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...