PF2R Drow

[OceanshieldwolPF 2.5]

Also, the concept of warped purple elves who definitely do not only live underground and have equal opportunity-archies while wearing sensible and sedate clothing but who definitely have a zealotry-level desire for Alkenstarian gunnes, Arcadian beastguns, and Numerian weaponry and technology in general (and engage in super…cutthroat…arms dealing and smuggling) could be a great way to give rise to post-Gap Apostaeans.

[Ruzza]

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Also, the concept of warped purple elves who definitely do not only live underground and have equal opportunity-archies while wearing sensible and sedate clothing but who definitely have a zealotry-level desire for Alkenstarian gunnes, Arcadian beastguns, and Numerian weaponry and technology in general (and engage in super…cutthroat…arms dealing and smuggling) could be a great way to give rise to post-Gap Apostaeans.

I can't speak for the design team, but I imagine that there were at least a few "Okay, can we do... this?" moments that fell to...

1. "Too close to drow, not safe legally."
or
2. "Way too different from drow and not enough time to develop it concretely to protect us."

I can't say for sure, but I imagine that entirely removing drow was pretty low on the list of things they wanted to do.

[OceanshieldwolPF 2.5]

Ruzza wrote:

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Also, the concept of warped purple elves who definitely do not only live underground and have equal opportunity-archies while wearing sensible and sedate clothing but who definitely have a zealotry-level desire for Alkenstarian gunnes, Arcadian beastguns, and Numerian weaponry and technology in general (and engage in super…cutthroat…arms dealing and smuggling) could be a great way to give rise to post-Gap Apostaeans.

I can't speak for the design team, but I imagine that there were at least a few "Okay, can we do... this?" moments that fell to...

1. "Too close to drow, not safe legally."
or
2. "Way too different from drow and not enough time to develop it concretely to protect us."

I can't say for sure, but I imagine that entirely removing drow was pretty low on the list of things they wanted to do.

What the hell does any of what I wrote have to do with…who? What’s a “drow”?

[Rysky]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

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?

Ah, gotcha.

If I had to guess: why not?

Removing Chromatic and Metallic leaves big hole to fill that just moving stuff over wouldn’t quite fill, especially with how niche those other dragons are more or less. And there’s not telling what overhauls those other dragons will review either. A Magma Dragon doesn’t hit the same feel that Red or Diabolic would.

[Squiggit]

magnuskn wrote:

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

Disregarding the legal issues entirely, imo this would be narratively awful and deeply unpleasant. Hard hard hard hard pass.

[Nobunyaga]

For me this is certainly the most bitter pill to swallow of the whole Remaster. Lost Omens: Darklands was probably my most anticipated book, particularly cause I wanted to see more of Paizo's Drow, cause I loved them in Abomination Vaults and Extinction Curse. It's a big loss for the setting, but there's nothing that can be done about it. I understand the decision, as sad as it is, and so I'm not mad at Paizo. Any hard feelings are reserved for a certain other company.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Rysky wrote:

ThePuppyTurtle wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

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.

100% of the lashing out has come from your side. You, in particular, have openly insulted other people numerous times during this conversation. Honestly, how do you have the gall to, in the same thread where you insinuated that I'm a pedophile, claim that other people are being angry and toxic?

You serious?

I didn’t call you a pedophile I called you out on bringing the retconned Deamon of Pedophilia, Folca, into the argument.

What the...?

Folca (The Gaunt Stranger) was basically a mashup of Slenderman and the Child-Catcher from the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. Daemonic Harbinger of abduction, strangers and sweets, with all the unsavory implications that carries.

Paizo wisely made the decision to leave him behind in the shift from 1e to 2e, where he no longer shows up among the list of worshipable Daemonic Harbingers. And good riddance to him, frankly.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Ruzza wrote:

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

Also, the concept of warped purple elves who definitely do not only live underground and have equal opportunity-archies while wearing sensible and sedate clothing but who definitely have a zealotry-level desire for Alkenstarian gunnes, Arcadian beastguns, and Numerian weaponry and technology in general (and engage in super…cutthroat…arms dealing and smuggling) could be a great way to give rise to post-Gap Apostaeans.

I can't speak for the design team, but I imagine that there were at least a few "Okay, can we do... this?" moments that fell to...

1. "Too close to drow, not safe legally."
or
2. "Way too different from drow and not enough time to develop it concretely to protect us."

I can't say for sure, but I imagine that entirely removing drow was pretty low on the list of things they wanted to do.

No, what happened was JJ proposed they axe the drow, and they unanimously agreed to do so. There wasn't even an attempt to make them work based on that statement. Or if there was, it wasn't even proposed as an alternative prior to suggesting they get axed.

[Ruzza]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

No, what happened was JJ proposed they axe the drow, and they unanimously agreed to do so. There wasn't even an attempt to make them work based on that statement. Or if there was, it wasn't even proposed as an alternative prior to suggesting they get axed.

I understand that there are nuances to English and that often two people may see the same statement with different pespectives. However, I feel like you're misrepresenting what James Jacobs said.

James Jacobs wrote:

While the input of lawyers has had an impact on all that we've done in preparing for the Remastered rules, and indeed all of our decisions on how to interpret what we can or shouldn't do with the OGL all the way back to Pathfinder 1's "Burnt Offerings", the decision to just cut drow off and move forward without them was something the creative department at Paizo decided to do. I believe I was the first to moot "let's just cut them out entirely" as an option while we were all trying to be tender and delicate about our options, and that perception was something that the majority (I believe all) of the creative staff embraced—but not without fear and sadness.

To me, that does not read as "everyone was excited to get rid of drow" but rather - "this is the best solution moving forward, even if it is hard."

EDIT: You make it sound as though they're doing this to spite players, when removing content seems to be the last thing they want to do. And their transparency in this matter runs counter to the idea that they're doing this for any strange reasons like "they've always wanted drow gone" or "this is a conspiracy against drow fans."

[Unicore]

Can you imagine spending decades building something up and staking your professional career around, having to make a difficult choice about a beloved part of that work because your creative team tried everything they could to come up with a way to save it, then have the courage to be direct and honest with the fans of the setting about why only to have everything you told them questioned and rejected as you just not being smart enough, creative enough, care enough or be courageous enough to make some choice that just popped into their head, but you spent countless hours agonizing over?

[CorvusMask]

I'm kinda realizing that my overall attitude of "Well, that sucks, oh well, time to move on" affects my reaction to fandom stuff as well.

Overall it also confuses me of how people use any big change as some sort of Rorschach test on company policy politics. Like how someone was basically claiming clearly drow being removed is extension of pathfinder not being as edgy anymore and I'm like "..Really, you think drow are that much more edgier than other things that is in darklands?"

[Pronate11]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Ruzza wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

No, what happened was JJ proposed they axe the drow, and they unanimously agreed to do so. There wasn't even an attempt to make them work based on that statement. Or if there was, it wasn't even proposed as an alternative prior to suggesting they get axed.

I understand that there are nuances to English and that often two people may see the same statement with different pespectives. However, I feel like you're misrepresenting what James Jacobs said.

James Jacobs wrote:

While the input of lawyers has had an impact on all that we've done in preparing for the Remastered rules, and indeed all of our decisions on how to interpret what we can or shouldn't do with the OGL all the way back to Pathfinder 1's "Burnt Offerings", the decision to just cut drow off and move forward without them was something the creative department at Paizo decided to do. I believe I was the first to moot "let's just cut them out entirely" as an option while we were all trying to be tender and delicate about our options, and that perception was something that the majority (I believe all) of the creative staff embraced—but not without fear and sadness.

To me, that does not read as "everyone was excited to get rid of drow" but rather - "this is the best solution moving forward, even if it is hard."

EDIT: You make it sound as though they're doing this to spite players, when removing content seems to be the last thing they want to do. And their transparency in this matter runs counter to the idea that they're doing this for any strange reasons like "they've always wanted drow gone" or "this is a conspiracy against drow fans."

Not exactly. I may not be saying it with the same nuance, but the message is still clear: JJ proposed they axe the Drow, it was met with unanimous decision, even if regrettably. It says it right there in the quote you posted. They didn't say "We tried and failed, so...

I've said this before, if the Drow where savable, why on earth wouldn't they save them? From a business perspective, from a marketing perspective, from what appears to be a personal perspective, if they could have saved the drow, why spend time reworking the substantially less popular duergar when they could have spent that time reworking Drow? Why are you assuming malice, or at least monumental laziness when the legal option has much more evidence?

[CorvusMask]

Also it kinda sounds like none of the other proposals resonated strongly with other devs. Like nobody had some sort of magic solution for how to change drows to be 100% ogl free while also being drows that didn't include major retcons already.

[The Raven Black]

I truly deeply believe that any change big enough to make Golarion drows immune to Hasbro lawyers would have also made them unrecognizable / unpalatable to drow fans.

[Ganigumo]

I've never been particularly attached to drow, but since Paizo is moving away from "monolithic evil societies" the concept of "evil elves" stops making sense in the setting.

With that said I don't agree that moving away from monolithic evil societies is necessarily a good thing. Its definitely a valid design direction, but I've never been fond of it.

I've always found those types of settings less interesting. Not that I'm saying everything should be black and white, but without anything being good or evil it all becomes a muddled mess and to me something is lost. I know plenty of other people love that kind of setting though.

What tends to bother me the most is that many of these settings are built on top of moral ambiguity, or things that are "morally grey", which I tend to just view as nonsense. Actions are either good or evil, and morality isn't an equation. As an example a serial killer who takes care of orphans isn't morally neutral. Like yeah, they did a lot of good taking care of orphans, but they're also a serial killer. The two things don't cancel each other out. These types of scenarios can add complexity and depth to characters but to me its never as though provoking as it seems to be for others.

There's a whole lot more I could ramble on about, like how moral relativism is bad for fictional settings because you can always invent a hypothetical society or viewpoint that inverts the morality and makes morality pointless (although it clearly isn't), or how any amount of analysis beneath the surface level view should quell the parallel between "monolithic evil societies" and racist views of other societies but I think I've rambled enough.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

The Raven Black wrote:

Actually they did : "I believe I was the first to moot "let's just cut them out entirely" as an option while we were all trying to be tender and delicate about our options,"

So, they were considering other more tender and delicate options until JJ proposed this.
Saying otherwise is, to say the least, a real misrepresentation of what was said.

If it was a genuine consideration, then it wouldn't have been dropped from contention at the first mention of axing them entirely.

At best, I suspect they ultimately believed they had no other option prior to the mention of axing them, because if they did, they probably would have went with it, as they have for other OGL creatures, and we know they have done so because JJ has mentioned a few of them already.

Even so, it doesn't change what I stated as the course of action they took and the reasoning behind it, which is ultimately what I was clarifying, not that they actually had a choice between two things.

[Cori Marie]

You weren't in the room, were you? Nothing James said implied that they immediately came to that consensus. They had been working on more tender and delicate solutions. None were working in a way that was tenable. James put out the idea of removing them. At some point, a consensus was reached that that was the best path forward. He didn't say it happened immediately, just that it happened. You are arguing in remarkably bad faith, under the assumption that this is what Paizo wanted all along, and not a hard decision they decided was best for the future of the game.

[PossibleCabbage]

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Folca (The Gaunt Stranger) was basically a mashup of Slenderman and the Child-Catcher from the film Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. Daemonic Harbinger of abduction, strangers and sweets, with all the unsavory implications that carries.

Paizo wisely made the decision to leave him behind in the shift from 1e to 2e, where he no longer shows up among the list of worshipable Daemonic Harbingers. And good riddance to him, frankly.

Paizo actually yeeted Folca out of the season almost immediately after people got the Book of the Damned and noticed that in addition to what you pointed out, Folca also granted the spell "Unnatural Lust" through his daemonic harbinger boon.

I believe the official position is that there are more gruesome and horrific things in the Abyss etc. than Paizo is willing to talk about, essentially things that do not clear the "Pathfinder baseline" might exist but Paizo will not talk about them without appropriate context and warning.

Like there's probably a Demon Lord whose thing is autosarcophagy, but that's never going to make it into a Pathfinder book either.

To bring this back around to the Drow, though it's not quite as big as the Abyss, the Darklands are *HUGE* so it's entirely consistent that they all just moved to a specific Vault, and Paizo is just never going to go there.

[Ruzza]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Ruzza wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

But feel free to assume my stance on the matter or my stance on their statement as them, you want to talk about disingenuous, ball is in your court, Pot. The Kettle is waiting.

What.

You put words in my posts that weren't there and acted like that was what I said. A literal strawman. You assumed my interpretation of their statement as something I never said. I never said they were happy to get rid of them like you seemed to think I did.

I understand that there are nuances to English and that often two people may see the same statement with different pespectives. However, I feel like you're misrepresenting what I said.

Ruzza wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

No, what happened was JJ proposed they axe the drow, and they unanimously agreed to do so. There wasn't even an attempt to make them work based on that statement. Or if there was, it wasn't even proposed as an alternative prior to suggesting they get axed.

I understand that there are nuances to English and that often two people may see the same statement with different pespectives. However, I feel like you're misrepresenting what James Jacobs said.

James Jacobs wrote:

While the input of lawyers has had an impact on all that we've done in preparing for the Remastered rules, and indeed all of our decisions on how to interpret what we can or shouldn't do with the OGL all the way back to Pathfinder 1's "Burnt Offerings", the decision to just cut drow off and move forward without them was something the creative department at Paizo decided to do. I believe I was the first to moot "let's just cut them out entirely" as an option while we were all trying to be tender and delicate about our options, and that perception was something that the majority (I believe all) of the creative staff embraced—but not without fear and sadness.

To me, that does not read as "everyone was excited to get rid of drow" but rather - "this is the best solution moving forward, even if it is hard."

EDIT: You make it sound as though they're doing this to spite players, when removing content seems to be the last thing they want to do. And their transparency in this matter runs counter to the idea that they're doing this for any strange reasons like "they've always wanted drow gone" or "this is a conspiracy against drow fans."

To me, that does not read as "putting words in your posts" but rather "you may be misrepresenting the words of James Jacobs."

EDIT: I often hedge my bets when conversing, if you notice - it doesn't sit right with me to state with any authority how someone outside of myself thinks or feels. Often using words like "as though" or "to me" to show how I may interpret your statements.

[The Raven Black]

no good scallywag wrote:

Ruzza wrote:

EDIT: You make it sound as though they're doing this to spite players, when removing content seems to be the last thing they want to do. And their transparency in this matter runs counter to the idea that they're doing this for any strange reasons like "they've always wanted drow gone" or "this is a conspiracy against drow fans."

I've been playing Pathfinder since the day it began, and have played GMd nearly every single weekend since it began, and been to every single GenCon playing in Society since it began, and been to PaizoCon. I've been quite the fanboy and consumed all the news and such over the years.

Drow have not been a favorite with the devs for a long time-for various reasons. So yes, the sentiment "against" drow has existed for a very long time.

But I don't believe they are punishing drow fans, that's ridiculous. They're just taking the easy way out, to my small chagrin, but I'm just going to move on at this point and continue playing, keeping the drow in my personal game (which don't play a huge role anyway and share power in the darklands with the serpent folk).

Also, I have nor idea about the decision being James Jacobs' move. I think it's common knowledge that many think he had something to do with the lack of dwarf content for years, and there is some evidence of that, but I don't remember him specifically down-playing drow in particular. Whatever the case, he's one of my favorite devs, and he doesn't call the shots in a bubble, although I am getting tired of all the sandpoint stuff coming out, especially another AP (:/) when there are plenty of other areas that could use an AP (I'm looking at you, Galt!).

EberronHoward wrote:

And 'pretending that a group of people were never there' is equally problematic for marginalized people.

100%

As far as the dragon changes, I'm fine with them. And I LOVE dragons; I've got two tattoos of them and know all the lore of all kinds of dragons. I like Paizo's new dragons and think their...

It is extremely easy to say they are "taking the easy way out" when it's not your job and those of your fellow coworkers that are at stake.

You might also want to read James Jacobs' own posts on this thread to gather a better understanding.

[Cori Marie]

no good scallywag wrote:

Ruzza wrote:

EDIT: You make it sound as though they're doing this to spite players, when removing content seems to be the last thing they want to do. And their transparency in this matter runs counter to the idea that they're doing this for any strange reasons like "they've always wanted drow gone" or "this is a conspiracy against drow fans."

I've been playing Pathfinder since the day it began, and have played GMd nearly every single weekend since it began, and been to every single GenCon playing in Society since it began, and been to PaizoCon. I've been quite the fanboy and consumed all the news and such over the years.

Drow have not been a favorite with the devs for a long time-for various reasons. So yes, the sentiment "against" drow has existed for a very long time.

But I don't believe they are punishing drow fans, that's ridiculous. They're just taking the easy way out, to my small chagrin, but I'm just going to move on at this point and continue playing, keeping the drow in my personal game (which don't play a huge role anyway and share power in the darklands with the serpent folk).

Also, I have nor idea about the decision being James Jacobs' move. I think it's common knowledge that many think he had something to do with the lack of dwarf content for years, and there is some evidence of that, but I don't remember him specifically down-playing drow in particular. Whatever the case, he's one of my favorite devs, and he doesn't call the shots in a bubble, although I am getting tired of all the sandpoint stuff coming out, especially another AP (:/) when there are plenty of other areas that could use an AP (I'm looking at you, Galt!).

EberronHoward wrote:

And 'pretending that a group of people were never there' is equally problematic for marginalized people.

100%

As far as the dragon changes, I'm fine with them. And I LOVE dragons; I've got two tattoos of them and know all the lore of all kinds of dragons. I like Paizo's new dragons and think their...

Galt got a high level adventure that concluded the main plot point. There's no plot left for an AP to tie up.

[The Raven Black]

Ravingdork wrote:

Thanks for the reminder, FallenDabus. I had forgotten about the doxxing accusations because it seemed to be scarcely a footnote compared to everything else going on at that time.

FallenDabus wrote:

I will note that many of the people who you are currently arguing with and disagree with your definition of censorship were quite upset about it.

Odd. I didn't realize I was in an argument with anyone. I've merely been stating my own opinions and thoughts on recent events.

FWIW one can completely have been stating their own opinions and thoughts AND be in an argument with other people. Actually, I believe that is pretty much the cornerstone of arguments.

[Jonathan Morgantini]

Locked for flags.

[Jonathan Morgantini]

Dealt with off topic, harassing, baity posts and quotes. There have been multiple warnings on this thread already. It will not reopen.