PF2R Drow

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Themetricsystem wrote:

Drow are clearly way too controversial for the setting, full stop. Folks can't even handle an honest discussion about what ACTUALLY WAS published for PF1 let alone try to try to force the writers to adopt their personal desired flavor or designs for them.

Just avoid it altogether and if they NEED a lore justification for it, just publish a chapter on the Darklands that covers how one deity or another erased them from existence and the timeline. The intended/targeted consumers for PF2 aren't mature enough to deal with it in any way that doesn't essentially rebrand them into something that is entirely divorced from what they have been in the existing setting, how they're viewed and portrayed in other media, and the narrative surrounding how some try to point to their skin colors and say it's some kind of dog whistle about racial purity.

They're nowhere near interesting, cool, or crucial enough to the setting to bother risking the ire of gamers for either upsetting tradition or trying to represent them as they've been known to be for decades.

I mean, I do agree that there shouldn't be this level of sensitivity thrown at this, because it's a matter of inaccurate self-insertion or parallel to be drawn, and because it paints this picture of this sort of thing being impossible in this universe (which I honestly disagree with), but I would disagree more from a simulationist standpoint than a political one, given that most creatures that exist in caves and tunnels and don't really go out and see the light of day will usually have lighter/paler tones of skin, and that's because they aren't exposed to the Sun, which usually causes skin to adapt and change colors in correspondence to such environmental factors.

That being said, we shouldn't be able to call them Drow anymore, because that term I'm pretty sure is OGL-specific, and just as well, if we want to distance ourselves from a name that was originally used to label "evil elves with dark/black skin," using a name that's already been used in the past with that kind of association wouldn't exactly be the most progressive, and even resorting to names like Svartalf doesn't work either.

[AnimatedPaper]

Relevant to this discussion: This post by James Jacobs where he discusses the decisions that went into how Drow were portrayed in Second Darkness, with the TLDR of "TL;DR: What we did with drow 15 years ago isn't what we want to do with them today"

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43pcx?Whowhat-would-you-make-with-playable-Dro w#20

Which is about as clear of a signal as any that PF1 lore should be taken with a grain of salt until new PF2 lore has a chance to confirm it.

[MMCJawa]

MadScientistWorking wrote:

On top of that you would think if people really cared as much about the depiction of drow as people are complaining about you would have seen a bigger reaction years ago. But nothing.

Not sure if this is a fair rebuttal. Society and cultural norms evolve, and there are no shortage of things people didn't think once about 10 years ago which are major points of contention and discussion today.

[graystone]

MMCJawa wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

On top of that you would think if people really cared as much about the depiction of drow as people are complaining about you would have seen a bigger reaction years ago. But nothing.

Not sure if this is a fair rebuttal. Society and cultural norms evolve, and there are no shortage of things people didn't think once about 10 years ago which are major points of contention and discussion today.

You also have to factor in how often people would use them and take notice to a skin change: for instance, until Abomination Vaults there weren't many drow images in archives of nethys [and they are small by default] so anyone using it for drow wouldn't notice the change unless they took a close read of its non-combat generic drow entry and/or specifically clicked the image to get a better look. So IMO, not seeing a reaction may be a result in not noticing the change as drow usually don't factor into a lot of games: for instance, would you know if there were any major changes in an Astral Deva without one coming up in a game and going out of your way to enlarge the picture?

[MadScientistWorking]

graystone wrote:

MMCJawa wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

On top of that you would think if people really cared as much about the depiction of drow as people are complaining about you would have seen a bigger reaction years ago. But nothing.

Not sure if this is a fair rebuttal. Society and cultural norms evolve, and there are no shortage of things people didn't think once about 10 years ago which are major points of contention and discussion today.

You also have to factor in how often people would use them and take notice to a skin change: for instance, until Abomination Vaults there weren't many drow images in archives of nethys [and they are small by default] so anyone using it for drow wouldn't notice the change unless they took a close read of its non-combat generic drow entry and/or specifically clicked the image to get a better look. So IMO, not seeing a reaction may be a result in not noticing the change as drow usually don't factor into a lot of games: for instance, would you know if there were any major changes in an Astral Deva without one coming up in a game and going out of your way to enlarge the picture?

Well no I mean the whole AP lays waste to the 1E lore. So much so that it stood out to me as weird because I didn't realize that it was doing that.

[graystone]

MadScientistWorking wrote:

Well no I mean the whole AP lays waste to the 1E lore. So much so that it stood out to me as weird because I didn't realize that it was doing that.

Myself, the only part of the AP I read [didn't play] was the Drow Shootist and repeating crossbows. As such, I don't really know much about any change and it'd hard to have a reaction on something you didn't know.

[AnimatedPaper]

Then it sounds like "risking the ire of gamers for...upsetting tradition" isn't, in fact, all that risky.

Edit: Especially with going OGL free forcing them to turn their back on nostalgic associations in favor of what they've come up themselves over the years.

[keftiu]

If Abomination Vaults “laid waste” to the 1e lore over two years ago, nobody seemed to mind much.

[Perpdepog]

I'm just hoping that the structure of the drow houses is still intact. That was always one of the cooler aspects of their society to me, and how each house's pledging to a different demon lord gave the drow this vicious, corporatist vibe, but in a way that was distinct from the other evil mercantile groups of the setting because of how the demon lords and house politics were placed at the center.

[keftiu]

Perpdepog wrote:

I'm just hoping that the structure of the drow houses is still intact. That was always one of the cooler aspects of their society to me, and how each house's pledging to a different demon lord gave the drow this vicious, corporatist vibe, but in a way that was distinct from the other evil mercantile groups of the setting because of how the demon lords and house politics were placed at the center.

Those Houses always were a specific feature of one city, Zirnakaynin, rather than universal to the Drow… and one of them, House Misraria, has the ascent of their patron to Redeemer Queen to deal with.

[Perpdepog]

keftiu wrote:

Perpdepog wrote:

I'm just hoping that the structure of the drow houses is still intact. That was always one of the cooler aspects of their society to me, and how each house's pledging to a different demon lord gave the drow this vicious, corporatist vibe, but in a way that was distinct from the other evil mercantile groups of the setting because of how the demon lords and house politics were placed at the center.

Those Houses always were a specific feature of one city, Zirnakaynin, rather than universal to the Drow… and one of them, House Misraria, has the ascent of their patron to Redeemer Queen to deal with.

Neat. That sounds like a plot point too juicy to pass up, which gives me more hope they'll be sticking around.

[MadScientistWorking]

keftiu wrote:

If Abomination Vaults “laid waste” to the 1e lore over two years ago, nobody seemed to mind much.

Also just clarify the part that is changed is that the

Spoiler:

drow aren't collectively evil

. I found it so strange that they called it out because I never knew it was a thing in the setting. It finally clicked with me that what I was reading was essentially a retcon after reading what James Jacobs wrote. Namely because I wasn't around at all for any of that.

[Grankless]

MadScientistWorking wrote:

keftiu wrote:

If Abomination Vaults “laid waste” to the 1e lore over two years ago, nobody seemed to mind much.

Also just clarify the part that is changed is that the ** spoiler omitted **. I found it so strange that they called it out because I never knew it was a thing in the setting. It finally clicked with me that what I was reading was essentially a retcon after reading what James Jacobs wrote. Namely because I wasn't around at all for any of that.

Even in 1e, they weren't automatically always evil. There's a CG drow who works with the Lantern Bearers described in... Faction guide??? I think. Who works to rehab other drow who escape the Darklands and help acclimate then to surface life.

Plus, they're people. It's not really a retcon to say "yeah they have free will and aren't locked to the predominant culture they're raised in".

[Temperans]

MadScientistWorking wrote:

keftiu wrote:

If Abomination Vaults “laid waste” to the 1e lore over two years ago, nobody seemed to mind much.

Also just clarify the part that is changed is that the ** spoiler omitted **. I found it so strange that they called it out because I never knew it was a thing in the setting. It finally clicked with me that what I was reading was essentially a retcon after reading what James Jacobs wrote. Namely because I wasn't around at all for any of that.

That's not laying waste. Mortals could already be any alignment, just that some alignments are more rare than others among certain creatures.

Laying waste would be completely changing everything. Like say, the complete removal of man eating goblins, their songs, and everything else that made Pathfinder goblins the ancestry we know and love.

[Unicore]

What if, in world, the existence of a type of elf known as “Drow” was always a fabrication. The histories, the mythologies around them, and the cultural assumptions about their society was a carefully orchestrated conspiracy to hide the true complexity of dark lands social structures?

There have actually been elves living below ground since well before earth fall. The elves there always had skin in shades of lavender, gray and blue. During earth fall, many elves from the surface did head below ground, and in the resulting apocalyptic events of earth fall, rovagug’s energies did erupt through the dark lands causing much damage to many of the peoples that lived there. Including leading to some very evil and destructive elven nations/empires etc, but it was never all of them. People on the surface had never encountered these elves before, and no one yet knows how they got to Golarion, because they do not exist on castrovel. Are they from a different planet? It is still a big mystery that is just starting to come to light. All the elves turning into dark elf’s because of evil stuff was a deliberate narrative being spread by someone or something out there that has a vested interest in making sure that the truth about the elves of the dark lands stays obscured.

I think playing with the history and tracing how it has been manipulated could be a way to have an interesting complex under dark elf but really doing something new that doesn’t have to erase the past, but can explain how that past wasn’t the whole picture.

[Trixleby]

Unicore wrote:

What if, in world, the existence of a type of elf known as “Drow” was always a fabrication. The histories, the mythologies around them, and the cultural assumptions about their society was a carefully orchestrated conspiracy to hide the true complexity of dark lands social structures?

There have actually been elves living below ground since well before earth fall. The elves there always had skin in shades of lavender, gray and blue. During earth fall, many elves from the surface did head below ground, and in the resulting apocalyptic events of earth fall, rovagug’s energies did erupt through the dark lands causing much damage to many of the peoples that lived there. Including leading to some very evil and destructive elven nations/empires etc, but it was never all of them. People on the surface had never encountered these elves before, and no one yet knows how they got to Golarion, because they do not exist on castrovel. Are they from a different planet? It is still a big mystery that is just starting to come to light. All the elves turning into dark elf’s because of evil stuff was a deliberate narrative being spread by someone or something out there that has a vested interest in making sure that the truth about the elves of the dark lands stays obscured.

I think playing with the history and tracing how it has been manipulated could be a way to have an interesting complex under dark elf but really doing something new that doesn’t have to erase the past, but can explain how that past wasn’t the whole picture.

This is pretty cool. I’m somehow probably going to get this wrong and I suppose I could just look it up, but it really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need to be exactly precise. All I was going to say is I am a huge fan of Warhammer 40,000’s way of story telling which has the motto to the effect of something like, “Everything is cannon not everything is true.”

essentially unreliable narrative due to the fact the what you learn from the Imperium about Eldar could be pure propaganda.. and what you hear about the Imperium from itself is probably, again, propaganda and the truth is out there somewhere… but we may never find it. Bits and pieces of information from a variety of in universe sources with varying degrees of correctness and education etc.

Although you know maybe Paizo wants a lot more precise story telling than that. Who am I to say.

[keftiu]

Instead of vaguely culture warring on the forums, I would simply go support games whose tone was closer to what I was personally interested in.

Just saying.

[Evan Tarlton]

I've been around Paizo in one form or another since the Dungeon/Dragon Magazine days (not always as a subscriber, and therefore not as consistently as I'd have liked). Dungeon #84, to be precise. I've seen a lot since then. I got Dungeon #95 when it came out. That's the issue with the infamous sealed section containing a Book of Vile Darkness tie-in adventure (Porphyry House Horror). There was some edgy, truly shocking stuff in the early days, especially when it was out from under WotC and didn't have to hold back. Some of that earliest stuff was pure magic. Others... the dragon article in PF #4 had some things in it that horrified me more than Porphyry House Horror. There are things about those days I miss. The devs took classic D&D creatures and themes and made them new for me again, and then they made genuinely new things for me to love. There's also a lot of things that I don't miss, like misogynistic Erastil or the original depiction of the Mwangi Expanse, or the way a certain slur was thrown around (ETA: or the examples that The Raven Black and Totally Not Gorbacz mentioned while I was figuring out exactly how to say all this). Some may call it censorship to appeal to a wider audience. I won't deny that mass appeal is a part of it. Paizo is a business, and it needs as wide an audience as possible. On the whole, however, I would say that rather than losing its edge, it grew up. Paizo grew up, and Pathfinder and Starfinder are the better for it.

I have long loved the drow (and yes, a certain ranger and his city of birth have a lot to do with that). I look forward to seeing how Paizo will handle them going forward. I don't think it should take much beyond a rename and a reemphasis of things that they are already doing or starting to do. If that means I won't get another trip to Zirkaynin for a long time (if ever), well, I know who's really to blame for that. I will just have to content myself with whatever awesomeness I get instead.

[keftiu]

Grankless wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

keftiu wrote:

If Abomination Vaults “laid waste” to the 1e lore over two years ago, nobody seemed to mind much.

Also just clarify the part that is changed is that the ** spoiler omitted **. I found it so strange that they called it out because I never knew it was a thing in the setting. It finally clicked with me that what I was reading was essentially a retcon after reading what James Jacobs wrote. Namely because I wasn't around at all for any of that.

Even in 1e, they weren't automatically always evil. There's a CG drow who works with the Lantern Bearers described in... Faction guide??? I think. Who works to rehab other drow who escape the Darklands and help acclimate then to surface life.

Plus, they're people. It's not really a retcon to say "yeah they have free will and aren't locked to the predominant culture they're raised in".

This is in Adventurer's Guide, and the character in question is a surface Elf who had the poor luck to be turned into a Drow by a druid's Reincarnate spell. The rest of what you say is true, but "I got turned into a hated minority and now understand their plight" is a little fraught, to say the least.

[Kevin Mack]

Evan Tarlton wrote:

I have long loved the drow (and yes, a certain ranger and his city of birth have a lot to do with that). I look forward to seeing how Paizo will handle them going forward. I don't think it should take much beyond a rename and a reemphasis of things that they are already doing or starting to do. If that means I won't get another trip to Zirkaynin for a long time (if ever), well, I know who's really to blame for that. I will just have to content myself with whatever awesomeness I get instead.

Yeah I would think a re-name would surfice for the most part

[Trixleby]

You know maybe generally good Drow should be the way to go.

As I said I learned about Drow in 2005 (the year) and guess who was the most popular Drow to ever do it. Mr. Drizz’t Dourden himself. I actually don’t know why he was popular because I’ve never read R.A. Salvator’s books but from an outsiders perspective I assumed it was because he was a good guy. He would put “good” on his character sheet and presumably “every body liked that”. Obviously not literally everyone, but enough to spawn a billion copycats.

So maybe we make them all good and some sort of organized fighting force holding back the horrors from the Darklands spilling out onto the surface and if you want to throw in something about maybe being Rovagug’s jailers? If you want to somewhat keep the origin story but put a twist on it: yes they were exposed to his corruption… but on purposes like the Exorcist Space Marine chapter who let demons posses them, then by force of will expunge them and exorcise them. This makes them more resistant to chaos. Maybe the Drow is close themself to Rovagug to reinforce their resistance to his corruption?

This would be a big spin and make them super unique imo.

[Castilliano]

Trixleby wrote:

You know maybe generally good Drow should be the way to go.

As I said I learned about Drow in 2005 (the year) and guess who was the most popular Drow to ever do it. Mr. Drizz’t Dourden himself. I actually don’t know why he was popular because I’ve never read R.A. Salvator’s books but from an outsiders perspective I assumed it was because he was a good guy. He would put “good” on his character sheet and presumably “every body liked that”. Obviously not literally everyone, but enough to spawn a billion copycats.

So maybe we make them all good and some sort of organized fighting force holding back the horrors from the Darklands spilling out onto the surface and if you want to throw in something about maybe being Rovagug’s jailers? If you want to somewhat keep the origin story but put a twist on it: yes they were exposed to his corruption… but on purposes like the Exorcist Space Marine chapter who let demons posses them, then by force of will expunge them and exorcise them. This makes them more resistant to chaos. Maybe the Drow is close themself to Rovagug to reinforce their resistance to his corruption?

This would be a big spin and make them super unique imo.

I'm not on board yet, but that's an interesting premise.

It reminds me of the Yeti, long maligned as monstrous, yet defenders against the insane outer reaches. With Drow spanning underground continents, maybe the Second Darkness Drow, as well as those interested enough in the surface to become antagonists, have been the anomalies. As a whole Drow might be "defenders against the insane inner reaches", also maligned as monstrous. And perhaps the famous evil Drow are because of course the evil ones stand out, and maybe they're casualties in the ongoing war against all manner of aberrations. They're the ones that have succumbed, while most Drow cultures have not. (And we should be talking cultures rather than subcultures here due to vastness of Drow territory, even if they are longer lived enough to have stronger cultural momentum).

[Karmagator]

Unicore wrote:

What if, in world, the existence of a type of elf known as “Drow” was always a fabrication. The histories, the mythologies around them, and the cultural assumptions about their society was a carefully orchestrated conspiracy to hide the true complexity of dark lands social structures?

There have actually been elves living below ground since well before earth fall. The elves there always had skin in shades of lavender, gray and blue. During earth fall, many elves from the surface did head below ground, and in the resulting apocalyptic events of earth fall, rovagug’s energies did erupt through the dark lands causing much damage to many of the peoples that lived there. Including leading to some very evil and destructive elven nations/empires etc, but it was never all of them. People on the surface had never encountered these elves before, and no one yet knows how they got to Golarion, because they do not exist on castrovel. Are they from a different planet? It is still a big mystery that is just starting to come to light. All the elves turning into dark elf’s because of evil stuff was a deliberate narrative being spread by someone or something out there that has a vested interest in making sure that the truth about the elves of the dark lands stays obscured.

I think playing with the history and tracing how it has been manipulated could be a way to have an interesting complex under dark elf but really doing something new that doesn’t have to erase the past, but can explain how that past wasn’t the whole picture.

The Great Skaven Drow Conspiracy. I love it :D

[Temperans]

Trixleby wrote:

You know maybe generally good Drow should be the way to go.

As I said I learned about Drow in 2005 (the year) and guess who was the most popular Drow to ever do it. Mr. Drizz’t Dourden himself. I actually don’t know why he was popular because I’ve never read R.A. Salvator’s books but from an outsiders perspective I assumed it was because he was a good guy. He would put “good” on his character sheet and presumably “every body liked that”. Obviously not literally everyone, but enough to spawn a billion copycats.

So maybe we make them all good and some sort of organized fighting force holding back the horrors from the Darklands spilling out onto the surface and if you want to throw in something about maybe being Rovagug’s jailers? If you want to somewhat keep the origin story but put a twist on it: yes they were exposed to his corruption… but on purposes like the Exorcist Space Marine chapter who let demons posses them, then by force of will expunge them and exorcise them. This makes them more resistant to chaos. Maybe the Drow is close themself to Rovagug to reinforce their resistance to his corruption?

This would be a big spin and make them super unique imo.

From what I understood its the similar thing to Goblins, Tieflings, etc. that were created as "mostly evil ancestries" but people like playing the character "who is totally different from those other evil ones". In effect they were popular because they were evil, different, and monstruous. Drizzt specially opened up a lot of copy cats because "oh look at how badass this guy is" and then everyone wants to copy that.

As for the spin, idk it seems like a cope out? You are effectively reconning everything that made Drow popular and saying it was all a lie. Not really a spin, but more of a wrecking ball, specially with the fact that people liked the fact that Drow society was uniquely evil. Saying now that "well they were actually good guys" in effect gives the impression that all the evil, grotesque, and vile stuff they do is good and "needed". Idk about but I would feel more uncomfortable saying fleswarping and all the evil stuff Drow do is good than saying "well this fantasy species has an evil society because they worship evil gods and they were originally created due to evil corruption".

[Syntax_error]

I am hoping for drow to just get a redux to be unique from the OGL. Dark Elves are not a unique thing to dnd, and it would be fun to see Paizo come up with their own ideas regarding them.

Side note, this whole thread is kind of a mess, though I guess we will need something to fill the void of alignment threads/j

[The Thing From Another World]

Syntax_error wrote:

I am hoping for drow to just get a redux to be unique from the OGL. Dark Elves are not a unique thing to dnd, and it would be fun to see Paizo come up with their own ideas regarding them.

Side note, this whole thread is kind of a mess, though I guess we will need something to fill the void of alignment threads/j

I agree with the first part and I rather see Paizo do a unique take on the Drow rather than just take Wotc version and just tweak it. I’m hoping many races get a unique take. Or just different from what Wotc does.

As for the thread it started well though as soon as someone disagrees with Paizo change on any subject the worst is assumed of the poster. Best to do is not engage flag and move on.

[Karmagator]

I don't know about "generally good drow". Not all drow being evil is absolutely a good move, because they are still people. Going straight into the opposite direction? That would turn a lot of people off, probably me included (unless the new lore was extremely cool). Drow are popular largely because they are one of the big antagonistic forces. In recent decades, fiction has taken a big step into the direction of villains being cool and different and heroes being somewhat mundane.

[Temperans]

MadScientistWorking wrote:

Temperans wrote:

As for the spin, idk it seems like a cope out? You are effectively reconning everything that made Drow popular and saying it was all a lie. Not really a spin, but more of a wrecking ball, specially with the fact that people liked the fact that Drow society was uniquely evil. Saying now that "well they were actually good guys" in effect gives the impression that all the evil, grotesque, and vile stuff they do is good and "needed". Idk about but I would feel more uncomfortable saying fleswarping and all the evil stuff Drow do is good than saying "well this fantasy species has an evil society because they worship evil gods and they were originally created due to evil corruption".

No one is saying that except for you. Everyone including Paizo is basically saying,"We shouldn't have made them a monoculture."

Maybe read the post I was responding to? They were specifically saying to spin the Drow lore and I responded about that. Also no, "everyone" is not saying what you are saying.

Even then, what? People have been actively talking about removing drow, removing the origin of drow, changing the origin of drow, or otherwise making drow into something completely different from what they are. So how are you making that into "oh they just don't want monoculture"? There is a huge difference between removing monoculture (just add another culture without touching the first) and removing everything about the culture to make a new entirely different monoculture.

[Trixleby]

I think changing the Drow in Pathfinder 2E to be the Valiant Vanguard against the eternal darkness and the horrors of the Darklands is a pretty cool spin IMO.

Take the Houses and turn them into Noble Knight Houses each with a rich martial and magical tradition trained and specialized in hunting and killing various specialized Darklands menaces. I'd give examples, but every single example I can think of is WOTC exclusive. I don't think we have Beholds or Mindflayers anymore. I don't know...Darklands Dragons. Do we get to have Fomorans the two-headed evil giants?

Perhaps they were the first of the Elves to realize what a threat to the surface the Darklands posed and took it upon themselves to create a bulwark agains the darkness. Perhaps many were corrupted by the horrors below and yes, went renegade and became evil. However most fight a fight agains the darkness alone, unaided, and unknown to almost the entire world.

That, to me, is a cool heroic spin that makes them special and cool and unique (as far as I know). I don't want my post deleted but to me the thing that made Drow cool was how cool they look, not because they were evil. I never cared about actual Drow lore personally. Something something Lloth something spiders idk. Then in PF2E something something Rovagug that's it. THey have like 2 lines of background.

[Ectar]

Karmagator wrote:

I don't know about "generally good drow". Not all drow being evil is absolutely a good move, because they are still people. Going straight into the opposite direction? That would turn a lot of people off, probably me included (unless the new lore was extremely cool). Drow are popular largely because they are one of the big antagonistic forces. In recent decades, fiction has taken a big step into the direction of villains being cool and different and heroes being somewhat mundane.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they took the goblin and gnoll route of:

"These are the playable version of this existing monster creature. They're from a specific part of our world, and while their specific culture has some of the trappings of the creature's wider culture at-large, it has been shifted towards good or neutral for use as a playable ancestry.
It implicitly does not apply to the entirety of the culture, but it can also be generalized to a member of that ancestry from pretty much anywhere with the Lore-guidelines provided."

The existence of good Drow (or goblins or gnolls) as playable characters doesn't necessitate an overhaul of the ancestry's entire history or culture.
As said by Karmagator: they're interesting because most of the members of that culture are evil, not in spite of it.