Frieren, the manga and anime about the titular elf, is in many ways classic fantasy, using a lot of common fantasy vernacular to tell its story. A dragon is a dragon, a wizard is a wizard, and even a mimic can be used as a sight gag without explaining what a mimic is, and why it resembles a treasure chest.
But Frieren also does several things that most classic fantasy does not, including taking seriously the idea that elves with extremely long lifespans would live fundamentally different lives than humans.
Of course, the concept of elves as long-lived beings is itself part of that common fantasy vernacular, and is drawn from Tolkien, who originated the idea of an "elf" as something distinct from the way the term was used in fairy tales, interchangeably with “gnome” or "fairy" and other depictions of magical fey folk.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, when the members of the fellowship are talking about what is (to them) ancient history, Elrond can weigh in and say he was actually there. He witnessed those events firsthand. This is a powerful way of illustrating the difference in how these people live. Frieren does the same thing, to great effect.
But a lot of other fantasy derived from Tolkien tends to copy the aesthetics without incorporating the underlying worldbuilding. D&D rarely presents its elves as truly long-lived creatures, because elves are first and foremost PCs, and it is difficult to embed a PC in ancient lore, or think about what they might have been doing 300 years prior to the game's start.
But is there a way we could we create a more Tolkien/Frieren treatment for elvish PCs? I do not mean the “penalty to strength, bonus to charisma" kind of mechanics that D&D has sometimes applied to its ancestries. Instead, a simple layer of situational advantages and disadvantages could provide characters with hooks for understanding how their character’s age affects their place in the story. These could be literal advantages and disadvantages (applied to d20 rolls) or more abstracted tools for resolving situations.
Normal Lifespan
These creatures rarely live far beyond 100 years. The category includes humans, halflings, dragonborn, tieflings, and many other sapient creatures not otherwise known for long lifespans.
Disadvantage: Ignorant of history. You aren’t familiar with much of the world beyond your own experience. Unless you are a scholar or other specialist who has had a specific reason to learn something about the history of a person, place, or thing, you just don’t know it. You may know the history of your family over the past several generations, or the last century or so of events in the community where you grew up, but that’s about it.
Advantage: Unencumbered by the past. Longer-lived creatures do not expect you to know or adhere to customs, traditions, or obligations not expressly presented to you in any kind of formal social situation. A human among dwarves or elves can get away with a lot of behavior that those peoples would consider rude or even offensive in a venerable peer who should “know better.” A human or other normal-lifespan person can always throw off the obligations of country and clan if they choose to do so, and longer-lived peoples will simply view that as being the natural way of such short-lived people.
Extended Lifespan
These creatures can live to be several hundred years old. Dwarves and gnomes are the most well-known members of this category. Creatures of the land, of rock and stone, often belong to this category.
Disadvantage: Unforgotten Feuds. These people have long memories. Their lives are too long to allow for the quick passage of time from generation to generation to wash away disputes; but they are not so long-lived that such disputes will ever seem inherently trivial. A creature with an extended lifespan likely has at least one unsettled feud with a member of any large community they visit.
Advantage: Appeal to the Old Ways. In their dealings with other creatures as old or older than them, people with extended lifespans can always appeal to an alternate system of resolution to resolve a problem. Depending on the culture or polity where the dispute takes place, it could be trial by combat, an appeal to the gods, or something more esoteric. The important thing is that the alternative definitively predates whatever the normal, contemporary resolution would be to a dispute.
Long Lifespan
These creatures can live hundreds of years, approaching 1000. Elves, of course, fit into this category. Other people who are not immortal, but whose infusion of magic lends them to greatly expanded lifespans, can fit in this category (for example, the druid’s high-level Timeless Body ability in D&D 5E fits this fiction well).
Disadvantage: People are like leaves in the wind. Like Frieren herself, people with long lifespans struggle to form lasting relationships with others. When they travel to a place they haven’t been recently, at least one person, organization, or institution has changed since they were last here. Someone has died. The government has changed. The customs and culture are radically different. This will always take the long-lived person by surprise, no matter how many times it happens.
Advantage: I was there. There is always a chance that something that seems ancient, secret, and powerful to the younger peoples is recent, obvious, and mundane to a long-lived person. Even if they didn’t personally witness an event or know a historical figure, they always have a chance of knowing things that no one else remembers.
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