The Elven Point of View

Elves are much like humans in physical appearance. They are thinner and somewhat smaller, averaging about 5 feet tall, but not small enough for the size difference to affect the way elves see humans and vice versa. Elves have a tendency, as do all demihumans, to be generally suspicious of human motives at the same time they admire (perhaps reluctantly) and look up to humans for their capabilities. But elves are the least affected by this feeling, and bear little jealousy to humans for their ability to advance an unlimited number of levels in their professions. Elves have their own set of special abilities and problems.
The greatest difference between the viewpoint of an elf and that of a human concerns concepts of time. The wispy, lightly built elves have a life span more than ten times as long as humans, averaging 1,200 years with a maximum of 1,600 years or so. Such a timespan is barely comprehensible to humankind; its effects on the elven personality are profound and far-reaching. Elven player characters are already 100 years old or older when they start play in the game, perhaps close to 200 years, and can look forward to many years more, barring accident or death in battle. In a typical elven lifespan it is possible for as many as sixty generations of humans to appear and vanish. Whole cities and nations could be founded, expand, reach a pinnacle, and fade away into degeneration and ruin in that time. Seemingly changeless, the elf would witness it all.
Time means nothing to an elf; there is little need for hurry in any project the elf is engaged in. Humans and other demihumans rush about and vainly set out on adventures and projects that they want to complete before the Grim Reaper turns their bodies and works to dust. Few things are that important to elves. Aging seems to have little effect physically on an elf's outward appearance; unscathed by the passage of centuries and millennia, elven longevity is intensely envied by most other races who travel in the shadow of mortality.
Seeing others' lives pass away around them, and having no such pressure from the presence of death, elves have attained a deep understanding and acceptance of death as a part of life by nature. They don't look forward to it necessarily, but they have no fear of it. This feeling is so deeply ingrained that elves (and half-elves) are immune to the effects of the magic-user spell Scare, which enhances any basic fears of death and doom in the victim's mind.
Elves are also immune to the paralyzing touch of ghouls, from which it may be deduced that ghouls are somehow able to cause their victims to be overtaken and immobilized by their fears of death. The more powerful undead creatures can paralyze or cause fear in elves as well as in other beings because those undead have a stronger innate magical power and use different ways to bring their attacks into effect. An elf might not fear death, but one would certainly fear an enraged vampire or lich for the harm or damage it could cause.
Elves are a brave people, but are not given to foolhardiness and the sort of "damn the torpedoes" approach that shorter-lived beings use so often. Caution is appropriate since there is so much to live for and so long to do it in. It may well be that elves are aware that since they do not possess souls but have spirits instead, they will be "reborn" after some time, and likely as elves again. Why fear death when you know you are coming back to life anyway?
Their longer lifespans also imbue elves with a tendency to see things in a long-range way. The short-term results of a particular action concern elves little; things are done for what will come about in the long run. Singing and dancing all day are not actions done for the sake of the moment (as most other creatures believe). This behavior helps make life more enjoyable and easily lived, enhancing elves' love of the world and of life in general. Longevity can mean intolerable boredom unless one can manage to keep occupied for over a thousand years and enjoy it as well. Elves know how to do this with little trouble. The naturally chaotic bent that elves have comes to their assistance here, guaranteeing a life filled with variety and unpredictability. Life is an endless series of surprises to fire elves' imaginations; there are poems to be written, songs to be sung, and tales to be told about those surprises.
To members of other races, elves appear heedless of the harsh realities of the world; they have no attention span, they waste time; they are "flighty or frivolous" and carefree. They have no understanding of the value of time, we believe. How wrong we are. Elves know only too well the value of time. They cannot comprehend fully our haste to do things, our concern over things that will not last.
Longevity has also granted elvenkind a keen empathy for life and living things. The sense of oneness that elves feel with the forests is a thing beyond our ken. We perhaps also cannot appreciate the richness elves feel in life, and the fellow-feeling they have for other living creatures, Elves cannot be said to truly hate almost any creatures; even orcs are merely regarded with antipathy, for they will soon pass from life — even more quickly than humans do. The all-consuming hate orcs feel for elves is, to the elves, but an annoying problem that can be circumvented with a little patience and a few good arrow shots.
There is only one mortal race that warrants a feeling of true hatred among elvenkind, and, interestingly enough, the hatred is for a variant elven race: the drow. Drow also have long lifespans, and to some extent their mentalities mirror that of normal (high, grey, and sylvan) elves. Yet the drow nature is wholly evil and based upon darkness, things very different from the philosophy of the upperworld elves. Against the drow, other elves show no mercy or quarter. To have any dealings with the evil dark elves is to betray tens of thousands of years of elven unity with life; even evil non-drow elves will more than likely refuse to have anything to do with the drow. If orcs were regarded with this same feeling by elves, they would be much less plentiful than they are today, perhaps extinct.
The empathy elves feel for living things gives them the desire to communicate more with life, and elves have a wide repertoire of languages to choose from as a result. Sylvan elves, more closely tied to their forests than high or grey elves, learn different tongues, but the language range is just as wide. These languages include the varied languages of the Fey, as well as, in some cases, simple communication with the wild beasts of the forests. All elves tend to be much more expressive than humans or other beings, and are more sensitive to changes in emotions in other creatures. This does not necessarily mean that elves are always good listeners or make friends easily, however; they associate primarily with their own race, who appreciate the elven view of life best. Making friends with shorter-lived mortals is difficult, since they know that soon (by elven standards) that friend will die.
Their sensitivity to emotions can be used by elves to draw people out and learn from them; elves enjoy secrets and are always seeking them for the joy of learning new knowledge. Perhaps this psychological tendency is related to their ability to detect secret and concealed doors, or perhaps this ability is just a function of living in a society that uses secret doors a lot. This might indicate that while elves seem to know a lot about everyone else, they sometimes don't know much about each other. Chaotics value their privacy highly.
Regardless of racial preferences, elves can make friends from many races. In all likelihood, elves, make few generalizations racially and make judgements on beings on a person-by-person basis. Were there such a thing as a chaotic good orc, he or she might find some friends among elvenfolk once the elves got past their initial distrust.
Most elves are basically peaceful and have little or no desire to own things, beyond the desire to have them in order to appreciate their beauty. It is enough for elves to have their long lives; material things are generally of little worth. This might seem contradictory in light of the fact that elves make excellent thieves, but elven thieves are very rarely in the business for the profit to be made. They seek the variety and excitement the thieving life offers, and care more about how interesting an adventure was rather than what material was gained from it. Well-wrought jewelry is much liked and appreciated for the level of skill required to fashion it; elven thieves prefer jewelry over any treasure but magical items. The amusing insistence of the shorter-lived races on ownership of personal property makes them particularly vulnerable to the average elven thief, who may feel he or she is doing the victims a favor by pointing out, in a blunt way, that nothing lasts forever.
A very self-willed race, elves tend to do very much as they please, paying little attention to social convention. They do not see other beings as superiors or inferiors, even their own leaders. Instead, they feel all beings should have dealings in a direct fashion without a complicated rank structure or hierarchy. This point of view is often appreciated by the less powerful members of an adventuring party that elves are traveling with, but bothersome to the more powerful members who are supposedly in charge of the expedition.
Leaders, to elves, are to be obeyed in matters only where the leader is knowledgeable, and they may be freely disobeyed if their rulings seem unreasonable. Individual elves follow their own leaders because they want to, not because "society' says they have to. This makes, of course, for a pretty chaotic state of political affairs, but this is greatly moderated in elven society by the elves' strong sense of identity as a race and their separateness from the rest of the social world. Thus, elven government, as disordered and confusing as it seems to an outsider, is quite stable.
If there is something elves desire strongly, it would be a knowledge of magical power. Magic fascinates elves, who see it as a source of infinite variety for their benefit and enjoyment over the long years. They are the best magic-users of all creatures except humans, and they understand the nature of magic well. Some elves understand magic so well as to be able to cast spells while wearing metallic armor, though this is not particularly common. Because of differences in the structure of the elven brain and the elven personality, they cannot advance as far as humans in magical ability. These differences in the brain's physiological structure also prevent elves from having psionic powers.
One interesting difference between elves and other beings in mental capabilities is also related to their long lives. Elves do not sleep as humans, dwarves, and other races do. During the time an elf is resting, he or she is vividly reliving past memories and experiences. For all intents and purposes, memory is a separate reality, and dreams serve as a reflection upon the world of the past. This is a valuable asset to elves because of the enormous amount of information and life experiences an elf can accumulate in a few hundred to a thousand years. Elves rarely close their eyes when they "sleep" unless there is a bright light present; thus, some have a "faraway" look in the evenings, and their companions are misled into thinking elves don't sleep or rest at all. While resting in this fashion, an elf is still alert to some extent but not overly so, and may have mild difficulty coming out of the memory-dreaming trance. This explains the elven resistance to sleep spells. Their resistance to charm spells may be due to their strong sense of self-will and individuality.
Elves' ability to move invisibly and with great silence in natural terrain is another interesting comment on the elven desire for secrecy on an individual basis. Elven speech is soft, lilting, and melodious to the ear; it contains many subtle variations in tone to indicate the speaker's emotional state, though most races miss them or misinterpret what is being expressed. Most of these delicate tonal changes are meant to be secret from other races — again, another comment on elves' love of secrets.
The elven feeling of equality and kinship with all beings is well expressed in their religion. Elves were born of the blood of Corellon Larethian, and thus in some sense are equals to that deity (brothers and sisters, perhaps). Elven deities work closely together, with no one designated as an absolute or even partial leader. All the various cults and sects of elven religious life coexist in similar fellowship.
The long-range psychological view elves have of life is mirrored in their physical ability with missile weapons, which requires foresight and accurate depth perception on the part of the archer. Note that Corellon Larethian's longbow never misses its mark. It may be that the elven skill with swords and bows is partially due to their kinship with a deity using these weapons and no others. Also note that this deity's sword points out the most dangerous opponents in battle; this is another manifestation of the elven talents of sensitivity and awareness.
Few children are born to elves, a logical result of having such extended lifetimes. This provides a check on their numbers and makes elves somewhat less than common. Their population tends to remain fairly constant.
Evil elves strive for the destruction of life, rather than the accumulation of treasure at any cost. Banshees (also called groaning spirits), the undead form of evil female elves, are particularly well associated with the bringing of death with their keening. Assassin-class elves commit murder and destruction of life as a matter of routine, and are rather fearsome as a result. Fortunately, such beings are quite rare. Elven assassins and half-elven assassins only rarely associate with their own kind, preferring human company. The other elves tend to pick up on too many subtle clues the assassin gives off, thus spoiling the "secret."
Elven males and females, though they are aware of their differences in physical strength, see each other as equals. Elven queens are as common as elven kings. Corellon Larethian is regarded by some elves as male, by some as female, by some as neither or both. Though female elves do not serve in the armies in any great number (except as unicorn cavalry riders) because of their lower strengths, other areas of elven life are about equally divided between male and female participants. Only actual combat occupations show a definite pro-male ratio, and even then the difference is not as extreme as in (for example) human or dwarven armies.
As a final comment, no other symbol could represent as well the changeless and ever-changing state of elven life as the holy symbol used in the worship of Corellon Larethian: the crescent moon. Always present and always different, looking upon the world year after year, century after century, with the same serene face. Though humans and other people come and go, the elves and the moon remain.
Valuable information for this article was gleaned from Paul H. Kocher's book, Master of Middle-Earth (paperback, Ballantine Books). Though this book is concerned with the Tolkien novels and their representation of elves and the other races, there are nevertheless strong similarities in several areas between the elves of Tolkien and the elves of the AD&D game. Otherwise, the information here is taken directly from or derived from the AD&D rule books.
This article is meant to standardize the roles and personalities of elven NPC's in the campaign, and players may use this information in role-playing their characters if they like. This article is a set of guidelines for playing elven characters, and not a set of rules.

The Elven Point of View by Roger E. Moore, Dragon Magazine #60, April 1982
This is the original article in its entirety, except a few minor changes have been made to adapt this article more closely to AD&D second edition.