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Erastil is also more home focus and in are career focus society for the longest time the home has been regulated to women and that perspective was accidently put into him.
I do believe that a place that James Jacob to put correction as he has mentioned that he think there should be a lore errata page.
Contributor
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I'd prefer that lore errata be explicit, and I think there is a very Paizo-consistent way this can be done. With sidebars.
In a newer product that mentions a topic (say, Sarenrae), include a sidebar that mentions, "Lore Errata: Sarenrae. Older Paizo products indicated worship of Sarenrae was prohibited in Taldor. We decided to move away from this because ... The current setting assumptions are that ..." This gives people clear guidance on what the current assumed setting includes, why the change has been made, and possibly some insights into how this aspect of the setting has evolved or is currently conceived of by the developers.
Personally, I love sidebars that explain developer thinking, whether about lore or about how specific rules are intended to function, what might be the intent of a specific adventure scene or NPC, etc. More, please!
I love this suggestion, Cintra! I think that having some of these lore changes be explicit is a great idea.
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I honestly can’t fathom how evil a person you can be if you think Slavery is/was Good.
It being good for some people, namely the people who owned slaves who benefited from the free labor, but it was not a good thing, no matter if the people benefiting from it liked it.
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The thing about cultural relativism is that much like how my individual right to ball my fist and wave my arms around ends at the point where I am punching people in the face(i.e. I should not do that), a culture's intrasubjective notions of ethics has to end at the point where you are affecting people who are not part of your culture.
Specifically things like "the international slave trade" or "systematic enslavement of a specific ethnic group" are cross-cultural, so we can't consider those things permissible.
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One does not have to use a modern lenses of morality to point out that it was wrong, immoral to the people at the time.
So like the most obvious being is like the slaves themselves right? That can be an almost universal example. The person being subjugated knew it was wrong. Then lets say we are talking about the trans-atlantic slave trade, we have abolitionist, we have other countries that didn't use slaves, or freed their slaves sooner then the Americas. Not to say that those nations didn't have their own issues, or were squeaky clean morally in their own way, but none of this uses a modern lense. There were people back then that knew it was *wrong.*
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Convenient or backed by divine mandate do not equal good though.As it pertains to relative morality it does as what a person defines as good is highly related to what their religion and culture dictates.
As it pertains to Pathfinder's absolute morality. You are right that in the actual metaphysics evil things are not good. But as a matter of subjective morality a person raised to worship Asmodeus as good and Desna as evil will believe that to be the case until confronted otherwise.
The first assumes that we know what people at the time felt about this (which we really don't) AND that all felt the same way, which is obviously false.
Relative morality cannot be used as an absolute counter, precisely because it is relative. Using it this way is merely trying to support a narrative that most people find repugnant.
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The problem is that it then says “misogyny can be the conduct of a being of incarnate, cosmic Good.”Lore errata like "Erastil is not supposed to be a misogynist, since he's good and misogyny is not good" or "Asmodeus is not supposed to have Paladins"?I don't see a problem with either myself: deities should be multifaceted creatures and not everything about them SHOULD fit neatly in a single alignment box:
As one of the oldest human gods, it wouldn't be unusual for Erastil to be a bit more 'old school' or politically incorrect with his thinking: he gives unsolicited criticism and advocates for a simpler ways of life, free of the constraints of modern civilization. I'm not sure what exact issue there was in the lore so I can't really comment more.
Erastil is slow to adopt to novelty but he's also aware of many, many worlds and people so he's not going to say "there is only one way to make it work" since many communities have made it work in a lots of situations by doing some different things.
Regarding the Drow thing, is there any reason we can't have light skinned Drow? They don't have to be super common, but I see no reason they shouldn't be pale like cave salamanders.
If you want to have albino drow or any other type, have at it. It's a fantasy world. Have fun playing with the tropes.
We all liked the evil drow. Most of us liked Eilistraee and the good drow faction fighting within the evil one. And every other drow out there. None of my group even thought at all it had anything to do with skin color. We chalk that at to some people wanting to impose their viewpoint on fictional material when the original writer or creator had no such intent and really doesn't care what you do with things in your personal game. They were just dreaming up an idea.
The drow when first introduced were interesting because elves were always these pretty, angelic like beings of light and goodness. The beautiful Tolkien elf blessed by the Valar. So suddenly you run into these beautiful, angelic looking elves but with inky black skin and crazy and evil as hell living not in forests, but in deep subterranean caves worshipping spiders ruled by insane priestesses following a psychotic goddess. Well, imagine your surprise the first time you ran into these when it wasn't mainstreamed in D&D lore. It was interesting to say the least because you weren't really sure how to react as a player. Do we kill them? Oh wait, they're going to kill us. Roll initiative.
The entire fun of RPGs is to be as creative and interesting as can be to accommodate different things players want to do or be or just make an interesting world to play in. So you do what you want with the material given. You are not stifled. Tabletop RPGS whether virtual or actual are a group creative endeavor. You should always feel free to build things to you and your group's sensibilities, tastes, and overall enjoyment.
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Getting real tired of explaining how “the dark-skinned matriarchal elves are the ones it’s kosher to kill on sight and the light-skinned ones without a matriarchy are goodies” is bad. The drow are heinous - and more than that, they’re someone else’s 50 year-old IP.
Pathfinder should aspire to both not be that problematic and not be that lazy.
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When drow were first created they were something completely new that had never been seen before that inspired a lot of writers and people to create very inspired works and characters that were anything but kill on sight.
Long before Driz'zt Do'urden people were making good and neutral drow elves and building on the unique mythology of the drow elf. No one viewed them as kill on sight or some uniformly evil group. They were thrown in a module. I believe Against the Giants as a surprise.
Then it was built into an adventure series known as Vault of the Drow. And continued to be built into bigger and bigger properties because the drow became super popular.
Everyone wanted to play some drow outsider that was good or at least neutral on the surface world. Part of the reason was mechanical because drow were one of the only groups with innate ambidexterity which made their warriors the ultimate two weapon fighters. The other part was their unique appearance as dark-skinned elves the color of night with silver or white hair with violet or red eyes. They had no real world analogue. Drow were always a counter to the fantasy elf, not anything in the real world.
Ever since their creation nearly every D&D based setting had their own take on the Drow with the most popular being the Forgotten Realms version that exploded with the Drizz't series of books.
Drow have been used in a variety of ways ever since their creation. I prefer them as they were because at the time it was extremely unique. It may not seem unique now after 30 plus years of people messing with the drow, but it was definitely unique and interesting at the time of their creation.
I'm always going to remember the first time fighting the drow because it was so unexpected and surprising. They were a super interesting enemy because we had never seen such a villain before. Seen plenty of orcs and goblins and giants and dragons. But strange evil elves? It was new and made you want to know more about them.
It was also fun in 2nd edition when they first allowed drow PCs. You got magic resistance, two-weapon fighting better than any other race, and powerful innate spells. And you looked super cool. I think everyone in my group at some point had some cool drow character they had to try because it was such a cool looking and interesting creation. And obviously the mechanical advantages were amazing for min-maxing.
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My posts appear to have gone missing, despite containing neither hate speech or debating the morality of slavery.
What gives?
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I generally find that the more Pathfinder lets go of its old D&D roots, the better it becomes.Getting real tired of explaining how “the dark-skinned matriarchal elves are the ones it’s kosher to kill on sight and the light-skinned ones without a matriarchy are goodies” is bad. The drow are heinous - and more than that, they’re someone else’s 50 year-old IP.
Pathfinder should aspire to both not be that problematic and not be that lazy.
Seriously. The Mwangi book made me care about elves, dwarves, and orcs more than I have in over a decade, and they did that by not being beholden to anything in That Other Game. Getting away from fraught old lore and incorporating diverse inspirations isn’t just good for progressive points - it gets us an infinitely more interesting setting!
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Seriously. The Mwangi book made me care about elves, dwarves, and orcs more than I have in over a decade, and they did that by not being beholden to anything in That Other Game. Getting away from fraught old lore and incorporating diverse inspirations isn’t just good for progressive points - it gets us an infinitely more interesting setting!
I don't know about all that, but it was a really good book anyways. I suspect it had a lot more to do with the developers' passion for the project.
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My posts appear to have gone missing, despite containing neither hate speech or debating the morality of slavery.
What gives?
Did you quote one of the removed posts?
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I honestly can’t fathom how evil a person you can be if you think Slavery is/was Good.
It being good for some people, namely the people who owned slaves who benefited from the free labor, but it was not a good thing, no matter if the people benefiting from it liked it.
For once I almost agree. Some forms of slavery were less bad than others. But it was never good. Not even to the people who directly benefited from the labour. If people think it is then they need to think longer term.
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I honestly can’t fathom how evil a person you can be if you think Slavery is/was Good.
It being good for some people, namely the people who owned slaves who benefited from the free labor, but it was not a good thing, no matter if the people benefiting from it liked it.
For once I almost agree. Some forms of slavery were less bad than others. But it was never good. Not even to the people who directly benefited from the labour. If people think it is then they need to think longer term.
Violently forcing someone into servitude is evil. Continuing to subjugate them until you break their spirit to resist or you kill them is really unjustifiable and evil. When you remove the word and discuss instead what it takes to do, I doubt anyone would argue it is anything but evil.
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In some circles, the innate ambidexterity of drow was a coded message about the inherent 'shiftiness' of the race.
'Ya can't even trust them to use the right hand.'
Before anyone jumps on me, this bugged me more than the skin pigmentation, as up until very recently left-handed people were treated like they were untrustworthy and unreliable.
Still happens in some places.
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First I've ever heard of that Wei Ji the Learner.
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In some circles, the innate ambidexterity of drow was a coded message about the inherent 'shiftiness' of the race.'Ya can't even trust them to use the right hand.'
Before anyone jumps on me, this bugged me more than the skin pigmentation, as up until very recently left-handed people were treated like they were untrustworthy and unreliable.
Still happens in some places.
What does relatively recent mean? It certainly wasn't a thing in the 70s and 80s. No one much cared what hand you were.
When the drow were created up through all the other iterations of the drow including their constant reduction in power because they started off far too powerful and then were slowly downgraded until now they are kind of a standard elf.
Ambidexterity allowed you to fight with two weapons with no penalty. It was an extremely powerful min-max advantage. It made drow warriors the most powerful two-weapon fighters. People back in the 2nd edition days liked two-weapon fighting because it was the most powerful form of fighting in D&D at the time. Many had adopted the optional rule of rolling for ambidextrous where during character creation you rolled I believe two twelve sided die and if they matched, your character was ambidextrous. You got to be an amazingly powerful two weapon fighter. Drow picked this up for free.
There were no "circles" of anyone thinking anything but being ambidextrous lets you fight with two weapons with no penalty.
It was in fact one of the big min-max combinations of the time. It was likely why it was nerfed to near trash in 3rd edition, while two-hander fighting became king in 3rd edition.
That's why I find the whole discussion by people who likely read some articles about drow amusing. For those of us that lived when the drow came out, they were viewed as cool, desirable, and a powerful min-max race that everyone wanted to play up there with Cambion or half-celestial, dragon, or fiend in 3rd edition.
Drow were the original power race in D&D. If you could talk your DM into letting you play one, you were ecstatic.
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In some circles, the innate ambidexterity of drow was a coded message about the inherent 'shiftiness' of the race.'Ya can't even trust them to use the right hand.'
Before anyone jumps on me, this bugged me more than the skin pigmentation, as up until very recently left-handed people were treated like they were untrustworthy and unreliable.
Still happens in some places.
Not even 100 years for America at that.
In turn, whilst we do have tropes such as "A Sinister Clue" for when a character's immorality or potential deviousness is supposedly hinted by their being left handed, it's...kind of interesting how little it comes up as an aspect of various fictional settings, despite all the other things transplanted from the real world on some level. Would it break people's suspension of disbelief, I wonder, or would portraying such practices negatively impact sales in places that still have such attitudes?
Apologies to natter, any event. Being lefty myself, always been somewhat interesting navigating the silly associations that come with it.
You mean you're not an amazingly artistic person? That was the primary association of being left-handed when I was growing up. If you were left-handed, you were more likely to be creative and an artist.
Other than that, no one much cared. That was back in the 1970s.
I'm aware of the word sinistral and the word sinister being associated with being left-handed. But it has nothing to do with the drow and their creation.
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My favorite aspect of Pathfinder's Drow, and I don't know if this translates to other Drow, is how they're all broken into various houses and families that all worship their own demon lords. It's very easy to play straight for darker adventures, but also play for parody like turning demon-as-patron into demon-as-mascot and giving the Drow a cynical schoolhouse vibe. Come to think, I guess Starfinder did do that, where the Drow on Apostae transformed demon-as-patron into demon-as-brand, in a sense, which is pretty clever. Not even demon worship gets in the way of capitalistic endeavor for long.
Also, I wanted to link The Hand here as a terrible bit of humor relating to my own left-handedness, and then I discovered that the titular hand is actually Michael Caine's right hand. I feel vaguely like cinema has let me down, somehow.
I believe that is a Pathfinder element.
The original drow all worshipped Lolth in Greyhawk.
In FR they Menzo-B worshipped Lolth. But there were other drow gods in the Forgotten Realms and an entire drow pantheon. FR really expanded on the drow the most.
Golarion has its own take on the drow. I haven't read it extensively as drow are just ok now. My players kind of lost interest in the drow when they were no longer a power gaming option. Now the drow are just one of the many types of elves rather than the most powerful elf in the D&D world.
In original D&D and for many iterations following, drow were one of the most powerful races you could play in the game and you had to get DM permission to play one because you would be far more powerful than anyone else in your group if you were the lone drow.
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In some circles, the innate ambidexterity of drow was a coded message about the inherent 'shiftiness' of the race.'Ya can't even trust them to use the right hand.'
Before anyone jumps on me, this bugged me more than the skin pigmentation, as up until very recently left-handed people were treated like they were untrustworthy and unreliable.
Still happens in some places.
What does relatively recent mean? It certainly wasn't a thing in the 70s and 80s. No one much cared what hand you were.
I had a friend who went to a Catholic school in the aughts and the nuns there would hit you if you wrote with your left hand. My dad had similar stories about growing up in the 1970s.
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I had a friend who went to a Catholic school on the aughts and the nuns there would hit you if you wrote with your left hand. My dad had similar stories about growing up in the 1970s.
From the same time period myself and it wasn't done for untrustworthiness but conformity. That and ink didn't dry fast enough so that you'd smudge your words with a trailing left hand. Now Catholic school teachers lagged behind a bit [left hand user where 'in cahoots with the Devil" to 'being Communist' into the 70' and they have always been quick with the ruler].
Now in Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia and the Iron Curtain countries all made right-handed writing compulsory in school in the 70's and Albania, left-handedness was actually declared illegal and was punishable as a crime. To some extent I assume it was for practical reason: many things are built right handed. A rifle designed to be fired by that hand is an example: they either would have to redesign an ambidextrous one or produce right and left versions. This still happens today in places like Singapore where soldiers are still taught to shoot right handed because their SAR 21 [Singapore Assault Rifle – 21st Century] is a right handed weapon.
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In some circles, the innate ambidexterity of drow was a coded message about the inherent 'shiftiness' of the race.'Ya can't even trust them to use the right hand.'
Before anyone jumps on me, this bugged me more than the skin pigmentation, as up until very recently left-handed people were treated like they were untrustworthy and unreliable.
Still happens in some places.
What does relatively recent mean? It certainly wasn't a thing in the 70s and 80s. No one much cared what hand you were.
I had a friend who went to a Catholic school in the aughts and the nuns there would hit you if you wrote with your left hand. My dad had similar stories about growing up in the 1970s.
In 1980-81 elementary school, I had a left-handed classmate who'd been abused into using his right hand, him being a lefty. This info came from our teacher, not the kid. And I believe my lefty mom faced some pressure from Catholic school nuns too (though yes, several decades before that).
Yet I can't say I've ever seen ambidexterity equated w/ left-handedness. And the Drow ambidexterity was based on their superhuman Dexterity, their competence.As noted, Ambidexterity was valuable in 2nd ed DnD, so valuable it was a feat in 3.0 and part of an expensive feat chain to dual wield (unless a Ranger). Monstrous Drow could start w/ 20 Dex in a system where only Strength (via a Girdle) & Dex (via Gloves and having an 18) could go over 18 w/o a campaign perk (which did happen) or old age (which was a risky route). And in 1st edition DnD, high Dex lessened the penalties for dual-wielding. Drow as a race just received a blanket statement that these guys were so nimble that ambidexterity's a given. No links to left-handed sinister natures that I could detect.
And there were Drow Half-Elves and Half-Drow/Half-Surface Elves in the main Drow city. In a CE city they were obviously mistreated for being different and poor, yet I can't recall them being considered tainted or innately evil from being part Drow.
Or back up a step. The Drow were built to fight PCs 7-12 levels higher than themselves! So Gygax gave them ridiculous magic resistance to survive those AoEs, amazing stealth to get in a surprise round, and all came equipped w/ magic weapons covered in one of the strongest poisons in the world. It had a 25%+ chance of knocking out high-level PCs; not kill, because that'd be bloodbath every time, but still scary when allies start dropping. And Drow had to use poison because their Str was pitiful. They had lots of tricks like if captured they could communicate silently to other Drow w/ subtle motions (back when Perception rolls weren't a thing), like say if forced to lead the way and lie to other Drow. And of course much of their valuable loot dissolved in sunlight or was Evil, or you might prick yourself using their poison (which they never did), and their cool cloaks (and very strong armor in the case of leaders) wouldn't fit a normal human, and so forth so that these guys could be overloaded w/ gear w/o skewing PC wealth. The main boss, Eclavdra, had an AC surpassing most demon lords (and would be Cloned and reequipped if you killed her early).
Enter the Drow
Fighting scores of giants, the PCs have been trying to find out who this "Eclavdra" entity is behind it all (if they'd found that clue that is). At the end of that arc, the PCs take out many dozen Fire Giants including their king, only to discover no mundane giant or greater brute behind all that, but quite the opposite, a slender, enchanting woman. Here we meet the Drow, who are like anti-giants. They're weak and frail and rather than strength they use magic, including minor artifacts in the hands of peons, effective poison in the hands of one-hit cannon fodder that AoEs struggle against, and a Wall of Tentacles right across from their Lovecraftian temple. It's a major paradigm shift (and tactical shift too, since hit point damage meant less than succumbing to poison, an enchantment, or a glob of goo you couldn't escape w/o aid). And that was their role, to contrast w/ giants, yet face PCs much higher level than themselves. From what I can tell Gygax had been drawing upon the Dark Elves of Norse mythology, since nothing other than their skin connects to African/African-American/etc. stereotypes.
While the "evil matriarchy" bit might be a distasteful slur, I'm not sure it's an intentional comment upon women (and I have no knowledge of Gygax's personal views). Looking at his works, nearly all of Greyhawk's countries are based on Earth equivalents, so nearly all are patriarchies, including plenty of evil ones. Celene, the Elf country closest to the main narrative, has had a Good queen for centuries. And the deity of Elves is both male and female. After Eclavdra, the other main evil Elf (not counting the albino woman vivisectionist that I doubt Gygax ever wrote for) was perhaps Keek, a pale male.
Which is to say, we'd need more evidence to conclude ill will here, though yes, it'd be great to see more examples of good matriarchies, a statement I'd apply to all fantasy settings, novels too.
Gygax named the main Drow city using syllables from his children's names, which I doubt was a comment on his brood. I think he had an affection for Drow as his creation. (spoilers on an out-of-print series) Eclavdra returned as a major villain in Gygax's novels, and her clone (away from the influence of Lolth, etc.) turned out Good and became the happily-ever-after romantic interest of the main character.
Make of that what you will. Cheers.
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In medicine, we use the abbreviation S for left and D for right. S is short for sinistra (Latin for Sinister) and D is short for dextra (Latin for Right). Yup, even in 2021, the left side is the sinister side in medicine.
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The reason I brought up handedness was because while I was lucky enough to be predominantly right-handed, my brother in the late '70's and up to the late '80's was not and was abused by teachers at public school and the like because he 'wouldn't conform to standards'.
So ambidexterity was this 'hidden sneaky' "Well, they MIGHT be left-handed... or they might just be SAYING they're left-handed" tone.
See Also: The Princess Bride sword fight between the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya.
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In medicine, we use the abbreviation S for left and D for right. S is short for sinistra (Latin for Sinister) and D is short for dextra (Latin for Right). Yup, even in 2021, the left side is the sinister side in medicine.
That goes back to Roman augury (ornithomancy): the way auspices would use to guess good and bad omens was to watch which direction of some auspicious types of birds like ravens, crows or eagles were flying by. These birds were supposed to play the role of messengers of the gods. If birds were flying by on your right this was good omen. On the left that was bad omen. So Latin isn't in the forefront of this debate. ;)
If you want to go WAY back, Judaic scripture and teaching, possibly as from as far as the Patriarchal era, states that evil nature resides in left part of the heart and good nature in the right part.
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In some circles, the innate ambidexterity of drow was a coded message about the inherent 'shiftiness' of the race.'Ya can't even trust them to use the right hand.'
Before anyone jumps on me, this bugged me more than the skin pigmentation, as up until very recently left-handed people were treated like they were untrustworthy and unreliable.
Still happens in some places.
What does relatively recent mean? It certainly wasn't a thing in the 70s and 80s. No one much cared what hand you were.
I had a friend who went to a Catholic school in the aughts and the nuns there would hit you if you wrote with your left hand. My dad had similar stories about growing up in the 1970s.
In 1980-81 elementary school, I had a left-handed classmate who'd been abused into using his right hand, him being a lefty. This info came from our teacher, not the kid. And I believe my lefty mom faced some pressure from Catholic school nuns too (though yes, several decades before that).
Yet I can't say I've ever seen ambidexterity equated w/ left-handedness. And the Drow ambidexterity was based on their superhuman Dexterity, their competence.As noted, Ambidexterity was valuable in 2nd ed DnD, so valuable it was a feat in 3.0 and part of an expensive feat chain to dual wield (unless a Ranger). Monstrous Drow could start w/ 20 Dex in a system where only Strength (via a Girdle) & Dex (via Gloves and having an 18) could go over 18 w/o a campaign perk (which did happen) or old age (which was a risky route). And in 1st edition DnD, high Dex lessened the penalties for dual-wielding. Drow as a race just received a blanket statement that these guys were so nimble that ambidexterity's a given. No links to left-handed sinister natures that I could detect.
And there were Drow Half-Elves and Half-Drow/Half-Surface Elves in the main Drow city. In a CE city they were obviously mistreated for being different and poor, yet I can't...
That's right. I remember that. The main elven deity was a dual sex deity way back when in Greyhawk.
Gygax read a ton as did his associates. He threw stuff in from every work of fiction, history, and the like he read mixing and matching as needed.
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Never saw negative treatment for handedness in all my life. Seen it for plenty else, but never handedness.
I attended Catholic School in the late 70s and early 80s in America. I attended public school in Washington State and Texas, multiple schools as we sort of moved around. I never saw any issues with handedness other than the basic problem that writing was designed to be done with the right hand.
No nuns or teachers which I was taught by did anything to left-handed kids of which there were more than a few. Not in public or private school. It was a complete non-issue in the Catholic school I attended and all of the public schools I attended.
Though I have read the history of left-handedness and its associations. It was not an issue that I ever saw any of in the 70s and 80s either personally, in movies, or on TV. Or really anywhere. Or heard from anyone I knew or associated with.
The only association left-handed people received is that they were artistic. Not sure how true it was, but apparently at least a few studies seemed to show a higher level of creativity if you were left-handed.
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The drow were made ambidextrous to be the best at two-weapon fighting. Ambidexterity was considered a huge advantage both in the game world and in the real world when was I growing up.