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In a world where infravision and darkvision exist, there absolutely is selective pressure for underground species to become dark to camouflage instead of pigmentless because they need no camouflage. So having underground elves be dark skinned makes a decent amount of sense in this world. Having them all be evil is hella racist.
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Jun 28, 2019 15:49
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I liked Malcolm Sheppard's idea where his fantasy world was the capital planet of a collapsed empire, and drow were the elves who lived underground and drank nanites that helped them survive but drove them batty.Jaxyon posted:Hey just a tourist here, is there a Vampire the Masquerade thread? 20th anniversary edition
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Jun 28, 2019 15:51
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Spire has the best Drow: they're the oppressed underclass in their colonized home city, with a traditional culture that's vaguely Lolth-y but not more evil than any society. The 'curse' thing is explicitly brought up as a theory of elf speciation pushed by the ruling high elf elite, while it's implied the more likely cause is either convergent evolution or descent from a common ancestor. There's a lot of crime, spies, and murder, but it's very clearly because you the players are revolutionaries in direct conflict with a brutal colonial state and your best bet is o stay in places that state has less reach. It has a distcintly Drow flavor while also being expressly antiracist (it is still the case that high elves specifically have distinct 'racial' traits beyond 'burnt by the sun' or whatever, but given that they're explicitly the British Empire Elves I'm not super worried about that).
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Jun 28, 2019 16:31
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"Just reprint 3.5 books!" was a thing under the OGL before Pathfinder. Mongoose were doing it in handy* pocket sizes.
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Jun 28, 2019 16:33
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13th Age also presents different approaches to races (and most of its setting central points, really), one of which is - albeit in some non-core supplement - that Drow are the Elf Queen's black ops squad, a whole culture trained in subterfuge and poison use whose actions are plausibly deniable as "well it sucks that they killed your duke, but they're evil, as everyone knows, what could her majesty possibly have to do with that"
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Jun 28, 2019 17:39
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Lurdiak posted:I really don't like how 5e fights are basically over in 2 rounds. Like sure, it's better than one combat encounter dragging on for 3 hours, but it's pretty disappointing when the boss monster is down to less than half their health after a single turn. And there's very little point healing spells when enemies one-shot most classes routinely. I've played and run 5e fights before and never had that be the case. Admittedly, I've never run higher level combat, though. Xarbala posted:I'll admit I laughed at that sixer <  >
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Jun 28, 2019 18:29
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Bogus Adventure posted:I've played and run 5e fights before and never had that be the case. Admittedly, I've never run higher level combat, though. They might've meant decided, but the dice still gotta roll? I've seen that happen in a lot of games in many systems. Less the whole alpha strike actually ends the encounter and more "Ok, well action economy is now skewed to the winners, unless the DM fudges stuff or there's an incredible stretch of bad luck, but really it's just time to wait out the clock" -and yes I know a good GM would wrap it up to keep the story going after the players have had their fun or skip forward to post capture/defeat if they players were losing.
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Jun 28, 2019 19:19
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Coolness Averted posted:They might've meant decided, but the dice still gotta roll? I've seen that happen in a lot of games in many systems. Less the whole alpha strike actually ends the encounter and more "Ok, well action economy is now skewed to the winners, unless the DM fudges stuff or there's an incredible stretch of bad luck, but really it's just time to wait out the clock" -and yes I know a good GM would wrap it up to keep the story going after the players have had their fun or skip forward to post capture/defeat if they players were losing. Maybe. I'm a little partial to 5e beause I like rules-light systems and D&D's settings, so it hits a happy medium for me. My current tabletop group likes more complicated stuff, like Pathfinder (and there was a time where they were incorporating all of 3.X into Pathfinder because they like minmaxing/munchkining the poo poo out of things), Shadowrun 4e, and HERO 5th ed. I like playing with them, but I hate the rules crunch.
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Jun 28, 2019 20:02
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5e is far from being rules-lite. Like what?
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Jun 28, 2019 20:12
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It's only lighter than 3.5 in that it doesn't have formalized equipment advancement (and replaces it with gm fiat) or complicated builds (because everything has been sanded down so nothing interacts with anything else) I guess no skill point either but the hosed up the math on that one
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Jun 28, 2019 20:14
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Xiahou Dun posted:5e is far from being rules-lite. Like what? Compare 5e to the list of other stuff that I posted that my group likes. It's rules-lite to me. Oh, we also tried Exalted 2E once. I still have nightmares of trying to figure out loving charms.
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Jun 28, 2019 20:26
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Bogus Adventure posted:Oh, we also tried Exalted 2E once. I still have nightmares of trying to figure out loving charms.
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Jun 28, 2019 20:30
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Exalted 2e was also just literally nonfunctional to the point that there was a nearly 100 page fan combat 'errata' (read: extensive house rules) that almost everyone who ran combats used.
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Jun 28, 2019 20:34
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Yawgmoth posted:I remember a long time ago someone made a CYOA-style website that was intended to teach you Exalted 2e combat rules and all it really accomplished was teaching me that Exalted 2e's combat is an even more exhausting slog than D&D 3.5e could ever be. It's a really terrible system to try and learn, and I never, ever, ever want to see it again.
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Jun 28, 2019 20:34
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Bogus Adventure posted:It's a really terrible system
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Jun 28, 2019 20:35
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Jun 28, 2019 20:38
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fool_of_sound posted:Exalted 2e was also just literally nonfunctional to the point that there was a nearly 100 page fan combat 'errata' (read: extensive house rules) that almost everyone who ran combats used. my favorite non-functional bit from Exalted 2e was the whole sidereal stuff that was literally copy & pasted from 1e without adjusting for the 2e changes so sidereals ranged from "hey this doesn't reflect the modern math so number-wise is really undertuned" to "No, that's literally not how that system works anymore, this charm/martial art does not interface with the modern game," but hell even 1st e had some really bad stuff like just accidentally omitting whole systems with contradictory references to what should've been there. Like how do limit breaks work for terrestrial exalted? Do they get them?  and depending on which section of which book you're reading, either they don't get them because the great curse was on the celestials and their gods, not he terrestrials. Instead they have the trade off roiling elements around them when they spend too much essence. Or maybe they get them but in a lesser form where they just emotionally act like the embodiment of their element personality-wise. There's no system for it or explanation though, and you can't really quite copy say the solar rules for it.
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Jun 28, 2019 21:00
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I'm not gonna lie as much as I need to never use the Drow again the logic behind "dark skin is camouflage for enemies with night vision invading your underground kingdom" is rad and I'm gonna steal that for something.
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Jun 28, 2019 21:17
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I can see it being very confusing to explain though. “So you have darkvision, so you don’t just see black, you see it as it actually is, but then it actually is black..”
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Jun 28, 2019 21:38
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Dealing with light sources and vision and maybe infravision is just the worst already in D&D.
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Jun 28, 2019 21:40
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Bogus Adventure posted:Maybe. I'm a little partial to 5e beause I like rules-light systems and D&D's settings, so it hits a happy medium for me. Okay, but there are better (and more rules-light) systems out there that don't involve signal-boosting and/or financially supporting the work of a transphobic rapist, a nazi, and a guy who actively helped them harass people.
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Jun 28, 2019 22:08
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i mean dark skin doesnt necessarily make sense as camo in the dark. you'd be better off being the same colour as the cave walls like the svirfneblin are. grey blends in with grey the same in the dark as it does in the light.
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Jun 28, 2019 22:17
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Let me tell you about our lord and savior, Gamma World 7E... Wasn't someone around here working on a fantasy conversion of that?
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Jun 28, 2019 22:28
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juggalo baby coffin posted:i mean dark skin doesnt necessarily make sense as camo in the dark. So, uh, be careful not to accidentally do a racism. Just don't have the drow suddenly reveal themselves by opening their mouths and revealing their blinding white teeth.
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Jun 28, 2019 22:48
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Oh yeah absolutely I'm not gonna do poo poo like that. I'm working on an Aliens mini campaign that's mostly just nervously doing survey on a frontier world knowing that any moment the boss can be like "nice work with all the colonizing, really like the new mess hall, by the way you're all expendable and we're storing a murder machine in the mess hall" and was thinking more of a subterranean No Actually Not A Xenomorph monster that was just evolved for perfect underground camouflage even in night vision. Yes I know I've described a Xenomorph, no it's not just a Xenomorph I swear. It's more just like the apex predator of the underground only and it's actually more profitable to never gently caress with them because I dunno they poo poo carbon nanotubes or something so let them have their underground ecosystem. Congrats you lucked out, now you're shitfarmers and the stupider companies (Weyland-Yutani) are going to come try and take them to see if a better ecosystem would be a hospital for terminally-ill orphans. The last time I did an Aliens thing I did a species of silicone-based parasitic wasps that injected people with a retrovirus that turned them into silicone-based humanoid statues with chest cavities full of shiny gem eggs. They leeched all the convertible nutrients into the eggs and the stone would become osteoporotic and collapse into statues with crumbled torsos while the adults would collect the stones to let them incubate in petroleum/Space Fuel until they hatched. Their habitat was a centuries-missing fuel tanker that had turned into an asteroid because the wasps converted elements into stone and would spit up the stone and paper it over the cracks of the tanker and they kept themselves fed off other asteroids that would collide with their environment and then feed off the new rocks. And over time a ship would show up, decide "well let's mine this" and then fall prey and become added to the hulk. By the time the PCs docked, the last batch of miners had found the tanker, turned on the distress beacon by splicing a battery into the central computer to find out what happened and all died. The PCs needed fuel, followed the signal and instead found an asteroid big enough to crack a planet instead of a fuel ship. The statues were still alive, FYI. They had a vein of stone that simulated a human nervous system and could carry electrical impulses to Protect The Eggs and it was fun to grab a curious geologist by the neck and throttle them when they least expected it. They managed to find the still 3/4s full fuel reserves deep in the spawning pits of the tanker and hucked a block of Space C-4 with an attached detcord where it nestled amongst all the incubating Space Wasps before they exploded the entire thing. Nobody died but the science officer still decided to take samples of the eggs and managed to figure out how to incubate one...and then got distracted with helping blow up the asteroid and left the incubating egg by its lonesome on the main ship. Made for a good sequel hook. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jun 28, 2019 |
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Jun 28, 2019 23:27
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also despite artists mostly never bothering with doing research and decades of star trek set designers' laziness, rocks are very very often not grey, and limestone caverns are almost never grey anyway obviously they'd just have "hide in shadows" and since it's nothing but shadows... e. you're better off not trying to apply real-world evolutionary principles to your underground monsters, because the energy economy below ground in real life is too poor to support large apex predators hunting exclusively underground. Cave adaptation doesn't only mean loss of pigmentation (which isn't "turning white" so much as it's "there's no point spending energy on pigmentation because nothing else can see you), it also usually means either "...and we leave the caves to find food" or "...and we're cold blooded, slow, hibernate a lot, basically just bugs, or otherwise can deal with there being not much to eat besides bat guano and maybe detritus flushed into our wet underground caves by regular floods/flowing water from outdoors" None of which should constrain anyone from inventing fun cool underground things, including evil elves or whatever, but it's irksome to see the theorycrafting about "how would drow evolve underground for realsies" when the answer is, they just wouldn't. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jun 28, 2019 |
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Jun 28, 2019 23:28
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Jimbozig posted:In a world where infravision and darkvision exist, there absolutely is selective pressure for underground species to become dark to camouflage instead of pigmentless because they need no camouflage. So having underground elves be dark skinned makes a decent amount of sense in this world. e: lol(th) beaten
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Jun 28, 2019 23:36
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Then just make drows grey like in Lineage
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Jun 28, 2019 23:44
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Then be sure to refer to them as grey elves in places where Tolkien nerds hang out.
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Jun 28, 2019 23:46
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Then be sure to refer to them as grey elves in places where Tolkien nerds hang out. lmao
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Jun 28, 2019 23:47
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Leperflesh posted:also despite artists mostly never bothering with doing research and decades of star trek set designers' laziness, rocks are very very often not grey, and limestone caverns are almost never grey Any time the ecology doesn't make sense, a wizard did that. I like Drow better when the underdark is converted to Hollow Earth and there's a sun down there and stuff. theironjef fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jun 28, 2019 |
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Jun 28, 2019 23:53
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Peak dark elf for me is always gonna be the dunmer even though they also have the “god curse” origin story.
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Jun 28, 2019 23:56
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theironjef posted:Any time the ecology doesn't make sense, a wizard did that. so, a wizard did the drow, and they're black because that wizard was super racist
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Jun 29, 2019 00:01
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He wasn't. A previous wizard before him cast Eliminate Context. That guy was super racist.
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Jun 29, 2019 00:12
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Drow are purple as camouflage because of the prevalent day for night shooting.
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Jun 29, 2019 00:14
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Splicer posted:Wait... why would being black help. Cave walls aren't black, We just think they are because they're dark. If you're trying to camouflage in grayscale then pitch black is the absolute worst colour to be. You'd stand out like a silhouette. You both make good points. I was thinking that being dark would help for hiding in shadows, but... I have no idea how darkvision actually works in places with no light... Like, are there even shadows? Does everything appear to be lit with the exact same intensity from all sides?
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Jun 29, 2019 01:15
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Since Darkvision works like magic rather than still being infravision, none of it makes sense. Everyone's focused on the skin color, but don't forget that the evil drow are also, predictably, matriarchal.
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Jun 29, 2019 01:24
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dwarf74 posted:Since Darkvision works like magic rather than still being infravision, none of it makes sense. Matriarchal dominatrices, because women can't have power without it being a Sex Thing
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Jun 29, 2019 01:28
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I think that concept of “evil elf” and “underground elf” and “elves with dark skin color” are all perfectly workable concepts, they just shouldn’t all be tied up into a single race of elves. It’s pretty messed imho. Shadow Elves are the best underground elves for what it’s worth, because they’re refugees who fled underground to avoid a nuclear disaster on the surface and worship a Immortal nuclear physicist. Edit: also never make being evil a racial thing, make it a political or ideological thing, the evil elves can just be the capitalist elves
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Jun 29, 2019 01:37
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theres a lot of weirdly fascist ideology coded into fantasy it seems like, and i wonder if the resistance to monster adventurers and removing the alignment restrictions on races that a lot of grognards have is tied to their lovely reactionary politics. i dont really think any material plane creature should be axiomatically evil, i think the 'always chaotic evil' stuff should be reserved for outsiders who are the literal embodiment of concepts. otherwise a sentient creature who can't choose their morality isn't really sentient. i realise a society can make it more or less difficult to change, but a drow baby raised by loving parents in some other society should turn out the same as them, if the kid is just automatically evil despite being loved and raised with good values, its some weird  poo poo. ofc theres always like instinct stuff, the same way chimps are pretty sentient but still succumb to the impulse to rip peoples dicks off despite being raised well. an illithid raised in human society would probably eat a few brains before they learned how to control their instinct (if illithids were babies, i think they get born fully formed when they take over people as brain worms). but that makes for a more interesting character in the end.
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Jun 29, 2019 01:53
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