Roleplaying long-lived races and their long life of... doing what?

[Anthee]

Hi all,

This is probably something many of you have thought about at one point or another, but I could not find any relevant threads so I thought to post my own.

Elves, dwarves and gnomes live long lives. The standard starting age for an elf is a whopping 120 years. This naturally raises questions. If this is a "young" elf, what did they do for a century or so before learning the skills of, say, a 2nd level wizard? How do you write a coherent backstory for an EfU character of this age?

I found online this unofficial but insightful article on the topic:

http://dmsworkshop.com/2017/10/13/roleplaying-long-lived-races/

The author of the article suggests, based on existing D&D lore, that long-lived races mature physically at around the same time as humans and would most likely be adventuring in the early decades of their life, before the rites of passage that force most of them to settle down. That would mean that the standard age of 120 for an elven PC, for example, actually represents a relatively rare situation. Can these suggestions be considered relevant for EfU, too? In particular, would it make sense for most PCs of long-lived races to be actually human-aged, despite potentially having a long, long life ahead of them?

The problem with that interpretation is that the world should then be chock-full of epic-level elves and dwarves who have had the good sense of using their centuries of existence for something other than just frolicking in the woods or drinking beer in a hole. But that would seem to be a smaller problem than assuming that humanoids which by all accounts are just as intelligent as humans would somehow be fantastically slow learners. Idiots, in other words.

Please voice your thoughts, but do bear in mind that "this is one reason why I don't play elves and dwarves" is not going to be particularly helpful!   ::)

[SeerofLight]

Typically, the way I see it, is that EFU in general is a very low power setting. You're only ever going to attain what may be seen as reasonable for your "average" adventurer.

Because of how easy it is through lowbies to get level 4, 5, or even 6, I think its fairly reasonable to have a moderately okay backstory around that level of power.

"I've been studying magic for X amount of years", as a level 5 or 6 Wizard, you have 3rd level spells, and you can usually manage those levels within your first day or two. I dont usually think its too bad to come up with something like that, since we dont really get into the epic levels.

[Random_White_Guy]

How do you write a coherent backstory for an EfU character of this age?

I think the big thing to emphasize is how much of life is lived in relation to Human society. As a long lived PC you can be things like wise, well versed, independently wealthy, studying one of many fields, or etc at your leisure.

Personally I tend to enjoy playing long lived Races (Elves, Stonefolk, etc) as more ponderous and conservative.

Think like how in LOTR the Elves were so slow to judgement, curious masters of the realm, wandering far and wide learning every bit and piece of things as scholars or rangers or artisans.

You can really add a lot by just biting into the idea that "My PC has seen much, he has no reason to rush, as Humans sprint from quest to quest or leap so carelessly into politics or conflict".

It adds a bit of an alien-esque perspective, but it can also shape your agendas and goals similarly.

- An Elven Wizard is in no rush to rebuild his spellbook as it brings the "Joy" of once more having to  reassemble it, having known Wizardry for many years

- My Stonefolk Merchant travels far and wide but he knows many things outside the scope of books and lore, so he's been hiring Palatial Tutors to help get him up to speed on more "Human" style approaches to maps and cartography, art, librarian sciences, etc.

- A Dwarven Smith who lives 300 years is gonna outpace a Human for sure but he can also RP that as "Well I am not gonna waste my time on just ANY forge, I need to find a properly blessed and crafted Dwarven Forge so I am just now learning how you Humans use these awkward tools".

etc.

[Anthee]

Thanks for the replies. Those are useful remarks for anybody playing long-lived races, but I should probably have stated my actual questions more clearly. They were, in brief:

1. Does it make sense for any character, no matter how long-lived, to start in EfU as 100 years old (give or take a few decades) since the starting level is 2? And if it does, exactly how, given that only an idiot would live a century without learning beyond the basics of a profession?

2. Or should the expected starting age of long-lived characters be more like the age of a human adult, instead?

I suggested that the second option would be the more sensible one, but I posted this topic to see if anybody disagreed and could come up with a good explanation for #1. SeerofLight's point that levels 4–6 are reached very quickly and could therefore, backstory-wise, be considered a character's "starting level", is a valid one and alleviates the problem somewhat. But not entirely – young characters get those levels very quickly, too, so it doesn't really help explain the relatively low level of old characters without some suspension of disbelief. (Incidentally, this is a bit of a problem for elderly human characters, too, at least in my eyes; it's just far more pronounced in the case of elves and dwarves.)

I guess some characters could be "career-switchers" who might have been very proficient in a civil profession before embarking on an adventuring career. But given how comprehensive the skill system is nowadays, incorporating many civil skills too, even that makes less sense than it might initially seem like.

[Iconoclast]

In most of EFU's history, there have been significant catastrophes that have caused every new PC to have effectively hit rock bottom before they arrive in the campaign.

A 300 year old Elf wizard might have done great and powerful things in his time as Grand Poobah of Londinium, but waking up in a dirty swamp of a city, the Ringfall, and being lost in the great ash desert have destroyed his spellbook down to a few scraps of parchment. Perhaps the only reason he remembers how to cast blur and endure elements is because of this struggle for survival.

An ancient sorcerer or monk would have been battered and weakened by the elements, perhaps their control of blood and body are the only reason they survived this long, scraping themselves back from the brink of death.

An alchemist lost their notes, same as a wizard. How much does even a proficient  real world chemist truly remember without notes, libraries, peer reviewed publications?  A smith, builder, painter, or tailor is slowly piecing together their tools and materials. Maybe the dwarf knows a lot about smithing mithril, but working with common and improvised materials and tools he makes a lot of mistakes. Maybe the only reason he can jury rig anything at all is because of this wealth of prior tangential experience? The painter only worked with oil paints, now all they have are water colors and they  must learn to control the new medium. If you always used pencils to draw, and you are now forced to only draw with a pen, there is some learning curve when you realize you cant erase. Mistakes happen.

For martial classes, this is even easier. It doesn't matter how much you have trained in the past, you are battered, broken, and weak. The jump from 2-6 is just the time it takes to hydrate and recuperate.

If you ABSOLUTELY NEED to start as a godmode 800 year old know-it-all who doesnt have to work for anything, Then all I can say is that sounds dreadfully boring and I don't know how to help.