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Gumdrop Larry posted:Did drow at any point ever really receive justification for being extremely dark skinned in spite of living in environments devoid of light which should generally result in a lack of pigmentation? Is it literally just black = evil, real-world racial connotations aside? Really in thinking about it if drow were shockingly pale or almost bioluminescent it would be freaky as hell and a cool basic subversion of the idea that something all bright and stereotypically angelic looking isn't necessarily good. That was just how they looked when they lived on the surface. (And it's more a purplish grey now.) When they went underground and started worshiping Demons their looks did not change much.
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Jun 19, 2017 17:15
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Reene posted:That they're edging very, very slowly away from it doesn't change that it's a thing though. Drow don't wear leopard skins or have human skin-tones anymore but they still started as evil matriarchal dominatrices with brown skin. The settings as-given still tend to be eurocentric, white, and patriarchal, or are assumed to be so unless stated otherwise. And so on. Actually they started with a pitch black skin that turned more grey over the editions but that is besides the point. Also their are horrible patriarchys as well. The Orcs for example.
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Jun 19, 2017 17:18
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Reclaimer posted:Nah Bregan D'aerthe are pretty chill. They even let a girl in once, too (Unfortunately Drizzt was confused and killed her). Their leader was an rear end in a top hat who over time became less of one eventfully turning into an ok guy. The rest of the group still tended to be awful, but loyal to Jarlaxle. (With exceptions some of them were not even loyal to him and were just assholes) And these guys are rogues of which their are a fair number of females. Hell a Matron Mother and her house sided with Jarlaxle and viewed the inequality between their sexs as something that was weakening them. (Which is why House Xorlarrin tends to have it's Males and Famales in near equal positions of power.) Though pretty much every Drow in that house is still a horrible evil rear end in a top hat. The basic Drow personalty can be described as paranoid, a sniveling coward to any Drow that has more power then them, brutally abusive to any creature that has less power then them. (This includes other Drow. Males tend to be super abusive to females they are above as they view it as a way to vent their frustration against the ones above them.)
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Jun 19, 2017 17:31
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I played a drow for the first time in 5e, and I was really miffed that there was no explanation for the Drow's society and how it actually worked, other than the grand strokes of Matriarchy and spider worship or whatever. I know that it's evil and fraught with backstabbing, but they don't actually go into it. Out of the Abyss didn't have any particular explanation either, did it? I only played in it as a PC. edit: I played an Ancients paladin that had lost her memory and was saved by the myconid, so she devoted her cause and worship to their pacifistic benevolence. I never read/saw any sort of property that involved Drizzt, so I didn't know he had a myconid thing too, but my character was more worshipful and "changed" by the myconid's healing magics to become sort of an Underdark hermit/folk hero. UP AND ADAM fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Jun 19, 2017 |
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Jun 19, 2017 18:07
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Drow society is so hilariously evil that the players at a table I was DMing did not believe that the penalty for basically every crime against the ruling class was execution. "You must be exaggerating," they told the exposition NPC, then promptly assaulted a priestess of Lolth in a crowded plaza in Menzobarranzan while impersonating members of a high-ranking House, both of which are punishable by death. Luckily two members of the party were elsewhere and were able to negotiate for the corpses so the game could actually continue.
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Jun 19, 2017 18:34
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Not just execution. Torturous Ritual Sacrifice to their Demon God.
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Jun 19, 2017 18:43
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That's why most of the dirty work is done by proxy. Can't be executed for a crime they can't tie to you! Really though, adventures set in Drow society have to draw hard on the cloak and dagger intrigue stuff to work. They make good generic bad guys though if you hang out in the Underdark a lot. Nothing like a blackguard hit squad to spice up stale Underdark adventuring.
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Jun 19, 2017 18:57
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MonsterEnvy posted:And these guys are rogues of which their are a fair number of females. Drizzt's sister was literally the first and only female member of Bregan D'earthe, and only because Jarlaxle secretly felt bad about loving over her dad. Aaand everyone regretted it after the fact because she was just an unrelenting downer bent on murdering her perfect brother. There was also a human woman later admitted as an honorary member after Jarlaxle went insane because of a powerful artifact, and she was promptly murdered in a coup by a guy who didn't think human women belonged (He also had other gripes against the management, tbf). IDK there might be some lady bugbears and stuff but out of all the members who have been named (or even described) these are the only two ladies inside the organization, and only one of them was drow. It's an old boys' club by design.
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Jun 19, 2017 18:59
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Reclaimer posted:Drizzt's sister was literally the first and only female member of Bregan D'earthe, and only because Jarlaxle secretly felt bad about loving over her dad. Aaand everyone regretted it after the fact because she was just an unrelenting downer bent on murdering her perfect brother. I meant their are a fair number of Female Rogues. Not D'earthe members They have little to no females. Also his sister was never a member. She was an employer of them. She was also crazy, evil and turned one of their members into a Drider. (Who also happened to be her other brother.) MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jun 19, 2017 |
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Jun 19, 2017 19:24
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MonsterEnvy posted:I meant their are a fair number of Female Rogues. Not D'earthe members They have little to no females. Also his sister was never a member. She was an employer of them. She was also crazy, evil and turned one of their members into a Drider. (Who also happened to be her other brother.) So Sharlotta was the only female member.  That's even better.
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Jun 19, 2017 19:47
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Gumdrop Larry posted:Did drow at any point ever really receive justification for being extremely dark skinned in spite of living in environments devoid of light which should generally result in a lack of pigmentation? Is it literally just black = evil, real-world racial connotations aside? Really in thinking about it if drow were shockingly pale or almost bioluminescent it would be freaky as hell and a cool basic subversion of the idea that something all bright and stereotypically angelic looking isn't necessarily good. This would be cool and good, right up until someone points out their penchant for raiding and enslaving is the real world equivalent of the white
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Jun 19, 2017 20:14
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Drow are salvageable but you'd have to divorce them from a lot of the cultural baggage people associate them with which people are probably unwilling to do given the body of fiction that has built up around them. I'd start by removing the "evil by default" stuff. I also like the idea of them instead being weirdly pale, luminous creatures with pink eyes and poo poo that aren't pants-shittingly evil but will still murder you on sight because the Underdark is dangerous as hell and you don't survive in it by being polite to outsiders.MonsterEnvy posted:Actually they started with a pitch black skin that turned more grey over the editions but that is besides the point. No, the original adventures published in the 70s very clearly depict them with brown skin. Over the years they shifted to more and more inhuman skin tones, which is fine, but they were absolutely brown-skinned for a stretch of time around their creation.
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Jun 19, 2017 21:16
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Reene posted:Drow are salvageable but you'd have to divorce them from a lot of the cultural baggage people associate them with which people are probably unwilling to do given the body of fiction that has built up around them. I'd start by removing the "evil by default" stuff. I also like the idea of them instead being weirdly pale, luminous creatures with pink eyes and poo poo that aren't pants-shittingly evil but will still murder you on sight because the Underdark is dangerous as hell and you don't survive in it by being polite to outsiders. First picture of a Drow.  First Description of a Drow. Very attractive (The art for everything was ugly so the above art is not trying to portray them as ugly) with sharp features Males have a thin build and average around 5 ft tall with dead black skin and dead white hair. Females are slender and shapely, average around 5 1/2 ft tall, have glossy black skin and shining silver hair. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jun 19, 2017 |
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Jun 19, 2017 21:36
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 You will certainly find examples of both, but they were absolutely depicted with brown skin in many places and multiple supplements. This, again, shifted to them being consistently depicted with inhuman skin tones instead later on. You'll find lots of plain black from that era as well, but color art tends to give them brown skin highlights (as opposed to grey or blue) anyway. There's plenty to Drow that's preservable that is still fundamentally Drow. They can still be matriarchal, dickish-to-murderous to outsiders, really into spiders, rigidly hierarchal, and so on. You can have all of those things without making them weird sexist racist caricatures.
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Jun 19, 2017 21:43
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Reene posted:
Yeah that was awful art which also came out in 1986 quite a bit after everything in the book was released. Which still describes Drow as having Pitch Black Skin. It and another piece were described as being a result of the artist taking the Dark Elf thing not as literally as it should have been.
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Jun 19, 2017 21:52
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I'd gladly welcome any lore changes that make it possible to play a half-drow that isn't inevitably the byproduct of rape.
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Jun 19, 2017 21:54
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I'd gladly welcome any lore changes that make it possible to play a half-drow that isn't inevitably the byproduct of rape. Luckily that's not too hard. Most Half Drow are the kids of Renegades. Quite a few who managed to get accepted into other groups. Even if they later betrayed that trust. (Looking at you Tos'un Armgo. The idiot who got his son killed and his daughter horribly abused cause of a magic sword.) Half Drow won't exist in actual Drow stuff. Cause they would be sacrificed at birth or their non Drow parent would get murdered.
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Jun 19, 2017 22:00
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Nehru the Damaja posted:I'd gladly welcome any lore changes that make it possible to play a half-drow that isn't inevitably the byproduct of rape. Or full drow, for that matter.
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Jun 19, 2017 22:23
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MonsterEnvy posted:Yeah that was awful art which also came out in 1986 quite a bit after everything in the book was released. Which still describes Drow as having Pitch Black Skin. It and another piece were described as being a result of the artist taking the Dark Elf thing not as literally as it should have been. It's still official art of an official module. You don't get to cherrypick just because it doesn't support your point, which honestly I'm not even sure what it is at this point. Is it that they're black but not really black? I feel like I've found the Mister Bibs of the D&D thread at this point.
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Jun 19, 2017 22:48
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Reene posted:It's still official art of an official module. You don't get to cherrypick just because it doesn't support your point, which honestly I'm not even sure what it is at this point. Is it that they're black but not really black? I am not nearly as awful as Bibs. I can admit when I am wrong. My point was pretty much they were presented as fairly non human look first and were always described as looking that way. With only two covers that are agreed by everyone to be bad giving them a somewhat realistic skin tone. The Queen of Spiders cover even came out 9 years after Drow were first depicted. It's an outlier and everything including the book it was covering ignored it. To just go over everything. Your point was that Drow were originally presented as Brown Skinned. I pointed out that they were not. 9 years later after they first showed up a piece depicted them with Brown skin which was stated to be a mistake and everything since then as ignored it. Current Drow have also moved away from being depicted with Black Skin and are now more of a grey or purplish. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Jun 19, 2017 |
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Jun 19, 2017 23:38
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MonsterEnvy posted:And they are not evil by default. Except for in the monster manual, where they are evil by default.
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Jun 19, 2017 23:50
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AlphaDog posted:Except for in the monster manual, where they are evil by default. Evil by default in that their culture is horrible and evil. You can raise a Drow to be a good person. This is even stated in the Monster Manual. Which even says that despite the alignment listed they are not all that alignment and there are outliers. But the majority are evil assholes. Edit: I don't even know why I am correcting you when you know what I meant.
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Jun 19, 2017 23:53
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What do you think "default" means?
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Jun 19, 2017 23:55
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AlphaDog posted:What do you think "default" means? How they would normally be. I said they were not in that they are not born evil. But the vast majority still are. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Jun 19, 2017 |
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Jun 19, 2017 23:56
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What do you think "default" means?
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Jun 19, 2017 23:58
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AlphaDog posted:What do you think "default" means? Edited it in already. How they would normally be. Don't be a jerk about this.
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Jun 19, 2017 23:59
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MonsterEnvy posted:Edited it in already. How they would normally be. Don't be a jerk about this. You're saying that drow are not "normally" evil? That the average drow is not evil?
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Jun 20, 2017 00:03
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AlphaDog posted:You're saying that drow are not "normally" evil? That the average drow is not evil? What's your point? Not all goblins, orcs, beholders, elemental dragons, demons, and liches are evil? #NotAllOrcs ?
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Jun 20, 2017 00:13
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My point is that "evil by default" is what Drow are in Dungeon & Dragons. Their alignment in the monster manual is evil. They live in an evil society and follow an evil god. They're contrasted with "the good elves", get described as malevolent or "the wickedest elves" or similar, are the ones that followed their dark god on the path of corruption and evil, and so on. There's plenty of other stuff that's also evil (or good, lawful, chaotic, etc) by default. I'm not saying all drow are always evil, but to say that Drow are not evil by default is dead wrong in D&D. Whether or not you think it's a good way to do things, D&D has bad-guy races and species, and Drow are one of them. There should be exceptions, and those make interesting or fun stories because they're exceptions. The very popular stories of Drizzt The Drow Who Isn't Evil only work because The Drow Who Isn't Evil is an exceptional thing. e: D&D would be better in general if "this sentient race defaults to this alignment" wasn't a thing, but that's incredibly unlikely to change. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Jun 20, 2017 |
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Jun 20, 2017 00:33
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Eberron Drow on the other hand are good poo poo with a strong slave uprising background and Half Scorpion men are better than Half Spiders. MonsterEnvy posted:Evil by default in that their culture is horrible and evil. You can raise a Drow to be a good person. This is even stated in the Monster Manual. Which even says that despite the alignment listed they are not all that alignment and there are outliers. But the majority are evil assholes. They put the lol in lolth.
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Jun 20, 2017 00:39
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AlphaDog posted:My point is that "evil by default" is what Drow are in Dungeon & Dragons. Their alignment in the monster manual is evil. They live in an evil society and follow an evil god. They're contrasted with "the good elves", get described as malevolent or "the wickedest elves" or similar, are the ones that followed their dark god on the path of corruption and evil, and so on. There's plenty of other stuff that's also evil (or good, lawful, chaotic, etc) by default. I always assumed that the alignment entry in the MM was not meant to be deterministic for more mundane races, just "this is what you will typically run across."
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Jun 20, 2017 00:44
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mango sentinel posted:I always assumed that the alignment entry in the MM was not meant to be deterministic for more mundane races, just "this is what you will typically run across." Yes, the default alignment, if you will.
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Jun 20, 2017 00:46
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mango sentinel posted:I always assumed that the alignment entry in the MM was not meant to be deterministic for more mundane races, just "this is what you will typically run across." AlphaDog posted:Yes, the default alignment, if you will. kingcom posted:They put the lol in lolth.
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Jun 20, 2017 00:54
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mango sentinel posted:Every time Monster Envy tries to agree with me I have a momentary thought of "oh no I did a bad opinion!"
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Jun 20, 2017 00:56
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MonsterEnvy posted:Current Drow have also moved away from being depicted with Black Skin and are now more of a grey or purplish. From the 5E PHB: "Also called dark elves, the drow have black skin that resembles polished obsidian"
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Jun 20, 2017 01:36
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The polished obsidian thing is weird. So they're... very shiny? Vitreous? Are there whorl-like patterns in their skin?
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Jun 20, 2017 01:46
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It's sweat. Put tens of thousands of people in a cave and things are gonna be... humid, to say the least. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Jun 20, 2017 |
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Jun 20, 2017 01:55
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Maybe they're just greasy. (There are also absolutely black people IRL with skin that dark incidentally, so that isn't even an inhuman skin tone if that's how they describe it. Grey and blue and purple, certainly, and based on the most recent Drow art I assume that's what they still want to go for now.)
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Jun 20, 2017 01:58
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Reene posted:The polished obsidian thing is weird. So they're... very shiny? Vitreous? Are there whorl-like patterns in their skin? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QRP9EzaL_I I think like this probably.
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Jun 20, 2017 02:05
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Reene posted:Maybe they're just greasy. Trailer Park Drow. "FRIG OFF Ri'c'yki'!"
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Jun 20, 2017 02:14
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