[DF] How long do the different races live?

[Opellulo]

Originally Posted by maximara

That last part shows something people often forget about long lived races. Their sense of time would be way different from that of a human.

True! And this opens up another Fantasy trope on how everybody knows things that happened millennia ago but technology and society meanwhile remained just about the same.

Technically this could work if you consider the extended lifespan of those ever present "Eldar Races" but once you put in a standard TL3 human in the mix the setting loses any believably: in just the time for a teenager elf to reach adulthood men should have already reached industrial revolution era.

The difference in time perception is one of the coolest aspect never exploited in fantasy. It's millennia everywhere, always middle ages! I have started to cope with this boring aspect deluding myself that fantasy worlds are set on Mercury.

Originally Posted by Polkageist

Finally, the social thing bothers me because it assumes that elf society is just like human society and hasn't adapted to having more and different social strata that deal with their nature of having long maturity levels.

I can think of some settings that tried (poorly) to expand on this topic: in WH40K the Eldar experience different lives "re-birthing" every century or in Mass Effect where the Asari have different life stages that dramatically change their behavior every couple centuries.
But designing those societies in a credible manner (especially if you want to go for a medieval fantasy) requires a lot of work and knowledge, it's always just simpler to import Tolkien's fantasy species and call it a day.