Our Elves Are Different / Tabletop Games

^{Clockwise from top left}Yu-Gi-Oh!, Warhammer, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons

Our Elves Are Different in tabletop games.

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Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering: Elves are the default humanoid creature type for green, the color of nature and tradition. Most of them qualify as Wood Elves, but a few unusual varieties show up on some planes:
  • The elves of the plane Lorwyn are as much The Fair Folk as they are fantasy elves. They have ram-like horns, though they can't really be compared to humanity, as Lorwyn has no humans. However, they do look down on the kithkin (i.e., hobbits). In addition, their entire society is based on physical beauty, with the most beautiful among them being worshiped as gods. In contrast to the typical nature-loving elf, they take it upon themselves to "improve" upon nature to make it more beautiful. Beings that are not beautiful -- mostly other races and disfigured elves -- are labeled "Eyeblights" and routinely exterminated.
  • In Lorwyn's Evil Twin plane, Shadowmoor, the elves are the only race that isn't Always Chaotic Evil. In Lorwyn, the elves believed themselves to be the stewards of beauty and perfection; in the Crapsack World of Shadowmoor, they are.
  • The biometallic plane of Mirrodin, where the line between organic life and metal got rather blurred, was home to elves that grew complex spikes and sheets of copper from their bodies.
  • The Silhana elves of Ravnica's Selesnya Conclave are aligned with white, the color of order and civilization, as much as green, so they skew towards high elves more than typical Magic elves. In contrast, the Devkarin elves of the Golgari Swarm are aligned with black and green and skew towards dark elves by being dedicated necromancers obsessed with rot and death. There are also the elves of the Simic Combine — bald, largely extinct, and almost uniformly Mad Scientists, and generally disliked by the other two types. They're technically all still Wood Elves, but the Devkarin are more focused on the "death" part of the cycle of life and death, and the Simic elves get a bit... creative in their goal of preserving life.
  • By Word of God, there used to be elves living on the gothic horror-inspired plane of Innistrad, too, but they were driven to extinction by the plane's many native horrors.
  • The elves of Fiora are concentrated in the port nation of Trest, having a political and mercantile bent that makes them much more similar to traditional high elves, albeit with a retained fondness for plant magic and trained animals.
  • Most of Magic's elves reject technology, because they're associated with green mana. Kaladesh's elves, on the other hand, are skilled artificers, because Wizards of the Coast concluded it was a bit boring if the place of green in every artifact set was solely based on rejecting it (a la Mirrodin, home of elves with Protection from Artifacts). Kaladeshi elves are deeply attuned to the flow of aether, and many focus on building robot animals and integrating living components like wood and vines into their machinery — Peema Outrider, for example, has a gold-and-wood steed.
  • Eldraine, a plane based on European fairytales, used to be ruled by cruel and capricious elves until humanity overthrew them and established the current realms. The elves still live in the Wilds outside of civilization, where they ride giant foxes and band together for The Wild Hunt.
  • The elves of Kaldheim, the Norse Mythology plane, are the descendants of the Einir, the gods who ruled the plane before the current Skoti. The Einir were stripped of their ancient power after being dethroned, and the modern elves hate the gods and dream of reclaiming their ancient divinity. They live in Skemfar, a realm of dark primordial forests, and are divided into two distinct groups — the wood elves, aligned with Green mana, who live in the treetops of their forests, and the shadow elves, aligned with Black mana, who live underground among the roots. The two groups don't get along, and their current high king is only just able to reign their animosity short of open conflict. Unlike the game's usual portrayal of elves, Kaldheim elves are depicted as muscular, Viking-like and often bearded.
  • The elves of New Capenna have tiny, antelope-like spike-horns on their foreheads (possibly a reference to the plane's pervasive demonic influence). Most are Druids in service to Jetmir's Cabaretti family, trying to keep their nature religion alive in a post-apocalyptic Land of One City. A small number can also be found among the Riveteers.
• Munchkin: Elves are a core race. They're roundly made fun of and made out to be sissy cowards, but that just puts them on an even level with every other race in the game. They have a bonus to running away from combat and are able to gain levels from assisting in other players' fights.
• Warlord puts a different spin on Elves. These elves are covered in fine scales, have horns growing above their eyebrows (which are sometimes mistaken for pointy ears if their hair covers them wrong), and live only 30 years unless they use necromancy to lengthen their lives.

Tabletop RPGs

• 13th Age, heavily inspired by D&D as it is, has the High Elf/Wood Elf/Dark Elf triad, literally by those names, although all three are in theory tied to the same Icon — the Queen of the Elves. They used to be united, but broke after the war with the dwarves, and even though the Queen's three-part crown is intact the three kindreds are referred to as the "Three Shards of the Crown". Drow are considered a full playable race, although their racial power being called "Cruel" may be a bit of a turn-off in some cases.
• Banestorm: The elves of the world of Yrth were evidently much better than humans at some point in their history; they're still a little more dexterous, smart, attractive, and magically talented (and physically weaker) than humans on average, and they can be extremely long-lived, but their once-impressive culture has declined to the point that most of them live in tiny villages far from major cities, In Harmony with Nature (of course), and they're pretty much a Dying Race. The oldest elves are all brilliant but seem to have no real ambition. In this setting, "dark elves" are an aggressively paranoid cult within elf society that wants to magically expel all non-elven life from Yrth; the titular Banestorm was the fault of a group of dark elf mages trying to banish all the orcs. Instead, they summoned humanity and a bunch of other races.
• Burning Wheel: The elves go back to their Tolkien roots, with the split between wood elves and high elves being primarily reflected in the Wilderlands vs Citadel/Etharch settings. It is not, however, that difficult to move between the settings — an elf born in the Wilderlands could easily grow up in the Citadel setting. On the whole, however, they are simply better than the other stocks (Men, Dwarves, Orcs). Their main drawback is an inability to use Sorcery, instead depending on a system of magical songs that represent their closeness to nature and the world as a whole. The game does avert most of the tropes associated with dark elves, who are described in the Paths of Spite supplement and are just like normal elves except the mystical Grief the normal elves suffer from has been transmuted to Spite.
• The Chronicles of Aeres: Silverleaf elves are essentially your standard wood elves, being created by the goddess of the hunt to protect the wild forests of the world. They are pragmatic, preternaturally quiet, and little inclined to speech. Twilight elves are a subrace who came into being when Silverleaf elves settled the Gruncrist Forest, a place with a strong planar connection to Dream Land. This caused them to mutate into a race of quiet, ethereal mystics and Dream Weavers, whose art portrays them as looking a lot like Dream of the Endless.
• Chronopia: The Elves are slender, haughty, and long lived, viewing themselves as the rightful rulers of the world, and have a history of slavery and backstabbing to get what they want. They segregated into four houses whose views and motives tend to vary. They are willing to ally with the other races against the Devout but without the Devout they would focus on making themselves powerful again. Additionally, a number of House elite/special forces are oddballs - one unit has dreaming elves that project an intangible ghostly version of themselves into battle, another group has experimented with swamp herbs and mutated to become hulking superstrong elves that can crush a man's skull between their fingers and etc.
• Crimson Blades: The sample setting presented, the Crimson Lands, was controlled by a once powerful race of amoral sorcerers and slavers called the Dendrelyssi, until humanity fought back. Due to their misuse of dark magic, the world is infested with strange monstrosities and phenomena, and the Dendrelyssi are slowly dying out from magical corruption. The Dendrelyssi very much follow the Dark Elf archetype, with the main difference is their appearance is based on Elric of Melniboné. While their prowess with weapons and spells can be surpassed by human warriors and sorcerers, they can learn to use both, and are unequal in summoning demons, elementals and the undead. They are also the best healers and surgeons around, but "Fleshcrafter" are not known for their bedside manners.
• The Dark Eye: The elves, which call themselves feya (fey as the singular masculine, fae as the singular feminine), are one of the main playable races. They all share a very nature-focused culture and are naturally talented with magic — they're all fully able spellcasters on top of anything else they do. They're also a royal pain to play "correctly" — 4e even has its own disadvantage specifically tailored to Elves.
  • Physically, elves are slender, graceful and six feet tall on average, and have no hair save their eyebrows and head coverings. They are functionally ageless and always youthful, and have no set lifespans; rather, each elf has a specific, personal purpose in life and will not die naturally until it's fulfilled. When it is, the elf will set their last affairs in order and age and die within a few days.
  • They're descended from beings that "stepped out of the Light", and all of them except for the wood elves are descendants of the old High Elven civilization that built great cities, but eventually broke apart so spectacularly that modern-day elves disdain the trappings of "civilization" (including, among much else, big cities, book-learning and the worship of gods) and instead try to live In Harmony with Nature. This often makes them very socially inept in non-elven cultures, as they commonly misunderstand simple things such as money or ownership; almost all elves live as hunter-gatherers. A few glade elves are the exception, and occasionally take to living in human cities.
  • The elves are divided between a number of major cultural groups, all found in the north of Aventuria. The glade elves ("auelfen") live along forest edges and river valleys, in treehouses or stilt villages. They're the most numerous and most likely to interact with humans, and the ones most others think of when thinking of elves. The wood elves ("waldelfen") inhabit deep forests bordering the glade elf lands, where they live In Harmony with Nature, and are deeply isolationist. The steppe elves ("steppenelfen") are horse-riding nomads of the northern plains. The firnelves live in the frozen north, sometimes on the open pack ice, and wage a constant guerilla warfare on the darkness growing in their lands.
  • Their ancestors, the high elves, were the typical "better than all of you" elves of fantasy fame, but with the Jerkass factor dialed up. After Pardona established her cult, that high elves (granted, a minority, but a sizeable one) became outright evil. (She later fused her most devout followers with demons, creating the black elves, a fertile species of elf-demon hybrids that plagues parts of Aventuria to this day.)
  • Half-elves — or elf-humans, as the elves call them — crop up occasionally, and are one of the few viable inter-species hybrids. Elves can normally control whether they conceive, which helps keep their population low, but this isn't very reliable when having sex with humans, and half-elves tend to be the result of this. Their cultural position varies — they can go from outcasts to revered to simply another part of society depending on the specific culture and worldliness of a given place. Elves don't like them too much, however, so most live in human society. They're intermediate in build between their parent species, have slightly pointed ears, retain their elven parents' magical talents but not their control over conception, and live for about a hundred years and remain youthful for most of that time. They can also reproduce fine with elves, humans and each other, and can be separated from their human and elven forebears by many generations.
• Dragon Dice features two types of elves — the Coral Elves, who are equivalent to High Elves living in flying coral ships, and the Lava Elves, who are equivalent to Dark Elves living in volcanic subterranean caverns.
• Dungeons & Dragons: The standard modern version of elves may not come directly from Lord of the Rings, but rather descend indirectly from it via D&D, which unabashedly copied Tolkien's elves and their cultures. It has high elves, wood elves, dark elves, and half-elves, and inspired decades of fantasy writing. D&D's elves are a foot shorter than humans, except in the Forgotten Realms setting where they're about the same height.
  • The basic rules for player character races in AD&D2 established that elves and humans can interbreed, but that the offspring of half-elves could themselves only be half-elves or humans — never "true" elves again, no matter how distant the human part of their ancestry might be.
  • Early editions had the Grey Elves, isolationist elves who lived in mountain cities and were so absurdly racist they used other elves as slaves; their definition was basically 'Jerkass surface elves'.
  • The drow, evil elves banished underground, are the Trope Maker for modern fantasy's dark elves. They have coal-black skin and bone-white hair, live underground, are unapologetically evil, worship spiders (sometimes leading to the creation of driders, centaurine beings with spider legs and bodies and dark elf torsos), loathe surface elves, regard every other race with contempt, and use arranged breeding, eugenics and infanticide to weed out any drow that is "defective" or plain not handsome enough.
    • Interestingly, at one point this was not true. The elite drow leaders were usually cruel and barbaric, but most drow were semi-slaves tending towards Neutral. They could be quite helpful to the party who at that time were largely assumed to be good.
    • The drow of the Forgotten Realms are also rather different. There are in fact entire (albeit small) communities of non-evil drow, mostly due to the presence of Eilistraee (a goddess who strives for her people to embrace a better, non self-destructive life).
  • The number of elven subraces (including aquatic elves, winged elves, and star elves, to name a few — eleven different races at least) has grown over the years. However, in the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the elven race is more generally divided into Elves (wood elves), Eladrin (high elf fairy folk), and Drow (dark elves), with the more specific subraces falling under one of those categories.
  • Pre-4th Edition D&D splits the high elf archetype into two separate subraces: the noble but friendly high elves, who have a bit of wood elf flavor as well, and the regal yet arrogant and isolationist gray elves. Both names are taken from Tolkien, though their descriptions were switched around a bit. The wood elf archetype was also split into the wood elves proper (civilized but rustic, and stronger than the average human) and the wild elves (perilous savages).
  • 5th Edition retweaks from 4th with 4 basic elf subtypes (along more numerous subtypes in setting specific books). High Elves are the civilized, surface dwelling, magic and sword loving type. Wood Elves are the sylvan, more tribal type. Drow keep as they usually are. Eladrin are re-added as Elves natives to the Feywild, closer to The Fair Folk in characterization, more mercurial and fickle with a strong bond to seasons.
  • Dark Sun's elves are 7-foot-tall nomads who have a reputation for being untrustworthy thieves.
  • Dragonlance has the High Elves represented by the Qualinesti, the Wood Elves represented by the Kagonesti, and the Gray Elves by the Silvanesti. They also had two Aquatic Elf subraces: the Dargonesti (who could turn into dolphins), and the Dirmenesti (transformed into otters). They were created by the Gods of Good, and this has led them unfortunately often to thinking they know best and then screwing up royally; a group of elven bigots were the root cause of the Cataclysm, as they were manipulating the King-Priest who directly caused it.
  • Eberron: The Elves come in three main cultures: the corporate ones, who are generally considered to be all-around backstabbing scum with a minor trade war going on between two of the houses; the arcane ones, who are ruled by the animated bodies of their dead ancestors (but are usually friendly if off-putting); and the badass Proud Warrior Race Guy elves, who may not be ethically better than you, but will gladly split you in half with a double-bladed scimitar if you point this out. There are also a few others, such as the Bloodsail elves of the Lhazaar Principalities, founded by necromancy-using exiles who left Aerenal after the extermination of the line of Vol.
    • Interestingly, half-elves have become an established minority who are more often born to two half-elf parents than a mixed-race couple. They are also known as a Khoravar, since they originated on the continent Khorvaire from the meeting of humans (originally from Sarlona) and elves from Aerenal. There are even half-elf noble families. This is partly due to an early attempt by shifty elves to capitalize on the short human lifespan by marrying aristocratic humans and outliving them to inherit their estates. At this point the two races were new to each other and the elves had no idea they could actually cross-breed with the humans. Embarrassed by their children, the elves mostly ran for it. But as these first generation half-elves were usually born as heirs to noble houses, they did not end up being socially-ostracized by humans (just the opposite). Then when the Dragonmark of Storm appeared among the half-elves it was taken as a sign that they were destined to be a "race" unto themselves, and the House associated with Storm, Lyrandar, is to this day a strong believer in Khoravar sovereignty and is hoping that once the dust settles in Valenar they can set it up as a half-elven homeland. An interesting aversion in Eberron is that orcs are Closer to Earth than elves, having a strong tradition of druids who saved the world from an extraplanar invasion.
    • Eberron's half-elves often believe themselves to be better than both elves and humans, to the point where the Player's Guide to Eberron quotes an excerpt from a play that appears to entirely be about half-elves and urban elves engaging in ridiculously overstated Cultural Posturing:
      Cullaris: Tell me, what virtue do we not possess?
      Mahlla: Humility?
      Cullaris: Yes, perhaps.
    • The drow of Eberron come in three cultures: the Umbragen are the most "typical" drow, although they embrace dark powers to fight other dark powers in their home in Khyber; the Vulkoori are jungle-dwelling tribes that hate giants and are associated with scorpions instead of spiders, and whether they're evil or neutral varies from tribe to tribe; and the Sulatar, who dwell in the ruins left behind by the magically gifted Sulat League giant culture, are strongly associated with pyromancy. Individual drow can be of any alignment, since Eberron is built on explicitly disavowing the Always Chaotic Evil trope. They descend from those elves who chose not to abandon their homelands on the jungle continent of Xen'drik, and consequently consider themselves to be the true inheritors of the old elven civilization and the "regular" elves to be cowardly deserters.
  • Spelljammer has Space Elves — the motley collection of elves hailing from every world with an elven population. Most of which became so obnoxiously haughty that next to these, groundling elves began to look nice.
  • Mystara: Elves mostly fall under the Wood Elf variant, although they make a lot more use of magic, owing to the Basic/Expert/etc system having given all elves spellcasting ability. The dark elf trope is partially averted, in that the subterranean shadow elves aren't black-skinned or Always Chaotic Evil, and are actually pretty naive if you get to know them. Too bad they're pissed at the surface elves for not telling them that the planet had recovered from a nuclear war thousands of years ago, never mind how the surface elves had no idea the shadow elves were still down there. Several elven populations on Mystara are actually well-integrated with their non-elven neighbors, particularly in Graakhalia (elves and gnolls as buds!) and on the Savage Coast.
    • Under the Basic/Expert/etc. system, half-elves don't exist on Mystara. Human/elf pairs aren't very fertile, and their descendants are either humans or elves, depending on which parent is male and which is female. Oddly, Mystaran elves and ogres have proven genetically compatible, giving rise to a hybrid race called the N'djatwa from two once-warring civilizations. Physically, they get the best of both worlds, being large but attractive and highly intelligent. Culturally... they're basically a blend of the worst aspects, and thusly they're slavers who regard other races as both servants and fodder.
    • The "there are no human/elf half-elves" thing was retconned in Dragon #178, where the land of Eusdria is home to an ever-increasing population of half-elves. They were created through the divine meddling by the Immortals Fredar and Fredara (better known to other lands as Frey and Freya), who created them in an effort to promote and increase homogeneity in the land that worshipped them. These half-elves are mostly true-breeding—half-elf plus anything else has a 65% chance of a new half-elf child—and mechanically they work like humans who trade a -5% penalty to EXP for access to elvin infravision and having a Halfling lifespan.
    • The Hollow World expansion to Mystara adds Ice Elves (hardy mountain-and-taiga Wood Elf variants), Gentle Folk (somber ultra-pacifistic High Elves who've lost their arrogance), and Blacklore Elves (cyberpunk elves from a high-tech prehistory), as well as a more conventionally-evil breakaway Shadow Elf faction.
  • Under the original Dungeons & Dragons rules, "Elf", "Dwarf" and "Halfling" races had significant class restrictions. Elves could choose once a day whether to be a fighter or a magic user, and were subject to the weapon and armor restrictions of whatever class they chose — elves who were in fighter mode could use any weapon, wear any armor and use any shield, but if they were in magic-user mode, they couldn't use any armor (unless it was magical armor, which human magic-users could not use) and were limited to the weapons of a magic user.
  • Ravenloft has High Elves in Darkon and Sithicus. The latter are more snobbish than the former, having a country of their own; the fact that the Land of Mists has only existed for ~400 years, and Sithicus for a fraction of that, means that their claims of "ancient heritage" tend to fall flat.
  • Elven lifespan seems to have been shrinking monotonically with edition, from 900-1500 years (depending on variety) in the old days to 200-300 in 4e.
  • LeShay are described as being to elves what elves are to men. They are a race of epic, immortal superbeings with spell-like abilities and hit-dice up the wazoo, can make you their best friend just by looking at you (hard to resist gaze attack) and can summon twin +10 Keen Brilliant Energy Bastard Swords they can wield without penalty (for those not in the know, they have a very high chance of scoring a critical hit, can ignore most kinds of armor, have ridiculous to hit and damage bonuses, and you can't kill them and take them because they are made of the elves' personal energy). They supposedly survived the death of the last universe.
  • 4th edition D&D, as personified by its default Nentir Vale setting, divides elf into an eladrin/elf/drow triad:
    • Eladrin are the root stock from which elves and drow sprung, but they both diverged after a violent, centuries-long civil war that has left the eladrin a Vestigial Empire in the Feywild, huddling in heavily-fortified cities that are under near-constant siege. Not just by drow, but also by the formorians, a race of evil fey giants who are horrifically ugly, insane, incredibly smart, adept with magic and possessed of various kinds of Eye Beams. The setting emphasizes how much of their old homes the eladrin have lost, and how unlikely they are to get it back, especially with all of the fey monsters they have to battle on the side... like a species of hive-minded carnivorous beetles that specializes in eating eladrin alive, so it can wear their skin as a disguise to get more prey.
    • Elves, meanwhile, are deserters, cowards and runaways from the civil war who fled to the mortal world instead, and have since degenerated, losing a notable amount of their fey powers — eladrin can teleport more or less at will, elves just run a little quicker than humans, and elves live a century less than eladrin do.
    • Drow, meanwhile, are... basically still drow. They're Always Chaotic Evil underground-living demon-worshiping backstabbing lunatics.
  • Played straight in the alternative class rules from the canon product D&D Cyclopedia (the compilation of the Basic, Expert, Companion and Master set). Normally in the Basic system era, Elves and other demi-humans as well as Mystics get hosed as they can only reach limited levels (in the Elf's case it's Level 10) while the other classes can go up to Level 36. This was to "balance" the demi-humans' and the Mystic's abilities (like the Elf's combining Fighter and Mage abilities at once). With the alternate rules — everyone can reach Level 36. The Elf has all the Fighter abilities (but their fighting skill is now equivalent to a Cleric's) and they have access to all the Mage spells, including the Level 9 ones like Wish.
  • Planescape: When first introduced in this setting, eladrin weren't elves but instead Chaotic Good angel equivalents who look like elves, with a vaguely Celtic theme and each eladrin subspecies being able to shapeshift into an "energy form" — usually a living mass of fire, but the one aquatic species could become a dolphin-shaped mass of golden water and another species could become a whirling mass of snow and ice. 4th edition reinvented them as the most "human" of The Fair Folk, portraying them as the dominant civilized race of the Feywild. In 5th edition, they were brought back with that same interpretation, although now redesigned so that their emotions shift them physically and mentally through four season-based subraces- Winter (sadness), Spring (joy), Summer (anger), and Autumn (generosity)- with each getting different spell-like abilities.
  • In D&D 5th edition, the core elven subraces in the Player's Handbook are High Elf, Wood Elf and Dark Elf. A later sourcebook, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, adds the Aquatic Elf, the Eladrin (Feywild elves), and the Shadar-kai (a cursed race of shadowy elves from the Hades-esque Shadowfell)^note just like the Eladrin, the Shadar-kai dated back to earlier editions but weren't originally elves.
  • Arkadia, a 3rd party setting for D&D 5e, uses High, Wood and Dark Elves, but reinvents them for its Heroic Bronze Age Fantasy style. Scyllaean Elves, the high elf equivalents, are refugees from the setting's equivalent of Atlantis. Oreyan Elves are basically Bronze Age wood elves, but have an "Amazonian" culture, where women are the primary hunters and warriors. Finally, the dark elf analogs, the Nyssian Elves, have an Egyptian motif, living in buried cities concealed beneath stone pyramids in a cursed desert, practicing necromancy in homage to the undead titan they worship and being led by a cabal of lich-pharaohs. Seeing sunlight is the deepest taboo possible, and any Nyssian Elf who sees the light of day is forever after exiled from their former home.
  • La Notte Eterna, a 3rd party setting for D&D 5e: While Neir's elves largely follow the standard D&D stereotypes, there are also the Klorss, a race of elves who were banished from the surface centuries ago and took up residence in a system of caves in the northern region of the Hidden Lands.
• Eon: The elves of Mundana are sorted into six tribes, each with their own culture and traditions setting them apart from each other and placing them into their own elfish stereotype: The Sanari are nobles, aristocrats and mages, infamous for their vast knowledge, secrecy and their peerless grasp of magic. Thism is a vassal tribe for the Sanari, regarded by most as either a Proud Warrior Race at best, or insufferably haughty at worst. Kiriya is the most artistically inclined of the tribes, valuing song, music, peace and love above all else. The forest-dwelling Henéa are a savage tribe of hunters and woodsmen, territorial and feared by most they are closer to The Fair Folk than traditional elves. Léaràm are craftsmen and blacksmiths, individualistic and stubborn to a fault their culture has a lot in common with Scottish culture. Finally, Pyar have integrated with human civilization and are far more likely to identify with whatever human society they live in than their elvish identity. The elves also refer to themselves as "the people of the curse" as they owe their long lives to a Biotropic field that slows their aging, but also makes them experience the passage of time more intensely the older they get. This results in most elves becoming apathetic and withdrawn as they get older. The Biotropic field also burdens the elves with a mutual sixth sense of sorts: They can feel when someone's looking at them, and how they are looking at them, and others can feel the looks of elves upon themselves in turn. It's repeatedly emphasized in the source materials just how uncomfortable and self-consious this tends to make most elves.
• Fellowship: The elves are known for being graceful and long-lived, and for standing out. Their core stat is Grace, and they can tap into innate magical powers called "elder arts" and can walk safely on precarious surfaces, or even run up sheer surfaces for short distances. The elf variants available include Faeries (small Winged Humanoids who can fly, and can briefly share the power of flight with others), Merfolk (who can breathe underwater, and can use their elder arts practically indefinitely as long as they're near a body of water), Star Elves (otherworldly beings from beyond the stars with high-tech "gizmos"), and Wood Elves (forest-dwelling elves who are great at travelling through woodlands stealthily).
• Godforsaken: Elves spend their long lives pursuing many different interests and quests. As such, adult elves have often mastered numerous skills, and almost all know a bit of magic. Elves encountered as adventurers tend to be driven by curiosity about the world or to have set out in search of abstract goals such as the perfect sunset or love song.
• La Notte Eterna: Classical elves have been left at a disadvantage on Neir thanks to the fall of Laon, the sun god, which has plunged Neir into an eternal night and robbed most sentient races of their ability to see in the dark. On the other hand, it's also brought out the Klorss, a race of dark elves who were banished into the caves of the Hidden Lands centuries ago, but who now feel confident enough to come out of seclusion.
• Mage Knight, a now-defunct miniatures game, has the standard Three as well, played fairly straight. The High Elves are a race of Knight Templars, the Wood Elves share power with a consortium of Centaurs and other woodland critters, and the Dark Elves are vampires-in-training lumped in with the "undead faction".
• The One Ring: Zig-zagged with the elf cultures from Tolkien's Legendarium. High Elves of Rivendell have considerably better starting stats than other cultures, but attract more attention from the forces of evil and can only lower their Shadow score by suffering permanent negative side-effects. Other elves are comparable to the other player types.
• Pathfinder:
  • Elves are much like their D&D counterparts, with the usual isolationist forest kingdom, long lives, largely Chaotic Good natures and detached attitudes from the rest of the world, with the added change of Monochromatic Eyes that are almost all iris/pupil. During Earthfall, they mostly avoided the devastation by fleeing to Castrovel, the setting's equivalent of the planet Venus.
  • Before being retconned out due to legal concerns, drow were descended from the elves who did not flee to Castrovel and were forced underground instead. As it turned out, elves who became consumed by hatred and/or evil would turn into drow. Unlike the D&D kind, who worship Lolth almost exclusively, Pathfinder drow were demon-worshipers who did not tolerate the worship of true deities (meta-wise, this was due to Lolth being D&D copyright and thus not usable by Pathfinder).
  • The elves are further divided into a number of distinct cultures and ethnic groups:
    • The Aiudeen are the setting's "default" elves, descending from the ones who fled Golarion through the aiudara gates and later came back. Due to this, they are also called the Returners.
    • The Spiresworn are an offshoot of the Aiudeen who secluded themselves in the Mordant Spire — a tower that grew from the corpse of a dead goddess — shortly after returning to Golarion, and now guard the secrets of lost Azlant and wage a secret war against the aboleths.
    • The Ilverani, also called the Snowcaster elves, are a reclusive people with ice-white skin and hair, whose ancestors sought refuge in the far north of the world, and who still lead harsh lives among the snowy wilds of the Crown of the World.
    • The aquatic elves are water-breathers, and live in seclusion beneath the oceans.
    • The elves of Jinin descend from the same group that fled underground to become the drow, but split off early on, traveled east to emerge in Tian Xia and eventually forged a Lawful civilization based on the traditions of the Samurai of Minkai.
    • The dark-skinned Mualijae descend from elves who sought refuge from Earthfall in the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse. In the modern day they're split between the Alijae, Ekujae and Kallijae tribes.
    • The Vourinoi live nomadically in the deserts of northern Garund. They have close cultural ties to the Mualijae, and tend to see gender as something inconstant and prone to changing.
  • Some elves, for any of a number of reasons, end up being Raised by Humans (or by halflings or gnomes or whoever else) rather than among other elves. Due to the elves' long lifespans and slow growing cycles, these elves inevitably see several generations of their caretakers, friends, siblings and rivals grow, age and die before they even reach adulthood, often harming their ability to form meaningful connections later in life. They also end up having trouble connecting to the slow-paced, long-term views and lifestyles of other elves, preventing them from truly fitting in either world, and are often referred to as the Forlorn as a result.
  • Half-elves are also common, and can have different traits depending on which kind of elf they descend from. Most half-elves are half-human, but in Starfinder it's more common for them to be half-ryphorian (ryphorians being the main humanoid natives of Triaxus, another planet in Golarion and Castrovel's solar system). They mostly live within elven or human societies, but can breed true with one another and at least one town, the port of Erages in the elven homeland of Kyonin, is majority half-elf.
  • Wood giants are essentially the giants' version of elves — they live in hidden villages within ancient forests, revere and protect nature, and are distinguished from other giants by their long pointed ears.
• RuneQuest: Elves are Plant People, descended from the plant goddess Aldrya, and are physical embodiments of the forests they inhabit; they are the most prominent members of the Aldryami, a broad group that includes multiple other types of sapient plants descended from Aldrya. The many types of Aldryami, identified as colors by humans, differ as much from each other as the animal-based mortal races do from each other; the most humanoid largely resemble fantasy elves with hair and clothes made out of plants, but others are humanoid figures made out of branches and foliage and others still are simply walking trees with gaping knotholes for eyes and mouths and twisting, knotty branches for limbs. They are one of the Elder Races and were once a powerful and widespread people, but have been pushed back into a number of small enclaves by a series of civil wars, conflicts with humans, dwarves and trolls, and blights of insect pests.
  • The true elves are divided between the brown elves (or Mreli), the green elves (Vronkali) and the yellow elves (Embyili). The brown elves are embodiments of deciduous trees (and unlike the others go dormant in the winter), the green elves of conifers, and the yellow elves of tropical evergreens. Each tends to dominate in their respective forest environments, but they place little importance on these distinctions and in mixed forests form into mixed societies with little regard for their specific types. Yellow elves are the only ones not to be strict vegetarians, and will sometimes spice up meals with bits of raw flesh or living insects; other elves find this practice disgusting.
  • There are also several other types of elf besides the main ones. The Voralans or black elves are tied to fungus, and thus aren't actually Aldryami, but share a cultural kinship with elves and will aid and shelter them if needed; they're also hermaphrodites. The Murthoi or blue elves are embodiments of aquatic plants; most live among kelp forests, but others tend floating rafts of seaweed in the open ocean and a few inhabit large freshwater lakes. They cannot survive out of water, have purple-red skin and violet hair, and swim by vibrating the long, thin tails they have instead of legs. The Slorifings, also called red elves or goblins, are the eldest of the elf races; they embody ferns and other spore-bearing plants. They're the smallest elves and the most physically varied; many aren't even humanoid. They reproduce by burying themselves, after which a spore-bearing plant grows over their graves and buds off new Slorifings.
  • Other Aldryami found living alongside the true elves include dryads (plant spirits capable of taking and shedding corporeal form), runners and sprites (which are to bushes and weeds what elves are to trees) and Great Trees (the original seedlings of Aldrya and the ancestors of the other Aldryami, usually found as part of the ruling councils of elf societies).
• Scarred Lands second edition, for Pathfinder and D&D 5e, has a couple of differences from the D&D norm. The elves here are around the same height as humans, and they commonly practice tattooing, regardless of race. The common elven races on Ghelspad, the primary continent, are wood elves, who are close to standard, and the dark elves (or drendali), who avert the usual depiction by tending towards neutrality rather than evil, only being called "dark" because they live underground. Half-elves in Ghelspad are rare — they're playable, but they're not a core PC race.
• Shadowrun: Elves average a foot or more taller than humans, with a more-than-proportional corresponding increase in arrogance.
  • They came into being around 2011 AD, when a noticeable percentage of human mothers began, apparently at random, to give birth to dwarf and elf babies. Dwarf/elf and either/human couples give birth to only dwarf, elf or human babies; no half-races exist. Elf/elf couples breed true so long as there's enough available magic; when magic dips, they give birth to apparently human children. Thousands of years later, when magic rises again, their otherwise-human descendants give birth to elf babies. There's also a random genetic quirk that can make an elf ageless rather than the normal two-hundred plus lifespan. By 2050 AD, a handful of conspiracy-loving Immortal Elves who survived since the previous cycle of magic have organized many of their born-since-magic-returned-in-2011 brethren into full-fledged not-so-Hidden Elf Nations. Generally speaking, the elves who live in normal human society know nothing about Immortal bloodlines or previous ages of magic and are frankly annoyed that the elf-centric countries exist, because it's fuel for Fantastic Racism.
  • As with all other metatypes, a number of distinctive variants have emerged from the main elf stock as a result of genetic variance and secondary awakening events. These are the nocturnae, also called dark elves and self-referred to as Night Ones, a European strain marked by a mild sunlight allergy, a resulting nocturnal lifestyle and short fur that would be indistinguishable from skin if not for its blue, black and violet shades; dryads, shorter and Always Female elves with an allergy to pollution; wakyambi, rare and extremely tall African elves with dark skin and rounded ears; and xapiri thëpë, a reclusive tribal people from South America with photosynthetic patches of chlorophyll-rich skin.
• Talislanta: Averted, as the complete absence of elves in the game-setting was actually used in advertisements to promote the game. However, Ariane, Mandalans, Mirin, Muses, Phantasians, and Thaecians can all easily be called elves with the serial number filled off. Most of them are as beautiful, magical, and spiritually superior as the best examples of elvishness.
• Talisman: The Elf of the fantasy rpg-themed board game fits mostly in line with Wood Elves, due to the special bonuses they get in Woods and Forest tiles. The "better" aspect is highly questionable, as many fans consider the Elf's special abilities to be quite underwhelming in comparison to other characters.
• Tormenta: Not only did the elves lose their nation, Len'rienn, in a war against goblin-kin, having refused an alliance with humans, but their goddess, Glorienn, sent an avatar to fight against the leader of the goblinoid army... and lost, then went mad in frustration, bringing to the world the Tormenta in the name of vengeance, which in turn didn't work because they killed EVERYTHING and not just goblinoids (and didn't even strike where the goblin army was, for what matters). Then, the Tormenta invaded her own divine realm, and Glorienn didn’t fought it despite being almost omnipotent there and lost her spot in the Pantheon, being demoted to a minor goddess. To make matters worse, she was so terrified that she accepted protection from the minotaur god of power, Tauron — a god that demands the weak to serve him. So the elven goddess is but a sex slave, and the elves have no nation, no goddess, no pride and no love from the setting's creators.
  • Recently, Glórienn plotted with Aharadak, the newly ascended minor God of Tormenta to kill Tauron and open the spot in the Pantheon so Aharadak could ascend to major godhood. It worked but in the process a spell showed all elves all over Arton the goddess’s actions, like [[Brainwashing]] elves to já ethem put themselves into situations in which their dead is almost sure to happen all because she wants their prayers or making them commit “heroic” sacrifice for her in a fight she could have easily won. After that, all elves abandoned her, and she lost her minor godhood as well.
• Uresia Grave Of Heaven: The author stated that every elven community was in fact a separate subrace — so you did not only had High Elves, you had Mountain High Elves, City High Elves, Wood High Elves...
• The World of Darkness:
  • Changeling: The Dreaming: The sidhe are the closest thing the setting has to elves. They're inherently beautiful, and are considered to bear the "divine right" of rule after returning to Earth in the late '60s. This is a bit of a sore spot for some commoner fae, who spent centuries trying to fight off the tide of Banality while most of the sidhe faffed about in Arcadia.
  • Changeling: The Lost: The Fairest are in many ways the spiritual successors to the sidhe.

Tabletop Wargames

• Kings of War: Elves are divided into two groups, regular Elves (who have both High and Wood aspects, presumably for maximum compatibility with Warhammer models) and the evil Twilight Kin. Regular Elves have the Elite rule across the board, letting them reroll one attack (in first edition) or all 1's on the attack roll (in second); Twilight Kin have Vicious instead, which does the same thing but for damage rolls instead, meaning they're roughly equal, with Elite mainly being an advantage for war machines.
• Warhammer: The Elves are either extremely long-lived or physically immortal humanoids — official sources tend to go back and forth on that — of the Tolkien-esque tall and lean variety, being on average both slightly lighter than humans and significantly greater in stature (5'11 in early editions of the RPG, 6'5 in later editions and Soulbound), with long pointy ears, enhanced senses, and slightly denser musculature. Artwork also tends to depict with solid-colored, usually near-black eyes. They're divided between the usual High, Dark and Wood Elves; strictly speaking, these are the names that humans and dwarfs use for them — the elves refer to themselves as Asur, Druchii and Asrai, respectively. They also all look more or less the same — their distinctions are by and large purely cultural.
  • The High Elves of Ulthuan (Atlantis, essentially) are a sophisticated, advanced, and haughty civilization that lives in marble cities amidst pastoral fields and woodlands. They are notable for the structure and tone of their military, which tends to focus a lot on combined arms. And also on really, really big swords and axes, which aren't usually considered classical Elf weapons, and on heavily armored cavalry. But then, they wield their six-foot-long two-handed swords gracefully. Also, instead of the usual stereotypical rangers, they instead have Shadow Warriors, which are Ninjas really (down to the outfits). They're still absolutely unwilling to use guns, though, unlike the humans and dwarfs, which extends to the other elf cultures.
    • The High Elves have a particular focus on war beasts, including dragons ridden into battle by Elven lords, giant eagles, fiery and icy phoenixes and giant white lions that can pull chariots or be ridden into battle. There are also the White Lions of Chrace, a unit of axe-wielding elves wearing lion pelts that they got from hunting down one of these lions and killing it personally. Among other things, Warhammer elves should be commended for combining elven grace with being very badass.
    • The High Elves are effectively the closest the setting has to a Big Good faction given their maintenance of the Great Vortex, their more-or-less cordial relations with all the other "good" factions, their naval strength keeping the seas open for trade, and the fact that they tend to bear the brunt of Chaos invasions.^note In the "Tyrion and Teclis" novels for instance, the force that attacked Ulthuan during the Great War Against Chaos is stated to be 200,000 Northmen and tens of thousands of Druchii, while 100-300,000 attacked the entire Old World (requiring the combined forces of the Empire, Dwarfs, and Kislev to defeat — with help from High Elf mages) in the 4e Chaos army book. In Total War: Warhammer II, the scripted Chaos/Skaven invasions they get hit with in the Vortex Campaign are collectively about twice the size of what's thrown at the Old World in the first game, which again, will likely be combated by an alliance of several factions. In the Storm of Chaos campaign event, the High Elves repulse the entirety of the Druchii's military while also deploying an elite expeditionary force to help the Empire and Dwarfs against Archaon on the continent and a fleet to sink the Norscan navy and prevent them from opening up another front in Nordland, while the Old World factions are unable to offer the High Elves any help in defending Ulthuan.
    • They are also quite typical examples of this trope in terms of their immense haughtiness, arrogance and firm belief in their cultural, magical and ethical superiority over everybody else, and for a long, bitter enmity with the Dwarfs that could have been easily avoided (alongside a lot of bloodshed) had the two peoples been less arrogant and proud. Albeit the High Elves' arrogance is closer to Condescending Compassion (think a Victorian-era Brit's opinion of Asians), while their Dark cousins see other races as cattle. The "Tyrion and Teclis" novels show this perspective in more detail, particularly in Tyrion's internal monologue, being more traditional than his brother.
    • The High Elves of Avelorn, one of the ten realms of Ulthuan and ruled by the high priestess of the Elven mother goddess, blur the line between high elves and wood elves; while culturally High Elven, they're also forest-dwelling nature-lovers, on good terms with the forest spirits that share their forested realm and noted to be very close kin of the Wood Elves proper.
  • The Wood Elves are descended from High Elven colonists who declined their King's request to return to Ulthuan and instead bunkered down in the Enchanted Forest of Athel Loren, are quite different from the standard Elf; they can be very cruel and capricious and generally act more like The Fair Folk, especially their king Orion and his Wild Hunt. They're also allied with the Treemen who share their forests, and with giant, intelligent hawks and eagles that they ride into battle. They also tend to act as a moral and magical middle ground between their High and Dark cousins. There are a few additional groups descended from other factions of recalcitrant colonists, which are otherwise largely separate but usually lumped in with the main Wood Elves; the primary such group are the Eonir of Laurelorn Forest within the borders of the Empire. As Laurelorn is a fairly "normal" magical forest instead of Athel Loren's borderline spirit world, the Eonir are much less fey than their Asrai cousins and somewhat less isolationist, engaging in trade and diplomacy with the Empire and even allowing villages to be funded within parts of their land — albeit only after a strict vetting process, granted.
  • The Dark Elves are the descendents of a faction of Chaos-worshipping High Elves who rebelled against the rest of their kind after their ruler, Malekith, attempted to crown himself king after killing his predecessor (the fact that becoming the High Elven king requires the chief elven god's say-so, and that said god was very unimpressed with Malekith's power grab, is a big part of why this coup didn't work). They were exiled from Ulthuan and settled in Naggaroth, a frozen and monster-haunted waste located where North America would be, and established a cruel civilization focused on the worship of the elven gods of war and murder, death, hedonism and the savage hunt. They're bitter enemies with the High Elves, and the two groups are constantly at war. They're feared the world over as terrifying raiders, corsairs and slavers, and have velociraptor-mounted heavy cavalry.
  • Earlier editions also describe the Sea Elves, who live on the coastal areas of the Elven Kingdoms (what later editions call Ulthuan) and have a long tradition of exploration, seamanship and merchantry, distinguishing them from the High Elves living further inland who view having to work for a living as a personal failure and never leave their homelands if they can help it and who view the Sea Elves as very uncouth. Consequently, Sea Elves are the most commonly seen elven kindred in human cities, and maintain a number of trading posts. Later editions retconned this split, although some traces survive in the distinction between Ulthuan's more magical and isolationist inner kingdoms and its coastal kingdoms that have larger navies and interact more with the outside world.
  • In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, elves have similar base strength and toughness stats to human ones but the highest ability score modifiers (two positive, no negative), significantly higher movement and moderately higher agility — their base movement is 5, as fast as your average horse — their career list lacks many of the sucky human ones like the peasant, and if you want to be a wizard you don't have to pay tuition. Of course, these fat bonuses come at the cost of one massive drawback: you're an elf and you have to play like one, in a setting where (outside of the major cities, Laurelorn's borders, and a few other places) everyone is extremely racist and hostile to them and will try to take an axe or a pitchfork or a torch to them. To give you an idea of just how hated elves are in this setting, a poor sap who got on the wrong side of a Loan Shark named Bruno Ballcrusher now lives in a cell with a child molester, a serial rapist and an elf... and talks about his predicament like being with the elf is the worst part.
• Warhammer 40,000: The Eldar are Space Elves to a "T", as the term Eldar was used by J. R. R. Tolkien to describe a subset of elves. Much like other denizens of the Warhammer 40K universe (Orks, the now-defunct Squats, Necrons), they are based on counterparts from the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Heirs to one of the oldest civilizations in existence, their hedonism and magical power created a Chaos God that almost destroyed their civilization and has plagued the galaxy since. They even have two cousin factions: the Dark Eldar (who are dark elves Recycled In Space with the dark aspect turned up to eleven) and the Exodites (who are more or less planetary wood elves who prefer isolation and pastoral environments).
  • The Eldar, much like everyone else in the setting, are morally grey at their best and actively evil at their worst, and are fully willing to instigate wars (from behind the scenes) in which billions of humans can die to save a few thousand Eldar. The Second and Third Armageddon Wars are a perfect example of this, an Eldar farseer engineered the rise of an Ork Warboss who went on to start the two wars which claimed billions of human and ork lives because he had foreseen that if he did not then ten thousand Eldar would die. He later looked back on the act and stated that it was completely worth it. The "up for debate" part, however, is because this isn't particularly out of the ordinary for any of the factions in 40k. Doubtless the Imperium of Man would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed, to say nothing for the unquestionably more evil sides. Other Craftworlds have been rather more cooperative when confronting a greater threat, although they will not hesitate to act if they feel threatened in any way.
  • Eldar physiology is generally superior to that of your average human. In keeping with stereotypical elfin attributes, Eldar are extremely nimble and have faster reflexes than almost anyone else; even Space Marines can barely keep up with most of them in reaction speeds, let alone trained Aspect Warriors. Whereas psykers are comparatively rare among other races, every single Eldar possesses some degree of psychic power and the race as a whole is host to some of the most powerful psykers in the galaxy. Even after Slaanesh started to steal their souls, they can still easily live for thousands of years without any signs of aging, though this is offset by a low birth rate that further exacerbates their constantly declining population. And then there's the fact that no matter how good you are at something, be you a musician or a warrior, a painter or a pilot, any Eldar from that path has likely done it for far longer than you, has practiced it more than you and will be better than you at it. Whether or not they could do anything else is another question entirely.
  • Biologically, however, the Eldar are still aliens and share little internal anatomy with humans. Their blood crystallizes instead of scabbing, their teeth are direct outgrowths of the jawbones, they have a complex system of hollow fibers instead of marrow and their organs do not appear to have any clear analogues with those of humans, although they do seem to have free-floating lymph nodes.
  • In general, Craftworld Eldar don't act too much like standard fantasy elves. Rather than being loose and free-spirited, they live highly disciplined and regimented lifestyles as dictated by the path they have currently chosen. Not that this is without good reason, since we've seen what happens when they are loose and free-spirited. While all the Craftworld Eldar are more or less analogous to high elves, each of the main Craftworlds embody different parts of the stereotype and often blow them out of proportion in the process. Biel-Tan for example, is the most heavily militarized and xenophobic while Ulthwe is full of psykers. Other major Craftworlds include Iyanden (once considered the greatest of all surviving Craftworlds, but is now in decline), Alaitoc (which produces a lot of the societal outcasts known as Rangers due to its higly regimented lifestyle) and finally, Saim-Hann (whose warriors ride around on jetbikes and settle matters of honour among themselves through non-lethal duels). While Exodites are in some respects similar to both Alaitoc and Saim-Hann, they are generally more analogous to stereotypical wood elves in that they choose to reject most forms of technology and live in harmony with the planet they settle on.
  • The Dark Eldar are a race that make drow look like saints — their home city of Comorragh is less Valinor and more Hellraiser. Practically everything they have is decorated in Spikes of Villainy and their only goal aside from survival is to screw around and make others suffer. Dark Eldar sustain their immortality through torturing as many people as possible.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The elves — or "aelves" — come in several varieties.
  • The first elves in the Mortal Realms were the survivors of the End Times in the world-that-was; a number of elves from the old world managed to escape with the help of magic and their gods, and set up sprawling new civilizations across the Mortal Realms with Chaos absent. Initially, they were isolationists, rarely interacting with the other races (mainly the humans, dwarfs/Duardin, and lizardmen/Seraphon, also descendants of old world survivors). When the God-King Sigmar found them, he uplifted them and they joined his kingdom. The descendants of these original survivors are now referred to as City Aelves, and they cohabit along with the other races in the Free Cities of Sigmar, where they fight for the God-King's empire in much the same way their human, dwarf, and lizardmen neighbors. Notably they lack a lot of common elven stereotypes, such as arrogance, isolationism, and rivalry with dwarfs.
  • The rest of the elves have a different origin. Slaanesh ate the souls of the elves that died when the original setting was destroyed. The deified elves Tyrion, Teclis and Malerion ambushed Slaanesh, imprisoned him, and took the elves' souls back. Some of the rechristened aelves went on to live alongside their brothers in Sigmar's Azyr, but three new races were created from elves whose souls had been damaged by their time spent digesting in Slaanesh's gut:
    • Morathi took some of these souls and reforged them into the Khinerai and Melusai, twisted elven women with, respectively, tails and batlike wings and the lower bodies of serpents.
    • The Idoneth Deepkin descend from elven souls taken in by Teclis, who had been tainted by their time inside Slaanesh and fled to the bottom of the seas to avoid Teclis' judgement. In addition to being a Darker and Edgier version of Sea Elves, most of their children are born without souls, requiring them to raid land-dwelling peoples to steal the souls of others in order to survive.
    • The Lumineth Realm-lords were made from the most stable of the elf souls harvested from Slaanesh, and thus came out the cleanest. More or less a recreation of the old setting's High Elves. They mainly inhabit Hysh, the realm of light.

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