I like Elves.
I hate them, too, but then, I’m a complicated guy. Inhuman, immortal weirdoes are right up my alley, yet too often, those qualities take a backseat when they’re trotted out in a TTRPG. Elves are reduced to bow-wielding forest folk with pointy ears; boring! Where’s the wisdom of aeons? Where’s the fae strangeness? Where’s the wild and ancient power?
Some of this stems from player accessibility; anything the players can do is inherently non-mysterious. After all, there’s little less awe-inspiring than a level one elf. James Raggi argues that humans are almost always a better enemy than humanoids. Not only does it ground the story, it also saves the ‘weird’ for when you really need it.
I’m tempted to agree. When I started prepping Bar Hak, one of our home games, I wasn’t sure if we’d run 5e or LotFP. As a result, the desert peninsula is peopled with scattered bands of elves and orcs. And as far as the orcs go, I’ve occasionally regretted that — Carcosa-style Red Men, Yellow Men, and Blue Men might have been better than Orcs of the same colours.
But I don’t regret the elves.
Keep it Weird
Luckily for me, no one played an elf off the hop. The first time the party encountered one was at the bottom of the first dungeon. Slightly glowing, an elf lay on the floor clutching a note referring to another local dungeon.
The players didn’t know it, but this was a corpse, over 600 years old. Trick #1 to making elves weirder?
Elves Don’t Decay
They don’t age; why should they rot? Bar Hak elves are outside the cycles of life and death. As fundamentally alien, inhuman creatures, they offer no sustenance to bacteria.
These ageless corpses made great set dressing throughout the campaign. Ars Ludica’s three-era model of history was really useful to me in fleshing out this system; the littered elven bodies helped me tell my players the story of a great war for control of the Bar Hak. It also constantly reminded the players: Elves aren’t like you.
Elves Don’t Breed
Dwarves and humans are basically the same species. They sleep. They decay. And they can interbreed (ergo, halflings/hobbits).
Elves don’t. LotFP doesn’t have half-elves, so they don’t exist in Bar Hak. Elves don’t have families. They simply sprang into being in prehistory. They are literally irreplaceable; the loss of each one is an endless tragedy.
Ancient and Ageless
All elves that exist were created in prehistory. In Bar Hak, elves were subject to a magical attack at the end of the second age, 600 years ago, which erased all their memories.
I’ve played a lot of games of DnD next to 100-year-old elves ‘still children by their own culture’s standards and setting forth to adventure among the humans’.
Yawn.
Old elves are more interesting because they are more fundamentally inhuman. They also give you a chance to plug players into your world’s history. To that end, I made a series of tables helping players decide what their elves were up to during each century of their lives up until the point of the campaign. Check it out:
1st century – What species did you land with after the amnesia weapon?
1 – Humans
2 – Dwarves
3 – Halflings
4 – Deer
5 – Wolves
6 – Iguanas
7 – Mountain Lions
8 – In a strange lab, being experimented on by flyheaded monsters
2nd century – What did you get up to during the formation of the elven republics?
1 – Speaker
2 – Artist
3 – Soldier
4 – Architect
5 – Linguist
6 – Historian/Bard
3rd century – What was your role during the Elf/Dwarf wars?
1 – Objector
2 – Prisoner
3 – Veteran
4 – Hero
5 – Criminal/Traitor
6 – Spy/Diplomat
7 – Exile
8 – Smith
4th Century – Late elven republic, what was your post-war obsession?
1 – Painting
2 – Sculpture
3 – Poetry
4 – Wine
5 – Smoking
6 – Dancing
7 – Monastic Vows
8 – Romance
5th Century – Role during the Century of Humility
1 – Servant
2 – Hermit
3 – Wanderer
4 – Prisoner
5 – Catatonia/Trance
6 – Addiction
6th Century – Recent History
1 – Teacher/Cult Leader
2 – Diaspora Leader
3 – Recluse
4 – Criminal
5 – Searching for the Elfhome
6 – Living as a Human
Final Thoughts
So what do you think? Is this too much ‘backstory’-ing for OSR characters? Or a great way to help loop your players into the world during character creation? Should elves be weird? Or is it fine if they’re just Legolas-likes?
Check out this quick elven appendix N, take a look at our twist on drow tattoos, and play our Knave romp through an island of weird dwarves. Most of all? Stay weird, friends!