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The Drow (created by Gygax as I remember, no insult Lazar) do deserve a mention IMO, if only because I could never figure out why the elves who lived above ground would be the pale ones.
My fanwank for that is that elves don't have melanin like humans, but instead adapt to the light levels around them. The elves who live on the highest mountain peaks, the grey or gold elves, are the palest of the pale. Those who live among humans, the high or silver elves, are mostly human in skin tone. Those who live in the shadowy forests, the wood or wild elves, tend to be darker skinned, with the grugach, from Greyhawk, the darkest of all, described as 'nut-brown' in color. In the depths of the seas, aquatic elf skin tones run from blue to green, and finally, in the lightless warrens beneath the earth, dark shades of blue, brown or black, depending on the artistic depiction, among the drow.
So, since 1st edition, really, elves have been paler when exposed to the most sunlight, and darker when living in darker areas.
But that's elves. Svirfneblin and Duergar are very much not elves, and it would be completely appropriate for them both to be pale white in color (like Derro already are), while the surface Gnomes and Dwarves run to darker more human-like complexions.
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The Drow are based on the svartalfar (dark or dusky elves) also from Norse legend. The ljosalfar and the svartalfar both formed from the white and black maggots crawling out of the corpse of the primordial frost giant, Ymir.
This is a legend you can repeat to get both regular elves and Drow upset with you.
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Of course, I'm a white guy, so I might just be denying the obvious racism. I don't think so though.
We never do, dude, we never do.
if I'm speaking seriously, I don't think drow are an example of obvious racism. It's splitting hairs, but I think they're an example of racial insensitivity, the difference being that no one stopped to think about how it looked if you weren't white.
It also pays to keep in mind that 1E comes from the same time as Elfquest, when even thinking of elves who weren't white, good or bad, was sort of revolutionary.
The Drow are based on the svartalfar (dark or dusky elves) also from Norse legend. The ljosalfar and the svartalfar both formed from the white and black maggots crawling out of the corpse of the primordial frost giant, Ymir.
This is a legend you can repeat to get both regular elves and Drow upset with you.
Only very loosely: the name, essentially.
The svart alfar are basically dwarves.
Sure, but in the real world lore drow are a lot closer to trolls than dark elves. It's word in icelandic or some language that has full on elves as part of its cultural reference.
My point was, I think Gygax heard about Dark Elves, did a little research, and ended up in a less informed place than Wendy Pini.
(Should have been one post, sorry.)
Director of Brand Strategy
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The Drow are based on the svartalfar (dark or dusky elves) also from Norse legend. The ljosalfar and the svartalfar both formed from the white and black maggots crawling out of the corpse of the primordial frost giant, Ymir.
This is a legend you can repeat to get both regular elves and Drow upset with you.
Also, the black Martians of Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Gods of Mars," who were evil, underground-dwelling, matriarchal spider worshipers with black skin and white hair.
Good point, Mark. A lot of people focus on the influence that Tolkein had on the early days of D&D and forget that ERB and the Conan novels also had as much if not more.
Why is it that people who claim Gygax "created" the drow as dark skinned with a backhanded racist slant ignore the fact that the only "caucasians" in his Greyhawk setting were essentially kung-fu white supremecists??
Or vikings.
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Regarding racial diversity in art, I think y'all should take a gander at the Prismatic Art Collection Kickstarter project.The Prismatic Art Project isn't just awesome because it'll provide a big archive of freely-available stock art for gamers and publishers, but also because you can personally get art from me (including a Paizo-blog-style goblin of you) for a measly $50!
This is awesome.
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Can we get a goblin riding a pony?
No insult, but I think you mean the githyanki; Drow were first statted out in the D1-3 series, with Kou-Toa etal. If the Fiend Folio was published before the module I will willingly eat some crow...
Very late 70's for the G modules and 1981 for the Fiend Folio.
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Diversity solely for diversity's sake is unfortunately of debatable value almost everywhere except the United States. But since Paizo is an American Company and Pathfinder is a game played in the United States, there is no good reason for it not to be diverse in its representation of characters. Paizo wants Pathfinder to appeal to as many customers as possible. That is good business. Men, Women, Black, White, Asian, Latino, I am sure that Paizo wants them all as customers. Diversity, whatever its morality, makes good business sense.What?
I'm not sure you have an entirely realistic view of the rest of the world. Just for example, the uk contains four primary native cultures, two first languages, and the primary population of england is the result of no less than four waves of migration. Thats just talking about the various flavours of historically native white people.
We have significant communities of people from various african nations, caribian nations, from india, pakistan, china, greece, turkey and poland. As well as jewish communities which have been here for hundreds of years.
Thats just sticking with the really large communities
What?
I'm sure you noticed that I said "almost".
But hey I know you British make a big deal about differentiating between a couple of different kinds of white people...
just kidding or trolling or whatever you want to call it...
as a history teacher I know that the difference between Scott and Welsh and Irish and English is a big deal and that Britain's legacy of Empire means that there are Indians and Asians as well not to mention Muslims...
That is why I said "almost". You will have to forgive me for noticing that most of the world is not only not interested in heterogeneity but is actively opposed to it.
Removed a couple of posts. Please keep it civil.
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What?
I'm sure you noticed that I said "almost".
But hey I know you British make a big deal about differentiating between a couple of different kinds of white people...
just kidding or trolling or whatever you want to call it...
as a history teacher I know that the difference between Scott and Welsh and Irish and English is a big deal and that Britain's legacy of Empire means that there are Indians and Asians as well not to mention Muslims...
That is why I said "almost". You will have to forgive me for noticing that most of the world is not only not interested in heterogeneity but is actively opposed to it.
I don't care if you were kidding/trolling your statement was culturally insensitive or ignorant at best or downright racist at worst.
The differences between all of the people's of the British isles are significant, important to you it may be a bunch of white people with funny accents in a very small group of islands. It is because of these differences we have Shakespeare, Wilde, Newton, Burns, Shelly, and so on.
Just as indigenous Americans distinguish between north America native people's and south American native people's, plains, artic, and so on. On a more modern basis the US has multiple self identifying ethnic groups from the large Scandinavian populations in mid north and the French/American people's of the south, Boston Irish, Amish, Italian Americans - all of these white Americans make every effort to differentiate themselves from other Americans.
Ethnic and cultural diversity is a wonderful thing I far prefer it to homogenous monocultures.
No worries lazar, I'm happy to be edited for the sake of the space elves.
It's worth considering that some of the racial-insensitivity-but-not-full-on-racism happens in the adaptation rather than in the original work.
For instance, the book Starship Troopers is written in the first person and race isn't really mentioned until maybe 2/3 of the way through the book, when a careful reader suddenly realizes the narrator is not only from Buenos Aires, but black. The military may well have been segregated at the time of publication, which makes the book very open minded in its portrayal of race as a non-issue.
In the movie, they just cast Casper Van Dien as the main character. I bet no one who produced that movie ever read the book closely enough to say "Hey, let's make the main character white," but that's what happened.
For instance, the book Starship Troopers is written in the first person and race isn't really mentioned until maybe 2/3 of the way through the book, when a careful reader suddenly realizes the narrator is not only from Buenos Aires, but black.
Rico is of Filipino descent.
In the movie, they just cast Casper Van Dien as the main character. I bet no one who produced that movie ever read the book closely enough to say "Hey, let's make the main character white," but that's what happened.
The movie has completely different tone and feel than the books and focuses on alleged pro-militarism and pro-fascism of the book.
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The article never mentions the 1E PHB. Did you know that all the humans in it were brown skinned? It's hard to tell with the black and white art work, but it's true.
The real issue regarding fantasy art work is age discrimination, not race. The only people over 30 years old I see in modern fantasy RPG art work are either elves or evil. The only women I see over 25 are either undead or invisible. There are laws against this kind of discrimination you know!
The average life span in a medievalvworld, and the average lifespan of an adventurer...this does not shock me.
The average life span in a medievalvworld, and the average lifespan of an adventurer...this does not shock me.The article never mentions the 1E PHB. Did you know that all the humans in it were brown skinned? It's hard to tell with the black and white art work, but it's true.
The real issue regarding fantasy art work is age discrimination, not race. The only people over 30 years old I see in modern fantasy RPG art work are either elves or evil. The only women I see over 25 are either undead or invisible. There are laws against this kind of discrimination you know!
Except that by that logic, the <30 year-olds are going to LOOK a LOT older than they do by our standards.
as a history teacher I know that the difference between Scott and Welsh and Irish and English is a big deal and that Britain's legacy of Empire means that there are Indians and Asians as well not to mention Muslims...
Muslims are not a racial group, they are a religious group. Muslims can be of any race/ethnicity.
For instance, the book Starship Troopers is written in the first person and race isn't really mentioned until maybe 2/3 of the way through the book, when a careful reader suddenly realizes the narrator is not only from Buenos Aires, but black.Rico is of Filipino descent.
In the movie, they just cast Casper Van Dien as the main character. I bet no one who produced that movie ever read the book closely enough to say "Hey, let's make the main character white," but that's what happened.The movie has completely different tone and feel than the books and focuses on alleged pro-militarism and pro-fascism of the book.
I'm happy to take your work for it, as I haven't read the book in about 20 years. All I really remember is reading a passing description of Rico's reflection in a space suit helmet and having to re-evaluate some assumptions I'd made about the character. Regardless of Rico's race, I doubt the casting of a white actor was a conscious choice so much as something no one was aware of.
A lot of Heinlein's books were like that. E.g. in Friday, about halway through the book Friday Jones is revealed as having a 'built-in sun tan' and being partially Amerindian in background. I remember reading that he wrote one heroine (I forget who) with two photographs taped to the wall in front of his desk, one of a black lady, the other of a white, and using both of them to color, so to speak, the way he wrote her character, even though he did no physical descriptions that could definitively identify her race. He was, in the best way he could in a society steeped in racism and bigotry, trying to be post-racial. (He didn't always entirely succeed -- some things he wrote make me cringe, but that's true of much of the SF from that era.)
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Except that by that logic, the <30 year-olds are going to LOOK a LOT older than they do by our standards.The average life span in a medievalvworld, and the average lifespan of an adventurer...this does not shock me.The article never mentions the 1E PHB. Did you know that all the humans in it were brown skinned? It's hard to tell with the black and white art work, but it's true.
The real issue regarding fantasy art work is age discrimination, not race. The only people over 30 years old I see in modern fantasy RPG art work are either elves or evil. The only women I see over 25 are either undead or invisible. There are laws against this kind of discrimination you know!
Also, the average age is misleading. If you survived to adulthood you could live to a reasonable age. But dying young was the main thing forcing the average down. and has also been the main way we've got our acurrent average age up, by reducing infant mortality massively. At the other end, the maximum age hasn't changed much, although we are getting more people towards it.
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Also, the average age is misleading. If you survived to adulthood you could live to a reasonable age. But dying young was the main thing forcing the average down. and has also been the main way we've got our acurrent average age up, by reducing infant mortality massively. At the other end, the maximum age hasn't changed much, although we are getting more people towards it.Except that by that logic, the <30 year-olds are going to LOOK a LOT older than they do by our standards.The average life span in a medievalvworld, and the average lifespan of an adventurer...this does not shock me.The article never mentions the 1E PHB. Did you know that all the humans in it were brown skinned? It's hard to tell with the black and white art work, but it's true.
The real issue regarding fantasy art work is age discrimination, not race. The only people over 30 years old I see in modern fantasy RPG art work are either elves or evil. The only women I see over 25 are either undead or invisible. There are laws against this kind of discrimination you know!
Ignoring infant mortality rate, low level adventurer mortality is also incredibly high, and is a career for the young anyway. Old adventurers should be rare and the art should reflect that.
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Ignoring infant mortality rate, low level adventurer mortality is also incredibly high, and is a career for the young anyway. Old adventurers should be rare...
Why?
I would really like an explanation for that which makes sense in a world like Golarion.
Generally, it seems to me that levels 1-3 are a condition of circumstance rather than an active career choice. After that you're just riding the wave or getting off.
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Ignoring infant mortality rate, low level adventurer mortality is also incredibly high, and is a career for the young anyway. Old adventurers should be rare...Why?
I would really like an explanation for that which makes sense in a world like Golarion.
Generally, it seems to me that levels 1-3 are a condition of circumstance rather than an active career choice. After that you're just riding the wave or getting off.
Because any career that involves going into a monster and trap infested dungeon is clearly high risk?
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Because any career that involves going into a monster and trap infested dungeon is clearly high risk?Ignoring infant mortality rate, low level adventurer mortality is also incredibly high, and is a career for the young anyway. Old adventurers should be rare...Why?
I would really like an explanation for that which makes sense in a world like Golarion.
Generally, it seems to me that levels 1-3 are a condition of circumstance rather than an active career choice. After that you're just riding the wave or getting off.
And that, on Golarion, has what to do with youth?
Ignoring infant mortality rate, low level adventurer mortality is also incredibly high, and is a career for the young anyway. Old adventurers should be rare...Why?
I would really like an explanation for that which makes sense in a world like Golarion.
Generally, it seems to me that levels 1-3 are a condition of circumstance rather than an active career choice. After that you're just riding the wave or getting off.
In our game (RotRL) we've had five or six character deaths over the course of about two months (in game) time. There are plenty of older non-adventurer NPCs in our game but it makes sense that adventurers die young.
Also, I thought the iO9 article was great. I hadn't realized that WotC was only writing for a european adventure setting (probably because I haven't read any of their stuff since switching to PF).
While I don't think there's anything inherently problematic with only running the familiar euro-centric game one of the things I love about Paizo is that they provide meaningful narrative options for people who want to model characters on other cultures. I'm playing a Tian-Mian samurai and I love reading the Paizo material because it rings true to the feudal Japanese flavor. I did a lot of background research for that character and all of it fits nicely with the campaign setting.
For my next character I've been thinking of putting together a knife-fighting Indonesian sea gypsy. In Pathfinder know exactly how to build this character and how he fits into the Golarion world. Keep up the good work devs!
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And that, on Golarion, has what to do with youth?Because any career that involves going into a monster and trap infested dungeon is clearly high risk?Ignoring infant mortality rate, low level adventurer mortality is also incredibly high, and is a career for the young anyway. Old adventurers should be rare...Why?
I would really like an explanation for that which makes sense in a world like Golarion.
Generally, it seems to me that levels 1-3 are a condition of circumstance rather than an active career choice. After that you're just riding the wave or getting off.
Most people take up their career path early in life, adventurers especially as it is the kind of crazy job that appeals to young people and is a physically demanding career. The bulk of adventurers will be low level and young. The art and iconics reflect that well, even adding in the rare occurence of one who starts later. Ezrael.
I was replying to the notion that youth is over-represented in art, my point is that is being properly represented and adventurers will be predominantly young. Paizo has plenty of older people for NPCs and in fact 40+ years old seems very common for their npcs but I am not counting.
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Because any career that involves going into a monster and trap infested dungeon is clearly high risk?Ignoring infant mortality rate, low level adventurer mortality is also incredibly high, and is a career for the young anyway. Old adventurers should be rare...Why?
I would really like an explanation for that which makes sense in a world like Golarion.
Generally, it seems to me that levels 1-3 are a condition of circumstance rather than an active career choice. After that you're just riding the wave or getting off.
It's a career with raise dead as an option.
A scroll of raise dead is IIRC 6k gold, that's entirely within WBL reach of a 4-5 level party. Heck, a bunch of 3rd level chars could break out the piggy and pool for a raise of their best buddy. That's not "late mid levels", that's "late low levels" or "early mid levels".
Add another 3.4k for restorations required to remove permanent negative levels - without them the revivee is hardly capable of returning to adventuring.
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A scroll of raise dead is IIRC 6k gold, that's entirely within WBL reach of a 4-5 level party. Heck, a bunch of 3rd level chars could break out the piggy and pool for a raise of their best buddy. That's not "late mid levels", that's "late low levels" or "early mid levels".Add another 3.4k for restorations required to remove permanent negative levels - without them the revivee is hardly capable of returning to adventuring.
Hey, we said "alive" not "alive and kicking"!
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Hey, we said "alive" not "alive and kicking"!A scroll of raise dead is IIRC 6k gold, that's entirely within WBL reach of a 4-5 level party. Heck, a bunch of 3rd level chars could break out the piggy and pool for a raise of their best buddy. That's not "late mid levels", that's "late low levels" or "early mid levels".Add another 3.4k for restorations required to remove permanent negative levels - without them the revivee is hardly capable of returning to adventuring.
Now we found the source of all those retired adventurers-turned-innkeepers with ultra heavy crossbows hidden under their bar counters. They are earning the cash the hard way for restorations after one revival too much.
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That is part of it too though, even those adventurers with any sense tend to retire before they hit middle age. Adventuring is definitely a career for the young and foolhardy. Those who are successful have enough to retire and live pretty comfy the rest of their lives by level 5. Those not successful are dead.
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Now we found the source of all those retired adventurers-turned-innkeepers with ultra heavy crossbows hidden under their bar counters. They are earning the cash the hard way for restorations after one revival too much.Hey, we said "alive" not "alive and kicking"!A scroll of raise dead is IIRC 6k gold, that's entirely within WBL reach of a 4-5 level party. Heck, a bunch of 3rd level chars could break out the piggy and pool for a raise of their best buddy. That's not "late mid levels", that's "late low levels" or "early mid levels".Add another 3.4k for restorations required to remove permanent negative levels - without them the revivee is hardly capable of returning to adventuring.
Nah...most of them just took an arrow to the knee, one day...
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That is part of it too though, even those adventurers with any sense tend to retire before they hit middle age. Adventuring is definitely a career for the young and foolhardy. Those who are successful have enough to retire and live pretty comfy the rest of their lives by level 5. Those not successful are dead.
All those 35+ yr old professional soldiers and mercenaries across the world who could have retired to a comfortable and peaceful life long time ago but chose otherwise disagree with you. They are the modern adventurers, placing the thrill of danger, the joy of a kill and a big fat paycheck over personal safety and stability.
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That is part of it too though, even those adventurers with any sense tend to retire before they hit middle age. Adventuring is definitely a career for the young and foolhardy. Those who are successful have enough to retire and live pretty comfy the rest of their lives by level 5. Those not successful are dead.All those 35+ yr old professional soldiers and mercenaries across the world who could have retired to a comfortable and peaceful life long time ago but chose otherwise disagree with you. They are the modern adventurers, placing the thrill of danger, the joy of a kill and a big fat paycheck over personal safety and stability.
And they make up a tiny fraction of all those who engage in a warrior lifestyle, but that is a bad comparison anyway. Our world is so vastly different to any campaign setting. Urban exploration is closer to adventuring than military contractors. Old abandoned prisons and sanitoriums merely lack the monsters and undead.
Do you really believe there are more old adventurers than young, or just being combative for the hell of it?
Another thing I appreciate Paizo doing is showing diversity of sexual orientation. This is getting a little off the original topic, because sexual orientation is less visual, and without there being gay pride stickers that an adventurer could paste on his Handy Haversack, it's not something that one will just see in the illustrations of the CRB. However, with at least two of the Iconics being canon non-hetero, romance options in the AP (e.g. Jade Regent) explicitly stating that same-sex parings are kosher, and a handful of both helpful and enemy NPCs being depicted as in same-sex relationships, there is definitely a recognition of non-hetero relationships.
I'd like to see some trans* characters -- magic makes this both easier and trickier, though, since in a high-magic world one could certainly imagine there being spells that could effect a change in sex to match mental gender in a much more thorough manner than hormone replacement therapy combined with sexual reassignment surgery, but these spells are probably not cheap. One could imagine a transwoman in a genetically male body adventuring to raise the money to get a wizard to cast an appropriate spell on her. Which spells would work for this purpose would be an interesting discussion.