Elves are just the worst.
And I'm not blaming the big grandad here. Tolkien's elves are not "elves" as trope. In Tolkien's world,
- elves don't have pointy ears
- elves and humans are apparently of same appearance; people and elves get mixed up (eyes and voice might give it away)
- elves don't have alien-level tech. They wear mail like everybody else.
- elves and humans are not really different species as much as they are different spiritualities, or something. You can see this in Elrond and his brother both being half-human, half-elf; and they get to pick which they want to be.
So there's a lot with Tolkien's elves that's less elvish than the trope they codified.
Everything I loathe about elves is a later invention - that sterile, boring, emotionless, technically superior and more skilled but in motivation still exceedingly human. It's a regular person, but more capable. Not wiser. That's mary sue. They're a nation of mary sues. Now if they had a totally different system of value or way of experiencing life - that would be interesting, right??? But no. They're people but better in everything except where it counts.
This has been reacted to by people like Scrap Princess and Arnold K of Goblin Punch. Their elves are terrifying because they are physically superior to humans but mentally and spiritually in no way wiser or more enlightened. They're scary; they're psycho's because of their superiority.
Of course elves are also storystelling shorthand. Elves are elegant; bam, done. Are brabbo's elegant? I don't know, because I have no frame of reference. That's an important point, but I LOATHE ELVES.
So there's no elves in Circassa. There's goblins - they're good guys now - there's orcs. There's fairies and spirits. No elves. The ancient rulers of Tel Ammon might have been elves. The scary kind. The imperial kind. The superior kind. The psycho kind.
But playable elves and half-elves? No. Cause an actual elf would not go adventuring. It would sit around moping and meditating on a higher plane of spiritual development, or it would be a terrifiying force of conquest. It would not adventure. Takes me out of every game.
I pretty much agree. If I want to run middle earth, or games based on mythology where elves and the like feature, I’d use existing rules for guidance, but then modified by my own take on them from reading source material. They’d unlikely be allowed as PCs. Unless I was going for something quite different, more like Glen Cook’s Cold Copper Tears stories and so on: but even then, probably not. Or if I were doing a nostalgia piece. I do like the idea often suggested of adapting various games’ race as class descriptions as being other human cultures. The example I remember was for using LotfP’s Dwarves, Elves, Halflings as other ‘humans’ - just from different civilizations or tribes or cultures. You’d have to tweak a bit, perhaps, and I’d change the names so people might guess it was a re-skinned elf they were playing, but it wouldn’t be presented that way.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, elves need to break out from the mold to be interesting. Halflings on the other hand don't seem to be interesting regardless. I've seen a number of attempts but it always seems like something else with "halfling" labelled on it.
ReplyDeleteAnd a 1/2 elf would battle those who wear the pants properly at the waste. Sheesh!
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