What if you are 50,000 years old, or 100,000?! You might have forgotten some things..or perhaps the Elvish brain is structured differently. Either way, is there any need or point in making Shadow World Elves immortal? Does it serve any purpose or just raise issues or is it irrelevant?
It could be that elves "shelve" memory and skills they don't need and have some kind of deep storage that is not accessed as easily as "surface" memories. And if they do want to access them, they must also restore the context in which those memories and skills applied - in essence "going back" to what they were at the time, mentally speaking. This is by no means canon in Shadow World (and there are hints that it actually is not true at all), but it could make for interesting reactions.
Having immortal elves is a perspective thing in a world with such a relevant timeline (it's not only that the timeline is long, it is that the events that took place so long ago are still relevant now). It means that, beyond the movers and shakers of the world (the K'Taa'Viiri, the Dragonlords, the Gods and greater Spirits), there are people who have memories long enough that they could remember what happened *then*. Of course, most of them don't (because attrition is a thing), but some might and make for interesting NPCs to look for (Elor, anyone ?).
But genetically immortal beings requires you to kick your suspension of disbelief up a notch. Not only is there a potential problem of population control, but there is also the issue of having a race where people can live indefinitely, yet never progress beyond the technological limits of the "now" while it is fairly obvious that other people before them *did* and that there are plenty of remains around to give the elves hints. Plus, since all races on Kulthea are basically Lords of Essaence genetically created servant races, one might wonder why they would program some of them for genetic immortality and not others - especially if the Althans themselves were *not* immortal (the K'Taa'Viiri were according to MA4, but whether the Althan were or not is never stated, i think). Perhaps elves were *favoured* servant races and that K'Taa'Viiri wanted to keep their favourite pets as long as they themselves lived - if only to avoid the bother of having to retrain new ones (and they did not give the same genetic advantage to mortal races because those were probably used for manual labour and as cannon fodder in Althan warfare, all occupations where long genetic lifespan is basically useless since you are not expected to live long anyway).
So, having immortal elves provides some entertainment if you like to speculate about *why* they are immortal and how it all works for them, but more pragmatically, you can just ascribe it to being a generic Tolkienesque fantasy trope, hang your disbelief a bit higher on the coat rack, and roll with it :)
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That all makes sense, but is still explanatory of the status quo. My question, given the opportunity to re-set or retcon some aspects of Shadow World, does it make sense to keep all or some Elves "immortal"?
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Yes. I am resurrecting this thread--but specifically for Shadow World. Should SW Elves (one type, some or all) be Immortal? Given that Elves and other sentient beings were brought back to Kulthea in the early interregnum, are the major Elvish NPC's 100,000 plus years old?
I only purchased the 4th Edition Shadow World Atlas a few days ago, but I am a long-time player of Rolemaster and MERP.
Elves aren't some special case in Shadow World, a list of race sbelow are just as "privilaged" if not more so:
- K’ta’viiri, the elves and fauns who are "near-human", they just don't have to worry about growing "old" and will live until killed by physical trauma
- Dragonlords, Fey Folk are not quite human; but they are physical beings, eat, breathe, etc. Often have super-human abilities and magicall powers
- Demons/Elementals, some Undead, have a physical body but aren't really "living beings" in the organic life cycle thing.
- Lords and Spirits of Orhan, Dark Gods of Charon, some Undead are beings beyond the physical. Some can interact as physical beings, but it is not their "true" nature
Why change something intrinsic to the setting of Shadow World?
Try consider these three points:
1) A player character elf doesn't start out any older or more skilled than their human counter-part.
2) Beings that don't age still die to violence. Only six Dragonlords have survived to "present-day" on Kulthea; I'd say they are much stronger than an elf.
3) Elves can give-up (or possibly loose) their immortality; How many "BFFs" will a 10,000 year old elf have out-lived and what does that do to their mental health?
Elven immortality is a perk that really doesn't come into play at the game-table. It is mere window dressing for higher level NPCs (who were born in the 1st or 2nd Era) which could just as well be Dragonlords, K’ta’viiri, or demons in disguise.
So keep the elven immortality. Like the dragonlords, just because they CAN live indefinately, doesn't mean they'll survive long on Shadow World.
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I never liked the idea of an immortal race as Tolkien/RM elves.
The second reason is a gamebalance concern. If a player?s character is 1000 years old, he could know a lot of ancient history as he was actually alive when it happened. And if he doesn?t have this information, whats the point in being so old.
Tolkein doesn't delve into the specific reason why Elves were created. They just were, and allowed to wander ME and eventually splintered off into the various sub-groups.
Elves were a semi-divine race whose presence in ME was temporary. They were scheduled to appear and scheduled to leave by divine plan. Just as Eru declared that even Melkor's disruptions originated with Eru, so would the deeds of all his creations. This pretty much made all races fragments of an overall plot mechanism, where even the conclusion was forgone. It isn't the destination, but the journey...
Middle Earth isn't Earth. It is a product of creationism, where most of the beasts and races were conjured into being. Through science, archaeology and DNA research that most modern humans are the result of earlier sapient races interbreeding with human subspecies and reflect the genetic advantages and disadvantages of the previous generations.
Playing an Elf should be no different than playing any other nonhuman race. But...every GM has his own interpretation of Elves, and even an interpretation of how Tolkein portrayed them. Me, I use speculative demographics...Example: Out of a total population, only a small percentage are motivated to join a military, of those in a military, only a small percentage actually fight, of those who actually fight, an even smaller percentage become heroes...and so on. The vast majority of any population is satisfied with getting by without notice or consequence.
Elves would have a concept of time entirely alien to humans: "The human king is a tyrant? We'll be back in a few centuries to see if there is any change."
From Tolkein, we have the numbers of the first three generation of Elves (Quendi, "Who speak with voices") : 14 Minyar (Firsts), 56 Tatyar (Seconds), and 74 Nelyar (*yawn* Thirds...but adopted Lindar, "Singers" as nobody wanted to be called Thirds...); Oromë found them and led a portion of them to Valinor, where they became known as Eldar (People of the Stars), the 82 that remained became known as Avari (Unwilling). From the Avari who traveled West, some were captured by Melkor and used to create the race of Orcs...and the rest is ME history.
Tolkein portrayed Elves as wise and benevolent but still could be corrupted by Melkor's influence as the Avari were led to mistrust Oromë...and eventually abandoned their usual rational nature that resulted Fëanor's actions after Melkor's murder of his father and theft of the Silmarils. Again, all part of the creator's plan...
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I never liked the idea of an immortal race as Tolkien/RM elves.
The second reason is a gamebalance concern. If a player?s character is 1000 years old, he could know a lot of ancient history as he was actually alive when it happened. And if he doesn?t have this information, whats the point in being so old.
Tolkein doesn't delve into the specific reason why Elves were created. They just were, and allowed to wander ME and eventually splintered off into the various sub-groups.
Elves were a semi-divine race whose presence in ME was temporary. They were scheduled to appear and scheduled to leave by divine plan. Just as Eru declared that even Melkor's disruptions originated with Eru, so would the deeds of all his creations. This pretty much made all races fragments of an overall plot mechanism, where even the conclusion was forgone. It isn't the destination, but the journey...
Middle Earth isn't Earth. It is a product of creationism, where most of the beasts and races were conjured into being. Through science, archaeology and DNA research that most modern humans are the result of earlier sapient races interbreeding with human subspecies and reflect the genetic advantages and disadvantages of the previous generations.
Playing an Elf should be no different than playing any other nonhuman race. But...every GM has his own interpretation of Elves, and even an interpretation of how Tolkein portrayed them. Me, I use speculative demographics...Example: Out of a total population, only a small percentage are motivated to join a military, of those in a military, only a small percentage actually fight, of those who actually fight, an even smaller percentage become heroes...and so on. The vast majority of any population is satisfied with getting by without notice or consequence. An Elf adventurer is an anomaly, almost an outcast.
Elves would have a concept of time entirely alien to humans: "The human king is a tyrant? We'll be back in a few centuries to see if there is any change."
From Tolkein, we have the numbers of the first three generation of Elves (Quendi, "Who speak with voices") : 14 Minyar (Firsts), 56 Tatyar (Seconds), and 74 Nelyar (*yawn* Thirds...but adopted Lindar, "Singers" as nobody wanted to be called Thirds...); Oromë found them and led a portion of them to Valinor, where they became known as Eldar (People of the Stars), the 82 that remained became known as Avari (Unwilling). From the Avari who traveled West, some were captured by Melkor and used to create the race of Orcs...and the rest is ME history.
Tolkein portrayed Elves as wise and benevolent but still could be corrupted by Melkor's influence as the Avari were led to mistrust Oromë...and eventually abandoned their usual rational nature that resulted Fëanor's actions after Melkor's murder of his father and theft of the Silmarils. Again, all part of the creator's plan...
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Elven immortality is a perk that really doesn't come into play at the game-table. It is mere window dressing for higher level NPCs (who were born in the 1st or 2nd Era) which could just as well be Dragonlords, K’ta’viiri, or demons in disguise.
Clearly you've never had elf PCs that were 1500 years old.
It's an interesting experience. Mostly because the player has to consider how to make it work.
The memories sort themselves out : anything worth remembering is remembered, anything not worth remembering is buried in the mists of history. Same as humans, really, only on a longer scale.
But the thought patterns are different. It was interesting to see how the players (I actually had two elven characters: one 900 y.o and one 1500 y.o) actually explained how they could interact with the short-lived races instead of "waiting it out". How they could explain that being immortal was not necessarily a boon all the time. And, as a GM, you have a hand in helping them them figure it out - the centuries-long slights that fester. The pain at losing loved ones an age ago and never getting over it. The despair at seeing humans make the same mistakes *over and over again* and the temptation to just "nudge things a little" so that they go in the "right" direction at least once...
Coming back to a city and getting to see your human friend... only to discover that he is a great-grandfather now and his trade has been taken over by his younger grandson.
And the wonder at watching them throw their lives away as it was worth nothing. When you can live millenia, the idea of taking risks is a bit more difficult to swallow.
You show them all that. And at the same time, you show them why there are things worth actually living and fighting for.
Honestly, having immortals (who have lived long enough to know it) and humans in the same group make for very interesting roleplaying situations.
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The memories sort themselves out : anything worth remembering is remembered, anything not worth remembering is buried in the mists of history. Same as humans, really, only on a longer scale.
I don't know. I remember a lot of stupid things I wish I didn't, like that thing I said in high school. And forget things I want to remember, like people's names.
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Elven immortality is a perk that really doesn't come into play at the game-table. It is mere window dressing for higher level NPCs (who were born in the 1st or 2nd Era) which could just as well be Dragonlords, K’ta’viiri, or demons in disguise.
Clearly you've never had elf PCs that were 1500 years old.
It's an interesting experience. Mostly because the player has to consider how to make it work.
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Honestly, having immortals (who have lived long enough to know it) and humans in the same group make for very interesting roleplaying situations.
With good players and the right campaign, I imagine the roleplay could be very inspired.
However, I have GMed one MERP group, been a player in two Rolemaster groups. None of the campaigns went past 10th level. Out of a total of 13 characters, only one was an elf. So in my experience, elves that are 10,000+ years old and have outlived the re-invention of the wheel 3-4 times are only NPCs.
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The memories sort themselves out : anything worth remembering is remembered, anything not worth remembering is buried in the mists of history. Same as humans, really, only on a longer scale.
I don't know. I remember a lot of stupid things I wish I didn't, like that thing I said in high school. And forget things I want to remember, like people's names.
I never said it was under active control :) Basically, you remember what your subconscious deemed important to remember *at the time*. It has nothing to do with what you'd wish you remembered *now*. It's a survival mechanism, and as such, it is completely contextual.
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That all makes sense, but is still explanatory of the status quo. My question, given the opportunity to re-set or retcon some aspects of Shadow World, does it make sense to keep all or some Elves "immortal"?
Well, unless you want to rewrite parts of history, you still have to keep *some* elves immortal (those who live throughout the ages). Now for the races as a whole...honestly, I'm not sure "does it make sense" is the right question. I have more trouble with Laan having a 200+ year lifespan yet being described in Haalkitaine as if they pruned their family tree to remove anyone who is a grandparent or more, making the family trees look like elizabethan english nobility look-alikes.
Having immortal elves is compatible with canon, and that's all I really need.
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This is one of the biggest game-setting problems I have had with RM:
IMMORTAL ELVES
Yes, I know it was a carry-ver from ME, and is wickedly-cool-awesome man. But I feel that the thought process of an immortal being - even one that is still a physical entity - would be too alien to understand.
Why though? That is just as much an assumption as the opposite. What if that alien world view only comes with time? I mean, my daughter views the world a hell of a lot more differently than I do, especially as it relates to time. So sure, NPC uber high-level elves might have weird alien mindsets, but not the young ones, not the ones most likely to go out an adventure.
And if they were alien...so what? I mean, the mindset of any race that is fully realized and distinct from humanity ought to be and feel different. Imagine an underground race like dwarves suddenly coming to the surface after decades underground, maybe being constantly terrified they could fall UP.
But if you want a good example of playing alien elves, check out Terrible Beauty for Shadows of the Demon Lord, where elves are not only mentally but physically alien, and you have nice charts to roll on to indicate how they view the world.
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I think the thought processes are completely dependent on the environment and the cultural aspects. I will use a few distinct examples from comics, myth and literature to illustrate:
- take, on one hand, the wild elves from Elfquest. Their focus is on the "now", and, in most cases, on survival in a hostile world. Immortality is not something that crosses their mind because the only way to mark the time is through repetitive events (seasons) and exceptional events (births, violent deaths, catastrophic events). They are more in tune with the turn of the seasons than with the passing of years. On the other hand, the secluded elves (Blue Mountain elves) are completely different, and almost insensitive to the passage of time - they have recreated a dream world and everything is unchanging, and they *fear* changes, because it reminds them that their microcosm is not the sum of reality.
- take, on the other hand, the sidhe from faerie myths. They might look almost-human, but they are utterly alien. They obey laws - one might even say *world* laws that make no sense to the average human but nonetheless make them immensely powerful, yet vulnerable to people who can find a new take on those laws. They are entities of contracts, and time has no meaning for them - so little that they can't even understand why it would have a meaning for humans.
- And the Tolkien elves meet humans halfway: human enough to share some thought patterns and habits, such as understanding the erosion of time (on the mind if not on the body), valuing life even in its transient form, and acknowledging the value of community and the threat of violence. On the other hand, they stick to their own because they cannot *relate* to the short-lived individuals (with a few, almost always tragic exceptions) and *do not want to* - they are eternal because they are the first-awakened, and closest to the ideal of world that was sung by the Valar, and humans are different - quick to live, quick to forget, quick to die, a constant reminder that the world is *not* eternal. Elves are not mortal, but they don't want to see death as their neighbour nonetheless. And even among elves, the pull of the undying varies - the Noldor feel it most, and the Teleri feel it the least (and the Vanyar never crossed into the east, so have no wish to "return to the womb", so to speak). Elves in Middle Earth are on borrowed time and it weighs on every one of them.
The problem with Shadow World elves is not that they are immortal. It is that we do not know their origin story and how they live it. They might live it in different ways, but for immortal people, the origin is not myth, it is history. Shay people can watch back a century or two back in time and see history, but anything beyond is the stuff of tales and legends, and the foundation myth is fluid - humans adapt to their environment and reshape their origin myth accordingly. Elves, being immortal, have a different take, because the beginning of the Second Era can be a handful of generations ago, if not less. Even if they do not know how they came to be, their origin myth can be preserved and, if it changes, it is for propaganda needs, not because they can easily forget.
I know most people don't really care about such things (it takes time away from slaying monsters and looting corpses, I guess), but, while the Shadow World timeline does a good job of presenting factual events, it does nothing to explain what people actually believe and why, and while it is not an issue for short-lived races, it is for immortal people - you have no clues about how they cope with being essentially "always there".
The only thing you know is that, barring a violent death, they *are*.
But as a GM, I'd rather come up with foundation myths to explain how elves deal with immortality than change the setting to make them mortal - I guess I'm not looking for an easy way out, rather for one that gives me more interesting story ideas.
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Here is the foundation myth we use and is in our "Master Atlas" that I posted up back in 2015.
https://ironcrown.co.uk/ICEforums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15879.0;attach=3411
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Yes. I am resurrecting this thread--but specifically for Shadow World. Should SW Elves (one type, some or all) be Immortal? Given that Elves and other sentient beings were brought back to Kulthea in the early interregnum, are the major Elvish NPC's 100,000 plus years old?
We already know that a number of Loremasters have been there since the beginning of the Second Era at least (notably Kirin T'Thaan). We also know from Emer II that Prince Elar of Namar-Tol has held his title since the Loari came to the isles in c. SEI 3000.
Not to mention that the Master Atlas [Master Atlas IV pp59+] classify all elven races as "immortal" (Linaeri, Loari, Dyari, Erlini and Shuluri).
I think it's safe to say that they are.
Of course, immortality never stopped a blade. The longer you live, the higher the chance of an "unfortunate accident", especially given the troubled history of Kulthea.
House rule it for Elves:
For the curious Elf:
For each 10 year period after 100, there is a cumulative 1% chance that something horrific happens to the elf (wars, creature encounters, bandits, overthrowing of governments/towns/areas). Roll at the end of each 10 year period. If they roll under the percentage, roll on the Large Pierce, Slash or Krush slaying crit. If they keep surviving to 1000 they are rewarded with the knowledge of the ages! Well, and they must make a memory roll to recall anything past 100 years.
For the "lock myself in the tower/castle for 1000 years" Elf:
The percentage drops to make a roll every 100 years with the same cumulative chance (there castle or hidey-hole can still be overthrown, sieged or infiltrated!). If they survive they only have book knowledge and hearsay and didn’t directly experience it, their history skill goes through the roof but that’s about it.
Solved :)
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House rule it for Elves:
For the curious Elf:
For each 10 year period after 100, there is a cumulative 1% chance that something horrific happens to the elf (wars, creature encounters, bandits, overthrowing of governments/towns/areas). Roll at the end of each 10 year period. If they roll under the percentage, roll on the Large Pierce, Slash or Krush slaying crit. If they keep surviving to 1000 they are rewarded with the knowledge of the ages! Well, and they must make a memory roll to recall anything past 100 years.
For the "lock myself in the tower/castle for 1000 years" Elf:
The percentage drops to make a roll every 100 years with the same cumulative chance (there castle or hidey-hole can still be overthrown, sieged or infiltrated!). If they survive they only have book knowledge and hearsay and didn’t directly experience it, their history skill goes through the roof but that’s about it.
Solved :)
To celebrate their 1000th birthday the elf spends all night partying. Waking up the next day, all the house-plants the elf has nutured for centuries (and had named each) have died. The elf decides that Kulthea is better wiped clean of life joins Priests Arnak in their quest!