In those fantasy settings where demi-humans live much much longer than humans, has it been explained why their populations don't make overwhelming majority of the setting's inhabitants? Like, if elves live for millenia, wouldn't they be popping out more babies than humans over their longer span? Are they less fertile? Do their offspring require a longer gestational period?

Just questions that keep me up at night...

You might want to buy this book......

Semi-seriously, that sourcebook goes into exhaustive detail about the subject matter.....

Or this one.

What I've usually seen is just much slower rate of doing most things, including repro cycles. Max lifespan isn't as potent a determinant of population as birth rate. Just look at bugs.

The worse implication to my mind is that very long-lived people would tend to naturally know a lot and potentially have massive amount of time to amass skill and expertise, unless they're slow learners of forgetful or something, which seems somewhat off to me at least in terms of Tolkienesque elves. But seriously, if you get to be in prime health for 100+ years and are fairly coordinated, I'd expect a fighter-type to tend to be able to train up ridiculously better than a human.

And to me, that just adds another level of problem to the typical "we're heroes who are really super great because we've been adventuring for a few years" business in RPGs. Hard for me to imagine that if that's how experience works, there'd be quite a few elves with much greater abilities.

Elves may have transcended the biological imperative to reproduce.  Mating, reproducing, and raising children might be a wholly spiritual experience shared with another.

Dwarves might be consumed with other aspects of their lives: crafts, war, trades, the ultimate workaholics.  Or their numbers might be kept down through constant wars with humanoids under the surface.  Dwarves might also have limited reproduction because they don't outgrow their fortresses.

There is the whole Malthusian thing where populations grow or shrink to whatever the available resources will support. Factors such as lifespans and birthrates may influence how quickly the population reaches this equilibrium state, but they don't play much of a role in the equilibrium state itself. Capital accumulation is the key to escaping the Malthusian trap, but a lot of fantasy settings are assumed to be "frozen in time" with regards to technology and economy. It's not like the industrial revolution is right around the corner.

Other ways to expand the population are usurping the land and resources of other races, or else expanding the frontiers of civilization. The deadliness of critters in unsettled lands can explain why more of the latter doesn't happen. The former requires the dominant race fend off usurpers by being better adapted (D&D level limits, or in Gary's later games, non-humans are assumed to be aliens from other dimensions), or else divine intervention (Hollow World has the "Preservation Spell").

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;971557In those fantasy settings where demi-humans live much much longer than humans, has it been explained why their populations don't make overwhelming majority of the setting's inhabitants? Like, if elves live for millenia, wouldn't they be popping out more babies than humans over their longer span? Are they less fertile? Do their offspring require a longer gestational period?

K-selection reproductive strategy.

Keep in mind that these races may have relatively normal reproduction rates once they hit the required/acceptable age.

But. And this is a big one.

The sheer attrition rate due to monsters may be keeping any growth in check.

Other checks may be things like tradition. Only X number of kids per family. Or may be biological. They may not get the "urge" or ability as often.

And of course the age old fallback of... Gods!

But personally I see it most likely being the sheer lethality of most fantasy settings being the main check. Theres ruins everywhere!

Well, part of reproduction rate is how much choice women have in the matter. I would imagine elven women don't constantly get pregnant because they probably don't want to and have the ability to decide when to have kids. Also I'm guessing elf dudes have very low sperm counts.

Dwarves I think probably suffer from a shortage of women

Quote from: Skarg;971571The worse implication to my mind is that very long-lived people would tend to naturally know a lot and potentially have massive amount of time to amass skill and expertise, unless they're slow learners of forgetful or something, which seems somewhat off to me at least in terms of Tolkienesque elves. But seriously, if you get to be in prime health for 100+ years and are fairly coordinated, I'd expect a fighter-type to tend to be able to train up ridiculously better than a human.

This had come to mind, but I didn't dwell on it. You are right, though. They should be dominating the setting with that much experience.

Quote from: Omega;971590But personally I see it most likely being the sheer lethality of most fantasy settings being the main check. Theres ruins everywhere!

I always got the impression that humans were more populous than elves and dwarves, and they're also exposed to the same dangers. Really must be the reproductive cycle. Blackvulmea's link (thanks!) makes me think that maybe elves and dwarves are more like real life whales, with longer gestation and longer parental investment in their offspring. Longer than humans, anyway, which would be a lot.

On the other hand, there seem to be so many orcs and other low level critters around. It would be cool to think that they come from something like spontaneous generation , but they have been shown to have a sort of tribal family structure from what I remember.

Quote from: Skarg;971571The worse implication to my mind is that very long-lived people would tend to naturally know a lot and potentially have massive amount of time to amass skill and expertise, unless they're slow learners of forgetful or something, which seems somewhat off to me at least in terms of Tolkienesque elves. But seriously, if you get to be in prime health for 100+ years and are fairly coordinated, I'd expect a fighter-type to tend to be able to train up ridiculously better than a human.

And to me, that just adds another level of problem to the typical "we're heroes who are really super great because we've been adventuring for a few years" business in RPGs. Hard for me to imagine that if that's how experience works, there'd be quite a few elves with much greater abilities.

There's some thought that you can't really stay expert at too many things with out it detracting from other things that you aren't focusing on (yes, I know I should have links to provide, I'll see what I can do when I get home). It's possible that the proverbial nearly immortal elves will either become hyperspecialized, or will keep changing what it is they are expert at as interests come and go-- the one who spends 300 years in the forest practicing swordsplay will eventually become infinitely good specifically at sparring with whatever partners they have there in the woods, while the one who keeps changing interests will for all intents and purposes simply be a different person every time you check in on them, but neither will eventually become 'the ultimate swordsman' or 'the ultimate polyglot.'

The Arcanis setting had an interesting take on their version of elves in this regard. The short version is that there was a finite number of Elven souls to go around and once the limit was reached, no new elves would be conceived until there was a free soul to reincarnate.

I used a similar concept in my own setting where the elves were pulled into the World due to the side effects of a planetary scale civilization-ending cataclysm. Their initial numbers (tens of thousands) gave them a huge initial advantage over the few thousand humans in the region, but after three hundred years they're still stuck at tens of thousands while the humans, even with the paltry population growth (about 1.5% or so) due to being surrounded by monster infested ruins of their old empire now number in the hundreds of thousands and its only their fractious warring that keeps the elves from being completely eclipsed by the human kingdoms that now surround them (some conspiracy-minded folks say the warring between the humans is even stoked by shape-shifting elves; changelings are a specific subtype of elf in the setting; acting to keep the humans at war with each other so they don't have the strength to fight the elves).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;971640There's some thought that you can't really stay expert at too many things with out it detracting from other things that you aren't focusing on (yes, I know I should have links to provide, I'll see what I can do when I get home). It's possible that the proverbial nearly immortal elves will either become hyperspecialized, or will keep changing what it is they are expert at as interests come and go-- the one who spends 300 years in the forest practicing swordsplay will eventually become infinitely good specifically at sparring with whatever partners they have there in the woods, while the one who keeps changing interests will for all intents and purposes simply be a different person every time you check in on them, but neither will eventually become 'the ultimate swordsman' or 'the ultimate polyglot.'

Yes, to a degree. Certainly there should be adjustments for rustiness and practice and so on. Also, being really good at something tends to have a lot to do with finding one's genius. But learning and practice are also very important, and becoming an expert has been described as 10,000 hours of practice till it becomes unconscious and doesn't really go away. Huge lifespan would give a lot of potential study time. Without the typical effects of age, skills and especially knowledge tend to accumulate more than they fade.

Quote from: Skarg;971571The worse implication to my mind is that very long-lived people would tend to naturally know a lot and potentially have massive amount of time to amass skill and expertise, unless they're slow learners of forgetful or something, which seems somewhat off to me at least in terms of Tolkienesque elves. But seriously, if you get to be in prime health for 100+ years and are fairly coordinated, I'd expect a fighter-type to tend to be able to train up ridiculously better than a human.

Tolkien's Eldar Elves were tougher than all but the toughest human heroes and I seem to recall an implication in the Silmarillion that humans learned some things (fighting maybe) faster than did the elves. And then there seemed to be a waning of elven capability a feeling that (most of the time and with a few exceptions) elves in the Third Age are not now what they once were. Humans seemed more warlike by nature than did the elves who seemed like they'd be happy singing songs, telling stories, making rings, or whatever rather than spending hours a week practicing fighting.

One option is to assume that elves become bored after reaching a level of mastery in most disciplines (except the one that may truly fascinate them) that is not better than some humans. I think Moorcock in his Corum novels characterized Corums people, the Vadhagh, as pursuing many different interests over their longer than human lifespans.

Or perhaps they tend to become ridiculously skilled in extremely narrow subsets of skill areas the vast majority of which are not combat applicable. So you get elf who is really, really skilled at throwing Raku pottery, the jeweler who is super specialized in making rings, the gemologist who knows everything there is to know about garnets, the scribe who has mastered to an absurd level the art of calligraphy, the biologist who knows everything there is to know about the life-cycle and habits of the Umber Hulk.

QuoteAnd to me, that just adds another level of problem to the typical "we're heroes who are really super great because we've been adventuring for a few years" business in RPGs. Hard for me to imagine that if that's how experience works, there'd be quite a few elves with much greater abilities.

Yeah fixing elves doesn't fix the zero to hero in just 90 days problem.

Quote from: Skarg;971644Yes, to a degree. Certainly there should be adjustments for rustiness and practice and so on. Also, being really good at something tends to have a lot to do with finding one's genius. But learning and practice are also very important, and becoming an expert has been described as 10,000 hours of practice till it becomes unconscious and doesn't really go away. Huge lifespan would give a lot of potential study time. Without the typical effects of age, skills and especially knowledge tend to accumulate more than they fade.

On the other hand, skills tend to stop growing after they are no longer challenged--or at least grow much more slowly.  Once one is the best, it's difficult finding that next challenge to improve, and there certainly isn't much to learn being taught by others.  

I assumed with elves that it is a similar but exaggerated effect to how humans learn their native languages.  I forget the exact numbers, but isn't it something like 70% of your vocabulary by age 6?  Carry that same trend through several hundred years, and there aren't many opportunities in the second and later centuries to learn something new.