Universe vs. Multiverse

Seconded. If you don't have a plane of faerie/want something more true to myth... the Tir is your place.

To each their own.

I avoid having gnomes or halflings in my campaigns when possible.

Well, the Elves in LotR, despite seeming so otherworldly, are in origin and biology almost identical to Humans. They only really differ in that they don't age.

I like D&D Elves to be connected to the fae in some way, but being fey-touched in some way would probably work, too. I just love that PW article on Elves a lot. But maybe that's where Halflings and Kender came from -- Elves messing about with Brownies, maybe.

Hey, I know! Maybe Dwarves evolved from badgers.

Really? That's pretty weird.

Where does it say that? I've read a lot of D&D books, and I think I'd remember something like that. At any rate, I think that's pretty much gone from 3E.

As for the Crown Wars, the term "millenia-long abberation," to me, is the funniest thing ever. An abberation is something that is strange and out of place, whereas the Crown Wars made perfect sense. Elfs are insular, xenophobic, racist, millitaristic, arrogant, and self-centered, so when there were a bunch of different groups with large populations living in relative proximity to each other, it was only a matter of time before the ethnic cleansing started. The reason the various surface races don't do the same thing now is because they are too isolated from one another to really care. That said, elfs still have a habit of fighting all their neighbors, they just aren't other elfs anymore. So yeah, Chaotic Neutral. I mean sure they have glimmering cities, and live in peaceful communities where they enjoy the arts and philosphy, communities that they will protect with their lives, but so do the Githzerai, and everyone agrees they are Neutral. If you start with notion that that most elfs are neutral and go from there, a lot of the things they do make a lot more sense than if they are good.

But because only superficial resemblances were copied, the reasons that those traits made sense are completely gone. Making their resemblance to Tolkien elves especially pointless and silly.

The 2e player's handbook, as well as numerous other 2e sources, mention Elven "ascension." I think the 3e book Races of Faerun might mention it as well; but I'm not certain. If it suits your campaign you can easily do away with the elven "otherworldliness" and just make them an exceptionally long lived race with sharp senses and an appreciation for nature. But to me, that it takes away pretty much anything that makes them interesting. As such I include that aspect of the elves in my campaign. For elves being predominantly good; while their political history does not always seem in line with this, it is ultimately the alignment of the individual members that determine whether a race is "usually chaotic good." In my campaign I do choose for them to be usually good. When most non-human races are predominantly evil, there should be a few races that are predominantly good. Granted dwarves are, but they have alot of diversity in alignment (at least in my campaigns), and they focus on the lawful side of good. Gnomes and halflings largely bother me, so I generally avoid making use of them. So elves fill the role of the race that shows the chaotic side of good (excluding exemplars of course).

Granted the otherworldliness of elves is derived from Tolkien (and I do not at all enjoy his works); but it seperates the elves from the other races. And the different races should exceptionally distinguishing traits so as to make them interesting.

I don't see how the ascension is bad for the game; it is unlikely that any of my players will live to die of old age or "ascend" anyways. It is pure flavor, nothing that significantly affects the game.

My dislike of halflings and gnomes is nothing significant (it wasn't bait to go off on a rant). Halflings are just little people who (sometimes) retain a childish curiosity throughout their lives; I find them completely uninteresting and unnecessary. They are largely derived from hobbits of course, and hobbits are also an uninteresting race that are a large part of why I don't enjoy Tolkien. Gnomes are more interesting and unique; but while deep gnomes are useful as a non-evil Underdark race, regular gnomes are largely unnecessary and as a personal quirk, when I'm DMing I never feel satisfied with how I portray them.

Yes, it inexplicably slipped my mind that for 3e halflings were redesigned as midget gypsies from hobbit clones.

The thing about fanboys and true role players is this: If someone is a true role player they are going to create a well-developed character after much consideration and not slide into "fanboyness"; obviously, for these people the fact that elves ascend is not particularly important.

For "fanboys", or more accurately roll players; you cannot expect then to create well-developed characters. They are either going to create a human character with a personality along the lines of "myself as a wizard" or resort to racial stereotypes. The fact that elves "ascend" instead of die of old age is not likely to come into consideration, partially because they will not be so well-versed in the various intricacies of the race. Yes, elves are very commonly played (but when half-orcs, halflings, and gnomes are among the alternatives what can be expected?); but lets not forget the legions of players with dwarf characters along the lines of Axebeard the Generic.

Honestly, I find the parade of humanoid generic fantasy races to be inherently and unavoidably boring. The only humanoids that I don't find hopelessly dull are Kender, but I doubt I would ever want to play one.
If you want interesting races, make them something that isn't generic humanoid. Dark Sun is good about that.

Or work on giving different races different psychology. How, for example, would a race like Thri-Kreen think? Very differently from humans in almost every way. Even mammalians like Tabaxi are going to have different life cycles, different ways of raising their families, different ways of making a living, that result in very non-human psychology. Just think about how cats work, and how a race evolved (or created) from them would work. That's what I think is interesting. Kender are interesting because their psychology is non-human. If you took Elves or Dwarves and gave them a different way of thinking and feeling, in keeping with living underground or having a really long lifespan and a connection to the fae, then they would be much more than just humans in Star Trek makeup.

Of course, it takes good players and DMs to actually take advantage of interesting non-human psychology. That's another issue entirely.

They're much more powerful than humans, and very difficult to kill, but certainly not on the level of gods.

Well, Gnomes are essentially just miniature Dwarves. I guess they are more mischevous and have cantrips, but that's not so much of a difference. And Halflings are even more boring, nothing but miniature Humans (even though I think they ought to be more similar to Elves).

I wonder if anybody has thought to write a Neanderthal race for D&D.

OK, so Gnomes are more interesting than I gave credit, but I still agree with Mak that they are boring.

Here's an idea about Elves: instead of making them unaging, make them seem unaging until they are very old, at which point they suddenly start aging quite fast. I know that Hags in D&D are a separate race(s), but it would make Elves more similar to those ancient legends in which the young Elves are beautiful and the older one are really ugly and hunched up.

All the inconsistencies are due to the drastic discrepencies between the D&D races, the mythical creatures whose names they share, and (in some cases) the peoples of Tolkien's mythos upon which they were at one point based.

For instance, elves were considered a type of fair folk (faerie) in the majority of Europe, and were depicted as tiny mischevious metaphysical beings. In Scandinavia, on the other hand, the álfar of Alfheim were man sized and regal, and were more akin to angels of modern Christiandom, being semi-divine. Tolkien took the latter approach, a fan as he was of Norse myth, but wrote a compellingly believable history for his people. D&D took the version of the elves popularized by The Lord of the Rings and used most of their traits without any of their history. By the third edition, however, the writers realized that such a diaspora would not do. They slowly removed the otherworldly and overpowering elements of Tolkien's elves, who were to humans as the gods (Maiar and Valar) were to them, and turned them into tree-hugging humans with pointy ears and questionable sexual orientation. I cried on the inside.

Next we move on to dwarves. Properly called dwarrows in the plural, the dwarves (called as such first by Tolkien, who replaced the "dwarfs" usage of his own time) were a race also taken from Norse myth. The dvergar were formed by the gods from the maggots in the flesh of Ymir, a giant whose body formed the world. Although sharing the likeness of men, these hard working peoples bored through earth as maggots through flesh. Tolkien made them more militant, and also added his own history, but kept them very Scandinavian for the most part. D&D basically stole Tolkien's dwarves, basing their character on that of a few individuals in his books. In myth, however, their origins became mixed with the gnomes of European myths, whom I will describe next.

The classical alchemist Paracelsus described gnomes as the greatest spirits of elemental earth who could swim through their element as fish through water. They were thus tied to it, and worked it wonderfully. Slowly becoming more manlike, they eventually evolved, in the minds of the European populace, into another type of faerie folk. Akin to goblins, albeit more often helpful, the gnomes either had many names or many similar cousins, such as the German knockers. They were, at various times, associated with spirits of the underworld (aka the afterlife, which was associated with the earth and thought to be deep underground) and with spirits of nature, caring for both the woodlands surrounding their underground homes and the creatures that inhabited them. D&D played up the magical aspect of their faeriedom, but was split between associating them with earth (making them miniature dwarves) or with nature in general (making them miniature elves). Tolkien never used gnomes, per se, although he originally named the Noldorim elves "gnomes", from the Greek "gnosis" for "knowledge". Everybody else demoted the spiritual creatures to little garden statues, which I consider an unforgiveable crime.

Finally, we have halflings. In appearance, they were originally an obvious ripoff of Tolkein's hobbits. Hobbits are creatures invented by Tolkien entirely. The name could come from any of the numerous faeries with "hob-" or "small" in their names, such as "hobgoblin", which was originally a smaller form of goblin (much unlike their D&D counterparts). In fact, there has been mention of "hobbits" in old compilations of faerie folk, but they were never expanded upon and Tolkien could only be held guilty for subconsciously taking the name from something he might have once read. The makers of D&D did not have the rights to the word "hobbit", a problem they often ran into while borrowing ideas from Tolkien (see Balor/Balrog). They thus took the unpatented "halfling" and made a few changes to their behaviour. Thus, the material plane halflings are lithe and agile tricksters (based on Bilbo's shortlived career as a thief, no doubt) with a gypsy like culture. The more sedentary features of Tolkien's hobbit race were applied to the D&D Gnomes, with whom nobody could decide what to do with, apparently. Thus, Bytopia is very similar to Tolkien's Shire, but strangely so is the halfling heaven in Mount Celestia. This further shows the indecisveness of how much each should be based on the concept it was originally copied from.

I hope those little summaries helped in the discussion. In my opinion, such books as Races of the Wild, Races of Stone, and Races of Destiny really helped flesh out the 3e versions of these creatures. On the other hand, other 3e books vary in their cohesiveness to this concept, creating further trouble. This is complicated even more in Planescape, which takes some of its planes (Ysgard being a prime example) from real world mythology (Norse in the former example) that overlaps that upon which some of the material plane races are based. Some of the myths also contradict each other, which is natural in the evolving mythologies of the real world, but hard to effectively explain in the coexitent realms of Planescape. Of course, it could all be chalked up to lies and misunderstandings, but that can only get you so far. I guess, eventually, its all left up to the individual DM's, since WotC does not seem to be doing a good job in creating a cohesive canon for 3.5e D&D, much less Planescape.

Hobbit is pseudo-English pseudo-derived from pseudo-Old-English holbytla.

Other than that, great little essay!

I love Tolkien's Elves a ton, but I don't think they belong anywhere near a D&D-style multiversal setting.
I was exposed to Magic: the Gathering before D&D, so I think of D&D Elves mostly as the near-fae creatures they seem to be in Magic. I think it would be interesting to play them as similar to the fae in not fully relating to human(oid) concepts of morality. A more Chaotic-Neutral, and less Good, approach if you will.

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That it would. Chaotic Neutral elves are the way of the future (as evidenced by my proposed destruction of Arvandor on the Urban Planescape forum). I'm actually not opposed to making them be somehow distantly related to the fae, I simply don't want them to be even partly divine. Divine or semi-Divine races really aren't meant to be played in D&D (hence the generally absurdly high Level Adjustments), and having elves be anything too similar to Tolkien's concept just throws that idea out the window. Which is a very bad thing indeed.

I'm of the opinion that game balance has an intangible form that goes beyond simply having equivelent stats to making each race be equally interesting to play. Right now, Dwarves get a lot of play mostly because they are incredibly over-powered, whereas Elves get a lot of play because people still treat them like the ones found in Tolkien. That notion is slowly weakening though, and giving them a clear origin of their own might actually fight it as much as reinforce it. One can only hope.

Sorry, fixed the name.

Didn't understand that that is what you meant by pseudo-Old English. And I was mistaken, it was Rohirrim, not Westron, that is equated with Anglo-Saxon and is the origin for hol-bytlan. Still, the real life origin is from the German "hob-" (small). So, we're both right, but we're coming to it from different sides. Anyway, that's way off topic.

Elves, immortality, constant degredation... discuss.