Cavern Elf vs. Drow


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion

51 to 70 of 70 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I know they're not rumors. Because my group is about to play Second Darkness using PF2 rules.
But of course I realize no ORC drow. etc, etc


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Captain Morgan wrote:
I haven't found the Koriah Azmeren mention from Sky King's Tomb yet, but given that adventure was published under OGL they can at least indirectly reference the drow article, which I assume they would not be able to do in ORC adventures.

Check the References at the end of the wiki article I linked to above. It gives specific page numbers for every book in which Koriah Azmeren is mentioned.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Captain Morgan wrote:

No need to search more; I found the twitch stream where James mentions it. Check out the 20 minute mark.

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/1831877743

Aaaaand I was wrong. His statement there makes it much clearer that they do have an in-world unreliable narrator thing, though that article doesn't sound likeit tmentions drow specifically. Sorry gang. I'll say it louder for the people at the back.

CAPTAIN MORGAN WAS WRONG.

Gonna duck in here to lightly tap my "there should be an authoritative centralized official FAQ that covers a few wide-reaching major canon changes" drum again for those of us who can't, and others of us who don't know about, and the few of us who were completely either off-planet or buried underground for the last few years and couldn't, watch hour-long uncaptioned* Twitch streams that contain a few minutes of crucial context about very frequently asked-after major canon changes.

Just very lightly. A tiiiiny little bomp.

* YouTube link with robot captions available


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Garrett Guillotte wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:

No need to search more; I found the twitch stream where James mentions it. Check out the 20 minute mark.

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/1831877743

Aaaaand I was wrong. His statement there makes it much clearer that they do have an in-world unreliable narrator thing, though that article doesn't sound likeit tmentions drow specifically. Sorry gang. I'll say it louder for the people at the back.

CAPTAIN MORGAN WAS WRONG.

Gonna duck in here to lightly tap my "there should be an authoritative centralized official FAQ that covers a few wide-reaching major canon changes" drum again for those of us who can't, and others of us who don't know about, and the few of us who were completely either off-planet or buried underground for the last few years and couldn't, watch hour-long uncaptioned Twitch streams that contain a few minutes of crucial context about very frequently asked-after major canon changes.

Just very lightly. A tiiiiny little bomp.

I would like a, and this is now the story so far

Paizo Employee Creative Director

9 people marked this as a favorite.
Garrett Guillotte wrote:

Gonna duck in here to lightly tap my "there should be an authoritative centralized official FAQ that covers a few wide-reaching major canon changes" drum again for those of us who can't, and others of us who don't know about, and the few of us who were completely either off-planet or buried underground for the last few years and couldn't, watch hour-long uncaptioned* Twitch streams that contain a few minutes of crucial context about very frequently asked-after major canon changes.

Just very lightly. A tiiiiny little bomp.

* YouTube link with robot captions available

Alas, that's a complicated and pretty much undoable ask for us at this time—the remaster wreaked havoc on our production schedule and we're still in the process of recovering and catching up to the normal flow of work, which doesn't really have much room for an official thing like this from the creative team even during standard times. :(

We're like sharks. If we stop swimming (working on creating the next products to be released) we sink and drown!


9 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Please keep a healthy balance of work, sanity, and health. I prefer the wonderful folks at Paizo not drown.


James Jacobs wrote:

Alas, that's a complicated and pretty much undoable ask for us at this time—the remaster wreaked havoc on our production schedule and we're still in the process of recovering and catching up to the normal flow of work, which doesn't really have much room for an official thing like this from the creative team even during standard times. :(

We're like sharks. If we stop swimming (working on creating the next products to be released) we sink and drown!

Alas, indeed. Thanks for taking the time to consider it.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

This community probably can help on that note.
Probably in the lost omens forum. I can start a thread asking the community what is the story so far for the setting?
And James can jump in to tell us we are all way off track lol.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

10 people marked this as a favorite.
Bluemagetim wrote:

This community probably can help on that note.

Probably in the lost omens forum. I can start a thread asking the community what is the story so far for the setting?
And James can jump in to tell us we are all way off track lol.

This is precisely the type of thing that's a great community project. And I'm not really the one to jump in to tell you if you're off track anymore... that's a Luis Loza thing, since he's the creative director for the rules and lore. I'm just the creative director for adventures these days.


10 people marked this as a favorite.

I have to say, I genuinely prefer PF2's use of unreliable narrators, rather than the book telling you exactly who is living in the scary place under the ground or what exactly happens when you die or whatever.

Like it's okay if people reading the books and running games don't know what exactly happened to the Drow when they were in old books and aren't in the new books. There are lots of things that have come up in Pathfinder in the past that have not come up since then, and no one knows what's going to come up the the future. There's little to be gained from telling people "here are the things that we will never talk about again."


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Like the interesting thing about PF2 Drow is that you have stat blocks and even examples of NOCs and archetypes they could offer PCs, so any GM wanting to do a big Drow campaign in the darklands really can, with very little fear that some new book is going to come out and say “no, that’s not what can happen with these characters!” Like just make up names for your under dark cities and you really have nothing else to worry about. I get that no new adventures will be written with them and some Darklands stuff will supersede vast tales of their empires, but there is more material currently to tell an in-depth Drow story set in PF2 Golarion than there is Kholo material, Iruxi material, gripping material, or really even halfling material not set in Cheliax or their colonies. Even the Sekmin feel like they needed a big PF2 revival before finding out they were taking over most of the darklands. There are a lot of great new stories I look forward to finding out more about.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
arcady wrote:

I never liked the idea of the deep underground being full of dangerous psionic monsters and evil elves.

I prefer my center of the earth to bull of barbarians in loincloths and bikinis riding dinosaurs and fighting ancient serpentine mystic cults.

So the idea that the barbarians in loincloths might be elvish works for me.

And even if the reason is legal; I am so glad to see the 'Curse of Ham' get tossed out of the game I prefer.

I misread this and now I can't get the image of a Velociraptor in a swimsuit out of my head.


Helvellyn wrote:
arcady wrote:

I prefer my center of the earth to bull of barbarians in loincloths and bikinis riding dinosaurs and fighting ancient serpentine mystic cults...

...I am so glad to see the 'Curse of Ham' get tossed out of the game I prefer.

I misread this and now I can't get the image of a Velociraptor in a swimsuit out of my head.

The OG "Dark Elf," Eol from the Silmarillion, was Teleri. He was called that because he could see in the dark, was friends with dwarves, and later made some morally terrible choices. It had nothing to do with skin color.

Now I know the drow are drawn from D&D and not him. And if there's any connection, it's probably because Gygax or someone in his group took the title and creatively ran with it in this very different direction. But the point being, it's simple enough for any GM or campaign to get back to the original "dark elf" meaning. Use it much more simply to refer to a morally dubious elf. Of any sub-ancestry. I am fully, full throatedly, supportive of dumping the whole 'ancestry-related evil' thing. Someone wants evil underground elves, just have them be evil elves that live underground. No uniquely villanesque ancestry needed.

And an aside, huge thumbs up for the idea of Golarion hollow earth.


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

I wonder... does Norse mythology predate Tolkien?


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Ed Reppert wrote:
I wonder... does Norse mythology predate Tolkien?

I...Are you serious?


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Benjamin Tait wrote:
Ed Reppert wrote:
I wonder... does Norse mythology predate Tolkien?
I...Are you serious?

Almost definitely not. Reppert seems more likely to be responding to the claim that Tolkien's dark elf is the "original" despite Norse myth being, well, right there.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

There's a real probability that the "dark elves" in the Prose Edda were just a poetic way of describing what eventually became Dwarves via Tolkien.

Like if you wanted to say "our dark elves are from Norse Mythology, not D&D" to make that bit stick, you kind of not have to have Dwarves around. Like that Amalur game that Curt Schilling defrauded the state of Rhode Island to get made- the main fantasy peoples were Humans, Elves, and Gnomes.

Dark Archive

Captain Morgan wrote:

No need to search more; I found the twitch stream where James mentions it. Check out the 20 minute mark.

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/1831877743

Aaaaand I was wrong. His statement there makes it much clearer that they do have an in-world unreliable narrator thing, though that article doesn't sound likeit tmentions drow specifically. Sorry gang. I'll say it louder for the people at the back.

CAPTAIN MORGAN WAS WRONG.

*small fist pump*

Possible Cabbage wrote:

Overworm

I have to say, I genuinely prefer PF2's use of unreliable narrators, rather than the book telling you exactly who is living in the scary place under the ground or what exactly happens when you die or whatever.

Like it's okay if people reading the books and running games don't know what exactly happened to the Drow when they were in old books and aren't in the new books. There are lots of things that have come up in Pathfinder in the past that have not come up since then, and no one knows what's going to come up the the future. There's little to be gained from telling people "here are the things that we will never talk about again."

A more nuanced version of my original take would be that I like unreliability in the narration, when it's at least reasonably clear to the IRL audience that the narrator might be unreliable.

In the case of Koriah Azmeren, it's not that she is merely incorrect or uninformed; it's that she lied to the audience without any ability for the audience to ferret out the existence of the lie. Which I fully understand is almost certainly because she wasn't meant to have been lying originally, but it still rankles. But I also understand that my feelings on the matter aren't likely to change, so Ima step out so as not to continue to stir the pot.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
James Jacobs wrote:
Bluemagetim wrote:

This community probably can help on that note.

Probably in the lost omens forum. I can start a thread asking the community what is the story so far for the setting?
And James can jump in to tell us we are all way off track lol.
This is precisely the type of thing that's a great community project. And I'm not really the one to jump in to tell you if you're off track anymore... that's a Luis Loza thing, since he's the creative director for the rules and lore. I'm just the creative director for adventures these days.

Since we have to do this anyway to try and maintain PathfinderWiki, I've been tracking many of them at a high level, adding to it as I come across them, at User:Oznogon/Mapping of canon changes.

We established a new policy for documenting canon changes a few weeks ago. On articles where there's been a significant canon change, we've started documenting them in detail on Meta pages; on articles where the entire subject has been retconned, we added a banner calling this out. For instance, here's Meta:Drow, where I recently included a link to this discussion and an edited version of the transcript for the video Captain Morgan referred to.

The problem is that we can only document what we know about, and what we have the time to document. Implicit canon changes that occur only through removal are difficult to spot and document. They require a comprehensive individual knowledge of not only what's current but all of what's past, and are subject to interpretations that might not reflect intent. So we often rely on forum posts and video statements from Paizo staff to clarify, which for some subjects (including this one!) are also not always timely or reliable.

So we have to do it anyway, but as an unofficial volunteer project it'll always lag behind—sometimes for years, until/unless someone finds out about the change and makes it on the wiki.

(Oblig. wiki account request link and Discord link.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Ectar wrote:
In the case of Koriah Azmeren, it's not that she is merely incorrect or uninformed; it's that she lied to the audience without any ability for the audience to ferret out the existence of the lie. Which I fully understand is almost certainly because she wasn't meant to have been lying originally, but it still rankles. But I also understand that my feelings on the matter aren't likely to change, so Ima step out so as not to continue to stir the pot.

The drow are a bit special, because they are one of the few "full retcon" that Paizo have done. Koriah being an unreliable narrator isn't meant to "fool" the players into thinking that the drow never existed in the first place, because drows appeard in AP and pathfinder product beyond just the story she relayed. They interacted with player groups and all that, them not existing anymore in golarion is an undeniable retcon. I think that what Paizo is trying to do by stating that she "lied about them all along" is to keep a continuity in golarion, by making it so that her "leak" still happenned, and it still had consequences, except that she was lying all along.

Compare to the old "goblin/orcs/gnolls/whatever are always evil", into the current "evil races don't exist". For this point, it's also clear that Paizo changed their stance, but it can be completely explained away without having to change golarion. None of the old AP/material required all goblins to always be born evil, because the players facing evil goblins here aren't a proof that the other tribe 10 miles away is also villainous. In this case, simply stipulating that the old books were written from a human avistani POV cleanly explain it all away.

Basically, what I meant to say is that Koriah "lying" isn't meant to be directed to the audience to justify drows not being there anymore, as that lie isn't enought to explain drows away when the players fought them or even played as them in PF1. It's here I think mostly to keep some of the consequences of the second darkness AP, even if it's flipped on it's head as it's now false info. Paizo do use unreliable narrator to justify some retcon, but I don't think that it's the case here.

51 to 70 of 70 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Second Edition / General Discussion / Cavern Elf vs. Drow All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.