It could go many ways, from immediate decommissions to using particularly despicable(by the 'modern national beliefs) for dedicated service to offended groups as a form of reparations
In D&D at least elves have the trance which allows them to relive moments of their life, at least until memories of previous lives overwhelm those memories, at which time they are ready to move on,. This will allow them to synthesize third knowledge, unlike a human. So at least for Faerun elves your original premise of the wise word makes sense.
I love the idea that a mercenary company would have a stake in any monster hunting in the nearby area and any adventurer would be called a "scab" and perhaps be attacked or driven out of town.
This video got me thinking and cause me to think of a whole lot of things about these mercenary companies could do. Like if you have a magic world, then I wonder if mercenary companies would have ways to force adventurers nearby to join or work under them. Perhaps to hunt in a region you have to make a magical oath or contract that enforces you to be loyal to them or follow said rules. Perhaps this is the first step that leads a mercenary company to evolve into the local adventurers guild which would mean that they try to crush or absorb any business rivals to ensure their future rule. Though this opens up a whole new can of worms. Like if magical oaths like this exist and can be enforced than you could do things like Knights who take an unbreakable oath to protect a kingdom, nobles magical oathed to work in the interest of the kingdom and/or their king, and priests who take a magical oath to be forever pious. would make it hard to be corrupt in such a world. I also wonder if such guilds/companies would lead to the creation of magical banking or investment system. Such as if said monster needs silver or a special magical item to kill them then overhead costs get ridiculously high so perhaps the mercenary company or guild acts as an investor that "buys stock" in your party by providing the more expensive weapons or runs a barracks for local adventurers in return for said adventurers doing missions for them and having to share spoils of the hunt with the company. This debt could also be a way to keep a hold of powerful people by saying that they can't leave the company or retire till they do enough work to pay off the investment back.
I wonder how these mercenary companies would cope with accepting magic users, rogues and bards, potentially of different species, into their ranks, if they were performing the tasks of clearing dungeons and combating evil sorcerers and the like. Would they accept them as necessary? How would the average mercenary soldier, accustomed to the company of other soldiers, get on with them? In a fantasy world, perhaps a guild for travelling groups of diverse problem solvers might be required.
@@petebyrdie4799 I would see them willing to work with them if they are useful unless it’s a setting with heavy extremism (religious or Nazi level antisemitism). A lot of people seem to be willing to bend their “principles” for profit. From there they may start to see others as actually pretty good. I mean the us military was desegregated before the country as a whole
@@Nostripe361 Could be. Might be an inspiration for wordbuilding. I could see the local swords-for-hire asking the party's meat shield why he's living an itinerant life with a bunch of freaks instead of putting down roots. Depending of the player's character background, might be interesting.
@@petebyrdie4799 mercenarys run like a business. They aren't murder hobos and they aren't in the business of risking their people to liberate treasure in a tomb or whatnot unless it's worth it. Every member of the group is an asset with skills according to their function in the group. It's reasonable to assume they would have those classes unless they are unwilling to work as a group. Mercenarys have no time for the antics of an individual.
Incidentally, lore for elves in Faerûn goes give them an ability to bypass the limits of memory. When they meditate they can relive any and all of their memories as if living them again.
@frousteleous1285 It's why I findiscussions revolving around magical creatures annoying when people try to. Anchor them down to operate in the exact same way, humans do biologically Despite being handcrafted by god and are half a step away from being actual magic creatures. I think it would be interesting to incorporate ideas. Like how humans have memory loss and how the longer live, races might get around that. In this case, elves don't have perfect memory recall. As we would normally imagine it, but instead, meditate and can relieve those experiences again. But also the idea that. They might get set in their ways like humans do, but then kind of have a soft reset where they start biologically re-evaluating every 100 years or so is also kind of interesting and would sort of play into their classical chaotic alignment.
That means they well get slower over time. Imagine filtering through hours of memories from dreams you’ve had and just spacing out. Or worse you get a mental illness like schizophrenia and each meditation your mind gets more disconnected from reality
I think one of my favorite ideas for memories of a long aged being was from an old anime where everyone was fighting over an item everyone thought was a weapon to destroy the world. The reveal was that there was actually an immortal being that could destroy the world and the thing everyone one was fighting for was just the beings magical Hard drive to save all its memories to once it’s organic brain was to full to hold it
Firstly in regards to the undead labor issue I think you should still give a look to the nation of Karrnath in the world of Eberron as the particular conflicts that this issue brings up among them are rather unique. Secondly, and far less seriously, all those "tends" in the Elves section are doing some real legwork keeping back Frieren fans.
Your ability to re-evaluate and course correct speaks well of you, in multiple ways. It takes a strong person to admit when they've erred, doubly so to address such errors openly and earnestly. Bravo!!
Per the issue of long-lived species, and uncomfortable points thereabout; people generally don't actually grow more conservative as they age. They become set in their ways, and the world moves on past them. I didn't comment this before because it's a darker take than I like to offer up on these videos, but how many times has desperately needed social change come from the *older* members of a population? Versus how many times have the middle-aged and elderly been the flag-bearers of the status quo, no matter how horrific or monstrous? How often have the young realized something was wrong and had the full violence of the state turned on them when they tried even to complain about it to the old people in charge? Elves in fiction generally avoid this by being *inherently* 'good' creatures; driven by culture and natural inclination toward empathy, altruism and aid. Tolkein's elves are literally holy beings in their context, and this in turn informed all of Western fiction. But if they aren't? If that natural inclination, or even just cultural inclination, *isn't* there? Imagine the world if a specific group of people who each can live long enough to outlast *civilizations* are the ones in power. And their morality and sense of justice and ideals about society all track back to the standards of, say, the real-world 1600s. Imagine how horrific that world would be. Imagine what would be necessary to shift that world.
To your point about elves, I think this is where we can probably borrow a little bit of how the Craftworld Eldar organize their lives in Warhammer 40K...... Where each one dedicates their lives to a specific aspect for a definite period of time, learning all they can about it, but then adopting a new path after a set amount of time to avoid the levels of excess and obsession that you spoke about.
I liked this channel before but now I love it. It's always great hearing someone take on feedback and discuss it. It extends and deepens the conversation, which IMO is always good when discussing worldbuilding. Also doesn't hurt that these videos can serve to bring earlier vids to folks' attention; I didn't know there was a video on elves.
How longer lived people function is rather difficult to guess. It's mostly a question of how they are defined in the world building. Even in D&D I often ask myself the question, why should Elves create and wear anything less than Masterwork items? They have the time to create nothing less. The same goes for Dwarves, though there it would be more focused on stone- and metalwork. While Dwarves in D&D don't live as long as Elves, the question remains, especially with the Legendary Dwarven Craftsmanship. Of course that may unbalance the economics of a game.
That point about Dwarves is exactly how Gimli tells Legolas how Dwarves would "tend" the caves of Helm's Deep: with utmost care and slow deliberation. Of course the quality of such work is balanced at least partly by the time it takes to make a given item. A human smith might make what they consider a Masterwork sword in a month of continuous work, while a longer-lived race would think half a year or more the minimum needed for such.
And yet despite average lifespans being the longest ever many people often choose to get cheap and disposable products rather than long lasting quality ones, this even extends to major things like houses which can quite easily be built to last hundreds of years and in the somewhat extreme case of Japan the average life of a house is just thirty years, and on a related note how often do people rip out and redo their kitchens and bathrooms despite them both working in pretty much the same way for at least the last fifty years? How much time and effort you are going to put into the manufacture of each object is likely going to be different per culture and to an extent individually by how much the quality or longevity matters to you. Thousand year life span elves my very well decide not to spent a lot of time making things they will get bored of or go out of fashion next season, or even find it foolish to become burdened by growing attached to items over a long life, just imagine how much crap a thousand year old hoarding elf could have in their attic.
Well for one thing having time is not the same as spending time. So you could spend 8 hours a day learning carpentry in order to make yourself the perfect spoon. Or you can spend that time going for walks, chating with friends, reading books, etc. Morover since you have more time there is also a higher bar to be considered a master. A human blacksmith can become a master within 20 years. But by dwarven standards it might require 100 years or longer. Even if you can produce the same as a human after 20 years, you wouldn't consider it proper masterwork, just journeyman's work.
I play an RPG called Mythras and I'm making a suppliment for it. Specifically an Elder Scrolls suppliment. I'm dealing with the "holy cow elves live a long time" thing, in particular the lifespan of TES elves is _highly_ variable as if some just start aging sooner or later than others and some get immensely lucky. In Mythras your character's age actually affects how many skill points they get, but aging can also make you lose core stat points. You can roll to see how old your character is. So now I've got this "exploding dice" aging minigame for creating elves. The amount of skill points you get slows significantly over the years so it's not completely absurd, but there's a sweet spot where you could still land a shockingly competent character from the outset, where if you'd aged much more you'd _rapidly_ degenerate and might just wither away and die. (Mythras isn't really a game that gives two shits about balance, just what's narriatively interesting.)
Your videos are some of the most thought provoking videos on world building I've found to date and have been an active influence on my writing. Reconsidering something with fresh eyes after being presented with more information is the act of the open-minded. I see you are very considered and open-minded and I commend you for that.
I don't think you were wrong to give your prison example in the previous video. I mean I'll accept if you didn't know about prison labour in the USA you may have been been stating things that you feel uncomfortable to have not seen. But I think it's a legitimate and worthwhile take. Including the interesting issue of it creating a perversion in the justice system. From a world building and story-telling perspective. The injustice of increasing all punishments to increase the work force is actually interesting. Eventually for instance. The punishment for stealing food, could be 200 years skeleton labour - clearly leading to a society where the government is corrupt and forsakes it's duties of care - for commercial gain. This is a built in longterm moral dilemma that players may enjoy tackling with. Some tables at least... Mine anyway.
If you want to see elven longevity addressed in media, you should check out the new anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. It's really wonderful so far.
As we are speaking of world building, your past observances have been colored by opinion and in-the-moment conjecture. And that is ok. World building in itself is the act of creating the rulebook for your current world. Yes, forethought and planning is a must and I applaud your channel for many thought provoking subjects. But never aplogize for your thought process or feel the need to explain yourself. Yes, critique can be an amazing discussion. When both parties have a voice to discuss. (The comment section is hardly that). Keep up the great work moving forward. Leave roads already traveled behind you.
In regards to necromancy, I think labor is more influential than one might first think. Because you have what is essentially localized outsourcing, all unskilled labor can be done by the undead which means abundant raw resources which 1) can be sold for dirt cheap, causing a boom in infrastructure and business 2) generate revenue through local sales and international exports, which can partially pay for citizen's taxes, thus decreasing the amound of tax dollars needed to run the local government, and 3) because of the abundance of cheap materials, boom in business / infrastructure, and elimination of the need for a working class, citizens will have a much higher standard of living as well as be able to afford focussing on art and science, thus creating more technological advancements due to the abundance of scientists, doctors, and engineers. This is all, of course, the ideal situation. Government corruption will likely prevent this.
I think worldbuilding is a reflection of what one thinks the world may work, even if they don't endorse or approve of what is happening. I thought the necromancy video was great, as it tried to think of ways it would have been integrated in the world without simplifying it to "dead = evil ", although this addendum to it is fine too.
4:444:44 bit of a major misunderstanding there. Criminals do forfeit their rights, or do you think prisoners are free? Likewise self defense exists because someone who makes themselves a clear and present danger forfeits their right to life and thus their actions cease to be self defense should say the cops shoot them. They don't cease to be human but in order to deter bad actors the legal system takes away rights from those who infringe on others rights. Even a measly fine is taking away the right to the fruit of one's own labor. Proportionality, bad laws, a multi-tiered justice system, crooked judges/cops/media bias, revolving door policies, violent offenders aren't reformed before release these are the major issues. Offsetting the cost of a huge money sink by people who have already forfeited many rights is...misguided. My family has seen the consequences of overcrowded prisons; my grandmother's killer spent 6 months behind bars before his release.
Mediaeval adventurers guilds ended up being Knights Templars or other orders, albeit that most of their quests were escort missions and I bet they constantly moaned about the pathing of the Pilgrims, how slow they were and how annoying it was when they tried to fight, rather than hide behind the actual fighters.
Honestly, the comparison to modern-day prison labour made the idea from the necromancy video make more sense to me when I watched it. Maybe I misunderstood what the video was - I thought it was just proposing ways a culture or society could come up with systems of using necromancy in a way tolerable to them, not that those ways should be ethical or moral from our personal standpoints. After all, I would say most cultures at least since the start of written history and up to the present day included have had a fairly deranged outlook on crime and punishment, and I would not at all put it beyond a DnD-style semi-feudal society not to respect criminals' rights or humanity in the slightest.
Maybe my personal bias is showing, but I didn't really think of your discussion of ethical use of undead as part of the prison system meant that it was good, rather than the society considered it to be ethical, which are often two different things. But then again, philosophically, most carceral systems are deeply flawed, intrinsically, as far as I'm concerned,
Yeah tbh, I was about to comment that some societies and people might just disagree that using criminals as undead labor is unethical. Especially depending on the crime. And ESPECIALLY in a dnd-style feudal society that actually has this magic and can tackle these questions.
12:10 uh.. yeah.. elves, being long lived, is more than just them becoming old and decrepid and then still living as a geezer for ages.. they age more slowly meaning memory will not decay as much as it would with humans. add to that their much better with magic means they could magically improve their memory. and if all else fails... pen and paper (or some magic memory crystal to record memories and/or events..) you were right the first time, mate.
Great video! Love to see a follow up on already great content as well as an open dialogue about possible mistakes or options for improvement. Thank you!
One thing of note: In medieval time and even way into the modern era, nations and states in a modern sense really dont exist. For a lot of this time countries are in a way both state and privat property of the nobility. The baseline theory of the time for this was, that the land and the people on it were giftet to the monarchs (iconicly kings) by god. They were entitled to rule as they saw fit, as long as they upheld gods laws. (a strechy and bandy thing, if the accountability was meant to come after their death by either gaining entrance to heaven or beig submittet to penance in purgatory or damnation in hell) Its the so called 'divine right of kings'. So there were no standing armies for most of the time (thats because of almst everyone working in agriculture and having actually no time to be even really parttime soldiers) and certainly no states/nations armies. All this happens really only after 1700.
I'll be honest I dont agree with a lot of the conclusions and ideas you bring up. But its one perspective well put together and gets me thinking so im here for it. Echo champers induce stagnation of ideas
Eberron really gave us 2 glimpses of normalized undead presence within a society: The nation of Karrnath, and the Areneal Elves. Karrnath is written as an evil nation, and the Blood of Vol has a lot to do with their interest in the undead, for obvious reasons, the Blood want both living and undead servants. The elves on the other hand are actually good, they have a culture based in animist beliefs and interaction with their ancestors, because they are mummies who have been around for 1000s of years in some cases.
To the point of undead being used later for immoral purposes, there are sharp restrictions on how far someone can be held responsible for those kinds of decisions. If I forge weapons that are bought by people that use them to defend innocents am I a hero? If they are stolen and used by murderers am I a villain? What if they are beaten into plowshares thereafter? What if I am lied to about the purpose of my work? What if I minted coins later used in human trafficking? What if I mined the ore to make the coins? The sins and glories of the fathers have reaching consequences, but much shorter lengths of accountability.
I disagree with the elf counter argument as that inherently requires assuming human brain = elf brain, while logic dictates a long lived intelligent species would have a brain adapted to their long life span and the problems that come with that.
maybe specializing is a path to success for elves with this sort of memory issue. they specialize and have a synergy with shorter-lived races that are more likely to push the boundaries along with the youngest elves. maybe an older elf has a number of human families that have been joining in her research and bringing innovation for many generations. the founders of those families had joined the elf when she was young, similar in age to her human counterparts. their children had grown up following in their parents' footsteps and so each generation had at least some who continued to work with and learn from the elf. just a thought.
Another model for long-lived species comes from M. John Harrison's _Viriconium_ series, in which an inconceivably old scientist and scholar can only remember the last 200 years of his life. He lives in a massive complex (which he presumably built) and is surprised when he discovers a new room. He really has no idea who he is or how he got there or how he learned what he knows. (_Doctor Who_ explored the same territory with Ashildr/Lady Me, who at least kept journals.) Or one could imagine a fog of memory like old vampires in _Vampire: The Requiem_ . Every so often vampires have to rest for decades or even centuries to "thin the blood". When they awaken, their memories are vague and confused, mixed with dreams and fantasies. In short, they confabulate. That was that setting's explanation for ignoring the lore of previous games. However, if elves do something similar, slowly and gradually, elves become not historians but fantasists and mythmakers. If they live for *thousands* of years, and converge on a consensus history, "eyewitnesses" to a Golden Age of Elfkind may not have seen any such thing.
I would like to see your take on Time Travel in fantasy. I can recall certain specific adventures involving some form of it. Chronomancy in general has such fascinating implications.
Here's my take on the general concept (more on the gameplay side than worldbuilding, but might still be fun) th-cam.com/video/6D0EKOz5gPE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=qvKJSekeg0VUE7-t
@@Grungeon_Master Already seen and enjoyed, although the game rules for time travel mechanics I use don't exactly allow time to loop as described. Continuum's time travel rules are a bit tighter. Should have specified I'd like to see how you'd build it into a world. I love hearing your takes on such topics as necromancy, and I want to how you puzzle out the logistics, ethics, and implications of time travel beyond just gameplay in a way that makes sense.
Older long lived races such as elves would make great historians and advisors. I don’t think they would make great innovators or progressive thinkers in their later years. Their revery (trance) allows them to relive and solidify their recent memories into long term memory in a more concrete way than the dream state of other races. It also allows them to relive older memories. This ability uniquely qualifies them to be able to remember details from even their earliest experiences. This same ability and constant “looking backwards” for centuries might also inhibit their ability to look forward and envision a new or unique solution. At least that’s how I see it. Grab your ketchup and crunch away my friends.
Kudos for reexamining your previous discussions in the light of subsequent criticism. Overall, I see you making the case for more nuance on these various topics, which leads, IMO, to more interesting and individual world-building. Cheers!
Someone on the internet admitting they made mistakes? The sky must be falling next! Jest aside, great video. And I say that not just because some of the criticism had been from me in the original videos. Guess that means you are still young enough to have some elasticity left in your brain. Improvement after all is mostly by becoming better than one has been in the past, and thus people (like so many on the internet) who think they know it all already usually cannot grow any longer.
These days humility has become a rare trait in people (younger than my elven 58 yr old ass) these days. But.. Tom here, expresses it rather well! It's as if he were gifted the trait. 😊 Well done sir. Well done.
errata videos are great because it let's you share things you've learned since the initial video on the topic(s). Thank you for this, I still think the initial videos had good things to say, and this adds to them
11:20 so the reason why thought patterns tend to concretize is known and important. It has to do with the way the brain changes as we age. If it's simply that elves age 10x slower than humans then that means their thoughts will reflect that. IE an elf that is 200 will have similar thought process to that of a 20 year old. It also means that they would be going through puberty for like 70-100 years.
That also would be a problem with any long life species. birth rates difficulties, having to care for a slow aging infant in a fast changing world unit it reaches their late teens and the need to preserve your own species and among other stuff
Not sure i agree with the critique on the elves part. Firstly, a worldbuilding species could very well have a better memory than humans if they live very long. It all depends on the writer's choices for that race. And as for them becoming, well "boomers" with antiquated views i feel like that's just as possible as them adapting and embracing change and the progress of history. I think it all depends on the character
For the Necromancy part.. Dwarfs in my setting uses undead miners as primary workforce. Darven necromancers has developed a way to bring parts of the miners personality back into the undead body, giving them full autonomy, but the effect only lasts for about 100 years.. or untill the next cave-in. Then they are off to have a proper burial. And one of my human kingdoms burn their dead and bury their ashes in sealed urns, Except royalty, historians and magic users. They get buried, full body, in the Kings Hill, so historians can ask a cleric to speak with dead if they ever need to know something from their time :P
I could imagine an elf talking to someone 20-something human and the human telling them some modern way of thinking about society, only for the elf to list off five times it was done and failed. "But it different this time." "Yeah. Good luck with that. But I'm going to leave for the next 50 some years. Last time, the following Civil War and famine ruined this country for decades."
I know it would require a bit of sensitivity to do it properly (colonial history being what it is) but having one of those "gentlemen's" explorer clubs like the British had in an adventure would be cool. Maybe you could make a video about how such an "adventurer guild" could be implemented/function.
In regards to the possibility of a corpse being used for purposes against the wishes of the family, I don't see it as terribly different to paying taxes. Even in feudal society there were taxes and it wasn't uncommon for a taxpayer to disapprove of how their tax money was spent by the monarch. I would say that a society which foregoes conventional tax, and instead takes the corpses, to be used by the state, would still be making a remarkable profit (assuming the maintenance costs of corpses is relatively low). Does it matter if the "taxpayer" disapproves of the uses of their loved ones corpses if it was seen as a tax rather than a donation? It's a bit odd to consider "what could happen over the next 100 years for this corpse" when they're effectively currency, either in replacing an army or a workforce. We don't question the way currency is used over 100 years so why would we think of undead any differently?
the elves in the setting i am working on live for approximately 2000 years on avarage so at 400 they'd be the equiverlent of 20. they're immensely smart valuing wisdom and to a degree logical thinking to avoid analyze new information and to easily understand new points of view though it isnt too uncommon for the elves to be old fashioned thinking considering as generations pass new generations have differing values and traditions that make them hard to relate to shorter lived races
Awesome video as usual. The concept of forced labor and slavery was explored in one of my world where if à prisonner sentenced to death was bought back, he would be forfeited his rights and become an object to his new owner. He would be marqued with tattoos and given away to his new master to do as he is pleased. This allowed for the players to be considered outside of the law, in the same way a gun is not responsible for hos crimes. The players were sent as undercover spies by the new master that saw an opportunity to build à "thief" army
a great example to draw inspiration form for a campaing or an adventure with a mercenary theme as discussed in this video are the italian wars and the golden age of condottieros or the mercenaries companies in central europe during the 30 years war (even if they're not medieval)
I think my preferred option for elves is that they're not human. They just don't age the same as humans do, or think the same a lot of the time. Maybe they're less likely to commit to a single idea or pursuit. So it wouldn't be an elf that invents meteorology, but they also wouldn't be as quick to dismiss the theory of evolution, or continental drift, as older humans did. That single minded passion that humans can have would seem very alien to an elf. Scary even.
For the long-lived creatures? One thing you probably should take into consideration is that they might have bypasses to human scale memory drop off. Dragons in D&D have a 3000+ year long lifespan for example. Elves with their potential 1000 year life. If you apply human restrictions on memory, born from our 100ish year potential life-span, you are also assuming that the evolutional path of these creatures is the same as a humans. Not saying that either is true, but most things have a life cycle that matches their longevity. Extended lives in real life tend to be paired with extended maturation rates.
It mostly going by the idea that the brain would alter the memory, or remove that memory. Do to the mind see that memory no longer needed and unnecessary would be multiple times since they would love much longer. They are already similar to any intelligent life without applying magical genetics
With "ethical" Necromancy i could imagine it would always be a contentious subject. An tyranical dictatorship may well use undead as free & reliable workers, soldiers & serfs because they can. And prison systems may emply "extended" sentences for their convicts. But on the flip side a culture like the Egyptians or Mayans may see mummification+reankmation as the highest honor. An honor held only by their greatest priests & seers so they may fontinue to help direct & protect their people. Some cultures may see having the undead like caring for loved ones, just cos grannies dead dont me she isnt family still. I recon it would be vastly different by culture, species & faith how people treat & feel about the undead. Adventurer Guilds could be like a union for those sesking to do mercanery type jobs of slaying monsters, saving people, robbing a vault ect... and Free-Companies would make for a great counter faction for players ro butt heads with! Bhaal as the "god of murder" is a weak concept. You can have that in a god's domain but take the real world Kali for example; she is the goddess of destruction, murder & death. Shes ALSO the goddess of motherhood & love. So shes not so bad... gods should be just as complex & flawed as those that worship them. I would imagine that some eldery elves & dwarves would be able to maintain their faculties long into their twilight years, but their would definetly be a good number that are hit by "the fog of ages" trope. Being set in their ways, losing memories, going senile, insanity & untimly death are ll things that could befall an elf (or dwarf or gnome) at any point in their lives.
I enjoyed listening to your videos and ideas even when I don't completely agree with them. With regards to elves and other long-lived races in fantasy, your ideas are quite interesting. However, the exception to the rule may be the D&D Elves. A few people have commented on it already, but for a better explanation, I suggest checking out the video by MrRhexx titled "What They Don't Tell You About Elves - D&D". I also suggest checking out some of the D&D lore videos about the elves in general by both MrRhexx and AJ Pickett.
You were not wrong, you just looked at things differently. And… whomever said you were wrong is the most wrong because they want to change how you think. Do not change anything, just listen and expand as ideas come to you… even if those wrong people bring it to your attention.
oooor.... maybe Elves just have generally more plastic minds that can entertain newer ideas longer. I mean they live a lot longer so maybe they need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. Also, they could just have better memories overall too
"Ethical necromancy" is an issue that canablizes itself, pun intended. Forced prison labor is not unethical because it is restorative justice (ie, the money they would make goes back to the victums), but because it incentivises the system to remove the rights of the person. Ie, the state of Idaho uses forced labor on farms and the state makes money off of this, which incentivises them to arrest more people. If you had an undead army, even in volunteers, it would cause less moral lords to poison grain to get more soldiers out there because we are expecting 7% casualties anyway; might as well turn the old and feeble into troops if they will die anyway. You would also see mass murder of civilians in war be more common if the practice is accepted as you are capturing a resource and turning them into a resource, just like captured munitions in modern warfare. All this aside, you are also making a system where democracy cannot arise and labor markets are undercut. Feudalism was not great, but the lords had to look after their people because the people grew crops on their field, secured their borders, and worked for you; necromancy is a way to bypass that. The Red Wizzards of Thay in the Forgotten realms is the logical conclusion to use of necromancy by the state: an undead nation with no population who swells its ranks by raiding near by settlements foe dodges to feed the machine. The god of murder thing depends on your world build; in the Forgotten realms and murder empowers the god of murder; does not have to be ritual or in his name (though he gets your rather on top of that if you do mumble a prayer). You also have gods that blackmail people into worship; ie the frost maiden forces ten towns to worship her or she will make the winter worse. Gods actively do things to improve their worship, and the evil ones are not afraid to use the stick as well as the carrot. Elven mental states are questionable since we do not have a point of comparison, but in official Forgotten realms lore, elves live longer than people, but their life cycle is more or less human, just longer. 100 years and you are considered an adult in fr elves. I think that means they are slow to change in general. I am not sure they would care about innovations as they tend to rely on nature, gods, and their magics. Does not get talked about a lot, but elven high magic has been used to turn land into a desert, pull a peice of heaven to the matterial plane, curse all drow, curse all dragons, and destroy three superhuman empires; why would they be interested in what some monkeys think turtles came from when they can just ask god?
Two things Necromancy - just remember If your society allows necromancy for labour and is capitalist. You will have a dystopia in only decades. As the city realise they can just use undead to do all labour and not have to play people at all. Until you’re left with a class of unemployed who lack the ability to even fight back as they can’t overcome the endless tide of undead. And will end up just dying if they try and becoming part of the horde of undead labour. Elves - I feel like everything said makes sense only if you try to make your elves human. A lot of argument I saw on that video was that they elves would become stubborn at the same rate. And forget everything. Another way of seeing elves is being a human life stretched out. So one human year is equal to 10 elvish years. I always see elves as experiencing the world both fast and slow. Fast cause they can watch generations of people die in their lifespan, or seeing seasons change in what must feel like a blink. But slow cause they themselves don’t change much. I think a lot of dms need to stop trying to make their fantasy races human. Instead allow them to be alien to each other. Make them behave and experience the world in wholly different ways. When your campaign ends or takes a hiatus and comes back 10 years later in world your elf character should talk like nothing has happened. Speak like they saw everyone just last year. Cause to you. It basically was. And vice versa with your short lived races.
So it's unethical to use necromancy on a skeleton because somebody in the distant future could potentially use it for evil? That's tantamount to condemning blacksmiths for making a sword because it could potentially murder somebody. We don't blame weapons for crimes, we blame the users. Also, why set term limits? This dude isn't a human with thoughts and feelings. The skeleton is an undead slave that cannot think for itself. Should I have to dismantle my robots after a certain amount of time? Is it unethical for me to pass my prized hammer onto my son, as opposed to just melting it down? Do I need to replace all of the clothes in my closet after their expiration date? This is completely arbitrary. Elves are a species that have evolved to live for many hundreds of years. Why are we assuming that their brains will work the same as ours, which are evolved for less than 100? Dogs also suffer memory issues and become set in their ways in old age, but for them, that's under 10 years. Why wouldn't it be the same for elves? assuming humans get 100 and elves get 1000, then we'd expect a 500 year old elf to behave like a 50 year old human. Wouldn't elves be incredibly good at determining what ideas are going to take off because they have a massive amount of experience? They would be incredibly good at predicting common human behavior if they've spent hundreds of years in contact with us. People who read up on their history tend to be pretty good at predicting things like purchasing and voting patterns, after all.
Um... why does it suddenly feel like you are treating the THEORY/religion* of darwinism as a fact? That severely harms any speculative excercise. Also, Id like to point out that the biologial and psychological differences that elves would require in order to live that long would change most of the very human limitations that you discuss in this video.
While the thoughts on elves here are kinda interesting, it is entirely based on the idea of elves having memory that works the same as humans. We can easily imagine a species with 10x our physical strength so why not 10x as good memory? Perhaps they are naturally flighty or extremely analytical which allows them to change their minds more readily. Honestly we have seen elves from near perfect demigods to canibals who eat flesh to absorb memories to humans but better at everything to disorganized humans that live a while. There's a wide range of elves and applying that thought is highly context dependent on what elves we are discussing. Thus I don't think its a fair criticism just an interesting thought.
The problem would be like trying to remember the face of a person from a year ago or remember the book you read 3 years ago. Compared to someone who lives much longer it would be like remembering 1 year to them is like a day that just be stretched out.
elven society`s ideas would be slow to change but that has little to do with their memory elves would most likely have a greater memory capacity (as in total memory) and just like humans would be able to retain events from their past even their childhood so the historian aspect still works so elves(prob out of arrogance aswell) would be slow to accept new ideas the older ones not the younger ones not helped by them being pretty secluded but would be able to recal things from hundreds of years ago and there might be jobs like merchants or diplomats that are forced to keep an open mind
Elves are not people at the end of the day. They are elves. They do not sleep the relive enjoyable memories each and every time they enter their trance. They replay games they lost, things they said. They don't have human feelings.
If you have a guild of taxidermists necromancy can at least be dressed up over time to be aesthetically acceptable even if they originated from horrible circumstances.
I have heard that you would continue to develop more memories until age 500 at normal human memory forming rate but of course you would continue forming memories but only by deleting old ones. Elves would probably evolve slightly greater memory storage to last 750 years if not a bit more but the arch druids... or well any druid actually if not for some magic ability but that might not be enough for that much data. Then there are the warforged... may you rest in piece...
Good video. Must be hard "talking" to your audience like that to facilitate a discussion (were on the fucking internet after all, and the format is really bad at this too!), plus it's hard talking to the guy who holds the biggest mic as the audience. You can basically pick and choose what to respond to, and you chose the hard topics and the ones were you were wrong. Dont even wanna go into the topic itself, this stays meta!
Elves spend hundred of years mastering the traditions of blade and bow, becoming nigh supernaturally effective with them. Humans spend hundreds of years refining technology, culminating in the invention of the gun, tank, and field cannon. Both are valuable, but who would you put your money on in a conflict? To me aboleth are the worst example of this kind of fantasy stagnation. They have intellect powerful enough to manifest the greatest psionic abilities, AND an infinite, perfect heritable memory that stretches back to the dawn of time... and yet human wizards less than a century old learn to travel safely between dimensions while aboleths consider it a major undertaking to leave thier pond. If ANY aboleth since the age of primordial soup learned to be a wizard, bard, artificer, or druid, all of its offspring would inherit those abilities. But they haven't. They don't seem to be collecting skills of any kind.
No offense, but you are wrong. People who commit crimes do forfeit their rights. Otherwise, imprisoning them or using violence against them, even in self defense, would be morally and legally wrong. The only problem with prison labor is incentivizing the state to have criminals, like with local governments collecting fines, and thus creating roads and such with speed traps in mind.
There's nothing at all wrong with prison labour. Best to stick to fantasy and steer well clear of passing uninformed judgment on modern society. There are plenty of political commentary videos out there.
It has to be that elves don't really live longer than humans. They just seem to because they can go into Faerie where time runs slower. They are small in number because they have had fewer generations in which to grow population. It all fits.
Just going to point out that Darwinism is fundamentally flawed in several places. Several of which could reasonably be know at the time the theory was introduced. Many of which evolutionists of today recognise, repudiate and amend to form the current evolutionary theory. And by the by, evolutionary theory, including the modern form, doesn't stack up well against actual scientific criticism. Creationism on the other hand, does much better in that regard. Regarding elves, or people with the lifespan of elves, consider that they likely wouldn't carry the cultural biases inherent to every generation. Would make for some interesting conversations now days.
The German skeleton from 60 years ago might not be the problem. 80 years ago might be the problem you have in mind.😊
I've never been great at maths.....
It could go many ways, from immediate decommissions to using particularly despicable(by the 'modern national beliefs) for dedicated service to offended groups as a form of reparations
@@Grungeon_MasterI wouldn’t even say that’s a math issue, more of a “Oh god… it’s been that long since **insert event here**?”
Well, not all deceased veterans died during the war.
@@tsizzle7883shame
Mistakes/Corrections videos are great for community engagement in my opinion - genuinely well done
In D&D at least elves have the trance which allows them to relive moments of their life, at least until memories of previous lives overwhelm those memories, at which time they are ready to move on,. This will allow them to synthesize third knowledge, unlike a human. So at least for Faerun elves your original premise of the wise word makes sense.
I love the idea that a mercenary company would have a stake in any monster hunting in the nearby area and any adventurer would be called a "scab" and perhaps be attacked or driven out of town.
This video got me thinking and cause me to think of a whole lot of things about these mercenary companies could do.
Like if you have a magic world, then I wonder if mercenary companies would have ways to force adventurers nearby to join or work under them. Perhaps to hunt in a region you have to make a magical oath or contract that enforces you to be loyal to them or follow said rules. Perhaps this is the first step that leads a mercenary company to evolve into the local adventurers guild which would mean that they try to crush or absorb any business rivals to ensure their future rule.
Though this opens up a whole new can of worms. Like if magical oaths like this exist and can be enforced than you could do things like Knights who take an unbreakable oath to protect a kingdom, nobles magical oathed to work in the interest of the kingdom and/or their king, and priests who take a magical oath to be forever pious. would make it hard to be corrupt in such a world.
I also wonder if such guilds/companies would lead to the creation of magical banking or investment system. Such as if said monster needs silver or a special magical item to kill them then overhead costs get ridiculously high so perhaps the mercenary company or guild acts as an investor that "buys stock" in your party by providing the more expensive weapons or runs a barracks for local adventurers in return for said adventurers doing missions for them and having to share spoils of the hunt with the company. This debt could also be a way to keep a hold of powerful people by saying that they can't leave the company or retire till they do enough work to pay off the investment back.
I wonder how these mercenary companies would cope with accepting magic users, rogues and bards, potentially of different species, into their ranks, if they were performing the tasks of clearing dungeons and combating evil sorcerers and the like. Would they accept them as necessary? How would the average mercenary soldier, accustomed to the company of other soldiers, get on with them? In a fantasy world, perhaps a guild for travelling groups of diverse problem solvers might be required.
@@petebyrdie4799 I would see them willing to work with them if they are useful unless it’s a setting with heavy extremism (religious or Nazi level antisemitism). A lot of people seem to be willing to bend their “principles” for profit. From there they may start to see others as actually pretty good. I mean the us military was desegregated before the country as a whole
@@Nostripe361 Could be. Might be an inspiration for wordbuilding. I could see the local swords-for-hire asking the party's meat shield why he's living an itinerant life with a bunch of freaks instead of putting down roots. Depending of the player's character background, might be interesting.
@@petebyrdie4799 mercenarys run like a business. They aren't murder hobos and they aren't in the business of risking their people to liberate treasure in a tomb or whatnot unless it's worth it. Every member of the group is an asset with skills according to their function in the group. It's reasonable to assume they would have those classes unless they are unwilling to work as a group. Mercenarys have no time for the antics of an individual.
Incidentally, lore for elves in Faerûn goes give them an ability to bypass the limits of memory. When they meditate they can relive any and all of their memories as if living them again.
as so often is the case, we can handwave things with one word: "magic"
@frousteleous1285 It's why I findiscussions revolving around magical creatures annoying when people try to.
Anchor them down to operate in the exact same way, humans do biologically Despite being handcrafted by god and are half a step away from being actual magic creatures.
I think it would be interesting to incorporate ideas. Like how humans have memory loss and how the longer live, races might get around that. In this case, elves don't have perfect memory recall. As we would normally imagine it, but instead, meditate and can relieve those experiences again. But also the idea that.
They might get set in their ways like humans do, but then kind of have a soft reset where they start biologically re-evaluating every 100 years or so is also kind of interesting and would sort of play into their classical chaotic alignment.
That means they well get slower over time. Imagine filtering through hours of memories from dreams you’ve had and just spacing out. Or worse you get a mental illness like schizophrenia and each meditation your mind gets more disconnected from reality
@@daralic2255Something akin, though more mystical, is said to happen shortly before an elf dies of old age.
I think one of my favorite ideas for memories of a long aged being was from an old anime where everyone was fighting over an item everyone thought was a weapon to destroy the world. The reveal was that there was actually an immortal being that could destroy the world and the thing everyone one was fighting for was just the beings magical Hard drive to save all its memories to once it’s organic brain was to full to hold it
Firstly in regards to the undead labor issue I think you should still give a look to the nation of Karrnath in the world of Eberron as the particular conflicts that this issue brings up among them are rather unique.
Secondly, and far less seriously, all those "tends" in the Elves section are doing some real legwork keeping back Frieren fans.
Your ability to re-evaluate and course correct speaks well of you, in multiple ways. It takes a strong person to admit when they've erred, doubly so to address such errors openly and earnestly. Bravo!!
Per the issue of long-lived species, and uncomfortable points thereabout; people generally don't actually grow more conservative as they age. They become set in their ways, and the world moves on past them.
I didn't comment this before because it's a darker take than I like to offer up on these videos, but how many times has desperately needed social change come from the *older* members of a population? Versus how many times have the middle-aged and elderly been the flag-bearers of the status quo, no matter how horrific or monstrous?
How often have the young realized something was wrong and had the full violence of the state turned on them when they tried even to complain about it to the old people in charge?
Elves in fiction generally avoid this by being *inherently* 'good' creatures; driven by culture and natural inclination toward empathy, altruism and aid. Tolkein's elves are literally holy beings in their context, and this in turn informed all of Western fiction.
But if they aren't? If that natural inclination, or even just cultural inclination, *isn't* there? Imagine the world if a specific group of people who each can live long enough to outlast *civilizations* are the ones in power.
And their morality and sense of justice and ideals about society all track back to the standards of, say, the real-world 1600s.
Imagine how horrific that world would be. Imagine what would be necessary to shift that world.
Some interpretations of Harry Potter come to mind.
To your point about elves, I think this is where we can probably borrow a little bit of how the Craftworld Eldar organize their lives in Warhammer 40K...... Where each one dedicates their lives to a specific aspect for a definite period of time, learning all they can about it, but then adopting a new path after a set amount of time to avoid the levels of excess and obsession that you spoke about.
I liked this channel before but now I love it. It's always great hearing someone take on feedback and discuss it. It extends and deepens the conversation, which IMO is always good when discussing worldbuilding.
Also doesn't hurt that these videos can serve to bring earlier vids to folks' attention; I didn't know there was a video on elves.
Love the idea of elder elves with solidifyed beliefs, that how Heimerdinger was written in Arkane ^^
How longer lived people function is rather difficult to guess. It's mostly a question of how they are defined in the world building.
Even in D&D I often ask myself the question, why should Elves create and wear anything less than Masterwork items? They have the time to create nothing less.
The same goes for Dwarves, though there it would be more focused on stone- and metalwork. While Dwarves in D&D don't live as long as Elves, the question remains, especially with the Legendary Dwarven Craftsmanship.
Of course that may unbalance the economics of a game.
That point about Dwarves is exactly how Gimli tells Legolas how Dwarves would "tend" the caves of Helm's Deep: with utmost care and slow deliberation. Of course the quality of such work is balanced at least partly by the time it takes to make a given item. A human smith might make what they consider a Masterwork sword in a month of continuous work, while a longer-lived race would think half a year or more the minimum needed for such.
And yet despite average lifespans being the longest ever many people often choose to get cheap and disposable products rather than long lasting quality ones, this even extends to major things like houses which can quite easily be built to last hundreds of years and in the somewhat extreme case of Japan the average life of a house is just thirty years, and on a related note how often do people rip out and redo their kitchens and bathrooms despite them both working in pretty much the same way for at least the last fifty years?
How much time and effort you are going to put into the manufacture of each object is likely going to be different per culture and to an extent individually by how much the quality or longevity matters to you. Thousand year life span elves my very well decide not to spent a lot of time making things they will get bored of or go out of fashion next season, or even find it foolish to become burdened by growing attached to items over a long life, just imagine how much crap a thousand year old hoarding elf could have in their attic.
Well for one thing having time is not the same as spending time. So you could spend 8 hours a day learning carpentry in order to make yourself the perfect spoon. Or you can spend that time going for walks, chating with friends, reading books, etc.
Morover since you have more time there is also a higher bar to be considered a master. A human blacksmith can become a master within 20 years. But by dwarven standards it might require 100 years or longer. Even if you can produce the same as a human after 20 years, you wouldn't consider it proper masterwork, just journeyman's work.
I play an RPG called Mythras and I'm making a suppliment for it. Specifically an Elder Scrolls suppliment. I'm dealing with the "holy cow elves live a long time" thing, in particular the lifespan of TES elves is _highly_ variable as if some just start aging sooner or later than others and some get immensely lucky.
In Mythras your character's age actually affects how many skill points they get, but aging can also make you lose core stat points. You can roll to see how old your character is.
So now I've got this "exploding dice" aging minigame for creating elves. The amount of skill points you get slows significantly over the years so it's not completely absurd, but there's a sweet spot where you could still land a shockingly competent character from the outset, where if you'd aged much more you'd _rapidly_ degenerate and might just wither away and die.
(Mythras isn't really a game that gives two shits about balance, just what's narriatively interesting.)
they wouldn't which is why they should always be more advanced than everyone
Your videos are some of the most thought provoking videos on world building I've found to date and have been an active influence on my writing. Reconsidering something with fresh eyes after being presented with more information is the act of the open-minded. I see you are very considered and open-minded and I commend you for that.
I don't think you were wrong to give your prison example in the previous video.
I mean I'll accept if you didn't know about prison labour in the USA you may have been been stating things that you feel uncomfortable to have not seen.
But I think it's a legitimate and worthwhile take. Including the interesting issue of it creating a perversion in the justice system.
From a world building and story-telling perspective. The injustice of increasing all punishments to increase the work force is actually interesting.
Eventually for instance. The punishment for stealing food, could be 200 years skeleton labour - clearly leading to a society where the government is corrupt and forsakes it's duties of care - for commercial gain.
This is a built in longterm moral dilemma that players may enjoy tackling with. Some tables at least... Mine anyway.
Honestly, any excuse to tell someone "I sentence you to 200 years of skeleton labour" is a good one 😂
If you want to see elven longevity addressed in media, you should check out the new anime, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. It's really wonderful so far.
As we are speaking of world building, your past observances have been colored by opinion and in-the-moment conjecture. And that is ok. World building in itself is the act of creating the rulebook for your current world. Yes, forethought and planning is a must and I applaud your channel for many thought provoking subjects.
But never aplogize for your thought process or feel the need to explain yourself. Yes, critique can be an amazing discussion. When both parties have a voice to discuss. (The comment section is hardly that).
Keep up the great work moving forward.
Leave roads already traveled behind you.
In regards to necromancy, I think labor is more influential than one might first think. Because you have what is essentially localized outsourcing, all unskilled labor can be done by the undead which means abundant raw resources which 1) can be sold for dirt cheap, causing a boom in infrastructure and business 2) generate revenue through local sales and international exports, which can partially pay for citizen's taxes, thus decreasing the amound of tax dollars needed to run the local government, and 3) because of the abundance of cheap materials, boom in business / infrastructure, and elimination of the need for a working class, citizens will have a much higher standard of living as well as be able to afford focussing on art and science, thus creating more technological advancements due to the abundance of scientists, doctors, and engineers. This is all, of course, the ideal situation. Government corruption will likely prevent this.
imho, your content is extremely thought provoking and simply great
I think worldbuilding is a reflection of what one thinks the world may work, even if they don't endorse or approve of what is happening. I thought the necromancy video was great, as it tried to think of ways it would have been integrated in the world without simplifying it to "dead = evil ", although this addendum to it is fine too.
4:44 4:44 bit of a major misunderstanding there. Criminals do forfeit their rights, or do you think prisoners are free? Likewise self defense exists because someone who makes themselves a clear and present danger forfeits their right to life and thus their actions cease to be self defense should say the cops shoot them.
They don't cease to be human but in order to deter bad actors the legal system takes away rights from those who infringe on others rights. Even a measly fine is taking away the right to the fruit of one's own labor.
Proportionality, bad laws, a multi-tiered justice system, crooked judges/cops/media bias, revolving door policies, violent offenders aren't reformed before release these are the major issues. Offsetting the cost of a huge money sink by people who have already forfeited many rights is...misguided. My family has seen the consequences of overcrowded prisons; my grandmother's killer spent 6 months behind bars before his release.
Mediaeval adventurers guilds ended up being Knights Templars or other orders, albeit that most of their quests were escort missions and I bet they constantly moaned about the pathing of the Pilgrims, how slow they were and how annoying it was when they tried to fight, rather than hide behind the actual fighters.
Here I thought you were gonna tell us about that book behind you, been curious about it for a while
It's just a nice looking gift from family who visited Florence. It's an address book, and it serves more purpose as a pretty tome, for me at least.
Honestly, the comparison to modern-day prison labour made the idea from the necromancy video make more sense to me when I watched it. Maybe I misunderstood what the video was - I thought it was just proposing ways a culture or society could come up with systems of using necromancy in a way tolerable to them, not that those ways should be ethical or moral from our personal standpoints. After all, I would say most cultures at least since the start of written history and up to the present day included have had a fairly deranged outlook on crime and punishment, and I would not at all put it beyond a DnD-style semi-feudal society not to respect criminals' rights or humanity in the slightest.
That's fair. I think I tried to do a bit of both, which is where it fell flat. Appreciate the perspective.
Maybe my personal bias is showing, but I didn't really think of your discussion of ethical use of undead as part of the prison system meant that it was good, rather than the society considered it to be ethical, which are often two different things. But then again, philosophically, most carceral systems are deeply flawed, intrinsically, as far as I'm concerned,
Yeah tbh, I was about to comment that some societies and people might just disagree that using criminals as undead labor is unethical. Especially depending on the crime. And ESPECIALLY in a dnd-style feudal society that actually has this magic and can tackle these questions.
12:10 uh.. yeah.. elves, being long lived, is more than just them becoming old and decrepid and then still living as a geezer for ages.. they age more slowly meaning memory will not decay as much as it would with humans. add to that their much better with magic means they could magically improve their memory. and if all else fails... pen and paper (or some magic memory crystal to record memories and/or events..) you were right the first time, mate.
Great video! Love to see a follow up on already great content as well as an open dialogue about possible mistakes or options for improvement. Thank you!
One thing of note:
In medieval time and even way into the modern era,
nations and states in a modern sense really dont exist.
For a lot of this time countries are in a way both state and privat property of the nobility.
The baseline theory of the time for this was, that the land and the people on it were giftet to the monarchs (iconicly kings) by god.
They were entitled to rule as they saw fit, as long as they upheld gods laws. (a strechy and bandy thing, if the accountability was meant to come after their death by either gaining entrance to heaven or beig submittet to penance in purgatory or damnation in hell)
Its the so called 'divine right of kings'.
So there were no standing armies for most of the time (thats because of almst everyone working in agriculture and having actually no time to be even really parttime soldiers)
and certainly no states/nations armies.
All this happens really only after 1700.
but skeletons are not thinking beings so would it matter with its history if they all go under the same masters mind?
I'll be honest I dont agree with a lot of the conclusions and ideas you bring up. But its one perspective well put together and gets me thinking so im here for it. Echo champers induce stagnation of ideas
Eberron really gave us 2 glimpses of normalized undead presence within a society: The nation of Karrnath, and the Areneal Elves. Karrnath is written as an evil nation, and the Blood of Vol has a lot to do with their interest in the undead, for obvious reasons, the Blood want both living and undead servants. The elves on the other hand are actually good, they have a culture based in animist beliefs and interaction with their ancestors, because they are mummies who have been around for 1000s of years in some cases.
To the point of undead being used later for immoral purposes, there are sharp restrictions on how far someone can be held responsible for those kinds of decisions. If I forge weapons that are bought by people that use them to defend innocents am I a hero? If they are stolen and used by murderers am I a villain? What if they are beaten into plowshares thereafter? What if I am lied to about the purpose of my work? What if I minted coins later used in human trafficking? What if I mined the ore to make the coins? The sins and glories of the fathers have reaching consequences, but much shorter lengths of accountability.
The butterfly may have caused the tornado, but they are not responsable for it.
I disagree with the elf counter argument as that inherently requires assuming human brain = elf brain, while logic dictates a long lived intelligent species would have a brain adapted to their long life span and the problems that come with that.
maybe specializing is a path to success for elves with this sort of memory issue. they specialize and have a synergy with shorter-lived races that are more likely to push the boundaries along with the youngest elves. maybe an older elf has a number of human families that have been joining in her research and bringing innovation for many generations. the founders of those families had joined the elf when she was young, similar in age to her human counterparts. their children had grown up following in their parents' footsteps and so each generation had at least some who continued to work with and learn from the elf. just a thought.
Another model for long-lived species comes from M. John Harrison's _Viriconium_ series, in which an inconceivably old scientist and scholar can only remember the last 200 years of his life. He lives in a massive complex (which he presumably built) and is surprised when he discovers a new room. He really has no idea who he is or how he got there or how he learned what he knows. (_Doctor Who_ explored the same territory with Ashildr/Lady Me, who at least kept journals.)
Or one could imagine a fog of memory like old vampires in _Vampire: The Requiem_ . Every so often vampires have to rest for decades or even centuries to "thin the blood". When they awaken, their memories are vague and confused, mixed with dreams and fantasies. In short, they confabulate. That was that setting's explanation for ignoring the lore of previous games. However, if elves do something similar, slowly and gradually, elves become not historians but fantasists and mythmakers. If they live for *thousands* of years, and converge on a consensus history, "eyewitnesses" to a Golden Age of Elfkind may not have seen any such thing.
Good video. Good to see you owning up to mistakes and oversights and correcting them. A lot of the points you make about elves came into play here.
I would like to see your take on Time Travel in fantasy. I can recall certain specific adventures involving some form of it.
Chronomancy in general has such fascinating implications.
Here's my take on the general concept (more on the gameplay side than worldbuilding, but might still be fun)
th-cam.com/video/6D0EKOz5gPE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=qvKJSekeg0VUE7-t
@@Grungeon_Master Already seen and enjoyed, although the game rules for time travel mechanics I use don't exactly allow time to loop as described. Continuum's time travel rules are a bit tighter.
Should have specified I'd like to see how you'd build it into a world. I love hearing your takes on such topics as necromancy, and I want to how you puzzle out the logistics, ethics, and implications of time travel beyond just gameplay in a way that makes sense.
Older long lived races such as elves would make great historians and advisors. I don’t think they would make great innovators or progressive thinkers in their later years.
Their revery (trance) allows them to relive and solidify their recent memories into long term memory in a more concrete way than the dream state of other races. It also allows them to relive older memories. This ability uniquely qualifies them to be able to remember details from even their earliest experiences.
This same ability and constant “looking backwards” for centuries might also inhibit their ability to look forward and envision a new or unique solution.
At least that’s how I see it.
Grab your ketchup and crunch away my friends.
I would like to see your take on Time Travel in fantasy. I can recall certain specific adventures involving some form of time travel.
Kudos for reexamining your previous discussions in the light of subsequent criticism. Overall, I see you making the case for more nuance on these various topics, which leads, IMO, to more interesting and individual world-building. Cheers!
Someone on the internet admitting they made mistakes? The sky must be falling next! Jest aside, great video. And I say that not just because some of the criticism had been from me in the original videos. Guess that means you are still young enough to have some elasticity left in your brain. Improvement after all is mostly by becoming better than one has been in the past, and thus people (like so many on the internet) who think they know it all already usually cannot grow any longer.
These days humility has become a rare trait in people (younger than my elven 58 yr old ass) these days. But.. Tom here, expresses it rather well! It's as if he were gifted the trait. 😊 Well done sir. Well done.
errata videos are great because it let's you share things you've learned since the initial video on the topic(s). Thank you for this, I still think the initial videos had good things to say, and this adds to them
11:20 so the reason why thought patterns tend to concretize is known and important. It has to do with the way the brain changes as we age. If it's simply that elves age 10x slower than humans then that means their thoughts will reflect that. IE an elf that is 200 will have similar thought process to that of a 20 year old. It also means that they would be going through puberty for like 70-100 years.
That also would be a problem with any long life species. birth rates difficulties, having to care for a slow aging infant in a fast changing world unit it reaches their late teens and the need to preserve your own species and among other stuff
Not sure i agree with the critique on the elves part. Firstly, a worldbuilding species could very well have a better memory than humans if they live very long. It all depends on the writer's choices for that race. And as for them becoming, well "boomers" with antiquated views i feel like that's just as possible as them adapting and embracing change and the progress of history. I think it all depends on the character
Constructs are still just better than zombies
For the Necromancy part.. Dwarfs in my setting uses undead miners as primary workforce. Darven necromancers has developed a way to bring parts of the miners personality back into the undead body, giving them full autonomy, but the effect only lasts for about 100 years.. or untill the next cave-in. Then they are off to have a proper burial. And one of my human kingdoms burn their dead and bury their ashes in sealed urns, Except royalty, historians and magic users. They get buried, full body, in the Kings Hill, so historians can ask a cleric to speak with dead if they ever need to know something from their time :P
I could imagine an elf talking to someone 20-something human and the human telling them some modern way of thinking about society, only for the elf to list off five times it was done and failed.
"But it different this time."
"Yeah. Good luck with that. But I'm going to leave for the next 50 some years. Last time, the following Civil War and famine ruined this country for decades."
I know it would require a bit of sensitivity to do it properly (colonial history being what it is) but having one of those "gentlemen's" explorer clubs like the British had in an adventure would be cool.
Maybe you could make a video about how such an "adventurer guild" could be implemented/function.
In regards to the possibility of a corpse being used for purposes against the wishes of the family, I don't see it as terribly different to paying taxes. Even in feudal society there were taxes and it wasn't uncommon for a taxpayer to disapprove of how their tax money was spent by the monarch. I would say that a society which foregoes conventional tax, and instead takes the corpses, to be used by the state, would still be making a remarkable profit (assuming the maintenance costs of corpses is relatively low). Does it matter if the "taxpayer" disapproves of the uses of their loved ones corpses if it was seen as a tax rather than a donation? It's a bit odd to consider "what could happen over the next 100 years for this corpse" when they're effectively currency, either in replacing an army or a workforce. We don't question the way currency is used over 100 years so why would we think of undead any differently?
"lets keep track of the skeletons with an engraving on their arm" "yeah guy I don't know how to tell you this-"
the elves in the setting i am working on live for approximately 2000 years on avarage so at 400 they'd be the equiverlent of 20. they're immensely smart valuing wisdom and to a degree logical thinking to avoid analyze new information and to easily understand new points of view though it isnt too uncommon for the elves to be old fashioned thinking considering as generations pass new generations have differing values and traditions that make them hard to relate to shorter lived races
Awesome video as usual.
The concept of forced labor and slavery was explored in one of my world where if à prisonner sentenced to death was bought back, he would be forfeited his rights and become an object to his new owner. He would be marqued with tattoos and given away to his new master to do as he is pleased.
This allowed for the players to be considered outside of the law, in the same way a gun is not responsible for hos crimes. The players were sent as undercover spies by the new master that saw an opportunity to build à "thief" army
a great example to draw inspiration form for a campaing or an adventure with a mercenary theme as discussed in this video are the italian wars and the golden age of condottieros or the mercenaries companies in central europe during the 30 years war (even if they're not medieval)
I think my preferred option for elves is that they're not human. They just don't age the same as humans do, or think the same a lot of the time.
Maybe they're less likely to commit to a single idea or pursuit. So it wouldn't be an elf that invents meteorology, but they also wouldn't be as quick to dismiss the theory of evolution, or continental drift, as older humans did.
That single minded passion that humans can have would seem very alien to an elf. Scary even.
For the long-lived creatures? One thing you probably should take into consideration is that they might have bypasses to human scale memory drop off.
Dragons in D&D have a 3000+ year long lifespan for example.
Elves with their potential 1000 year life.
If you apply human restrictions on memory, born from our 100ish year potential life-span, you are also assuming that the evolutional path of these creatures is the same as a humans.
Not saying that either is true, but most things have a life cycle that matches their longevity. Extended lives in real life tend to be paired with extended maturation rates.
It mostly going by the idea that the brain would alter the memory, or remove that memory. Do to the mind see that memory no longer needed and unnecessary would be multiple times since they would love much longer. They are already similar to any intelligent life without applying magical genetics
With "ethical" Necromancy i could imagine it would always be a contentious subject. An tyranical dictatorship may well use undead as free & reliable workers, soldiers & serfs because they can. And prison systems may emply "extended" sentences for their convicts. But on the flip side a culture like the Egyptians or Mayans may see mummification+reankmation as the highest honor. An honor held only by their greatest priests & seers so they may fontinue to help direct & protect their people. Some cultures may see having the undead like caring for loved ones, just cos grannies dead dont me she isnt family still. I recon it would be vastly different by culture, species & faith how people treat & feel about the undead.
Adventurer Guilds could be like a union for those sesking to do mercanery type jobs of slaying monsters, saving people, robbing a vault ect... and Free-Companies would make for a great counter faction for players ro butt heads with!
Bhaal as the "god of murder" is a weak concept. You can have that in a god's domain but take the real world Kali for example; she is the goddess of destruction, murder & death. Shes ALSO the goddess of motherhood & love. So shes not so bad... gods should be just as complex & flawed as those that worship them.
I would imagine that some eldery elves & dwarves would be able to maintain their faculties long into their twilight years, but their would definetly be a good number that are hit by "the fog of ages" trope. Being set in their ways, losing memories, going senile, insanity & untimly death are ll things that could befall an elf (or dwarf or gnome) at any point in their lives.
I enjoyed listening to your videos and ideas even when I don't completely agree with them. With regards to elves and other long-lived races in fantasy, your ideas are quite interesting. However, the exception to the rule may be the D&D Elves. A few people have commented on it already, but for a better explanation, I suggest checking out the video by MrRhexx titled "What They Don't Tell You About Elves - D&D". I also suggest checking out some of the D&D lore videos about the elves in general by both MrRhexx and AJ Pickett.
I still think enchantment/charm spells are the most evil.
Taking someone's free will is far worse than animating their corpse.
You were not wrong, you just looked at things differently. And… whomever said you were wrong is the most wrong because they want to change how you think.
Do not change anything, just listen and expand as ideas come to you… even if those wrong people bring it to your attention.
Honestly, the comment on "Free Companies" is so good. SO good.
I love how there's "simp" in the thumbnail
oooor.... maybe Elves just have generally more plastic minds that can entertain newer ideas longer. I mean they live a lot longer so maybe they need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. Also, they could just have better memories overall too
Have you considered an opt out system for necromantic labor
"Ethical necromancy" is an issue that canablizes itself, pun intended. Forced prison labor is not unethical because it is restorative justice (ie, the money they would make goes back to the victums), but because it incentivises the system to remove the rights of the person. Ie, the state of Idaho uses forced labor on farms and the state makes money off of this, which incentivises them to arrest more people. If you had an undead army, even in volunteers, it would cause less moral lords to poison grain to get more soldiers out there because we are expecting 7% casualties anyway; might as well turn the old and feeble into troops if they will die anyway. You would also see mass murder of civilians in war be more common if the practice is accepted as you are capturing a resource and turning them into a resource, just like captured munitions in modern warfare. All this aside, you are also making a system where democracy cannot arise and labor markets are undercut. Feudalism was not great, but the lords had to look after their people because the people grew crops on their field, secured their borders, and worked for you; necromancy is a way to bypass that. The Red Wizzards of Thay in the Forgotten realms is the logical conclusion to use of necromancy by the state: an undead nation with no population who swells its ranks by raiding near by settlements foe dodges to feed the machine.
The god of murder thing depends on your world build; in the Forgotten realms and murder empowers the god of murder; does not have to be ritual or in his name (though he gets your rather on top of that if you do mumble a prayer). You also have gods that blackmail people into worship; ie the frost maiden forces ten towns to worship her or she will make the winter worse. Gods actively do things to improve their worship, and the evil ones are not afraid to use the stick as well as the carrot.
Elven mental states are questionable since we do not have a point of comparison, but in official Forgotten realms lore, elves live longer than people, but their life cycle is more or less human, just longer. 100 years and you are considered an adult in fr elves. I think that means they are slow to change in general. I am not sure they would care about innovations as they tend to rely on nature, gods, and their magics. Does not get talked about a lot, but elven high magic has been used to turn land into a desert, pull a peice of heaven to the matterial plane, curse all drow, curse all dragons, and destroy three superhuman empires; why would they be interested in what some monkeys think turtles came from when they can just ask god?
Two things
Necromancy - just remember If your society allows necromancy for labour and is capitalist. You will have a dystopia in only decades. As the city realise they can just use undead to do all labour and not have to play people at all. Until you’re left with a class of unemployed who lack the ability to even fight back as they can’t overcome the endless tide of undead. And will end up just dying if they try and becoming part of the horde of undead labour.
Elves - I feel like everything said makes sense only if you try to make your elves human. A lot of argument I saw on that video was that they elves would become stubborn at the same rate. And forget everything. Another way of seeing elves is being a human life stretched out. So one human year is equal to 10 elvish years. I always see elves as experiencing the world both fast and slow. Fast cause they can watch generations of people die in their lifespan, or seeing seasons change in what must feel like a blink. But slow cause they themselves don’t change much. I think a lot of dms need to stop trying to make their fantasy races human. Instead allow them to be alien to each other. Make them behave and experience the world in wholly different ways. When your campaign ends or takes a hiatus and comes back 10 years later in world your elf character should talk like nothing has happened. Speak like they saw everyone just last year. Cause to you. It basically was. And vice versa with your short lived races.
The matter of Bhaal was particularly funny considering the fact that in the lore Bhaal is constantly working on schemes to keep himself relevant.
love ur vids and channel, keep up the amazing work
So it's unethical to use necromancy on a skeleton because somebody in the distant future could potentially use it for evil? That's tantamount to condemning blacksmiths for making a sword because it could potentially murder somebody. We don't blame weapons for crimes, we blame the users.
Also, why set term limits? This dude isn't a human with thoughts and feelings. The skeleton is an undead slave that cannot think for itself. Should I have to dismantle my robots after a certain amount of time? Is it unethical for me to pass my prized hammer onto my son, as opposed to just melting it down? Do I need to replace all of the clothes in my closet after their expiration date? This is completely arbitrary.
Elves are a species that have evolved to live for many hundreds of years. Why are we assuming that their brains will work the same as ours, which are evolved for less than 100? Dogs also suffer memory issues and become set in their ways in old age, but for them, that's under 10 years. Why wouldn't it be the same for elves? assuming humans get 100 and elves get 1000, then we'd expect a 500 year old elf to behave like a 50 year old human.
Wouldn't elves be incredibly good at determining what ideas are going to take off because they have a massive amount of experience? They would be incredibly good at predicting common human behavior if they've spent hundreds of years in contact with us. People who read up on their history tend to be pretty good at predicting things like purchasing and voting patterns, after all.
You missed the big one on necromancy: that it's not economically viable in 5E due to scale and rarity of casters.
Um... why does it suddenly feel like you are treating the THEORY/religion* of darwinism as a fact? That severely harms any speculative excercise. Also, Id like to point out that the biologial and psychological differences that elves would require in order to live that long would change most of the very human limitations that you discuss in this video.
This is an excellent video, thank you.
While the thoughts on elves here are kinda interesting, it is entirely based on the idea of elves having memory that works the same as humans. We can easily imagine a species with 10x our physical strength so why not 10x as good memory? Perhaps they are naturally flighty or extremely analytical which allows them to change their minds more readily. Honestly we have seen elves from near perfect demigods to canibals who eat flesh to absorb memories to humans but better at everything to disorganized humans that live a while. There's a wide range of elves and applying that thought is highly context dependent on what elves we are discussing. Thus I don't think its a fair criticism just an interesting thought.
The problem would be like trying to remember the face of a person from a year ago or remember the book you read 3 years ago. Compared to someone who lives much longer it would be like remembering 1 year to them is like a day that just be stretched out.
elven society`s ideas would be slow to change but that has little to do with their memory
elves would most likely have a greater memory capacity (as in total memory) and just like humans would be able to retain events from their past even their childhood
so the historian aspect still works so elves(prob out of arrogance aswell) would be slow to accept new ideas the older ones not the younger ones not helped by them being pretty secluded but would be able to recal things from hundreds of years ago and there might be jobs like merchants or diplomats that are forced to keep an open mind
Can you talk about immortal creatures
Hey, you took my feedback about devotion to evil gods. Nice! 😁
This is a very admirable video😊
Aboleths have perfect recall and I think they pass their memory to their offspring. If I remember right. :)
Essentially they remember the beginning of their race.
There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.
Elves are not people at the end of the day. They are elves. They do not sleep the relive enjoyable memories each and every time they enter their trance. They replay games they lost, things they said. They don't have human feelings.
If you have a guild of taxidermists necromancy can at least be dressed up over time to be aesthetically acceptable even if they originated from horrible circumstances.
Nah, that elf theory don’t make that much sense, should’ve kept with the old one
I have heard that you would continue to develop more memories until age 500 at normal human memory forming rate but of course you would continue forming memories but only by deleting old ones.
Elves would probably evolve slightly greater memory storage to last 750 years if not a bit more but the arch druids... or well any druid actually if not for some magic ability but that might not be enough for that much data.
Then there are the warforged... may you rest in piece...
Gentleman's clubs? 🤨 Did the strippers come with them on adventures too? 😂 That does sound like an amusing twist.
Good video. Must be hard "talking" to your audience like that to facilitate a discussion (were on the fucking internet after all, and the format is really bad at this too!), plus it's hard talking to the guy who holds the biggest mic as the audience. You can basically pick and choose what to respond to, and you chose the hard topics and the ones were you were wrong.
Dont even wanna go into the topic itself, this stays meta!
Elves spend hundred of years mastering the traditions of blade and bow, becoming nigh supernaturally effective with them. Humans spend hundreds of years refining technology, culminating in the invention of the gun, tank, and field cannon. Both are valuable, but who would you put your money on in a conflict?
To me aboleth are the worst example of this kind of fantasy stagnation. They have intellect powerful enough to manifest the greatest psionic abilities, AND an infinite, perfect heritable memory that stretches back to the dawn of time... and yet human wizards less than a century old learn to travel safely between dimensions while aboleths consider it a major undertaking to leave thier pond. If ANY aboleth since the age of primordial soup learned to be a wizard, bard, artificer, or druid, all of its offspring would inherit those abilities. But they haven't. They don't seem to be collecting skills of any kind.
i like your hair, very curly. very red
Well done sir.
No offense, but you are wrong. People who commit crimes do forfeit their rights. Otherwise, imprisoning them or using violence against them, even in self defense, would be morally and legally wrong. The only problem with prison labor is incentivizing the state to have criminals, like with local governments collecting fines, and thus creating roads and such with speed traps in mind.
Good.
🗿👍
There's nothing at all wrong with prison labour. Best to stick to fantasy and steer well clear of passing uninformed judgment on modern society.
There are plenty of political commentary videos out there.
It has to be that elves don't really live longer than humans. They just seem to because they can go into Faerie where time runs slower. They are small in number because they have had fewer generations in which to grow population. It all fits.
Im not liking the video while it's at 666 likes
Just going to point out that Darwinism is fundamentally flawed in several places. Several of which could reasonably be know at the time the theory was introduced. Many of which evolutionists of today recognise, repudiate and amend to form the current evolutionary theory. And by the by, evolutionary theory, including the modern form, doesn't stack up well against actual scientific criticism. Creationism on the other hand, does much better in that regard. Regarding elves, or people with the lifespan of elves, consider that they likely wouldn't carry the cultural biases inherent to every generation. Would make for some interesting conversations now days.
First nice
Ok zoomer…
I’m the 169th
Get on my level.
Woke Channel Detected.
Woah
baseless, uselss comment.
@@frousteleous1285 nah. Based useful comment