Archpaladin Zousha |
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Darksol the Painbringer wrote:The ratio is more approximate to 1/9th, which isn't a big number compared to some of the other "staple" creatures, but given that, for example, Dragons, feature in more APs and are likewise affected by the OGL, it's relatively strange that Drow get the axe and Dragons don't, if the complaint is "We can't use them for our setting."”True” Dragon families as established under the OGL are getting the axe.
If we see red dragons in a product it won’t be Snippy the Chromatic Red Dragon (and all the baggage that entails).
It’ll be Snippy, a unique dragon whose scales happen to be red.
Or Snippy, one of the new Tradition dragons and have red scales.
Which ties into Paizo can absolutely add (bolded for emphasis) dark elves into the setting, they just can’t continue the Drow.
And besides, as Thurston indicated over on the Starfinder board, the drow will be steadily shifted from their current status as "drow" to something different "though still in the elven backstabby megacorp space capitalist vein."
As I expressed in that thread, the changes that occur there, and what the drow eventually "become" could easily reverberate back to Pathfinder, eventually allowing for them to creep into the Darklands again. Maybe not back into the spotlight since the Sekmin have clearly taken it, but enough to the point that we can go "Yeah, there's two kinds of subterranean elves, Ayindilar and [insert name here]. Ayindilar are always a welcome sight in the Darklands, but you gotta be wary when you encounter [insert name here]. Some are just Darklands survivalists, and they're usually okay once you shown them they can trust you, but others worship Demon Lords or do weird fleshwarping experiments. 'Drow?' Oh no, [insert name here] HATE being called that."
Temperans |
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Rysky wrote:Darksol the Painbringer wrote:The ratio is more approximate to 1/9th, which isn't a big number compared to some of the other "staple" creatures, but given that, for example, Dragons, feature in more APs and are likewise affected by the OGL, it's relatively strange that Drow get the axe and Dragons don't, if the complaint is "We can't use them for our setting."”True” Dragon families as established under the OGL are getting the axe.
If we see red dragons in a product it won’t be Snippy the Chromatic Red Dragon (and all the baggage that entails).
It’ll be Snippy, a unique dragon whose scales happen to be red.
Or Snippy, one of the new Tradition dragons and have red scales.
Which ties into Paizo can absolutely add (bolded for emphasis) dark elves into the setting, they just can’t continue the Drow.
And besides, as Thurston indicated over on the Starfinder board, the drow will be steadily shifted from their current status as "drow" to something different "though still in the elven backstabby megacorp space capitalist vein."
As I expressed in that thread, the changes that occur there, and what the drow eventually "become" could easily reverberate back to Pathfinder, eventually allowing for them to creep into the Darklands again. Maybe not back into the spotlight since the Sekmin have clearly taken it, but enough to the point that we can go "Yeah, there's two kinds of subterranean elves, Ayindilar and [insert name here]. Ayindilar are always a welcome sight in the Darklands, but you gotta be wary when you encounter [insert name here]. Some are just Darklands survivalists, and they're usually okay once you shown them they can trust you, but others worship Demon Lords or do weird fleshwarping experiments. 'Drow?' Oh no, [insert name here] HATE being called that."
See this would be much better than just deleting them.
PossibleCabbage |
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Yeah, the thing that Starfinder did was "take the OGL Drow, and do something extremely different with them compared to their traditional role."
It would not be hard to rename then "the Apostae" and keep them as purple elves who run a very aggressive megacorp, with the sort of internal and external politics you would expect from that.
"Corporate elves who happen to be lilac or cerulean with white hair" is a different enough thing, much like how the Diabolic Dragon happens to be largely red and most likely breathes fire, it's just a different thing from a "Red Dragon."
Starfinder also has the runway to do stuff like this since Starfinder 1st edition will continue to release under the OGL, and presumably the Starfinder 2nd edition they're going to start working on in a few years is going to be an ORC product.
Darksol the Painbringer |
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It would not be hard to rename then "the Apostae" and keep them as purple elves who run a very aggressive megacorp, with the sort of internal and external politics you would expect from that.
The question then becomes "Why can't they just do this, but in a Pathfinder setting?"
Because if the answer is "Because ORC doesn't allow them," then by that proxy, Starfinder wouldn't be able to do so either if it also became an ORC product down the line, like what Pathfinder 2 is doing now.
If the answer is "We don't want that level of science fiction in the setting," we already have firearms and alien tech in-setting; it might not be prevalent, but the excuse of "It's hidden deep, deep, deep in the Underdark, protected and coveted by Dark Elves," it'd keep the existing setting while also setting up a possibility for Starfinder to come to fruition later (and explain the origins of the current Apostae of the OGL). It also works with how Elves are designed in-setting for Pathfinder as well (alien entities that crash-landed from space), so it's not like it can't be functional or consistent with the lore, either, which is significantly different from D&D.
**EDIT** If an answer is "the setting is too similar to D&D's, so no change will work," then quite frankly the entirety of Golarion is at risk because any change to any entity that is based from D&D in any respect is still going to risk legal action. I don't think Paizo can't find the line between "This is legally distinct from D&D" and "This isn't legally distinct from D&D," because they are able to do so with other things; what makes Dark Elves so much more difficult than anything else they would be forced to change? (This is why people come up with the "They don't want to put forth the effort to do this" excuse.)
And ultimately, if a response becomes "It's different enough from the Drow that it shouldn't cause any legal trouble if we do X," not unlike the Diabolic Dragon is to the Red Dragon, then it does nothing to assuage the factor that there is some good story-telling possibility to have here (while also serving as a "ret-con" from the original material) that isn't being explored (AKA getting axed), because [reasons]. Essentially, the whole "We're threatened by the OGL allegations" excuse becomes null and void if apparently it isn't actually threatened by legal trouble by being merely different enough from the "inspirational" material, and again, the Diabolic Dragon is an example of this.
The Raven Black |
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As a grognard Drow fan who's built a behind-the-scenes Drow adventure arc going through DnD modules from the Drow's POV (and hitting most of the "best of all time" adventure list), I can't say I would have noticed if Paizo had silently excluded Drow.
"We're going to the Sekmin portion of the Darklands."
"Cool."So I find it mighty polite of Paizo to even bother to tell us, and to take the blow to their own plans for the sake of smoother transition than would have happened via Hasbro's legal shenanigans.
---
And yes, one can't officially play a Drow in PFS, but your head-canon is your own. In PFS1, I did play a Half-Elf pseudo-Drow, escaped from Drow slavers. It had zero relevance to any scenario and I don't even think his escape or subterranean origins ever arose except in his own dedication to freeing others. But he was a Drow to me! :-)
Full agreement.
My PFS Champion of Torag has always been a Cavern elf adopted by dwarves. That he came back with the sole survivor of an encounter between a dwarven exploration squad and an encampment of slender demon-worshippers and that his adopted father took extreme care of hiding his skin tone, including through burns, and to cut his white hair as soon as some appeared to spare him the worst of some dwarves' xenophobia has nothing to do with IP that will not be anymore.
And he was my very first PFS2 character, played from november of 2019.
And I keep on playing him. He just hit level 9 a few days ago. No plans to stop his career short.
Rysky |
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Essentially, the whole "We're threatened by the OGL allegations" excuse becomes null and void if apparently it isn't actually threatened by legal trouble by being merely different enough from the "inspirational" material, and again, the Diabolic Dragon is an example of this.
It does not because they’re completely different situations.
DND didn’t invent Dragons.
They did invent Drow as they are used in Pathfinder.
Space purple corpo elves not so much.
The question then becomes "Why can't they just do this, but in a Pathfinder setting?"
Because it’s not just the name.
If you’re instead asking why couldn’t they have the space purple elves named Apostae come down to Pathfinder, yeah they could.
They CANNOT, however, build on the Drow lore already in there. The evil underground matriarchal demon worshipping sensually clad white haired dark elf lore is off limits.
The Raven Black |
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PossibleCabbage wrote:It would not be hard to rename then "the Apostae" and keep them as purple elves who run a very aggressive megacorp, with the sort of internal and external politics you would expect from that.The question then becomes "Why can't they just do this, but in a Pathfinder setting?"
Because if the answer is "Because ORC doesn't allow them," then by that proxy, Starfinder wouldn't be able to do so either if it also became an ORC product down the line, like what Pathfinder 2 is doing now.
If the answer is "We don't want that level of science fiction in the setting," we already have firearms and alien tech in-setting; it might not be prevalent, but the excuse of "It's hidden deep, deep, deep in the Underdark, protected and coveted by Dark Elves," it'd keep the existing setting while also setting up a possibility for Starfinder to come to fruition later (and explain the origins of the current Apostae of the OGL). It also works with how Elves are designed in-setting for Pathfinder as well (alien entities that crash-landed from space), so it's not like it can't be functional or consistent with the lore, either, which is significantly different from D&D.
**EDIT** If an answer is "the setting is too similar to D&D's, so no change will work," then quite frankly the entirety of Golarion is at risk because any change to any entity that is based from D&D in any respect is still going to risk legal action. I don't think Paizo can't find the line between "This is legally distinct from D&D" and "This isn't legally distinct from D&D," because they are able to do so with other things; what makes Dark Elves so much more difficult than anything else they would be forced to change? (This is why people come up with the "They don't want to put forth the effort to do this" excuse.)
And ultimately, if a response becomes "It's different enough from the Drow that it shouldn't cause any legal trouble if we do X," not unlike the Diabolic Dragon is to the Red Dragon, then it does nothing to...
The last answer is the right one, as you likely know if you have read James Jacobs' posts.
They do not have enough time to divorce the Golarion drow from the DnD drow enough. They cannot mention the Golarion drow in any ORC product.
They must switch to ORC as fast as they can.
Drows are very far from being the only thing that disappears going into the ORC, as several other threads attest. They're just the one some people decided to raise hell about because reasons. With arguments like This is a conspiracy against people who love drows and I know better than Paizo and their lawyers.
Not to mention the good old I, and people who think like me, have the absolute right to free speech, whereas people who do not agree with me and say it are censors who should be silenced.
Paizo, with the help of their lawyers (go team !!!) have been working for months on finding the very thin line they have to follow to change their setting as little as possible while reducing the legal risks as much as possible.
And they knew people were going to internet hate them.
But they had no choice.
The choice they had was to say nothing and hide what they had to do or be sincere with us. They bravely chose the latter. They did the right thing but that makes them no less brave.
PossibleCabbage |
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I mean, the reason Starfinder can do things with their Dark Elves but Pathfinder can't is that Starfinder put in the work to make the argument "these Dark Elves are different from the Dark Elves you know and recognize" - they run a corporation; they are about profit; they will cheat, steal, and kill because of the culture of the corporation rather than their religion or whatever; their religion is the corporation!
Whereas Pathfinder itself tried to go back and say "these Dark Elves are *like* the Dark Elves you know and love" (this was the point of Second Darkness) and only started to move in the other direction recently.
It's not like Pathfinder 2e going forward isn't going to have subterranean elves, they're just not cruel and up to no good like the Drow were. That's the difference they've carved out- the Cavern Elves are generally not villainous culturally unlike the Drow.
Darksol the Painbringer |
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If you’re instead asking why couldn’t they have the space purple elves named Apostae come down to Pathfinder, yeah they could.
Pretty much this. If they ret-conned the Drow as we know them in the PF1/PF2 OGL to be the Apostae as we know them in Starfinder (which is basically the closest analogue we have to the Drow in-setting that isn't copyright infringing,) I don't see what the issue becomes if they are different enough that no legal case can be made, other than maybe an improper subversion tactic in the setting.
And they can do plenty with this in-setting for Pathfinder that can be both interesting as well as legally distinct from Drow, especially since a lot of the other parts of the setting (in both Pathfinder and Starfinder) enable them to exist in that framework.
After all, they made significant effort to avoid them being a 1:1 Drow comparison with the changes they've already made in-setting before the OGL was sprung on them (even if it can be argued it wasn't enough), I fail to see how it is they can't do so to the point it's legally distinct, either now or even eventually. Heck, even if the complaint is "They don't have time to make proper changes," that doesn't mean they can't put it on the backburner for a time (i.e. discontinue releases with it, as they have said before, the OGL products still remain "canon" and usable for the setting,) and then impose the ret-con later when they feel comfortable enough to release it, both legally and lore-wise.
The last answer is the right one, as you likely know if you have read James Jacobs' posts.
They do not have enough time to divorce the Golarion drow from the DnD drow enough. They cannot mention the Golarion drow in any ORC product.
They must switch to ORC as fast as they can.Drows are very far from being the only thing that disappears going into the ORC, as several other threads attest. They're just the one some people decided to raise hell about because reasons. With arguments like This is a conspiracy against people who love drows and I know better than Paizo and their lawyers.
Not to mention the good old I, and people who think like me, have the absolute right to free speech, whereas people who do not agree with me and say it are censors who should be silenced.Paizo, with the help of their lawyers (go team !!!) have been working for months on finding the very thin line they have to follow to change their setting as little as possible while reducing the legal risks as much as possible.
And they knew people were going to internet hate them.
But they had no choice.
The choice they had was to say nothing and hide what they had to do or be sincere with us. They bravely chose the latter. They did the right thing but that makes them no less brave.
I have stated that this was a lose-lose situation due to how heavily engrossed into the OGL Golarion is, and really, the only choice Paizo had a hand in was in which way they wanted to lose. And I have read their posts, so it's obvious that I understand a decision had to be made, and they went with the decision of "They get the axe," which I suspect is largely because it's not important enough to keep in-setting while risking the potential legal action that may come regardless of the effort they put in to change it.
But I can also see the point behind those that disagree with that decision as well (even if I don't agree with the fandom behind it), since again, they are putting forth effort to change things that can be just as legally risky as the Drow themselves, but aren't doing so for the Drow because [reasons]. Even if I'm not a real fan of the Drow myself, I can't help but empathize with people that feel like they are the odd one out when others who may have similar issues are getting preferential "treatment" to function under the ORC. Whereas they are not.
As for the other things that are disappearing from the ORC, those things weren't even really featured in any published product, either from a Rulebook line or an Adventure Path, and if they are, they are largely being changed up into something similar yet legally distinct, and the few that aren't are being replaced with something better.
The Drow aren't getting anything like that. They get the axe, and that's it. No replacement, no change, nothing. It's like somebody created a Disintegrate Satellite in orbit that targeted every Drow in existence and turned them into fine ash, and in the blink of an eye and whoosh of the air, they are no more. [Queue "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas]
Unicore |
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Yeah, love it or hate it, second darkness sets the lore for Dark Elves in Golarion as inseparable from D&D because it was an attempt to go back to the D&D orgins of the Drow before more recent D&D divergence. At the time, with the OGL the way it was, it probably felt safer legally to go that direction with Dark Elves, because it meant avoiding more recently copyrighted material about changes to Drow culture.
By the time Pathfinder started trying to make a change to Drow culture that felt distinctly Golarion and not D&D inspired, it was probably too much work with too little time to really get it done in a way that the same creature could be talked about without needing to reference the OGL.
Diabolic Red Dragons that breath fire are completely safe. Devils are often depicted as red and loving fire. Dragons who's magic is entirely based in the divine magic of Hell has completely severed ties with the idea that Dragons are innately creatures of arcane magic, perhaps the paragons of arcane magic in the universe. Making that kind of change to Drow would not have been lauded as "saving Drow."
The Raven Black |
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The Golarion drows are replaced by the future society and culture of Cavern elves for those who focussed on underground elves and by the Sekmin for those who want underground empire of alien evildoers.
I feel the setting wins because both of these people were quite underdeveloped and will now benefit from Paizo's ability to create awesome creatures and cultures for the Golarion setting.
William Ronald |
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It may be possible to introduce a version of Starfinder's "dark Elves" to Golarion but they have to be created first and introduced, or reintroduced. Perhaps the new version had a base here and there on Golarion if they came from elsewhere.
However, Paizo, Kobold Press, and others are acting NOW to separate themselves from the OGL. I suspect it is not a conspiracy to honk off some gamers, but rather fear of legal action but a MULTI-BILLION dollar corporation. So, somethings have to be changed.
The drow are problematic as they still resemble those of Dungeons and Dragons closely. Someone asked why they weren't changed with Pathfinder Second Edition. First, there was no need as the OGL was considered to be an inviolable document that could not be revoked and the thought of threats to revoke it were not considered by Paizo or others. Secondly, changing the drow rapidly would likely result in something that might not only fail to meet legal muster to avoid potential lawsuits but would be a rush job. Thirdly, Paizo (and others) have bigger things to consider.
While drow have appeared in some APs and even some Pathfinder Society first edition products they do not figure as prominently as they do in the Forgotten Realms. Show Hasbro a drow that is very like their intellectual property, and expect a lawsuit. There are questions if companies the size of Paizo could survive the lead-up to a court decision in a lawsuit. So, it is better to avoid anything that even remotely appears to be like the drow of old.
Long ago, I learned that you can't please everyone. This is going to be the case with the remaster. However, the events of the past few months have made a remaster necessary for Pathfinder Second Edition and led Kobold Press to hurry up their work on their own system. The irrevocable agreement has been threatened with revocation and the backtracking by Hasbro may just be a temporary measure. In a sense, creating anything under the OGL has become much like playing in a rigged game. The best thing to do under such circumstances is to move on and walk away, even if it is painful to people. Obviously, it is painful to some gamers and even game designers. Sometimes, I think that we forget that there are other people on the other end of the keyboard. Let's try to respect each other and have compassion for each other.
Cori Marie |
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Cori Marie wrote:magnuskn wrote:Wow, a whopping four adventure paths (if you count Shensen) out of 35 Adventure Paths. Gasp shock. So many.keftiu wrote:'Quite a lot? Prominently?' They're in Second Darkness (which I've seen near-universal disdain for before this news broke), a group almost no one in this discussion has mentioned feature in one book of Extinction Curse, they get a bit part in a single volume of Abomination Vaults, and that's all I personally know of. We haven't had them as a primary antagonist in something since before PF1.Let's see. Second Darkness, Abomination Vaults, Shattered Star, Hell's Rebels (in the form of Shensen) are just off the top of my head and I am quite sure individual dark elves also appeared in other volumes. Of course there's extensive mention of them whenever an article about fleshwarping comes up. So, yeah, they were an organic part of the setting which now is being ripped out quite inorganically.
All I am mildly argueing for is using a more lore-friendly method of getting rid of them in the setting (canonically speaking) than just stuffing them into a dark closet and pretending they never existed. Have them emigrate to another dimension en masse due to some in-game event, which itself only needs to be mentioned in passing. It's not as if elves are strangers to using portals to GTFO when something bad happens. Much better than to pretend they never existed in the first place.
Also Extinction Curse volume five, which I found by just lighty cruising through two random AP volumes I grabbed off my shelf a few hours ago. I'm pretty sure I can rustle up quite a lot more examples if I put my mind to it, which I don't want to, since I'd prefer spending my Sunday afternoon doing more productive stuff.
Hence, your sarcasm is misplaced and, dare I say it, unnecessarily rude.
EC 5 was in my 8 AP volumes counted. The drow aren't a big player until SD book 2, so I only counted 2-6 there. One AV. One EC. One SS. That's eight. But in the last couple hours I went through my collection of 491 PF1 and 99 PF2 PDFs and I counted the times drow were mentioned, and how prominent they were to the book.
Here's what I found: for adventure paths, lets give the benefit of the doubt and say that all of SD and all of AV count. Sure why not. That's nine volumes there. One Shattered Star, one Serpent's Skull, one Extinction Curse. You MIGHT argue for two more in Runeplague as it's a part of the adventure's backstory, and A Song of Silver with Shensen's backstory. That brings us up to 14 AP volumes where drow are a prominent feature. AP 191 just came out. That's about 7% of volumes that feature drow prominently.
Now on to Campaign Setting books, out of the 96 campaign setting books I have, plus 17 Lost Omens books, they feature prominently in 8. None are 2E - Darklands Revisited, Faction Guide (for the Lantern Bearers), Inner Sea Races, Inner Sea World Guide (darklands entry), Into the Darklands (heavily referenced here), Lost Cities of Golarion for the city of Ilvarandin, Mythic Realms for the Black Desert's undead drow, and the Rival Guide for a group of drow adventurers. That's again right at around 7% of the volumes.
Let's look at player companions, shall we? Out of the 111 that I have, drow are prominent in six volumes. Agents of Evil, Blood of Shadows, Heroes from the Fringe, and Bastards of Golarion all give player options for drow chracters. Magical Marketplace has one store that's a drow art store. Heroes of the Darklands mentions them a lot. That's about 5% of those books.
Oh and in the 73 Adventures/Modules I have from 1E/2E, they appear in four total: two dead drow and a random encounter table entry in the Emerald Spire, a house banner in a loot pile in No Response From Deepmar, three pieces of drow loot, an NPC backstory, and one corpse in Cradle of Night, and a statue in the Moonscar.
Last but not least, lets take a look at the Rulebook line. Sure they have entries in a couple fo bestiaries, but I wouldn't call them any more prominent in those than any other creature. But if you want to count that, they have Bestiary 1 for both editions, and Bestiary 6 for the Drow Troop in 1E. But no, out of the 46 rulebooks I have for both editions, only Monster Codex's drow section and Adventurer's Guide's section on the Lantern Bearers really seem like prominently featuring the drow to me. So about 4% there.
Now I don't actually have every 1E product, but I do have most, and the numbers show that they really, truly, are not a prominent part of the setting. (oh and four examples I have were places where it was specifically said that the drow are not involved. Three for Tian-Xia stuff and one for the creation of Banshees.)
Perpdepog |
I guess DnD will keep having drows in their products. People will find them there.
Or on Pathfinder Infinite, like here.
I'm really looking forward to what Starfinder does with drow going forward. I keep talking about how PF's drow felt like they lived in a corporate theocracy, and SF's drow feel more like that, so I'm looking forward to plugging some of their lore into my homebrewed drow, should I run a homebrew game, and should the party go to the Darklands, and should they be in a part of the Darklands where drow might live.
Cori Marie |
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The problem is that they've already been established with all of these things bud, Paizo didn't make their drow distinctive 15 years ago when they created them, haven't done much with them since to make them different, and now are stuck in a corner where they can't use what they've made.
ThePuppyTurtle |
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I mean, the reason Starfinder can do things with their Dark Elves but Pathfinder can't is that Starfinder put in the work to make the argument "these Dark Elves are different from the Dark Elves you know and recognize" - they run a corporation; they are about profit; they will cheat, steal, and kill because of the culture of the corporation rather than their religion or whatever; their religion is the corporation!
Whereas Pathfinder itself tried to go back and say "these Dark Elves are *like* the Dark Elves you know and love" (this was the point of Second Darkness) and only started to move in the other direction recently.
It's not like Pathfinder 2e going forward isn't going to have subterranean elves, they're just not cruel and up to no good like the Drow were. That's the difference they've carved out- the Cavern Elves are generally not villainous culturally unlike the Drow.
Is there actual confirmation of this or is this just speculation? My understanding was that replacing the drow was exactly what they had decided not to do, hence the retcon deleting them rather than altering them.
PossibleCabbage |
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In the Darklands panel at Paizocon where they announced the Drow are out, they talked a bit about the new underground elven people the Ayindilar which are represented by the "Cavern Elf" ancestry.
I don't think we know what color they are yet (though PC color is always negotiable) but these are more CG than CE, and live in smaller communities that are generally hospitable to outsiders. An Ayindilar settlement is supposed to be kind of an oasis in the Darklands. I'm not sure they've decided much about them yet except that they're not going to have anything in common with Drow culture.
They had a lot more to say about the Hryngar replacing the Duergar, because they're actually going to show up in Sky King's Tomb and Dead God's Hand, so they had to figure out what the Hryngar are about, a thing they haven't needed to do with the Ayindilar yet.
Wei Ji the Learner |
A long-running psy-op by 'Good God-fearing people' to demonize helpful elves using a lot of details sounds eerily reminiscent of the M.O. of certain groups in modern IRL society. (Second Darkness)
Stepping away from this propaganda is a wonderful change.
Cori Marie |
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Cori Marie wrote:...EC 5 was in my 8 AP volumes counted. The drow aren't a big player until SD book 2, so I only counted 2-6 there. One AV. One EC. One SS. That's eight. But in the last couple hours I went through my collection of 491 PF1 and 99 PF2 PDFs and I counted the times drow were mentioned, and how prominent they were to the book.
Here's what I found: for adventure paths, lets give the benefit of the doubt and say that all of SD and all of AV count. Sure why not. That's nine volumes there. One Shattered Star, one Serpent's Skull, one Extinction Curse. You MIGHT argue for two more in Runeplague as it's a part of the adventure's backstory, and A Song of Silver with Shensen's backstory. That brings us up to 14 AP volumes where drow are a prominent feature. AP 191 just came out. That's about 7% of volumes that feature drow prominently.
Now on to Campaign Setting books, out of the 96 campaign setting books I have, plus 17 Lost Omens books, they feature prominently in 8. None are 2E - Darklands Revisited, Faction Guide (for the Lantern Bearers), Inner Sea Races, Inner Sea World Guide (darklands entry), Into the Darklands (heavily referenced here), Lost Cities of Golarion for the city of Ilvarandin, Mythic Realms for the Black Desert's undead drow, and the Rival Guide for a group of drow adventurers. That's again right at around 7% of the volumes.
Let's look at player companions, shall we? Out of the 111 that I have, drow are prominent in six volumes. Agents of Evil, Blood of Shadows, Heroes from the Fringe, and Bastards of Golarion all give player options for drow chracters. Magical Marketplace has one store that's a drow art store. Heroes of the Darklands mentions them a lot. That's about 5% of those books.
Oh and in the 73 Adventures/Modules I have from 1E/2E, they appear in four total: two dead drow and a random encounter table entry in the Emerald Spire, a house banner in a loot pile in No Response From Deepmar, three pieces of drow loot, an NPC backstory, and one corpse in Cradle of
Ah yes, seven percent, such a high number. I'm pretty sure demons, devils, hags, ghouls, and even giants probably feature in more Adventure Path volumes as enemies than drow do. And again the 14 number was being generous and counting the two volumes of AV that only tangentially mention drow, and the one book of Second Darkness where you fight a single drow as the last enemy of the book. Such a prominent force in that book that revolved mostly around Riverport intrigue.
Unicore |
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Some people clearly just want something that can't happen given the reasons for the change and won't even listen to the developers explain why. I get it. Being in complete control of your fantasies is an appeal of RPGs in the first place. So keep that in mind, and just do it yourself. All the existing material is still out there and any story you want to tell involving Drow in Golarion is legal and fair for you and your friends to tell.
Yeah, it sucks that company you want to tell you more of those stories is telling you that they aren't going to do that, but you can't force your neighbor to mow your lawn either. And if you tried to insist that it was worth your neighbor's time to mow your lawn while they were under legitimate threat of being sued if they ever use their lawn mower again, people would probably call you rude too, if not worse.
Charlie Brooks RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32 |
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RE: why drow but no one else?
It's not just drow. We've already heard hints that otyugh will be replaced by a different sewer monster. I'd be amazed if owlbears stick around.
There are a number of old friends who will be left behind when Pathfinder moves on from the OGL. Hopefully, the new crowd is as interesting and engaging as the old.
Archpaladin Zousha |
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I should hasten to add that the speculation I was making was done under the assumption that if a hypothetical Starfinder purple elves who are backstabbing corporate sleazebags WERE to be backfilled into Pathfinder under the auspices of "this is what these scumbag elves were like when Golarion was still there in the distant past" the understanding that they fill the absence the drow left behind is left completely unspoken and just accepted as they are with no explicit comparisons made but everyone's kind of in on the "joke" so to speak.
If something like this were to occur, it couldn't be a big production, kind of like how drow are being "left behind" now. Things have to be kept deliberately vague now to allow wiggle room for the future, and the thing people seem to be arguing about now is whether this is a hard "yes" or "no" from Paizo, just after they said they don't want to give that kind of a statement right now.
ThePuppyTurtle |
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If you remove everything about the Drow that makes them recognizable as Drow would the people in here fighting over them even want them?
Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity.
PossibleCabbage |
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Yep, Drow feature in 7 frigging percent of all adventure paths. Outside of core races (including goblins, I guess), that's actually a pretty big number for a race which is "not predominant".
The standard is "literally appear somewhere" not "fill an important or memorable role" here. I'm willing to bet things like Aasimar and Tieflings are in way more than 7% of Adventure Paths, and like Androids are close just because of being in all six volumes of "Iron Gods" I wouldn't be surprised if Kobolds are there somewhere in more than 7%.
BUt like how many adventure paths have Otyughs? How many of them have Phase Spiders? The role of "Drow" and "Phase Spiders" in most Pathfinder stories is not that different.
It always seemed like Drow were much better represented in lines like the Player Companion than actual adventures, since Paizo was acknowledging "people like Drow and want to play them" but wasn't really all that interested in telling stories about them.
Unicore |
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Rysky wrote:Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity.If you remove everything about the Drow that makes them recognizable as Drow would the people in here fighting over them even want them?
Paizo is not actually "removing" any content though. James Jacobs told us he has plans for overwriting some setting locations that have been written about previously, probably in some up coming adventure paths. He is just letting fans know that those settings won't have the drow anymore that they were maybe expecting there, and there isn't going to be anything written about why not. I take that as a sign of respect for my maturity and ability to understand the situation as a fan of the setting and the adventures James Jacobs writes. I guess we have one vote for "just don't tell us this in advance and let us get mad when it happens." But I for one appreciate being told not to expect anything more said on the topic than, "because we legally can't tell the story in a way that includes drow, but we have stories that we want to set in that location, that we think are worth telling."
James isn't just making up stuff about these settings because he wants to upset some members of his audience, but because he has exciting ideas for some of these locations and doesn't want to have to completely disregard everything to keep telling the stories he wants to tell. I for one am excited because this probably means that we have some more underdark stories in the works over the next couple of years and I look forward toward seeing what is going on there. Never writing about the underdark again, just to avoid letting the sekmin out of the bag that drow are gone would have been a real shame.
Lord Fyre RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32 |
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Do you think they are going to implement this change in older PF 1st Edition material? I.e., they've already decanonized Second Darkness.
Will Paizo do anything more drastic with the existing PDFs?
Unicore |
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Do you think they are going to implement this change in older PF 1st Edition material? I.e., they've already decanonized Second Darkness. Will Paizo do anything more drastic?
No, they are not going to touch material that was written with the OGL, because then they would have to republish it with that license, which is the whole point of this change in the first place: to stop publishing new Pathfinder material under the OGL. They will continue to sell the material that was published previously under the OGL, because that material should be safe, but if they go back in and start changing that material and then republish it under the OGL, then they are inviting wizards to claim ownership of that new material.
Lord Fyre RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32 |
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Lord Fyre wrote:Do you think they are going to implement this change in older PF 1st Edition material? I.e., they've already decanonized Second Darkness. Will Paizo do anything more drastic?No, they are not going to touch material that was written with the OGL, because then they would have to republish it with that license, which is the whole point of this change in the first place: to stop publishing new Pathfinder material under the OGL. They will continue to sell the material that was published previously under the OGL, because that material should be safe, but if they go back in and start changing that material and then republish it under the OGL, then they are inviting wizards to claim ownership of that new material.
Ah!
This make sense. Paizo may be a bit overcautious about this, but it's not my company/job on the line.ThePuppyTurtle |
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ThePuppyTurtle wrote:James Jacobs told us he has plans for overwriting some setting locations that have been written about previously, probably in some up coming adventure paths.Rysky wrote:Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity.If you remove everything about the Drow that makes them recognizable as Drow would the people in here fighting over them even want them?
This, right here, is the specific thing I do not like. Everyone on your side of the debate has been arguing that the drow always a minor element of the setting. If that's true, why is it necessary to explicitly purge them--and with them, everyone's Second Darkness & Shattered Star playthroughs--from continuity rather than just leaving them unmentioned from now on?
Shattered star was the first a p I ever ran, and the fact that acknowledging its events in other adventures at my table now creates an explicit continuity error is what bothers me.
Replacing the drow with something else would not cause the same problem because it merely alters the events of Shattered Star rather than deleting them.
Archpaladin Zousha |
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But they're NOT purging them, they're just not saying anything about them going forward.
The big thing is Zirnakaynin, and all they're saying is it's now empty and the Sekmin fear it. They're very pointedly not saying HOW it got empty or what the Sekmin are so scared of. Other locations are changing hands to the Sekmin, yes, but they're also NOT saying how that occurred. They could have captured them, they could have had them all this time, they could have been empty when the Sekmin found them, depending on what the GM wants to use those locations for. All Paizo's doing is showing us the current state of affairs without the presence of the drow and letting us decide how much drow, if any, we want to add to that.
Lord Fyre RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32 |
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Unicore wrote:ThePuppyTurtle wrote:James Jacobs told us he has plans for overwriting some setting locations that have been written about previously, probably in some up coming adventure paths.Rysky wrote:Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity.If you remove everything about the Drow that makes them recognizable as Drow would the people in here fighting over them even want them?
This, right here, is the specific thing I do not like. Everyone on your side of the debate has been arguing that the drow always a minor element of the setting. If that's true, why is it necessary to explicitly purge them--and with them, everyone's Second Darkness & Shattered Star playthroughs--from continuity rather than just leaving them unmentioned from now on?
Shattered star was the first a p I ever ran, and the fact that acknowledging its events in other adventures at my table now creates an explicit continuity error is what bothers me.
Replacing the drow with something else would not cause the same problem because it merely alters the events of Shattered Star rather than deleting them.
You are not going to win this arguement.
At this point just follow Elsa's advice (Let it go.)ThePuppyTurtle |
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But they're NOT purging them, they're just not saying anything about them going forward.
The big thing is Zirnakaynin, and all they're saying is it's now empty and the Sekmin fear it. They're very pointedly not saying HOW it got empty or what the Sekmin are so scared of.
On the contrary, aren't they explicitly saying that it was always empty, rather than just that it has come to be empty now?