Why are there a quadrillion types of elf in games, but rarely

>>52536734
Well, for one, humans are already usually built to be a very versatile racial package, so you don't need subraces to mechanically represent groups of humans that are good at different things the same way you might for other races.

>>52536734
There's actually about as many dwarf subraces as elf ones. Maybe slightly less, but there's still an absurd number.

The reason or humans is easy. Imagine the controversy you'd get if they were remotely like real life human races.

I guess that the reason for all the different elves is because they're supposed to be living in harmony with nature, which makes it hard to put them into different environments without fundamentally changing the elves too. And then once the elf differentiation ball got rolling it was hard to stop. Dwarves and hobbits reshape nature so you can put them anywhere, they'll make sure that it ultimately ends up pretty much the same.

>>52536734
You can probably trace having different elf subraces to Tolkien, since he had elves that fit the later standard "wood elf" and "high elf" archetypes, and DnD writers probably made elf subraces to have an easy way to represent the two quite different styles of elf. Then later they added dark elves, and a bunch of other subraces, but most of those never became very relevant. However, dark elves did, so now you've got a trinity of standard elf subraces that would go on to show up in pretty much every generic fantasy setting since then.

Now, DnD did subraces for other races as well. There's multiple different types of dwarves as well (hill dwarves, mountain dwarves, even dwarf equivalent to dark elves in form of druegar). However, all dawrf subraces are pretty much slight variations of the same basic dwarf (they're all underground-dwelling, forging, ale-lowing, stubborn, bearded midgets), so they're not very memorable and can easily be just rolled under the ubralla of "generic fantasy dwarf", while wood elves and high elves are different enough that they fulfill clearly distinct roles (for the same reason the elve subraces that are "wood elves but more savage", "high elves +1", "elves underwater", etc. are largely ignored).

>>52536734

I kind of like that one race exists which is mutable to the extent that they have numerous subraces. It's another way that elves are different from other races.

And if you subscribe to the idea of elves as magical transhumanism-- engineered via magic in some ancient long-fallen magical empire to be superior to baseline humans-- then it makes even more sense that they come in flavors like that.

Elves are magical and hippie-ish. Why WOULDN'T they change themselves to suit a particular environment that they could then live in harmony with?

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>>52536734
Because elves are the "cool kids" race they rea basically humans just better in every way. The other races are uninteresting, especially if you are 16 or below, or you are above just never made it past that point in creativity.

>>52536734
>mean I understand that elves are popular and pretty, but that alone doesn't explain it.
But that is the only true explanation there is, all other "in-universe explanation" is just damage control.

>>52536734
High elves, wood elves and dark elves have become a standard for FR-ish fantasy, but if you want to be really special with your fantasy races elves offer a lot of flexibility to change them around without taking the elf away.

Forgotten Realms also has three different dwarf types, though they are just superficially diffierent, to the extent that I can't really say what the differences are. They are basically dwarf, and the dwarf-fans don't want them to be different. Occasionally you will get the odd "dark-dwarf".

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>>52536734
Good settings have subraces for different magical races, just most settings are shit created by shit people that start race creation with elves write 200 pages about elves then they get bored and write 2 pages each for the rest of the races and call it a day.

>>52536856
I don't know, man. Look at Elder Scrolls, they've done fine with multiple human races that are statistically different.

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>>52536734
You could say in the setting that elves are an elemental race, and thus very prone to a shift of self depending on environment. Like a magical version of evolutionary adaptation, but taken to an extreme. Leave an elf clan at a volcano for a few of their generations, boom, Ash Elves.