Constructing a D&D cartoon.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The second position is still the dwarf embracing his cultural norms but as a personal choice. That's a much more powerful position.

1) Therein lies the problem. Star Trek didn't do the 'these people are different but three-dimensional if you look inside really hard' moral. They did do the 'show tolerance for different cultures' moral a lot, which seems the same but isn't. Why did they do it like that?

[*] Everyone is three dimensional only works as a moral if you show the person as actually being three-dimensional. The 'not all elves listen to 2-hour ballads about trees/practice swordplay/etc.' does not work as a moral unless you actually have an elf in the party. Otherwise it comes across as an Informed Attribute or tacked-on moralizing.

[*] Why does it feel tacked-on? Simple, because of screentime. You can't actually show some elves eating red meat and fumbling with a sword other than as a quick cutaway because you just do not have the time to craft a three-dimensional character. If you only had a finite amount of exotic characters in your show like in Teen Titans then you can actually give the characters enough screentime to add extra facets. But D&D churns through different races and cultures like crazy. This is why Star Trek and D&D should instead go with the 'show tolerance for different people' moral. I'm not saying that not-all-people-are-stereotypes is a bad moral, it's just that the format of the show would regularly undercut that moral because the most we'd get to know people are as stereotypes.

2) Even if you were going to run with this you have better characters for this. The cultural norms of a dwarf aren't all that exciting or interesting to begin with. Odo could support this theme, Worf couldn't. Because Worf is too much like a human to make this sink in.

If you had, say, a drow you could get some mileage out of this. 'Not all drow are backstabbing and untrustworthy, that's just the way Tel'Arin is and we love him for it' or 'not all drow agree with the society's agenda of feeding topsiders to the spider goddess' could possibly work but 'dwarves are not inherently heavy drinkers' or 'dwarves are not all afraid of height' is lame because it's weaksauce and doesn't generate all that much conflict other than as a gag. Red-Eye's situation in OotS is gutchurning, Durkon's is not.

[fectin]

I still disagree on which path is best, but yours seems workable. Overall quality is likely to have more impact than this difference.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, I mean, I don't want to sound like a hater or anything. I do like dwarves, I'm just uncertain of their marketability or depth as anything other than comic relief. I mean, can you point to a dwarf character that was developed as much as their non-dwarf comrades beyond the dwarfly stereotypes?

[Krusk]

I think you need to keep dwarves out of the show as long as possible. They are one of my favorite races but the amount of "lol dwarves are short and drink lol " is too much. You couldnt do a scene where it wasn't present without people complaining. Including it then annoys everyone else. Easiest to simply not mention dwarves until the episode where they are brough in as prey for the monster of the week.

[Gx1080]

Ok, then swap them. Make the Wizard the Dark Magician Girl and the Assasain the magnificent bastard.

I'm still sticking to "3 men, 2 women" and "male leads" because you are selling to children, specifically to boys.

Women-majority groups tend to have a different narrative that men-majority ones. More self centered, more romance plots. Unless you have Lara Croft and Co., which is a different audience. An audience that, I dare to say, buys D&D anyways.

And with the "pick your poison" thing, I would choose a powerful male leader. Is a chiche, but is a higly effective one. People want that shit. And nobody cares about McGuffin/Heart chick.

[Prak]

I don't get female warforged. I think it could clash with perceptions - people aren't even going to see gender in a mostly-robot. 'Gender-neutral' with male implications is probably best.
Unless you really do go the KOS-MOS style robot, but that's... not very authentic to the setting. Which is fine and not-fine. Too human is weird for D&D, too non-human will make it a difficult female character.

Black Arachnia
Arcee
Strika
Thunderblast
Hel (from Metropolis)
The androids from Doctor Who ep. "Bad Wolf"
A Semi in an Eminem Music Video
Several robots from Futurama
Master Mold in Wolverine and the X Men
BD-3000s, Betty Droids, in the Clone Wars
Glados
Clash with perceptions? Five of the above examples are from two of the most beloved nerd series, Transformers and Futurama, a sixth is a lesser known example from a third beloved nerd series. Another is from a classic movie. I'm sure people are okay with robots acting and sounding female by now. Lets not forget that if you're going to say "A feminine robot makes no sense!" neither does a masculine robot.

Also, in lieu of having a strong female lead like the female paladin examples (I'm not being sexist, demographic marketing is sexist), it'd be better to have two strong leads, female and male. It's pretty hard to maintain a strong solo female lead. It is not too hard to maintain two roughly equivalent leads who happen to be opposite genders. E.g. female human paladin, male half-orc monk. You might not want to make them both frontline types, though. Or rather, not frontline heavy types.

I want to preface, this isn't directed at you, I believe you when you talk about demographic marketing.
GOD DAMNED FUCKING MORONIC AUDIENCES!
I'm better now...

I can't say much about half-orcs. There are a few races that, somehow, completely fail to flavorfully appeal to me as a player, so I'm just going to stay quiet about them because I have no way of gauging how 'good' a character a half-orc would make. Or a dwarf. Or a half-elf, to a lesser extent. Those races just have limited appeal to me.

http://holecomic.com/ (half orc, and a troll disguised and played as a dwarf)
http://flakypastry.runningwithpencils.com/index.php (Goblin, not half orc, but similar issues)
http://www.giantitp.com/index.html (For a dwarf. Ignore the annoying unreliability of updates.)
http://guildedage.net/ (Dwarf)

Hm... I think the first decision point is solo male lead, or duo male/female lead (and emphasis on who)? And if you go duo, what class pairing? Presumably, it should be compatible enough that the two can operate together in the same scene (or camera shot, even), because they are the leads and that's just sort of natural. But not so similar they're doing the same things. The stronger of the two leads should be familiar - a grounding point. Human. The second can be something else, even something weird. And then you fill out the rest of the party with whatever you want.

I'm sure this isn't exactly what you're saying but to me it sounds like you're saying "So the lead is a human male paladin. The less important lead can be some funky female xeno-race thing, no one will care about her" (if it makes you feel better, I fully assume stuff like that actually gets said when a show is actually being pounded out in hollywood...)

Female Human Paladin (Good for goodliness sake!) (stronger lead)

Piffany from Nodwick with a class swap and a slightly higher tolerance for use of violence

Male Tiefling Warlock (Glaivelock?) (I AM ANGSTY, HEAR ME... meh) (strong secondary lead)

Angsty Emo/Goth Warlock is kind of cliche, though I can't provide specific examples.

Male Hale-elf Druid (Calm and cool, duh)

So long as he's not a Shaggy expy, I'm ok with this.

Female Drow Assassin (They're a good person inside, but telling them that may get you stabbed)

Black Arachnia with skin, HookerKiller With a Heart of Gold

Male Warforged Monk (Kung-Fu Spock + if I only had a heart...)

Data. I'm pretty sure he exhibited martial arts skill at some point.

I believe I just walked into like sixteen different cliches there. Which is impressive, because I only had five characters to do with it. I'm not happy with the secondary lead. He's... lame and generic. But none of the other characters seem like they would fill the role appropriately.

Maybe not 16, but I'm just going off the top of my head... a thorough search of TV Tropes could probably give you quite a few more.

[Lago PARANOIA]

As an exercise, off of the top of my head I'm going to come up with ten fantasy-era or mostly-fantasy robot characters.

Tio (Grandia II)
Gorbyc (Chrono Cross, I know I know)
Cait Sith (Final Fantasy VII)
Tabatha (Tales of Symphonia)
Kunzite (Tale of Hearts)
Emeralda (Xenogears)
Final Fantasy XIII has a whole mess of them.
There's a prestige class where you can make your own damn robots in Faith and Pantheons. Gondsman something.
Nier has one or two I think?

Okay, I could only come up with nine. So sue me. The point is, robots aren't that foreign to fantasy. The problem is...

Clash with perceptions? Five of the above examples are from two of the most beloved nerd series, Transformers and Futurama, a sixth is a lesser known example from a third beloved nerd series. Another is from a classic movie. I'm sure people are okay with robots acting and sounding female by now. Lets not forget that if you're going to say "A feminine robot makes no sense!" neither does a masculine robot.

While robots are a staple even in heroic fantasy, all of the fembots you displayed are Not Pretty and are thus disqualified from the trope. It's okay if the entire cast are robots or kaiju like in Transformers, but you can't mix and match.

[Leress]

So you plain forgot about Robo from Chrono Trigger?

[DSMatticus]

I'm sure people are okay with robots acting and sounding female by now. Lets not forget that if you're going to say "A feminine robot makes no sense!" neither does a masculine robot.

That wasn't my point. Like, at all. Name a female robot from Futurama you care about. This isn't about what people will 'accept as existing' or 'what makes sense' - you can totally fem up all the warforged you want. The question is, will people care about it enough for it to be a main character?

And none of those examples convince me, because I probably wouldn't have remembered they existed if tvtropes did not exist. And I certainly aren't interested in any of them. And that's the goal - interesting main characters.

I want to preface, this isn't directed at you, I believe you when you talk about demographic marketing.
GOD DAMNED FUCKING MORONIC AUDIENCES!

I'm not arguing with you, but things are what they are. There's a difference between what I think is good and what would fly as a real, honest cartoon.

As for the half-orc, dwarf, half-elf bit... I'm not saying there aren't characters that are those things that I happen to like (though, of the OoTS cast, I appreciate the humor and side of things Durkon brings, but he's possibly the furthest from my favorite/most interesting character). It's a mark against them, and so I just tried to back off and be impartial about it. But dwarf pretty much always means "joke race" to me. I expect dwarf-esque humor. I have trouble taking them seriously. I am a fantasy-racist. Don't get me started on gnomes and halflings. I may just hate the short-folk, really.

"So the lead is a human male paladin. The less important lead can be some funky female xeno-race thing, no one will care about her"

That's not what I was going for at all. I was trying to make a strong female lead sellable with a close secondary male lead. Sexist as entertainment is, solo female leads have... inherently limited demographics. It works for some genres, not others.

So long as he's not a Shaggy expy, I'm ok with this.

Oh god no, not shaggy, but I had that thought and laughed about it when I was writing. Even if he's not shaggy, though, that's still a total cliche.

Most of those examples were intended to have those little cliche blurbs, mind. Cliches... work. We have cliches because people like cliches. Fiction is rarely about pure originality - pure originality blows. If you have an idea someone's never tried before, it's probably because it's not any good. Call it 'Rule of Simpsons' or whatever you prefer, but everything's been done before. You're probably better off starting with a cliche, and then adding just enough to get you something interesting in a unique aspect. New permutations of existing ideas, not new ideas entirely.

Whether that says something depressing about our culture's entertainment, I don't know... But it's certainly how it works.

[Username17]

Robots from Weird Science to Chobits to Metropolis are sexy ladies that seduce people. So much so that for After Sundown, the invoked trope of the "Android" is the sexy and doomed unrequited lover. I now TVTropes links are bad, but I think This One really makes the point rather well.

That being said, I think that having a robot character as one of the basic five is a stupid idea. I mean, in Magical Pokaan, the main characters are a Witch Girl, a Vampire Girl, a Werewolf Girl, and a Robot Girl. And that works fine. But the Robot Girl is the most expendable of the quartet. Your "outsider" character who has stunted or confusing emotions would be better as a Vampire or a Wererat. Or even just a human Druid or Paladin.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

So you plain forgot about Robo from Chrono Trigger?

I excluded him because you initially pick him up in a fully sci-fi world, but since you spend most of the game in pre-industrial age locales regardless it would make sense to include him. My bad.

Your "outsider" character who has stunted or confusing emotions would be better as a Vampire or a Wererat. Or even just a human Druid or Paladin.

The problem I have with using a less 'exotic' character to be the designated stunted/confusing emotion character is that it just doesn't make any goddamn sense within the context of D&D. It just strains belief to have a character conflicted or angsting about how their species and original influences their emotional retardation when there are goddamn lava monsters, shardminds, or gully dwarves around the corner. It makes sense for the Robot Person to still do this since robots being heartless and wishing to be real people have a long tradition. But not for full-on humans or wererats or the like. It's like, 'if these people of sewage dwelling mole people can get their act together, why can't you?'

[Prak]

I'm sure people are okay with robots acting and sounding female by now. Lets not forget that if you're going to say "A feminine robot makes no sense!" neither does a masculine robot.

That wasn't my point. Like, at all. Name a female robot from Futurama you care about. This isn't about what people will 'accept as existing' or 'what makes sense' - you can totally fem up all the warforged you want. The question is, will people care about it enough for it to be a main character?

Clearly you have not watched Beast Wars. Once again, Black Arachnia, who people do care about as a main character, and is pretty. Enough that there's porn of her (though r/34 turns up nothing, and I don't care enough to search other wise).
For those who don't know the character, she looks like this (not porn):

But beyond that...
Hel (pretty, main character)

BD-3000 (pretty, but probably not main characters)

Glados, while not particularly visually pretty, has a pretty voice, which all you experience through most of the game, and is a main character.

The way you make something interesting is by making it a main character. The fembots in Futurama aren't interesting because they're not main characters. Bender would not be anywhere near as interesting and memorable were he not a main character. Sure, people might remember Don Bot, Hedonism Bot, Flexo, Clamps, and Calculon, but they're little more than one note jokes. Because they're not main characters.

And none of those examples convince me, because I probably wouldn't have remembered they existed if tvtropes did not exist. And I certainly aren't interested in any of them. And that's the goal - interesting main characters.

Again, you clearly have not watched Beast Wars, or Metropolis. Or Played Portal. I won't say much about the others, because they were all things I was vaguely aware of but reminded of by TV Tropes. But those three examples are pretty much all I need. Black Arachnia (and possibly her G1 ancestor Arcee), Hel, and Glados are compelling female characters that are feminine artificial constructs.

PostPosted: 26 May 2011 09:38 pm Post subject:
As an exercise, off of the top of my head I'm going to come up with ten fantasy-era or mostly-fantasy robot characters.

Tio (Grandia II)
Gorbyc (Chrono Cross, I know I know)
Cait Sith (Final Fantasy VII)
Tabatha (Tales of Symphonia)
Kunzite (Tale of Hearts)
Emeralda (Xenogears)
Final Fantasy XIII has a whole mess of them.
There's a prestige class where you can make your own damn robots in Faith and Pantheons. Gondsman something.
Nier has one or two I think?

Okay, I could only come up with nine. So sue me. The point is, robots aren't that foreign to fantasy. The problem is...

Prak wrote:

Clash with perceptions? Five of the above examples are from two of the most beloved nerd series, Transformers and Futurama, a sixth is a lesser known example from a third beloved nerd series. Another is from a classic movie. I'm sure people are okay with robots acting and sounding female by now. Lets not forget that if you're going to say "A feminine robot makes no sense!" neither does a masculine robot.


While robots are a staple even in heroic fantasy, all of the fembots you displayed are Not Pretty and are thus disqualified from the trope. It's okay if the entire cast are robots or kaiju like in Transformers, but you can't mix and match.

That's a different trope.
But...
Chi from Chobits/Ping from Megatokyo
Cameron from Sarah Connor Chronicles (y'know, the latest pretty, underage girl played by Summer Glau)
Annalee Call from Aliens Resurrection (shut up, I liked it... and it's an example)
Robot Maria from Metropolis (hey look, again)
Fembots from Austin Powers (sure, no one cares about them, but...)
Galetea from Bicentennial Man
Six, Boomer and Athena from the 2003 Battlestar Galactica Series
Kos Mos, as stated above, though I think she's too ridiculously human for my taste as an artificial character. But then, so are most of the characters here... I'm still questioning why the main cast all has to be classically pretty... Unless you actually want to invoke the tired cliche of "pretty=good/ugly=evil, except when you need to seduce the hero, but then her beauty is only skin deep, and she'll be revealed to be ugly once her disguise is ruined"
Eve from Applegeeks
Sari from Transformers Animated, apparently a Cybertronian/Human hybrid (don't ask me, I long since turned to TV Tropes to find things others more culturally priveleged than I should recognize)

I want to preface, this isn't directed at you, I believe you when you talk about demographic marketing.
GOD DAMNED FUCKING MORONIC AUDIENCES!

I'm not arguing with you, but things are what they are. There's a difference between what I think is good and what would fly as a real, honest cartoon.

Yeah, I know. Why do I still have any faith in the public?

As for the half-orc, dwarf, half-elf bit... I'm not saying there aren't characters that are those things that I happen to like (though, of the OoTS cast, I appreciate the humor and side of things Durkon brings, but he's possibly the furthest from my favorite/most interesting character). It's a mark against them, and so I just tried to back off and be impartial about it. But dwarf pretty much always means "joke race" to me. I expect dwarf-esque humor. I have trouble taking them seriously. I am a fantasy-racist. Don't get me started on gnomes and halflings. I may just hate the short-folk, really.

I was just providing examples of well received characters of those races. I don't like Durkon either, but there are those who do...

"So the lead is a human male paladin. The less important lead can be some funky female xeno-race thing, no one will care about her"

That's not what I was going for at all. I was trying to make a strong female lead sellable with a close secondary male lead. Sexist as entertainment is, solo female leads have... inherently limited demographics. It works for some genres, not others.

*nod*, I know. I want to point out Buffy, but... yeah. Also that wasn't a cartoon. Put a female lead in a cartoon, and it's labeled as a cartoon for girls...

So long as he's not a Shaggy expy, I'm ok with this.

Oh god no, not shaggy, but I had that thought and laughed about it when I was writing. Even if he's not shaggy, though, that's still a total cliche.

I get enough stoner in RL from my friend... I've never liked Shaggy, or the stoner characters. The one exception off the top of my head is Hyde from That 70's Show, but, well they were all stoners, and he had other things going for him.

Most of those examples were intended to have those little cliche blurbs, mind. Cliches... work. We have cliches because people like cliches. Fiction is rarely about pure originality - pure originality blows. If you have an idea someone's never tried before, it's probably because it's not any good. Call it 'Rule of Simpsons' or whatever you prefer, but everything's been done before. You're probably better off starting with a cliche, and then adding just enough to get you something interesting in a unique aspect. New permutations of existing ideas, not new ideas entirely.

Whether that says something depressing about our culture's entertainment, I don't know... But it's certainly how it works.

I was just pointing out, since you mentioned it.

Regarding Frank's bit about the Robot Girl being the most expendable... that will always happen with robot characters, they're honestly, unless in a cast full of bots, like Transformers, played for lack of emotion and such, which just makes them less interesting to some. There's also the fact that artificial characters are perceived as always fixable....

[DSMatticus]

Your examples of robot female characters still aren't very compelling. I watched beast wars (intermittently and not anytime recently, obviously) and I still didn't recognize Black Arachnia by name alone (though I remember that exact scene, I think - maybe that's false memory).

But GLaDOS is not a robot. In the same way HAL-9000 isn't. We're talking humanoid but non-human robots here. And Transformers/Beast Wars are a whole different boat - that's a whole cast of robots and pretty much nothing but. Hel is probably the best example of what we're talking here, and we both know that wouldn't really fly today, even if it worked 80 years ago (and is still a classic, when appreciated as such).

[fectin]

Battle Angel Alita? Or the woman from Screamers?
Or would you count Ghost in the Shell characters?

Edit: or the easy one: Shale from Dragon Age.

[Gx1080]

Lago, talking about the race issue is fine and all, but your examples STILL have Drows. Which are only useful as protagonists for the "comes from an evil family/society", that can be reproduced with a Human Rogue that comes from a family of Evil Wizards or something. And Drizz'it already tainted Drow protagonists as a whole.

So:

Male Human Paladin.
Male Half-Elf Druid.
Female Half-Orc Monk.
Female Warforged Wizard.
Female Human Assasain.

Also, thing is, if you do go for the "pretty robot girl", there's going to be a barrage of nerdrage against the series because you modified that aesthetic of the Warforged. If you want that, go ahead. If not, swap her for a "deal with the devil" Tiefling with a Ring of Disguise or something.

[Almaz]

All the statements of "(blah) is not compelling" seem to be people stating "I do not personally find this compelling." It is not an argument that people IN GENERAL find these compelling, and conflating the two is a disservice.

So are you against gynoids because of a personal preference or a delusional belief about what the public wants? Because your personal preference is not what everyone likes, and arguing as if they were identical is disingenuous. Attempts to argue that people, in general, do not find robot girls appealing will be smothered with the pillow of a thousand anime, movies, and books. If you don't want to include gynoids because of a personal preference, that's fine, but just don't try to pass it off as something other than that.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I would make a quick chip-in... keeping this remotely family friendly seems to put the idea of "assassin" right out. My suggestion would have it be an assassin crunchwise, and a "bounty hunter" fluffwise. Plus a hot laddette seems like it would work well in this case.

[DSMatticus]

Almaz, I did not mean not compelling as in "bad characters." I meant not compelling as in "bad examples in support of how this specific situation would play out."

I am talking about a very specific type of character - humanoid but distinctly non-human robots who are main female characters. GLaDOS is a compelling 'robot' character, but she is not an example of the type of character we're talking about.

The few applicable examples I've seen are things like Black Arachnia, Hel, etc, etc, and my argument is that those are not going to be interesting enough characters to a general populace to fill a main character slot. Lago put it very well - "they have to be pretty." And that's very true of female characters (as awful as that may seem).

And authentic female warforged are never going to meet that requirement, and that really is a 'requirement' of popular T.V. It is a tried and true cliche that people like or even need. So we either have to changed the warforged aesthetic significantly (clash with source material), or abandon the female warforged idea, or do something.

[Gx1080]

Overall, since this is a re-launch, in an original setting, Warforged came from Eberron and nobody gives a shit about Eberron, I think that you can get away with altering the Warforged aesthetic without too much backlash. Specially since the standard bearer of the change is a hot chick.

[Cynic]

I'm going to add Cortana to the list of female robot leads. Yes, she isn't a robot per se. But as an uploaded brain, seh can easily go for it.


I agree with Frank that robot-girl isn't really a great fit for the five party group.

Vamps and werewolves go well here because they hit a couple of different tropes. Inherently unique and removed from society, they can be emotionless or exhibiting a different spectrum of emotion. They also hit the whole, I"m a tortured soul but I can suck blood with the best of them. At the same time, both of the above qualities also allow for a redemption mechanic.

--

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago, talking about the race issue is fine and all, but your examples STILL have Drows. Which are only useful as protagonists for the "comes from an evil family/society", that can be reproduced with a Human Rogue that comes from a family of Evil Wizards or something. And Drizz'it already tainted Drow protagonists as a whole.

I very strenuously disagree. Counterpoint: Garak from Deep Space Nine. It is totally possible to have someone from a 'bad guy race' be unironically working for the good guys yet not lose their moral ambiguousness or threat factor. If there's a better race (remember, they have to be pretty) to draw a Magnificent Bastard type character from then I'm all ears, but for my money you're not going to do better than a drow unless you're willing to import Cardassians.

Vamps and werewolves go well here because they hit a couple of different tropes. Inherently unique and removed from society, they can be emotionless or exhibiting a different spectrum of emotion. They also hit the whole, I"m a tortured soul but I can suck blood with the best of them. At the same time, both of the above qualities also allow for a redemption mechanic.

That kind of thing only works for vampires and werewolves because they're the only players (or at least the big ones) in their own stories. We can understand their feelings of alienation because even though from a biological standpoint it's usually a good deal they're still isolated from society in various ways. It makes sense for a vampire to angst about how they'll never get a normal job or how they can't enjoy a regular meal or can't have sex without killing their partner because they're the only ones in that situation. Yeah, the shapeshifting and superstrength and whatever is cool and all, but they can still arouse sympathy because of their situation.

A werewolf or vampire bitching about their bad situation or how they can't feel and how this cuts them off from normal society does not make any sense and comes across as whiny and ungrateful when you can turn around the corner and see much more miserable critters like Kuo-Toa, Gnolls, Gully Dwarves, Half-Orcs, Mongrelfolk, Goblins, etc.. Those poor bastards are even more isolated from 'normal' society, live shittier lives, and don't even get appreciable superpowers in the deal. I would rather be a human being than a vampire, but I would much rather be a vampire than a fucking Derro.


It might work for a wererat if you throw in a subplot about how wererats are considered the scum of scum and are forced to live in sewers and people spit on them in public--and if you don't give said character any cool powers to compensate for the fact that they sometimes flip out uncontrollable then it makes their feelings of isolation actually make sense. Said character is all snarky and emotionless and morally conflicted because he or she was locked in a basement for most of their life and only had rats to eat and rotten books to keep them company.

But werewolf or vampire, the rockstars of the monster kingdom? No fucken way.

[Lago PARANOIA]

DSMatticus: You do need to have a savage or stereotypically savage race in the party. They don't need to wear flea-bitten furs or eat raw meat with their bare hands, but they do need to be the token 'non-pretty races' representative (even if they themselves are still pretty). Otherwise you once again have the very unfortunate D&D undertone of 'a party of fit and smooth-skinned heroes mows down ugly savages', unless you want to make most of the opponents come from 'civilized' races.

Hence why I prefer a spread of:

Human Paladin: Either female or a male minority like a gay guy, a black guy, an Arabic guy, etc.
Halforc Monk: for aforementioned reasons, monk is there to get around censorship problems while still having melee violence.
Halfelf Druid: again, another frontliner class that can get around censorship, also designated Green Aesop character.
Drow Assassin: in this case you actually want to play up the stereotype, since it makes him/her look badass instead of repulsive. Halforcs acting like stereotypical halforcs are annoying, but drow acting like stereotypical drow are awesome.
Wererat Wizard: you want to milk the character for as much pathos as possible; unlike the halforc and halfelf you can't really turn the character's issues off, not without seeming callous or hypocritical.

I still recommend a spread of three girls, two boys for variety's sake. I honestly don't think guys care as much about having Boy Power as much as they used to; Powerpuff Girls and MLP and all other sorts of magical girl shows are totally mainstream these days.

[Gx1080]

Ok, then how do you deal with the fact that Drow are a civilization of highly intelligent, Chaotic Evil elves that worship an Evil Spider Godess aka Drow are Kill on Sight in most towns?

I don't mean "they are treated like vermin" like most sub-races, I mean "Torches and Pitchforks".

And I like the Warforged idea more than the Were-rat idea. Just make her a "custom model".

[Prak]

Ok, then how do you deal with the fact that Drow are a civilization of highly intelligent, Chaotic Evil elves that worship an Evil Spider Godess aka Drow are Kill on Sight in most towns?

I don't mean "they are treated like vermin" like most sub-races, I mean "Torches and Pitchforks".

And I like the Warforged idea more than the Were-rat idea. Just make her a "custom model".

Or just say that warforged in the cartoon world were crafted to look more like sculptures of exceptionally aesthetically pleasing members of other races since they were built as soldiers, and it would aid relations with their living comrades. So some warforged look like the elven ideal of beauty, others the dwarven, etc. Warforged built to fight amongst humans basically look like greek statues.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Ok, then how do you deal with the fact that Drow are a civilization of highly intelligent, Chaotic Evil elves that worship an Evil Spider Godess aka Drow are Kill on Sight in most towns?

You don't. It's just an obstacle the party overcomes with varying success/difficulty depending on the demands of the plot. Sometimes the paladin is able to pull rank and get their buddy into the building. Sometimes the drow crafts a cunning disguise or just sneaks in. Sometimes a more enlightened place has heard tales of the drow's heroism and gives them a Drizz't exception. Sometimes the drow is able to just bluff/charm the pants off of the simpletons in the beloved peasant village. Sometimes there's just no way around it and the drow and the wererat have to sit outside town gates playing tiddlywinks.

Actually, the more I think about it the more I think wererat (or werehyena or whatever, some sort of base animal that people have negative slimy feelings towards) is appropriate for this kind of party. Any obstacle that will inconvenience the drow will certainly inconvenience the wererat as well. But the MB spymaster character can just be blaise about the racism issue since he has multiple ways to get around it that don't involve killing everyone in sight and you can also make it so that the character isn't victimized as much by it (that's okay, I didn't want to visit your dirty ape shanty anyway so we both win) since that's just the way the character archetype rolls.