So, funny story.
I recently shaved my winter beard, and having grown long hair and being fair of skin and slight of build, my coworkers started calling me Legolas. OK, fine.
Today the weather was nice and I found myself sitting on my porch barefoot and shirtless, drinking out of a jug. And the notion "redneck Legolas" crept over me.
The more I think about it, the more sense it makes for D&D elves (3.x elves, in particular).
They live a really, really long time. You know who else lives for a really long time? Socially-conservative old people. If elves are anything like humans psychologically (and given that humans are playing them, they must be a bit), living to 300 years seems very likely to produce social conservativism. Especially when you take into account that they live damn near forever and are the firstborn people of the gods (in the Tolkeinesque standard interpretation), a bit of casual superiority complex, racism, and cultural conservatism seem likely.
But, they're Chaotic (Good, but still Chaotic). If they're not Chaotic on the "social norms" front, they're probably Chaotic on the "respect for authority" front. Also possibly in the "hold my bourbon and watch this" sense; what use is living forever if you don't enjoy it? (Related: "renowned for their wine" rhymes with "produces moonshine", which is close enough for me)
Apparently they're all raised to know how to use weapons: gun culture, Southern-style honor culture.
But if they're beloved of the gods, get a bunch of sweet racial bonuses (except the Con penalty; possibly inbreeding?), and only have to sleep four hours a night, why do they live in the backwoods instead of being in charge? Clearly they're fractious (Chaotic supports this; me against my brother, my brother and I against our cousin, and all three of us against the humans) and possibly have been defeated by the empire of men ("The Elves will rise again").
... now I kind of want to train a Markov chain name generator on a combined set of elven and stereotypical redneck names, to get things like "Celebrimbubba", "Billrond Junior", and "Fingolforrest".
Meanwhile, in the fantastical, post-magical-apocalypse Deep South, the dwarven vaults are doomsday-prepper / militia compounds, hobbit cartels smuggle pipeweed across the border in apparati of Kwalish, the City State of the Invincible Overlord is basically New Orleans, and giant crawfish suck the heads off of you.
Perhaps the problem with my previous approach to RPGs was taking things entirely too seriously.
I'd play that. Drizzt Joe Bob Urden...
ReplyDeleteA renegade elf, who has emigrated to Yankeeland! He has a pair of old LeSabres on blocks in his yard, and a pet panther that he's convinced is a normal cat who is just really well-fed ("Any cat'll get this big if ya feed 'em biscuits and gravy"). His neighbors really aren't sure what to think of him.
DeleteGood to see another blog post John! This one was quite fun.
ReplyDeleteSorry for beeing very late to the party, but there once was a (German)Webcomic about Warhammer (both Fantasy and 40K), that showed an shot down human and an old woodelf-woman muttering:
ReplyDelete"He trespassed on my land. There is a reason the woodpublicans defend my right to wear a bow."