I can take you back to my childhood a little here
The Scandinavian "Drakar & Demoner" had a "monster book" with an interesting take. Elves are basically associated with specific parts of nature (going back to ideas of elves as nature spirits I suppose, but more in the flesh). So you have wood-elves, cave-elves (with bigger ears), gray elves (a sort of sea elves, I always wondered if these were inspired by Tolkien's Gray Havens), and silver elves that can fly (some sort of realm in the skies I suppose), and frost elves in arctic areas. You would not want to mess with the areas that they protect and consider their realm. Elves are also related to a wider group of "elven" peoples that include things like water nymphs that my younger self found pretty hot.  

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4750[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4751[/ATTACH]

i allow players to use the advantage/disadvantage components of the D6 system to build their non-humans so that no two elves or gnomes are truly alike; ultimately what is the difference between an elven enchantress and a nymph?

I always liked the Tolkien Elves... They were epic. Kind of dropped their sad part though, and added a few things of my own to vary player experiences.

Elves IMC are immortal, and only die of they are slain in battle, or who tire of this life, choose to leave this world, and go to the next. The are immune to disease, don't need to sleep, but do rest or meditate for about four hours a day. There are three types of elves, High Elves, Woodland Elves, and Dark Elves.

The High Elves like magic, and are renowned as Wizards and Sorcerers. They can create any magic items, and often create new and impressive magics that few have seen before. They also like temporal magic, and time-shift or phase shift their cities. They spend time with other spirits and fey, and are capricious and enjoy playing pranks. Being immortal means they are unconcerned with most of what goes on in the physical world, choosing to time-shift away using magic, if threatened, or attacked. You'll typically find a plenitude of pixies and sprites, and some nymphs, and slyphs who live with and share  the arboreal tree cities the elves enjoy living in. Spend just a day or two in the realm of the high elves, and a season or to will pass in the real world.

The Woodland Elves like crafts, and are experts as smiths and carpenters, and use magic to make remarkable tools, dishware and utensils. They don't use temporal magic, and instead prefer elemental magic. They are expert trackers and rangers and gain bonuses for tracking, hunting, and wilderness survival. They like riding Wolves, Giant Ferrets, Eagles, Griffons, and Pegasus. They also spend time with sprites and pixies and other fey, including wood nymphs, and jealously guard the sanctity of the woodlands. Often they can be found in the company of druids as well as wizards and sorcerers.

The Dark Elves are also crafters, and they live beneath the ground in caverns or dungeons. They focus on gemcutting and smithing fine jewels, and specialize in earth and water elemental magic, glyphs & wards, and illusion magic. They are not evil, but neutral, however are solitary and aloof, do not like to be disturbed by other races.

I have Ice Elves too, and they specialize in Light and energy based magic. The have pale blue skin and generally light hair color, with white, deep blue, or black eyes. They also use various cold or ice spells, and are also magical jewel smiths with talents in creating jewel embedded weapons, with spells stored in crystals and gems that are set into weapons, rings, staves, wands, and apparel. They are also adept miners and can delve through both stone, earth and ice with impressive accuracy and speed. They generally live in Ice Caverns or Ice Crevasses, although sometimes they create mountain strongholds by delving into stone, much like the dwarves. They do not spend time with Fey, but do like to roam and explore the Astral and Ethereal planes.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1143907I always liked the Tolkien Elves... They were epic. Kind of dropped their sad part though, and added a few things of my own to vary player experiences.

Elves IMC are immortal, and only die of they are slain in battle, or who tire of this life, choose to leave this world, and go to the next. The are immune to disease, don't need to sleep, but do rest or meditate for about four hours a day. There are three types of elves, High Elves, Woodland Elves, and Dark Elves.

The High Elves like magic, and are renowned as Wizards and Sorcerers. They can create any magic items, and often create new and impressive magics that few have seen before. They also like temporal magic, and time-shift or phase shift their cities. They spend time with other spirits and fey, and are capricious and enjoy playing pranks. Being immortal means they are unconcerned with most of what goes on in the physical world, choosing to time-shift away using magic, if threatened, or attacked. You'll typically find a plenitude of pixies and sprites, and some nymphs, and slyphs who live with and share  the arboreal tree cities the elves enjoy living in. Spend just a day or two in the realm of the high elves, and a season or to will pass in the real world.

The Woodland Elves like crafts, and are experts as smiths and carpenters, and use magic to make remarkable tools, dishware and utensils. They don't use temporal magic, and instead prefer elemental magic. They are expert trackers and rangers and gain bonuses for tracking, hunting, and wilderness survival. They like riding Wolves, Giant Ferrets, Eagles, Griffons, and Pegasus. They also spend time with sprites and pixies and other fey, including wood nymphs, and jealously guard the sanctity of the woodlands. Often they can be found in the company of druids as well as wizards and sorcerers.

The Dark Elves are also crafters, and they live beneath the ground in caverns or dungeons. They focus on gemcutting and smithing fine jewels, and specialize in earth and water elemental magic, glyphs & wards, and illusion magic. They are not evil, but neutral, however are solitary and aloof, do not like to be disturbed by other races.

I have Ice Elves too, and they specialize in Light and energy based magic. The have pale blue skin and generally light hair color, with white, deep blue, or black eyes. They also use various cold or ice spells, and are also magical jewel smiths with talents in creating jewel embedded weapons, with spells stored in crystals and gems that are set into weapons, rings, staves, wands, and apparel. They are also adept miners and can delve through both stone, earth and ice with impressive accuracy and speed. They generally live in Ice Caverns or Ice Crevasses, although sometimes they create mountain strongholds by delving into stone, much like the dwarves. They do not spend time with Fey, but do like to roam and explore the Astral and Ethereal planes.

Hey, that's surprisingly similar to the Scandinavian Drakar & Demoner (post above)

In my eyes he's still the King.[ATTACH=CONFIG]4757[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Trond;1143899I can take you back to my childhood a little here
The Scandinavian "Drakar & Demoner" had a "monster book" with an interesting take. Elves are basically associated with specific parts of nature (going back to ideas of elves as nature spirits I suppose, but more in the flesh).

Quote from: GameDaddy;1143907I always liked the Tolkien Elves... They were epic. Kind of dropped their sad part though, and added a few things of my own to vary player experiences.

I think Tolkien has overshadowed the fantasy genre and stifled its possibilities, although that probably deserves a topic of its own.

In pre-Tolkien occultism, the elves were named as one of the many varieties of earth elementals alongside gnomes, goblins, satyrs, dwarves, etc. Occultism assigned elemental affinities to all magical creatures.

I don't know where the idea of elves being associated with all the elements originates, although Legends of the Fire Spirits claims that Tunisian folklore has genies of the air (leriah), sea (baharia), and land (siadna). So that idea wasn't invented by Gygax, although he almost certainly came up with idea independently from the Tunisians since his names for the different tribes were nonsensical (e.g. djinn (or jinn) is the Arabic word for genie, jann is the genderless inflection of jinn, marid is a synonym for genie and has nothing to do with water, ifrit is another synonym for genie, and dao isn't Arabic at all). The Tunisian genies don't resemble the D&D ones at all: the leriah are spirits of disease, the baharia are mermaids and mermen, and the siadna loosely resemble fairies in post-Christianized Indo-European cultures (for example, their name is a euphemism meaning "our sovereigns" similarly to the use of "fair folk").

I think you could make a case for placing elves, genies, etc under an umbrella if you're trying to write a medieval authentic game. I think Ars Magica tries to do something like that, since their Mythic Africa book names the Tunisian genie varieties (I suspect they read the same book I did), but I'm not familiar with it overall. Though what I have read of it is really complicated, since (like the wildly inconsistent folklore it emulates) it mentions that "genie" is an umbrella term for many related and unrelated entities. I have to give it credit for going to the insane effort of creating an underlying logic for the many idiosyncrasies of folklore. You'd never see anything like that in the humpty dumpty world of D&D jargon.