Are the Drow of Golarion black-skinned or white-skinned? And if they're black-skinned elves living below ground, will it ever be explained why they're not as pale as death? Not that I want to criticise magical drow, I'm just curious.
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Pertaining to the issue of real-world cultural analogues in a fantasy game-world:
I've been on both sides, and over the years have to come to realize that its not only necessary but inevitable. My first deviation was a teenagers lame attempt at opposition: Vikings culture with asian physiology living in the sandy desert for example. Second attempt was more along the lines of "forget real world culture and try to create a unique culture"...which was pretty good, but the players kept referring to real-world analogies, "They are like ancient egyptians with a bushido code"...
I realized that that its inevitable because we always want to find a mode of comparison. You as the DM may "get it", but that new player is going to infer/imply real-world comparisons.
Its necessary because its a short-hand. No player wants to spend time reading, let alone digesting, the intricacies of Chelaxian culture and what makes it unique in a real-world sense. Its a hell of a lot easier to say "Chelaxians are like eastern europeans after the fall of rome" or some such thing...the fact that there is some fiendish influences is what makes it unique in the fantasy context and thats enough.
Human history is pretty rich, but we aren't trying to recreate a history here, just have a context for playing. So yeah, its usually a good idea to use real-world analogues.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Pertaining to the issue of real-world cultural analogues in a fantasy game-world:
Its necessary because its a short-hand. No player wants to spend time reading, let alone digesting, the intricacies of Chelaxian culture and what makes it unique in a real-world sense. Its a hell of a lot easier to say "Chelaxians are like eastern europeans after the fall of rome" or some such thing...the fact that there is some fiendish influences is what makes it unique in the fantasy context and thats enough.
I understand the short-hand. That's why Howard used a world that had so many real-world cultural analogues. I guess one question I have is does skin-colour, hair colour, eye shape, and facial structure have to be the script of this short-hand? Surely we are more imaginative than that.
However, even if Golarion does use real-world analogues as a short-hand to that degree, they could still avoid real-world racism. It just becomes more difficult as readers might interpret things according to real-world prejudisms.
The Shoanti could become a bitter, dying culture, respected for their connection with nature but having little to offer the new world with the only good Shoanti being the Sheriff Hemlocks who are willing to change their names and give up "the old ways". OR Shoanti could be a label the Chelaxians and the Varisians gave to a number of different peoples with different customs, traditions, and perspectives who react to colonization in different ways and continue to make vital contributions to life in Varisia.
The latter option gives more room for adventure and creativity on the part of designers. The former option is easier.
I suspect that as this world grows we will continue to see richness, depth, variety, and verisimilitude (my new word of the week).
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Are the Drow of Golarion black-skinned or white-skinned? And if they're black-skinned elves living below ground, will it ever be explained why they're not as pale as death? Not that I want to criticise magical drow, I'm just curious.
Because they're dark skinned? :P
I believe they have said they're below ground demon worshipers. :)
Are the Drow of Golarion black-skinned or white-skinned? And if they're black-skinned elves living below ground, will it ever be explained why they're not as pale as death? Not that I want to criticise magical drow, I'm just curious.Because they're dark skinned? :P
I believe they have said they're below ground demon worshipers. :)
I like Might and Magic's dark elves, which are white. Literally white, like a sheet. Come to think of it, Tolkien's dark elves (the narrower defintion, not just all those who didn't see the Treelight) were the same - all that time below ground or below the deep shade of really thick forests, respectively.
Of course, you can just say they're black-skinned (literally black, like pitch) because. Or maybe the demon worshippers put their mark on them.
Or they use boot polish and fake their skin colour to seem more scary. Think about it: They live below ground, and your average humanoid would think they should be pale as death, on account of never getting any tan (I think Golarion is still some years away from tanning salons), so imagine an elf as black as the shadows around him suddenly killing your mates. That guy's gotta be ridden by something seriously bad.
Yes, I saw right through them now: Drow are the same as other elves, they just play pretend!
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Of course, you can just say they're black-skinned (literally black, like pitch) because. Or maybe the demon worshippers put their mark on them.
Yes, you can. And that makes sense, as long as it's explicit somewhere. ... But my policy has always been "fantasy is reality with certain very specific changes, and the consequences thereof."
So, to recap, if a world-designer wants to have either drow as black-skinned or humans as a light skinned race living in tropical climates it would have to be explained because "fantasy is reality with certain very specific changes" and over thousands and thousands of years skin colour (at least in humans) gets lightened due to lack of sunlight and the resulting low vitamin D3 and darkened in intense sunlight to prevent low folate levels.
So, has the drow's darkness been explained in other campaign settings? Have there been any light skinned humans in tropical climates?
P.S. I suspect I'm in the minority but I think drow look stupid and I always have. They neither scare me nor attract me. The half spider part is kind of cool but 23 years now and I still haven't changed my mind.
The Great Migrations (there's even a map!) give a pretty good idea of how each race ended up where it ended up.
I think we just have different definitions of "context". While it's true that the Great Migration accounts for three (or so) races of humans, I don't give a whole lot of credit to "they all started over there, now they're all over here." If we could see racial standards along the paths of migration, that would be one thing, but that migration map just shows a trio of races criss-crossing the continent, leaving behind settlers at random points.
On the other hand, I don't know the Forgotten Realms well enough to argue that they're any better.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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P.S. I suspect I'm in the minority but I think drow look stupid and I always have. They neither scare me nor attract me. The half spider part is kind of cool but 23 years now and I still haven't changed my mind.
You are in the minority. Back in the magazine days, putting a black-skinned-white-haired drow on a cover was a surefire way to increase sales. Drow are very, very popular.
Consequently, the drow of Golarion will have black skin and white hair.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I think we just have different definitions of "context". While it's true that the Great Migration accounts for three (or so) races of humans, I don't give a whole lot of credit to "they all started over there, now they're all over here." If we could see racial standards along the paths of migration, that would be one thing, but that migration map just shows a trio of races criss-crossing the continent, leaving behind settlers at random points.On the other hand, I don't know the Forgotten Realms well enough to argue that they're any better.
They're way, way, way worse. I assure you.
I don't understand what you mean by "racial standards." While most of the Greyhawk countries host humans of a variety of races, the dominant strains generally are associated with the paths of migration as represented on that map.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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You are in the minority. Back in the magazine days, putting a black-skinned-white-haired drow on a cover was a surefire way to increase sales. Drow are very, very popular.Consequently, the drow of Golarion will have black skin and white hair.
I thought that it was women in chainmail bikinis on the cover that increased sales.
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I'm sure chainmail bikini does sell books, but I'm sure she sold better...
http://paizo.com/image/product/magazine_issue/dungeon/119/cover_500.jpg
Hot drow chick in a chainmail bikini.
Yum yum.
The FR 2nd Ed sourcebook Demihuman Deities actually had an explanation for the drow's dark skin.
Basically, the drow originally lived in the tropical rain forest; they were jungle elves. Lolth (before her fall/transformation) was their primary patron godess in the elven pantheon. When Lolth rebelled against Corellon, the jungle elves warred against the other elf nations. After Lolth's defeat, they were driven underground, but retain their dark skin.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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That always struck me as... well... extremely lame.
Drow skin is _black_. Not "black" like a dark-skinned human of African ancestry, but BLACK. Like the crayon.
Drow are black because they are evil, and because at some point in their history they were tainted by corruption. Evil like darkness. Evil like the cover of "Smell the Glove."
There is no variance in the blackness of a drow's skin. There are not "lighter" drow or drow that are more brown than black or drow that are green.
Again: Pitch black. Not metaphorically black. Actually black. All of them.
They also have white hair. All of them. How is that explained by a jungle origin?
In my campaign world Drow also have pure white insides like a cat fish belly, their tongues would be a purplish grey. And if female drow parted those sharpie black thighs, you'd see a little white...
Erik make sure the vikings of Golarion eat Hakarl!
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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That always struck me as... well... extremely lame.
Drow skin is _black_. Not "black" like a dark-skinned human of African ancestry, but BLACK. Like the crayon.
Drow are black because they are evil, and because at some point in their history they were tainted by corruption. Evil like darkness. Evil like the cover of "Smell the Glove."
I agree that the jungle origin is extremely lame and that the tainted by corruption is better. I don't have a problem with the association of black with evil; I'm sure it is not a cultural universal but it does make sense for anyone who is afraid of the dark (which I wasn't until I read through Hook Mountain Massacre).
As long as we live in a world where skin colour does not need to be determined by environment though, the door is still open for Golarion to be different from earth in these regards. In any case, my own Golarion will be a lot like my own Greyhawk in that the range of skin, hair, and eye colours will be more variable due to greater migration.
Thanks Erik for taking the time to respond. I'm really excited about watching this world grow.
The Fourth Edition core backstory for drow explains their colouration pretty well for me:
Sehanine and Lolth are sisters, goddesses of the full and new moons respectively; Sehanine is pale-skinned and dark-haired, Lolth is dark-skinned and pale-haired. When evil elves first gained Lolth's attention for the way they delighted in cruelty and took power for themselves, she marked them as her favourites by changing their colouration to match her own.
So Lolth had black skin because she represented the new moon, and drow have black skin because Lolth marked them as her chosen people.
I'm the sort of person who takes a real delight in seeing how elements like all the various monsters of D&D can be re-envisioned by an imaginative team of writers, so in that regard Pathfinder and Golarion in general is a goldmine for me, even if I'm not exactly looking for a world designed to be so much like Greyhawk as, say, Eric and many of the people on this thread are.
I really loved the backstory for the dragons of Golarion, for instance. The crossbred lines are a great innovation.
Of course that history doesn't work when you're talking about Realms Drow, but that's ok. :)
Oh, yeah, obviously. :) It also doesn't work for Eberron's drow, but we already know why they look the way they do: when the elven slaves of the ancient giant empires of Xen'drik rebelled, the giants magically altered some of their loyal (or imprisoned) elven slaves to serve as spies and assassins against the rebels.
I think my interest in seeing D&D monsters interpreted and reinvented in multiple ways is related to my interest in alternate history and parallel timelines in fiction: I like seeing different takes on the familiar.
The Paizo crew can be sure that I will be picking up Classic Monsters Revisited even if I never run a non-Adventure Path campaign in Golarion - it'll be worth it just for what it is.
I've pointed out something similar in another thread, but for those of you puzzling over the black skin/drow issue, it goes back to Old Norse mythology. There was a classification of elves that, literally translated, were the "black elves". Tolkien, w/ his command of Old English and Old Norse, was well aware of this categorization, as well as the various Old English elves (e.g., mountain elves, field elves, wood elves, etc.).
Keep in mind that though we get our dwarf/elf distinctions from Tolkien (he just crystallized them into the D&D versions; they existed before him), they weren't as clear cut necessarily in the Middle Ages. The classic illustration is the Old Norse name of the subterranean home of the dwarves: Svartalfaheimr (broken into elements, this is Svart-alfa-heimr, or "the world of the black elves").
So keep in mind that it was possible, historically, that "black elves" were a term for dwarves, at least in mythological constructions of the time. Anyway, just a little background for you all.
D&D obviously took the bare basics of these "black elves" and made its own mythology for them.
I think we just have different definitions of "context". While it's true that the Great Migration accounts for three (or so) races of humans, I don't give a whole lot of credit to "they all started over there, now they're all over here." If we could see racial standards along the paths of migration, that would be one thing, but that migration map just shows a trio of races criss-crossing the continent, leaving behind settlers at random points.On the other hand, I don't know the Forgotten Realms well enough to argue that they're any better.
They're way, way, way worse. I assure you.
I don't understand what you mean by "racial standards." While most of the Greyhawk countries host humans of a variety of races, the dominant strains generally are associated with the paths of migration as represented on that map.
Your Greyhawk prejudices are showing again Erik. ;)
As it happens I agree with you. Even before the great migrations were quantified, Greyhawk always had a more aggregate feel to it, like it could really work. I enjoyed the Realms for a while, but I never got that feeling very often. The Dalelands and the North were the only areas where the feel was similar to Greyhawk (I have a feeling that's because those were the areas where Ed Greenwood ran his games). The rest of the Realms always just seemed tacked on here and there.
I haven't kept up with Realmslore much in the past 10 years, but I do remember reading that much of the northern areas were colonized in a great wave from the Chessenta area, but that was it. All of the lands were colonized by just the "human" race rather than subraces. Like you I don't remember the subraces of humans being named until much later in the history of the Realms, whereas the Greyhawk human subraces added a great deal to the flavor of the Flanaess from the very beginning.
That always struck me as... well... extremely lame.
No argument. It sounded like a retconned explanation for something that was never specifically addressed. I would have been more impressed if there was a tie-in to Shar (the ruler of darkness in the Realms) or something (Plane of Shadow?).
Of course that history doesn't work when you're talking about Realms Drow, but that's ok. :)
It will, once they changed the Realms to make it fit. Lolth will probably get time travel powers, with no one to stop her now Helm and Mystra are dead, and do that to the elves. Can't have different species in different settings in 4e, oh no.
That always struck me as... well... extremely lame.
I agree.
Mind you, my personal preference is for a more "rational" look to the Drow. In keeping with the pseudo-scientific elements you find in a lot of pulp fantasy (which, after all, was generally low magic and "gritty," meaning it was intended to be "realistic" in a broad sense), my Drow have always been pale, pasty white in complexion, the result of having lived in a lightless environment for centuries. This physical appearance change goes a long way toward breaking the connection with bog standard D&D Drow, so I'm free to make other changes to their culture and society without anyone saying, "But Drow aren't like that!"
I realize you can't do this with Golarion but I think that's a shame. Ghostly pale Drow strike me as much more pulpy than the ebon-skinned variety.
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As long as we live in a world where skin colour does not need to be determined by environment though, the door is still open for Golarion to be different from earth in these regards. In any case, my own Golarion will be a lot like my own Greyhawk in that the range of skin, hair, and eye colours will be more variable due to greater migration.
Also opens it up for anime styles! Pink and Blue hair for everyone!
Personally I'd love it if the Vikings took a bit from the Mandalorians (as in a distinct culture that primarily expands by acquiring people from other cultures) than "northern barbarians with longships and beards" (I have no idea what your plans are of course)I submit that the two are not mutually exclusive. Your reference to the Mandalorians is interesting, because one of the touchstones I've been using when thinking of the warriors of the Linnorm Kings are the likewise mercenary Varangians, particularly the Varangian Guard of ancieny Byzantium.
That and farming, of course.
Thank you, Erik.
I am really looking forward to your take on the Vikings. Ever since I researched Viking society for a barbarian/bard character I created, and later for a campaign I ran, I have been fascinated with them. They often get a bad rep in history, but in some ways they were more culturally advanced than other Europeans cultures of the time.
I am really looking forward to your take on the Vikings. Ever since I researched Viking society for a barbarian/bard character I created, and later for a campaign I ran, I have been fascinated with them. They often get a bad rep in history, but in some ways they were more culturally advanced than other Europeans cultures of the time.
They get a bad reputation in gaming, too. I wrote a Living Greyhawk scenario involving the Frost Barbarians and did a lot of research for that. By the time WotC had finished editing it though they'd taken out some of the cultural stuff and added trumped up charges and trial by combat (presumably because that's what barbarians do). I was disappointed. (I get that it probably made for a better game, though.)
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I think Golarion has the following things in common with Greyhawk:
• Lots of human subraces.
• Takes inspiration from Howard, Leiber, etc. This is pulp fantasy.
• Has a crashed space ship somewhere on the world.
• Built using the core assumptions, essentially, of first edition.
• Has Vikings.
• Cultures exist within a context, rather than a hodge-podge.
• Lots of dungeons. The point of the world is a place in which to set adventures. Adventures drive the world.
• I like both of them a lot.There are more similarities, but those are the ones that jump out at me immediately.
--Erik
The Problem with Spaceships and D&D is this: D&D has rules for Making Spaceships and Rayguns from Magic and yet DMs never seem capable of plundering the resource.
BLACKLORE: Magic of such complexity as to be the equivalent of Advanced Technology.
Thats why We like the 3rd Edition Rules...You can magic up the Frostray rifle with Range Doubler Lens at third level Wizard, slap in the Damage magnifier lens at 7th level, and the highspeed stock at 14th level that lets you fire the wonderous magic item 6 times a round (against a single specified target).
If you want a Flying Saucer you enchant a frame using Fly, Create Air, Wall of Iron so it takes your 20th level wizard 75 years and 25 million gp to enchant.
Frankly anyone who wants a space ship that isnt Blacklore is just breaking the rules of the game engine.
IF PAIZO wants to establish the new rulebook for Blacklore in D&D it better do so...soon!
Sounds like Golarion is coming to life just fine.
The spaceship angle, Im mixed about. On the one hand Ive never really got into the Barrier Peaks module of old (though Ive owned it). On the other hand, it depends what Paizo does with it.
A focused AP about it could be excellent, but long term aftershocks probably wouldnt (i.e. an RSE). Having one area where the locals have eventually adapted this technology (ray guns, flying metallic mounts) etc) doesnt sit right with me.
Having a single, reclusive, crazy Arch-Mage using this stuff would make for a great Iconic. Or did I just describe a Golarion Jedi Knight?
Good times to be with Paizo as a birth of a new campaign setting is always exciting.
I'm not hoping for a "disguised Greyhawk" but rather "in the same vein as Greyhawk." The same way that Forgotten Realms in many ways is closer to Tolkien than it is to Greyhawk, I was hoping for a setting that was closer to Greyhawk than it was other settings, if that makes any sense.-The Gneech
Perhaps you can explain, good Sir, this notion that the Forgetable Realms resembles Tolkien's Middle Earth. Middle earth was a pretty sparsely populated & comparitively primitive place; as compared to the Archmage-on-every-street corner of the Realms. If you'd be so kind, of course:)
Perhaps you can explain, good Sir, this notion that the Forgetable Realms resembles Tolkien's Middle Earth.
Don't quite get it myself. Rare magic versus abundand magic (that makes people insane nowadays). Few, big events versus one big event each week.
Though in both settings, the glorious days are in the past (though in the case of the Realms, it was only months ago)
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Sounds like Golarion is coming to life just fine.
The spaceship angle, Im mixed about. On the one hand Ive never really got into the Barrier Peaks module of old (though Ive owned it). On the other hand, it depends what Paizo does with it.
A focused AP about it could be excellent, but long term aftershocks probably wouldnt (i.e. an RSE). Having one area where the locals have eventually adapted this technology (ray guns, flying metallic mounts) etc) doesnt sit right with me.
Having a single, reclusive, crazy Arch-Mage using this stuff would make for a great Iconic. Or did I just describe a Golarion Jedi Knight?
Good times to be with Paizo as a birth of a new campaign setting is always exciting.
I'm rather fond of the spaceship angle as long as its all magebuilt. Then i can have that Flyingsaucer full of raygun-toting Goblins in silver cloth jumpsuits as part of a legitimate campaign. More importantly it forces us to make goblins very rare. If they are in a deep cavern beneath a mountain, they are probably mining critical minerals to keep their "Technology" going.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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The space ship is from a different planet, and is probably not made with magic. It is _technological_ in nature, which is the whole point of putting a space ship there in the first place.
It's also located in a fairly remote location in the world, so if you don't want to use it you can ignore it easily.
Basically, when designing Golarion we asked ourselves "what sorts of campaigning do people enjoy," and tried to create a location conducive to each of those styles of play. The space ship is located in a nation called Numeria, which has a sort of "Thundarr the Barbarian" vibe to it.
A mix of Strange Science and Sinister Sorcery, eh? (waves bladeless hilt around) Maybe there's someone in that neck of the woods who can tell me how to work this darn thing...
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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A mix of Strange Science and Sinister Sorcery, eh? (waves bladeless hilt around) Maybe there's someone in that neck of the woods who can tell me how to work this darn thing...
Light come forth!
Heck, you could have it so that after the ship crashed, there were survivors, who proceeded to cannibalize the ship, then managed to ghetto-rig a transmitter, caught a ride back, and left the shell and some less advanced material behind.
I like the spaceship idea. Of course the setting really affects the mixing advance tech into D&D. My last campaign was a Planescape game that had the players end up in WWII France during D-Day. My players had a blast and snagged a few grenades and a Thompson SMG. The SMG did not last long. I used the autofire rules from d20 modern, so the player burned through the ammo. The grenades were a bit more effective.
Just dropping obvious advanced tech into a more classical D&D setting can be a bit jarring, escpecially if the players are not expecting it.
The space ship is located in a nation called Numeria, which has a sort of "Thundarr the Barbarian" vibe to it.
omg, I loved this cartoon when I was a kid. :)
Are we that old now?
Evil like the cover of "Smell the Glove."
I never thought I'd see a Spinal Tap reference on this board! I suspect I won't again... Unless someone's drow go to 11. :)
--Ray.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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Evil like the cover of "Smell the Glove."I never thought I'd see a Spinal Tap reference on this board! I suspect I won't again... Unless someone's drow go to 11. :)
--Ray.
I don't know. I've been thinking of rewatching Spinal Tap since that reference and misread a link in the store blog sidebar. I could easily imagine a mini-adventure titled Smell the Grave ... This is what I actually read. Smell of the grave.
Perhaps you can explain, good Sir, this notion that the Forgetable Realms resembles Tolkien's Middle Earth. Middle earth was a pretty sparsely populated & comparitively primitive place; as compared to the Archmage-on-every-street corner of the Realms. If you'd be so kind, of course:)
I'm not hoping for a "disguised Greyhawk" but rather "in the same vein as Greyhawk." The same way that Forgotten Realms in many ways is closer to Tolkien than it is to Greyhawk, I was hoping for a setting that was closer to Greyhawk than it was other settings, if that makes any sense.-The Gneech
"Closer" philosophically, is primarily what I meant. M-E, at least as presented in The Hobbit and LotR is a world that consists of fairly comfortable, "good" places associated with a given race (The Shire, Bree, Rivendell, Edoras) with more dangerous and/or "evil" zones around and between them, which is always more or less how FR has struck me. In M-E and FR both, you're likely to be helping "good folk" against some monolithic evil.
Greyhawk is more balkanized, with a variety of more-or-less self-interested (and human-dominated) nations that make or break alliances based on political expediency, where the individual adventurer is more inclined to be trying to make a buck, than to save the world against the forces of darkness.
Each world has room for variation; it's all a matter of degree really. But if I was going to be placing classic fantasy characters into a D&D setting, I'd put Frodo Baggins into FR and Conan into Greyhawk, if you see what I mean.
-The Gneech
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Personaly I like to think of Golarion as what Flubberonn's writers wanted it to be; gritty, tactile and both physically and mentaly dangerous. From the burning of the placid streets of Sandpoint to the "OMG I don't wanna die on an Ogre's dinner table!" Golarion is showing itself, through Pathfinder, to be fantasy pulp noir at its best.
I liked old grognardy Greyhawk but after a decade of DMin in a homebrew I recently, while preparing to run Exp. To CG, went back to refresh my Greyhawk memory and while reading about it found it wonderfully droll, mildly racist and sort of unimaginative.
So I hope that Erik and crew continue to bring the good of GH into Golarion without compromising how well the world is coming together and sticking to common cliche's and stereotypes.
BTW - Catfolk Vikings would totally kick azz and they have now been upgraded into my brew when I get back to it after RotRL path is complete...
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Not to be too narrow-minded or anything, but isn't dark skin a survival trait for an underground species in a world where most underground predators are aberrations, who come with darkvision as standard equipment, and where light is going to be a rarity at best? Since darkvision is black and white, isn't dark skin the most effective camoflage available against darkvision-using predators?
Erik Mona/James Jacobs-How do you guys feel about the Dragonborn(aka dragonmen/Trogdor-And will this type of crap end up in Golarion/Pathfinder adventures?
(I don't wanna see Dragonborn innkeepers or Dragonborn Paladins.
And will the Half-orc remain a race based on Human/Orc experience or will it be "Cleaned up as to not be offending" as Michelle Carter pointed out in Races and Classes?
Michelle Carter-
From Races and Classes
But the race intrinsically makes me uncomfortable due to its implied origins, and until that’s solved, I’m just as happy to see them left out for now. At the same time, I have absolutely no doubt that we can find a story that will allow us to update the half-orc with the same kind of reimagining that turned the tiefling from an oddity into a full-fledged race.(WTF?)So all half-elves are the product of loving/consenting parents? please.
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Creative Director
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All I've seen so far about dragonborn is the art. I haven't seen the rules yet. But my gut feeling about them is that they're unnecessary; the game's already got lizardfolk, half-dragons, draconians, spawn of Tiamat in their bazillion incarnations, and countless other dragon person races. And personally, I don't like having monstrous-appearing humanoids as a common factor; tieflings are about as far as that goes for me (and for the record, I like tieflings a LOT). If we do switch to 4th edition, we'll incorporate dragonborn into Golarion somehow, but they won't have a big role in the world at first; we've already established the major PC races for our world, and those races are the ones in the 3.5 PHB. Tieflings have a role in there too, but that's because they've been in the game already for some time. Dragonborn, being newcomers, don't have a role yet in Golarion, and if they are to have one, that role will start out relatively minor in the world. Whether or not that role grows into something larger and you'll start seeing dragonborn brushing shoulders with humans in the majority of the world's cities depends on how long it takes us at Paizo to warm to them and how the players of the game react to them. In my case, at least, it's a steep uphill battle for them. It'll be a LONG time, in other words, before you see a dragonborn NPC in Pathfinder, no matter what we do with them, I suspect.
Half-orcs remain in the game. And yes, most of them are probably the result of orcs raping human women. That actually does make me a little uncomfortable as well, and we certainly won't be dwelling/obsessing on this fact, but the truth of the matter is that Golarion's not a utopia or a perfect world. As readers of "Hook Mountain Massacre" doubtless know, we aren't afraid to include more mature themes in Pathfinder or GameMastery products; sanitizing these aspects of the game isn't something I'm interested in pursuing. That said... there aren't a lot of half-orcs OR half-elves in Golarion either. Neither race has its own "nation" as far as I know, and most of those that DO exist have lonely lives.