Quote from: Zalman on August 11, 2022, 07:42:33 AM
One thing that comes to mind for me is that elves live longer because they engage in activities during which they do not experience the passage of time. We've all probably heard the stories about humans entering fairy rings who wind up dancing for 40 years. Suppose elves in this state do not age (mentally or physically), and that they do this sort of thing regularly.

In this scenario, the 100-year-old elf who is starting out on adventure has really only "lived" the same 15 years as their human counterpart, while the rest was spent in a timeless trance state. They age the same as everyone else during the span of their adventuring career, and generally return to long trancing/dancing/etc. upon retirement.

Yep, do you get experience doing the same easy stuff over and over, or do you get it pushing yourself?  How is the experience curve modeled in the game?  Even for us mere humans, I've met people that have effectively crammed almost 3-4 years of experience (relative to their peers) into about a year (even though they'll have some gaps).  And I've also met people with 10-20 years experience in their field, that apparently haven't learned a thing after the bare minimum in the first six months.

Several people have mentioned population, growth rates, etc.  Well, that works both ways.  Yeah, the races with long lives are going to go after more education, possibly contributing to even lower birth rates.  But also those with lower birth rates are going to be far more cautious with the children they have--which means a lot less life experience.  It's at the extremes when this start to really become so alien that we can't fully relate it to human norms.  Which is why even though we talk about dwarf and elf, it's really the nigh-immortal elves that are the issue.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on August 11, 2022, 08:42:07 AM

Quote from: Zalman on August 11, 2022, 07:42:33 AM
One thing that comes to mind for me is that elves live longer because they engage in activities during which they do not experience the passage of time. We've all probably heard the stories about humans entering fairy rings who wind up dancing for 40 years. Suppose elves in this state do not age (mentally or physically), and that they do this sort of thing regularly.

In this scenario, the 100-year-old elf who is starting out on adventure has really only "lived" the same 15 years as their human counterpart, while the rest was spent in a timeless trance state. They age the same as everyone else during the span of their adventuring career, and generally return to long trancing/dancing/etc. upon retirement.

Yep, do you get experience doing the same easy stuff over and over, or do you get it pushing yourself?  How is the experience curve modeled in the game?  Even for us mere humans, I've met people that have effectively crammed almost 3-4 years of experience (relative to their peers) into about a year (even though they'll have some gaps).  And I've also met people with 10-20 years experience in their field, that apparently haven't learned a thing after the bare minimum in the first six months.

Several people have mentioned population, growth rates, etc.  Well, that works both ways.  Yeah, the races with long lives are going to go after more education, possibly contributing to even lower birth rates.  But also those with lower birth rates are going to be far more cautious with the children they have--which means a lot less life experience.  It's at the extremes when this start to really become so alien that we can't fully relate it to human norms.  Which is why even though we talk about dwarf and elf, it's really the nigh-immortal elves that are the issue.

The issue is that even taking all that stuff into account (and similar points made by others), being stuck 40+ years (80 in the case of elves) in a holding pattern is excessive, implausible and unhealthy. People who spent 10-20 years learning nothing tend to get held back in real life. They don't advance at work, learn new skills or achieve anything significant. And once people get to that place they tend to develop inertia and conformity with their current station in life, and it's really hard to break from that pattern.

Do people who spend decades not learning anything technically exist in real life? Sure, but they're hardly shining exemplars of a successful human being, and they're always older people or at least nearing middle age who already who already had a full education, got a job, then plateaued and got stuck where they are in life. They're never young, vibrant people with their whole lives ahead of them, still in their developmental years. And if they are, they're FUCKED, cuz they never develop a work ethic or inclination to work (I've known people like that, and they become useless parasites invariably).

The idea that an elf, dwarf or whatever would reach maturity at age 20 or so, then get stuck DECADES (plural!), wasting their youth away, waiting to become productive and truly functional members of society is just dumb. It's dumb from a developmental point of view, and it's dumb from an economic point of view because it means that the rest of society has to carry their unproductive ass for all those years (which are multiple DECADES) while they sit around and do nothing. Then finally, after decades of being a useless eater they're suddenly gonna get the productive bug up their ass and somehow break off from decades of inertia doing nothing and not advancing at all in their lives?

I don't buy it. It just makes no sense. Even bringing up the "Oh, but they're so long lived, they're just alien and incomprehensible to us" angle it still makes no sense from a practical point of view, and just sounds wasteful AF. Having long lived races waste decades of their youth cuz they live hundreds of years doesn't invoke a sense of agelessness in me. It just makes me wonder how these people even got their society started and haven't gotten displaced by more productive races already.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 11:24:22 AM
People Humans who spent 10-20 years learning nothing tend to get held back in real life.

Fixed that for you.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 11:24:22 AM
The idea that an elf, dwarf or whatever would reach maturity at age 20 or so, then get stuck DECADES (plural!), wasting their youth away, waiting to become productive and truly functional members of society is just dumb.

Why do you assume they would mature first, and then start doing the elf-dance/trance thing? More likely, they've been doing it, say, monthly throughout their youth. And how is it a "waste" of youth, if they don't age or experience time when they're doing it?

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 11:24:22 AM
It just makes me wonder how these people even got their society started and haven't gotten displaced by more productive races already.

Which is of course a ubiquitous theme in literature. The elves did, in fact, get displaced by humans.

Quote from: Zalman on August 11, 2022, 11:32:47 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 11:24:22 AM
People Humans who spent 10-20 years learning nothing tend to get held back in real life.

Fixed that for you.

Irrelevant. Telling me that they're not human doesn't address any of the logical problems I pointed out. It just handwaves them away, because "fantasy", like verisimilitude isn't a thing.

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Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 11:24:22 AM
The idea that an elf, dwarf or whatever would reach maturity at age 20 or so, then get stuck DECADES (plural!), wasting their youth away, waiting to become productive and truly functional members of society is just dumb.

Why do you assume they would mature first, and then start doing the elf-dance/trance thing? More likely, they've been doing it, say, monthly throughout their youth. And how is it a "waste" of youth, if they don't age or experience time when they're doing it?

I wasn't talking about the elf-dance/trance thing. That's a separate issue, that depends on whether that's even the way that is handled in the campaign, which isn't a given. And it doesn't really address the logistical issues of how do we even maintain a population of people waiting decades on end to become fully acting adult members of society. Even if they don't age during that time, they're still doing nothing with it, draining resources (even if at a reduced rate) and indisposed. So what's the point of even having all those years of "life" if they're not gonna be doing anything with them?  Why even have it in the game to begin with?

What does it add to the game to make elves wait 80 years to start taking an active role in the world, simply because the game book says their starting age is 100? If they supposedly mature by 20, just make 20ish the starting age, and maybe drop the maximum age few decades to make adjustments if long life is really an issue.

Quote

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 11:24:22 AM
It just makes me wonder how these people even got their society started and haven't gotten displaced by more productive races already.

Which is of course a ubiquitous theme in literature. The elves did, in fact, get displaced by humans.

It's a ubiquitous theme that depends on the specifics the campaign world and it's usually explained as being a consequence of their birth rates. The points I'm talking about go beyond that.

Quote from: Zalman on August 11, 2022, 07:42:33 AM
One thing that comes to mind for me is that elves live longer because they engage in activities during which they do not experience the passage of time. We've all probably heard the stories about humans entering fairy rings who wind up dancing for 40 years. Suppose elves in this state do not age (mentally or physically), and that they do this sort of thing regularly.

In this scenario, the 100-year-old elf who is starting out on adventure has really only "lived" the same 15 years as their human counterpart, while the rest was spent in a timeless trance state. They age the same as everyone else during the span of their adventuring career, and generally return to long trancing/dancing/etc. upon retirement.

I really like this idea!
It's a great way to explain an elf's longer life without resorting to Tolkien-esque "immortality." It can also present some unique cultural shifts within elven communities, with "city elves" who spend more time around humans seen as having turned their backs on their heritage. Similarly, the city elves might view traditional elves as haughty, stagnant dinosaurs.

It's possible that immature long-lived races simply don't learn as quickly as humans. It's also possible that, while mature elves only trance 4 hours per day, younger elves may trance (or even sleep!) for much longer, possibly even for 20 hours per day. Anything is possible when talking about non-humans in a magical world.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 10, 2022, 07:20:25 PM
...

The problem is that none of this is mechanically reflected in the game. Elves and dwarves don't get extra skill/tool proficiency selections to reflect their stricter cultural expectations or decades (almost a freaking century in the case of elves) of study and honing their skills to extreme standards higher than expected of humans. They don't get bonuses to Int or Wis, or at least minimum Int & Wis requirements to reflect any of this either. Technically you could play an elven or dwarven drooling idiot, even though it goes against their (extremely) extended upbringing, and there's nothing in the rules stopping you.

This is absolutely true...

Earlier editions of D&D tried to make allowances for this. But as a practical matter class restrictions, Ability score minimums, and level limits were some of the first things tossed from the game.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 10, 2022, 07:20:25 PM
Plus, if elves and dwarves physically mature at the same rate as humans there's no real reason they couldn't start adventuring right away—specially since other races wouldn't care or know what their cultural expectations are. If anything, everything you mention here implies that maybe they should start adventuring early to get all that wisdom and experience their elders expect from them. That would help explain why lore-wise those races are supposed to stand out in terms of talent above other races—they spend decades "leveling up" before they're even accepted as full members of their society.
...

That is the best solution Lore-wise from a practical perspective.

There should also be lore notes that give brief GM and PC expectations on how such an Elf PC doing his 'grand tour/walkabout' is treated by other older elves.

Most of this thread seems to consider Elves as being adventurers from day one that twiddled their thumbs for decades before actually going out on an adventure. More likely the Elf was studying ancient Drow Poetry and had a midlife crisis and then became an adventurer at 40+, with 1st level adventuring skills equal to a 20-something human.

Of course level-limits in old AD&D complicate this way of thinking as an Elf that started at 20 should be able to go up and up and up over the years.

Quote from: Ruprecht on August 11, 2022, 05:08:01 PM
Most of this thread seems to consider Elves as being adventurers from day one that twiddled their thumbs for decades before actually going out on an adventure. More likely the Elf was studying ancient Drow Poetry and had a midlife crisis and then became an adventurer at 40+, with 1st level adventuring skills equal to a 20-something human.

Mechanically, there's nothing to support studying drow poetry.  Elves aren't automatically more intelligent, nor do they have more skills.  Not even 'cultural skills' like music and poetry. 

In every way that matters, a 110 year old elf going on his first adventure is just like a 15 year old human going on his first adventure.  Either the adolescent human is learning almost 10x faster or the elf is wasting almost a century. 

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 12:27:10 PM
I wasn't talking about the elf-dance/trance thing. That's a separate issue, that depends on whether that's even the way that is handled in the campaign, which isn't a given. And it doesn't really address the logistical issues of how do we even maintain a population of people waiting decades on end to become fully acting adult members of society. Even if they don't age during that time, they're still doing nothing with it, draining resources (even if at a reduced rate) and indisposed. So what's the point of even having all those years of "life" if they're not gonna be doing anything with them?  Why even have it in the game to begin with?

To be fair, there's nothing to suggest young elves are "wasting time" for 80+ years and being a drain on society/economy. It's well within reason to assume they are working at an apprenticeship or providing other menial services (like burger-flipping for 80 years). I understand your point, though, that these experiences aren't being represented, and that's one of the things I was hoping to have a productive conversation around. It's one thing to point out the inconsistancies, but it's another to suggest ways of addressing them.

The dance/trance idea is a great way to explain why elves seem to "lose" time, which only looks like immortality to an outside observer.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 11, 2022, 11:24:22 AM
I don't buy it. It just makes no sense. Even bringing up the "Oh, but they're so long lived, they're just alien and incomprehensible to us" angle it still makes no sense from a practical point of view, and just sounds wasteful AF. Having long lived races waste decades of their youth cuz they live hundreds of years doesn't invoke a sense of agelessness in me. It just makes me wonder how these people even got their society started and haven't gotten displaced by more productive races already.

I think you misunderstood my use of "alien" there.  I think we are in agreement.  I'm saying that we can use all these marginal reasons (especially if you don't look too close), and get them to work for halflings or dwarves or something that lives longer than people but not that much longer.  Sure, if your dwarves start pushing 250+ on a regular basis, that breaks down too, but we can use some of these ideas to extend races into the 100-200 range.  Actually, it works even better if several of the ideas are used in conjunction, because then when not looking at it too close, it's a lot easier to assume when one factor doesn't apply, another one does.

Whereas with creatures routinely living 500, 1000, or more years, it's either one of two things:  They have a lot more life experiences, even if sheltered somewhat--and thus should nearly all have more skills, power, etc.  Or there is something truly alien (i.e. "not human") in their makeup that explains why they don't have all those life experiences.  Zalman's answer works.  In a similar vein, you could have a race that hibernates for long stretches--maybe when certain critical foods are in short supply.  Further afield, consider a near immortal race whose brain fills up after a few decades.  Then things start going away, will ye, nil ye.  Dr. Elf went back to med school on 4 different occasions, doing a different specialty each time, with only a vague sense of the retained skills from the prior century.  By the time humans start doing that, it's time to start winding down your affairs. 

Of course, whatever that alien thing is that explains it should have other consequences that make it stand out.

Greetings!

The problem is that the D&D game rules have no mechanical reflection of the dynamic that Elves and Dwarves have far longer lifespans than humans, and at theorized levels of maturity, even at a "same state" as humans, Elves and Dwarves are essentially the same as Humans.

Provide Elves with 6 bonus languages; 4 bonus culture lore skills; 6 academic skills; 6 nature skills; 6 professional skills;

Provide Dwarves with 3 bonus languages; 3 bonus culture lore skills; 3 academic skills; 3 nature skills; 6 professional skills;

In my Thandor campaign, I have such individual characters rated at being formally educated, and skilled at the Journeyman Level of professional expertise. Whether individual characters begin play as Player Characters or NPC's, and whether such starting ages are 30, 60, or 100, such supplemental detail seems sufficient, in both cases for Elves and Dwarves. Elves and Dwarves also typically begin play with various racial abilities, as well as racial skills in weapons, armour, and fighting. Pound for pound, Elves and Dwarves are superior to the average human. Humans dominate simply from a broad foundation of skill, and breeding like crazy. Humans have thousands, tens of thousands, of craftsmen, etc, and they are also readily replaced and augmented every 20 years. Elves and Dwarves, not being blessed with such proliferation, simply don't make that many, and don't expand their numbers nearly at the same rate that Human do so.

Assuming various racial bonuses to favoured skills, in practice such dynamics mean that almost always, typical or average Elven or Dwarven craftsmen, for example, are likely to be considerably and noticeably more skilled and knowledgeable than a Human craftsman of whatever profession. Only Humans that have been practicing a craft or profession for many years, and have pursued extreme levels of dedication and artistry are likely to compare to the better Elven and Dwarven craftsmen. Humans, of course, blessed from birth with unusual talent, will naturally show themselves to be members of elite skill, artistry, and capability.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

If you really wanted to model this in some way you'd need some kind of character development minigame.

Human Starting Age: 14 + 1d6 years.
Every year roll on Human Profession/Skill/Event table.

Elf Starting Age: 22 + 6d6 years
Every year roll on the Elf Profession/Skill/Event table


Even if you assume Elves are spending a majority of their time on the equivalent of watching TV, what becomes apparent is if you want this to make any sense at all you need a real setting (and not a D&D-like implied "generic fantasy") setting to be able to describe what these characters are doing.

Quote from: Zelen on August 11, 2022, 11:52:15 PM
If you really wanted to model this in some way you'd need some kind of character development minigame.

Human Starting Age: 14 + 1d6 years.
Every year roll on Human Profession/Skill/Event table.

Elf Starting Age: 22 + 6d6 years
Every year roll on the Elf Profession/Skill/Event table


Even if you assume Elves are spending a majority of their time on the equivalent of watching TV, what becomes apparent is if you want this to make any sense at all you need a real setting (and not a D&D-like implied "generic fantasy") setting to be able to describe what these characters are doing.

Greetings!

Very good point, Zelen! You need a real setting! Very true!

In my Thandor campaign, I definitely have Elves for example, being firmly rooted in a quasi-mythical, mystical tradition. The Elves live in the physical, earthly world, but at the same time have deep connections to the Spirit World.

Besides Elves having particular game-related abilities, I also assume some large degree of mystical capabilities and senses that are very much quasi-supernatural. Elves are NOT humans, so they don't need to abide by or submit to every kind of Human convention or expectation. Take a 50-year old Wood Elf adventurer, for example. If I assume a roughly similar maturity rate for Wood Elves, then they have reached the age of Majority, at by age 25. That mean they have been occupied doing "Wood Elf Things" for the last 25 or so years, presumably before their fateful meetup with the rest of the adventuring band.

What has the young Wood Elf been doing all of these years? Yes, indeed, the maturity rate is similar, but with time--the experience and perspective of *time* is different for a long-lived race like the Elves, in comparison to lesser-lived races, like Humans. That 50 years of childhood and adolescence for the young Wood Elf goes by *like a blink*. It seems very swift, and while meaningful to them, not terribly monumental. I always remind myself, that Elves are not Humans, and do not experience time the same way we do. They live much longer, far more years, so their perspective I different.

As for "Wood Elf Things"--I assume the young Wood Elf knows a 50-mile or 100-square mile area around their home settlement, village, or town, extremely well. The Wood Elf, regardless of their main "Class" and favourite profession, knows many, many more things, very well, in addition to all that. They know the weather, the weather patterns, the plants, the crops, the herbs, the changing seasons, the rituals and habits of a dozen kinds of animals. Maybe they know several families of squirrels, and routinely speak to them. As well as a few Hawks, and a family or several, of weasels that live in the nearby forest. The Wood Elf know how to hunt, travel, and live amidst the hill and forest, knowing all the trails, the best meadows, the fastest streams, the deepest and strongest river rapids. At all times, and in all seasons. Nuts, roots, fruits, edible needles, besides fish, frogs, amphibians, rodents, deer, wolves, bears, wolves, beaver, birds, and insects.

Knowledge of local civilized communities or bands, other tribes, monsters, humanoids. Dangerous threats, as well as more seasonal, localized threats and problems. After all, there are many challenges in life that are serious problems, and yet, not an existential threat at all times to the entire community.

Add in some tribal lore, some specialized knowledge and class abilities, a few hobbies or special talents the character wants to focus on, and there you go. The Wood Elf has been busy *LIVING LIFE*. That is how I try and think about it.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK