Imagine a group of archaeologists pondering the purpose of a thousand-year-old artifact when a elf enters the room and says, ‘I was pickling onions on that. Where did you find it? I’ve been searching for it for centuries…’

@BrettCaton

2 ай бұрын

There's a scene where Serie is walking with glee as a civilization arises around her. From her perspective, human activity is like binge watching twenty years of her favorite drama all in one session. She could well end up in the equivalent of our world, with flat screen TVs and self driving cars, and be terribly amused by it all.

@pjirp

2 ай бұрын

This is essentially my biggest problem with long lived races. That long lost forgotten civilization that fell 1000 years ago? Yea my buddy over there was a steward in the castle, he always wonders why no one remembers it existed.

@frozenheartedgiant8330

2 ай бұрын

@@pjirpthe easy fix there is elves being individuals who rarely ever settle down in one place, leading to a lack of companions and them not writing of what they experienced

@MoiMagnus1er

2 ай бұрын

@@pjirp Have you ever have something that happens to you, peoples hear about it in a way that is sligthly wrong, so when you talk with them you need to correct it. Once. Twice because someone else was not here the first time around. And a third time because someone else just joined the group. And a fourth time because someone was not listening and only heard the end. Etc. Imagine that for centuries. Sure, they have the information. But they literally told the story thousand of times to different peoples, and they'll need to start again the next century. At this level, depending on their personality, either this near-immortal being takes pride in explaining again and again the story and indeed their knowledge won't be lost, or at some point they will stop to volunteer informations unless it is absolutely necessary. Plus, when I worldbuild, I also like to add that near-immortal beings, including gods, don't have perfect memory, and are able to forget or mis-remember things. While the amount of information they can remember is higher than for a human being, it's not that much higher, so is severely undersized for their lifespan.

@pjirp

2 ай бұрын

@@MoiMagnus1er Its one thing to have specific details be forgotten. It's quite another thing for the existence of an entire civilization to be entirely forgotten when there are people running around in the world who were alive when it was around. I'm not saying either of these things are bad on their own, but they are both common fantasy tropes and don't work very well when both exist.

As an elf explained to Drizzt. Elves must live multiple lives when they have chosen to partner and befriend shorter life races. Once your friends have passed, it is time to leave and make a new life elsewhere because it is not healthy to linger.

@HighmageDerin

2 ай бұрын

I've always viewed the way elves see the shorter lived races the same way humans view their pets. With love spending as much time with them as they can before their short life span comes to an end. Mourning them deeply and then spending time in solitude swearing they'll never love again until that next pet 2 or 3 years later comes along and Opens their heart back up.

@idlevillager3763

2 ай бұрын

@@HighmageDerin only these "pets" have the same mental faculties as you, if inevitably less experience, It's more like having younger friends who keep dying young while you age and either finding it harder and harder to connect/commit to new ones, or fully getting stuck in an adolescent (for your own species) mindset and starting over again and again for the sake of escapism.

@Joseph1_00

2 ай бұрын

@@idlevillager3763 but do they have the same mental faculties? I would argue that maybe not. In the real world hyper intelligent people can not relate to average people because their perspective and stuff are so much diffirent. I think that might apply here as well. The elves have experienced so much more then the humans that their perspective might be so diffirent that the analogy with pets isnt that bad.

@codyperry5427

2 ай бұрын

@@idlevillager3763I like the idea of elf’s especially in dnd where they reincarnate, and that elf’s are actually envious of the likes of humans because once they die they can actually ascend to a higher plain, continue being them, with a elf once they are reborn with some memories, so it puts the idea that are you you now kinda like the boat situation, if you you keep replacing the boat is it the same boat

@codyperry5427

2 ай бұрын

And the idea that young elf’s are educated in a way so that they are mentally prepared to live such long lives, and that many young elf’s leave and join human society as they old elf’s are too slow or they can’t relate to them, but as they age they begin to understand their teaching and lessons and rejoin Elf society once they are ready to

I found a meme post from some message board. If you think about it, humans have the same relationship with their pets in terms of longevity as elves would with humans. The idea that Elves would be naturally aloof and uncaring about human lives just because they outlive them doesn’t really fly, unless elves are just dicks culturally. You have likely had dozens of pets, from hamsters who only live 2 years at most to birds or turtles which can outlive you. Cats and dogs have 1/5th your lifespan. My parents got some dogs when they were puppies and my parents were approaching retirement age. They still outlived the dogs. None of this matters as we all have pets we remember fondly and remember how devastating it was when they died. To play an elf genuinely struggling with immortality, remember the last time your pet tragically died and then dial it up to 20.

@irenewhitcomb1813

2 ай бұрын

To humans elves seem uncaring and aloof. To elves you are heartache and future loss. They are shielding themselves from that emotional "roller coaster." So from a human's POV you are "aloof and uncaring" because you lack a century of experiences.

@caintheweirdo9945

2 ай бұрын

​​@@irenewhitcomb1813So basically a mix between tsundere and kuudere for a typical elven personality then?

@dandyspacedandy

2 ай бұрын

​@@irenewhitcomb1813 i agree, and its precisely because humans are sapient beings that it becomes easier for them to distance themselves. You are all your pets have, it is one's duty to take care of them and show them the love they deserve, despite the fact youre likely to outlive them five times over. Meanwhile, humans can take care of themselves for the most part, ghosting them may make you kind of a dick, but ghosting a pet makes you totally cruel, and i feel that distinction matters a lot

@dandereninja4750

2 ай бұрын

@@dandyspacedandythere is also the fact that in DnD all elves have the potential to become deities if they impress Corellon enough. For me one of the most important and interesting aspects to the Elves in DnD is that they were born by accident when Corellon was wounded in a battle, the elves were born from his blood. Now Corellon loved his new children until they started taking on a concrete form (they got tricked into by Lolth) after which he took their divinity away from them. It’s also why Elves can breed with everything, though it’s rare when they do.

@carso1500

2 ай бұрын

​@@dandereninja4750to be perfectly honest in DnD almost everyone can reach godhood if they try hard enough

As a dwarf I agree, elves live too long, their lifespan should be around 20 minutes

@bobbobbing4220

3 ай бұрын

rock and stone...

@jancatperson8329

3 ай бұрын

🤣

@beammeupscott3032

3 ай бұрын

Hazahar!!

@reesescup69

3 ай бұрын

As an orc I agree

@beammeupscott3032

3 ай бұрын

@@reesescup69* squints at dial just on the edge of the red* "Your alright"

I played a drow who didn't see aging that traditional elves do. He treated it like everyone around him was going to die before him and he hated the idea. So he started getting a lot more reckless until the party confronted him about it. And he broke down because he doesn't want to be the last one left in the group after a hundred years, after a thousand years (he was a 102 year old Druid and just found out that if he keeps getting stronger that he'll become functionally immortal). And the thought of being the only one left to remember everyone terrified him

@FelicityUwU

2 ай бұрын

Did they end up working it out in the end?

@Majickss

2 ай бұрын

Marcille from Dungeon meshi does this same thing! It’s a really fun way to look at it from a character perspective

@olafgurke4699

2 ай бұрын

My first character I played was an elf who was looking forward to effective immortality. Sure, her friends would pass eventually, but she was resolved to be the guardian of their legacy and their memories. My current character is a half-elf half-dragon who was raised by humans. While still very youthful, he has a sense of urgency and a drive to get things done that surprised the other elves we have met so far. Also, great story on your part. These are the emotional story beats we roleplayers play DnD for.

@valentinamonti573

2 ай бұрын

That's such an interesting concept :)

@kelmirosue3251

2 ай бұрын

That's such a well made and compelling character tbh

I played an elf who was part of a campaign that stretched back into 1st Edition D&D. None of the group remember who originally played him. He never had a name, but went by Graymantle and he was...Old. He had a painting on the wall of his home that his father had made of an idyllic river, and that place is a canyon now. Part of my interpretation of the character was that he had forgotten so much over his thousands of years that reading his old memoirs was a new and exciting experience. He disappeared for a few decades taking a walk around the planes and was surprised to see his new friends with wrinkles and gray hair. He used to be a virtuoso, but lost his edge over time. A great warrior as well, but grew bored with it and his skills atrophied. He was eternal, and even apocalyptic threats were more interesting to him than frightening. Chillest dude ever.

@kdandsheela

2 ай бұрын

that's such a cool character! you got to adopt him from a former player? this sounds like a very long campaign

@Zane-It

2 ай бұрын

That would be a fun guy to talk to.

@carsonm7292

Ай бұрын

I do really like the idea that elves don't radically change society by honing their skills and knowledge beyond what any short-lived race could do because they...eventually just get bored of it, drop it, and start some new endeavor. The skills atrophy, and they become a novice anew at something completely different.

Unicorns live much longer than elves, and they always get something new out of doing the same things over and over again. They wouldn't know a week has passed unless you told them.

@Calebgoblin

3 ай бұрын

me

@caritahearts2405

3 ай бұрын

Just like me fr

@Merilirem

2 ай бұрын

Yep...

@maevav5645

2 ай бұрын

This make me remember about The last unicorn🤔 but there they are immortalxf

@hondaaccord1399

Ай бұрын

That's my opinion on immortality, really. Who says if you remember everything and go insane? What if you forget stuff and get to learn it all over again?

I’m a Warforged in my current campaign and I RP her as being desperate to do things quickly BECAUSE she knows she’ll outlive everyone around her. She constantly feels too short on time.

@Ayrichu

3 ай бұрын

I love this!

@rafaelbordoni516

3 ай бұрын

I love warforged, they're probably my favorite race ever. At least in Eberron, they not only have this long age problem but they also have an opposite problem at the same time: they were literally created like 30 years ago, so none of them are old, none of them know what it's like to be old and at the same time they are born adults, whatever "adult" means for them. I don't remember if they ever described their training process (supposing there is one, they could very well emerge from the forge already possessing the skills they need when they're sold), so currently they're all a bunch of children that never had a childhood. Your character concept is really cool too, I hope you're having fun.

@G.F.SF55

2 ай бұрын

Same wihh my elf, she's a dragon bloodline sorcerer and in that setting at 18th level you get +1000 years to your life span, she's afraid that time will slip and she won't notice it passing, she wants to see her friends and family living, people she cares about are the most important thing to, so she's afraid of missing out

@Mankorra_Gomorrah

2 ай бұрын

Ya, there is a rush to do everything you can with your friends because you never know when they won’t be there. “I can walk my dog tomorrow but my dog might not be able to walk tomorrow.”

@MultiCommissar

25 күн бұрын

My succubus chef often makes fun of her Aarakocra friend for having shorter lifespans than some parrots. She does it to keep perspective on how little time she has with the people she loves, but feels awful every time she does so.

This video gave me an idea of an elf character that gets very stressed about human timeframe. Like "What? We only have one month to do that thing? That's like no time at all! We need to hurry!" when the task is something that a human would consider a generous timeframe.

@3dsmaster537

Ай бұрын

God forbid they have to do somtehing by tomorrow

@taniwha5441

Ай бұрын

This is just me irl and I'm not even immortal 😭 Anything happening within 1 month is "very soon" to me.

Picks elf, plays druid until we get the class ability that extends the natural lifespan of the user tenfold...~7000 years.

@zedgathegreat9122

2 ай бұрын

And that is pretty freaking scary. Let's look at our own basic knowledge of the past 7k years. Yeah, accouple hundred years ago a new god existed? we're really unclear about most of the time up until the last 500 or so years, and yeah, there's some good books and accounts of it, but a lot of it might not be taken for face value, and everything else is just muddled. We got a pretty decent idea of what happened, but we're pretty unsure. That's pretty much a weekend of an elf's ultimate life span. Also to think about how much technology has advanced in that time frame is insane... 7k years ago we are in the early stages of animal husbandry (early stages of raising of livestock and farming). It was for the most part still hunter-gather style living, and we were on the cusp of going from the stone age to the bronze age. Think about the fact that you have one living being witness another race go from barely surviving and foraging everything, to developing technology to get themselves to the moon and creating the internet in your own lifetime, also while each one of those life forms die in essentially a day or two to you. It'd be like watching a colony of the ants essentially build it's own space program of the course a few days.

@joshuawells7415

2 ай бұрын

In Goblin Slayer they go to the elf village and learn that the archer's sibling is 8,000 and is getting married

@Amy_the_Lizard

2 ай бұрын

That's assuming they reached level 18 as a baby. More likely than not they'd probably be older than that. If they were, say 100 at reaching level 18 (still very young for an Elf) it'd be more like 6,000 - it slows down your aging to a 10th of what it'd normally be, not multiply your lifespan by 10. If a 50 year old human became a level 18 Druid, they'd only get 300 extra years, while a 20 year old human would get 600, so it's still highly dependent on the age of the individual

@thefracturedbutwhole5475

Ай бұрын

The oath of ancients paladin becomes immortal at level 15. Druids and monks can live a long time, but they will still die of old age eventually, the ancients paladin literally stops aging completely.

@Amy_the_Lizard

Ай бұрын

That's assuming they reached level 18 somewhere before 50, which is possible, but not super likely...

Frieren really opened my eyes to the concept of a long lived being. They could even have been friends with a grandparent of a player and what not. It's quite refreshing and a way to think of it elves and other long lived races in a new way. As a player or as a dm

@Ayrichu

3 ай бұрын

I second this! I love the idea of elves being arguably able to live forever, and Frieren really does it so well. Elves actually being more rare in Frieren, especially long lived ones makes a ton of sense to me. I honestly feel like elves being as common as humans just about doesn't really add up to me. It makes so much sense to me that Humans actually advance rather quickly compared to the likes of Elves, because an Elvish society has all the time in the world to make advancements, but humans, especially when many races live much longer than them, kind of have to rush to push things further and further because they will expire so much quicker. I feel like there is a pretty natural lack of agency the longer a species can live, hence like how Frieren doesn't really care about how long something will take because for her, it'll be just within the blink of an eye, but the magic of her getting to see how others view time and learning to care about other people's time especially when they have just much less with their lives, is so damn interesting.

I’ve never understood the concept of a species living so long having no interest in doing anything. I live day-to-day not thinking about how long I’m gonna live I want to do something because it’s fun or I’m invested in it not because i’m scared of dying

@nerdywolverine8640

2 ай бұрын

exactly my thought

@angeldude101

2 ай бұрын

If anything, for me, worrying about what I need to do and the little time I have to do it ends up making me do _less._ Being scared of dying doesn't motivate me to do more, it just makes me waste more time being scared.

@calebgalli5582

Ай бұрын

Its more of an instinct tho

@TheLoki7281

23 күн бұрын

indeed. like... are dogs up to more then us just because they live shorter lives?

@andyasbestos

15 күн бұрын

There's a line in Shimeji Simulation which stuck out to me. It went something like: "What would I do if I only had one day left to live? ...Probably nothing."

-Jay is dedicated to his craft and works long laborious hours -Jay has wisdom and observations to share -Jay hates elves Conclusion: Jay is a dwarf

@BatTCK

3 ай бұрын

Has a beard too. Hmmmm 🤨 suspicious

@probablythedm1669

2 ай бұрын

Jay: THAT'S GOING IN THE BOOK! 😂 Dwarves that record every slight are the best dwarves, imho.

@olafgurke4699

2 ай бұрын

@@probablythedm1669 Warhammer Fantasy is just amazing all around.

@masscreationbroadcasts

2 ай бұрын

Now we just need to see his wife. If she has a beard, there's no denying it.

I had a similar experience on a TTRPG campaign. A player made a sacrifice to help his party, becoming cursed with immortality. His character became an NPC for some of the future generations of the continued campaign as both a mentor and observer. When the player (using a new character) asked his previous character in game why does he not interfere with mortal affairs anyway or interact with it. I spoke as his character: "Over 1300 years has passed since that fateful day, the day I took on this horrible curse to save my friends. You ask me why I do not interact with mortal affairs? There is no grand or lofty reason. I just do not want another soul to suffer as I have. Watching everyone and everything grow old, worn out, and vanish. I've seen many beautiful and extraordinary sights. From the highest peaks of Mount Dragonfang, to the deepest depths of Hollow Mirada. Yet nothing, nothing could erase those precious memories of the time I walked with my companions. Now... off with you lot. You and your companions have your own tale to spin and see to the end. Just as I had seen mine and many others end." It was a double campaign, but probably one of the fun ones I managed to DM.

@orboakin8074

2 ай бұрын

Brilliant and moving

I remember hearing an argument about how elven families, even if they didn't run for power positions, would accumulate enogh wealth over the many human generations to hold sway, essentially holding old money even if they're in the young adult phase in their life

I think a fantastic example of long life being done well is Heimerdinger in Arcane. His species-based long life, magical truama, and lack of urgency becomes something he grows through because of characters he interacts with. Jayce forces him to see that what magic isn't inherently bad. Viktor reminds him the consequences of a lack of urgency in progress, resulting in the heartbreaking line, “It’s a sad truth that those who shine brightest often burn fastest.” Ekko teaches him that much of what makes life worth living isn't safe.

@chongwillson972

3 ай бұрын

@dis_graceb5657 though he is right about a lot of things.

@dis_graceb5657

3 ай бұрын

@@chongwillson972 True, but it isn’t about right or wrong. His growth is about adding nuance that he hasn’t been able to see before.

A few years ago, before Frieren had even come out, I made a character named Linden. Linden was an orc, but when he was a baby his clan had been wiped out by a group of elves who were enemies of this orc camp. One of the Elves ended up adopting baby Linden and raising him as if he was his son and Linden grew up to become an Elven Guard, which were a group of knights in this world. Part of his backstory though was him trying to make a huge world shattering distance which is what started him on his DND quest in the first place. He had been raised his whole life by his family, yet to them it had seemed little more then a few passing days. They didn't want Linden to be a soldier as they still viewed him as the young baby they adopted due to the difference in how they viewed time. Linden knew however it was now or never as he didn't have as long as them and his ultimate goal was to accomplish something so grand that once he was dead and gone his family would never forget him despite how little time he would have actually spent with them compared to their long life.

@RedRocket4000

2 ай бұрын

Interesting as the idea of playable Orc is a deviation from the sources in most folklore and the current starting source of Lord of the Ring. Orc and Goblin are the same thing different languages. And most folk lore sources they a evil spirt based being thus can't choose to do good. In Lord of the Rings Orc are evil spirts with a flesh husk created by the Greater Evil God in charge in the first age. Thus their weakness to the Sun as that an anti evil effect. They are incapable of good as they are a creation intended to do evil. But there were limited Half Orc. D&D took the half orc and made them have free will unlike the Orc which did not have free will. Your playing a primitive human war like barbarian tribe version of the Orc that became popular in many sources.

@rainyliquid5644

2 ай бұрын

@@RedRocket4000 I'm not talking about LOTR. It was DND 5E and a Homebrew setting, thus any lore or notion is thrown out the window or hand waved and does not matter unless stated otherwise by the DM, a term which refers to GOD Aka the story teller. So yes. I was a playable lawful good Orc.

Chucking an obligatory, "Please go watch Frieren, Beyond Journey's End" comment in here, for the algorithm, for the quality entertainment. For our friend, Jay. And, to support his wife, who deserves it more than he.

@nicholasfaulkner7185

3 ай бұрын

It’s really so good. He is hinting at the crux of the issue outright; “If mayflies earned doctorates…we’d be terrified” but the reverse is also interesting as well, since they become compendiums of historical/cultural experience. It’s a difficult empathy gap to understand in either direction, and makes for very good questions. Also, the simple fact (TAZ shoutout) that a party of mixed races will INEVITABLY experience the death of the less longevitus members; or the human who pair-bonds with the elf will not only die first, but their half-elf child will probably 1) far outstrip their human forebears, but also, 2) likely die before their pure-elf parent…a fascinating problem for character development

@Zetact_

2 ай бұрын

I've never heard anyone give a reason to watch it beyond what a basic synopsis of the themes might otherwise give.

@daridon2483

14 күн бұрын

​@@nicholasfaulkner7185 We technically already experience this with pets. We live for 80+ years, yet a dog/cat lives for 15 years. They'll be gone before we even spend a quarter of our lifespans, yet we still remember them dearly. Even though their existance is short, the mark they leave on us is long lasting. That's also why some people don't want to adopt rats. Ignoring the steryotypes, they don't want to deal with the emotional trauma of having such a great pet, that sadly only gets to live for 7 years.

My very first character was a wood elf druid. When the campaign ended, we each described an epilogue for our characters. Mine would go on to direct the evolution and development of the town, seeing it advance far into the future as this solarpunk utopia. Sustainable and in harmony with the natural world. He’d spend his days hand making toys and telling the stories of his parties adventures to the next generation. A living legend and witness to the entire town’s history. But he’d also be trapped in a vicious cycle of companionship and loneliness It’d go like this: -find new family -cherish them and get attached -watch them die -isolate and become dead to the world -become unbearably lonely -find new connections to fill that void Rinse and repeat for thousands of years

In my world, elves need to regularly purge excess memories to keep from all that information driving them insane. They off load the extra information in magic crystals and store them in a place in their home town. This happens once every two hundred years and marks the beginning of their “next life,” which is a major milestone event in their life, complete with massive party.

@kikankuro

2 ай бұрын

I absolutely love that idea, it's really cool! What did they do before they had this crystal storage method? Did they seek death before insanity?

@valiensr1037

2 ай бұрын

@@kikankuro I haven’t quite decided that part yet. I’d imagine there was two schools of thought where the more noble elves would choose either death or some other way of permanently erasing memories. The other side would instead choose to keep their memories and willingly go mad after a few centuries.

@ProgressIsTheOnlyEvolution

2 ай бұрын

Doesn't sound like Elves to me. Elves would have the wisdom to know what information mattered and what information didn't, they don't live in a modern information age where you are bombarded with information as a way to advertise and brain wash you, so I do not think a true Elf would ever really have a issue with insanity. They are moral and spiritual being with a deep rooted sense of purpose. I think you are trying to make the Elves too much like modern humans, which for me would question why you have Elves in your world at all.

@fz_dracohart1255

2 ай бұрын

Huh, excess of memories driving long-living races insane is like the concept of Mara in Honkai Star Rail. The Vidhyavara/dragon race get rid of excess emories by "reincarnating" themselves every few hundred years or so, but the nigh-immortal Xianzhou people got no method to their memory overload and down the line they risk of turning into a crazy monster crazy called Mara-struck. I like this tbh. Sure Elves got long life accumulating wisdom and experience, but at the same time the weight of memories wear their mind. It's like double-edged sword. Permission to steal this concept lol.

@pancake8180

Ай бұрын

​@@fz_dracohart1255 this is fun! I'm pretty sure mara as an idea comes from hi3, and it wasn't exactly a phoenomenon happening to multiple people, but was actually tied to my favourite character - Fu Hua. She's immortal and she has to erase her memories all the time, picking out what to save and what to delete to not get overloaded

Marcille was a half-elf character from Dungeon Meshi. Her worst fear was losing her loved ones due to their shorter life span. It did things to her psyche.

I've always envisioned the opposite behavior with long-lives races...which of course doesn’t reeeeally jive with fantasy settings. But I kind of picture elves going through periods of long monotony, then periods of human-speed action. "Okay, I spent 100 years studying the lute, BUT I AM SO BORED OF STUDYING MUSIC NOW and I need a flurry of activity to add flavor back to my life! I'm gonna be super active for another 100 years until I get tired again and want to take it easy." Maybe not all elves, but probably quite a few - especially quite a few that encounter "busier" races frequently. Once you get used to all that activity, a slow pace must seem frustrating. And who wants to be *bored* for a decade or so?

@seleneshofner9176

2 ай бұрын

Wait... did I just invent elf ADHD?

@rhael42

2 ай бұрын

​​@@seleneshofner9176I was literally about to make a joke about elven adhd until I saw you already realized it..

@angeldude101

2 ай бұрын

Ah the cycle of burnout... Since you guys already brought up ADHD, I feel the need to mention a specific and very relevant aspect of ADHD: Time Blindness (or rather Time Myopia). Time is such a fascinating concept when living with ADHD.

@ProgressIsTheOnlyEvolution

2 ай бұрын

Actually the opposite is correct. The maker of this video is wrong. He is trying to make ancient Elves too much into modern Humans. Elves would not at all have a issue with a lack of motivation or tendency to procrastinate. Remember Tolkien believed in God, The Bible had people live to be more than 900 years old who was spiritual, Aragorn a Numenorean also lived a lot longer, and the Elves were excellent fighters and craftsmen. That does not suggest a lazy unmotivated procrastinating race who just sit on a trunk singing songs or playing bingo.

@achimdemus-holzhaeuser1233

Ай бұрын

@@ProgressIsTheOnlyEvolution reasonable. Especially if it concerns Mastering some craft the Elven Timeframe adds to that .. In controst to Elven ADHD there should be a lot of cases of Elven OCD. Elven Adrian Monk.

The other thing that helps with the motivation aspect of why do a thing when your race/species lives for centuries is that “average lifespan” isn’t the same as “guaranteed lifespan”. An elf can be struck down by a dragon just as easily as a human, so you can totally have elves dying at age 25, 30, or 40 when their parents may be 650 years old.

@colbyboucher6391

2 ай бұрын

I remember a blog post written by LadyNerevar where she analyzed the lifespan of elves in The Elder Scrolls and came to similar conclusions, it's wildly inconsistent and certain writers have claimed that elves only live like 200 years while LOTS of them in-game stretch all the way to 1000+. She figures (and I pretty much agree) that it's largely down to caution and luck for them. ...And a bit of magic, when they're truly getting old.

@katm8128

Ай бұрын

Are elves susceptible to disease? Illness could also be a factor in taking the life of them early

ok so this idea is kinda growing on me. elves as the ultimate procrastinators. they live so long, they'll get to the thing eventually, thus maybe even leading them to a sort of stagnation

@erikschaal4124

3 ай бұрын

The paradoxical part about that is plain survival. Elves seem to be just as vulnerable to starvation, pestilence, injury, etc, as humans are. Their long life spans mean they are likely to die for reasons aside from old age. (This could be a liability for their species if it takes them that much longer to mature and reproduce. )

@floofzykitty5072

3 ай бұрын

That's exactly why Frieran seems so lazy to humans. She gets up at noon every day because she has an eternity to get to that thing. She'll just spend a decade in a town and that's a vacation to her, meanwhile the residents have begun seeing her as a part of their town.

@ficnonnie6006

2 ай бұрын

And Serie really did put off the decision to take over for Flamme by 1000 years. Like fr, fr.

@Skye_YTT

2 ай бұрын

I like this so much. Consider an elf who procrastinated dating their friend for 100 years or whatever similar situation, then a war tears their village apart and separates them as refugees, forced to live a nomadic life.

@ProgressIsTheOnlyEvolution

2 ай бұрын

Elves are not ultimate procrastinators, only modern Humans who don't understand Elves would think so. This could not be further from the truth, if anything Elves are far more likely to be prepared and motivated than Humans. This idea is false and a way to make Elves more Human which kind of defeat the purpose of having them in the first place. Elves are spiritual with spiritual motivation and purpose, they live forever and have life after death, so the concept of God is very close to them but in a natural spiritual way, not in a religious way. The maker of this video does not get this because he does not understand Tolkien, the Bible and Scandinavian Mythology. The Elves would have no issue whatsoever with a lack of motivation or procrastination. This is a modern human issue, not a ancient or Elvish issue.

Thinking about long lives is absolutely something I want to think about when I have an opportunity to play a character like that. A longer lived race may be slow to adapt or stubborn to change compared to us and our fragile relatively short human lives. Also, just because they live long doesn't mean that they have really great memories, right? How many of us can remember what we did last week? An elf may be hundreds of years old, but can only reasonably maintain vague memories from the last few decades, and everything before that is just a hodgepodge mix of impressions and both true and false memories. And how does a long-lived race mesh with shorter race societies? I'm playing a gnome illusionist in one game whose back story is that he was a university professor on an extended sabbatical from the university because the humans that run it wouldn't give a long-lived race like him tenure because then those positions would never open up. This could similarly apply to a human loathe to sell property to a long-lived race, perhaps. Had another idea of a not-long-lived character who wants to find means to extend their life (maybe even lichdom?) because their favorite writer is an elf who won't expect to finish up their book series for hundreds of years. I'm imagining almost a parody of historical romance novels, ala, something like from the novel/film Misery.

@catherineelmore2004

3 ай бұрын

Ok… if you play that second character you have to post how it goes somewhere because that sounds *awesome*! Love that concept! And your gnome professor also sounds incredible! Like yeah, I’d be annoyed and need time away too if my *simply being the species I am* was impeding my career progress like that! That’s really genius and a great set up for your GM to poke and prod at how the different races get along in society based on how long they live and the dynamics that would cause… Oh I love that! Just seriously kudos! I’m new to the game and so cool backstories like that just make me really excited cause it’s like ooh… I could do something cool like that, not *that in specific but something like it*.

@Theroha

3 ай бұрын

The idea of memory getting vague over time could open up a cool racial feature. Imagine playing an elf who has lived long enough to have gone on at least one adventure before but is now woefully out of practice with their old skills. The old tricks are still there but take more effort to remember how to do. Mechanically, I'd say you pick a class that your character could multiclass in but hasn't. Once per long rest, you can use a feature of that class up to the level equal to the modifier of the relevant required stat. Ex. A wizard who used to run around as a barbarian could rage once a day. It would need some balancing, but I could see that as a fun variant.

The biggest problem with Elves in D&D isn’t that they live so long, but that they physically mature only slightly slower than humans, and then wait several decades before declaring themselves an adult So you have full pay grown beings that are classified as children, imagine if you saw a 20 year old man throw in a tantrum in a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit because his parents said it was time to go home, that’s an elven child, he’s 48 and this is normal behavior for elves at that age A story from someoneI know, when he was 13/14, he was visiting a friend while said friend was having a family reunion, he was smitten with one of his friend’s cousins, but he didn’t make a move because she was clearly 16/17 years old and she’d never be interested in a younger boy He found out later that she was 11 years old, yet she could pass for 17, he was certain that she was going to get someone in a lot of trouble one day According to D&D, that is every single elven child, it’s like the opposite of the anime/manga thing where the person looks 8 but is actually a 500 year old alien or whatever

@chloegoodwin2482

2 ай бұрын

just because you don't classify yourself as an adult in your culture doesn't mean you will behave like a child. elves who are 18 will act like 18 year old humans because they have the same worldly experience, but because elves are haughty and live for a very long time they think the worldliness of a human is inferior, childlike, and expect a lot more from their kind. i mean i get that you're probably joking but a lot of people are confused about that

@featherofajay4667

2 ай бұрын

I think Elves just have a different concept of adulthood. An 18-year old (western) human is not yet fully mature. You could even argue that most 25-year old (western) humans aren't really mature yet. But we still define them as adults. I imagine that Elves only declare themselves as adults once they have reached a certain level of maturity.

@Sarah_Bragg

2 ай бұрын

@@featherofajay4667If I remember correctly, Elves declare themselves adults when they gain their memories of past lives along with their true name. Could’ve just been a world specific bit of lore that I thought was universal though.

@featherofajay4667

2 ай бұрын

@@Sarah_Bragg I've never seen the "memories of past lives" as a canonical thing, but I may be wrong

@Sarah_Bragg

2 ай бұрын

@@featherofajay4667 It very well could be something I heard somewhere when I was younger and worse at telling canon from headcanons, but it’s the only way I could ever make sense of a race that ages a tiny bit slower than humans until 20ish equivalent age, but is only considered an adult at 100.

_“How you live your days is how you live your life.”_ In the campaign setting I've been running for the last 20 years, Elves refer to members of their race who develop close relationships with mortals as "Gardeners" because they liken the idea to a tree falling in love with a flower. Their passion is made enthusiastic by the understanding of the relative brevity and the appreciation of that life as a fleeting beauty. Moreso than that, they live to watch over the countless descendants and see that love grow as a reminder of what it once started as, just as a single flower will grow into a field of blooms underneath the protective shade of the tree. That's what keeps the "Gardeners" emotionally attached to the time scale of mortals in a way thats different from other Elves who remain more fixed in a different speed of progression amongst their own ageless race which is more similar to humans being amongst their own. This is inherently also why Elves more easily form relationships or attachments to trees & forests because they grow on a similar time scale. The key element is understanding when actions are _necessary_ being a part of a larger world, because they have to be able to reapond to changes that happen from the other mortals that have the ability to drastically change the world (like how quickly modern technology changes things even over just a handful of decades). This is why Elves specialize themselves into projects that require centuries of singular oversight that give them a niche to integrate with the larger and more short lived world, and what generally separates them from other mortals. Further from that in my setting are the Fey who don't fundamentally understand the concept of mortality at ALL. So long as they have a name, they just continue to exist, which is why it's at the core of their magic. It's what makes them dangerously playful and childlike because for most of them, the very idea of death is beyond their ken, and why they slip through thin spaces between reality & time - because their experiences with it are near-alien, even to Elves. They seem frivolous and petty because they obsess over momentary things whilst being more careless about what mortals find existentially important. Thus Fey spend their days lazily laying about or having feasts across decades of human time, or becoming singularly obsessed with an individual for what seems like a moment but lasts generations. Thus why the Elves understand why Fey are to be regarded with careful precision and caution more than the Mortal races who can only see the impact of that last but a fleeting moment by comparison. It is the interplay of the relationship of different timescales that makes races so very interesting, but I also think it's why "importance" or "most important" or "if it matters" is something that's more of a Mortal concern about their lives. It isn't less significant if the scope isn't as dire, but the experience is about the "present" because you carry it with you as a past regardless of the length of your life, and Mortals mostly don't understand that because they're in such a rush all the time. Rather than ageless or immortals feeling that something is meaningless because they've enjoyed defining moments of the "world" mortals share, they get to be carried by that passion in Mortals as their empathy allows them to share it even in the small fleeting moments whilst they tend their gardens. They are just as passionately devoted to complex matters that can take centuries which are less understandable to anyone not ageless, as it can seem like detachment when it is anything but when those scales of time are flipped.

An elf would have to have superb memory. An elf only able to remember the last century could be considered to have something equivalent to the human condition of dementia.

Minor correction: The Monk’s final ability prevents them from feeling the effects of aging making them age closer to something like a Dragon or Saiyan than a typical humanoid. They will persist at their peak condition until the natural systems of their genetics fall apart. Some might argue that would grant them effective immortality as the biggest cause of death is getting sick while you are old and feeble. This doesn’t take into account that DNA when it replicates and replaces old DNA is never a perfect copy and will over decades lose its structure and eventually naturally become deformed. If you want an explanation that explores it in a fun and nerdy way check out the Film Theory video on Logan.

@XGD5layer

3 күн бұрын

There are some animals whose telomers do not shorten upon duplication. They are in essence immortal, if nature didn't get involved.

I love when stories with different aging species actually show how that affects their mindset. An example of a story that I think does something interesting with this is Arcane with the character Heimerdinger. He doesn’t truly understand why Jace and Victor are pushing for their technology to be produced and released faster, cause to him 10-20 years is nothing. And as someone who lives for so long, he is very cautious in his mindset, cause he lacks the time pressure of a human who’ll be dead in the next 60-100 years.

Completely independently from knowing anything about Frieren, I was also working on a story about this idea. A 400+ year old elf wizard who outlived all his original party members getting a new group together to relive his glory days, but realising as the leader he has a responsibility for his party's safety and growth. I had this idea like three years ago.

I remember reading a statistic, that if humans didn’t die of old age, then the average life expectancy would be about 200 before war, disease, crime, or accidents took you out.

@dynamicworlds1

4 күн бұрын

That seems too short, but without looking at their methodology, I can't give more than an intuitive reaction to that.

@XGD5layer

3 күн бұрын

​@@dynamicworlds1 what I found was "In the world, approximately 62 million people, all causes of death combined, die each year. In 2006, more than 36 million died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients". While about 90% of deaths in industrialized nations were age-related.

I play an elf. I actually go over this concept mentioned in that game. See, I placed my elf in what I assume is the elf equivalent of a human’s early to mid 30’s. Somewhere past 200, maybe about half way to 300, give or take. This was done so I could intentionally take up the role of providing context for the story and the party’s other characters as to the machinations of the world and how long ago and deeply immersed some of those have been around. My character is functionally a scholar, part of a faction of researchers and archivists, despite their class being a fighter. They study languages. For an elf I figured this would give them a unique perspective on the subject because they live such a long life that they can actually watch and see and hear a language evolve and take first hand notes on all of it. But that isn’t their role in the party nor is it what my character believes their role is. As a scholar and an elf, my character is designed around the theme of memory. To remember. To watch a legacy unfold and ripple through existence. They are passionate about their work and watching this process happen. But for their thoughts on their existence? My character believes that elves exist to have such long lives because they are intended to remember, that they are supposed to be an archive of the past and the lessons and legacies from back then. Because short lived races will eventually forget or neglect the lessons of their ancestors with each new generation, by their own choice or not. So memory and the legacy of people, that’s what my character believes their are meant to contribute to the party. Now, unlike Frieren (might have misspelled this) I do take a different approach. As you said, a long lived race may not feel the same urgency as a shorter one. To adjust this so my character isn’t some “higher being” aura (and come off too condescending), I made it a point to have my character surrounded by people who live by the faster sense of time. My character was born and lived for several centuries in the capital city which is also the country’s major world wide trade hub. This was not a primary elf society. So my character was surrounded and interacted with in their formative years, a wide range of people and cultures and life expectancies. My character watched as the people they grew up with lived, loved, had children, who then had children, and died, and then watched as the next generation did so too, over and over. They faced that heart break but they never forgot a single one. I made this character deeply and unashamedly sentimental (something the party needed bolstering for). And this life style, while they always felt out of place, is why they got culture shock when they finally went to a city that was primarily elves and elven culture. While it was welcoming to them (they got to get to know their cultural heritage, and they needed the slower pace to recover from a traumatic event and the grief from it) they still felt out of place. This allowed me to set my character apart enough for the other characters to hone in on when I first joined the party. I guess what I’m trying to say is that my character helps the party keep the bigger picture in mind because of the way they experience life and because of the nature of their research and personality. I keep my character moving, despite having all the time in world from a mix of sentimentality, the acknowledgment that things are always changing and to treasure them, a different sense of time from the others of their race, and a deep passion to understand and appreciate the world around them for being exactly what it is. I really hope I articulated what I wished here. Kind of typing this with a headache but I really wanted to make it clear how I’m using these same concepts to bolster the type of story I’m trying to tell with my own, that I also am trying to tell the story he mentions in this video. I treasure this.

@allhana365

2 ай бұрын

What an awesome character!!! I love characters like that! Also thanks for sharing it because it gave me some good ideas for what I’m currently working on. For a story of mine I’ve created the Watchers, and they believe their purpose is very similar. (Watchers is more of a stand in name until I find something I like) But I was having trouble with how to write them and whatnot but this has actually helped me a lot!

@mentalrebllion1270

2 ай бұрын

@@allhana365 glad to be of assistance!

Dungeon Meshi does a good job with this Major Spoiler: One of the main characters, Marcille, is a half elf. In universe they live for 1000 years, compared to the few hundred years normal elves live. She was also surrounded by tall men all her life so she’s afraid of outliving all of her friends. The life spans of races also affects their power as tall men are looked down upon and half feet are oppressed, as dwarves and elves see them as immature due to their short life spans

I played the reverse of this with my first character, Atielli the Aarakocra Way of Mercy monk, actually

My favorite exploration of this trope is in an episode of the Thundercats 2011 reboot. The cats discovered a race of flower people that live their whole lives in a single day. And Lion-o develops a close mentor like relationship with one flower boy. Lion-o, who's still mourning the loss of his father and his home, has to come to grips with loosing this person he cares about. And learns to cherish all the time he has.

"If what we are is the sum of all our choices and experiences, what are we… when we are forever?" (The Riddle of Magic).

@UrDad000

2 ай бұрын

Forever changing I guess

The fact that your wife got so much of her personality into the video without being able to talk with just a few hand signs in front of the camera is really impressive! Also, just a really great topic, really enjoyed it. I’m playing a *very young* half elf in my current campaign- like 20 young- and a big part of her motivation for adventuring is the long life she’s expecting to have- or more accurately the fact that she wants to be recognized as an adult with a desire to do a particular thing (in this instance be a bard and travel doing her art) rather than go into the family business, and her elf dad is acting like it’s the whim of a kid and she’ll grow out of it- leave her be for a few years and she’ll be come back, over it… cause he’s comparing *his* life span to hers when they’re not the same and also they’re just, you know, not the same people with the same goals. It’s been fun so far- still early though.

That anime sounds so good, I'm gonna have to check it out! I've played with this idea with the novel I've been writing, an elf child getting stuck on this side of the divide between our world and faerie, raised in a human society and taught human ways. He thinks like a human who needs to accomplish all they will ever do within the combines of a century, but at only half that time he has barely aged past puberty. He knows he will continue on living while all the meaningful connections he's made won't last but a few decades. A meaningless amount of time for him, and he struggles with wanting to be "normal". Never knowing an elf or knowing that elves even exist, he doesn't understand why he is the way he is and he grapples with the impending deaths of his loved ones, even if those deaths are many decades away. He knows it's coming and he is terrified of being alone. The story is in a way a bit of that last man on earth trope, but before it happens and knowing it will. The story eventually goes into more fantastical and happier twists and turns, but it's definitely where the character starts and what he will always grapple with. On Keith Baker's Eberron blog, he mentions how the elves of Khorvaire, the ones integrated into the societies of the shorter-lived races, willoften befriend family of humans. He sort of equated it with how we may prefer to stick with one kind of dog - when one passes away, we will adopt a new dog of the same breed because that breed is familiar and well lived by us. Same for elves to an extent. I thought that interesting.

I had a Warforged Paladin in a Rise of Tiamat / Tyranny of Dragons campaign that was made by the cult to sneak into and disable Water Deep. He had gone against his code as they were trying to disassemble him for the next prototype, and spent every day after that with the one command - the one fatal mistake his creator ordered - to “kill them all.” He had to get his bearings, of course, but once set on his path, he worked towards tracking down and slaying each and every member of that cult from the ground up. Then the DM forced a 5-year time skip in which we couldn’t do any of our own activities and forced me to play Project S.E.R.V.O.N. (Or Servo, as he called himself) out of character. He was still a very fun character but after that I had fallen off the bandwagon.

In the one year between school and starting my civil service, I met my wife and some of my most dear friends and changed more than I ever changed before or after. When one year in 100 can be so important, why shouldn’t 10 years in 1000 be similarly important? And I am sure that after my parents pass away, I will regret not knowing more about them. Damn, that hurts.

Excellent! Another great video and thanks for a new anime recommendation. Keep up the great work

The fact we have long lived races in TTRPGs also implies that there are a lot of things that kill things.

this has been an interesting insight into longevity in fantasy races I will definitely be using it

Jay out here casually pinpoint sat striking my existential dread. I did really enjoy this though, and I'm probably gonna check out Frieren this weekend now. March to 100K let's gooooooo

This is something I considered, at least on occasion, in regards to an elf character I play. He's been an adventurer since the earliest days of his adulthood, which has been at this rate nearly 2 centuries of off and on adventuring. He's been through many ups and downs, new paths and divergences that shape him into the man he is. He started out wanted to just find more stories to tell to children after running out. But the most important thing he has to learn, is that he's telling his own story, and inspiring others to do the same. I'm proud of it, honestly.

Elves would be terrified of falling in love with humans.

This idea of immortality or living for ever is interesting concept in media. I love how Rick Riordan points out how human lives are just too short and how making busy is weird to the gods who live for so long. And then there's the Inheritance Cycle, or is people know them as the Eragon books, where Eragon points out how he'll live forever as long as he isn't killed by over use of magic in battle and that's what makes him wonder if he should give up on his eleven crush since humans wouldn't understand him and there's not many magic users that can achieve immortality.

In my current campaign there's a species of spirits that are effectively immortal. In order to add a sense of urgency and tragedy to their lifespans, they are limited by their memories. All of our memories are faulty, but that becomes even more complicated when you've lived a few centuries and gradually forget the details or even whole decades of time, the same way we might forget what we had for breakfast or did over the weekend a year ago. I added an additional complication though, because they are spirits, they are even quicker to forget; our meat brains work in part as memory saving devices. As spirits without a physical body to retain their memories, they forget much quicker, and have to rely on external sources (journals, songs, stories, etc.) to recall their own lives.

The first time this concept really hit me was years ago when I first read the Inheritance Cycle. The way that story handled the worldbuilding elements surrounding elven lifespans and the way that impacted their culture really opened my eyes to the implications and narrative opportunities that such a long life present.

This is a really interesting point to consider when worldbuilding! I never really thought about it that much. It’s fun to think about an elf taking a “weekend off” to relax and just disappearing for like a month

So an anime called GATE addressed the concept of trauma with a long lived race. The human was stressing over the funk that the elf character was in after seeing their father die. The elf later mentioned that PTSD is just something they deal with because it’s inevitable over a long lifespan and it takes up so little of their time by proportion.

@pondking2801

16 күн бұрын

Gate had another elf being given as a slave to a human. She would be his slave for perhaps 60 years, a very short time within her lifespan.

I love the thought of immortality in a story or nigh immortality. I also have been toying with the idea of being passed over on this world when everyone else gets to the afterlife, there ascension makes your infinite like feel like stagnation, or even a decent. Thank you for the video I even subd for this one.

I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:( But I have created 12 different Lvl 1 Characters in case I found a group. They are all Elves/Elf-Adjacent or Dwarf or Gnome, PRIMARILY because they have such long lifespan potential! IN FACT, 2 of my characters combined with eventual Class/Sub-Class features have 7,500 year potential lifespan!!! 1 is a High Elf Druid and the other is a Shadar-Kai Undying Warlock.

I love playing elves and I usually play a class that will extend my life so I will end up living for thousands of years. I love playing with time and what that does with their mind. It’s so fun.

Perspective really makes the difference. If your character lives in the present then their lifespan doesn't matter, everything is equally important to them. Do they think primarily in terms of long term planning and are more dismissive of shorter lived races because of that? etc, etc.

With my current campaign my character, a half-elf is feeling the reverse of this. Her mother has died and she is well aware that the rest of her human family will die before her, even the next generation of her family. At the same time to her elf half of their family she die hundreds of years before them. Heck, her father was barely an adult in elven terms when she was born and will still be relatively young when she dies and this factor weighed on her choices pre-campaign

Fascinating take on this. I might even say that the condensed nature of storytelling means that WE are the ones with the extreme lifespan looking into the lives of the characters in envy for all they accomplish in a short amount of time. Because we might take only a day, a week, etc., to read or watch a story, but to the characters it might be years. Even if the story is only about ordinary mortal Humans, the way we experience their adventure is by necessity far shorter than how it would be experienced in real time.

I really enjoy the return to a more consistently sincere and serious tone in this video. I get that this isn't really the style of the channel anymore and I imagine I'm in a minority as someone who prefers it, but a little bit of it every now and again would be very welcome.

Your channel is actually good.

I wasn't expecting a full-blown existential crisis to come from watching this.

There is a TTRPG called 'Starfinder', which is an extrapolation of 'Pathfinder', a TTRPG set in the standard 'Tolkien-esque' setting, but untold thousands of years in the future of that world. The Starfinder setting suffered an event known as "The Gap", where Everyone, Everywhere suddenly awoke from a Universal Amnesia, and found that key details of their past were suddenly unknown, and even written/computer records of this time (lasting a millennia or more) are garbled, and the Gods (that still exist, some of them anyway) won't speak of it. Now I wonder how the Elves of the setting would react, being the longest lived race in the setting (among PC races anyway)?

This was the push I needed to finally DM my own campaign. Your deep dive on like the impact of long life on story reminded me of how all things connect. Like when your civilization has lived long enough to see whole races die. Smart capable ones, how does one not see effort as futile? Or trying for others who have the push to do so. While you wait to enjoy the fruit of their labor after they are gone.

I remember reading about a D&D campaign story that had one elf barde that lives through everything every other pc die or growth old and die but he keep adventuring and made a vault with the painting of everyone else and there story.

I thoguht of Heiemrdinger and Jace in Arcane. Heimerdinger, with the benefit of centuries of experience, advises caution with magic as he has seen the destruction it can wreak before but was complacent and it felt like he forgot that humans can't wait decades to test something to ensure it's safety and sometimes they need to just take the risk with less testing so they can actually see it used in their lifetime

The elves I run are basically a culture of the Diocletian quote, "If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn't dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed." There are outliers that are prodigies and accomplish great things, and with their lifespan most often do end up becoming masters of their chosen field of expertise, but most... don't choose a field that's particularly impressive. An elvish animal trainer is an unrivaled paragon in their field, but if you're a carpenter, or a soldier, a mason, a miller, a whitesmith, it's not impressive at all. Humans don't see a dynasty change because someone can teach a dog to bark on command, or paint some really nice artwork, it changes with shrewd politicians, genius tacticians, and those blessed by divine providence or raised up by great forces and coalitions. The elves, however, continue to do what they want anyway, because an elf doesn't care about the fleeting opinions of what others think is a good use of their time. Frieren is a great example. She's an accomplished wizard, nearly unparalleled, but the fact of the matter is that getting involved with the chaos of ambition and being recognized as a hero was never a blip on the radar of her motivations. Someone asked her to be the party wizard and she had nothing better to do since that's basically what she was already doing. Other elves we meet in the series share this almost pessimistically aloof view that the times have changed and all they can do is wait, so they might as well wait while committing what they think matters most. This isn't to confuse them with Hobbits/halflings, who are a common folk of little worldly desires and minimal ambition. There is no great Hobbit general that rallies his people to push back against an encroaching evil, they know and enjoy their lot in life is to enjoy the simple pleasures of hard work to make good food to share with good company; community. The only thing that pulls them out of it is getting swept up in forces beyond their control. Elves in contrary are broadly capable but narrowly focused in their chosen niche, which might be agriculture, but could just as easily be as an advisor/administrator or a great warrior, and should those elves not meet an untimely end will certainly earn some amount of respect or renown. All of them are masters of the micro, which when times allow becomes mastery of the macro, just as any other race. The trademark "Elvish Arrogance" comes from the fact that, well, they know that for all the yapping about human potential, the clear fact is that by math alone they have the most potential and are thus better than anyone that isn't a Main Character Prodigy that was Born Better. If the elves cared about shaping worldly affairs, such as taking advantage of a civil war succession crisis, they would easily come out on top after about 200 years because your great-grandchildren would beg them to show up. Instead, most don't bother wasting mental processing on that because it's no more a fleeting impulse than being upset your best friend ate the last slice of pizza, the only difference being that the former pulls far more people into the shit-fling than the latter. The world keeps turning after the pizza is eaten and after someone is king. There will be more pizza, there will be more kings, grow up. Y'know, unless the threat is specifically that the world will stop turning, then they're allowed to step in and chide people for letting things get this bad.

The video is very on point! rom what I see, many people skip other perspectives and perceptions. Yeah, in our world people are currently dominating species, but in a story, there exist a completly diffrent one. You can litterally change physics, the question is if you can do it properly. Also, 4:05 , if humans live the tenth amount it would be even less, 80:8, now, that's truly terrifing! Came here to say that, amazing video! English isn't my first language, sorry for the errors. Have a great day people!😁

I can also imagine elves as being extremely engrained in time. Because they have so much time, they see the value of this moment, the specialness of now. They can experience this single sunrise with their full attention because they don't have to worry about tomorrow. They do have the time to do something with all their heart and are not plagued by the little details of "what will i eat tonight?" "how would my friend be doing?" "i still need to do laundry" they know that what doesn't happen now, will happen when they have time for that so they can focus entirely on what they are doing now. Or being completely the opposite because if they still have to eat, sleep, clean and so on every day, they will have problems keeping up with it, because in their eyes its such a large chunk of their time they have to spent on it. I think that they would have a lot of inventions to take care of those things like humans also invented more to speed up the stuff that took the most time in their lives.

I like Frieren. But I wonder if an immortal race would really undervalue the experiences of life in that way. I don’t judge an experience in terms of my lifespan. I enjoy the moment. Even if I lived for 10000 years, it wouldn’t reduce the joy or wonder of a moment with friends. My college years are no less special because I have new friends now. In fact the knowledge that these moments are so ephemeral, makes them even more valuable. In a nearly infinite life, the years are irrelevant, but the moments are everything. I may become jaded to some more mundane things, but there are always new places, new people, new discoveries. In an infinite universe, even an immortal will never run out of things to explore, people to meet, and special moments. So many stories explore the pain or monotony of immortality. Losing loved ones, or being bored with the mundane. But I think it would be more like Doctor Who. All of time and space to explore, and an infinite life to explore it.

@dravex9697

2 ай бұрын

Excellent take. For all the discourse lambasting immortality, it can't be ignored that all the people portraying it as a depressing slog are mortal humans, themselves; not a single one can speak from experience. It's wild to me how so many can handwave an idea that hasn't even been realized before - if an immortality treatment sprung into existence tomorrow, hordes of the people currently railing against immortality would be lined up around the block to benefit from it. So why all the dismissal? Perhaps it's a sour grapes situation: because so many people consider immortality unattainable, they cope by assuming it would be undesirable anyway. They reframe it as something you shouldn't want even if it became a possibility, despite it having the potential to elevate the human experience beyond what it ever has been. Nobody should be ashamed of wanting to live for as long as they please.

i have an alien race that is practically immortal and they've been around since before most of the stars. ive never really thought about how that would affect them but this video found me as ive started exploring that concept.

This is really interesting and I've actually thought about this for my world and characters. I've actually changed life spans of several characters either making them longer or shorter. One a dhampir who has lived for a very long time I shortened it a bit because I asked the question wtf did he do in all that time? He has two main stories. One of my friends ravenloft campaign but by then he's already lived a long time. In the other is when he gets back to feywood, my world and meets the love of his life. But I play around with the fact of missing those that are long gone. I also have another character who is still young for his race. He traveled the world avoiding responsibility until he was around 60. Even tho his species lives for about as long as elves. He feels guilt over not acting sooner. How many lives lost because he didn't act sooner. After defeating the big bad guy he goes on to mentor several other characters. I've also upped the human lifespan a bit for story and more reasons. Due to the magical energy in feywood humans can live up to 200 years tho most die young. And even when species like elves they often die young and don't get to experience old age due to all the dangers in my world. But the ones who do live extremely long might be extremely intelligent, get very bored, or go insane. Insane because how much information can one really store? They might literally forget important events because the brain can only remember so much.

My issue with the longer lived races was formthe longest time in D&D and games based on it there was little about how long it took them to reach physical maturity. Usually yhe assumption in settings and at a lotmof tables, it was whatever it said on the table in the PHB. Under TSR, it was explicitly stated that elves took 80 to 90 years to rewch physical maturity. That never sat well with memover the decades. I like that Paizo has said, that on Golarion, elves reach physical maturity only slightly after humans at around 25. The idea of an elf is adult at 100 is an entirely social concept to elves. There are even several instance in setting of Forsaken [elves that grew up ariund the shorter lived races] being out and adventuring between 20 and 25.... and other elves being appalled by what amounts to child-soldiers.

Frieren is basically the embodiment of procrastination, it shows you why having a deadline (quite literally) can be important to progress yourself or the world.

Final Fantasy 14 shows that concept well with the dragons in the heavensward expansion, you meet one who was thought to have died years ago, in truth he was litterally just taking a short pause, resting his eyes a little after the battle and recharging some strength. Later another will wish you a good life, because he's tired and planning to take a short nap, more or less showing how little your lifespan is compared to theirs.

Me and some friends have played DnD for a long time. One friend has played and elf, and I play human nobles of varying classes... Their elf is several hundred years old and has remained loyal to the family of my characters for hundreds of years! Constantly comparing this new character to their many ancestors. Laughing when they do something a previous character would have. Scolding them for making similar mistakes, while forgetting they aren't the same person. They've watched this family grow from small local noble, to powerful kingdom.

I watched the show because of this video and loved it. Both really forced me to look at my current character in a different light. I already planned for him to eventually take aspect of the moon to remove the need for sleep in order for him to escape his daily nightmares. After realizing that his being half dragon half elf would cause him to live an extremely long life makes the need for the invocation very dire

Also- to take this to a space that is frequently gone into by this channel- how these tropes are handled in actual plays- I really appreciated how Dimension 20 Fantasy High Sophomore Year dealt with this issue with Adaine. Spoilers for people who haven’t watched it! But tying her fear of abandonment to her knowledge that she’s going to outlive her entire party and what that does to a person was a really good call for tugging on both Adaine and the viewers’ heart strings. Especially with someone who’s already dealt with as much loss as Adaine at that point and as *early* into her exceptionally long life as she is, having to confront that? Yeah, that was a gut punch!

"You're fighting so you can watch everyone around you die! *Think, Mark!* You'll outlast every fragile, insignificant being on this planet. You'll live to see this world crumble to dust and blow away! Everyone and everything you know will be gone! What will have after 500 years?"

Imagine having to work 400 years instead of 40 before retirement…

I did enjoy playing an elf mage in DnD once. I greeted a human lord by putting my hands on my knees and hunching a bit, despite being of a height with the man, and singing out "Now what might your name be little boy?"

Most people not familiar with Elf's coming hermits in old age will miss Freiren joined Himels party after being a hermit for 500 years(she was doing her Undying Lands/Evermeet bit) thus her more distant aloof nature

I once read a book where a young hero needed to recruit a vampire kingdom to save his fathers kingdom from the great big bad guy. His kingdom sent youth each year to keep these vampire from eating them all. They had this arrangement for centuries at this point. He had to convince them it was important that they would not have any food if the great bog bad killed them all. He only managed to convince them by highlighting the fact that they were also bored. That this entire kingdom of undead had done essentially Nothing for hundreds of years thanks to the agreement with his kingdom. The vampire king and queen were greatly amused by his lack of fear of them. They joined the war effort and soon realized that the big bad was a Much Greater threat than they had realized. Even with the vampire kingdom they barely managed to defeat the big bad guy. Ugh, I wish I could find that book again. I really loved the concept of extremely bored immortals. The whole "history is doomed to repeat itself" would be a form of agony to live through again and again. That book really went into it.

The first point you made is exactly why I always picture my characters to be young. A friend asked me why I would make a character that could live for 200 years only in their early 20's. Because in the context of the game world, we are starting at level one and will probably die to a racoon over anything else. I'm not going to make an elf character that is 200-300-400 years old that is going to get their world rocked by a kid throwing a well-aimed stick at my head. I am a level 1 elven wizard that can only cast burning hands a few times over a given period of time, is that really all that I can do after spending centuries living in a city that has existed since the beginning of time and has seen whole empires come and go. What have I been doing for all those centuries? I never understood why people always wanted to play a character that is in the fall of their life, when it is from that point onward that they will become way more than they ever were before.

So I got into 2 things around the same time that both address elves life span around the same time. One is frieren as you mentioned but the other is dungeon meshi. While the show hasn't gotten to it yet dungeon meshi explores the elongated life span of elves from multiple perspectives via multiple characters and without spoiling anything it's very interesting how both different characters treat the ageing differences and how the different societies of the different races treat each other as wholes.

One aspect of elves' super-long lives that seldom gets talked about, and that I based key aspects of their social structure around in my homebrew setting, is that the "generation gap" of mindset between elves who are just starting out in life and those who've already lived for centuries is going to be gargantuan . Elven populations in my setting are self-sorted into "elderbands" and "youthbands", with the former and latter barely interacting in day-to-day life. Elder elves take responsibility for cultural tradition, mastery of arts and crafts, pure magical research, military leadership, and high-level decision making for their societies. Most elders establish lasting close relationships with from one to half a dozen peers as a co-habiting family of choice, rarely traveling beyond their home settlements or indeed even their residences unless their duties demand it. If your PCs need to consult an elder elf for information on some obscure historical figure or lost language, they'd better be ready to track them down at their address ... and possibly to be sent on to a completely different elder's home, if it turns out the first one's knowledge, though first-hand and exhaustive, covers a slightly-different historical period. (And let's hope neither of them is too caught up in building a palatial mansion out of matchsticks or penning the 287th chapter of their memoirs to help you.) Very few aged elves deal much with beings as short-lived as humans, whose languages, cultures, and politics shift so rapidly that few elders can be bothered to keep track of them. Indeed, their aversion to travel is mostly because most don't enjoy seeing how so many landmarks and wildlands they'd loved in centuries past have changed beyond recognition. Elf youths, being fast-thinking and impatient by elder standards, do the traveling, trading, and interacting with short-lived races whose mindsets they can better relate to. They gather in cliques and crowds of similar-aged youths, socializing and learning and competing and courting and partying with their age-mates like a high school class. Virtually all elf adventurers come from such youthbands, and the vast majority of elves are born within such bands as well: products of young adult elves' "brief" romantic flings of five or ten years' duration. Such children are born free from any social stigma about being "accidents" - slow-breeding elves welcome all the offspring they can get - and are raised by their (great-)grandparents, aunts, or uncles - elves who are on the brink of "aging out" of the youthband and taking up elder responsibilities, child-rearing being a "trial run" of sorts for those - more often than by their birth-parents. More than one dwarf or human adventurer has been shocked to discover that their elf companion, who looks and acts too young for college, receives finger-paint pictures from her grandson in care packages from home.

Stories are told on top of stories, is an entire reason why I have to hard-world build an entire world for about three to four centuries before the destruction of an entire continent on that world where most of the history I am building now gets destroyed and only the fragments are left.... but I want to know what the clay pot looked like before the pieces were smashed into rubble and left for years, so this is how I do it

Let's not forget Kraft from Beyond Journey's End. If you know who I'm talking about and the implications for Frieren's future, you know

I remember "Genevieve undead" (a warhammer novel) explored this and she was only... 300? And it literally changed the way i saw the world. (For example, the idea of an afterlife became actively horrifying.)

As a counterpoint, when you live a long time, when is the time to let go of any one aspect of yourself, your past, your skills. If you forget quite important parts of your legacy because of constantly evolving life and self, is that so bad? Do your stanards for what it means to be a mentor ajust because you have longer to mentor those of your own kind, who you become accustomed to? Do you feel more accountable because you will be more likely to see all the consequences of your own actions, or, if you are stubborn, do you become more and more inflexible because time doesn't help with that though pattern? How does this sense of long time affect your ability to forgive, or your ability to experience or accept forgiveness from others? When you have unique experience because of age, how much duty do you feel to live almost strictly to pass on that legacy or let it be lost and what part of life do you lose if you devote too much to that duty? Also, don't tend to see writers deal with the truth that,if it take someone a long time even to be a relitively young life stage, their risk of being disabled in all kinds of non-age-related ways is still the same. So maybe vast numbers of these long-lived mythical race peoples should be variously disabled . . . and then we get into how attitude to disability changes when it's just a given that a large chunk of your life WILL be spent with one or more serious disabilities. And what if an elf losing a large part of their memory, or starts to forget with something like dementioa? At what point are they a difforent person entirely? I immagine such elf-people could also live in constant fear of being trapped in powerless or painful stuations without the means to cause their own deaths, since that suffering could go on without any very firm temporal limit. And how does longer life affect the community reaction when an elf dies young?

This is actually very interesting. I've been reading the Decameron, a book from the 1300s,and it always struck me how fast they lived. I mean they would do things so young and so quickly, get married after a few months, start a feud over nothing, etc. I keep thinking to myself how much slower I would go about those situations, on the other hand I expect to live around 75 years, whereas they were lucky if they got fifty.

The Faraway Paladin is a series that actually touches on one of those first points of no urgency. There's a scene where the spirit of a dead elf says they need to "go that way as quick as possible" to save an elf that's barely defending against a hydra, the elf in the party knows that they need to book it immediately at max speed bc you can't trust an elf's sense of time bc it's probably almost too late

A campaign I am participating in dabbles with this concept, I usually never pick elves in this case I did an elf feywild wanderer, with a journey of self discovery thing, essentially aloof and disconnected but really wants to help people and discover why, so he follows the party in order to understand where comes the drive for urgency at improvement I continue by saying, frieren is a must watch for fans of fantasy and dnd party shenanigans it has very little anime bs and the characters are great

There's a very well-written race in the 'Beyonders' books, humanoids called drinlings who live two years. They were created as a soldier race, learn and grow at incredible speed. And there's a long-lived elvenlike race as well, for contrast. Definitely recommend those books.

One of the reson why unlike other elves in anime and media is that in fierern elves became endangered which makes time feel more fleeting as its like seeing an ant farm to a human if thats all u see u lose the interest to have speed as u dont have to race to be the best as u will be the best just by time but other versions where elves are as abundant as others time will feel similar to humans but the interest in advancement and research would be far superior and more complete as time allows experimentation to reach its limit that even human

We have yet to find the limit to Human lifespans. Yet, in the medieval times life expectancy was much less because of things killing us. Even with Magic, medieval fantasy worlds would likely have an upper bound of 50 years at most due to things killing us, so it probably shouldn't be a problem in most worlds

I play as an elf character in a TTRPG and one of the funny quirks is he finds himself really having difficulty communicating because he’s so old he speaks Middle English instead of Modern English.

For those of us not steeped in a anime. What was the story mention around the 5:00 mark? I saw no reference in notes or comments. It looked interesting.

Interesting point about the longevity of elves. I had never really considered it I just sort of accepted it. Thinking about it though from what you were speaking of I think you could almost equate elves with vampires and that's what they're both immortal and the burden or curse of immortality. Like Anne Rice points out in Interview with the Vampire, few vampires have the stomach for immortality so I wonder if it would be the same with elves?

In most of my settings, elves as a whole have a 'go with the flow' mentality. They just do what feels right for them at the time, and stop when something else comes up. Add in a cultural mentality of everything having regular seasons, and even the idea of *having* a 'life's work' is alien to them. They just don't get why humans or dwarves would want to do just one thing for all their life, and because of that they don't achieve the same comparative level of greatness in any one thing. Combine that with their affinity for magic making life very comfortable, and their societies have little need to push for excellence the same way humans and dwarves do. This mentality led to some fun interactions such as one elf PC suggesting a human community just abandon their city in the face of an invasion because it would only take a decade or two to rebuild. Naturally, he wasn't very popular after that.

In the Enlantra books by Michelle Sagara she has two immortal races the dragon and barani(read as elf). She has them wanting to do anything because the thing that scares them the most is boredom. They will do anything just that are not bored anymore.