101 problems with elf adolescence

[Lincoln Hills]

Inspired by the recently re-ignited debate about whether elves wait 100 years to adventure because they're physically immature or because they're just not ready to commit to the hack-and-sack lifestyle, we now give you 101 problems that elven adolescents have:

1. Over the decades, you wear out about a hundred couches while you're talking on the phone.

2. You can't go outside for about 80 years, or people will see your acne.

3. You have to find a prom date over and over.

4. You're willowy and stick-thin and they still make you play dodgeball.

5. History class is even more boring, because you were around when it happened. Why are they telling you this stuff?!

[Bunnyboy]

6. You have to wear your big sister's old clothes, even when they wen't out of fashion decades age and you are boy.

[thejeff]

Elven parenting manual: Surviving the Terrible Twenties

[Azten]

7. Decades of puberty.

[thejeff]

Lincoln Hills wrote:

5. History class is even more boring, because you were around when it happened. Why are they telling you this stuff?!

History class is awesome because you get to tell the other (human) kids what really happened because you were there.

[Umbral Reaver]

8. You keep being held back a grade every year, for ten years at a time.

[Larkos]

Bunnyboy wrote:

6. You have to wear your big sister's old clothes, even when they wen't out of fashion decades age and you are boy.

I don't seeing how the gender issue would affect an elf; they all look bloody androgynous! (ba dum tish)

[Lincoln Hills]

9. Hebrew elves have to spend a century practicing for their bar mitzvah... which takes three weeks. And if you don't get it perfect, you have to start over. Oy!

10. Every ten years you have to relearn Common to keep up with teen slang! When you were a wee tot, you were told that things you enjoyed were 'ripping' - but it turns out that they were actually a scream, they were daddy-o, fab, marvy, groovy, funky, funkay, gnarly, totally tubular, radical, in your face, off the hook, the shizzle, r0xx0r, and - now that you're an adult - apparently they are OMG. And let's not even get started on the need to throw away your entire wardrobe every decade.

[Vod Canockers]

11. Algebra XXII

[Sissyl]

No, school is the one problem elven adolescents do not have. Whatever happens, elven kids Do. Not. Learn. Not ever. No matter what you do. The biggest activity for teachers in elven schoolclasses is wiping drool and looking out over a room full of vacant stares.

[thejeff]

It's a pseudo medieval fantasy world. "School" pretty much isn't a thing. Certainly not in the modern sense.

[Sissyl]

The problem is still the same. Replace "school" with any sort of learning or teaching situation, and the main issue is still "where do we store the kids so they don't take up as much space until they get their first brain cells and start doing more than pooping and peeing at 115? Maybe we can tie them to branches somewhere? Nah, that would make feeding them a hassle..."

[KahnyaGnorc]

12. "You'll grow into it . . . eventually."

13. Raging hormones for decades.

14. That cute human will die of old age before your parents say you are old enough to date.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

15. 50 years of being bored by grown-up talk followed by
16. 50 years of thinking everyone is a phoney.

Fun fact: Mystaran elves age at mostly the same rate as humans until they hit ca. 20, at which point they are considered late teens, which lasts until they are about 100. This is the adventuring period. After this, most have grown up enough to move back home and settle down.

[DungeonmasterCal]

17. Waiting for that cute guy to ask you to the prom takes FOREVER!

[DM Under The Bridge]

18. You have great ideas on what Elven society needs to do to get ahead, aaaand by the time you are mature and can make a difference the humans are even more powerful, established and numerous.

[Vod Canockers]

19. Rover, Prince, Max, Buddy, Duke, Boomer, Scout, Dog. Running out of names for your pet dogs.

[DungeonmasterCal]

These are great, but the reinforce the house rule I have that in my homebrew elves have the same adolescences as humans,then age must more slowly than other races. 400 years is about the max in my setting, then they gradually wander off to the mysterious "homeland" of the elves.

[Lee Hanna]

20. Your voice cracking and changing, for 30 years.

21. Having to buy 40 new game platforms.

[Lilith]

Azten wrote:

7. Decades of puberty.

...I've had this nightmare.

[HarbinNick]

As somebody with a mentally handicapped sibling, the fact that some people just stop mentally maturing is fascinating, but horrifying. Elves...ugh...At the same time, wouldn't this mean Elves physically grow slower?

[Sissyl]

If they didn't stop growing physically, an elf would be the size of... well, Norway or so.

[KahnyaGnorc]

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

These are great, but the reinforce the house rule I have that in my homebrew elves have the same adolescences as humans,then age must more slowly than other races. 400 years is about the max in my setting, then they gradually wander off to the mysterious "homeland" of the elves.

A number of games I ran were based off of the PCs growing up together (either in the same community or even in the same household) . . . I could either limit the racial options of the group, or I could normalize their childhood lengths. I'd rather do the latter.

[miniaturepeddler]

ADD and ADHD for elven kids lasts for DECADES, not just years!!!