That's how it feels from what I've read. It's so annoying that the race so often linked to "Old bastards slow to accept changes." are also "Super mutable and can literally spawn a new subrace because some elves moved into a new enviroment"
The time I played an elf his suggestion to solving most problem was "let's just wait a few centuries and the problem will go away on its own" The humans in the party consistently hated his suggestions
This reminds of of an anime I watched called “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End”, which about an elven mage. The character is shown to have a poor sense of time because her perception of the passage of time is quicker than a human’s. This anime gave me a character idea for an elf that often lags the party due to her perception of time.
@@underthedice1231 A realistic long-lived race would care about sustainability, as they would live with the consequences of their inaction in the future, unlike shorter-lived races.
@@Javetts because its a rol play game, and its kind of hard to rol play a completly diferent and alien species for a human for most people because in the lore the races are unique and diferent and you can rol play them like that
I used to play a LARP elf as someone several thousand years old surrounded by humans who only seem to be alive for 5 minutes. It was difficult. I had to act like nothing mattered, which is never fun in role-playing ofc. I became a pirate and then it worked a lot better. Also I have a slightly posh British accent.
The Elves, so stuck in their superiority complex, collectively viewed Drow as a corruption of their form. They drove them to the underdark, in a region where Lolth reigned, slowly manipulating their minds until they became what the other Elves thought of them.
Ilythiiri bargained with dragons in the dragon ages thus founded the first elven kingdoms outside Faerie, became decadent dominators of lesser nations and races, got bored and trucked with Ghaunadaur and unnecessarily bad mojo, then went all in with Lolth after their elven cousins struck back, which also resulted in them mixing their blood with the balor Wendonai for a demonic boost. After messing with the politics of and directly attacking their cousins' nations over a long period of the elven heydays, their corruption was open enough that the Seldarine responded (or were magically tapped in a huge ritual), and Corey cursed them all as traitors (dhaerow) that visibly marked them with their skin, hair, and eye color and drove them underground with their new sensitivity to light, where they festered into an intentional breeding campaign of functionalish sociopathy, occasionally interrupted by mixing with their cousins, which tended to show in normal elven eye colors (at least was hinted at from 2e, if it were never stated). This implies the odd ones out were favoring their other ancestory, though some other elves eventually managed to uncurse those without demon blood back into Ilythiiri removing the color swap and innate Lolth magic. The concept clearly originated in the Norse svartalfar, but the devs wanted a shared origin and a detailed reason for the split, so we got two bad-mad gods, imperialistic decadence, and demon blood. The Norse writings had dark and black elves that might've been the same race, and even the Norse dwarves were probably the same race. The Norse dwarves originated from "maggots" in the earth so were a success case of ascension, and the differences with the explicit dark or black elves vs the explicit dwarves might've been mostly or purely cultural in Norse mythology.
I played an high elf character that was disowned at a young age, so she was raised by farmers so she was like a crazy country elf. That was a fun character.
I play a drow rogue, escaped the underdark and joined the rogues for more power, and escaped when law chased her, she was chaotic evil, had a mocking and fun personality, she's fun to play
yeah, that and they lumped in some weird lore of their own, like the trance thing (which i just straight up removed). If you are using elves, make them truly like Tolkien elves, or make them almost Lovecraftian, none of this weird half way nonsense.
Thats not realy problem. Tolkien elves are a lot different to DnD / Generic Fantasy ones. Only problematic thing about (not only) elves in DnD is alligement. I play RP for years, but from my 12 years i had never used alligement system, because everyone could be a jerk, everywhere could be intriques and bad guys, and more importantly what is seeming a lawfull good for one could be seen as fanatic idiotic bloodshed for other ones. I think that offten arogant - overlord and isolated - xenophobic / racist race is interesting as part in game to deal with.
100%. Tolkien's elves, at least in LotR, have this sort of cautious perfection, but the thing is, they didn't start that way. After thousands of years of war, incest, kinslaying, betrayal, etc., etc. they lost almost all their empires and kingdoms. That's why they're isolationist, why they are so wise. Their wisdom isn't something they just have, it's been earned through a history of loss and tragedy.
@@Calder90 That incest part is not mean to be by Tolkien himself, he had only some mess in work because he frequently changed names, houses and so. But he was in sexual part of his work realy conservative and influenced by christian values, he even got that far than he work up that elves can not be raped because their spirit just leave body rather than be harmed that way. There mean to be no blood relation between original tribes/houses of elves, but it goes more and more confusing because he changed original 4/5/8 tribes into kins at base if they go or not to Valinor, and even tweaked that part multiple times.
@@JakubNaceradsky Yet Christianity didn't stop incest in real life. Saying that he's sexually conservative in his work, doesn't change the fact that he's a student of history. Now it being mistakes, I could totally see yes, that is a thing that most writers have happen in their works, but likening it to rape isn't really accurate, especially when we're talking real world monarchies.
How about Arcanum? Fair & pretty, but also luddites in a world undergoing a technological revolution. Also, something else: *they evolved AFTER humans & dwarves.*
Abject nonsense. Feanor may have made the Silmarils, but he and his sons were no one's idea of gems. Even Galadriel was an opportunist following along in the second rank of the rebellion of the Noldor, looking for her chance to rule lands of her own. And then there were Eol and Maeglin, plus the elf who insulted Turin and threw his comb at him (Unfinished Tales). Tolkien's elves were Least angels, with the Maiar being Lesser angels and the Valar being Greater angels, but they were never perfect.
The Elves certainly saw themselves that way once Man awoke (using Tolkien's terms, don't blame me for them), and the tales certainly TRY to paint them in that light. But there's a running theme that the elves are wrong. It's subtle, but if you read enough of Tolkien's writings it becomes clear that Elves were NOT superior to humans, but were in fact inferior to them. They were there to pave the way for humanity, acting as a bridge between the Valar making the world and humanity inheriting it. Almost every elf we see in Tolkien's work shows deep flaws. Our first introduction to them is as a fundamentally monstrous foe, more Germanic elf than High Elf. Seriously, in The Hobbit Elves are treated as prettier than goblins (orcs) but not fundamentally better--they were greedy, suspicious, vain, and violent to the point of war-mongering. In LOTR we hear story after story of Elves screwing up and making serious mistakes. They're more athletic and dexterous than humans, and can be wiser due to their longer lifespan, but many are either silly, complacent (see the Elves the hobbits meet in the Shire), or vain to the point of insanity (blindfolding the Fellowship because one is a dwarf). In the Silmarillion Elves are even worse, engaging in profoundly stupid acts of violence that get a bunch of them banned from Paradise. Elven superiority is propaganda. The facts (well, literary examples anyway) show a very different story.
So, here's the thing: if you dig past the surface, D&D elves are very, very weird. They don't sleep- they trance, which helps them to organize the chaos of their minds. Their fey bloodline grants even the least magically talented elves access to minor spells. They physically develop at the same rate as humans, but aren't considered adults until they're at least a century old... *because they can remember their past lives until then.* This includes their time spent in the elvish afterlife, because elves explicitly reincarnate, rather than going on to a permanent afterlife (usually). As for the ancient civilizations, those exist in the past of the elves. They once built great floating cities using powerful magic that is no longer available to modern elves, and filled those cities with potent artifacts that modern wizards would kill to get a scrap of. But that great elvish civilization fell, their magics forever lost, and everything the elves are have been just a pale imitation since.
Elf start remembering their past live after a century. I wonder if young elves are afraid of getting overwhelmed by those memories and not being themselves anymore.
@@schwarzerritter5724 I think according to lore the reason they're so mopey and stoic is Because their God sort of barred them from the afterlife, and during that first century they can remember EVERY life they've ever lived since the very beginning. because their patron diety was a shape-shifter and so were they. But they were tricked to take a permanent form that forced itself on their god. And threw the God into an outrage. He cursed the elves to only reincarnate so that they may never be with him. This doesn't apply to the drow I believe who... aren't really elves I think?
Wow, I did not know this past life bit of the lore. In my canon I made so that they are sensory so supersensitive to everything and regulate their emotions so poorly, that in their younger years they actually have to lead a somewhat isolated lifestyle to develop properly. I like to think that we only see elves as these majestic perfect creatures because we always meet elves that are adults and would have a very different perception if we came across young elves.
@@UmbraKrameri on that note, I'm playing a young elf (only 107) in my DnD campaign. They act like a teenager, just one that can fight, and fight well. They are also super not composed every time they open their mouth, and they curse to cast, bc why not. No poise, charisma is dump stat. They are quite similar to me in a lot of ways, including growing up too quickly, tho for different reasons. I accidentally did that lol, I didn't mean to make my chaos gremlin grow up too quickly, it just kinda slipped in. Also they had to be lvl 11 somehow to join mid campaign (the campaign is almost over, it was my first chance to play DnD ever and I couldn't pass that up)
Elves have an absurd amount of complexity that was abandonded for simplicity in 5e. They have the ability to sense nearby elves, their lifestyles revolved around their longing to return to Arvandor, their motivation to adventure around trying to fill their trances eith good memories because they lost the ability to remember Arvandor through them, and high magic was insane.
I liked Terry Pratchett's version of elves, he had them as being wholly alien & essentially psionic. The Psionic abilities were based on being able to manipulate the electrical brain patterns which made them SEEM more glamorous essentially having a ranged Charm effect that could be negated by magnetic fields, thus the traditional aversion to Iron & other ferrous metals. They were completely native to the other realm so more like long eared aberrations with a strong sadistic streak the plot of the story they were in, Lords & Ladies, was closer to an alien invasion than a "perfect fantasy" race. They had the grace, & sympathy of cats, the sympathy that cats have towards mice.
TP also includes lines about what are essentially "half-elves" which are lineages of people who, in the past, have elf ancestry. They tend towards being waifish, pointy eared weirdos who giggle a lot but beyond that are otherwise indistinguishable from humans, and are explicitely not treated the same as real "elves" which are hated, feared and seen as hostile alien invaders by anybody with any sense. By TP's logic you could have your "playable elves" (basically just humans with physically elf-like qualities) and you've got your "weird NPC elves" in the form of magnetically psionic sadists from a parasite dimension who've long ago dropped their moral compass off a cliff. This is essentially how I run them in my games, so players can still be an elf if they want and they get boosts from it and they're called elves, but they're not "the fair folk" who are distinctly alien with blue and orange morality spectrum and usually not friendly.
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantments. Elves are terrific. They inspire terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad. -Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies
He had elardar and elves. The elardar are the real elves and the tree huggers are their changed decendents. It's essentially the way DnD chose to go as well.
Well that's cause Pratchett's elves are based on real-world mythology/folklore. Otherworldly, inhumane (litterally and figuratively), semi-divine beings who will make you dance till you drop dead just for funsies. No match for Granny and the beez tho
People tend to use tropes whenever they think of elves, but the old old school D&D elves were actually pretty cool. It's just that almost no one remembers their original stuff because it hasn't survived new editions. One thing I always found very interesting about elves is the fact they can't truly die. Whenever an elf dies, they are just reincarnated as a recently conceived elf baby. This is why, despite their being portrayed as mostly superior to humans, they tend to live in only small confined areas rather than the vast sprawling empires humans have, because there are only a finite number of elves that can exist at any given time. Also, have you ever wondered why elves "Trance" rather than sleep? This is another thing that has been lost over the editions and revisions. The reason for the trance is partly to temporarily experience the serenity and peace of the elven heaven they came from originally and can no longer get back to. It also allows them to tap into memories from their past lives. They spend their youth developing as a new individual, then around middle age and onward they begin to remember who they used to be and transition into this new person with immense knowledge and skills from many generations and lifetimes of experiences. ALL of them are basically Aang the Avatar. The elven heaven, ruled by the elven pantheon, can't be accessed by them or at least not easily. It's been so long since i've had to think about this stuff even i'm fuzzy on the details, but it is POSSIBLE for them to go back to heaven, but it's difficult I believe. Regardless, D&D elves are more interesting than people give them credit for. The problem is people just keep kind of pushing Tolkien tropes onto them and forgetting their actual origins and abilities and culture. I think one reason why people tend to gloss over their lore is because lore-wise, elves are incredibly powerful. I mean, an elven wizard has a minimum of 10 times the amount of time a human does to learn and master magic, how could a human wizard ever hope to compete with the knowledge and experience of an elf? Couple that with their past life experiences, you could bump into an elf with potentially multiple thousands of years of experience and power growth. But then of course, when it comes to game mechanics, because it is a game, the rules are setup in a way to try to balance everyone on an even playing field, so actual PC elves end up essentially being humans with slight changes to modifiers. I think thats part of the reason why people don't tend to think of them as being these supremely powerful, immortal entities, because the game's rules makes them feel equal to everyone else and kind of kills that illusion and makes them look smug and arrogant for even believing it despite it being absolutely true in the lore. Elves even have whats called Elven High Magic that other races can't even learn because they don't live long enough because it is so complicated, but allows them to do tremendously powerful things far beyond the scope of ordinary spells. Elves are cool actually. They just seem like jokes because thats how most players and DMs treat them.
This is really cool! Do you have a link or name of the source so I can read more about it? I would love to do something more with elves in the campaign in prepping but don't really know what so this would be an amazing inspiration :)
@@ccouch713 There isn't one "source", this is just elven lore from older editions and a lot of stuff from those eras was more sprawled out from many sources. If you want to learn it all, you'd have to dig around in google for it, or if you wanted a more easily digestible quick version you should look up folks who make youtube videos talking about lore or races and stuff like that, they probably have entries relating to elven lore and elven high magic and things of that nature. I always found them interesting though. Elven High Magic is very cool all by itself.
@@ccouch713 mrRhexx has 3 videos on elves, about 20 minutes each and named some varation of "what they don't tell you about elves", when he does an expiation videos he tells it like a coherent story from the original d&d lore to 5e, because it's all technically connected in weird ways, he actually was the basis for me building my current character, a friend of mine wanted a long term campaign "completely driven by the players" he envisioned us going on small quests and eventually building our own kingdoms, I asked what was inbounds, he laughed and said "anything that is canon" so now I'm a wizard hell bent on becoming a god that will restore the shadow weave from 3.5e
Correction: the "elfiest of the elves" are actually the eladrin. Also, the eladrin give us insight as to why there are so many subraces. Elves started as fey shapeshifters in the feywild, they left the feywild and due to this shapeshifting were highly adaptable to their surroundings. Lore happened, Corellon banned them from the feywild, they got cut off from this shapeshifting, yadda yadda. Eladrin are from a lineage of elves who got back under Corellon's good graces, hence the season shifting. And then of course, I know there's more lore to it, but the shadar kai are the least elfy of the elves due to their mixing with the shadowfell, which is the direct antithesis of the feywild.
@@justinwhite2725 idk if this is a change for 5e, but the sun elves are high elves. Source: this excerpt from the lore paragraph about high elves in the PHB “One type (which includes the gray elves and valley elves of Greyhawk, the Silvanesti of Dragonlance, and the sun elves of the Forgotten Realms) is haughty and reclusive, . . .”
I think the drow were intended not as a reflection of real life cultures (Since, aside from that one image, they really don't map to any real life societies), but were instead meant to be a "photo-negative" of the bright shining elves. Which is why unlike real-life dark-skinned people who have equally dark hair, Drow hair is bleached white to contrast the warmer red, gold, brown and black of an elf. While it's true that we all have cultural biases, there are actually quite a few. Since even Ancient Rome, the colour black has been associated with evil, sadness horror ect. (The black cape, the dark cave, the castle at night), and that is a seperate association towards real life dark skinned people (Not that people haven't used the former to justify the cruelty to the latter, but the association was never MADE with dark-skinned people in mind) I believe Drow being "dark" was connected more to the association with dark colours in fantasy, (the dark forest at night) than real life dark skinned cultures. This is why so much of Drow art depicts them with skin tone that is fundamentally impossible for a human (Dark Grey and Dark Purple), to have. Funnily enough, the earliest Drow art shows them as WHITE. Ironically, it's been more of the MODERN Drow art which was made after Drow were depicted as living in an evil culture rather than inherantly evil that shows them with more realistic skin tones. I know the video says the coding is "Very Obvious", but again, take that one image aside, and the coding, if intended, becomes very confused. Their society maps more to a parody of western colonialism or fantasy Nazis (Even in the 70's, Nazi's made for the best default baddies). Their attire is generic Edgelord baddie attire with too many pointy bits and BDSM gear (And even then, looks more westen european in most images). Even the bingo card is a collection of generic "evil" tropes instead of ones that stereotype a real life culture. If the items on the card were say "Lives in mud huts, has thick lips, dresses in leaf skirts", THEN you could probably see some "Obvious coding". The closest to problematic coding I think could be the "Matriarchal society is evil" part. To me that DOES read as a "How do we make them seem backwards and alien. Wait, what if the WOMEN ruled instead of the men?" Which is a mindset that aged poorly. You could argue that the "Caste System" is problematic since that DOES map to real life India, except... That was a false positive. The Drow don't actually have a caste system, they live in a feudal society which again, we traditionally associate with medieval europe. Whoever made THAT particular image in the video though...
The spider connection explained the matriarchy. Female spiders are bigger. So are female drow. It’s a reversal of the western norm. It is ONLY because edgy bois and grrlz have been given permission to identify with and obsess over evil stereotypes since the mid 90s that this was ever a problem.
Thank you for not being so sensative like some people these days, that comment he made about the drow rwminds me too much of "orcs are fantasy black people". If you look at a drow or orc and see bad because black skin, evil, etc. then that's your, not my fault.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 had some interesting Elves, because they were effectively Ancestor Worshipping Cannibals with REALLY freaky hyper-defined abs who could view the memories of the dead by consuming their flesh, and when they died would grow into trees. Which is pretty rad.
Divinity Elves are so interesting to play. You get to learn about people and the world by eating people’s corpses. I generally like how the races play in that game because every one brings unique gameplay.
I disagree about elves "being perfect" in fantasy. The elves see themselves as perfect but that is also their downfall. They are vain and selfish. They think they are smarter and they are but that is because they live longer and can learn more through that
Yeah, but that isn't really in the lore put forth by WOTC, like, its implied, but at the end of the day, they still manage to contradict themselves by just...making them really good at everything all the time. My primary suggestion is to just run another system, or make your own setting like I did and you will begin to see a difference Immediately.
exactly in the Dragonlance the Qualinesti elves call themself good but after the Solace refugee are freed they just send them on their way saying that they the elves have other problem than helping the humans goodly elves my ass.
Are they smarter though? For their longer lifespans they really aren't much more advanced in any aspect than other peer civilizations. A 20 yr old human is as capable of being a level one adventurer as a 120 yr old elf so they really aren't any better on an individual level. They aren't typically any more skilled or powerful in practice to humans, just in flavor text.
@@BlackLotus30 Don't forget that the Silvanesti in Dragonlance take the Qualinesti stereotypes and ratchet it up to eleven. While the golden haired Qualinesti are at least willing to interact and trade with the outside world, the Raven hair Silvanesti are very much isolationist to the point of violence on par with the fourth world tribes in the Amazon or on North Sentinel Island.
Of course, very obvious when we think of warhammer fantasy dwarves. They live long and have been betrayed by other races over and over and over again. So why would they trust anyone? On the other hand, for D&D elves, moon elves are actually not xenophobic and wood elves have usually very good reasons to be. These guys live in harmony with their forests and animals and humans keep doing fur coats, deforestation and climate change everywhere they go.
There's a reason why I love the Eberron elves. They have been on the planet so long they have no idea where they originated from before the age of giants. With how the giants treated them no wonder they don't trust ANYONE. If you live for 200 + years as slaves you're not only going to get jaded, you are going to hold grudges till the end of time. Also after that long, you have seen and done everything.... what else is there to do? Look, elves dressed like Mongals roaming the desert and getting into fights with the halflings that raise dinosaurs is kinda awesome... can't tell me otherwise.
Drow in my games are the result of a cultural diaspora. After an uprising against Corelon, he doomed all of them to be separated from the Elder Weave, a sort of natural network of life before and after. There are still those who are radicalized and participate in Lolth worship, some seek to rebuild those connections by taking the Rites of Eilistrae that turn them into Lunar Elves (NOT high elves), but many are content with their more mortal lives and live in normal towns and cities.
Personally I prefer the concept of evil entities luring heretical elves away from the elvish spiritual system, and then the heretics HAD to be exiled to stop them from corrupting the vulnerable youth. I think one of the few things that's canon is that elvish souls are a finite quantity, so any entity luring away or corrupting elvish souls diminishes their whole self contained reincarnation system.
Honestly I kind of like the idea of elves being changed by their environment, basically being humanoid eevies. When an elf is born they're just like. An Elf. But once they hit puberty and every few hundred years after they can go through metamorphosis depending on their environment or social group; elves in cities turn into high elves, elves in the ocean turn into sea elves, elves that remain in the feywild or shadowfel become eladrin and shadar-kai, etc.
You also could look at the Elder Scrolls, where the ancient elves, known as the Ayleids, Chimer, and Dwemer, who all are gone for a variety of reasons (and not even the same one for each, making them even more diverse). This adds new motivations to the modern elf types as well. The high elves, for example, are trying to regain the power of the Ayleids, which they believe was stolen. Just a thought.
They and the races of men are also two sides of the same coin, borne from the same origins but from ancestors walking different paths. (Also: small point, but the high elves are trying to regain the glory of the Aldmer, the proto-elf ancestor race. Ayleids came later.)
Personally I think pathfinder is on the right track with the visual design of elves. They have huge eyes without a sclera (think the grey alien) and long gangly bodies. In other words dial up that alien look, make them hit that uncanny valley. Their personality should also have that strangeness to it. Them being from the feywild, could mean that their emotions are much more exaggerated and they have problems with reading other races.
I like to think that elves have eyes similar to cats, the vertical slit of a pupil. It matches their other catlike qualities, thinking they're better than you and expecting you to service their every need. Disclaimer, I am a cat person lol, love my Siamese tabby But seriously, cats and elves have so much in common, it's kinda crazy
I play a shadar kai, way of the shadow monk. Edgiest concept for a character, but she's actually just a little social awkward cinnamon bun who ran away from her evil family. She has so much social anxiety, I absolutely killed her charisma score to go along with the theme
Chewbacca is an elf. He's from a culture closer to nature, he wields a (cross)bow even when everyone else is more advanced, he's incredibly long-lived and he travels with a member of one of the shorter-lived because of a moral code he has chosen to uphold. Ok, so Wookies might not translate perfectly, but it's a way for a player to make an elf work in your campaign!
Another fun option is the humans speedrunning life route. Humans due out much quicker compared to the normal length humanoids last, so they squeeze out all the experience life can give and actively encourage others to do the same (hence why non humans advance as fast in game)
@@phonetheory7056 jokes on you kobolds are speedrunning life even more than humans after all there are some adventurers kobolds who are only five days old.
On the drow "problematic bingo", most of these can be blamed on their "Black widow" aesthetics -Matriarchal? Because spiders! -Black skin and white hair? Because spiders! -Poisoners who prefer the dark? Because spiders!
Anyone associating fantasy races with real people is Racist. I love your take on the matter. It allows the Drow to shine as the evil baddies you just want to play against.
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ No, no Tolkien didn't. Tolkien wrote the orcs, goblins, and urak-hai based on the Germans and Austrio-Hungarians. Similarly, the Muklaks of LotR were based on the Ottoman Empire. Tolkien was writing LotR based on his experiences in WWI and a Anglo-Christian belief system.
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ That doesn't change that he was directing that at the Germans and Austrio-Hungarians. Go look at some political cartoons in WWI Allied print at the time and notice how those images were similar to the description above and were directly pointed at the Central Europeans of the Axis powers (Germany and Austio-Hungary).
@@RedCascadian Ooooff. Yeah, survival mechanics can get NASTY. To the point! D&D is weirdly true to the source material for the fey and the fairy courts-they’re not the bad guys per se, fey operate on a logic that is as different to non-fey as neckties are different to pizza.
I love the idea of modern elves being different to ancient elves and I'm definitely going to incorporate that into my world building. As always love your work and hope you're doing alright.
I think modern elves inevitably fall into "how are you fellow kids" pit. Like, in our world from the begining of industrial revolution to today takes around 200 years, and it is still a very young elf.
Also, I find conflicting that elves are supposed to be both "one with nature and magic" and very frikin rich, have entire castles and perfect perm and makeup. I think it would be interesting that "lineage" elves and "nature" elves are different cultures of the same race. But thats just two cents
my brother in Christ, you left out the most interesting parts of elves for instance the visions formed from the elvish trance, reincarnation, and timeless perception of the world around them. also, as long as we are talking about fantasy races being racist dwarves are literally against race mixing :p
D&D takes place in a "pre-enlightened" time though. Going back to the Tolkien roots, elves are "spirits of the world" who do not go to the afterlife. Its D&D that made them otherworldly.
there's some old official lore that says dwarves are not really against race mixing but they're too stubborn and only do things is grandpa's grandpa already did and gave the okay for it. also race mixing does nothing to a dwarf's progeny, if a dwarf gets another race's pregnant or gets pregnant by another race there's a 90% it's just gonna be a common dwarf, slightly taller if it was not the child of a halfling or a gnome
@@emanuelcamuglia5984 I'm sure that's been retconned by now though. There is cannonically a whole subrace of half dwarf half human out there and it's the only recorded instance of it happening.
Unpopular opinion: I like evil dark elves. To me, the Tolkien roots of D&D are some kind of anchor. Tolkien interprets elves as "spirits of the world". The way I see it, elves bring the world into themselves. Though, I argue that dark elves come from Norse myth originally. And Lotr elves are hardly perfect though. In my setting, the Drow are the semi-reason(yes and no) elves split in the first place. The elves were changed from human by the good gods for their heroism in a war long ago. After the war, the lifestyle of elves changed drastically. So instead of living the lifestyle of a soldier folk, they became more indulgent and decadent(not how they see it). One group of elves became twisted into Drow when they went for a group of people who went missing underground(not entirely their fault, but people don't know this). Then a group of elves(wood elves) started accusing the rest of Decadence and retreated into the most dangerous woods on the continent. The High elves see themselves as cultured and civilized, while the wood elves see themselves as trying to reconnect with their roots by living in dangerous places.
To be fair, one could argue that the Drow of DnD/The Forgotten are more influenced by the imperialistic, sadistic, chaos-god worshipping Melniboneans of Michael Moorcock's "Elric of Melniboné than any of Tolkein's elves.
Are your elves based on Warhammer 40k Eldar? your short description seems to similar to what is happening there. I'm not trying to accuse you of plagiarism or anything, and I'm all for stealing things that you think are cool and putting them into D&D, I'm just curious if this is where you got them from.
Actually popular opinion. Just forbidden and you can never admit it. It's like being a D&D players in the 80s all over again. lol Chastised for not conforming to societal standards even when all you're doing is rolling some dice and making up fictions. sigh... Saying that liking Drow makes you a racist is just as moronic as saying playing D&D makes you a devil worshipper. stupid af.
It's not an unpopular opinion, Drow are one of the most popular player races in the forgotten realms, nobody actually believes they're innately evil, and they haven't been portrayed that way in the books since literally the early 1990s. Even when they were "innately evil except for that one", *everyone* wanted to play as Drizzt. The people who tear their garments and throw themselves out windows about the Drow are *STILL* complaining that they're black skinned, when they aren't, they're grey or purple skinned now and have been for a while - showing that they *never actually cared*, they just wanted to make themselves feel better about racism by finding a fiction they don't even know and shitting on it
There is an old-school game that does exactly that -- Dungeon Crawl Classics. I like what they did with their race-as-classes to begin with, let alone how they handled Wizard and Cleric magical sources, but they did force an iron allergy to elves. In DCC's game lore, this is why elves did so much with mithril. It was better than steel, and didn't require them coming in contact with the iron they dread.
May I suggest you make it pig iron. As it is a brittle material, not exactly great for actually building anything, including weapons out of. Have them break after, x number of battles. That way they can't just constantly keep an iron version of their weapon around, should Fey be fought somewhere along the way.
I don't have the artistic chops to create the stunning visuals that you do but the way that you propose and explain changes to races and classes in this game unblocked my art/writing block with all the grace of a three legged three headed dog. You're absolutely amazing and make me laugh with the ending reminders :'D
The problem I had with Drow elves was that if they lived such a long time underground in the dark, their skin colour would have been more likely pale white, rather than black. You can always make the excuse with "Magic", but if there were any "dark-skinned" elves, I guess, they would be Desert Elves or Jungle Elves.
That only applies if they weren't sentient and already magically advanced when they entered the underdark. They are not playing by regular natural selection rules, no more than 19th-21st century humans are. Also, they don't live in the dark, though they can because they have darkvision. They have artificial lighting, both normal flames and magical (they can literally cast dancing lights from the get go), which means even if they're only a dim effect with their darkvision they can see as if it were bright light.
My head-cannon to explain the enormous variety of Elven sub-species is that while Elves are personally **really** bad at adapting to change, as a species they are generationally hyper-adaptive, so elves who move to a different environment will have descendants who are physically/mystically adapted to that environment in a couple of generations, creating a new Elven sub-species. (Which could be practically indistinguishable from an existing one.)
This is basically canon in Pathfinder. There's even an ancestry feat for elves in 2e that lets you change your heritage if you stay in the relevant biome for a while!
There's a book series called the Dwarves, from a German author whose name escapes me. There, the lore is that the superiority complex elves have is mostly based off the lifespan discrepancy. Elves in that world see humans etc as we see dogs, cats etc, which is an explanation I kinda like. Also, on the bingo chart is an entry of "reproduces quickly" which has some biological logic behind it. Short-lived species (eg mice, frogs, fish) tend to reproduce fast while long-lived species (elephants, whales, etc) have few offspring. Now, why all evil races are short-lived and all good races have long lives is a whole 'nother problem.
Good and evil exist as legitimate natural forces in the D&D universe. As expressed by the positive and negative material planes. So maybe like the dark side in Star Wars,the evil beings connection to literal evil energy. Slowly degrades the body over time causing the evil beings shorter lifespan?
Was thinking the same thing. If you can live for 1000s of years (or theoretically infinitely) then all the humies stumbling around and dying by 100 years at most, are like toddlers, if the toddlers also had guns. They're dangerous to you and each other, and there's way too many of them to actually do anything about the problem, so the smartest plan is to remove yourself from the danger and try to avoid them.
I quite like the idea of elves once having this massive empire but overtime there place in the world has been diminished and they can see the courtyard slowly fading out I think that could be really cool and that could explain they’re xenophobia they consider The outsiders responsible for the Shrinking culture and then trying to hold on to the last bit of “true Elf coaching”
Thank you, I was searching for this kind of comment. In my past tables, I used to write elves as a dying race that are very protective of parts of their cities (due to having elderly and children in that specific areas in the most part of the day, think about "school perimeters") bu usually very open to communicate with other races specially because they recognize they are slowly fading from the existence. But in games where it's specific in DND settings, I usually just let the players do whatever they want because most of them play elves as typical old dudes (think about the on the wiser side, but easily surprised by technology) in younger bodies, they couldn't care so much about the lore. Like, you really don't remember they are playing an elf. Although when I play as an elf... I like to take the Drizz't Route for some and add the "inquisitive yet non-imaginative" nature of a race that lives for so long and doesn't really do much besides thinking about themselves and magic. Think about someone who just goes on very specific topics of historical knowledge, but struggles to understand how new tools can improve your working space, new slang and new concepts. So I think that "do was written exactly" is pretty lazy. Let's say my drow paladin became very popular in the first session I played her, the table was a bit afraid of what it would happen since most players don't exactly like PC elves, let alone drow. Well. They loved her, even though she wasn't exactly a good person. (Maybe it was my accent, one player said that they thought it was cute) Well, bellow this point is just what happened: They just loved how she was very excited to talk about mushrooms, was fascinated with the colors of the flowers, the songs of the birds, the things that are so different from the Underdark. Yet she also mentioned the things she found beautiful there, the faerie fire-lit cities, the abundance of glowing gems, the softest silk from spiders. But mostly importantly, when they (the PCs, not the players) asked why she was adventuring on the surface alone and wasn't afraid of people thinking badly of her, she just said: "The most open minded folks will understand that a place you are born doesn't define your personality, you can change, I'm here to know the world and see if I like it or not. So far, I'm happy here, people actually recognize my strength and rely on me, and I feel I can rely on most of people. And... I have brothers and sisters, I truly love my siblings and seeing they suffer under the things Lolth taught us broke my heart, so I want to one day bring them here, away from the influence of Lolth. One day, the Underdark will be empty, be it by the ones fleeing from that cursed land, or by killing each other. So, I'm here to bring the ones who doesn't wanna live miserably under an evil goddess. Mother? She isn't what I think a mother is, even though my own wasn't a good one too. Besides, I'm not the first drow planning to live in the surface and I won't be the last, I hope. Everyone deserves to be happy." (It wasn't said all at once, of course. I'm just pointing the several dialogues she had regarding her time on the surface.) They accepted her in the party shortly after and so far they are having fun with her discovering new things that are the norm for them, slowly opening up to the others and not being the snooty brat they thought she would be. She still mentions that "in my hometown things would be very different" once in a while, but doesn't say it's positive or negative, she just rolls with it. (One of the main concerns was that two party members were half-elves and they were relieved when she just said "oh, that's cool, I thought it was just a legend that people up here married out of love!" when they revealed that instead of going "ohoh, what a shame", since the players said they always encounter snob elf PCs who act like that every time they play was half-elves. The other two were playing a human and a tiefling, they are still surprised that the only """"superiority complex"""" that the drow paladin showed was a joke, the exact "Menzoberranzan is very deep, you wouldn't understand. Two miles is very deep, right?" and proceeded to laugh.)
Yes! I've been playing a High Elf whose life's work is trying to weave together the lost culture of her people by visiting ruins and delving into those place's dreams.
I honestly don't get what's "problematic" about Drow. That they're evil and dark skinned? That's very little to extrapolate from. Besides, their skin is pitch black/grey, not a dark brown which is the stereotype IRL. I do have a problem with the idea of a race being "inherently evil by nature" but I doubt Drow are the only example of that.
I've been obsessed with Elves since I first read The Lord of the Rings back in the day and I loved this video! I've had numerous characters that have fallen into the Elven Archer trope, and yet I still never seem to get bored with it.
The elves in d&d are a fallen civilization as well as the dwarves. It’s in their backstory to find ancient glorious elven ruins. If these ruins are still occupied by elves they are isolationist because they are afraid of losing what little they have left. They seem more human because many have blended with human societies to have safer and easier living standards. The reverie/trance is really interesting aspect to me. They’re able to relive past lives and memories through it which can make them trapped or living in a dream of a memory. The drow are the perfect elves to make more alien too, they rely on having an alien way of thinking and living or else they just seem like a bunch of illogical psychos.
This is just how I think of them. That said if you don’t like elves that’s understandable. People don’t usually play elves because they read the PH entry on them, they play elves because they want to be an elf.
I find the Drow interesting because they're basically like the culture of ancient Rome but instead of Patriarchal, isolationist slavers they're Matriarchal, isolationist slavers. Plus, being underground and having light-sensitivity, the Drow as a society are a great way to do a Vampire civilization without literal vampires, like a race of Daywalkers.
Yeah I still love the concept too. It's essentially an alien world with plenty of challenges, a xenophobic society, and it's best to just gloss over the unfortunate racial issue.
That's an pretty cool flavor for the drow. For my campaign, i went another way though. I described the drow as basically the mongol empire, but with giant spiders instead of horses.
My own personal twist on elves in my campaign is that they evolve as they stay in one place, absorbing its natural magical and planar energy. Thus a Shadar-Kai elf could theoretically shift to a moon elf if they left the shadowfell for the feywilds. Their theme is consistent, but it’s not that elves tend to necessarily be racist or haughty, but immortals that tend to be stuck in their ways.
I've always been of the opinion that while yes, fantasy species do have some influence from writers' perceptions of different human cultures, Drows being evil probbly has nothing to do with the perceived, racist notion of "black people = evil" and more so with the classic "shadows = evil". Drows and Dark Elves are more sinister and tend towards evil not because of racist undertones but because humans have always been afraid of what lurks in the dark.
@@DefinitivNichtSascha The problem with the Drow back then is a lot of it overlaps with black stereotypes. Enslavement of their own kind. Untrustworthiness Matriarchy A lot of this was written about Black people as far back as the 1600s. So yeah its really hard to divorce oneself from the obvious racial undertones of the D&D Drow.
@@kappadarwin9476 ima just straight up say that the drow have almost no stereotype’s in common with African people. Matriarchy was not an African stereotype. And saying something like untrustworthy is also so overwhelmingly a common stereotype for all races twords another that it’s baseless. The drow are not at all based on african people, they are dark skinned beacause darkness(shadows/night) have throughout history been associated with evil.
In my setting, the elven heritage is split between those whose followed the gods into the Feywild and those who remained on the material plane. Material Plane elves are your average joe, living life in the city. Feywild elves live off the land. Residents of the material plane and Feywild are unaware that the other exists
The way I rule it: make humans more special by accomplishing just as much as elves do in a shorter period of time. Kinda silly to see a human wizard live to 65 years old outclassing elves that have lived for 400+ years.
My homebrew has their fey ancestry letting them live a "full life" but letting them stretch it out over hundreds of years. Most of their society is focused on mundane repetitive tasks. Their armies guard their borders but never expand as new experiences age them, leading to isolationist behavior. Elven adventurers usually have short careers that they can spend hundreds of years writing about. Their affinity for magic comes from hundreds of years of self study of theory that a human can surpass with decades of strenuous trial and error experimentation.
@@doubleg281 fascinating. Sort of the opposite of gnomes in Pathfinder. They need to have new experiences or else succumb to the "bleaching" a genetic disease that literally saps the color from them and turns them clinically depressed and pessimistic
I usually rule it as elves doing more with it than humans can. For example all mages can cast fireball but only elves can make it do some truly weird shit. I homebrew metamagic feats exclusively for elven wizards. It's balanced by the fact that I make human wizards do slightly more damage ala warmage edge from 3.5 and they can cast one spell for free once a day in exchange for hp damage and the cost of spellslot the next day(in universe people have died from this and this does damage your ability to do magic later in life ). The in universe reason is elves know better than to risk losing access to magic. Humans on the other hand don't care or can't afford to care as they don't live long enough to worry about the consequences.
This is why when I make an elf I always make them under 100 they wanted to live since to be one that wanted to seek adventure they're only gonna get stronger. Like I had an elven NPC/boss being level 40 due to their age. They started out as a ranger and became a druid. They're basically Shrek but pretty "stay the hell out their swamp"
I've always preferred half-elves. Probably in part due to their "not fitting in" aspect. After all, I got into D&D as a pre-teen... nearly 40 years ago. WHAT THE ACTUAL FLYING.... I'm getting old. Anyway, half-elves, followed by the bog-standard human, are my usual go-to's for my D&D characters. (I even played a "quarter-elf" once. Sigh. I'm hopeless.)
got into d&d almost 20 years ago. I usually played half elves, half orcs, and humans. When 3.5 released tieflings and aasimar those were my go tos. I occasionally would run half demon or half dragon if my dm allowed them in one shots. Idk half elves, half orcs and humans just kinda fit that adventurer niche of not really having a place so they go and see the world.
"I think elves would be more interesting if they had this lost connection to the feywild and are obssessed with what they have lost..." My dude. That's literally what elves in dnd are. Elves dream of the ancient lands until they turn 100, and lose the memories completely from then on. Etc. Point, mainstream shallow views of elves are dull. Just don't be that. xD
No, they have reveries where they can remember past lives AFTER they turn 100. But yes... he should completely redo this video, it's absolutely shamefully bad, how little he knows about D&D elven core lore, and how he randomly mixes other media in when analyzing D&D elves when it's not relevant. Some of his vids about DMing techniques and homebrewing or improving classes and such are so good... but then he got something so basic and well established so fucking wrong about one of the major playable races... just... wut?
Just gonna put This here there are dark-skinned wood elves, hill dwarves, humans and halflings in the forgotten realms. Their are also light skinned orcs and drow as well.
@@leodouskyron5671 I mean there are literally as many as you want there to be- also at least in 5e there's a bunch of art of black humans, dwarves and even some elves. I don't really see your point
@@beastwarsFTW For Gruumsh Sake Orcs are Orcs. they are one of the most diverse race in the forgotten realms from literally Pigmen, to Grayskinned Inter-dimentional Inavaders, to Ape-likeJungle Dwellers, to large Green Humans, ect and thats just one setting. Also Corellon is a douche.
I think that its mostly a 5e thing... Because in earlier editions if i remember right, "pale drow" was Shaddar-Kai in Underdark. Same for skinned dwarfs, they were Golden Dwarfs race not a Hill ones, in Dark Sun were even litteraly Dark Dwarves i think, and realy pale skinned ones were that escaped from Drows, dont remember name. Dark skin Wood Elves were not a thing, because in older lore was a black skin of Drows caused by curse. There were brown skin Wild Elves, they were in lore even (partialy?) descendants of Drows who returned to surface and dont follow evil gods anymore. Pale Orcs were considered other race brunch than normal orcs too.
I see drow in the same way I see dark eldar from 40k or orcs. They are a different species altogether, taken by a very real, very controlling goddess and made to be a specific way. It's like if if I took some short lived tortoises, bred them to eat raw meat, hunt in packs and have black shells, then I'd end up with a lot of black, carnivorous, social tortoises... They're not inherently bad for being made that way by me, but they may seem bad if they're let loose to devour neighborhood pets. Orcs are evil because Gruumsh created them to conquer and fight and kill and devour man flesh. Drow are evil because lolth twisted them to scheme and poison and take over the overworld. These monoculture races are an extension or tribe following a very real, very talkative god who does deal out punishments for failures. I think of them as real world gated cults, the types that build their own village and practice human sacrifice in the modern world. They usually all dress the same, look similar and conform to their leader's wishes religiously, and face punishments for failures or dissent. Anyone who can look at a drow or orc and think: "yup, this may be racist towards real black people", is actually racist themselves. They see evil elf with charcoal black skin and white hair being evil, or tribal man eating orc with brown/green skin and black hair and think " :o real black humans?". These people should not be listened to at all, ever. It's like having a dirty mind and taking harmless statements in dirty ways, they have a racist mind and take harmless things in a racist way, then they accuse the person who said or made that thing of being racist because it made them feel guilty about taking it in a racist way. If they eliminate everything they feel is racist in their eyes, then they no longer have to encounter it and take it in that way and feel guilty. You're not allowed evil orcs or drow, because black people need to be portrayed in a positive light for them to feel safe. There are black humans in D&D. They have an empire, earth Africa inspired cultural motifs and are generally just as human as any other human society, with criminals and saints, workers and nobles... They worship all kinds of different god's across the alignment table. Orcs and drow are their own thing, and they need to be evil for the players. Killing a man eating monster who is obviously evil, and was made to be evil by a god, who revels in his evil and wants you and your race dead... That's guiltless. You can slaughter that, and it's family... You can purge their entire evil tribe without guilt because they're evil, awful and are made to be so. Instead, if it's a hard working guy just trying to feed his starving kids, and he's been pressed into the warband and, in desperation, they decided to raid a village for food, they don't hurt anyone, they just pillage the stores and go home... Yeah, killing them feels awful, its akin to killing another human. Then it gets political, it gets humanitarian, It's complicated and messy and now you need to think about repercussions and it's just not fun. It turns a game about killing evil monsters into a therapy session helping some poor tribal people find a healthy, friendly food source, or how to trade for what they want. It removes threats from the game and replaces them with more normal people... That just isn't interesting.
Yeah , something people often forget is that Forgotten Realms gods are 100% real , 100% active and often walk among people , so talking shit about them or opposing them is not a good idea , specially when your whole race is dedicated to that one god (Drow and Orcs) with very clear goals and it is looking at you at all times and very much rewards those who serve it well People often think FR gods are just sky people without any real interest in the world , much like IRL gods , that is something i have seen a lot of people struggle to separate , they can accept any kind of fantasy trope or BS , except the existance of active gods TBH all this "coded" shit says more about the people using it than the people they try to cancel
Gonna use some TVTropes terminology here, but that's a Watsonian argument for why they're evil. In Universe, they're evil because a higher power decided to make them that way, it's not their fault. But what's the Doylist reasoning? Why did the creator decide, that when they needed an evil group of elves, they were going to have dark skin? Blaming the god for why they're both evil and black ignores the fact that someone wrote the god to make that decision. They obviously didn't see anything wrong with it at the time, probably didn't realize the implications they were making with that decision. It happens a lot. That doesn't mean the implications aren't something to be analyzed and critiqued in the hopes of doing better next time. It'd be one thing if they were written as just bitter about being forced to live underground and are trying to carve out a slice of the surface they can live on again. That's legitimate cultural friction and conflict. You describe a campaign where people have to pick sides in a nuanced conflict and wrestle with complicated morality questions like some people aren't totally into that shit. That being said, brain dead bad guy smashing is super cathartic, you're right. It's nice to think "I'm just beating up literal evil right now," And not worry about politics. DnD has plenty of ways to do that without terrible implications. Demons and Devils exist, Undead exist, you can have cults dedicated to bringing about the end of the world populated by an eclectic arrangement of divinely enthralled minions whose souls have already been devoured, or literally anything from the Far Realms that would drive you insane just by seeing it. Get imaginative, it's DnD.
@@5PINN3R Ok, let's go doylist. There are three main ideas that fundamental to human development over the centures. The first is the idea of light and darkness. It plays out every day outside your window. The light brings warmth and light, makes the trees green and food ripe, it helps you see and reveals threats. The dark brings cold, conceals threats, makes plants turn brown or black and wither away and makes it very hard to navigate. Every day, the light shines overhead, only to eventually be conquered by the darkness. The day's shortening brings death to the plants, and the day's lengthening brings life and vibrance. It's easy to then link the dakness's shriveling and blackening of the plants to corruption, and the light's presence as life giving. Personifying these, the light, white, brightness is good, and the black, shadowy darkness is bad, and can corrupt plants and turn them dark and dead. Basically: white/light magic heals, black/dark magic kills. The next main idea is that of ultimate good vs ultimate evil. Fantasy is just that, fantasy. The world is nothing but shades of grey. There are no evil people or good people. I can argue that a pedophile, rapist or mass murdere are evil, and that a heroic person who gives their life to save people from a fire is good, however the pedophilic rapist murderer may have spent his life and vast fortunes helping millions of people, and the heroic person who gave their life may be into consentual cannibalism on the weekends. The real world is nothing but grey. Fantasy is where things can be black and white for a change. It's guilt free to kill something that is 100% ultimately evil. We want that as writers, to give that catharsis, and to escape from reality's grey areas for a while. Finally, the last idea is that of familiarity. We want to make things easily recognizable for the people we're writing for. When I say tall, muscular brute with black-green skin wielding a large, crude axe, you immediately think orc in a D&D setting because it's recognizable. When the writers were making D&D, they were thinking Tolkein orcs. Tolkein, when he was writing, was working with existing european mythologies. Orcs, or Orcus, were small green/black devils or goblins that were evil. The word was also used previously to mean ogre. All were described to be dark of skin, corrupted, evil. This choice of colouring came from the first trope I described. They were corrupted by darkness, and so bore it's colour. This later was incorporated into Tolkein's writing. The dark lord is dressed in black and shadow. Elves are good, and light, and white, and bright. To corrupt an elf, you remove the light, and are left with darkness, blackness. We show that on screen by having the elves be white, the dark elves be black. Orcs are born of muck, so they are browns and greens. These are ultimate evils. You can tell by how dark and corrupted they are. They're not humans, they're other. Now, let's address actual black people in fantasy, because they exist. But first, I'll point out that they do not exist in Tolkein's world. Tolkien created a mythos for europeans, white people. The men of the east are likely a depiction of the ottomans or turks, eastern europeans, not africans. The orcs are corrupted elves, as discussed, their pigment is owed to their lack of light, not to depict certain other human races. However, in D&D, black humans exist. 2 of the 9 different cultures of human are people of colour. The ones described as "dark mahogany" skinned, the Turami, are actually depicted in a good light: forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Turmish, forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Turami. In The Wheel of Time book series, most of the world is made up of people of various skin tones from various places. Even the main character is a dark skinned, red haired guy from the desert tribes, and he's in one of the only mostly white areas of the world, written to be that way simply so that he looks out of place there. The evil are called Darkfriends. The trollocks are massive, hulking, ugly black and brown skinned monsters with animalistic features and fur. The way people have written about actual people of colour as normal, well meaning, good people is in very stark contrast with how orcs and drow are written. It's written that way because of very old tropes and because those tropes are easily recognizable by the audiences of the world. Is it racist in the real world, as writers, to depict an evil force of savage brutes as dark skinned monsters? no. Is it racist to depict evil elves as spidery black skinned monsters? no. Is it racist to equate those two with actual black people on earth? I say yes... very. If you're doing that, then that's a you problem. There are historical, cultural, religious and observable reasons why humans depict evil as dark or black. If you take that and put that on actual black humans then that's on you. It wasn't ok 400 years ago, it's not ok today.
having just finished heavensward i appreciate all the refferences. also, something cool i've made of elves, drow specifically. i've made them Star Elves. they retain the normal drow stuff like black skin, white hair, underground dwelling, superior darkvision and sunlight sensitivity but their underground cities are under mountains in remote locations where at night they can go to the surface and see the stars. they are also really big into astrology, divination and horoscopes and ancient greek-style mystery cults. they are all about divination, the passage of time, the keeping of records and the secrecy of all of it. the spells they get are Guidance, Ilusory Script and Augury and get proficiency with Navigator's tools for reason's completely unrelated to the sea
That's actually what Drow are supposed to be like, but Lolth destroys anyone that tries this. Another goddess, Elistrae I think, encourages Drow to go out and see the stars for the first time. That's usually where all the good Drow come from.
I like drow the way they are now with lolth-sworn drow being evil/forced to be evil and good drow who've renounced the evil ways. It makes it so you can have the best of both worlds. You can keep the fanatical matriarchal, spider loving, child slaying slavers of old while having a bunch of good-aligned Drizzts roaming the surface world proving that not all drow are evil.
Honestly, I'd love to revamp elves with an emphasis on the more chaotic elements of their social structure: the part where the elf themself gets to choose when they are ready for adulthood and that they choose a new name when they do. It's my favorite part of elven lore and I'd love to see it expanded upon since a lot of people forget that part
One of my favorite types of elves in fiction are the dark elves in the Elder Scrolls series. Their culture is so alien and weird that I just naturally find it interesting. They live in a land covered in ash, their mages live in giant hollow mushroom and the fauna and flora looks like something from another planet.
@@vladprus4019 I felt they had a more south asian cultural feel, especially in their theology regarding the nature of the universe, 'the wheel', and how to escape it from it through enlightenment,. Also the depiction of their living gods. Vivec looks like Ardhanarishvara (Shiva combined with his Wife Parvati into a singular hermaphroditic deity) and according to some texts within morrowind they are also hermaphroditic.
@@peterp.9327 Well, when it comes to religions, gods etc. in TES, I've heard opinions that it has some Hindu "feel" overall, so that doesn't surprise me.
Eilistraee is probably my favorite goddess in the entire setting of the forgotten realms. MrRhexx did a video on her awhile back, and I want to play a bladesinger because of it.
I don't quite see it as that. Rather, I choose to see this whole city of good drow they are suggesting as an Eilistraee success story, and that she is becoming more prominent. I think it could even make for a good story line for a campaign as Lolth becomes more desperate as dissidents gain power and defect. That said, I can see at least one part of her lore being a thing of the past and deserving to stay there. The fact that non-drow followers do pilgrimages in black face is a bit problematic, even if the intent is to help promote drow as the good guys. Not something I'd be bringing into my games, at least. Still, having her as a goddess that actively fights for the sake of her people, a goddess that has made sacrifices in the name of not just the mortals that worship her, but the ones that don't as well. I don't see many gods going that far, and that's why she's my favorite.
@@hellpenguin3031 one reason Eilistraee is gaining more followers and Lolth’s are diminishing is due to sustainability. I remember reading a 3.5e book about the drow and to paraphrase. One may question how a society based on raiding and backstabbing have able to sustain itself, the answer. It can’t. Lolth isn’t omnipotent and has to rely on her followers and spiders to be her eyes and ears to see if things are collapsing. If they are she has to order her followers to take care of it or intervene herself. Plus, she isn’t the only god in the drow pantheon. The only one who serves her is her grandson Selvetarm (sorry for this misspelling and future ones.) Her son has the largest drow following on the surface and is very popular among male drow. Eilistraee has a size-able following and seems to be growing. Kiranaslee is known for being a drow goddess of vengeance and is most likely plotting her revenge. Lolth might be a divine web spinner but, it’s stacked against her not only in the drow pantheon but outside as well.
Yeah by the way he's saying she's a recent addition to reform the drow, and Daughter of Drow was literally published almost 30 years ago, every single video that shits on drow for being racist always cites things from nearly 3 decades ago. It's like complaining that Star Trek Discovery is sexist because back in TOS they made cracks about women on the bridge
>>"The good elves won and drove the bad elves underground" Very much not the case. Driving the drow underground was a massive warcrime. "Justified" in response to warcrimes. Which were committed in retaliation for sun elves committing genocide. In this case the "good elves" were the Vyshaantar Empire of Aryvandar. who were basically elf nazis, who genocided the ilythiiri (pre-drow)'s neighbor country in their war trying to conquer all of faerun. And then the Ilythiiri (pre-drow) started using evil magics / raising half-demon babies / working with evil gods to get the power to kill said elf-nazis. And starts fighting back, nuking and napalming Vyshaanti provinces / vassal states to fight back. And then the other elves are like "damn now there's two flavors of evil elf empire." And then a bunch of elves (pretty sure it was the vyshaanti but I cant find a source) conduct a massive high magic (elven soul necromancy, sometimes with a boost from elf gods) ritual to curse the whole demon-crossbred ilythiiri ethnic group so they can't handle sunlight - and within two months of that their entire civilization is driven down into the underdark. Then the gods say "enough is enough!" and intervene. They make a new elf king who has to be morally worthy and is tested first. Elf-NATO is formed, and said Elf-King rules Elf-NATO. Elf-NATO defeats Aryvandar.
Question. What book is this from? I want to figure out how to improve the drow by making their story more sympathetic or even heroic, but can't find a good starting point.
@@thedorklord1029 My recollections are a broad strokes history, I may have gotten some of the smaller details wrong or presented some minor events out of order.
@@thedorklord1029 The single source with the most detail on the Crown Wars is Cormanthyr Empire of Elves, which is a 2e D&D book I picked up used really early in my gaming career. Great book.
@@thedorklord1029 I posted a long reply with far more details and like 10 other books listed. It seems to have been deleted? Lets try again, shorter, just sources. Demihuman Deities and Lost Empires of Faerun add a bit more to the mix. For more varied Drow stuff look at Ed Greenwood's Drow of the Underdark from the early 90s. And then there are these Novels: Evermeet by Elaine Cunningham - Has bits on Ilythiir before the descent and also the elven gods. Starlight and Shadows details Eilistraee's faith the best. Lady Penitent adds more to the Descent and follows a Drow MC who discovers bits of lost knowledge of Pre-Descent Drow (but the author wildly changes Eilistraee's personality from how Cunningham and Greenwood developed her - so it's a book with very mixed reception). The Last Mythal covers some other Crown Wars stuff - but does not focus on the drow. It's a good look at elven society in general though. On FR Wiki look up the Crown Wars, The Ruler's Blade, Ilythiir, and Miyeritar
I’ve always liked the idea of wood elves being people who care for and have a natural understanding of the world, I usually treat them as if they have a Shinto like culture. Also I tend to think of elves acting like an older coworker how’s seen a lot of people come and go messing up something’s that are basic to them, and some people in that situation get a superiority complex but others tend to be understanding.
I always thought the matriarchal slavers that are the dtow are interesting. The idea that lolth corrupted them is also interesting as well. While I understand that back in the day, we needed entire types of creatures that are experience and treasure pinatas, I do appreciate nuance that has been added to different d&d races over the years
That, and even with real life cultures that have raided and enslaved others, there is always more than those specific cultures. There is far more to the Mongols than just raiding people. He is correct when he says that many of these races have been problematic in the past. But, he's showing pictures from the 70s as if they still apply to the races, and none of us thing they are ridiculous.
You guys shouldn’t complain about the tropes from the general lore until you’ve looked into how they’ve written it. Elminster; book 2 visits elves that covers his suggestion of elves too obsessed with past glories pretty much exactly. Starlight & Shadows; Drow turns good and finds out there is actually a lot of good Drow the ones underground did a good job spreading a bad rep. It’s dnd, they want you to turn the tropes upside down.
@@maxxor-overworldhero6730 Daughter of Drow was published in 1995 and this guy's acting like good drow are only a new thing meant to change the brand. The Drow subrace is largely being fought over by Vhaerun: Libertarian and god of cryptocurrency, Eilistree: goddess of moonlight and freedom (ancom socialist), and Lolth: goddess of chaos It annoys me of a fan of the WONDERFUL stories by Elaine Cunningham, Ed Greenwood, and R.A. Salvatore to have someone vaguely say Drow are racially coded (what race? lol) and should be scrapped Shit going back to Daughter of Drow, even the most-evil-drow, the queen of the city, first matron: she's too short and has imposter syndrome and is a lesbian but her station demands she take a male consort, she is miserable. The society is evil, and it forces people into roles they don't fit in, and as a result those people in turn inflict pain on others, and the cycle continues. It's a beautiful piece of fiction
I quite like Runesmith's comments about elves when it comes to just how many variants there are: Cockroaches. As no matter what plane, dimension, sphere, etc. in DnD, there's somehow some type of elf there. Also you forgot about Fey Elves. Basically elves who've been hugging trees more than even elven standards.
In Divinity: Original Sin elves are far more alien looking, with super long necks and weird elongated skulls. They take the whole 'weird but beautiful' vibe to a whole other level
Tolkien was perhaps the only anarcho-monarchist ever, which explains that kings-but-free bit of elves. I'd love more properly frightening fae elves like in folktales, but I suppose that would be hard to RP.
Anarcho-monarchy is when someone says that they're royalty and everyone just humors them. Like Joshua Abraham Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
A frightening fae elf I could see being inspired from is the Pale Man from “Pan’s Labyrinth”. Never ending greed corrupts one’s body to match their personality and desire? Sounds interesting! Or an elf that gives the appearance of being poised and elegant, but when they want to get at something, (maybe even others’ flesh as a snack) it’s fingers, limbs, eyes and mouth become bigger as it lurches forward and chases after their victim.
I thought about the concept of alien elves as a kind of tourist in the material plane. They buy a material body hoping to blend in with the humans, but they usually have flaws that make them uncanny to humans. Their ears are too long, or their eyes are off, or they have an extradimentional space instead of a back, or they don't cast a shadow. Stuff like that.
My first character ever was a barbarian elf with a background of being athlete who competed in javelin throwing and deadlift, being extra buffed and all that. Arnold elfsnegger
I’d agree plus it’s like, as a player your elf doesn’t have to be the stereotype set for elves in D&D. Like in my current campaign my character is an Elf who didn’t grow up in an elven society to the point he has not elven influence on his upbringing. He can’t even speak elvish. So there are ways to play elves without the aspects he talked about. Plus if I’m being honest my choice of race depends on the character design I come up with. I think the only time to remove a race as playable would depend on the campaign. Like if it’s part of the lore of the world. Then it would make sense.
Something left unsaid is that a lot of the times, in the lore of post-Tolkien settings, elves are built up as "perfect" and "superior" with the explicit intent to cast them down (like in Dragon Age, where they go from extremely powerful immortal mages to oppressed second-class citizens; or in the Forgotten Realms, where there are countless elven cities and kingdoms that were seen as marvelous and then brought to ruin or destroyed). I think while there may be an element of projection into the superiority of elves, there is also an element of sadism or vengeance by writers and designers who identify more with other races (like humans) and who gleefully write these "perfect" elves being brought low out of sheer gleefulness.
As a DM I started out like that, but as I developed their culture (homebrew setting) I grew to like them a lot and now elves are probably my fave fantasy race.
Sea elves: that one harry potter weed that makes you swim good Triton: People with scales that look kinda fishy Water Genasi: Fish people. Take a fish, make it a person.
The current design for elves I have in my own universe is that they have anime character features. Big eyes, hair prone to be vibrant in hue and stick upwards, etc. Their physiology is closely attuned to their environment. So wood elves literally turn green and become immune to a lot of diseases and conditions you'd expect to find in forests. Then there are elves like the ones "produced" by the elderbrain hivemind, which has essentially designed their own breed of elves by selectively breeding the ones easier to control. The other elves tend to be absolutely terrified by them.
Just my take. But you're relying too much on the print to give you interesting characters or cultures when really that's the job of the DM and Players.
The BIGGEST problem with elves is that they generally all come from Tolkien knockoffs... BAD Tolkien knockoffs, no less. Now, a DECENT DM will go back to the original sources that Tolkien used--Nordic and Celtic folklore of the Liosalfar, Svartalfar, Sidhe, Tylwyth Teg, Sluagh, and Gruagach. At the very least, go over to Warhammer 40K and look at the Eldar and Dark Eldar, or go read some of Terry Brook's Shanarra novels.
@@Blue_708 Okay, for Celtic mythology, you'll want to start with the Mabinogion, the Tain bo Culney (Cattle Raid of Cooley), and anything about the Tuatha de Danaan, the Daoine Sidhe, Y Tylwyth Teg, the Sluagh, and the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. For Norse mythology, look up the Aesir, Yggdrasil (the World Tree of Norse mythology, which links the Nine Worlds together). You might also want to read Beowulf and the Kalevala--the latter is the Finnish epic poem about their gods and legendary heroes, and it gets kinda wild in places. Have fun! Oh, I just remembered, there's a channel here on UA-cam that you may want to start with: Mythology & Fiction Explained ua-cam.com/users/MythologyFictionExplained They have some pretty good basic videos on different pantheons from around the world.
I spit on these D&D Elves. I personally love playing rage filled barbarian High Elves in honor of the most glorious of all Tolkien Elves (who did nothing wrong because those boat wimps deserved it), Fëanor.
I LOVE the idea of aether elves being like that chick from She-Ra who sees the past, present, and future all at once. She can never tell when a person is actually talking to her or she's seeing a vision of something they're going to say in the future. Her intense clairvoyance makes her functionally senile with constant, overlapping visions.
Also, one thing about Drow, or at least i think so, is that half, or more, of their evilness and edginess comes from one of the plausible inspirations for this race: Melniboneans. Melniboneans are a sort of Sidhe-like race in the Elric of Melnibone saga by Moorcock, people from a decadent empire, full of vices, violent and depravated rituals, and they make pacts with Demon Lords, like Arioch. Elric in particular is born as an albino and very weak, so he's not very liked by other Melniboneans. This thing is present in the D&D Drow by Szarkai, literally albino Drow that are despised by other Drow. So to me part of the Drow problem just comes from one of the influential works that founded concepts present in D&D (Alignment comes from there, especially the Law-Chaos axis).
13:39 actually reminds me of what Eberron decided to do with goblinoids. It had the Dhakaani Empire, which was a goblinoid empire that ruled the continent until a war with invading aberrations cursed them with insanity, reducing them to feral or close to it humanoids who can barely understand the civilization they once had. Then humans came and mistook them as squatters in the ruins of another more advanced race. However, a some of the Dhakaani people managed to avoid their fate by escaping underground, where they have waited for the curse above to abate. Some might have even come to the surface to see their ruins plundered by the humans.
And his reasons for hating elves are hilariously moronic, the only thing matching it being like that one elf race from dragonlance. How does this guy have subscribers? I guess because it's obvious that people who play DND now don't know or care about the lore at all and are just going by how this guy is misleading them.
Kind of interested in what you think of Elves are in different settings like in Eberron they literally are always trying to live past glories of ancestors and are rules by a weird immortal court made of people who have been deemed to precious to let die
Eberron in general has better cultural context for all races (once again: in general!). It's also less prone to bioessentialism outside of mechanics. This is just because the Eberron setting is a) newer and therefore more mindful b) not "the baseline" and therefore allowed to not be the cultural zeitgeist's basic idea of each of the races. Those are my thoughts!
Honestly one thing that really ticks me off about elves is just how many there are. Like why are there 7 different sub races? Why do I need to put all of them still my setting? It got to the point I decided to just completely rewrite them in most cases just because I didn’t feel like working with all the stuff they kept tacking on
Generally, in my campaign(s), that is pretty much the case. While an individual player could use whatever "sub-race" they wanted or mechanics to mix and match, by and large they are just one population. In effect, you could have a Moon elf child of a Wood Elf and Sun elf parents. The only place where this would becomes more nuanced is in the Jade Empire of the east modeled loosely after Rokugan in L5R. There, the elves have largely become integrated with the greater multi-ethnic Empire, but maintain their blood lineages because of feudalistic pressures to maintain their Samurai status.
@@davidford3115 that makes sense, I have it written that each varient is a different corruption that they all have gone through. High elves corrupted by mortal desires, then they were corrupted into wood elves by nature itself, then the old ones corrupted them into sea elves, lol the corrupted them into drow and so on..
@@Daragausthedragon Heh, the video creator basically described my Eastern Empire elves with his courtly variation. In my campaign, take the haughty arrogance of the Crane Clan and that describes the most visible elves in the East. Interestingly, the concept of clan honor and Bushido was Dwarven in origin which was adopted by the human population after the Dwarves became the Hida and Kaiu families of the Crab Clan. How is that for turning stereotypes on their head? I do like your suggestion that the variations are a result of the vices which resulted in their changes. Kind of goes to that otherworldly aspect in that their anchor to the world is in part that corruption which has changed them.
I have a feeling this comes from the mostly failed attempt to combine Tolkien elves with the Fae. There are hundreds different kinds of fae, so now we have hundreds different kinds of elves.
You... you don't, who said that you need to out them in your setting if you don't want to? Most of them aren't even in the basic books! You don't have to use it, the same way you don't have to use leonin.
I think I'm missing something, what's the problem with the drow? if I had to compare them to a real life group of people I'd say... medieval France maybe? with the fancy dress and politicking
Because there is a vocal minority of racists that see racism in everything now a days unaware of the irony that they are outting themselves as racists when they do it. *Evil nonhuman fantasy race that enslaves others, worships an evil spider godess, and believes in power above all* Racist "This is clearly meaning black people." Normal person "So what you are saying is that is how you see black people" Racists "How dare you call me racist for attributing horrible characteristics to a specific race based on their skin color." That pretty much sums up how the convo tends to go.
Honestly I find that saying "the drow must be racist because they're darker skinned and do evil things" is a false equivalence akin to saying "the race of tribal ape people is racist because black people used to be compared to apes." Basically, that's a notion being brought into the paradigm from our preconceived notions. They're dark skinned evil elves with a love of spiders, not dark skinned evil elves with a love of fried chicken and water melon. The other "problematic tropes" I don't know if i see as problematic. The evil matriarchy feels very similar to the false equivalence of the race analogy, and the other things like slavery... I mean yeah it's bad, but if it's an evil culture that's what you expect. My big issue with pigeon holing all drow in this camp is that it takes away a level of creative freedoms. I'd rather it be "this is one culture that is prevalent in drow society." Because that gives dms and players more wiggle room for creative interpretations. I just honestly don't see the racial aspects there. "Evil dark elves must be a commentary on dark skinned humans" just seems like the people making those claims subconsciously associate dark skinned humans with evil as opposed to just seeing it as a coincidental thing. There are also green evil races in DND, which human race is that lined up with? Not to mention the general racism of the elves as a whole is definitely seen as a problematic flaw. So racism is bad enough that we are using as a major flaw for a set of races, but at the same time the designers of the game are also partaking in it? I really just don't see it as anything besides reading too much into it. I can find a commonality between any real world group of people and any group of bad guys in fiction, color is a low hanging fruit, but I can twist pretty much anything to be some version of prejudice. Color makes it an easier twist, but still a twist of the objective facts.
the "forgotten ancient elves that are gone and left only few and rare ruins scattered, for not even their story is told anymore" already exists in forgotten... as the Green Elves.
Biblically accurate Elf subrace, "Be not afraid". There was a Cyclops elf that couldn't open his eye without killing every thing in eye shot. I really like the idea of the Elves being mostly fae. They are walking capricious morality tales. They shouldn't be playable because player agency will probably not play the right.
the way I do the elves is they were moved out of the feywilds to protect it from Lloth. they aren't perfect. they're flawed as fuck. but they keep Lloth out so not that bad. they're xenophobic because humans evolved and do what humans do thus making elves hate them.
@@kylekid10 in my world, they enslaved the elves. they found ways to capture them and bind them. the elves fought back, won their freedom at the cost of splitting up into sub races.
What you suggest about elves is actually canon in the FR. You can read the "elminster in Myth Drannor" to see the elves are actually decadent society obsessed with the past and lineages and so on and so on. They are not perfect. Because they are not good with adaptation to changes, they learn slowly. And it's just a top of the iceberg. And yes, their great kingdoms have fallen.
11:52 If this is how "D&D is trying to move away from racial stereotypes" (something it already did with 3.X by the way), than I can't wait for 6E where I get to play 15 different flavors of human all with the same stats and a background related to Asmodeus. But wizards still shitstorming everything and rangers still sucking because apparently it's racial ability scores and movement speed that make people feel bad about their characters, not wildly unbalanced classes or getting disadvantage on heavy weapons.
@@Yarkoonian Because WotC has a boner for Asmodeus that started in 4E but got tremendously worse in 5E. He is literally WotC's lore explanation for everything.
What are you even talking about? You clearly missed what actual problem is, it has nothing to do with racial ability scores. Nice try though. Look at the fucking bingo card.
@@rickwrites2612 Wow, a UA-camr puts out a "bingo card" and you think it's word of God, how cool. So what was the bingo card about? "Evil dark-skinned culture", even though drows' skin represents darkness and has no connection with Afro-American ethnicity? "Mathriarcal society to represent evilness", which doesn't mean fking nothing because it's not that matriarchy is used to portray evil, it's just evil non-patriarchy for the sake of an unusual and interesting element? Yeah, very good points there I see. (Also, race-untied ability scores are _totally_ a "look how progressive we are" move from WotC, so I'm calling it out)
Mechanically I don't think either subrace works. Like the eather elf can misty step as a reaction to what exactly? Taking damage? Being targeted by a spell and or attack roll? Forced to make a saving throw? And the courtly elf's features feel like they represent a specific background rather than race, plus, they're weak. I agree with your general take on elves though.
It’s kind of funny how elves are considered one of the good races when their main flaw is there miss trust I’ve practically every other race and it’s a consistent thing with most elves 🧝♀️ excluding mainly Moon elves and drow when they stray away from the influence of hey certain spider bi-(baroness of the drow race).🕸️
Considering the type of world they live in you can't really blame them about being untrusting of strangers. D&D cool to play, scary as heck to actually live.
And elf walks into a bar.
There is now a Bar Elf subrace.
That’s just the Irish
@@azrelldrekmorr9344 to be irish the elf needs to enter a pub
I legit laughed out loud lol
Im sure that is called a prostitute
That's how it feels from what I've read. It's so annoying that the race so often linked to "Old bastards slow to accept changes." are also "Super mutable and can literally spawn a new subrace because some elves moved into a new enviroment"
The time I played an elf his suggestion to solving most problem was "let's just wait a few centuries and the problem will go away on its own"
The humans in the party consistently hated his suggestions
This actually is really funny
This reminds of of an anime I watched called “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End”, which about an elven mage. The character is shown to have a poor sense of time because her perception of the passage of time is quicker than a human’s. This anime gave me a character idea for an elf that often lags the party due to her perception of time.
If that was your elfs response to every problem, then you don't know how to role play an elf.
@josephsage3524 Or he knows how to play a realistic long lived race 😂
@@underthedice1231 A realistic long-lived race would care about sustainability, as they would live with the consequences of their inaction in the future, unlike shorter-lived races.
Someone in LARP once said "No one ever really plays an elf, they play humans with pointy ears."
Well, elf and allmost all races are like that lol
That is not true if you can do a posh british accent!
@@Javetts because its a rol play game, and its kind of hard to rol play a completly diferent and alien species for a human for most people
because in the lore the races are unique and diferent and you can rol play them like that
I used to play a LARP elf as someone several thousand years old surrounded by humans who only seem to be alive for 5 minutes. It was difficult. I had to act like nothing mattered, which is never fun in role-playing ofc. I became a pirate and then it worked a lot better.
Also I have a slightly posh British accent.
So...Hylians from Legend of Zelda, basically?
The Elves, so stuck in their superiority complex, collectively viewed Drow as a corruption of their form. They drove them to the underdark, in a region where Lolth reigned, slowly manipulating their minds until they became what the other Elves thought of them.
Ilythiiri bargained with dragons in the dragon ages thus founded the first elven kingdoms outside Faerie, became decadent dominators of lesser nations and races, got bored and trucked with Ghaunadaur and unnecessarily bad mojo, then went all in with Lolth after their elven cousins struck back, which also resulted in them mixing their blood with the balor Wendonai for a demonic boost. After messing with the politics of and directly attacking their cousins' nations over a long period of the elven heydays, their corruption was open enough that the Seldarine responded (or were magically tapped in a huge ritual), and Corey cursed them all as traitors (dhaerow) that visibly marked them with their skin, hair, and eye color and drove them underground with their new sensitivity to light, where they festered into an intentional breeding campaign of functionalish sociopathy, occasionally interrupted by mixing with their cousins, which tended to show in normal elven eye colors (at least was hinted at from 2e, if it were never stated). This implies the odd ones out were favoring their other ancestory, though some other elves eventually managed to uncurse those without demon blood back into Ilythiiri removing the color swap and innate Lolth magic.
The concept clearly originated in the Norse svartalfar, but the devs wanted a shared origin and a detailed reason for the split, so we got two bad-mad gods, imperialistic decadence, and demon blood. The Norse writings had dark and black elves that might've been the same race, and even the Norse dwarves were probably the same race. The Norse dwarves originated from "maggots" in the earth so were a success case of ascension, and the differences with the explicit dark or black elves vs the explicit dwarves might've been mostly or purely cultural in Norse mythology.
@@Endopticbest response I’ve seen
I played an high elf character that was disowned at a young age, so she was raised by farmers so she was like a crazy country elf. That was a fun character.
I'm going to have a disowned wood elf in my next druid campaign.
I had a crazy archdruid high elf as a mentor, probably high on another level too
I play a drow rogue, escaped the underdark and joined the rogues for more power, and escaped when law chased her, she was chaotic evil, had a mocking and fun personality, she's fun to play
@@sinedddmk8996higher than a kite, eh?
Could not help but think she had a cowboy hat and went yeehaw every time she approves.
The biggest problem with elves in dnd is that they want to be tolkein elves without the setup that made tolkein's elves work.
yeah, that and they lumped in some weird lore of their own, like the trance thing (which i just straight up removed). If you are using elves, make them truly like Tolkien elves, or make them almost Lovecraftian, none of this weird half way nonsense.
Thats not realy problem. Tolkien elves are a lot different to DnD / Generic Fantasy ones. Only problematic thing about (not only) elves in DnD is alligement. I play RP for years, but from my 12 years i had never used alligement system, because everyone could be a jerk, everywhere could be intriques and bad guys, and more importantly what is seeming a lawfull good for one could be seen as fanatic idiotic bloodshed for other ones. I think that offten arogant - overlord and isolated - xenophobic / racist race is interesting as part in game to deal with.
100%. Tolkien's elves, at least in LotR, have this sort of cautious perfection, but the thing is, they didn't start that way. After thousands of years of war, incest, kinslaying, betrayal, etc., etc. they lost almost all their empires and kingdoms. That's why they're isolationist, why they are so wise. Their wisdom isn't something they just have, it's been earned through a history of loss and tragedy.
@@Calder90 That incest part is not mean to be by Tolkien himself, he had only some mess in work because he frequently changed names, houses and so. But he was in sexual part of his work realy conservative and influenced by christian values, he even got that far than he work up that elves can not be raped because their spirit just leave body rather than be harmed that way. There mean to be no blood relation between original tribes/houses of elves, but it goes more and more confusing because he changed original 4/5/8 tribes into kins at base if they go or not to Valinor, and even tweaked that part multiple times.
@@JakubNaceradsky Yet Christianity didn't stop incest in real life. Saying that he's sexually conservative in his work, doesn't change the fact that he's a student of history. Now it being mistakes, I could totally see yes, that is a thing that most writers have happen in their works, but likening it to rape isn't really accurate, especially when we're talking real world monarchies.
"Elves are perfect and idealized and can do no wrong etc."
*The Silmarillion has entered the chat*
The Thalmor Entered the Chat
Every great story starts with a Kinslaying
How about Arcanum?
Fair & pretty, but also luddites in a world undergoing a technological revolution. Also, something else: *they evolved AFTER humans & dwarves.*
Abject nonsense. Feanor may have made the Silmarils, but he and his sons were no one's idea of gems. Even Galadriel was an opportunist following along in the second rank of the rebellion of the Noldor, looking for her chance to rule lands of her own. And then there were Eol and Maeglin, plus the elf who insulted Turin and threw his comb at him (Unfinished Tales). Tolkien's elves were Least angels, with the Maiar being Lesser angels and the Valar being Greater angels, but they were never perfect.
The Elves certainly saw themselves that way once Man awoke (using Tolkien's terms, don't blame me for them), and the tales certainly TRY to paint them in that light. But there's a running theme that the elves are wrong. It's subtle, but if you read enough of Tolkien's writings it becomes clear that Elves were NOT superior to humans, but were in fact inferior to them. They were there to pave the way for humanity, acting as a bridge between the Valar making the world and humanity inheriting it. Almost every elf we see in Tolkien's work shows deep flaws. Our first introduction to them is as a fundamentally monstrous foe, more Germanic elf than High Elf. Seriously, in The Hobbit Elves are treated as prettier than goblins (orcs) but not fundamentally better--they were greedy, suspicious, vain, and violent to the point of war-mongering. In LOTR we hear story after story of Elves screwing up and making serious mistakes. They're more athletic and dexterous than humans, and can be wiser due to their longer lifespan, but many are either silly, complacent (see the Elves the hobbits meet in the Shire), or vain to the point of insanity (blindfolding the Fellowship because one is a dwarf). In the Silmarillion Elves are even worse, engaging in profoundly stupid acts of violence that get a bunch of them banned from Paradise.
Elven superiority is propaganda. The facts (well, literary examples anyway) show a very different story.
So, here's the thing: if you dig past the surface, D&D elves are very, very weird.
They don't sleep- they trance, which helps them to organize the chaos of their minds. Their fey bloodline grants even the least magically talented elves access to minor spells. They physically develop at the same rate as humans, but aren't considered adults until they're at least a century old... *because they can remember their past lives until then.* This includes their time spent in the elvish afterlife, because elves explicitly reincarnate, rather than going on to a permanent afterlife (usually).
As for the ancient civilizations, those exist in the past of the elves. They once built great floating cities using powerful magic that is no longer available to modern elves, and filled those cities with potent artifacts that modern wizards would kill to get a scrap of. But that great elvish civilization fell, their magics forever lost, and everything the elves are have been just a pale imitation since.
Elf start remembering their past live after a century.
I wonder if young elves are afraid of getting overwhelmed by those memories and not being themselves anymore.
@@schwarzerritter5724 I think according to lore the reason they're so mopey and stoic is Because their God sort of barred them from the afterlife, and during that first century they can remember EVERY life they've ever lived since the very beginning. because their patron diety was a shape-shifter and so were they. But they were tricked to take a permanent form that forced itself on their god. And threw the God into an outrage. He cursed the elves to only reincarnate so that they may never be with him. This doesn't apply to the drow I believe who... aren't really elves I think?
@@schwarzerritter5724
You misread, its the other way around
Wow, I did not know this past life bit of the lore. In my canon I made so that they are sensory so supersensitive to everything and regulate their emotions so poorly, that in their younger years they actually have to lead a somewhat isolated lifestyle to develop properly. I like to think that we only see elves as these majestic perfect creatures because we always meet elves that are adults and would have a very different perception if we came across young elves.
@@UmbraKrameri on that note, I'm playing a young elf (only 107) in my DnD campaign. They act like a teenager, just one that can fight, and fight well. They are also super not composed every time they open their mouth, and they curse to cast, bc why not. No poise, charisma is dump stat. They are quite similar to me in a lot of ways, including growing up too quickly, tho for different reasons. I accidentally did that lol, I didn't mean to make my chaos gremlin grow up too quickly, it just kinda slipped in. Also they had to be lvl 11 somehow to join mid campaign (the campaign is almost over, it was my first chance to play DnD ever and I couldn't pass that up)
Broke: Drow are just evil elves
Woke: Drow are the Australians of D&D
Of course Drow can't be evil elves
Elves are evil elves
@tf2 medic Especially the Ayleids from TES
@@mp5enthusiast honestly had to search that I have no context on them but I'll trust you
@@the_apotecary_from_tf2 It's quite the rabbit hole, so I wouldn't blame you for not delving into it. But they're straight up evil.
@@the_apotecary_from_tf2 Exactly! Praise Lolth!
Elves have an absurd amount of complexity that was abandonded for simplicity in 5e. They have the ability to sense nearby elves, their lifestyles revolved around their longing to return to Arvandor, their motivation to adventure around trying to fill their trances eith good memories because they lost the ability to remember Arvandor through them, and high magic was insane.
I liked Terry Pratchett's version of elves, he had them as being wholly alien & essentially psionic. The Psionic abilities were based on being able to manipulate the electrical brain patterns which made them SEEM more glamorous essentially having a ranged Charm effect that could be negated by magnetic fields, thus the traditional aversion to Iron & other ferrous metals. They were completely native to the other realm so more like long eared aberrations with a strong sadistic streak the plot of the story they were in, Lords & Ladies, was closer to an alien invasion than a "perfect fantasy" race. They had the grace, & sympathy of cats, the sympathy that cats have towards mice.
TP also includes lines about what are essentially "half-elves" which are lineages of people who, in the past, have elf ancestry. They tend towards being waifish, pointy eared weirdos who giggle a lot but beyond that are otherwise indistinguishable from humans, and are explicitely not treated the same as real "elves" which are hated, feared and seen as hostile alien invaders by anybody with any sense.
By TP's logic you could have your "playable elves" (basically just humans with physically elf-like qualities) and you've got your "weird NPC elves" in the form of magnetically psionic sadists from a parasite dimension who've long ago dropped their moral compass off a cliff. This is essentially how I run them in my games, so players can still be an elf if they want and they get boosts from it and they're called elves, but they're not "the fair folk" who are distinctly alien with blue and orange morality spectrum and usually not friendly.
This more inline with Elves from Norse Mythology and the Fair folk from Irish myth.
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantments.
Elves are terrific. They inspire terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
-Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies
He had elardar and elves. The elardar are the real elves and the tree huggers are their changed decendents. It's essentially the way DnD chose to go as well.
Well that's cause Pratchett's elves are based on real-world mythology/folklore. Otherworldly, inhumane (litterally and figuratively), semi-divine beings who will make you dance till you drop dead just for funsies.
No match for Granny and the beez tho
People tend to use tropes whenever they think of elves, but the old old school D&D elves were actually pretty cool. It's just that almost no one remembers their original stuff because it hasn't survived new editions.
One thing I always found very interesting about elves is the fact they can't truly die. Whenever an elf dies, they are just reincarnated as a recently conceived elf baby. This is why, despite their being portrayed as mostly superior to humans, they tend to live in only small confined areas rather than the vast sprawling empires humans have, because there are only a finite number of elves that can exist at any given time.
Also, have you ever wondered why elves "Trance" rather than sleep? This is another thing that has been lost over the editions and revisions. The reason for the trance is partly to temporarily experience the serenity and peace of the elven heaven they came from originally and can no longer get back to. It also allows them to tap into memories from their past lives. They spend their youth developing as a new individual, then around middle age and onward they begin to remember who they used to be and transition into this new person with immense knowledge and skills from many generations and lifetimes of experiences. ALL of them are basically Aang the Avatar. The elven heaven, ruled by the elven pantheon, can't be accessed by them or at least not easily. It's been so long since i've had to think about this stuff even i'm fuzzy on the details, but it is POSSIBLE for them to go back to heaven, but it's difficult I believe. Regardless, D&D elves are more interesting than people give them credit for. The problem is people just keep kind of pushing Tolkien tropes onto them and forgetting their actual origins and abilities and culture.
I think one reason why people tend to gloss over their lore is because lore-wise, elves are incredibly powerful. I mean, an elven wizard has a minimum of 10 times the amount of time a human does to learn and master magic, how could a human wizard ever hope to compete with the knowledge and experience of an elf? Couple that with their past life experiences, you could bump into an elf with potentially multiple thousands of years of experience and power growth. But then of course, when it comes to game mechanics, because it is a game, the rules are setup in a way to try to balance everyone on an even playing field, so actual PC elves end up essentially being humans with slight changes to modifiers. I think thats part of the reason why people don't tend to think of them as being these supremely powerful, immortal entities, because the game's rules makes them feel equal to everyone else and kind of kills that illusion and makes them look smug and arrogant for even believing it despite it being absolutely true in the lore. Elves even have whats called Elven High Magic that other races can't even learn because they don't live long enough because it is so complicated, but allows them to do tremendously powerful things far beyond the scope of ordinary spells.
Elves are cool actually. They just seem like jokes because thats how most players and DMs treat them.
This is really cool!
Do you have a link or name of the source so I can read more about it?
I would love to do something more with elves in the campaign in prepping but don't really know what so this would be an amazing inspiration :)
@@ccouch713 There isn't one "source", this is just elven lore from older editions and a lot of stuff from those eras was more sprawled out from many sources. If you want to learn it all, you'd have to dig around in google for it, or if you wanted a more easily digestible quick version you should look up folks who make youtube videos talking about lore or races and stuff like that, they probably have entries relating to elven lore and elven high magic and things of that nature.
I always found them interesting though. Elven High Magic is very cool all by itself.
Most of this is in 5e, in Mordenkainen's tome of foes
The old Dragon magazines would be another place to find lore
@@ccouch713 mrRhexx has 3 videos on elves, about 20 minutes each and named some varation of "what they don't tell you about elves", when he does an expiation videos he tells it like a coherent story from the original d&d lore to 5e, because it's all technically connected in weird ways, he actually was the basis for me building my current character, a friend of mine wanted a long term campaign "completely driven by the players" he envisioned us going on small quests and eventually building our own kingdoms, I asked what was inbounds, he laughed and said "anything that is canon" so now I'm a wizard hell bent on becoming a god that will restore the shadow weave from 3.5e
Correction: the "elfiest of the elves" are actually the eladrin.
Also, the eladrin give us insight as to why there are so many subraces. Elves started as fey shapeshifters in the feywild, they left the feywild and due to this shapeshifting were highly adaptable to their surroundings. Lore happened, Corellon banned them from the feywild, they got cut off from this shapeshifting, yadda yadda. Eladrin are from a lineage of elves who got back under Corellon's good graces, hence the season shifting. And then of course, I know there's more lore to it, but the shadar kai are the least elfy of the elves due to their mixing with the shadowfell, which is the direct antithesis of the feywild.
The eladrin are the sun elves. 5e just made them a little more distinct.
@@justinwhite2725 idk if this is a change for 5e, but the sun elves are high elves.
Source: this excerpt from the lore paragraph about high elves in the PHB
“One type (which includes the gray elves and valley elves of Greyhawk, the Silvanesti of Dragonlance, and the sun elves of the Forgotten Realms) is haughty and reclusive, . . .”
I think the drow were intended not as a reflection of real life cultures (Since, aside from that one image, they really don't map to any real life societies), but were instead meant to be a "photo-negative" of the bright shining elves. Which is why unlike real-life dark-skinned people who have equally dark hair, Drow hair is bleached white to contrast the warmer red, gold, brown and black of an elf.
While it's true that we all have cultural biases, there are actually quite a few. Since even Ancient Rome, the colour black has been associated with evil, sadness horror ect. (The black cape, the dark cave, the castle at night), and that is a seperate association towards real life dark skinned people (Not that people haven't used the former to justify the cruelty to the latter, but the association was never MADE with dark-skinned people in mind)
I believe Drow being "dark" was connected more to the association with dark colours in fantasy, (the dark forest at night) than real life dark skinned cultures. This is why so much of Drow art depicts them with skin tone that is fundamentally impossible for a human (Dark Grey and Dark Purple), to have. Funnily enough, the earliest Drow art shows them as WHITE.
Ironically, it's been more of the MODERN Drow art which was made after Drow were depicted as living in an evil culture rather than inherantly evil that shows them with more realistic skin tones.
I know the video says the coding is "Very Obvious", but again, take that one image aside, and the coding, if intended, becomes very confused. Their society maps more to a parody of western colonialism or fantasy Nazis (Even in the 70's, Nazi's made for the best default baddies). Their attire is generic Edgelord baddie attire with too many pointy bits and BDSM gear (And even then, looks more westen european in most images). Even the bingo card is a collection of generic "evil" tropes instead of ones that stereotype a real life culture. If the items on the card were say "Lives in mud huts, has thick lips, dresses in leaf skirts", THEN you could probably see some "Obvious coding".
The closest to problematic coding I think could be the "Matriarchal society is evil" part. To me that DOES read as a "How do we make them seem backwards and alien. Wait, what if the WOMEN ruled instead of the men?" Which is a mindset that aged poorly.
You could argue that the "Caste System" is problematic since that DOES map to real life India, except... That was a false positive. The Drow don't actually have a caste system, they live in a feudal society which again, we traditionally associate with medieval europe.
Whoever made THAT particular image in the video though...
The spider connection explained the matriarchy. Female spiders are bigger. So are female drow.
It’s a reversal of the western norm. It is ONLY because edgy bois and grrlz have been given permission to identify with and obsess over evil stereotypes since the mid 90s that this was ever a problem.
Thank you for not being so sensative like some people these days, that comment he made about the drow rwminds me too much of "orcs are fantasy black people".
If you look at a drow or orc and see bad because black skin, evil, etc. then that's your, not my fault.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 had some interesting Elves, because they were effectively Ancestor Worshipping Cannibals with REALLY freaky hyper-defined abs who could view the memories of the dead by consuming their flesh, and when they died would grow into trees. Which is pretty rad.
Divinity Elves are so interesting to play. You get to learn about people and the world by eating people’s corpses. I generally like how the races play in that game because every one brings unique gameplay.
I really liked their take on dwarves also, living on tops of mountains instead of under them.
Cool. If I build a house out of dead Elves is it magic?
@@helloidharbl6753yes actually. There’s a sentient ship made from the wood of an elven tree
I disagree about elves "being perfect" in fantasy. The elves see themselves as perfect but that is also their downfall. They are vain and selfish. They think they are smarter and they are but that is because they live longer and can learn more through that
Yeah, but that isn't really in the lore put forth by WOTC, like, its implied, but at the end of the day, they still manage to contradict themselves by just...making them really good at everything all the time. My primary suggestion is to just run another system, or make your own setting like I did and you will begin to see a difference Immediately.
exactly in the Dragonlance the Qualinesti elves call themself good but after the Solace refugee are freed they just send them on their way saying that they the elves have other problem than helping the humans goodly elves my ass.
Are they smarter though? For their longer lifespans they really aren't much more advanced in any aspect than other peer civilizations. A 20 yr old human is as capable of being a level one adventurer as a 120 yr old elf so they really aren't any better on an individual level. They aren't typically any more skilled or powerful in practice to humans, just in flavor text.
*vain
@@BlackLotus30 Don't forget that the Silvanesti in Dragonlance take the Qualinesti stereotypes and ratchet it up to eleven. While the golden haired Qualinesti are at least willing to interact and trade with the outside world, the Raven hair Silvanesti are very much isolationist to the point of violence on par with the fourth world tribes in the Amazon or on North Sentinel Island.
aren't dwarf just as sometimes even more xenophobic? i think it is a long lived race thing to be distrustful and hard to change
Of course, very obvious when we think of warhammer fantasy dwarves. They live long and have been betrayed by other races over and over and over again. So why would they trust anyone?
On the other hand, for D&D elves, moon elves are actually not xenophobic and wood elves have usually very good reasons to be. These guys live in harmony with their forests and animals and humans keep doing fur coats, deforestation and climate change everywhere they go.
Mostly they are bros with humans.
I like Lawful Evil Dwarves. They view other races as inferior, but will put on a friendly face for business reasons.
But they're blue-collar manly-coded so they get a pass. And yet nobody talks about the problematic politics _there._
@@Wicked_Witch_of_the_Wired You’re talking about the Duergar
There's a reason why I love the Eberron elves. They have been on the planet so long they have no idea where they originated from before the age of giants. With how the giants treated them no wonder they don't trust ANYONE. If you live for 200 + years as slaves you're not only going to get jaded, you are going to hold grudges till the end of time. Also after that long, you have seen and done everything.... what else is there to do?
Look, elves dressed like Mongals roaming the desert and getting into fights with the halflings that raise dinosaurs is kinda awesome... can't tell me otherwise.
Aerenal elves are cooler than Tairnadal elves tho
(I just like seeing necromancy that isn't treated as inherently evil, it's cool, okay?)
@@Metal_Maoist The Aerenal pretty much practice a Día de Muertos style of necromancy, and I love it.
Drow in my games are the result of a cultural diaspora. After an uprising against Corelon, he doomed all of them to be separated from the Elder Weave, a sort of natural network of life before and after. There are still those who are radicalized and participate in Lolth worship, some seek to rebuild those connections by taking the Rites of Eilistrae that turn them into Lunar Elves (NOT high elves), but many are content with their more mortal lives and live in normal towns and cities.
TLDR: D&D should not make players have to sunder a backstory or bend ear to ankles to let a character of any race be capable of good.
Personally I prefer the concept of evil entities luring heretical elves away from the elvish spiritual system, and then the heretics HAD to be exiled to stop them from corrupting the vulnerable youth. I think one of the few things that's canon is that elvish souls are a finite quantity, so any entity luring away or corrupting elvish souls diminishes their whole self contained reincarnation system.
"reject twinkery, embrace short kingness"
you sir have just earned yourself a subscriber.
Honestly I kind of like the idea of elves being changed by their environment, basically being humanoid eevies. When an elf is born they're just like. An Elf. But once they hit puberty and every few hundred years after they can go through metamorphosis depending on their environment or social group; elves in cities turn into high elves, elves in the ocean turn into sea elves, elves that remain in the feywild or shadowfel become eladrin and shadar-kai, etc.
You also could look at the Elder Scrolls, where the ancient elves, known as the Ayleids, Chimer, and Dwemer, who all are gone for a variety of reasons (and not even the same one for each, making them even more diverse). This adds new motivations to the modern elf types as well. The high elves, for example, are trying to regain the power of the Ayleids, which they believe was stolen.
Just a thought.
They and the races of men are also two sides of the same coin, borne from the same origins but from ancestors walking different paths.
(Also: small point, but the high elves are trying to regain the glory of the Aldmer, the proto-elf ancestor race. Ayleids came later.)
Elder scrolls elves are my favourite interpretetions, the fact that Bosmer, being nature-loving people eat just meat makes so much sense 🤣
@@Vale-fd4pk not just any old meat either lmao
@@Vale-fd4pk Wild Hunt intensifies. I really wish you got some kind of bonus for being a Bosmer with lycanthropy.
That's not what the Altmer are trying to do at all lol, they're trying to unmake mundus so they can return to being immortal.
Personally I think pathfinder is on the right track with the visual design of elves.
They have huge eyes without a sclera (think the grey alien) and long gangly bodies.
In other words dial up that alien look, make them hit that uncanny valley.
Their personality should also have that strangeness to it.
Them being from the feywild, could mean that their emotions are much more exaggerated and they have problems with reading other races.
Pathfinder elves also are quite literally aliens. They come from another planet of Golarion's solar system.
I like to think that elves have eyes similar to cats, the vertical slit of a pupil. It matches their other catlike qualities, thinking they're better than you and expecting you to service their every need. Disclaimer, I am a cat person lol, love my Siamese tabby
But seriously, cats and elves have so much in common, it's kinda crazy
that sounds a lot like the Eldren in Michael Moorcocks Eternal Champion novels
Welcome, fellow Pathfinder fan. : )
I play a shadar kai, way of the shadow monk. Edgiest concept for a character, but she's actually just a little social awkward cinnamon bun who ran away from her evil family. She has so much social anxiety, I absolutely killed her charisma score to go along with the theme
Drow have been. And will be the best
Chewbacca is an elf. He's from a culture closer to nature, he wields a (cross)bow even when everyone else is more advanced, he's incredibly long-lived and he travels with a member of one of the shorter-lived because of a moral code he has chosen to uphold. Ok, so Wookies might not translate perfectly, but it's a way for a player to make an elf work in your campaign!
Another fun option is the humans speedrunning life route. Humans due out much quicker compared to the normal length humanoids last, so they squeeze out all the experience life can give and actively encourage others to do the same (hence why non humans advance as fast in game)
If you shave Chewbacca you will get Bald Thranduil.
@@phonetheory7056
jokes on you kobolds are speedrunning life even more than humans after all there are some adventurers kobolds who are only five days old.
@@chongwillson972 Kobolds are to humans like how humans are to elves.
On the drow "problematic bingo", most of these can be blamed on their "Black widow" aesthetics
-Matriarchal? Because spiders!
-Black skin and white hair? Because spiders!
-Poisoners who prefer the dark? Because spiders!
Anyone associating fantasy races with real people is Racist. I love your take on the matter. It allows the Drow to shine as the evil baddies you just want to play against.
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ No, no Tolkien didn't. Tolkien wrote the orcs, goblins, and urak-hai based on the Germans and Austrio-Hungarians. Similarly, the Muklaks of LotR were based on the Ottoman Empire. Tolkien was writing LotR based on his experiences in WWI and a Anglo-Christian belief system.
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ That doesn't change that he was directing that at the Germans and Austrio-Hungarians. Go look at some political cartoons in WWI Allied print at the time and notice how those images were similar to the description above and were directly pointed at the Central Europeans of the Axis powers (Germany and Austio-Hungary).
@@Chocopacotaco1413 That was was literally him describing the design of his orcs to a guy...
Yea but you gotta admit that old drow artwork he showed was DEF POC coded
“Y’know, I wonder why D&D elves are so isolationist and distrusting?”
>Related to and/or descendants of fey
“…Yeah, that’s probably why.”
A lot of the monster manual also explicitly thinks they taste good. I'd be stand-offish too after several millenia of that.
@@RedCascadian Ooooff. Yeah, survival mechanics can get NASTY.
To the point! D&D is weirdly true to the source material for the fey and the fairy courts-they’re not the bad guys per se, fey operate on a logic that is as different to non-fey as neckties are different to pizza.
I love the idea of modern elves being different to ancient elves and I'm definitely going to incorporate that into my world building. As always love your work and hope you're doing alright.
I think modern elves inevitably fall into "how are you fellow kids" pit. Like, in our world from the begining of industrial revolution to today takes around 200 years, and it is still a very young elf.
Also, I find conflicting that elves are supposed to be both "one with nature and magic" and very frikin rich, have entire castles and perfect perm and makeup. I think it would be interesting that "lineage" elves and "nature" elves are different cultures of the same race. But thats just two cents
my brother in Christ, you left out the most interesting parts of elves for instance the visions formed from the elvish trance, reincarnation, and timeless perception of the world around them. also, as long as we are talking about fantasy races being racist dwarves are literally against race mixing :p
Yeah but they make weapons good, the dwarves I mean.
D&D takes place in a "pre-enlightened" time though. Going back to the Tolkien roots, elves are "spirits of the world" who do not go to the afterlife. Its D&D that made them otherworldly.
@@the11382 this is unrelated to my comment
there's some old official lore that says dwarves are not really against race mixing but they're too stubborn and only do things is grandpa's grandpa already did and gave the okay for it. also race mixing does nothing to a dwarf's progeny, if a dwarf gets another race's pregnant or gets pregnant by another race there's a 90% it's just gonna be a common dwarf, slightly taller if it was not the child of a halfling or a gnome
@@emanuelcamuglia5984 I'm sure that's been retconned by now though. There is cannonically a whole subrace of half dwarf half human out there and it's the only recorded instance of it happening.
Unpopular opinion: I like evil dark elves. To me, the Tolkien roots of D&D are some kind of anchor. Tolkien interprets elves as "spirits of the world". The way I see it, elves bring the world into themselves. Though, I argue that dark elves come from Norse myth originally. And Lotr elves are hardly perfect though.
In my setting, the Drow are the semi-reason(yes and no) elves split in the first place. The elves were changed from human by the good gods for their heroism in a war long ago. After the war, the lifestyle of elves changed drastically. So instead of living the lifestyle of a soldier folk, they became more indulgent and decadent(not how they see it). One group of elves became twisted into Drow when they went for a group of people who went missing underground(not entirely their fault, but people don't know this). Then a group of elves(wood elves) started accusing the rest of Decadence and retreated into the most dangerous woods on the continent. The High elves see themselves as cultured and civilized, while the wood elves see themselves as trying to reconnect with their roots by living in dangerous places.
To be fair, one could argue that the Drow of DnD/The Forgotten are more influenced by the imperialistic, sadistic, chaos-god worshipping Melniboneans of Michael Moorcock's "Elric of Melniboné than any of Tolkein's elves.
Are your elves based on Warhammer 40k Eldar? your short description seems to similar to what is happening there. I'm not trying to accuse you of plagiarism or anything, and I'm all for stealing things that you think are cool and putting them into D&D, I'm just curious if this is where you got them from.
@@nox9856 Not consciously. The high elf smugness always gave me vibes of pridefulness. Pride comes before a fall and all that.
Actually popular opinion. Just forbidden and you can never admit it.
It's like being a D&D players in the 80s all over again. lol
Chastised for not conforming to societal standards even when all you're doing is rolling some dice and making up fictions. sigh...
Saying that liking Drow makes you a racist is just as moronic as saying playing D&D makes you a devil worshipper. stupid af.
It's not an unpopular opinion, Drow are one of the most popular player races in the forgotten realms, nobody actually believes they're innately evil, and they haven't been portrayed that way in the books since literally the early 1990s. Even when they were "innately evil except for that one", *everyone* wanted to play as Drizzt. The people who tear their garments and throw themselves out windows about the Drow are *STILL* complaining that they're black skinned, when they aren't, they're grey or purple skinned now and have been for a while - showing that they *never actually cared*, they just wanted to make themselves feel better about racism by finding a fiction they don't even know and shitting on it
I've long wanted to use the cold iron allergy/vulnerability for elves/fey from folklore but have never found a good way of implementing it.
There is an old-school game that does exactly that -- Dungeon Crawl Classics. I like what they did with their race-as-classes to begin with, let alone how they handled Wizard and Cleric magical sources, but they did force an iron allergy to elves. In DCC's game lore, this is why elves did so much with mithril. It was better than steel, and didn't require them coming in contact with the iron they dread.
Iron weapons do bonus damage against elves 😜
i do an expanded crit range or extra die of damage for stuff like that
May I suggest you make it pig iron. As it is a brittle material, not exactly great for actually building anything, including weapons out of. Have them break after, x number of battles. That way they can't just constantly keep an iron version of their weapon around, should Fey be fought somewhere along the way.
I don't have the artistic chops to create the stunning visuals that you do but the way that you propose and explain changes to races and classes in this game unblocked my art/writing block with all the grace of a three legged three headed dog. You're absolutely amazing and make me laugh with the ending reminders :'D
The problem I had with Drow elves was that if they lived such a long time underground in the dark, their skin colour would have been more likely pale white, rather than black. You can always make the excuse with "Magic", but if there were any "dark-skinned" elves, I guess, they would be Desert Elves or Jungle Elves.
wow you managed to make it actually racist
That only applies if they weren't sentient and already magically advanced when they entered the underdark. They are not playing by regular natural selection rules, no more than 19th-21st century humans are. Also, they don't live in the dark, though they can because they have darkvision. They have artificial lighting, both normal flames and magical (they can literally cast dancing lights from the get go), which means even if they're only a dim effect with their darkvision they can see as if it were bright light.
Maybe their black to adapt to blending in the dark
@@imadkahya6955 The sun turns your skin darker.
@@imadkahya6955wtf are you talking about
My head-cannon to explain the enormous variety of Elven sub-species is that while Elves are personally **really** bad at adapting to change, as a species they are generationally hyper-adaptive, so elves who move to a different environment will have descendants who are physically/mystically adapted to that environment in a couple of generations, creating a new Elven sub-species. (Which could be practically indistinguishable from an existing one.)
This is basically canon in Pathfinder. There's even an ancestry feat for elves in 2e that lets you change your heritage if you stay in the relevant biome for a while!
There's a book series called the Dwarves, from a German author whose name escapes me. There, the lore is that the superiority complex elves have is mostly based off the lifespan discrepancy. Elves in that world see humans etc as we see dogs, cats etc, which is an explanation I kinda like.
Also, on the bingo chart is an entry of "reproduces quickly" which has some biological logic behind it. Short-lived species (eg mice, frogs, fish) tend to reproduce fast while long-lived species (elephants, whales, etc) have few offspring. Now, why all evil races are short-lived and all good races have long lives is a whole 'nother problem.
Good and evil exist as legitimate natural forces in the D&D universe. As expressed by the positive and negative material planes. So maybe like the dark side in Star Wars,the evil beings connection to literal evil energy. Slowly degrades the body over time causing the evil beings shorter lifespan?
Markus Heitz is the author and the books are a must read!
A problem that will not and should not be tackled
I’ve heard his orcs series is really good too but it hasn’t been translated
Was thinking the same thing. If you can live for 1000s of years (or theoretically infinitely) then all the humies stumbling around and dying by 100 years at most, are like toddlers, if the toddlers also had guns. They're dangerous to you and each other, and there's way too many of them to actually do anything about the problem, so the smartest plan is to remove yourself from the danger and try to avoid them.
I quite like the idea of elves once having this massive empire but overtime there place in the world has been diminished and they can see the courtyard slowly fading out I think that could be really cool and that could explain they’re xenophobia they consider The outsiders responsible for the Shrinking culture and then trying to hold on to the last bit of “true Elf coaching”
Thank you, I was searching for this kind of comment.
In my past tables, I used to write elves as a dying race that are very protective of parts of their cities (due to having elderly and children in that specific areas in the most part of the day, think about "school perimeters") bu usually very open to communicate with other races specially because they recognize they are slowly fading from the existence.
But in games where it's specific in DND settings, I usually just let the players do whatever they want because most of them play elves as typical old dudes (think about the on the wiser side, but easily surprised by technology) in younger bodies, they couldn't care so much about the lore. Like, you really don't remember they are playing an elf.
Although when I play as an elf... I like to take the Drizz't Route for some and add the "inquisitive yet non-imaginative" nature of a race that lives for so long and doesn't really do much besides thinking about themselves and magic. Think about someone who just goes on very specific topics of historical knowledge, but struggles to understand how new tools can improve your working space, new slang and new concepts. So I think that "do was written exactly" is pretty lazy.
Let's say my drow paladin became very popular in the first session I played her, the table was a bit afraid of what it would happen since most players don't exactly like PC elves, let alone drow. Well. They loved her, even though she wasn't exactly a good person. (Maybe it was my accent, one player said that they thought it was cute)
Well, bellow this point is just what happened:
They just loved how she was very excited to talk about mushrooms, was fascinated with the colors of the flowers, the songs of the birds, the things that are so different from the Underdark. Yet she also mentioned the things she found beautiful there, the faerie fire-lit cities, the abundance of glowing gems, the softest silk from spiders.
But mostly importantly, when they (the PCs, not the players) asked why she was adventuring on the surface alone and wasn't afraid of people thinking badly of her, she just said: "The most open minded folks will understand that a place you are born doesn't define your personality, you can change, I'm here to know the world and see if I like it or not. So far, I'm happy here, people actually recognize my strength and rely on me, and I feel I can rely on most of people. And... I have brothers and sisters, I truly love my siblings and seeing they suffer under the things Lolth taught us broke my heart, so I want to one day bring them here, away from the influence of Lolth. One day, the Underdark will be empty, be it by the ones fleeing from that cursed land, or by killing each other. So, I'm here to bring the ones who doesn't wanna live miserably under an evil goddess. Mother? She isn't what I think a mother is, even though my own wasn't a good one too. Besides, I'm not the first drow planning to live in the surface and I won't be the last, I hope. Everyone deserves to be happy." (It wasn't said all at once, of course. I'm just pointing the several dialogues she had regarding her time on the surface.)
They accepted her in the party shortly after and so far they are having fun with her discovering new things that are the norm for them, slowly opening up to the others and not being the snooty brat they thought she would be. She still mentions that "in my hometown things would be very different" once in a while, but doesn't say it's positive or negative, she just rolls with it.
(One of the main concerns was that two party members were half-elves and they were relieved when she just said "oh, that's cool, I thought it was just a legend that people up here married out of love!" when they revealed that instead of going "ohoh, what a shame", since the players said they always encounter snob elf PCs who act like that every time they play was half-elves. The other two were playing a human and a tiefling, they are still surprised that the only """"superiority complex"""" that the drow paladin showed was a joke, the exact "Menzoberranzan is very deep, you wouldn't understand. Two miles is very deep, right?" and proceeded to laugh.)
The Witcher elves are a lot like that in the books
Yes! I've been playing a High Elf whose life's work is trying to weave together the lost culture of her people by visiting ruins and delving into those place's dreams.
I do something similar in my settings as well
basically Melniboneans from the Elric series
I honestly don't get what's "problematic" about Drow.
That they're evil and dark skinned? That's very little to extrapolate from. Besides, their skin is pitch black/grey, not a dark brown which is the stereotype IRL.
I do have a problem with the idea of a race being "inherently evil by nature" but I doubt Drow are the only example of that.
I've been obsessed with Elves since I first read The Lord of the Rings back in the day and I loved this video! I've had numerous characters that have fallen into the Elven Archer trope, and yet I still never seem to get bored with it.
The elves in d&d are a fallen civilization as well as the dwarves. It’s in their backstory to find ancient glorious elven ruins. If these ruins are still occupied by elves they are isolationist because they are afraid of losing what little they have left. They seem more human because many have blended with human societies to have safer and easier living standards. The reverie/trance is really interesting aspect to me. They’re able to relive past lives and memories through it which can make them trapped or living in a dream of a memory. The drow are the perfect elves to make more alien too, they rely on having an alien way of thinking and living or else they just seem like a bunch of illogical psychos.
This is just how I think of them. That said if you don’t like elves that’s understandable. People don’t usually play elves because they read the PH entry on them, they play elves because they want to be an elf.
I find the Drow interesting because they're basically like the culture of ancient Rome but instead of Patriarchal, isolationist slavers they're Matriarchal, isolationist slavers. Plus, being underground and having light-sensitivity, the Drow as a society are a great way to do a Vampire civilization without literal vampires, like a race of Daywalkers.
Yeah I still love the concept too. It's essentially an alien world with plenty of challenges, a xenophobic society, and it's best to just gloss over the unfortunate racial issue.
Based take.
That's an pretty cool flavor for the drow. For my campaign, i went another way though. I described the drow as basically the mongol empire, but with giant spiders instead of horses.
@@travisbishop782 Well now I'm curious- who was their Genghis Khan, Lolth?
@@branhan215124 no, a high priestess of Lolth. She threw a coup and took over as Empress.
My own personal twist on elves in my campaign is that they evolve as they stay in one place, absorbing its natural magical and planar energy. Thus a Shadar-Kai elf could theoretically shift to a moon elf if they left the shadowfell for the feywilds. Their theme is consistent, but it’s not that elves tend to necessarily be racist or haughty, but immortals that tend to be stuck in their ways.
I actually like the drow lore, the good drow Goddess is my favorite goddess in the game
I thought that the Drow were originally based on dark elves from German folklore
They are.
And the Melniboneans from Micheal Moorcock's Elric series
I've always been of the opinion that while yes, fantasy species do have some influence from writers' perceptions of different human cultures, Drows being evil probbly has nothing to do with the perceived, racist notion of "black people = evil" and more so with the classic "shadows = evil". Drows and Dark Elves are more sinister and tend towards evil not because of racist undertones but because humans have always been afraid of what lurks in the dark.
@@DefinitivNichtSascha The problem with the Drow back then is a lot of it overlaps with black stereotypes.
Enslavement of their own kind.
Untrustworthiness
Matriarchy
A lot of this was written about Black people as far back as the 1600s. So yeah its really hard to divorce oneself from the obvious racial undertones of the D&D Drow.
@@kappadarwin9476 ima just straight up say that the drow have almost no stereotype’s in common with African people. Matriarchy was not an African stereotype. And saying something like untrustworthy is also so overwhelmingly a common stereotype for all races twords another that it’s baseless. The drow are not at all based on african people, they are dark skinned beacause darkness(shadows/night) have throughout history been associated with evil.
In my setting, the elven heritage is split between those whose followed the gods into the Feywild and those who remained on the material plane. Material Plane elves are your average joe, living life in the city. Feywild elves live off the land. Residents of the material plane and Feywild are unaware that the other exists
The way I rule it: make humans more special by accomplishing just as much as elves do in a shorter period of time. Kinda silly to see a human wizard live to 65 years old outclassing elves that have lived for 400+ years.
My homebrew has their fey ancestry letting them live a "full life" but letting them stretch it out over hundreds of years. Most of their society is focused on mundane repetitive tasks. Their armies guard their borders but never expand as new experiences age them, leading to isolationist behavior. Elven adventurers usually have short careers that they can spend hundreds of years writing about. Their affinity for magic comes from hundreds of years of self study of theory that a human can surpass with decades of strenuous trial and error experimentation.
I mean technically, that's what happens normally
@@doubleg281 fascinating. Sort of the opposite of gnomes in Pathfinder. They need to have new experiences or else succumb to the "bleaching" a genetic disease that literally saps the color from them and turns them clinically depressed and pessimistic
I usually rule it as elves doing more with it than humans can. For example all mages can cast fireball but only elves can make it do some truly weird shit. I homebrew metamagic feats exclusively for elven wizards. It's balanced by the fact that I make human wizards do slightly more damage ala warmage edge from 3.5 and they can cast one spell for free once a day in exchange for hp damage and the cost of spellslot the next day(in universe people have died from this and this does damage your ability to do magic later in life ). The in universe reason is elves know better than to risk losing access to magic. Humans on the other hand don't care or can't afford to care as they don't live long enough to worry about the consequences.
This is why when I make an elf I always make them under 100 they wanted to live since to be one that wanted to seek adventure they're only gonna get stronger. Like I had an elven NPC/boss being level 40 due to their age. They started out as a ranger and became a druid. They're basically Shrek but pretty "stay the hell out their swamp"
I've always preferred half-elves. Probably in part due to their "not fitting in" aspect. After all, I got into D&D as a pre-teen... nearly 40 years ago. WHAT THE ACTUAL FLYING.... I'm getting old. Anyway, half-elves, followed by the bog-standard human, are my usual go-to's for my D&D characters. (I even played a "quarter-elf" once. Sigh. I'm hopeless.)
got into d&d almost 20 years ago. I usually played half elves, half orcs, and humans. When 3.5 released tieflings and aasimar those were my go tos. I occasionally would run half demon or half dragon if my dm allowed them in one shots. Idk half elves, half orcs and humans just kinda fit that adventurer niche of not really having a place so they go and see the world.
Elves, the original Anarcho-Monarchists.
"I think elves would be more interesting if they had this lost connection to the feywild and are obssessed with what they have lost..."
My dude. That's literally what elves in dnd are.
Elves dream of the ancient lands until they turn 100, and lose the memories completely from then on.
Etc. Point, mainstream shallow views of elves are dull. Just don't be that. xD
No, they have reveries where they can remember past lives AFTER they turn 100. But yes... he should completely redo this video, it's absolutely shamefully bad, how little he knows about D&D elven core lore, and how he randomly mixes other media in when analyzing D&D elves when it's not relevant. Some of his vids about DMing techniques and homebrewing or improving classes and such are so good... but then he got something so basic and well established so fucking wrong about one of the major playable races... just... wut?
Just gonna put This here
there are dark-skinned wood elves, hill dwarves, humans and halflings in the forgotten realms. Their are also light skinned orcs and drow as well.
The numbers make them almost non-excitant though.
Orcs are Mongolian/German.
@@leodouskyron5671 I mean there are literally as many as you want there to be- also at least in 5e there's a bunch of art of black humans, dwarves and even some elves. I don't really see your point
@@beastwarsFTW For
Gruumsh Sake Orcs are Orcs. they are one of the most diverse race in the forgotten realms from literally Pigmen, to Grayskinned Inter-dimentional Inavaders, to Ape-likeJungle Dwellers, to large Green Humans, ect and thats just one setting. Also Corellon is a douche.
I think that its mostly a 5e thing... Because in earlier editions if i remember right, "pale drow" was Shaddar-Kai in Underdark. Same for skinned dwarfs, they were Golden Dwarfs race not a Hill ones, in Dark Sun were even litteraly Dark Dwarves i think, and realy pale skinned ones were that escaped from Drows, dont remember name. Dark skin Wood Elves were not a thing, because in older lore was a black skin of Drows caused by curse. There were brown skin Wild Elves, they were in lore even (partialy?) descendants of Drows who returned to surface and dont follow evil gods anymore. Pale Orcs were considered other race brunch than normal orcs too.
I see drow in the same way I see dark eldar from 40k or orcs. They are a different species altogether, taken by a very real, very controlling goddess and made to be a specific way.
It's like if if I took some short lived tortoises, bred them to eat raw meat, hunt in packs and have black shells, then I'd end up with a lot of black, carnivorous, social tortoises... They're not inherently bad for being made that way by me, but they may seem bad if they're let loose to devour neighborhood pets.
Orcs are evil because Gruumsh created them to conquer and fight and kill and devour man flesh. Drow are evil because lolth twisted them to scheme and poison and take over the overworld. These monoculture races are an extension or tribe following a very real, very talkative god who does deal out punishments for failures. I think of them as real world gated cults, the types that build their own village and practice human sacrifice in the modern world. They usually all dress the same, look similar and conform to their leader's wishes religiously, and face punishments for failures or dissent.
Anyone who can look at a drow or orc and think: "yup, this may be racist towards real black people", is actually racist themselves. They see evil elf with charcoal black skin and white hair being evil, or tribal man eating orc with brown/green skin and black hair and think " :o real black humans?". These people should not be listened to at all, ever. It's like having a dirty mind and taking harmless statements in dirty ways, they have a racist mind and take harmless things in a racist way, then they accuse the person who said or made that thing of being racist because it made them feel guilty about taking it in a racist way. If they eliminate everything they feel is racist in their eyes, then they no longer have to encounter it and take it in that way and feel guilty. You're not allowed evil orcs or drow, because black people need to be portrayed in a positive light for them to feel safe.
There are black humans in D&D. They have an empire, earth Africa inspired cultural motifs and are generally just as human as any other human society, with criminals and saints, workers and nobles... They worship all kinds of different god's across the alignment table.
Orcs and drow are their own thing, and they need to be evil for the players. Killing a man eating monster who is obviously evil, and was made to be evil by a god, who revels in his evil and wants you and your race dead... That's guiltless. You can slaughter that, and it's family... You can purge their entire evil tribe without guilt because they're evil, awful and are made to be so. Instead, if it's a hard working guy just trying to feed his starving kids, and he's been pressed into the warband and, in desperation, they decided to raid a village for food, they don't hurt anyone, they just pillage the stores and go home... Yeah, killing them feels awful, its akin to killing another human. Then it gets political, it gets humanitarian, It's complicated and messy and now you need to think about repercussions and it's just not fun. It turns a game about killing evil monsters into a therapy session helping some poor tribal people find a healthy, friendly food source, or how to trade for what they want. It removes threats from the game and replaces them with more normal people... That just isn't interesting.
Yeah , something people often forget is that Forgotten Realms gods are 100% real , 100% active and often walk among people , so talking shit about them or opposing them is not a good idea , specially when your whole race is dedicated to that one god (Drow and Orcs) with very clear goals and it is looking at you at all times and very much rewards those who serve it well
People often think FR gods are just sky people without any real interest in the world , much like IRL gods , that is something i have seen a lot of people struggle to separate , they can accept any kind of fantasy trope or BS , except the existance of active gods
TBH all this "coded" shit says more about the people using it than the people they try to cancel
All correct
ALL OF THIS
Gonna use some TVTropes terminology here, but that's a Watsonian argument for why they're evil. In Universe, they're evil because a higher power decided to make them that way, it's not their fault. But what's the Doylist reasoning? Why did the creator decide, that when they needed an evil group of elves, they were going to have dark skin? Blaming the god for why they're both evil and black ignores the fact that someone wrote the god to make that decision. They obviously didn't see anything wrong with it at the time, probably didn't realize the implications they were making with that decision. It happens a lot. That doesn't mean the implications aren't something to be analyzed and critiqued in the hopes of doing better next time.
It'd be one thing if they were written as just bitter about being forced to live underground and are trying to carve out a slice of the surface they can live on again. That's legitimate cultural friction and conflict. You describe a campaign where people have to pick sides in a nuanced conflict and wrestle with complicated morality questions like some people aren't totally into that shit. That being said, brain dead bad guy smashing is super cathartic, you're right. It's nice to think "I'm just beating up literal evil right now," And not worry about politics. DnD has plenty of ways to do that without terrible implications. Demons and Devils exist, Undead exist, you can have cults dedicated to bringing about the end of the world populated by an eclectic arrangement of divinely enthralled minions whose souls have already been devoured, or literally anything from the Far Realms that would drive you insane just by seeing it.
Get imaginative, it's DnD.
@@5PINN3R Ok, let's go doylist. There are three main ideas that fundamental to human development over the centures. The first is the idea of light and darkness. It plays out every day outside your window. The light brings warmth and light, makes the trees green and food ripe, it helps you see and reveals threats. The dark brings cold, conceals threats, makes plants turn brown or black and wither away and makes it very hard to navigate. Every day, the light shines overhead, only to eventually be conquered by the darkness. The day's shortening brings death to the plants, and the day's lengthening brings life and vibrance. It's easy to then link the dakness's shriveling and blackening of the plants to corruption, and the light's presence as life giving. Personifying these, the light, white, brightness is good, and the black, shadowy darkness is bad, and can corrupt plants and turn them dark and dead. Basically: white/light magic heals, black/dark magic kills.
The next main idea is that of ultimate good vs ultimate evil. Fantasy is just that, fantasy. The world is nothing but shades of grey. There are no evil people or good people. I can argue that a pedophile, rapist or mass murdere are evil, and that a heroic person who gives their life to save people from a fire is good, however the pedophilic rapist murderer may have spent his life and vast fortunes helping millions of people, and the heroic person who gave their life may be into consentual cannibalism on the weekends. The real world is nothing but grey. Fantasy is where things can be black and white for a change. It's guilt free to kill something that is 100% ultimately evil. We want that as writers, to give that catharsis, and to escape from reality's grey areas for a while.
Finally, the last idea is that of familiarity. We want to make things easily recognizable for the people we're writing for. When I say tall, muscular brute with black-green skin wielding a large, crude axe, you immediately think orc in a D&D setting because it's recognizable. When the writers were making D&D, they were thinking Tolkein orcs. Tolkein, when he was writing, was working with existing european mythologies. Orcs, or Orcus, were small green/black devils or goblins that were evil. The word was also used previously to mean ogre. All were described to be dark of skin, corrupted, evil. This choice of colouring came from the first trope I described. They were corrupted by darkness, and so bore it's colour. This later was incorporated into Tolkein's writing. The dark lord is dressed in black and shadow. Elves are good, and light, and white, and bright. To corrupt an elf, you remove the light, and are left with darkness, blackness. We show that on screen by having the elves be white, the dark elves be black. Orcs are born of muck, so they are browns and greens. These are ultimate evils. You can tell by how dark and corrupted they are. They're not humans, they're other.
Now, let's address actual black people in fantasy, because they exist. But first, I'll point out that they do not exist in Tolkein's world. Tolkien created a mythos for europeans, white people. The men of the east are likely a depiction of the ottomans or turks, eastern europeans, not africans. The orcs are corrupted elves, as discussed, their pigment is owed to their lack of light, not to depict certain other human races. However, in D&D, black humans exist. 2 of the 9 different cultures of human are people of colour. The ones described as "dark mahogany" skinned, the Turami, are actually depicted in a good light: forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Turmish, forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Turami.
In The Wheel of Time book series, most of the world is made up of people of various skin tones from various places. Even the main character is a dark skinned, red haired guy from the desert tribes, and he's in one of the only mostly white areas of the world, written to be that way simply so that he looks out of place there. The evil are called Darkfriends. The trollocks are massive, hulking, ugly black and brown skinned monsters with animalistic features and fur.
The way people have written about actual people of colour as normal, well meaning, good people is in very stark contrast with how orcs and drow are written. It's written that way because of very old tropes and because those tropes are easily recognizable by the audiences of the world. Is it racist in the real world, as writers, to depict an evil force of savage brutes as dark skinned monsters? no. Is it racist to depict evil elves as spidery black skinned monsters? no. Is it racist to equate those two with actual black people on earth? I say yes... very. If you're doing that, then that's a you problem. There are historical, cultural, religious and observable reasons why humans depict evil as dark or black. If you take that and put that on actual black humans then that's on you. It wasn't ok 400 years ago, it's not ok today.
having just finished heavensward i appreciate all the refferences. also, something cool i've made of elves, drow specifically. i've made them Star Elves.
they retain the normal drow stuff like black skin, white hair, underground dwelling, superior darkvision and sunlight sensitivity but their underground cities are under mountains in remote locations where at night they can go to the surface and see the stars. they are also really big into astrology, divination and horoscopes and ancient greek-style mystery cults. they are all about divination, the passage of time, the keeping of records and the secrecy of all of it. the spells they get are Guidance, Ilusory Script and Augury and get proficiency with Navigator's tools for reason's completely unrelated to the sea
That's actually what Drow are supposed to be like, but Lolth destroys anyone that tries this.
Another goddess, Elistrae I think, encourages Drow to go out and see the stars for the first time. That's usually where all the good Drow come from.
I like drow the way they are now with lolth-sworn drow being evil/forced to be evil and good drow who've renounced the evil ways. It makes it so you can have the best of both worlds. You can keep the fanatical matriarchal, spider loving, child slaying slavers of old while having a bunch of good-aligned Drizzts roaming the surface world proving that not all drow are evil.
Honestly, I'd love to revamp elves with an emphasis on the more chaotic elements of their social structure: the part where the elf themself gets to choose when they are ready for adulthood and that they choose a new name when they do. It's my favorite part of elven lore and I'd love to see it expanded upon since a lot of people forget that part
One of my favorite types of elves in fiction are the dark elves in the Elder Scrolls series. Their culture is so alien and weird that I just naturally find it interesting.
They live in a land covered in ash, their mages live in giant hollow mushroom and the fauna and flora looks like something from another planet.
So, Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal" meets Frank Herbert's "Dune."
They still have plenty of irl inspirations though: in large part Middle-Eastern (Mesopotamian and Jewish seem to be the most prominent)
@@vladprus4019 I felt they had a more south asian cultural feel, especially in their theology regarding the nature of the universe, 'the wheel', and how to escape it from it through enlightenment,. Also the depiction of their living gods. Vivec looks like Ardhanarishvara (Shiva combined with his Wife Parvati into a singular hermaphroditic deity) and according to some texts within morrowind they are also hermaphroditic.
I find it super wild in Elder Scrolls that orcs and dwarves are just subraces of elves, and I've kind of embraced that in my current D&D campaign.
@@peterp.9327 Well, when it comes to religions, gods etc. in TES, I've heard opinions that it has some Hindu "feel" overall, so that doesn't surprise me.
Eilistraee is probably my favorite goddess in the entire setting of the forgotten realms. MrRhexx did a video on her awhile back, and I want to play a bladesinger because of it.
Yes.
Too bad they are trying to diminish all of her lore... if not outright erase her. Looking at you RA Salvatore.
I don't quite see it as that. Rather, I choose to see this whole city of good drow they are suggesting as an Eilistraee success story, and that she is becoming more prominent. I think it could even make for a good story line for a campaign as Lolth becomes more desperate as dissidents gain power and defect. That said, I can see at least one part of her lore being a thing of the past and deserving to stay there. The fact that non-drow followers do pilgrimages in black face is a bit problematic, even if the intent is to help promote drow as the good guys. Not something I'd be bringing into my games, at least. Still, having her as a goddess that actively fights for the sake of her people, a goddess that has made sacrifices in the name of not just the mortals that worship her, but the ones that don't as well. I don't see many gods going that far, and that's why she's my favorite.
@@hellpenguin3031 one reason Eilistraee is gaining more followers and Lolth’s are diminishing is due to sustainability. I remember reading a 3.5e book about the drow and to paraphrase.
One may question how a society based on raiding and backstabbing have able to sustain itself, the answer. It can’t. Lolth isn’t omnipotent and has to rely on her followers and spiders to be her eyes and ears to see if things are collapsing. If they are she has to order her followers to take care of it or intervene herself.
Plus, she isn’t the only god in the drow pantheon. The only one who serves her is her grandson Selvetarm (sorry for this misspelling and future ones.) Her son has the largest drow following on the surface and is very popular among male drow. Eilistraee has a size-able following and seems to be growing. Kiranaslee is known for being a drow goddess of vengeance and is most likely plotting her revenge. Lolth might be a divine web spinner but, it’s stacked against her not only in the drow pantheon but outside as well.
Yeah by the way he's saying she's a recent addition to reform the drow, and Daughter of Drow was literally published almost 30 years ago, every single video that shits on drow for being racist always cites things from nearly 3 decades ago. It's like complaining that Star Trek Discovery is sexist because back in TOS they made cracks about women on the bridge
>>"The good elves won and drove the bad elves underground"
Very much not the case. Driving the drow underground was a massive warcrime. "Justified" in response to warcrimes. Which were committed in retaliation for sun elves committing genocide.
In this case the "good elves" were the Vyshaantar Empire of Aryvandar. who were basically elf nazis, who genocided the ilythiiri (pre-drow)'s neighbor country in their war trying to conquer all of faerun. And then the Ilythiiri (pre-drow) started using evil magics / raising half-demon babies / working with evil gods to get the power to kill said elf-nazis. And starts fighting back, nuking and napalming Vyshaanti provinces / vassal states to fight back.
And then the other elves are like "damn now there's two flavors of evil elf empire."
And then a bunch of elves (pretty sure it was the vyshaanti but I cant find a source) conduct a massive high magic (elven soul necromancy, sometimes with a boost from elf gods) ritual to curse the whole demon-crossbred ilythiiri ethnic group so they can't handle sunlight - and within two months of that their entire civilization is driven down into the underdark.
Then the gods say "enough is enough!" and intervene. They make a new elf king who has to be morally worthy and is tested first. Elf-NATO is formed, and said Elf-King rules Elf-NATO. Elf-NATO defeats Aryvandar.
Question. What book is this from? I want to figure out how to improve the drow by making their story more sympathetic or even heroic, but can't find a good starting point.
@@thedorklord1029 My recollections are a broad strokes history, I may have gotten some of the smaller details wrong or presented some minor events out of order.
@@thedorklord1029 The single source with the most detail on the Crown Wars is Cormanthyr Empire of Elves, which is a 2e D&D book I picked up used really early in my gaming career. Great book.
@@valasdarkholme6255 I see. I'll look into it. Thank you!
@@thedorklord1029 I posted a long reply with far more details and like 10 other books listed. It seems to have been deleted? Lets try again, shorter, just sources.
Demihuman Deities and Lost Empires of Faerun add a bit more to the mix.
For more varied Drow stuff look at Ed Greenwood's Drow of the Underdark from the early 90s.
And then there are these Novels:
Evermeet by Elaine Cunningham - Has bits on Ilythiir before the descent and also the elven gods.
Starlight and Shadows details Eilistraee's faith the best.
Lady Penitent adds more to the Descent and follows a Drow MC who discovers bits of lost knowledge of Pre-Descent Drow (but the author wildly changes Eilistraee's personality from how Cunningham and Greenwood developed her - so it's a book with very mixed reception).
The Last Mythal covers some other Crown Wars stuff - but does not focus on the drow. It's a good look at elven society in general though.
On FR Wiki look up the Crown Wars, The Ruler's Blade, Ilythiir, and Miyeritar
I’ve always liked the idea of wood elves being people who care for and have a natural understanding of the world, I usually treat them as if they have a Shinto like culture. Also I tend to think of elves acting like an older coworker how’s seen a lot of people come and go messing up something’s that are basic to them, and some people in that situation get a superiority complex but others tend to be understanding.
Its the Tofu law
Elves absorb the flavor of whatever they get cooked in.
I always thought the matriarchal slavers that are the dtow are interesting. The idea that lolth corrupted them is also interesting as well. While I understand that back in the day, we needed entire types of creatures that are experience and treasure pinatas, I do appreciate nuance that has been added to different d&d races over the years
That, and even with real life cultures that have raided and enslaved others, there is always more than those specific cultures. There is far more to the Mongols than just raiding people. He is correct when he says that many of these races have been problematic in the past. But, he's showing pictures from the 70s as if they still apply to the races, and none of us thing they are ridiculous.
You guys shouldn’t complain about the tropes from the general lore until you’ve looked into how they’ve written it.
Elminster; book 2 visits elves that covers his suggestion of elves too obsessed with past glories pretty much exactly.
Starlight & Shadows; Drow turns good and finds out there is actually a lot of good Drow the ones underground did a good job spreading a bad rep.
It’s dnd, they want you to turn the tropes upside down.
Yup
Indeed. Especially with the Drow, since Eilistraee is a thing.
So true.
Aren't those novels?
@@maxxor-overworldhero6730 Daughter of Drow was published in 1995 and this guy's acting like good drow are only a new thing meant to change the brand. The Drow subrace is largely being fought over by Vhaerun: Libertarian and god of cryptocurrency, Eilistree: goddess of moonlight and freedom (ancom socialist), and Lolth: goddess of chaos
It annoys me of a fan of the WONDERFUL stories by Elaine Cunningham, Ed Greenwood, and R.A. Salvatore to have someone vaguely say Drow are racially coded (what race? lol) and should be scrapped
Shit going back to Daughter of Drow, even the most-evil-drow, the queen of the city, first matron: she's too short and has imposter syndrome and is a lesbian but her station demands she take a male consort, she is miserable. The society is evil, and it forces people into roles they don't fit in, and as a result those people in turn inflict pain on others, and the cycle continues. It's a beautiful piece of fiction
What race do drow represent? What poc are drow? I can't think of a real world race that's even close.
I quite like Runesmith's comments about elves when it comes to just how many variants there are: Cockroaches.
As no matter what plane, dimension, sphere, etc. in DnD, there's somehow some type of elf there.
Also you forgot about Fey Elves. Basically elves who've been hugging trees more than even elven standards.
The elves in D&D have their origins in the Feywild, but the video sucked and didn't really cover the actual lore much at all.
MFW Thranduill is LITERALLY the king of the wood elves
In Divinity: Original Sin elves are far more alien looking, with super long necks and weird elongated skulls. They take the whole 'weird but beautiful' vibe to a whole other level
Tolkien was perhaps the only anarcho-monarchist ever, which explains that kings-but-free bit of elves.
I'd love more properly frightening fae elves like in folktales, but I suppose that would be hard to RP.
Anarcho-monarchy is when someone says that they're royalty and everyone just humors them. Like Joshua Abraham Norton, self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
@@LexYeen Gods but I love Emperor Norton.
A frightening fae elf I could see being inspired from is the Pale Man from “Pan’s Labyrinth”. Never ending greed corrupts one’s body to match their personality and desire? Sounds interesting!
Or an elf that gives the appearance of being poised and elegant, but when they want to get at something, (maybe even others’ flesh as a snack) it’s fingers, limbs, eyes and mouth become bigger as it lurches forward and chases after their victim.
@@o0bookwyrmknight0o There's always Critical Role's Artagan. Classic high-brow elf, until he asks if he can choke you to death to see what it's like.
@@o0bookwyrmknight0o A life of hedonism turns one into a sensory homunculus.
I thought about the concept of alien elves as a kind of tourist in the material plane. They buy a material body hoping to blend in with the humans, but they usually have flaws that make them uncanny to humans. Their ears are too long, or their eyes are off, or they have an extradimentional space instead of a back, or they don't cast a shadow. Stuff like that.
My first character ever was a barbarian elf with a background of being athlete who competed in javelin throwing and deadlift, being extra buffed and all that.
Arnold elfsnegger
Also high elf
All elves have proficiency in Perception, so Wood Elves don’t need it twice.
Respectfully, D&D wouldn’t be the same game without classic elves. I don’t really want them to be changed too much.
I’d agree plus it’s like, as a player your elf doesn’t have to be the stereotype set for elves in D&D. Like in my current campaign my character is an Elf who didn’t grow up in an elven society to the point he has not elven influence on his upbringing. He can’t even speak elvish. So there are ways to play elves without the aspects he talked about.
Plus if I’m being honest my choice of race depends on the character design I come up with.
I think the only time to remove a race as playable would depend on the campaign. Like if it’s part of the lore of the world. Then it would make sense.
Something left unsaid is that a lot of the times, in the lore of post-Tolkien settings, elves are built up as "perfect" and "superior" with the explicit intent to cast them down (like in Dragon Age, where they go from extremely powerful immortal mages to oppressed second-class citizens; or in the Forgotten Realms, where there are countless elven cities and kingdoms that were seen as marvelous and then brought to ruin or destroyed).
I think while there may be an element of projection into the superiority of elves, there is also an element of sadism or vengeance by writers and designers who identify more with other races (like humans) and who gleefully write these "perfect" elves being brought low out of sheer gleefulness.
As a DM I started out like that, but as I developed their culture (homebrew setting) I grew to like them a lot and now elves are probably my fave fantasy race.
obsessed with the aether elf??? it feels like the coolest extension of elf lore to me, and i can't wait to be cute and spooky :)
Sea elves: that one harry potter weed that makes you swim good
Triton: People with scales that look kinda fishy
Water Genasi: Fish people. Take a fish, make it a person.
The current design for elves I have in my own universe is that they have anime character features. Big eyes, hair prone to be vibrant in hue and stick upwards, etc.
Their physiology is closely attuned to their environment. So wood elves literally turn green and become immune to a lot of diseases and conditions you'd expect to find in forests.
Then there are elves like the ones "produced" by the elderbrain hivemind, which has essentially designed their own breed of elves by selectively breeding the ones easier to control. The other elves tend to be absolutely terrified by them.
Do they also have “that” anime aesthetic with the elves.👀
@@danjudex2475 Which aesthetic? Your reply is a bit confusing.
Just my take. But you're relying too much on the print to give you interesting characters or cultures when really that's the job of the DM and Players.
The BIGGEST problem with elves is that they generally all come from Tolkien knockoffs... BAD Tolkien knockoffs, no less. Now, a DECENT DM will go back to the original sources that Tolkien used--Nordic and Celtic folklore of the Liosalfar, Svartalfar, Sidhe, Tylwyth Teg, Sluagh, and Gruagach. At the very least, go over to Warhammer 40K and look at the Eldar and Dark Eldar, or go read some of Terry Brook's Shanarra novels.
commenting on this so I can come back to it
Aren't the norse elves also elitist assholes? My only conctact with them comes from the Magnus Chase books.
thank u for these leads, want to research nordic and celtic mythology but have no idea where to start lol
@@Blue_708 Okay, for Celtic mythology, you'll want to start with the Mabinogion, the Tain bo Culney (Cattle Raid of Cooley), and anything about the Tuatha de Danaan, the Daoine Sidhe, Y Tylwyth Teg, the Sluagh, and the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. For Norse mythology, look up the Aesir, Yggdrasil (the World Tree of Norse mythology, which links the Nine Worlds together). You might also want to read Beowulf and the Kalevala--the latter is the Finnish epic poem about their gods and legendary heroes, and it gets kinda wild in places. Have fun!
Oh, I just remembered, there's a channel here on UA-cam that you may want to start with: Mythology & Fiction Explained ua-cam.com/users/MythologyFictionExplained They have some pretty good basic videos on different pantheons from around the world.
Athasian elves disagree, and will probably drain all the liquid from your corpse to survive another day under the dark sun.
I spit on these D&D Elves. I personally love playing rage filled barbarian High Elves in honor of the most glorious of all Tolkien Elves (who did nothing wrong because those boat wimps deserved it), Fëanor.
"Fëanor is a really nice guy!" - J.P. from Terrible Writing Advice, FANTASY RACES.
Fucking based and silmaril-pilled
Or Glorfindel… he wrestled the captain of Melkor’s Balrogs to death.
Based. Martial elves are underrated.
love how you said "LOTR PEOPLE DO NOT INTERACT" and the top 5 comments i see when i scroll down are all lotr people lol
But he also kept mixing LotR and other media into the video while mostly ignoring the ACTUAL EXISTING D&D CORE ELVISH LORE.
Elves can be great villains in your campaign. Egomaniac bastards that always think they're better than anyone else? Easy to be hated by your party.
I LOVE the idea of aether elves being like that chick from She-Ra who sees the past, present, and future all at once. She can never tell when a person is actually talking to her or she's seeing a vision of something they're going to say in the future. Her intense clairvoyance makes her functionally senile with constant, overlapping visions.
Skyrim be like "what if EVERY race was racist?"
Also, one thing about Drow, or at least i think so, is that half, or more, of their evilness and edginess comes from one of the plausible inspirations for this race: Melniboneans.
Melniboneans are a sort of Sidhe-like race in the Elric of Melnibone saga by Moorcock, people from a decadent empire, full of vices, violent and depravated rituals, and they make pacts with Demon Lords, like Arioch.
Elric in particular is born as an albino and very weak, so he's not very liked by other Melniboneans.
This thing is present in the D&D Drow by Szarkai, literally albino Drow that are despised by other Drow.
So to me part of the Drow problem just comes from one of the influential works that founded concepts present in D&D (Alignment comes from there, especially the Law-Chaos axis).
13:39 actually reminds me of what Eberron decided to do with goblinoids. It had the Dhakaani Empire, which was a goblinoid empire that ruled the continent until a war with invading aberrations cursed them with insanity, reducing them to feral or close to it humanoids who can barely understand the civilization they once had. Then humans came and mistook them as squatters in the ruins of another more advanced race. However, a some of the Dhakaani people managed to avoid their fate by escaping underground, where they have waited for the curse above to abate. Some might have even come to the surface to see their ruins plundered by the humans.
W40K dark elves would make the Drow look like blackveil brides fans.
"I hate elves, so check out my homebrew elf races!"
And his reasons for hating elves are hilariously moronic, the only thing matching it being like that one elf race from dragonlance. How does this guy have subscribers? I guess because it's obvious that people who play DND now don't know or care about the lore at all and are just going by how this guy is misleading them.
Kind of interested in what you think of Elves are in different settings like in Eberron they literally are always trying to live past glories of ancestors and are rules by a weird immortal court made of people who have been deemed to precious to let die
Eberron in general has better cultural context for all races (once again: in general!). It's also less prone to bioessentialism outside of mechanics. This is just because the Eberron setting is a) newer and therefore more mindful b) not "the baseline" and therefore allowed to not be the cultural zeitgeist's basic idea of each of the races. Those are my thoughts!
Honestly one thing that really ticks me off about elves is just how many there are. Like why are there 7 different sub races? Why do I need to put all of them still my setting? It got to the point I decided to just completely rewrite them in most cases just because I didn’t feel like working with all the stuff they kept tacking on
Generally, in my campaign(s), that is pretty much the case. While an individual player could use whatever "sub-race" they wanted or mechanics to mix and match, by and large they are just one population. In effect, you could have a Moon elf child of a Wood Elf and Sun elf parents.
The only place where this would becomes more nuanced is in the Jade Empire of the east modeled loosely after Rokugan in L5R. There, the elves have largely become integrated with the greater multi-ethnic Empire, but maintain their blood lineages because of feudalistic pressures to maintain their Samurai status.
@@davidford3115 that makes sense, I have it written that each varient is a different corruption that they all have gone through. High elves corrupted by mortal desires, then they were corrupted into wood elves by nature itself, then the old ones corrupted them into sea elves, lol the corrupted them into drow and so on..
@@Daragausthedragon Heh, the video creator basically described my Eastern Empire elves with his courtly variation. In my campaign, take the haughty arrogance of the Crane Clan and that describes the most visible elves in the East. Interestingly, the concept of clan honor and Bushido was Dwarven in origin which was adopted by the human population after the Dwarves became the Hida and Kaiu families of the Crab Clan. How is that for turning stereotypes on their head?
I do like your suggestion that the variations are a result of the vices which resulted in their changes. Kind of goes to that otherworldly aspect in that their anchor to the world is in part that corruption which has changed them.
I have a feeling this comes from the mostly failed attempt to combine Tolkien elves with the Fae. There are hundreds different kinds of fae, so now we have hundreds different kinds of elves.
You... you don't, who said that you need to out them in your setting if you don't want to? Most of them aren't even in the basic books! You don't have to use it, the same way you don't have to use leonin.
I think I'm missing something, what's the problem with the drow? if I had to compare them to a real life group of people I'd say... medieval France maybe? with the fancy dress and politicking
Because there is a vocal minority of racists that see racism in everything now a days unaware of the irony that they are outting themselves as racists when they do it.
*Evil nonhuman fantasy race that enslaves others, worships an evil spider godess, and believes in power above all*
Racist "This is clearly meaning black people."
Normal person "So what you are saying is that is how you see black people"
Racists "How dare you call me racist for attributing horrible characteristics to a specific race based on their skin color."
That pretty much sums up how the convo tends to go.
Moment of silence for the comment section. Insert condescending comment here.
Honestly I find that saying "the drow must be racist because they're darker skinned and do evil things" is a false equivalence akin to saying "the race of tribal ape people is racist because black people used to be compared to apes." Basically, that's a notion being brought into the paradigm from our preconceived notions.
They're dark skinned evil elves with a love of spiders, not dark skinned evil elves with a love of fried chicken and water melon.
The other "problematic tropes" I don't know if i see as problematic. The evil matriarchy feels very similar to the false equivalence of the race analogy, and the other things like slavery... I mean yeah it's bad, but if it's an evil culture that's what you expect.
My big issue with pigeon holing all drow in this camp is that it takes away a level of creative freedoms. I'd rather it be "this is one culture that is prevalent in drow society." Because that gives dms and players more wiggle room for creative interpretations.
I just honestly don't see the racial aspects there. "Evil dark elves must be a commentary on dark skinned humans" just seems like the people making those claims subconsciously associate dark skinned humans with evil as opposed to just seeing it as a coincidental thing. There are also green evil races in DND, which human race is that lined up with?
Not to mention the general racism of the elves as a whole is definitely seen as a problematic flaw. So racism is bad enough that we are using as a major flaw for a set of races, but at the same time the designers of the game are also partaking in it? I really just don't see it as anything besides reading too much into it.
I can find a commonality between any real world group of people and any group of bad guys in fiction, color is a low hanging fruit, but I can twist pretty much anything to be some version of prejudice. Color makes it an easier twist, but still a twist of the objective facts.
the "forgotten ancient elves that are gone and left only few and rare ruins scattered, for not even their story is told anymore" already exists in forgotten... as the Green Elves.
Biblically accurate Elf subrace, "Be not afraid". There was a Cyclops elf that couldn't open his eye without killing every thing in eye shot.
I really like the idea of the Elves being mostly fae. They are walking capricious morality tales. They shouldn't be playable because player agency will probably not play the right.
the way I do the elves is they were moved out of the feywilds to protect it from Lloth. they aren't perfect. they're flawed as fuck. but they keep Lloth out so not that bad. they're xenophobic because humans evolved and do what humans do thus making elves hate them.
What do humans do tho?
@@kylekid10 in my world, they enslaved the elves. they found ways to capture them and bind them. the elves fought back, won their freedom at the cost of splitting up into sub races.
@@kylekid10 climate change, deforestation, mass extintions and inevitably the end of the world? :) (wood elf player ;) )
Wait when does he talk about the Gucci elves?
I don’t hate elves.
But I enjoy pretending to absolutely despise them.
In reality I just find them boring.
What you suggest about elves is actually canon in the FR. You can read the "elminster in Myth Drannor" to see the elves are actually decadent society obsessed with the past and lineages and so on and so on. They are not perfect. Because they are not good with adaptation to changes, they learn slowly. And it's just a top of the iceberg.
And yes, their great kingdoms have fallen.
11:52 If this is how "D&D is trying to move away from racial stereotypes" (something it already did with 3.X by the way), than I can't wait for 6E where I get to play 15 different flavors of human all with the same stats and a background related to Asmodeus. But wizards still shitstorming everything and rangers still sucking because apparently it's racial ability scores and movement speed that make people feel bad about their characters, not wildly unbalanced classes or getting disadvantage on heavy weapons.
Why the background with asmodues
@@Yarkoonian Because WotC has a boner for Asmodeus that started in 4E but got tremendously worse in 5E. He is literally WotC's lore explanation for everything.
In D&D 6e players will be able to play as MLP characters, Goku, or Hank Hill and the DM will have no say.
What are you even talking about? You clearly missed what actual problem is, it has nothing to do with racial ability scores. Nice try though. Look at the fucking bingo card.
@@rickwrites2612 Wow, a UA-camr puts out a "bingo card" and you think it's word of God, how cool.
So what was the bingo card about? "Evil dark-skinned culture", even though drows' skin represents darkness and has no connection with Afro-American ethnicity? "Mathriarcal society to represent evilness", which doesn't mean fking nothing because it's not that matriarchy is used to portray evil, it's just evil non-patriarchy for the sake of an unusual and interesting element?
Yeah, very good points there I see.
(Also, race-untied ability scores are _totally_ a "look how progressive we are" move from WotC, so I'm calling it out)
Mechanically I don't think either subrace works. Like the eather elf can misty step as a reaction to what exactly? Taking damage? Being targeted by a spell and or attack roll? Forced to make a saving throw?
And the courtly elf's features feel like they represent a specific background rather than race, plus, they're weak.
I agree with your general take on elves though.
It’s kind of funny how elves are considered one of the good races when their main flaw is there miss trust I’ve practically every other race and it’s a consistent thing with most elves 🧝♀️ excluding mainly Moon elves and drow when they stray away from the influence of hey certain spider bi-(baroness of the drow race).🕸️
Considering the type of world they live in you can't really blame them about being untrusting of strangers. D&D cool to play, scary as heck to actually live.