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Will halflings be given different names since that name was taken after D and D had to change from hobbit.
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Will halflings be given different names since that name was taken after D and D had to change from hobbit.
One of the reason that D&D was allowed to straight up rebrand their Hobbits as Halflings is that the word predates the publication of "Lord of the Rings", specifically deriving from the Scots "hauflin" a term for a teenager who is halfway between childhood and adulthood.
This is where, for example, Tolkien got the idea of having Pippin be described as "King of the halflings".
But specifically the fact that D&D appropriated *a lot* from Tolkien means that they're straight up not going to assert "we own Dwarves or Orcs" or really anything they got from Tolkien because the Tolkien estate would be interested in that claim.
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Again, it's a lot harder for Hasbro to claim they own a firebreathing red dragon when those exist long before D&D was a thing. They also can't claim to own dark elves. They CAN claim to own DROW and specifically dark elves that live in evil, underground, matriarchal, demon worshiping societies. Do you see the specifics here that differentieate the two?
If that's such a non-issue, then Chromatic/Metallic Dragons should be safe for Paizo to publish, or even better, Paizo can have Red Dragons that breathe Acid, for example, because again, it's different enough from the given source that it can't be construed as being OGL content (since apparently being a dragon with red scales isn't enough to threaten OGL lawsuits). The fact that Paizo isn't doing so means either Hasbro has a case on some level or Paizo doesn't want to risk it. I'd reckon it's a mixture of both aspects there, otherwise the Diabolic Dragon wouldn't be proposed as some alternative. We'd have to ask a Paizo lawyer for sure, but honestly, I think Hasbro has more of a case than any of us think or know for sure.
I know the specifics, they're sprawled all over the thread. I engaged with the specifics in a previous post, attempting to dethrone the idea of "We can't change them." The thing is, Paizo didn't even try to do that. Or rather, they felt like they didn't have any reasonable chance to do so and be successful, so they simply didn't. Maybe they were simply told by their lawyers "Yeah, no matter what you do, you'll lose this legal case, just let it go and move on." And obviously, Paizo will take the side of their legal counsel, because that's what keeps the lights on in their establishment; can't blame them for that.
But I still think that there wasn't enough effort to at least try to make it work, given that there was more effort put into other OGL entities in comparison. Not even scrapped ideas. From JJ's abridged recollection, he initially proposed that they get axed, and it was a unanimous decision. Based on that, it would appear that there wasn't even an attempt.
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Nothing going into the ORC is a D&D IP with a coat of paint and a new name. Just using that language is indicative of knowing that you are stealing something and doing the least amount of work as possible to claim ownership rights over it. It is disrespectful to the creative development team at Paizo to keep suggesting that this is what they have done with any of the ideas that they are working with. That is what has impressed me about this whole process.
With the Hyrngar for example they are doing really new and interesting things with greedy underground dwarves, something I wouldn’t have even thought possible. Giant psychic cave worms are way cooler and more developed in Pathfinder lore than anything I have read in anything since Dune and are way different than Dune Sandworms. Brain sucking aliens from outer space? Again, way bigger than the fantasy genre.
The much bigger issue with Drow specifically is that paizo’s initial efforts to do something different with Drow, second darkness, went backwards for inspiration to separate from WotC/ Drizzt lore. At the time, it probably felt safer than trying to Rush past WotC in making Drow different from innately evil underground elves who had been cursed and worship demons. Then the company reversed course for the long list of reasons discussed in previous conversations. It is only very recently that Paizo had made any progress on making these changes and they have been having to deal with years of fans old and new getting confused about what is uniquely Golarion about Drow. Complicated by 3rd parties adding their own spin to Drow in Golarion such as owlcat with Wrath. Trying to rewrite misinformation is far more difficult than rewriting obscure lore. Trying to do that quickly given the immediacy of the ORC stuff was just the coffin in the mail and a unique problem to the Drow.
Saying the situation is the same as dragons is like saying this means they can’t have evil elves at all in PF2. Pathfinder already included many dragons that were far removed from chromatic vs metallic dragons, they have a boat load of lore to develop with that before needing to worry about people saying “but these aren’t real dragons!” Or having WotC sue over cloud dragons.
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Personally, I prefer not to have an explanation saying "All the drow are gone/dead." I'd prefer room to do my own thing with the drow and include them as I wish, and not having to say, "Ignore the canon drow apocalypse" saves me a step.
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This here is the thing that I am saying they should have done.I see one minor difference. The second case allows a GM with an existing history to fill in the blanksPlease elaborate on the contradiction you perceive.… so which is it?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?
If they’re never acknowledged again and the areas they are in are given to new creatures without comment when those areas are touched upon, what’s the difference?
“Never existed in the first place” and “we’re never going to mention or acknowledge them again”, what’s the difference?
I’m not sure how assured this would be, from my viewpoint the GM would still need to do the same amount of work, since again Drow aren’t being used anymore in official products. If Paizo does something where Drow used to be involved, the GM would have to edit regardless of which path was taken.
And again, Paizo was not gonna cut themselves off from the Darklands where Drow used to be, there’s still stories to be told there.
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And 'pretending that a group of people were never there' is equally problematic for marginalized people.And don't get me started of those fans who want the Drow to get "genocided" away in lore. Said fans probably don't want to consider how the many marginalized writers over at Paizo probably wouldn't like to see that applied in the setting. But those writers' discomfort mean nothing compared to the inconvenience of simply pretending Drow don't exist anymore in Pathfinder anymore (and likely won't be in Starfinder anymore once the SF team runs out of OGL material in a year's time).This is moon logic to me. Even ignoring the fact that gloarion already contains genocide, what makes you think marginalized creators necessarily don't want to write about genocide? I'm a marginalized person, and I have written about it in my own work.
This is also true. How many peoples have been erased in the real world because others, including colonizers and their historians have decided that they were not worth a mention?
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Why do the people who are happy that the drow are leaving Paizo conplete with their wardrobes, care about what tje people who are upset about it think about it?I’m not happy at all Drow are leaving, I love Drow, I have the commissioned art to prove it.
The issue mostly is how the people upset have been expressing that and lashing out.
It only counts if they have revealing clothes on :)
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Like since Paizo's position is basically "we're never going to include the word 'Drow' in an ORC product" there's no point in Paizo planting seeds for future Drow-related stories since they're never going to follow up on any of them.
Since any individual table can conclude:
- The Drow are still there.
- The Drow were never there.
- The Drow were there, but they went somewhere else.
- The Drow were there but they got killed off by something scarier.
etc.
It's like "why won't Paizo tell us what happened to the WotR party, since they're some of the most powerful people on Golarion" since it's better to let tables come up with their own explanations for whatever their PCs are doing. Paizo even commenting on it limits other people's creativity.
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Tell me where WotC has claims on this lore:
Refusing Torag’s summons in the quest for sky, these dwarves stayed behind in an increasingly hostile darklands. Attacked on all sides by increasingly monster outs threats, the Hyrngar turned to a dark god of treachery that promised them survival for obidience. Now these dwarves have adopted a pyramid scheme economic system where any sign of kindness is likely an attempt to entrap another into forfeiting future profits to the superior dwarf who’s actions “enabled” all future wealth generation of the lesser dwarf.
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It's further than Tattooine is from Arrakis.
I'm bringing it up as being (relatively) specific because it's been stated by JJ that several OGL monsters are being merely rebranded instead of axed. Ogres, Intellect Devourers, Neothelids, Dragons; these are all things that are still essentially existing under the ORC, but are merely getting a new coat of paint (because, assumedly, according to the lawyers, that's all they really need to be distinct from the OGL).
I've never seen Star Wars, Star Trek, etc., so I don't understand the reference. If the point is "these are further from each other than the example," then I disagree, since JJ posted that at least 3 of those are protected by OGL and required reworking to function in ORC (and appear to be able to do so afterward, assuming the lawyers did their job adequately enough).
Yeah, one of the things you do when you're trying to head off a legal fight against a much bigger corporation whose IP you are adjacent to, is you make a good faith effort to respect their copyrights and make an effort to differentiate your stuff from theirs. You especially want to avoid stepping on whatever part of their IP they consider the most valuable/marketable.
Wizards is very unlikely to sell "Ultimate Otyughs" in my lifetime, so a different sewer monster that doesn't look like theirs it just fills the same ecological niche isn't going to cost them money so they're less likely to care.
But things like True Metallic and Chromatic Dragons, Mind Flayers, and Drow are genuinely marketable arrows in their quiver, so those are copyrights they're inclined to protect aggressively.
Eagle-Eyed observers might observe that Paizo is doing with the Duergar precisely what some hoped they would do with the Drow. But putting aside the fact that it's hard for anybody to own "Dwarves live underground, Dwarves are greedy, Dwarves aren't very nice" it's also meaningful that R.A. Salvatore did not write a series of bestselling fantasy novels about an iconoclastic Duergar.
It's about more than just "good faith effort," it's also about ensuring that you aren't infringing on anything unique to the IP. "Flying dragon that breathes fire" isn't exactly iconic to the IP, since that concept well predates OGL, but them being defined (both mechanically and in-setting) by the color of their scales apparently is. I.E. Red Dragon breathing Fire, Blue Dragon breathing Electricity, etc. As well as the entirety of Metallic Dragons (so long as they aren't robots, of course).
I don't see how that is relevant, given they haven't also made an "Ultimate Drow" book yet either. Just because they are more likely to do so based solely on popularity doesn't mean that's a reason for them to go after Paizo, since them going after Paizo requires Paizo to do something with the IP, not if Hasbro wants to do something with the IP.
Obviously, but some of these are IPs that Paizo (apparently) has found a way to circumvent, some of which were already present in the setting (like the Imperial, Outer, and Planar Dragons). And others are ones that Paizo can do without, since they have other parts of the setting that they can use to fill that niche.
Yes, the novels obviously added invaluable notoriety to the Drow's IP for Hasbro, but I don't think that is the nail in the coffin for why Duergar get changed and Drow get axed.
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But that is not what they said, they said that drow don't exist and never existed.
You're mistaking an in-universe account that claims the Drow never existed and they just were just made up for reasons, from an actual authoritative claim of such.
Paizo's just going to let the diagetic explanation in Sky King's Tomb book 3 stand and leave it at that.
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Nothing going into the ORC is a D&D IP with a coat of paint and a new name. Just using that language is indicative of knowing that you are stealing something and doing the least amount of work as possible to claim ownership rights over it. It is disrespectful to the creative development team at Paizo to keep suggesting that this is what they have done with any of the ideas that they are working with. That is what has impressed me about this whole process.
With the Hyrngar for example they are doing really new and interesting things with greedy underground dwarves, something I wouldn’t have even thought possible. Giant psychic cave worms are way cooler and more developed in Pathfinder lore than anything I have read in anything since Dune and are way different than Dune Sandworms. Brain sucking aliens from outer space? Again, way bigger than the fantasy genre.
The much bigger issue with Drow specifically is that paizo’s initial efforts to do something different with Drow, second darkness, went backwards for inspiration to separate from WotC/ Drizzt lore. At the time, it probably felt safer than trying to Rush past WotC in making Drow different from innately evil underground elves who had been cursed and worship demons. Then the company reversed course for the long list of reasons discussed in previous conversations. It is only very recently that Paizo had made any progress on making these changes and they have been having to deal with years of fans old and new getting confused about what is uniquely Golarion about Drow. Complicated by 3rd parties adding their own spin to Drow in Golarion such as owlcat with Wrath. Trying to rewrite misinformation is far more difficult than rewriting obscure lore. Trying to do that quickly given the immediacy of the ORC stuff was just the coffin in the mail and a unique problem to the Drow.
Saying the situation is the same as dragons is like saying this means they can’t have evil elves at all in PF2. Pathfinder already included many dragons that were far removed from chromatic vs metallic dragons, they have a boat load of lore to develop with that before needing to worry about people saying “but these aren’t real dragons!” Or having WotC sue over cloud dragons.
Not necessarily. We have relative confirmation that some existing creatures will be changed while still having some basis on fulfilling the same niche as creatures from the OGL, even if a fair amount of them are getting axed. To me, that screams "new coat of paint" design, even if legally they might be okay after making some adjustments (and I'm going to assume they are, otherwise I suspect some lawyer positions at the Paizo office are going to start opening up). At best, I would suspect that for those types of things, "new coat of paint" is enough to avoid legal action, and if that's all they have to do, that's probably all they will want/need to do.
Well, Paizo doesn't have to worry about copyright infringements from the creators of Dune (largely because they aren't completely greedy jerkwads), so even if they were somehow relatively similar or taken as inspiration, they won't be at risk for legal action. Hasbro is a whole different animal, given how hungry they are operating at right now, so Hyrngar being potentially infringing is far more scary in comparison.
Obviously Drow are a more specific IP with far more fame behind them, but I (and several others) were of the opinion that they maybe could have done something in-universe to justify things that would make things separate enough for them to function. After all, they have done some significant changes for them, though I don't want to list them because A. they've been listed several times throughout the thread already, and B. I'm unsure as to how much of those changes are consistent with the lore that they have for them. The only problems are that those changes are made under the OGL, which are literally using the Drow name for said changes, which is a specifically copyrighted term by Hasbro, and that they apparently had no time to implement an appropriate retcon besides "Snekmin invaded the Darklands and the Drow mysteriously vanished never to be seen or heard from again."
No, it's not comparable at all, but going to your "other types of Dragons" point, they've included Imperial, Planar, and Outer Dragons, as well as the numerous Drake types, and these cover the niche of Dragons well enough that they shouldn't need more types to replace them. That then beckons the question "Why are we making new types of dragons to replace the old/illegal ones if these ones are more than capable of functioning in that role?" Same concept with the likes of the Apostae being used to replace the current implementation of the Drow, which I personally find to be a missed opportunity (not unlike calling the Sekmin the Snekmin) and is probably what I will do for my own personal canon regarding the Drow (and Sekmin).
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It only counts if they have revealing clothes on :)Why do the people who are happy that the drow are leaving Paizo conplete with their wardrobes, care about what tje people who are upset about it think about it?I’m not happy at all Drow are leaving, I love Drow, I have the commissioned art to prove it.
The issue mostly is how the people upset have been expressing that and lashing out.
They do. The ones that have clothes on that is.
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And 'pretending that a group of people were never there' is equally problematic for marginalized people.And don't get me started of those fans who want the Drow to get "genocided" away in lore. Said fans probably don't want to consider how the many marginalized writers over at Paizo probably wouldn't like to see that applied in the setting. But those writers' discomfort mean nothing compared to the inconvenience of simply pretending Drow don't exist anymore in Pathfinder anymore (and likely won't be in Starfinder anymore once the SF team runs out of OGL material in a year's time).This is moon logic to me. Even ignoring the fact that gloarion already contains genocide, what makes you think marginalized creators necessarily don't want to write about genocide? I'm a marginalized person, and I have written about it in my own work.This is also true. How many peoples have been erased in the real world because others, including colonizers and their historians have decided that they were not worth a mention?
Come now, surely you realize that using such weighted language and comparison to real life atrocities when talking about fictional characters is utterly rediculous. This is basically you accusing an author of murder because a character got cut from a book.
Drow are not a marginalized people. They are utterly fictional. This is not a fictional depiction of an atrocity. This is an editing decision. It can be one you disagree with, but lets bring things back down to earth shall we?
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With the Hyrngar for example they are doing really new and interesting things with greedy underground dwarves, something I wouldn’t have even thought possible...Paraphrased: "They are doing something totally new with this thing that is really just that old thing, but instead of [insert evil thing here] its [insert the same thing but renamed]. No they can't make a new thing with that other thing, its impossible."
I swear that argument irritates me because its so hypocritical. They could had done the same, they simply chose not to.
Not to mention that if Hasbro wanted to sue them just for the sake of suing they could already do so. So it feels extra like certain things are being specifically targeted for complete removal and the lawyers are being used as a scapegoat.
Wotc doesn’t have a lock on “underground dwarves”.
Doing a quick read on the DND lore for Duergar it’s actually divergent a lot than what Paizo had been doing, unlike the Drow which was copy pasted.
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Seeing how people react here to the disappearance of the drows.
Remembering how previously people were blasting Paizo for not creating playable drows right now, complete with OP powers.
There is zero way these people would have been any happier with "drows were there but vanished from the setting".
The retcon allows Paizo to talk about lore they have created before and maybe some they were working on in future ORC products.
I agree that it is sudden and harsh. But it was the less worst possible way to do it for Paizo.
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Why are we making new types of dragons to replace the old/illegal ones if these ones are more than capable of functioning in that role?"It’s comments liek this that make you look like you’re arguing in bad faith. The Drow and Dragons are not comparable. WotC doesn’t own Dragons. WotC owns Drow.
I am not, though, and I feel I am being misunderstood, so let me start again.
The argument was:
Pathfinder already included many dragons that were far removed from chromatic vs metallic dragons, they have a boat load of lore to develop with that before needing to worry about people saying “but these aren’t real dragons!” Or having WotC sue over cloud dragons.
And I expanded upon that point. Yes, there were a few types of dragons already included in Golarion. Imperial Dragons, Outer Dragons, Planar Dragons, Drakes, etc. These are plenty functional in setting and are different enough from Chromatic/Metallic Dragons that they won't risk OGL lawsuits. The question I posed was wondering why these don't become the new standard going forward, instead of the new types being created to essentially replace the Chromatic/Metallic Dragons, which Paizo themselves have stated that they will not be making any more stories with by fear of infringing OGL copyright?
Obviously, radical changes to the Drow are going to have backlash, since it seems like it's nothing but a money sink (due to poor reception/sales) and a bad publicity generator (due to the sheer complacency of the fandom), which is why I don't blame them for taking the opportunity to axe them. All I'm saying is that 1. This wasn't the reasoning provided to us as to why they were axed, which would make more sense to me personally, and 2. I understand the outrage behind the decision since it's not treating other OGL monsters in the same way, even if by necessity it's not going to, especially since the assumption was "No OGL under any circumstance." Not "Tweak OGL content enough and it works."
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I mean, there will still be elves that live in Golarion. Some of them will still live underground. That is probably more close to copyright infringement than any of the new dragons, because the new dragons are coming into existence to highlight how dragons in Golarion are tied to the 4 traditions of magic, which is a cosmological feature of Golarion predating the ORC split, and no where near a WotC concept. If WotC adopted primal dragons and occult dragons and divine dragons, they would be the ones risking copyright infringement. What totally new thing has Paizo introduced to Drow on a creation myth or cosmological level equal to dragons based on traditions or a group of betrayed dwarves turning to a dark god who forced a hyper-hierarchical Ponzi scheme over their whole society, making them trust no one and see giving some one a gift as an excuse to come back and claim future revenue from them?
There is nothing close to this level of rewrite that has already been in progress related to bigger changes in Golarion lore that were already underway when the whole OGL had to be walked away from.
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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.
Every time a drow turned up, it was a bit of an event for my players, people who all read the Drizzt books (which, going back to them, are pretty badly written, yes) when they were younger and getting into fantasy. So, yeah, Drow held a more weighty position for us than they actually had in the setting of Golarion.
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I understand your disappointment, but you do have to understand how legally they cannot give an in-game explanation for why drow will not be written about.
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Paizo stopped writing narratives around slavery because they were told by multiple people that they were doing a bad job telling those stories and that the inherent idea of telling abolition stories as the success of a small group of heroes over a global system of violent economic exploitation was an absurd and problematic approach to the issue they had created for themselves by making such an earth-like system of international slave trading in Golarion. The developers listened to this feedback, thought about it, and agreed that a light-hearted fantasy game might not be the best place for a company to repeatedly keep trying to tell these stories about how an institution like slavery is put to an end.
Not that any individual table is not allowed to come up with any story that they want to tell, but that Paizo as a company who’s primary product is selling pulpy fantasy adventure would stop using a model of chattel slavery adapted from earth history as a plot device.
Trying to tie the decision to walk away from Drow because legally it didn’t feel right continuing to use them in Golarion to that past decision feels like a way to discredit Paizo’s right to decide for themselves what kind of material to write because they can’t be trusted with these decisions. That looks like a very condescending argument.
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Paizo stopped writing narratives around slavery because they were told by multiple people that they were doing a bad job telling those stories and that the inherent idea of telling abolition stories as the success of a small group of heroes over a global system of violent economic exploitation was an absurd and problematic approach to the issue they had created for themselves by making such an earth-like system of international slave trading in Golarion. The developers listened to this feedback, thought about it, and agreed that a light-hearted fantasy game might not be the best place for a company to repeatedly keep trying to tell these stories about how an institution like slavery is put to an end.
I'm a historian by education, therefore I got a good idea how slavery ended on real life Earth and how long of a struggle it was. Real life doesn't work on fantasy principles, absolutely correct.
However, in the context of a fantasy world where it was a prevalent institution and where we punch dragons and genocidal maniacs and necromancers in the face on a daily basis, having the very big and good event of slavery being ended worldwide happen off-screen and without any explanation as to "why did all evil nations agree to this?" makes narratively no sense. I just hope the Firebrands book goes into it at least a little bit, so that we can get an explanation, I am mostly complaining about already spilled narrative water.
Trying to tie the decision to walk away from Drow because legally it didn’t feel right continuing to use them in Golarion to that past decision feels like a way to discredit Paizo’s right to decide for themselves what kind of material to write because they can’t be trusted with these decisions. That looks like a very condescending argument.
It is an argument of disappointment that we the method by which Paizo addresses these kind of things is trying to walk away from them very quickly and not looking back, rather than dealing with them in a narrative way (which, again again, could be done with a few paragraphs for dark elves in the next lore book and be about how they left Golarion for some unexplained reason, instead of having their entire existence be negated outright).
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They literally cannot do what you are asking them to do without risking legal repercussions.
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With the Hyrngar for example they are doing really new and interesting things with greedy underground dwarves, something I wouldn’t have even thought possible...Paraphrased: "They are doing something totally new with this thing that is really just that old thing, but instead of [insert evil thing here] its [insert the same thing but renamed]. No they can't make a new thing with that other thing, its impossible."
I swear that argument irritates me because its so hypocritical. They could had done the same, they simply chose not to.
Not to mention that if Hasbro wanted to sue them just for the sake of suing they could already do so. So it feels extra like certain things are being specifically targeted for complete removal and the lawyers are being used as a scapegoat.
There are just a few things that you're missing.
TSR and WotC never gave the duergar as much of the creative attention that the other really big Underdark baddies got. They were always just kind of there compared to drow, mind flayers, beholders, etc. There's a shallowness to their culture when compared to the drow, and Paizo made the choice to initially hew as close to both of those as they could get away with. It proved to be much easier with the duergar, because of said shallowness. They are smiths and slavers, dwarves who have the work ethic and craftsmanship but none of the kindness or appreciation of beauty. The duergar weren't that interesting, and their foray with the drow ultimately proved a noble failure, so they turned their attention towards other enemies from the OGL (esp. the aboleths) and on building a take on pop culture tropes (the serpentfolk). Their success caused them to keep going in that direction. By the time of 2e, the duergar remained untouched and the drow were only in the early stages of a Paizonian retool.
When Paizo decided that they needed to back away from slavery, they had the benefit of abolition being a running plot through the lore. Also, Cheliax (the last major slaveholding state) went through some major upheaval in the last couple 1e years. It was a relatively quick and easy thing to have Abrogail Thrune pull a fast one to take her enemies' eyes off her for a while keeping Chelish society more or less unchanged in practice. That proved to be the last major in-universe hurdle. The Imperial Governor of Molthune used Tar-Baphon's return to force his reforms past the other governors, Osirion was undergoing slow abolition anyway, the Pactmasters of Katapesh saw where the wind was blowing and followed the money, and the abolitionists in Qadira won.
There was just one problem: the duergar, for whom slavery was kind of their thing. It was culturally engrained in ways that it wasn't for the surface dwellers. Something had to be done about this, especially because Highhelm was in the pipeline and a book about dwarves had to include the duergar. Fortunately, the fact that virtually nothing had been done with the duergar turned into an opportunity for a neat retcon.
They already worshiped Droskar, who was on the outs with Torag and co. for taking credit he didn't deserve. That taking credit business became the core of their whole society, which evolved into a multilevel marketing scheme backed by enough traditional dwarven work ethic to remain functional. It was also somewhat expansionistic, with outsiders being roped into it by force. This extortion would become the source of the stories about duergar as slavers. As retcons go, this was fairly elegant. There were duergars without slavery, and their culture became richer and more interesting. It also took major steps in uncoupling them from the OGL.
...and then everything got a special brand of fun back in January.
At some point, the conversation turned to the duergar, and Paizo realized that they had already done most of the work needed to keep them. They needed new magical abilities to fit their new lore, and a new name. The Hryngar were born. They may or may not get a cosmetic revamp as well (though my gut says yes). We'll probably find out this month when Highhelm comes out.
Meanwhile, the drow. There were changes being made. Their skin went from black and off-black to lavender, and we met some non-evil drow that went more for proteans than demons. I have no doubt that we'd have caught up with Nocticula's drow worshipers had things not gotten special fun, and that there would have been more work done with them to further separate them from OGL drow. However, that is not how things shook out.
Paizo decided that it could only handle so much fun, and so the ORC was born, and so they wanted to get fully on board with the ORC ASAP. That means that they had to divest themselves of the OGL. Unfortunately, they decided that too little work had been done with the drow for them to stay, and that presented another problem. They were the dominant power in Sekamina. Any big developments there would have to involve the drow somehow or else break immersion. This wouldn't affect Nar-Voth or Orv, but Sekamina is right in the adventuring sweet spot. Tough enough and strange enough to be compelling, but not so dangerous as to require high level characters. So, the decision was made to replace the drow with the Sekmin, who are engaging villains with proven popularity.
And before you say it: while they could have had an in-universe removal/disappearance of the drow plot in a pre-ORC book, it would have created more problems than it solved. The Sekmin would have to expand into now-empty drow territory in order to take over as the big threat, and that territory would be highly contested. That would put them into the realm of potential, distant threat rather than current, looming threat. It would take years before they could convincingly dominate Sekamina like the drow did, and years more before they'd be ready to move against the surface. If they wanted to skip past that in real time, there would need to be a timeskip between 2e and a future 3e, because they aren't going to want to do it while Tar-Baphon is still loose. That's a headache for the creative side, and I don't know how well a timeskip would be received by the fans. The alternative would be to wait for years before doing anything really big in Sekamina, and that's not a pleasant prospect either.
I don't like this any more than you do. My not liking it doesn't affect the situation. The whole thing with the Pinkertons shows exactly where WotCs head is at, and I doubt that's going to change. The ORC is the right call, even with everything it has to cut loose (and there are so many things I do not want them to cut loose!) Look at it this way: Paizo is making it clear that there are things in Sekamina that the Sekmin don't understand, and that lack of understanding frightens them. I think that a certain Pathfinder's lie might just have more truth to it than she ever imagined, and woe be to all should that be so.
(All but to we who love the dark elves, that is)
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Another reason that the Duergars got remade into something else but the Drow did not is that there was an AP, a setting book, and an adventure being worked on that involve Dwarfs and/or the Duergars when the whole OGL thing happened. So the reason to redo the darkland Dwarves happened around the same time that there was an opportunity to do it.
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I understand your disappointment, but you do have to understand how legally they cannot give an in-game explanation for why drow will not be written about.While at the same time obvious Drow on Apostae are just fine. Yeaaah... sure.
Apostae is still published under the OGL. Whatever Paizo publishes for the remaster would not be under the OGL and have no license protection at all, however flimsy.
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Apostae are still under the OGL. Whatever Paizo publishes would not be under the OGL and have no license protection at all, however flimsy.I understand your disappointment, but you do have to understand how legally they cannot give an in-game explanation for why drow will not be written about.While at the same time obvious Drow on Apostae are just fine. Yeaaah... sure.
Hrm. Okay. I guess I have to accept that argument. I'm not sure how exactly they are going to word their "it was snakepeople, all along, Austin!" switcheroo without mentioning that dark skinned elves of an evil nature were living in certain places, though.
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They simply will not - something, obviously, that has left many people upset. But as you can see, because of the OGL/ORC move, their hands are tied. This could likely have been easily to untangle if drow were given a more unique voice in Golarion over the intervening 15 years, but - I mean, people were angry about lavender skin, so I imagine it became very difficult to move too far, too quickly. A lot of incremental change, but not enough to save them in the end.