He maybe got the idea from D&D, but what he wrote is not elf-like at all. The tiste liosan maybe, but that's like 1/3 of them
>What do you call green guys with tusks who are obsessed with power and conquest?'"
So you did not read past GotM? Because that's just Reast, and he is fucking retired in later books to chill with his dead cat
The rest of them are just grumpy funny old men/women who hate civilization and prefer to live isolated. And despite being good fighters they are all high mages. They are probably the smartest race in those books too
There is nothing Orc-like about them