
![]() |
5 people marked this as a favorite. |

I understand why the Drow couldn't be retained as is or under that name, but deleting them rather than replacing them seems like a massive error. You could have replaced them with some cool original creation (it could have been as different as they wanted and I would've been fine), but instead we get a retcon that leaves half the darklands in limbo to the point where Golarion as a setting is now incoherent. If the drow were never there, what happened all the times they showed up? What species was the vampire the Sihedron heroes encountered when they went into the darklands? Who in the darklands has been taking all those slaves?
It's like in Doki Doki Literature Club when Monika deletes Sayori. This does not leave the rest of the game intact but without her in it. The whole thing is a glitchy mess now. I feel genuinely betrayed as someone who was invested in this setting, not because I particularly care about the drow, but because now the precedent is set that any aspect of the setting is liable to be awkwardly ripped away. I'm left wondering why I should let myself become invested in any aspect of the setting if this is just going to happen to it.

PossibleCabbage |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I mean, if you never ran Second Darkness, or Shattered Star, or whatever then it doesn't matter whether or not the Drow were ever around.
If you did run those, then you can make it make sense however you want. Pathfinder as a whole doesn't depend on the specific ancestry of a vampire in an AP any more than it depends on the specific ancestry or class of a PC in an AP.
So I don't think there's a difference between "in some people's versions of Golarion there were Drow" and in some people's versions of Golarion there were never Drow, it was always the Sekmin" any more than it matters who the specific members of the Silver Ravens who got statues on that one bridge in Kintargo actually are.
Only on the very coarse details of "what happened in a specific adventure" matter generally.

![]() |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |

I mean, if you never ran Second Darkness, or Shattered Star, or whatever then it doesn't matter whether or not the Drow were ever around.
If you did run those, then you can make it make sense however you want. Pathfinder as a whole doesn't depend on the specific ancestry of a vampire in an AP any more than it depends on the specific ancestry or class of a PC in an AP.
So I don't think there's a difference between "in some people's versions of Golarion there were Drow" and in some people's versions of Golarion there were never Drow, it was always the Sekmin" any more than it matters who the specific members of the Silver Ravens who got statues on that one bridge in Kintargo actually are.
Only on the very coarse details of "what happened in a specific adventure" matter generally.
That example was off the top of my head. My broader complaint is that instead of replacing them with something else, it seems like they've left a hole. Removing Drow from the darklands is like removing humans from the surface world. Now I'm left wondering what species most of the population are if they're not humans anymore.
Serpentfolk are not a valid answer because being rare is part of their fundamental concept. If they're now as common as drow, how is it that they're angry about having lost their old empire and being replaced by humans? That resentment is half their ethos and without it they're just some scaly dudes.
I'm also worried this will set a precedent that retcons of this size are just a thing that Paizo will do sometimes now, which means all setting material is cheapened by its liability to be taken away.

PossibleCabbage |

That example was off the top of my head. My broader complaint is that instead of replacing them with something else, it seems like they've left a hole. Removing Drow from the darklands is like removing humans from the surface world. Now I'm left wondering what species most of the population are if they're not humans anymore.
Serpentfolk are not a valid answer because being rare is part of their fundamental concept. If they're now as common as drow, how is it that they're angry about having lost their old empire and being replaced by humans? That resentment is half their ethos and without it they're just some scaly dudes.
I'm also worried this will set a precedent that retcons of this size are just a thing that Paizo will do sometimes now, which means all setting material is cheapened by its liability to be taken away.
I just don't see this as a very big hole if it even is a hole. If you had asked me last November (before any of this OGL nonsense) "how many Drow do you estimate are on Golarion" I probably would have said "about 10,000" since Elves don't reproduce very quickly and the Darklands are a hard place to live. I have no trouble believing there are 20,000 Sekmin in Sekamina, since hell they named the place for them.
Like Kyonin is probably the least populous of the major Avistani kingdoms, and Elves in sheer numbers trail behind all of the common ancestries. It's just that "Elves get around" is why you can justify them more or less anywhere.
We probably had bigger holes when Pathfinder deleted the entire Cavalier Class during the edition shift, since there were all those orders that did things and now there aren't, probably.

Dancing Wind |
13 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm also worried this will set a precedent that retcons of this size are just a thing that Paizo will do sometimes now,
Paizo did not "just do a thing". Instead, something was done to them.
There's a serious difference between randomly deciding to change something about your product, and being forced to change it because you are under external legal pressure.
If you are worried because you think they randomly woke up one morning and decided to make major changes, then you can relax. That never happened.
If you are worried because some external thing happened that forced them to make major changes, then you're just going to have to manage that anxiety yourself. That DID happen, but no one could predict it or control it. And it could happen again, unpredictably, without Paizo being able to control it.

![]() |
4 people marked this as a favorite. |

ThePuppyTurtle wrote:I'm also worried this will set a precedent that retcons of this size are just a thing that Paizo will do sometimes now,Paizo did not "just do a thing". Instead, something was done to them.
There's a serious difference between randomly deciding to change something about your product, and being forced to change it because you are under external legal pressure.
If you are worried because you think they randomly woke up one morning and decided to make major changes, then you can relax. That never happened.
If you are worried because some external thing happened that forced them to make major changes, then you're just going to have to manage that anxiety yourself. That DID happen, but no one could predict it or control it. And it could happen again, unpredictably, without Paizo being able to control it.
The decision to stop including Drow in new material was forced on Paizo. The decision to close the door on any coherent continuity regarding what happened was not. They could have treated them like Folca and just not acknowledged them going forward, leaving the door open for people to employ their own headcanons. They've specifically chosen to deny us that freedom. Now that they've done that once, who's to say they're not going to do it every time something they previously wrote becomes inconvenient?

![]() |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

ThePuppyTurtle wrote:That example was off the top of my head. My broader complaint is that instead of replacing them with something else, it seems like they've left a hole. Removing Drow from the darklands is like removing humans from the surface world. Now I'm left wondering what species most of the population are if they're not humans anymore.
Serpentfolk are not a valid answer because being rare is part of their fundamental concept. If they're now as common as drow, how is it that they're angry about having lost their old empire and being replaced by humans? That resentment is half their ethos and without it they're just some scaly dudes.
I'm also worried this will set a precedent that retcons of this size are just a thing that Paizo will do sometimes now, which means all setting material is cheapened by its liability to be taken away.
I just don't see this as a very big hole if it even is a hole. If you had asked me last November (before any of this OGL nonsense) "how many Drow do you estimate are on Golarion" I probably would have said "about 10,000" since Elves don't reproduce very quickly and the Darklands are a hard place to live. I have no trouble believing there are 20,000 Sekmin in Sekamina, since hell they named the place for them.
Like Kyonin is probably the least populous of the major Avistani kingdoms, and Elves in sheer numbers trail behind all of the common ancestries. It's just that "Elves get around" is why you can justify them more or less anywhere.
We probably had bigger holes when Pathfinder deleted the entire Cavalier Class during the edition shift, since there were all those orders that did things and now there aren't, probably.
This seems wildly at odds with how common drow are throughout published material. It's too 12:00 AM for me to go looking for prooftexts now, but they're all over the corpus. There's no way they've secretly been rare this whole time.
Cavalier orders were never in-universe organizations, and were never portrayed as such in setting material.

Dancing Wind |
7 people marked this as a favorite. |
They could have treated them like Folca and just not acknowledged them going forward, leaving the door open for people to employ their own headcanons. They've specifically chosen to deny us that freedom.
deny us that freedom? Really?
Here's what the Creative Director of Paizo said about that.
As for how well handle canon going forward from previous drow-adjacent stories... we will be handling those when (and if) we do new stories that build off of that content. The stories we've already published, be they old (like Second Darkness) or relatively new (like Abomination Vaults) aren't going anywhere; the OGL remains, after all. We just aren't going into an OGL future.
Which of your freedoms does that deny?
Now that they've done that once, who's to say they're not going to do it every time something they previously wrote becomes inconvenient?
But no one is taking away your head canon. No one is even taking away the previously published material.
Obviously, the creators of a universe can make changes to that universe. That's a risk you take when you steep yourself in the lore of someone else's universe.
But if that's what is keeping you up at night, then there's not much anyone can do to manage that anxiety for you.

Dancing Wind |
8 people marked this as a favorite. |
What's the point of buying a setting book if nothing in it is still going to be canon in a few years?
Personally, I got seriously into Pathfinder with 2nd edition. Before that, I'd played in a homebrew setting using Pathfinder rules.
But I've bought hundreds of dollars of PF1 setting materials because most of it has NOT changed. "nothing in it is still going to be canon" isn't reality. That has not happened.

PossibleCabbage |
6 people marked this as a favorite. |

This seems wildly at odds with how common drow are throughout published material. It's too 12:00 AM for me to go looking for prooftexts now, but they're all over the corpus. There's no way they've secretly been rare this whole time.
I've run or been part of like 20 different Pathfinder Adventure Paths* between two editions. I cannot, for the life of me, remember a single encounter with a Drow other than Shensen I guess. I know a couple of the ones I've not played or ran had Drow in them (like second darkness and abomination vaults) and my memory isn't perfect, but they legitimately never showed up in basically any Pathfinder game I've been part of.
Were they super common in PFS or something?
The Drow legitimately never seemed to me like something that Paizo was all that interested in. They were just there because of the "kitchen sink" approach that Golarion had, where we have vikings, and pirates, and ninjas, and robots, and draculas, and cavemen, and cowboys, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

![]() |
4 people marked this as a favorite. |

ThePuppyTurtle wrote:They could have treated them like Folca and just not acknowledged them going forward, leaving the door open for people to employ their own headcanons. They've specifically chosen to deny us that freedom.deny us that freedom? Really?
Here's what the Creative Director of Paizo said about that.
James Jacobs wrote:As for how well handle canon going forward from previous drow-adjacent stories... we will be handling those when (and if) we do new stories that build off of that content. The stories we've already published, be they old (like Second Darkness) or relatively new (like Abomination Vaults) aren't going anywhere; the OGL remains, after all. We just aren't going into an OGL future.Which of your freedoms does that deny?
ThePuppyTurtle wrote:Now that they've done that once, who's to say they're not going to do it every time something they previously wrote becomes inconvenient?But no one is taking away your head canon. No one is even taking away the previously published material.
Obviously, the creators of a universe can make changes to that universe. That's a risk you take when you steep yourself in the lore of someone else's universe.
But if that's what is keeping you up at night, then there's not much anyone can do to manage that anxiety for you.
Let me elaborate on the Folca example I used.
Folca, we have been assured, is never going to be mentioned in published material again, and, because explaining his disappearance would require mentioning him, we will never be told why. Those of us who are invested enough in the setting to care can make up a story on our own to explain what happened. I, personally, like to imagine that Andoletta killed him. While this is not officially true, it's also not officially untrue. There's nothing official that disproves it.
If published material had just stopped mentioning drow, I'd be free to imagine that something happened to them, or that they're just hanging out off-camera. Instead, the retcon we've been given is such that the drow explicitly never existed. Cities they once ruled are now officially, canonically, objectively, mysterious ruins which they have never inhabited. This is the one, true, correct answer, and any coherent-canon-preserving story I make up in my head about why they're not around anymore is objectively wrong.