LogFAQs > #897680016

Random RPG observation of the day:

D&D has a fuckton of elf subraces.

I've been thinking a lot about elves lately (at least partly because they did a video about their official 5e metaplot origins recently on D&D official YouTube channel, and because Perkins has been showing off the Shadar-Kai on Dice Camera Action over the last couple weeks), and I sort of got set off on this particular line of thinking while looking into the Terrinoth setting (ie, the setting for Runewars and Dragonholt) and how they handle races there.

It occurred to me that Tolkien theoretically has about seven "subraces" - Vanyar, Noldor, Teleri, Sindar (who are also technically Teleri), Nandor/Silvan (who are also technically Teleri), (who are technically Nandor and thus also technically Teleri - basically, nearly every elf in the entire world outside of Aman who isn't Noldor is Teleri or Avari), and the Avari (or "dark" elves" who never set out for Aman and mostly just hid in the woods near their place of "birth") - he really only sort of divides them in to two separate groupings in the context of the stories (basically, the Noldor as the "high elves" and the "lesser elves" make up 99% of named elf characters who actually interact with the world in any notable way - the Vanyar and Teleri who remain behind in Aman are pretty much uninvolved while the Avari are pretty much unimportant and utterly unnoticed, if not long dead or lost). So if you were running a Middle Earth campaign (like in Iron Crown's MERP system - Jesus, I am old), you'd basically default all PC elves to either Noldor, Sindar, or Silvan (and, in fact, I think that system did indeed boil PC elf choice down to those three). And about the only real scaling difference between them is whether or not you're one of the really ultra-sophisticated wise scholar-type high elves or one of the tree-hugging hippies.

Meanwhile The Elder Scrolls games, where something like half (if not more) the races you see in the world are elf-derived (sorry, Aldmer-derived), have about seven known subraces of elf - the Altmer (High Elves), the Bosmer (Wood Elves), the Chimer (who later become the Dunmer, or Dark Elves), the Dwemer (confusingly referred to as dwarves, but also as Deep Elves), the Falmer (Snow Elves), Maomer (Sea Elves), and the Orsimer (the Orcs, who are corrupted elves, which makes them one of the few interpretations of Orcs in fantasy that is actually pretty close to what Tolkien intended their origins to be). You can also throw in the Sinistral or "Left-Handed" Elves (though we know absolutely nothing about them, and they're supposedly all dead) and the Ayleids (who are also supposedly all dead, but who we know slightly more about, mostly because they fucked the humans who led to the Bretons and because they built most of the magical ruins in the Imperial province).

D&D, by contrast, has at least a dozen that I can actually think of, and probably more besides. There's blatantly ubiquitous Sun and Moon Elves (aka the "High Elves"), the obligatory Drow/Dark Elves, the "lesser" Wood and Wild Elves, the more obscure winged elves, merpeople elves, and lycanthrope elves of Faerun, the more esoteric Dusk and Shadow Elves who have been getting used a lot in official books lately, or the downright forgotten about Sidereal Elves (Star Elves), Deep Elves (Rockseer Elves), or Elves from Dark Sun (who are basically "Sand Elves"). And that's without bringing the Eladrin into the equation.

Meanwhile, I think D&D has maybe three dwarf subraces, tops. And halflings usually get either two or three depending on the setting. Elves VASTLY outnumber the other races when it comes to diversity (which actually works pretty well with their new origin story).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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