The Gaming Den

So there's a standing problem, in nominal D&D demography, with having humanoids that live for 700 years but don't ordinarily aspire to very much more than Men who survive for a mere eighth of that time. What are level 1 Elves doing with so much extra time? Why do even the extraordinary, PC-quality ones take so fucking long to come of age? Are they actually retarded?

So here's the deal: We know that elves don't sleep, but they do need four hours a night of "trance." This isn't the full story. An Elf can survive on four hours of trance per day, but their actual predilection is to spend close to their entire lifespan that way. Nearly every member of Elven society is drifting around with the ephemeral, zoned-out disposition of a Man frittering away his time on a rainy morning after staying awake through the previous night.

Elf life is full of post-coital cuddling and strumming forgettable ambient tunes on stringed instruments. Their villages are places of absolute serenity because none of them do anything very loudly or energetically. Even their children are ridiculously sedate. They don't have much of a capacity for hard labor but they do manage slow productivity in the form of low-intensity study and light industry. You're probably never going to see a strip mine or clear-cut field resulting from Elven effort but you will certainly see artisans produce intricate works through months or years of slow-burning whimsy and you'll note how well suited their inclinations are to the massive bonsai projects they maintain for the purpose of treetop shelter.

Elves do also have a reputation for ferocity and imperiousness. This is the inevitable result for a people who can only manage expedition through campaigns of over-exertion. Elves will, over the course of their lives, occasionally get on the warpath to achieve something important and time-limited, and they do this by snapping into their analog to long-term sleep deprivation. Every Elven emissary or adventurer you meet on a four-hour-per-day trance schedule is burning the candle at both ends and riding a form of psychotic motivation that is particular to their kind. They can keep this up for much longer and with fewer diminished capacities than a Human surviving on cat-naps, but it's uncomfortable, stressful, and leaves them feeling manic and irritable. Some extraordinary elves keep this up for decades but it's also said to be an unhealthy habit that will take years off your life. Certainly, some of the more prodigious Elves do seem a lot more severe and rough around the edges than the ones who can take it easy at home.


Shit, Elrond, stressed out much? You must be managing some kind of war effort, or something. Look at your face, you need some fucking trance.

So . . Elves aren't really arrogant but just . . tired/sleepy and grumpy?

I'm thinking it's more like a frustration that people aren't as dialed in on the same obsessive perpetual second wind they're running, plus unshakable discomfort with how noisy and distracting everything is away from home, all while they've got that weird cranial pressure you get from a Dymaxion sleep cycle.

But I've got personal connotations for manic hyposomnia that are, possibly, not universally appreciated. So by all means, if you want to run with the idea, do what makes sense.

Also I have no idea what this says about Drow, but my first instinct is to draw them more into the unhinged mindset that comes from doing lots of phenylethylamines and never coming out of a basement that is lit principally, if at all, with dying glow-sticks.

Tolkien Elves are from Italy I see

Well, this is a clever conceit because it outputs D&D Italians Elves, but is that really something you want?

I mean, Tolkien Elves are just better than you, right? So I don't know that making elves long-lived lotus eaters really scratches the itch of someone who wants to play Legolas. I mean, among other things, Legolas is optimistic and happy-go-lucky, he's more a blonde surfer archetype than Elrond.

http://www.chronopiaworld.com/artikel.php?id=93

Eikre wrote:What are level 1 Elves doing with so much extra time? Why do even the extraordinary, PC-quality ones take so fucking long to come of age? Are they actually retarded?

I liked Frank's economic answer better. I can't find it because google seems to have increased its blind spot regarding this forum, but the short version is that elves live in really cushy terrain and have a very strong leisure ethic. So they support themselves by hunter/gather-ing (with a little crafting thrown in) for about 10 hours/week, and spend literally the rest of the time having fun: singing, dancing, discourse, sexytimes, etc. The result is an incredibly unproductive economy, and it takes an elf ~100 years to save enough money to have starting adventurer gear. But it's 100 years of 10-hour work weeks and epic parties, so they don't even mind.

To approach this more srsly... I like the Zelda or One Piece path of just making svelt/squat/'normal'/hulking humanoids all varieties of humans, and longevity is a thing you have to actively do something to achieve via internal/external alchemy.

I don't see anything to gain with D&D's "120 year old as competent as an 18 year old", and any explanations just bring attention to a part of the setting I just ignore.

So in how I'd do it, you can have a society of 100+ year old forest folk that live in seclusion, but there's a reason for their longevity like they spend most of their week in slumber, their souls are tied to the forest, and so on that prevent them from being 200 year old adventurers. But some of them can leave and then their aging process becomes normal but they get to be adventurers and die in a monster's gullet.

There was a Howard Conan story like that, it was a city where everyone smoked super longevity opium and didn't do anything, doomed to eventually perish.

OgreBattle wrote:To approach this more srsly... I like the Zelda or One Piece path of just making svelt/squat/'normal'/hulking humanoids all varieties of humans, and longevity is a thing you have to actively do something to achieve via internal/external alchemy.

Lolwhut? One Piece giants are explicitly said to have about 3 times the longevity of humans just because, while in the latest Zelda we had Zora who were children one hundred years ago now being young adults (and the adults becoming old zora), while all kokori/fairies never age. For Goron, we have the mention of five generations over a period of 400 years, meaning they take about 80 years to get mature enough for their own sexytimes.

Yeah they still have non-humans, but they tend to be significantly different in ways not just like "I have pointy ears" but being fishpeople or made of rocks or whatnot.

In One Piece Whitebeard is a massive human with arms longer than the height of an average human, the 'non human' giants who live a long time then start at King Kong size and get bigger.

maglag wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:To approach this more srsly... I like the Zelda or One Piece path of just making svelt/squat/'normal'/hulking humanoids all varieties of humans, and longevity is a thing you have to actively do something to achieve via internal/external alchemy.

Lolwhut? One Piece giants are explicitly said to have about 3 times the longevity of humans just because, while in the latest Zelda we had Zora who were children one hundred years ago now being young adults (and the adults becoming old zora), while all kokori/fairies never age. For Goron, we have the mention of five generations over a period of 400 years, meaning they take about 80 years to get mature enough for their own sexytimes.

Gorons are literally made of rock, have no genitals, and all identify as male. I don't think they have sexytimes at all.

OgreBattle wrote:Yeah they still have non-humans, but they tend to be significantly different in ways not just like "I have pointy ears" but being fishpeople or made of rocks or whatnot.

In One Piece Whitebeard is a massive human with arms longer than the height of an average human, the 'non human' giants who live a long time then start at King Kong size and get bigger.

Ah sorry, misunderstood what you meant.

Although natural "giant" humans is a staple of shonen manga all the way since Fist of the North Star. And One Piece itself has Big Momma more than able to keep up with non-human giants.

hyzmarca wrote:

maglag wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:To approach this more srsly... I like the Zelda or One Piece path of just making svelt/squat/'normal'/hulking humanoids all varieties of humans, and longevity is a thing you have to actively do something to achieve via internal/external alchemy.

Lolwhut? One Piece giants are explicitly said to have about 3 times the longevity of humans just because, while in the latest Zelda we had Zora who were children one hundred years ago now being young adults (and the adults becoming old zora), while all kokori/fairies never age. For Goron, we have the mention of five generations over a period of 400 years, meaning they take about 80 years to get mature enough for their own sexytimes.

Gorons are literally made of rock, have no genitals, and all identify as male. I don't think they have sexytimes at all.

We don't know about the genitals since they could be hidden inside their bodies (Zora also don't have visible genitals despite explicitly having male/females and laying eggs), and we see female gorons in Phantom Hourglass and the Ocarina of Time manga.

EDIT: Heck, not even the Zelda horses have genitals, so clearly it's Link's simple nature that filters them out. Just like no pokemon has visible genitals too yet you get a compatible male and female together and they'll pop out an egg.

DrPraetor wrote:Well, this is a clever conceit because it outputs D&D Italians Elves, but is that really something you want?

Well, yes, actually.

Elves, in their general mythological extraction, have a touch of fae about them and I'd like their psychology to come through with a hint of disassociation. The D&D conceit that Elves have a different relationship with sleep than Men is a serendipitous starting point; For me, sleeplessness is a romanticizable state of altered consciousness, and while I appreciate that this probably isn't true for everybody, I still think that it's low-key and accessible enough in general to serve up a good connotative starting point for what it's like to live and think like the kind of creature I'm writing.

I do not necessarily hold the expression of Tolkien archetypes as my first priority with D&D these days, but I don't see mind the light in which Legolas is cast by my take, here. Orlando Bloom spends most of the LOTR movies mugging it in the background and I think that works fine while you imagine he's got a little case of that silly punchdrunkness you get at the latter half of a leisurely all-nighter.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I liked Frank's economic answer better.

Yes, I take note of his model, and it ends up being the state of affairs in mine. But this is just a matter of culture. If you wanted to lean into a brand of racialism where having pointy ears or dark skin or short stature or chinky eyes ends up being the primary determinant for your ethnography, for some reason, then you can sign up for that and let your elves just be crypto-Chumash tribespeople, but I'm not super down for that and prefer to offer enough of an overt speciated physiological difference to explain why Elves always seem to have such a different attitude than Men without sounding like a Klansman trying to explain something about the inevitability of Jewish treachery.

Elves tend to be very present oriented and therefore they consume a lot and save/invest little. For Men on the other hand, the marginal utility of future goods is higher relative to present goods so they tend to save & invest more.

I'd appreciate if you could cite some evidence because my data indicates that plenty of humans are actually really fucking good at having absolutely no savings whatsoever.

infected slut princess wrote:Elves tend to be very present oriented and therefore they consume a lot and save/invest little. For Men on the other hand, the marginal utility of future goods is higher relative to present goods so they tend to save & invest more.

You would actually think this would be the other way around. The Elves know they're going to be around for centuries so they'd be more inclined to be conservative with resources. Humans in fantasy rarely to past half a century (especially adventurers) so they'd be more live for the now and smoke em if you got em mentality.

Pariah Dog wrote:

infected slut princess wrote:Elves tend to be very present oriented and therefore they consume a lot and save/invest little. For Men on the other hand, the marginal utility of future goods is higher relative to present goods so they tend to save & invest more.

You would actually think this would be the other way around. The Elves know they're going to be around for centuries so they'd be more inclined to be conservative with resources. Humans in fantasy rarely to past half a century (especially adventurers) so they'd be more live for the now and smoke em if you got em mentality.

Hmm, that may explain their hippie/tree-hugging mentality. Elves living centuries would be a lot more aware of the dangers of desertification after you cut too much trees down and making exotic animals go extinct and whatnot.

So an explanation about elf economy is that it may look less efficient but is actually all about long durations.

Normal humans are happy if their tools/houses last some decades, but an elf wants something that will last them centuries. So an elf adventurer needs to save extra for higher quality stuff that will actually serve him for a lifetime.

Similarly elven society tries to be a lot more self-sustainable because they can't as easily just dump their problems to the next generation. When elves screw up their enviroment, they'll live long enough to regret it and then some. So they take extra care to do things extra carefully to make sure there'll still be nice places for them to live and whatnot when they reach their old age several centuries later.

maglag wrote:
EDIT: Heck, not even the Zelda horses have genitals, so clearly it's Link's simple nature that filters them out. Just like no pokemon has visible genitals too yet you get a compatible male and female together and they'll pop out an egg.

Some later Goron wear loincloths that cover some kind of loin

I like the use of sleeplessness to provide a touchstone to a different species mental makeup. However it doesn't grab you in the immediate way it would need to to gain memetic traction with people by word of mouth. I entirely agree with Ogrebattle that nothing is gained from having elves take more than a century to gain the competence of a teenager and that that should be jettisoned as what it is: the shitty writing of early D&D designers.

What if we take those two things and marry them together? Elves should mature at the same rate as humans so a 35 year old elven adventurer isn't a Baby's Day Out scenario. Then their "sleeplessness" slowly increases as they get older and older. When an elf is relatively young, say 120 years or less, they're sprightly and active like mortals but as the elf ages they spend more and more time in half wakefulness. This way an elf doesn't age physically but there is still a difference between the youth who adventure and lust and dance and the aged who stroll half lost in thought in gardens and languidly play on their lutes. This could let us marry D&D and Tolkien elf death so old elves don't die of heart attacks but instead becomes so lethargic they eventually decide their time has come, bid their loved ones farewell, and lay down for their final sleep.

If trance sleeplessness increases as the elf ages I think you'd have something you could sell to people. That elves don't age and die but simply get tired as their life force gets stretched out over centuries, eventually deciding to take their final rest as their eons come to a close.

Eikre wrote:I'd appreciate if you could cite some evidence because my data indicates that plenty of humans are actually really fucking good at having absolutely no savings whatsoever.

We are taking about sociological generalities for fantasy races and comparing them. No one cares about "your data" on "plenty of humans". Of course, in real life it depends where you look. For instance, in Canada savings rates are very low. In China, savings rates are very high. Look up some OECD stats dumbass.

But when we are talking about Elves vs. Man, we are simply trying to explain why Elves appear less dominant in fantasy worlds compared to Man. Man might have "low" savings rates (whatever that means) but Elves might have savings rates that are lower still. It's a relative measure. But maybe Elves save more like Canadians and Men save more like Chinese.

Pariah Dog wrote:You would actually think this would be the other way around. The Elves know they're going to be around for centuries so they'd be more inclined to be conservative with resources. Humans in fantasy rarely to past half a century (especially adventurers) so they'd be more live for the now and smoke em if you got em mentality.

Obviously individual psychological factors will play a role for each situation, but we can make some general comments based on certain biological realities. Both Elf and Man are born into the world as children. They grow up to be adults. They can procreate. And then they get old and die.

We know that children tend to be very "present-oriented." Present consumption and immediate satisfaction are favored over future consumption and delayed satisfaction.

As one becomes an adult, one will tend to become more "future-oriented." Future consumption becomes a bigger issue, especially as one creates children of one's own.

Then as one becomes an old geezer, one will tend to become more present-oriented again because future goods are less important. Again, we are just speaking in generalities, like "Americans eat more cheeseburgers than Ghanaians."

How would the longer lifespan of an Elf versus Man influence this? Well if an Elf thinks he is going to live for 1000 years, we might presume that he remains in a state of relatively greater present-orientation "youthful irresponsibility" longer than otherwise. However, his "mature future-oriented" phase should also be proportionally longer. So we need to consider the idea that for whatever reason, Elves just tend to be more present-oriented and focused on present consumption rather than future consumption compared to Man. We might also consider different eras or different kinds of Elves. Perhaps the great Elven cities were built by future oriented elves whose ancestors became decadent, apathetic, and lazy. Perhaps High Elves are more future oriented than the hunter-gatherer societies of the Forest Elves.

maglag wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:

maglag wrote:
Lolwhut? One Piece giants are explicitly said to have about 3 times the longevity of humans just because, while in the latest Zelda we had Zora who were children one hundred years ago now being young adults (and the adults becoming old zora), while all kokori/fairies never age. For Goron, we have the mention of five generations over a period of 400 years, meaning they take about 80 years to get mature enough for their own sexytimes.

Gorons are literally made of rock, have no genitals, and all identify as male. I don't think they have sexytimes at all.

We don't know about the genitals since they could be hidden inside their bodies (Zora also don't have visible genitals despite explicitly having male/females and laying eggs), and we see female gorons in Phantom Hourglass and the Ocarina of Time manga.

EDIT: Heck, not even the Zelda horses have genitals, so clearly it's Link's simple nature that filters them out. Just like no pokemon has visible genitals too yet you get a compatible male and female together and they'll pop out an egg.

First of all, I seriously doubt that a Zelda game will ever show genitals, regardless of the situation. Also, Zelda is not alone in having no genitals: Skyrim, for example, does not have them on horses or trolls or what not (at least, not by default...)

Secondly, Gorons do definitely reproduce, we just don't know how: In OoT, Darunia has a child that he names after Link, while in Majora's, the Goron Elder has an annoying whelp who never shuts up. In neither game is a female Goron present or even mentioned, and Darunia and the Elder are treated as the only existing parent of their respective children. Maybe they reproduce via fission?

(Furthermore, any female Gorons that appeared in the manga are explicitly and strictly non-canon, and thus irrelevant to the discussion. I haven't played Phantom Hourglass, so I don't know if there are lady-Gorons in it, and if there are, then they are most definitely the exception rather than the norm.)

Shrapnel wrote:

maglag wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:
Gorons are literally made of rock, have no genitals, and all identify as male. I don't think they have sexytimes at all.

We don't know about the genitals since they could be hidden inside their bodies (Zora also don't have visible genitals despite explicitly having male/females and laying eggs), and we see female gorons in Phantom Hourglass and the Ocarina of Time manga.

EDIT: Heck, not even the Zelda horses have genitals, so clearly it's Link's simple nature that filters them out. Just like no pokemon has visible genitals too yet you get a compatible male and female together and they'll pop out an egg.

First of all, I seriously doubt that a Zelda game will ever show genitals, regardless of the situation. Also, Zelda is not alone in having no genitals: Skyrim, for example, does not have them on horses or trolls or what not (at least, not by default...)

Secondly, Gorons do definitely reproduce, we just don't know how: In OoT, Darunia has a child that he names after Link, while in Majora's, the Goron Elder has an annoying whelp who never shuts up. In neither game is a female Goron present or even mentioned, and Darunia and the Elder are treated as the only existing parent of their respective children. Maybe they reproduce via fission?

(Furthermore, any female Gorons that appeared in the manga are explicitly and strictly non-canon, and thus irrelevant to the discussion. I haven't played Phantom Hourglass, so I don't know if there are lady-Gorons in it, and if there are, then they are most definitely the exception rather than the norm.)

Thing is, the female goron in the manga looks just like the males, same body shape and size. So it's entirely possible that just like classic dwarves, female gorons are simply mistaken with males by those silly humans that don't know any better. Unless you want to claim that every goron ever explicitly claims they're a male.

Phantom Hourglass has the goron island shop run by a goron "business woman". This one actually is thinner, smaller and has long hair. But still a goron girl. May be the result of evolution between OoT and Phantom Hourglass (enough time for the zora to change into bird people after all) or simply that some gorons can be of different sizes and shapes (just like the hulking goron with loinplate shown earlier).

Also considering how every goron society has quite few children (the goron community in OoT has one over a period of 7 years), that they can just reproduce by fission is highly unlikely, while raising the strong possibility that goron females are extremely rare. Only the biggest and strongest males like Darunia can hope to get a mate and then are left taking care of the offspring while the female goes somewhere else for whatever reason (in particular between Ganondorf's rise to power and food shortage, the rare females would've probably gone somewhere safer first). Gorons are long lived and extremely tough so they can afford low reproduction rates. If they could just split on their own, then one would've expect them to be everywhere by now.

maglag wrote:If they could just split on their own, then one would've expect them to be everywhere by now.

That doesn't necessarily follow. If splitting reduces your size/power (as one would expect), you would only split if you were either very safe or very strong. Only the strongest Goron's might split because the 'parent' would still be strong enough to survive/defend the offspring.

For counterexamples, see every species that actually exists and reproduces asexually.

What about 50 year old dwarves with the smithing competence of an 18 year old human

deaddmwalking wrote:

maglag wrote:If they could just split on their own, then one would've expect them to be everywhere by now.

That doesn't necessarily follow. If splitting reduces your size/power (as one would expect), you would only split if you were either very safe or very strong. Only the strongest Goron's might split because the 'parent' would still be strong enough to survive/defend the offspring.

For counterexamples, see every species that actually exists and reproduces asexually.

You mean like all the bacteria-based diseases that multiply like crazy inside our bodies as soon as they find a way in?

Or asexual fungi spore that are just thrown at the wind?

Or the fastest multiplying insects that spread all over the world?

Asexual reproduction is all about speed and quantity over quality. Sexual reproduction is the one that cares about safety and watching over your offspring, because it's all about spending extra resources for higher quality.

Extra fun fact: Some species reproduce asexually when something else breaks them in pieces and then each piece regenerates into a separate individual. So indeed asexual reproduction is the realm of the very weak and very vulnerable.

Besides, what is the point of several gorons using male pronouns if they don't actually have females? There's no such thing as a males-only species since by definition the males can't reproduce by themselves.