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I was really hoping to see Paizo's updated take on the Drow. Maybe bioluminescent fungus worshipers with ties to the outer gods or who knows what else. This is honestly the worst of both worlds - removing Drow and leaving nothing or nonsensical oops all snake people in their place. Cavern elves aren't even close to a substitute especially if they're going to be heroes of the darklands. I'm sure I'll get over it but I don't think I could be more disappointed than this.
Glad to see more people sharing my frustration. This is really disappointing.
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The Yuan-Ti analogue is a bad example because what Yuan-Ti are in legal terms is Wizards of the Coast copyrighting an expression of pre-existing "evil underground serpent people" thing that predates Gary Gygax and is featured in countless sword and sorcery stories.
"Dark elves that are an underground matriarchal evil society that has a thing for spiders" is something TSR came up with, they didn't adapt an existing trope.
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TL:DR - as we kind of expected, drow are too close to DnD to safely disentangle. Therefore, drow are not going to be featured anymore. Instead, cavern elves aka Ayindilar are going to be the new "underground elves", but they are going to not be a direct replacement, as they seem to be actually be quite good.
The direct replacement for drow as the main organized antagonist in the darklands will be the serpenfolk. They are also taking over the grand underground cities for the most part.
I gotta wonder how they are going to explain away Second Darkness, if Eando or whomever just "invented" the drow, or whatever they come up with exactly. Not to mention all those other Drow NPC's in numerous adventure paths and single adventures and source books and so on.
Rule and Lore Creative Director
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Now give me a Stonelord champion archetype with all of this Dwarf content! (I'll accept Stalwart Defender as a stopgap while you all figure out the logistics of translating Stonelord from 1e to 2e :P)You'll need to chat up the Rules & Lore team and my counterpart there, Luis Loza, for that. In the meantime I'll keep setting up adventures for your stonelord to get into trouble in. ;-)
This one is actually already in Narrative's court, as it were. I worked with Vanessa Hoskins to help develop some material for the Sky King's Tomb backmatter. Two of the archetypes found in volume three took inspiration from the 1E stonelord archetype, but it's open to all classes. Hopefully it will scratch that itch for you!
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I gotta wonder how they are going to explain away Second Darkness, if Eando or whomever just "invented" the drow, or whatever they come up with exactly. Not to mention all those other Drow NPC's in numerous adventure paths and single adventures and source books and so on.TL:DR - as we kind of expected, drow are too close to DnD to safely disentangle. Therefore, drow are not going to be featured anymore. Instead, cavern elves aka Ayindilar are going to be the new "underground elves", but they are going to not be a direct replacement, as they seem to be actually be quite good.
The direct replacement for drow as the main organized antagonist in the darklands will be the serpenfolk. They are also taking over the grand underground cities for the most part.
How many of those are still in print?
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I gotta wonder how they are going to explain away Second Darkness, if Eando or whomever just "invented" the drow, or whatever they come up with exactly. Not to mention all those other Drow NPC's in numerous adventure paths and single adventures and source books and so on.TL:DR - as we kind of expected, drow are too close to DnD to safely disentangle. Therefore, drow are not going to be featured anymore. Instead, cavern elves aka Ayindilar are going to be the new "underground elves", but they are going to not be a direct replacement, as they seem to be actually be quite good.
The direct replacement for drow as the main organized antagonist in the darklands will be the serpenfolk. They are also taking over the grand underground cities for the most part.
The same way that they explain why worshippers of Folca, members of Darklight Sisterhood, Slohr, bearded/unbearded in Taldor, Dragonfall Graveyard and countless other soft retcons aren't there anymore - they don't explain that, they just stop writing them in the setting.
Apart from a narrow group of hyper-invested people who Really Care About The Setting and are overrepresented here, few will care/notice. I'm quite confident that none of the 20 people I game with will, at any point, start a conversation about why drow aren't featured in Paizo products anymore.
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So what will become of fleshwarps? Not the ancestry, but the monsters created through alchemical torture. Driders, irnakurses, grothluts, gomnits, gublasks, etc.?Fleshwarps are all ours. Driders being called fleshwarps is something we did. But driders being so tied to drow means we'll need to do some adjusments, and at the very least rename them, but a "spider centaur" is not something that D&D can own, and the weird appearance we gave to our driders (which don't have sexy elf heads) are also ours. So it'll probably be limited to a new name and the scrubbing of the drow bit of flavor.
Cannot tell you how happy I am to hear fleshwarps get to stay! I adore everything about them. My favorite group of creatures, right next to daemonkind.
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They don’t have to explain any of it!!!! They already published that material and they own those stories.
If they want to go back and write new stories that build upon 2nd dark or abomination vaults, etc, AND publish them under the ORC license, they won’t reference Drow in them. They might tell some new version of what happened, or make a mystery of it, ir present a different perspective.
Golarion is not 1 unified world or universe. It becomes each tables version when you play adventures that happen there. There are millions of different Golarion’s out there. You can can use any of the existing material to tell the story of yours, or even make up new stuff, or combine in proprietary adventures from dozens of other companies however you see fit…Paizo is not going to do that with theirs though, and they are not telling new stories about some of their old material. That is all this means.
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Yeah, Pathfinder drow were just D&D drow except not into spiders but demon lords instead.
If you read Second Darkness editorials and forum posts from that time, Paizo writers were literally "we can use drow thanks to OGL, but Llolth is a no-go, so we decided to make something that's as much the good old FR drow you love just with enough serial numbers filed off".
Turns out, what was enough of serial numbers to be filed off in 2008 isn't enough in 2023.
Yep.
People wanted more of Paizo's own take on Drow. But Paizo didn't want to take their Drow and greatly expand on them for one reason or another. So instead we got nothing, and their previous takes on it are no longer really canon.
That reason being WotC and their Pinkertons, you seem to be operating under the assumption they could just keep using them the same as and everything would have been fine. That's a MAJOR assumption you are having.
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I think the legal argument is a little negative of a depiction of Paizo. WotC is making clear moves to suggest that they don’t want other companies using their IP to build up other games anymore. Paizo is voluntarily choosing to respect that, even with material that they themselves have spent a lot of time developing on their own. Paizo is not going to let themselves be pushed over on stories that are not WotC material, but where they recognize they have been building on really fundamental WotC ideas, they are giving those up to do something new.
It is incredibly kind and respectful of them, especially knowing that they have a section of their own fan base that would probably rather see Paizo fight tooth and nail for everything they can “get away with.”
Paizo is acting as a paragon of open listening and good will to TTRPGs as an industry here.
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Aside from the Pinktertonian Debacle, the 'narrative space' (as has been noted by James Jacobs and others) for Drow was exceptionally limited.
So one can attempt to write into this 'very narrow defined space that might satisfy a handful of groupies' OR 'create completely new and unrelated content that's scores of magnitudes better'.
I'm rather grateful that Paizo took the latter route, for it has allowed people like Shardra Getl (iconic Dwarven Shaman in PF1) to see the light of day, or even a black woman (Seelah) as a paladin of Iomedae.
That it has also insulated Paizo from legal action and enabled a cleaner separation rather than a closing of doors is an added bonus, in retrospect.
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In my games/at my table I'll still have Drow, just because I think they're neat. However, in my canon I've already made changes, but is roughly similar to the previous offerings.
When the Age of Darkness was on its way the Elves had a decision to make, abandon Golarion entirely and return to Castrovel, or try and ride out the disaster on Golarion.
There was fierce philosophical debates about this in Elven society, and ultimately the independent minded elves decided to split factions.
The majority returned to Castrovel, to wait out the age of darkness and return when the time was right to rebuild.
The Snowcasters retreated to the Crown of the World, where the Age of Darkness would least affect them, until such time that they could guide their Castrovelian bretheren back.
The Sea Elves would take shelter beneath the waves, returning to land when the world was free of that calamitous age.
Ekujae elves sheltered in deepest jungles, becoming their own culture.
Another faction decided to shelter underground, or even trek through the Darklands to Tian-Xia. Refusing to abandon Golarion entirely to its fate. They resented the Castrovel faction for abandoning the world in its time of need, and hoped they might find some magic on Golarion to undo the Age of Darkness.
There Darklands faction splintered, true believers were called through the world and eventually found their way to Tian-Xia, embracing the culture there and taking it on as their own.
Others lost faith, and lost their way in the Darklands. There they found the Sigils. Marking their flesh with the sigils, these elves changed to unnatural colours, bruise purple, radioactive green, jaundiced yellow, bloodshot red, pallid white, amongst others, these aesthetic changes also brought about physical adaptations to help survive in the darkness. Drow still hate so called "high elves" those that abandoned and returned to Golarion, they mostly have friendly (though secretive) relations with other ancestries. They even get along well with the Snowcasters, Ekujae and Sea elves, and are proud of their cousins that managed to make the entire trek through the Darklands.
Some small factions of Drow have taken to demon worship as a means of survival in the Darklands, and are mostly concentrated in one city, but the majority of Drow sometimes called Cave Elves are merely adapted to their environment and have made their peace with being the guardians of the Darklands biome.
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If there's ever a need to republish Abomination Vaults under the ORC license, in my view, the adventure would lose nothing if the drow were simply changed into Ayindilar.
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I gotta wonder how they are going to explain away Second Darkness, if Eando or whomever just "invented" the drow, or whatever they come up with exactly. Not to mention all those other Drow NPC's in numerous adventure paths and single adventures and source books and so on.TL:DR - as we kind of expected, drow are too close to DnD to safely disentangle. Therefore, drow are not going to be featured anymore. Instead, cavern elves aka Ayindilar are going to be the new "underground elves", but they are going to not be a direct replacement, as they seem to be actually be quite good.
The direct replacement for drow as the main organized antagonist in the darklands will be the serpenfolk. They are also taking over the grand underground cities for the most part.
The same way that they explain why worshippers of Folca, members of Darklight Sisterhood, Slohr, bearded/unbearded in Taldor, Dragonfall Graveyard and countless other soft retcons aren't there anymore - they don't explain that, they just stop writing them in the setting.
Apart from a narrow group of hyper-invested people who Really Care About The Setting and are overrepresented here, few will care/notice. I'm quite confident that none of the 20 people I game with will, at any point, start a conversation about why drow aren't featured in Paizo products anymore.
Yeah, I guess that'll have to do. I appreciate the tough position Paizo has been put in and therefore support such necessary changes, but it makes me a bit sad to see such a long-supported concept just peter out.
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No they wouldn't just like people don't confuse Disney Thor with actual Thor or any other Thor.Not to mention that a troll would be getting too far away from what gamers think of as drow. There are many other generic names that could be used that would summon up drow-like images. For the Golarion setting, "Darklands elves" would be an obvious choice.Yeah, Golarion could have "Tiamat" if they clung very closely to the Mesopotamian deity of that name. But people would be confused about her not being a five headed chromatic dragon. So it's better to just not do that.
If you needed an evil female dragon deity to get involved in the Apsu/Dahak story, you should just come up with a new one at this point.
Ask people on the street how they like Thor having red hair.
Be prepared for massive confusion.
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Yeah, Pathfinder drow were just D&D drow except not into spiders but demon lords instead.
If you read Second Darkness editorials and forum posts from that time, Paizo writers were literally "we can use drow thanks to OGL, but Llolth is a no-go, so we decided to make something that's as much the good old FR drow you love just with enough serial numbers filed off".
Turns out, what was enough of serial numbers to be filed off in 2008 isn't enough in 2023.
Yep.
People wanted more of Paizo's own take on Drow. But Paizo didn't want to take their Drow and greatly expand on them for one reason or another. So instead we got nothing, and their previous takes on it are no longer really canon.
Paizo has clearly stated their one reason for letting go of the drow completely. Why do you imply otherwise ? What would be another reason ?
It is obviously a painful topic for them too.
Keeping on railing against them does not help.
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The do not own dark/undergound elves.
They do for all intents and purposes own the non-white skinned white haired sensually clad matriarchal demon worshipping evil elves that live underground, which are not from real world myth. Paizo can't safely step around that, they could by completely changing everything about the Drow... but that would mean completely changing everything about the Drow.
I don't see how that argument holds water.
WoTC also claims they own Yuan-ti but Paizo just started calling them serpentfolk and now Sekmin.
Retconning "drow" as "serpentfolk/Sekmin" seems a totally bonkers Rube Goldberg-esque construction considering how Yuan-ti were already re-purposed.
Just do the same thing with "drow" that was already done with "yuan-ti" and be done with it seems far more satisfying and easier.
Just as an example:
...
- They are properly called "dokkálfar" or just dark elves. The word "drow" is a Dwarven exonym that originally meant "troll-like." It was was occasionally used mistakenly in the past. (and never use "drow" in any other product again to refer to "dark elves")
- They no longer live exclusively underground but some choose to do so just like human groups and other surface dwellers could if they wanted.
- They can be just as evil or good as any human.
- Like humans and other PC races, there are some groups and cults that have evil plans (most dark elves were appalled at the cultist group that caused Second Darkness).
- They don't worship spiders more than anybody else. Some dark elves like spiders but that is merely a coincidence.
- Dark elves can be found mingling in above-ground cities just as often as wood elves, aquatic elves, snow elves, etc
- Dark elves live all over Golarion. There are dark elf paladins in Andora just like Cheliax has Dark Elf Antipaladins.
- Things like driders, fleshwarping, etc are the results of evil wizards like the ones that made abominations out of humans.
You just need to let go of the skin color and the white hair and of the specific word drow and picture them as having small communities rather than a vast civilisation. And then you just described what the Cavern elves are going to be in Paizo's future products.
Of course, you, like everyone, can still use the drows in whatever version you like in your home games.
When will the caverb elves vegib to be developed as more than a feat choice?
When will the caverb elves vegib to be developed as more than a feat choice?
I'm not 100 percent sure what you are trying to say there, but cavern elf is a heritage, not a “feat choice”.
What would you like to see beyond that?
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One thing that seems apparent from the remaster previews so far is that all the old bestiaries remain compatible. While drow won't be in the official products anymore, we at least still have the tools to tell our own 2e stories with them (and with owlbears, green dragons, and anything else being left out of the Monster Core).
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If you read the posts, you will see that the Paizo people are equally as dismayed and disappointed they had to make this decision. This is very likely completely informed by their legal department to make sure Paizo is as safe as possible from a possible legal WotC retribution.
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Also, as a lawyer of sorts, let me tell you that there likely was a way to keep drow in the game, but doing so would require removing from them all the elements that made drow what the fanbase likes. This would end up with Paizo being told, "well you made drow into something that is nothing like what I spent 30 years admiring, you might have as well removed them entirely".
So that's what they did, saving themselves a lot of work that would be rejected by the drowcore part of the fanbase anyway.
Also, while not Drow, was there any mention of Intellect Devourers or Neothelids?We didn't have time for that. BUT
Intellect Devourers are still there; we're doubling down on them being aliens and part of the Dominion of the Black, but the city of Ilvarandin is still in the setting, and thus these "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" are still there. They get a new name too that's not a "humans call them this": Xoarian. (Implying that they come from a distant planet in the Dark Tapestry called Xoar.)
Would the fact that intellect devourers are featured in the new D&D film pose any problems with that?
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I was really hoping to see Paizo's updated take on the Drow. Maybe bioluminescent fungus worshipers with ties to the outer gods or who knows what else. This is honestly the worst of both worlds - removing Drow and leaving nothing or nonsensical oops all snake people in their place. Cavern elves aren't even close to a substitute especially if they're going to be heroes of the darklands. I'm sure I'll get over it but I don't think I could be more disappointed than this.
If you want it to be Outer Gods or Old Ones/Lovecrast stuff , I reckon James was thinking about Yig when he decided on making the Serpentfolk as the primary under dark antagonists. He’s a full on Lovecraft super fan. So there, wish granted.
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WotC caused this, not Paizo.Let's not make it about that. Remember... without WotC... there would be NO Paizo. The fact that the OGL has been so permissive in letting us play with things, the fact that WotC really helped us to transition over to Pathifnder from the magazines (the original license end date would have left the Savage Tide adventure path ending halfway through), and the fact that healthy RPG companies all around make the industry a better place is what's important.
They're still not getting any of my money moving forward.
When will the caverb elves vegib to be developed as more than a feat choice?I'm not 100 percent sure what you are trying to say there, but cavern elf is a heritage, not a “feat choice”.
What would you like to see beyond that?
Give them a culture, a place within the setting, something that is more than a heritage choice.
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Illithids the original Underdark denizens, were heavily Cthulhu inspired. And the idea of the Underdark also seems inspired by Yoth. So, the Underdark was very Mythos inspired from the onset.
Having the primary antagonists be Serpentfolk makes a lot of sense since they are also Mythos based. In this retcon they DON'T seem Yuan-Ti inspired so much as Serpentfolk Cthulhu Mythos inspired (which heavily predates Yuan-Ti), especially from the work "The Curse of Yig" and "The Mark of Yig" (the latter work moved his domain to Yoth).
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I gotta wonder how they are going to explain away Second Darkness, if Eando or whomever just "invented" the drow, or whatever they come up with exactly. Not to mention all those other Drow NPC's in numerous adventure paths and single adventures and source books and so on.TL:DR - as we kind of expected, drow are too close to DnD to safely disentangle. Therefore, drow are not going to be featured anymore. Instead, cavern elves aka Ayindilar are going to be the new "underground elves", but they are going to not be a direct replacement, as they seem to be actually be quite good.
The direct replacement for drow as the main organized antagonist in the darklands will be the serpenfolk. They are also taking over the grand underground cities for the most part.
I mean Eando Kline inventing a fabrication wholesale to prevent people gaining access to an artifact would actually be a really cool Pathfinder Society story arc.
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They're still not getting any of my money moving forward.WotC caused this, not Paizo.Let's not make it about that. Remember... without WotC... there would be NO Paizo. The fact that the OGL has been so permissive in letting us play with things, the fact that WotC really helped us to transition over to Pathifnder from the magazines (the original license end date would have left the Savage Tide adventure path ending halfway through), and the fact that healthy RPG companies all around make the industry a better place is what's important.
and it's still pretty scummy that WotC, if not Hasbro, is pulling the rug under so many devs' feet by essentially "shutting down the OGL". Paizo shouldn't have to remaster everything to avoid getting sued.
I mean, when they have to rework the iconic DRAGONS to avoid trouble, you KNOW there's a problem...
I don't mind seeing new underground elves, dwarves, gnomes and whatnot, it's the whole process that annoys me.
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Would the fact that intellect devourers are featured in the new D&D film pose any problems with that?Also, while not Drow, was there any mention of Intellect Devourers or Neothelids?We didn't have time for that. BUT
Intellect Devourers are still there; we're doubling down on them being aliens and part of the Dominion of the Black, but the city of Ilvarandin is still in the setting, and thus these "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" are still there. They get a new name too that's not a "humans call them this": Xoarian. (Implying that they come from a distant planet in the Dark Tapestry called Xoar.)
Someone else mentioned that they are swapping out legs with tentacles, beyond the name change.
Brain-eating parasites that puppeteer bodies is a very common horror trope, and not something that WotC can lay claim to.
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In my games, drow as a culture, will still be around, but they're essentially just evil cavern elf fleshwarpers now.
Gives my players a lot more artistic license when it comes to character portraits and the like.
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That's what we've been doing for the past several years, reimagining them, but we've come to the conclusion that they're SO D&D in theme that keeping the name and the roles and the looks that gamers have grown to love is so deeply a part of D&D that in order to revise them to a point we at Paizo would feel comfortable keeping the result in the game... it'd be so different that we might as well have just replaced them with something that already has a lot of lore built into the game already, like sekmin, than make up something brand new. If we were creating Golarion today, then a full reimagining might be more palatable to us, but that's not the case.Hey, new poster here.
So I get that *drow* cant be used anymore, but why not reimagine them?
Call them Dark Elves etc. or make them a society of Nephilim Elves that worship demons. Change their look a bit if you must.
there are many ways to update drow to fit the move away from the OGL and D&D legacy without replacing them with lizards.
The only concepts related to Drow that are iconic to WotC is the worship of Lolth and the name.
The concept of subterranean black skinned elves comes straight from Norse mythology and I hate that it is just being ceded to WotC. They also can't claim to own the concept of a matriarchal government.
I think it would actually be cool to have a race of subterranean dark skinned Viking elves.
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I mean, the one thing you would have to change about your "subterranean elves" in your TTRPG to make them legally distinct from WotC's intellectual property, is the name "Drow".
A lot of time Paizo has the option to go back further to whatever bit of folklore etc. that TSR (later WotC) was adapting for their game, and say "we're not going to base our snake people on TSR's snake people, we're going to base them on Robert E. Howard's snake people." and that will generally work as long as you do it right.
The problem is that if you look back at what the word "Drow" meant before Gygax picked it up, that was a word for either a malignant fae or some kind of giant from the people of the Shetland Islands and Orkney. It was originally "trow" but the Scots pronounced it "drow." Basically all this creature has in common with the D&D critter is "it avoids sunlight."
If you wanted to have "Dark Elves" and you wanted to go back to the eddas to do that, you'll find that the Dokkalfar actually cling much closer to what we read as "fantasy Dwarves" than fantasy Elves. Since Tolkien basically created the fantasy genre in its modern form, and Tolkien took his Dwarves from Norse myth and his Elves from Anglo-Saxon myths.
But regardless, they will have Dark Elves that live in the darkness, dark Elves that have dark skin (most of which live on the surface), and dark elves with the new Drow skin colors (like purple and blue) because the Jinin are still around (they're the Elves who went underground for Earthfall and came out the other side). They would just be wise to not call any of these things "Drow."