So a good friend of mine raised a damn interesting question, and one that as far as I know has never been addressed in any game system directly-however I admit to not knowing if this last bit is true, because I only have so much time in each day!-how does the Elven lifespan and need for less sleep than the average humanoid affect their culture?

His general complaint was that all too often the races in fantasy game were just too human, and to be fair it seems like he has at least something here.


So what do you think how does longevity affect culture? How does only needing four hours of sleep affect culture? How do you go about making another race seem truly different? Or do you not feel the need to do so? Why or why not?

Also feel free to throw out suggestions for other races, and attributes they have that would surely affect how their society lives and evolves.

I've wondered about this too, but I think a lot of game design ignores it in the interest of "balance". If you had a couple of thousand years at your disposal imagine the skill set you could aquire.

Quote from: Serious PaulSo what do you think how does longevity affect culture? How does only needing four hours of sleep affect culture? How do you go about making another race seem truly different? Or do you not feel the need to do so? Why or why not?

I read this scifi novel ages and ages ago where an astronaut had zapped off in a super-fast spaceship near the speed of light, so just a couple of years had passed for him and centuries for Earth. When he came back everyone was really long-lived due to medicine, and it had turned them into a race of pussies. Basically the idea was that if you have "only" twenty or fifty more years of life, you'll be happy to climb mountains and get drunk and try drugs and jump on top of a giant fucking Roman candle and go the starts, you're not risking that much, quality matters more than quantity when the quantity is so small. But if you know that you could live a thousand years, then that's a bit different. If the only thing that'll definitely kill you is an accident or poisoning, then you'll become a wuss.

Perhaps that explains why the elves tend to keep to themselves in their forest and sit around playing the harp. It might explain why the Council of Elrond ran for about six years (or so it seemed in LotR). Why hurry?

Less sleep, I dunno. What are they going to do with that extra time? In rpg parties, it just meant they always had to do an extra watch at night.

I haven't really tried other non-human races for ages. I've stuck to human cultures. I begin by making the PC culture distinct, so that when they see a different culture, they notice the difference by contrast. The PC culture I make distinct with just little things, like a different word for "knife" - say, "seax" - that everyone carries with them, and different social groups have different knives, eg people of no property and slaves carry one no greater than the span of their hand - called a "scramseax", or "food blade" - those of property carry one larger - just called "seax". Then I might inheritance from a man to his sister's first son, rather than from father to son.

A few details like that and things start falling into place for the players, I've found. And once they know who "we" are, who "they" are seems more strange, different and interesting.