I don't like when elves are just humans with pointy ears and a few different beliefs than humans

I don't like when elves are just humans with pointy ears and a few different beliefs than humans.

I like my elves weird, humanoid for sure, but off both physically and mentally, inherently different than a human.

In a generic fantasy setting, how do you make sure your elves aren't generic knife eared humans? What do you do to make them distinct?

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weird elves pls.

Since they are a playable race, they will never stop being more human-like than being a completely different being, even moreso if a player will not try to emulate these elves, but will just play whatever he feels comfortable with, probably playing himself but with pointy ears.

What I can think of applies to other fantasy races as well: In all the things they differ from us, the consequences that derive from them must be different from how humans would deal with them. For example the extended lifespan: a 700 years old elf should not handle his long life the same way a human would, even if humans would be up to 700 years old. If that would be the case elves would really be just 700 years old humans.

When it comes to their physique a lot of settings already give them different facial structures and eyes, even though the art of these settings may interprete these not consistently, but I think they should be recognizable as elves even from afar and without the ears as well. Sometimes they are tall and lankey, sometimes smaller and slim. I'm a fan of giving them, compared to humans, a smaller torso, but longer legs, because that emphasizes their agility.

Pic may or may not be related.

Everything is different except their bodyshape.

The way they act, think, behave, live, eat, and how they reproduce. Their beliefs, their values, their arts. Their homes. Their family units and their governments. Their approach to magic, and their religions. None of them should be human or humanlike.

They're immortal.

Imagine meeting 8 or 9 generations of your family. Imagine them all trying to guide or manipulate you.
Some of them possess skills honed over centuries. Some of them are bored. Some filled with regret. Some with vast amounts of knowledge, and the ego to match. Some are paranoid. Some are patient and wise. Some suffer otherwise completely unknown maladies of mind and body.

Smugness and knowitalls should be relatively common.

Xenophobia and isolation should be in some ways normal responses to avoiding the two things that end an elf, violence and disease.

Maybe they don't have kingdoms or republics, maybe they follow whoever is the oldest.

Maybe they can innately sense the winds of magic.

Maybe they form no attachments to material things, because they know everything is transitive and temporary compared to an elf.

>I like my elves weird, humanoid for sure, but off both physically and mentally, inherently different than a human.
So not elves?

Elves don't need to just be pointy eared humans. And if deviating from that to make them more unique doesn't make them elves anymore, so be it.

try:

Avain elves: add feathers, sharpen the nose and ears more, give them birdcalls and really light bones.

Plant Elves: they smell funny, have flowers where their particulars should be, and have leafy vines for hair. eyes look like amber stones... skin looks like a peach in color and texture, but is far less edible.

Just because they might look similar doesn't mean they can't be very different in other terms.

If immortal, days are like seconds to them. This has a lot of far reaching implications alone.

Divinity had them be cannibalistic, which is interesting to me. They absorb the memories and all that from whoever they eat. The general idea could be presented for lots of different reasons in an original setting, be it forms of population control, a religious belief of all being one, etc.

There's room for tons of cultural differences, really only limited by your creativity. Appearance is basically irrelevant. Ask yourself if the dwarves in your setting are fundamentally different from humans apart from form factor, then compare elves to humans. All these races tend to just be exaggerated aspects of humanity itself, or largely could just be another culture that's still human. There's nothing wrong with that.

Ganjalf

Of course, I'm not saying that culture and how they behave can only be different if they look visibly different, but a big, obvious physical difference helps. Dwarves wouldn't carry the same oomph they do if they were just normal humans who lived in mountains and had beards. There's something about them being specifically stout and short that ties the visual appearance to what they are. That's also why I think halflings and gnomes don't have the same instant draw that the big three races have, because we already have a short race of humans in the dwarves, and just changing how short or how their feet look isn't enough.

But we're specifically talking elves here, and while people certainly are drawn to them for the grace, the long life, and all that stuff, to me those slightly pointed ears just aren't enough for them to be memorable in my head.

Do elves not being particularly lithe and spindly with distinct ears not do the same? To me the image is quite fitting for such a long lived "thoughtful" race that tends to be less resilient than others. It also fits their tendency to live in trees and nature to me. At the least it fits as much as Dwarves being short, fat and beardy while living in caves.

If their skinniness and their spindly bodies are emphasized, along with the ears being longer or more visible, then yeah that does really help the elves stick out. But often I see them depicted with the ears being the same general size except pointed, and mostly the same human bodies. As one user said, you could mistake an elf from a distance as a human.

That's how elves were originally written.

No, dumbass. Like elves were originally presented, in the mythology Tolkien and D&D drew from.

>Since they are a playable race
Who says they have to be?

That's literally just cosmetics. It has no actual impact.

Those sound like some very familiar and human emotions you're giving to creatures that supposedly think and behave in completely alien ways

Charlie Stross has elves in his latest Laundry book, haven't read it yet (Kinda gone off Stross lately, natch)

>Some notes about elves:

>The Host belong to another subspecies of gracile hominin, genus homo, and are about as closely related to us as we are to H. Neanderthalensis.

>The big difference in their history—the point of divergence—occured about 100,000-250,000 years ago: the point mutation that caused the H. Sapiens version of the FOXP2 gene to diverge from chimps and other hominids occurred much later in elves. FOXP2 is expressed as a transcription factor that permits the development of spoken language. Neanderthals shared our mutant version: we've had the capability for language (a modified hyoid bone and larynx) for somewhere between a quarter and a million years. The ancestors of the elves didn't get it until much more recently.

>Gracile hominids are individually vulnerable, but are social animals with a rich repertoire of learned behaviour. Language facilitates horizontal transfer of knowledge; a mute hominid species would be under intense selection pressure for stronger theory of mind and enhanced cognition so that they can survive despite lacking rich semantic communication.

>When the ancestors of elves acquired language, then rapidly wiped out every rival hominin subspecies on their world. Magic-wielding hominin ambush-hunters can generally be described as "sociopaths" by the standards of non-magic-wielding hominin hunter-gatherer/scavenger/pursuit hunters. The normal form of social control among elven societies is the geas or magical compulsion, in which the strongest or highest-status individual imposes their will directly on those lower down the feudal pile. On the diplomatic level, they tend to be aggressive and warlike.

I've edited out a lot because of the word limit

/thread

Let's not engage ourselves in useless blabbering.

I give them a different psychology than humans. If they're playable, then not so different that players can't at least pretend to relate to their own character. It could be something like inability to understand sarcasm, having emotions that are heavily reduced when compared to those of humans, or having emotions that are heavily intensified when compared to those of humans, and so on.

Their appearance doesn't matter as RPGs aren't a visual medium, so learn to stop worrying about it.

If you want to know how to properly write elves and shit then just copy paste from this.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuada_Airgetlám

Dont call them elves at all then. The word elf already has a bunch of meanings associated with it. So if you say "here is an elf!", but it has gamma radiation color skin, 5.66667 tentacle/limbs, 3.14 spider eyes and moves by vibrating through transitive dimensional phases, people are going to rightly say: that's not an elf.
If every member of it's species is it's own gender and they mate in a cosmic orgy that collapses stars. That's also not an elf.
If their government is a macro conscious dream tesseract state, it's also not an elf.
Elf is already generic nowadays.
Just make something else.

Pic related. It's also not an elf.

Don't let players who can't roleplay the part be an elf.

>What do you do to make them distinct?
They don't cut down trees.

Audibly kek'd

Humans are our only metric for how a sapient species reacts to things. We are the only example. Even our closest other examples, elephants and dolfins, react pretty human to general situations.

Then perhaps the attempt to create psychologically alien races is an inherently futile endeavor

>Pic related. It's also not an elf.
>giant ancient super soldiers with pointy ears who want to destroy mankind and get fucked by bards

Pretty much elf to me.

If they're playable they will always be mostly human.

The fact is, elves have always represented very human things, whether these be human virtues and values or human fears about death, the unknown, etc. Making elves too alien makes them not really elves at all. The idea held by guys like that elves were somehow this completely alien force in mythology (and in Tolkien, now? I don't know how you could get that impression) is pretty much entirely incorrect. 'Elf' has referred to a lot of different things in a lot of different things, from nymph-expys to specific interpretations of huldra, but by en large, they are the distant people. They are the elder, wiser folk that live somewhere far away and hidden, usually somewhere better (often implied, especially in Celtic folklore, to be the afterlife), the ideal people that live forever and work wondrous artifices with their superior understanding of the world.

Really, it's enough to give them different value systems, different ideas about maturity and worth, different relationships with the natural world, etc. Make your elves too alien and you may as well just create new race entirely.

So, Malazan elves?

Tolkien elves aren't mentioned to have pointy ears on any section of the texts. The only reason we even know Tolkien intended for them to have it is that someone asked him in a letter. If you read LotR and the Silmarillion blind, without having ever known what an elf was, you'd get the picture of very tall humans - which is precisely what they're intended to be, given that humans and elves are the same kind of being in Middle-Earth. The difference is that human souls are transient and not innately bound to Arda, and get a christian sort of afterlife, while elves are intrinsically bound into the world and cannot ever die until the apocalypse.

They also don't have what would conventionally be considered free will, since that's a human-only privilege.

>moves by vibrating through transitive dimensional phases
That's just fey step silly

>They also don't have what would conventionally be considered free will, since that's a human-only privilege.
You'll have to elaborate on that; I can think of anything in Tolkien relating to what you mean

Elves in their original Fair Folk incarnation filled the role of Anal Probimg Alienskidnapping people for their weird games.

I haven't opened my Silmarillion in a while, give me a moment. But in short, that was part of the creation of men. It's the reason the Ainur generally don't trust mortals, since the only other being who has acted in spite of the Music is Melkor

Fair folk aren't the original depiction

Elves have a destiny, humans get to make their own.

>But to the Atani I will give a new gift.'
>Therefore to willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein; but they should have a virtue to shape their life, amid the powers and chances of the world, beyond the Music of the Ainur, which is as fate to all things else; and of their operation everything should be, in form and deed, completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.
>But Ilúvatar knew that Men, being set amid the turmoils of the powers of the world, would stray often, and would not use their gifts in harmony; and he said: ''These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.' Yet the Elves believe that Men are often a grief to Manwë, who knows most of the mind of Ilúvatar; for it seems to the Elves that Men resemble Melkor most of all the Ainur, although he has ever feared and hated them, even those that served him.
A bit off-track with my last remark, but there it is

Elves have acted negatively, most notably the dark elf and his son. And of course there's feanor denying the fucking Gods his silmarils to save the world because he really liked how shiny they were. The gift of men is having a fate beyond waiting in the Halls of Mandos. Both men and elves can act freely, elves just rarely do. Probably the immortality and godly favor have something to do with it.

He's wrong. The only race implicitly without free will are Orcs, and that was an accident. Elves can choose their fates, as characters like Arwen or the dark elf demonstrate.

The ears of elves are pointed. Tolkien doesn’t often dwell on describing the minute physical details of his characters, so it is possible to read The Lord of the Rings and his other writings without noticing that either Elves or Hobbits have pointed ears. However, in a 1938 letter (No. 27, p. 35) to his American publishers Tolkien says Hobbits have “a round, jovial face; [with] ears only slightly pointed and ‘elvish.’” From this it is clear that Elvish ears were more obviously pointed. This was confirmed when The Lost Road was published in 1987. In the Etymologies under the first definition of ‘LAS’, which is the element in lasse meaning ‘leaf’, there is this note: “The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than [?human]” (p.368).

[page references: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1981 & 2006; The Lost Road, 2002 UK paperback]

I gave my elves aspargers.

Thanks to elven glamour, humans still think they are charming, despite them in fact being social retards.

>Really, it's enough to give them different value systems, different ideas about maturity and worth, different relationships with the natural world, etc. Make your elves too alien and you may as well just create new race entirely.

Depending on how you represent their wisdom and values you could make them appear alien to humans. If elves are more akin to "ideal" humans, then that would make them alien, as we humans are far from perfect.

Arwen, in order to choose to become a mortal, must have always been in the half-elf gray area. Eol's strangeness was key to the events that led to the Fall of Gondolin.

Yes, that's what I mean by the letter. I didn't know it was to his publishers, though. I've never read them fully.

Eol was still full elf. He was just a dick. Can't have dick elves if they don't have free will, and he certainly wasn't the only dick elf.

I want more of this contributing kind of autism on this board.

Yes, but Eol and Maeglin being the fuckups they were was what made a very important historical event possible. There are no random "dark" elves.

I think this was meant more figuratively. The Elves were born in relative peace and sheltered from strife early by the Valar. Men by contrast were born later in a turbulent world and fell under sway of Melkor in whatever homelands they wandered from. Naturally the elves ended up much more in tune with the music of the Ainur while the men had to "shape their life amid the powers and chances of the world"

Nobody can really work outside the will of Illuvatar; everything is fated as he sang it. Your own quote mentions ''These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work.' Even Melkor only played into the Music with his discordance: he uses his dominion over heat and cold to ruin his brother's creations yet only makes mist and snow, which were as things were meant to be even beyond the Valar's awareness. Even before that in the primordial singing his discordance just added more verses to the whole song.

And there are random dark humans? All is Illuvatar's will, his will is just...foggy sometimes.

“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget 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.”

>Elves are bad.
They engage in badassery?

The ideal person is based on our human understanding it.

Specifically, in the case of elves, it's based on the understandings of a bunch of Germanic and Celtic tribes, and to some extent the very Catholic understanding of idealness that Tolkien held.

>Elves are bad.

Elves are so bad, they call them Boss.

>someone asked him in a letter
No one did. The line of text that you're likely thinking of is his descriptions of Hobbit ears, which stated that they were "only slightly pointed and 'elvish.'" Some take this to mean that the word "elvish" here is directly related to the pointedness of the ears, and others that it's referring to some other undefined trait.

Tolkien did, however, give the following definition for the Quenya word lasse:
>"LAS(1) - *lasse leaf: Q lasse, N lhass; Q lasselanta leaf-fall, autumn, N lhasbelin (*lasskwelene), cf. Q Narqelion [kwel].Lhasgalen Greenleaf, Gnome name of Laurelin. (Some think this is related to the next and *lasse 'ear'. The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than [?human].)

Still, though, even if we assume that the last word in that sentence was indeed meant to be "human," there's no indication that this means that it was the top part of the ears that was pointed. It could just as well have been their earlobes.

In fact, the best argument for Tolkien's Elves having pointed ears is that he never once objected to Pauline Baynes illustrating his Elves as having them. He did, in fact, never make any comments on it what so ever.

Basically this ...youtube.com/watch?v=XZmUUupSgQk

I had an idea for an elven race in a setting I'm making.
Basically elves are non sentient (or at the very least extremely primitive) nocturnal arboreal humanoids that live extremely long lives but also move as slow as sloths, only experiencing bursts of speed when pushed into fight or flight responses they perceive the passage of time differently from other races, from their pov they live only about 40 years or so and everything around them is in fast forward.
Extremely long limbed and with enormous eyes.

>In a generic fantasy setting, how do you make sure your elves aren't generic knife eared humans? What do you do to make them distinct?
You turn them into what they always were.

Assholes.
There's a good reason why around elves, you watch yourselves.

My Terry readan nigga

But
why
are
they
called
elves