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How much hate in the heart! :P
Well is not exactly that D&D owners (Hasbro) doesn't allow anyone to use pathfinder anymore what they made was trying to create a greedy contratual trick in order to get money from those who uses D&D as basis for many of their products. But off-course that this goes wrong and just creates a mistrusting between all its partners that no more want to risk their own products linking it to D&D.
Anyway for Golarion setting this was more like a speedup in their natural go away from D&D aspects than a real sudden breakdown. PF2 used the OGL more to keep the familiarity than a compatibility between the systems and was a very good license in the market to use during a long way.
IMO the OGL crisis was way more impactful for other settings that uses 3.5/5e rules than it was for Paizo and Golarion setting because most of them don't have a rapid rules alternatives as the Golarion have with PF2.
Anyway this wasn't completely bad at all. The OGL mistrusting open the doors for D&D alternatives once again, show PF2 as already mature alternative and boosted creativity in many settings designers to think outside the box that D&D left them accustomed to.
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Unless I missed something Hasbro/ WOTC aren't forcing the Paizo to drop the SRD, its just Paizo and many others no longer trust Hasbro/WOTC to keep the SRD content free to use. Paizo is choosing to make the ORC because of the OGL which a lot of businesses have used in their own work could not longer be trusted to stay available.
The backlash to the OGL change was massive and Hasbro/WOTC rolled back the changes but the damage is done.
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The hold-overs from DnD were a crutch, the OGL crisis took away that crutch but it turns out Pathfinder is fine on its own.
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I'd like to say that I stopped spending money on Hasbro/WotC products due to this whole OGL fiasco, but the truth is that I pretty much stopped doing that years ago.
Due to their products being overly hyped and lacking substance, they've been on the outs with me for a long time, while Paizo just keeps crushing it.
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I fully changed to Pathfinder in 2008 and have never looked back.
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I changed over to PF during the 4E push to stuff that system down our throats without regard for whether we liked it.
I tried 5E and liked it for a while. They at least tried to make 5E with more input from the community and I had been playing PF a long, long time and was looking for something new.
Came back to PF2 when it came out. The characters weren't as fun to build, but PF2 is far more DM friendly edition and the characters are good enough. So not more WotC products. I don't spend on game products if I'm not playing the game.
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I mean... if it was published before remaster you can still use it?
Yes you can use normally.
The problem is that the OGL became an untrustable license so release new content using it means that you risk that someday the WotC could "update" it to a new license that could be harm for you.
So most major publishers are being reticent about releasing new material using the OGL and unless you use some very creative contractual loophole, that means you can't make material using D&D without risking being dragged into the OGL.
Probably that why Thomas Jones is complaining. Because Paizo probably won't do 5e conversions anymore like it did for Abomination Vaults and Kingmaker due the risk of Hasbro/WotC change the license in some way like "now you need to pay royalty for me" or "we no more allow you to sell books using our rule set" or anything like this.
Hasbro tried to change its license to a version of Creative Commons but the trust was already broken and even with this license it has its own legal problems and limitations and was used basically to try to create a distraction.
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That said, as much as I sneer at what happened with the OGL, I hold WotC and Hasbro entirely blameless in the matter of protecting their IP from parties who are no longer part of an agreement to use it. They have to do that, or they don't have any IP at all. It's not (inherently) acrimonious or mean-spirited - it's the legal process of two companies ending a licensing agreement.
I understand that side, but it's still a shot in the foot!
OGL was not created because WotC was a benevolent company. It was created as an attempt to standardize the TTRPG market, which at the time, practically each setting had its own system and was almost always incompatible with other systems.
The OGL releasing the D&D rules as open changed everything by allowing any setting creator to use the D&D rules as a base, creators no longer needed to develop a rules system and could just focus on the lore of their settings, Saving time and money, players didn't need to learn a whole new set of rules every time they found a cool new setting, thus making their lives easier and even allowing for cross-use of content.
This meant that the success of D&D became something much greater in the TTRPGs market, practically overshadowing all other systems and in practice despite the stagnation in the development of the rules, everyone benefited from it, this mainly included Hasbro/WotC.
So much so that this was one of the factors that made 4e a failure! Because in addition to the big change that drove many players away, nothing was compatible with D&D 4e anymore, the settings designers were restricted to keeping their products for 3.5, and players in the end did not adhere to the new version of the system in large numbers, and this made Hasbro go back to OGL in 5e.
So as much as she wanted to defend her IP (which was not at risk because the name D&D and much of its authorial content not linked to the rules were never OGL), it was in practice a repetition of the same mistake she made in 4e along with a breach of trust with its partners and players by trying to prevent them from refusing the new license.
it's the legal process of two companies ending a licensing agreement.Which no one would have minded. But the actual license included that pesky word "perpetual", which Hasbro unilaterally decided didn't mean "perpetual" after all.
And it wasn't "two companies". It was every TTRPG company that had ever used anything that Hasbro had put under that license. Most of the 3rd party TTRPG industry, in other words.
Perhaps it would have gone largely unscathed if Hasbro had restricted itself to attacking only VTTs with the new license. But the greed was too great and it ended up attacking the entire industry, as you said, by trying to make the license retroactive and even by placing control clauses on materials made using the license.
And yet I have my doubts, because even if it just created a new license without retroactively, just focusing on attacking VTTs, several players and companies would possibly refuse to use the new version of D&D with this license precisely because they already use some VTT that wasn't from Hasbro and have more options that didn't depend so much on Hasbro to play online.
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...
That said, as much as I sneer at what happened with the OGL, I hold WotC and Hasbro entirely blameless in the matter of protecting their IP from parties who are no longer part of an agreement to use it.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Is there someone who is actually arguing that the OGL material is all public domain?
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I never cracked the D&D 5e PHB because Mearls hired some of the worst abusers in the entire TTRPG culture to work on that edition- only edition I've never played.
But a lot of the reason for the ORC is so that other publishers can use the things that Paizo is licensing through the ORC, that were previously available to others through the OGL. Paizo (like WotC before them) likes it when third parties make stuff for their game.
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......Mostly true, and yet, 100% irrelevant.
The OGL is a licensing agreement. Paizo was, for many years, comfortable publishing material under that agreement. Quite recently, Hasbro made an ill-advised move to try to retroactively alter the agreement. Even after failure, Paizo was now aware that Hasbro was an unreliable partner and potentially treacherous partner to be in such an agreement with, and so they ended their participation in the agreement.
As a result, they have to stop using licensed IP in future products. If Paizo continued to use licensed IP in future products, they would be open to lawsuits that Hasbro MUST pursue, or lose the right to their IP. This is not a thing that Hasbro can legally opt to do, because of obligations to their owners.
Any history and individuals involved is irrelevant. Feel however you want to about any of it, what I've described is the cold, hard legal fact.
YuriP, the motives and virtues of WotC, the follies of edition transitions, etc., yes, might all be true, or at least a valid way of looking at events, but none of that impacts the legality of the matter.
Dancing Wind, I, too, think that it's a fun bit of trivia that the lawyer that initially drafted the OGL is now working with another company to draft the ORC, but that doesn't actually affect the legal situation between Hasbro and Paizo. Paizo had been publishing material drawing from IP licensed via the OGL. They decided to discontinue with the OGL as a result of last year's events. That's a technical description. If you want to reframe it into a saga, feel free to do that. I think it's a great story. Arguing rhetoric against the technicalities is kind of an odd way to approach it, though.
Yes, these are the legal consequences and we are not saying anything against them, not that what Hasbro did is outside their rights, or that Paizo was wrong to exit a license that proved unreliable after trying to maneuver the license retroactively.
We were commenting on the consequences of this!
That commercially and for the company's image and reliability within the TTRPGs market was considerable damage. Which won't end Hasbro/WotC or D&D, but in the end it caused more setbacks than benefits.
The fact that you have a right does not mean that exercising that right is not necessarily the best choice, not to mention that the form also matters.
And the topic itself is about this, it started with someone declaring their dissatisfaction with the fact that the Golariom setting will probably no longer have a future within D&D and us remembering that this was all the result of decisions, so far disastrous, on the part of Hasbro which basically undermined any 3rd party alternative setting in D&D, not just Golarion and that in the end for Paizo the situation wasn't even that bad as it was already largely working without using most of the WotC IP protected by the OGL, which it just needed to make some adjustments to get out of the license and already had a ready and mature system to run the setting, but unfortunately for other settings this is not true, they ended up in a situation where they basically needed to start everything from 0, either creating their own system, whether using another system like PF2 and changing its license to ORC at the same time they also needed to review its content to not upload anything that could be used as a reference that was copied from OGL.
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. Is there someone who is actually arguing that the OGL material is all public domain?I am mad as Hell about what D&D won't let pathfinder use any more. This is going to throw off the continuity of the world of Golarion one of the richest and most detailed fantasy settings of all time. I have been buying D&D products for about 40 years now, but they won't be getting a single penny from me ever again!This. The OP. Thomas is angry that "D&D" (Hasbro/WotC) won't "let" "Pathfinder" (Paizo) use its IP any more. I'm trying to clarify that Paizo no longer has the legal right to publish that material, and Hasbro must protect its right to that material. The proximate cause for that is Paizo's decision to leave the OGL, though I think we all agree that their reasons for doing so were justified, to say the least.
There are plenty of reasons to be upset at Hasbro in this whole debacle, but Hasbro can't just decide one day to not be meanie-poopie-heads and pinkie-promise that they'll let Paizo play with their toys forever. It's a bit more complex than that.
Oh, I see. I had read the OP as being upset that Hasbro tried to alter the OGL agreement ex post facto rather than upset that, having rejected the OGL, Paizo was no longer able to use the OGL material. Now that you point it out, I can see that you he latter interpretation makes sense.
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The OGL is a licensing agreement. Paizo was, for many years, comfortable publishing material under that agreement. Quite recently, Hasbro made an ill-advised move to try to retroactively alter the agreement. Even after failure, Paizo was now aware that Hasbro was an unreliable partner and potentially treacherous partner to be in such an agreement with, and so they ended their participation in the agreement.
Unreliable and treacherous... but you don't assign any malice?
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Seems like this topic might be past it's prime.
Beat the rush and get out now while the back-and-forth is just bickering about tone and semantics, and as of yet merely teeters on the cusp of full-scale ad hominem attacks. Little of value will likely be lost that wasn't going to get pruned in the morning when the mods get in.
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Yes, these are the legal consequences and we are not saying anything against them, not that what Hasbro did is outside their rights, or that Paizo was wrong to exit a license that proved unreliable after trying to maneuver the license retroactively.
We were commenting on the consequences of this!
That commercially and for the company's image and reliability within the TTRPGs market was considerable damage. Which won't end Hasbro/WotC or D&D, but in the end it caused more setbacks than benefits.Actually, the OP framed this whole discussion as if Hasbro not letting Paizo use their IP was a mean-spirited decision, or even an intended consequence of what Hasbro did. I pointed out that this was not the case. Then you responded to me with "I understand, but" and then ignored my post and said a bunch of stuff that wasn't related to what I said.
The fact that you have a right does not mean that exercising that right is not necessarily the best choice, not to mention that the form also matters.Actually, most rights come with obligations. When it comes to property, many of those obligations come in the form of maintenance. If you own something, and you don't care for it, in some instances, it can be considered neglect or abandonment. That's how IP works. You have to maintain it, or it's not yours any more.
In this case, it's not even relevant, because Paizo saw the situation with the OGL and left of their own free will, taking the proactive approach of excising OGL material themselves, even after Hasbro surrendered. The form of Hasbro enforcing their own IP, in this case, is nothing. They're not trying to run Paizo off. At this point, I'm sure they would prefer if Paizo stayed, for the same reason that the OGL originally existed for. Hasbro isn't doing this. Paizo is. Yes, for important reasons, but it is still their action.
And the topic itself is about this,I know what the topic is about. I just quoted that entire...
No I'm just saying since the beginning that the fact that we probably won't get anymore things from Golarion's setting into D&D is a consequence of the Hasbro's decision during the early of last year when they tried to change license retroactively.
Then I added my own commentary to the topic that for Paizo this was less impactful than it was for many other settings due the existence of PF2 and how this system is already a lot outside the D&D's IP and its changes was minimal in comparison to other settings need to do.
And my 3rd point is that the fact that's if the Hasbro is right or not legally when they try to change the contract to protect the IP don't really matters in face of the undesired consequences that they had to deal.
So don't need to be harsh. I'm not disagreeing from you. It was Paizo who decided to abandon the OGL in a free will due distrust not the Hasbro that prohibited new Golarion content for D&D. I also pointed this in my first paragraph in my first reply here. But this doesn't change the fact that the exit of Paizo from OGL was the consequences of Hasbro's acts.
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Since all the 2nd edition material is still usable in the remaster, I don't really feel much of the effects of the OGL-to-ORC shift just yet. When 3rd edition comes out, and if it has significant changes from 2nd edition, then I'll start mourning owlbears and their friends.
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Yes that's a point that I will do too.
Nothing really forbids me to use the OGL content specially the Bestiaries in my remastered game. Maybe I need to do some adjustments (like changes from alignment damage to spiritual damage) but probably the MC will give me all the necessary basis to make such adaptations easily and the most current OGL monsters already could be used without any adjustment.
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Actually, the OP framed this whole discussion as if Hasbro not letting Paizo use their IP was a mean-spirited decision, or even an intended consequence of what Hasbro did. I pointed out that this was not the case. Then you responded to me with "I understand, but" and then ignored my post and said a bunch of stuff that wasn't related to what I said.
It just feels like you're arguing against a point that no-one is making; OP isn't saying that Hasbro is mean for enforcing their IP against Paizo now that they are no longer using the ORC to access WotC's IP, they're saying that they wish that WotC had never tried to pull the rug out from under everyone's feet with their revoking of the old OGL. This isn't a legal argument, this is a statement of frustration that the bad behaviour of WotC has led much of the tRPG community to feel unsafe in continuing to use the OGL, because this means that many parts of Paizo's setting that they enjoy will have to be removed. The specifics of the legality of it is seemingly irrelevant to what they're trying to communicate with their statement - at least that's how I read it.
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Seems like this topic might be past it's prime.
Beat the rush and get out now while the back-and-forth is just bickering about tone and semantics, and as of yet merely teeters on the cusp of full-scale ad hominem attacks. Little of value will likely be lost that wasn't going to get pruned in the morning when the mods get in.
Actually, I am shocked at how many Kickstarters there still are for D&D 5E products.
No I'm just saying since the beginning that the fact that we probably won't get anymore things from Golarion's setting into D&D is a consequence of the Hasbro's decision during the early of last year when they tried to change license retroactively.Either this is phrased awkwardly, or I'm missing something. Things from Golarion's setting into D&D? Either you said it backward, or you're primarily focused on Paizo's conversions of their own material to 5E.
It was I understood about OP. Unless it's complaining about the Paizo decision to not use Drows anymore or something like this.
If that's the problem then maybe he's worrying too much.
I think that apart from the removal of the drow and the replacement of dragons linked to alignments with those linked to traditions, I didn't see much change in the lore with the departure of the OGL.
And honestly, even some of that I'm not 100% sure was just due to the license change. Because dark elves are already defined by Norse mythology and were already present in the Tolken universe before D&D. For me, the designers took advantage of the situation and just removed them from the game, as they was already having problems dealing with this politically incorrect association of dark elves = bad, light elves = good. While kobolds as reptiles with draconic traits are very linked to D&D (since the original mythological kobolds were fey and have their mythology mixed with that of goblins) and yet they continued in the game even with the license change.
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If that's the problem then maybe he's worrying too much.
I think that apart from the removal of the drow and the replacement of dragons linked to alignments with those linked to traditions, I didn't see much change in the lore with the departure of the OGL.
And honestly, even some of that I'm not 100% sure was just due to the license change. Because dark elves are already defined by Norse mythology and were already present in the Tolken universe before D&D. For me, the designers took advantage of the situation and just removed them from the game, as they was already having problems dealing with this politically incorrect association of dark elves = bad, light elves = good. While kobolds as reptiles with draconic traits are very linked to D&D (since the original mythological kobolds were fey and have their mythology mixed with that of goblins) and yet they continued in the game even with the license change.
To be clear, as I recall the developers have been pretty explicit that yes, they dropped the drow because of the OGL issues. Their preference would have been to guide the drow into a position where they were functionally a Paizo original creation that shares its origins and name with the OGL drow but is otherwise entirely distinct. The reason why this didn't happen is that they were years from enacting these developments, and the OGL debacle presented some rather tight deadlines on that idea.
Additionally, it's been said many times now, but Norse dark elves and drow are far enough distinct things that there is no way to claim the former when what you have is the latter--at least not while keeping really anything that drow fans like about the drow, and Paizo were not about to pretend that not-drow were 'drow enough', so instead we do have cave elves who aren't drow.
To be clear, as I recall the developers have been pretty explicit that yes, they dropped the drow because of the OGL issues. Their preference would have been to guide the drow into a position where they were functionally a Paizo original creation that shares its origins and name with the OGL drow but is otherwise entirely distinct. The reason why this didn't happen is that they were years from enacting these developments, and the OGL debacle presented some rather tight deadlines on that idea.
I know, but I just don't really believe in this justification that the designers gave. Or at least it wasn't just that.
But It's just my personal thought about this only.
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It was I understood about OP. Unless it's complaining about the Paizo decision to not use Drows anymore or something like this.Yeah, give it another quick read. He's angry that the Golarion setting is going to be disrupted when the WotC IP is stripped out. Which is absolutely understandable. There's a lot of fictional canons I am fiercely protective of, and would be outraged if they were altered due to a years-later change to an IP contract.
The problem is that there is literally no way out. Hasbro is bleeding and desperate, looking for new monetization strategies and making boneheaded mistakes in an effort to stay alive. As a result of one of those, they ruined their relationship with third party publishers via the OGL. Therefore, they have to divide the IP. It's shockingly common in licensing agreements, and getting moreso all the time.
The OP made a statement with colloquial language, you are jumping on their short post because they didn't approach it with more literal appropriate legalistic language.
But that is more arguing semantics with someone rather than just accepting the words that they used were suboptimal but still clear in intent. If not to you, then to pretty much everyone else who has commented on this matter.
Just incase you aren't actually intended to be a debate bro about this and are just having a brain freeze, the OP's intent was to convey:
- WotC took actions that caused Paizo to believe creating ORC was the safest and most sensible action to take.
- In doing so WotC forced a scenario in which Paizo had to purge OGL covered IP from their setting.
- The OP is unhappy that WotCs actions resulted in this, and blames them for the scenario and therefore the effect of Paizo deciding to make a choice.
But like, why would they lie? It clearly didn't go over with parts of the community well. It would have been substantially better to just silently not print any more drow content, or do what they did with slavery and say they are not interested in dealing with them. If they just wanted to get rid of them, this was the worst possible way for them to do itTo be clear, as I recall the developers have been pretty explicit that yes, they dropped the drow because of the OGL issues. Their preference would have been to guide the drow into a position where they were functionally a Paizo original creation that shares its origins and name with the OGL drow but is otherwise entirely distinct. The reason why this didn't happen is that they were years from enacting these developments, and the OGL debacle presented some rather tight deadlines on that idea.I know, but I just don't really believe in this justification that the designers gave. Or at least it wasn't just that.
But It's just my personal thought about this only.
That's to point that I don't understand too (independently from their motivations). Why they just not silently abandoned the drows.
The only point I can think about this is that the drows are too famous and they like to make a final point to the requests about them. Since the release of PF2 that many people come and ask "when can I play as a drow?" or "when will you do more adventures about drows?".
About my disbelief it's not that I think they lied but that the OGL wasn't the main reason but a perfect justification to abandon the drow concept at once while avoid complains.
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Hasbro leadership didnt understand the TTRPG ecosystem build around DnD over decades.
it just shows that owning a thing and having unilateral control over leveraging profit from it are not one and the same.
The fact that Paizo has the community/customer base and apparently financial positioning to restructure under a new license is great for them and for us who enjoy their game.
let each product diverge and be its own thing. We as players only benefit for having more options, and right now I look at pathfinder and like the options and the lore it presents more than DnD.
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About my disbelief it's not that I think they lied but that the OGL wasn't the main reason but a perfect justification to abandon the drow concept at once while avoid complains.
But it didn't avoid complaints.
And they also are filling that space with their own, new type of cavern elves... so clearly it's not a design space they wanted to just wholly abandon.
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But like, why would they lie? It clearly didn't go over with parts of the community well. It would have been substantially better to just silently not print any more drow content, or do what they did with slavery and say they are not interested in dealing with them. If they just wanted to get rid of them, this was the worst possible way for them to do itTo be clear, as I recall the developers have been pretty explicit that yes, they dropped the drow because of the OGL issues. Their preference would have been to guide the drow into a position where they were functionally a Paizo original creation that shares its origins and name with the OGL drow but is otherwise entirely distinct. The reason why this didn't happen is that they were years from enacting these developments, and the OGL debacle presented some rather tight deadlines on that idea.I know, but I just don't really believe in this justification that the designers gave. Or at least it wasn't just that.
But It's just my personal thought about this only.
That's to point that I don't understand too (independently from their motivations). Why they just not silently abandoned the drows.
The only point I can think about this is that the drows are too famous and they like to make a final point to the requests about them. Since the release of PF2 that many people come and ask "when can I play as a drow?" or "when will you do more adventures about drows?".
About my disbelief it's not that I think they lied but that the OGL wasn't the main reason but a perfect justification to abandon the drow concept at once while avoid complains.
Paizo could not do further products involving the Darklands without talking about the Drows.
Paizo could not mention Drows in an ORC product.
Paizo needed to make their products ORC rather than OGL as soon as possible.
So they needed to explain asap what happened to the Drows and the Darklands before doing any ORC product dealing with the Darklands.
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But like, why would they lie? It clearly didn't go over with parts of the community well. It would have been substantially better to just silently not print any more drow content, or do what they did with slavery and say they are not interested in dealing with them. If they just wanted to get rid of them, this was the worst possible way for them to do itTo be clear, as I recall the developers have been pretty explicit that yes, they dropped the drow because of the OGL issues. Their preference would have been to guide the drow into a position where they were functionally a Paizo original creation that shares its origins and name with the OGL drow but is otherwise entirely distinct. The reason why this didn't happen is that they were years from enacting these developments, and the OGL debacle presented some rather tight deadlines on that idea.I know, but I just don't really believe in this justification that the designers gave. Or at least it wasn't just that.
But It's just my personal thought about this only.
That's to point that I don't understand too (independently from their motivations). Why they just not silently abandoned the drows.
The only point I can think about this is that the drows are too famous and they like to make a final point to the requests about them. Since the release of PF2 that many people come and ask "when can I play as a drow?" or "when will you do more adventures about drows?".
About my disbelief it's not that I think they lied but that the OGL wasn't the main reason but a perfect justification to abandon the drow concept at once while avoid complains.
Because people asked about the drow?
The drow were incredibly popular and one of the most well known fantasy races worldwide.
Even Everquest had dark elves which were basically drow over two decades ago.
WoW had night elves which were obviously inspired by dark elves and the drow.
For whatever reason, the drow Gary Gygax's "I need some new monster invention" tossed into the basement of a giant lair has turned into some kind of super popular race of elves inspiring more material written on them than any other fantasy race D&D has ever produced.
I'm sure Paizo and James Jacobs understand there are still drow-philes in their player base. So they addressed the change. When you have to remove the most popular fantasy race in D&D based RPGs that has driven so much content creation for the drow loving community, you want to address that.
I had a drow or two or more in nearly every game for years due to their popularity and of course mechanical powers during the height of the drow craze. It fell off after they were made into just other elves rather than the super elves they were in the early days. But even after all these years they still have a following, just not as large as at the height of their popularity.
WoW had night elves which were obviously inspired by dark elves and the drow.
Yet night elves are conceptually different from drows. They are more closer to moon elves than to drows.
In the setting of warcraft night elves occupy the place where moon and forest elves usually occupy in other settings as protectors of the nature and recognize by their fantastical and mythical primal and fae like powers.I honestly don't understand why drows do so much success to many players. anyway there is no doubt that they are a popular success.
WoW had night elves which were obviously inspired by dark elves and the drow.Yet night elves are conceptually different from drows. They are more closer to moon elves than to drows.
In the setting of warcraft night elves occupy the place where moon and forest elves usually occupy in other settings as protectors of the nature and recognize by their fantastical and mythical primal and fae like powers.I honestly don't understand why drows do so much success to many players. anyway there is no doubt that they are a popular success.
I knew why when they first came out because it was a power increase. Drow were far more powerful than the common races in early D&D.
I think the FR books helped their popularity as well.
I think there has been a steady decline since the drow were made weaker.
Drow were built to be the Alpha Elf. They were racists who viewed everyone else as inferior due to their superior nature. They were the Alpha Elf, the ultimate expression of racial perfection, the rulers of the Underdark viewing all as beneath them and any imperfection in their own people as undesirable. I understood the attraction of being a super elf who laughed at magic and wielded weapons in a fashion very few could emulate.
Kind of hard to be the Alpha Elf when you are just another elf race with no superior powers or abilities. People were attracted to being the super elf. Not so much the watered down version of the drow.
I think people viewed that as closer to Tolkien like elves because the elves in Tolkien were far superior to humans whereas normal D&D elves were slightly better than humans. Now they are all just about the same.
No more super elves. So why bother playing one other than you like the way they look and to live a long time.
WoW had night elves which were obviously inspired by dark elves and the drow.Yet night elves are conceptually different from drows. They are more closer to moon elves than to drows.
In the setting of warcraft night elves occupy the place where moon and forest elves usually occupy in other settings as protectors of the nature and recognize by their fantastical and mythical primal and fae like powers.I honestly don't understand why drows do so much success to many players. anyway there is no doubt that they are a popular success.
I knew why when they first came out because it was a power increase. Drow were far more powerful than the common races in early D&D.
I think the FR books helped their popularity as well.
I think there has been a steady decline since the drow were made weaker.
Drow were built to be the Alpha Elf. They were racists who viewed everyone else as inferior due to their superior nature. They were the Alpha Elf, the ultimate expression of racial perfection, the rulers of the Underdark viewing all as beneath them and any imperfection in their own people as undesirable. I understood the attraction of being a super elf who laughed at magic and wielded weapons in a fashion very few could emulate.
Kind of hard to be the Alpha Elf when you are just another elf race with no superior powers or abilities. People were attracted to being the super elf. Not so much the watered down version of the drow.
I think people viewed that as closer to Tolkien like elves because the elves in Tolkien were far superior to humans whereas normal D&D elves were slightly better than humans. Now they are all just about the same.
No more super elves. So why bother playing one other than you like the way they look and to live a long time.
If I remember right the old rules for making drow had an increased level penalty but got magic resistance and innate spells and weapon proficiency. plus other stuff i dont remember.
It really was the examples of not evil Drow that made me like them.Drizzt Do'Urden cause he was cool.
Viconia from balders gate 2