OSSR: Drow of the Underdark
Wrap Up
AncientH
I know it's been a little hard to tell because we've been going back and forth between the two books with the same title, but let's go over a few key points before we wrap it up:
1) The Drow Don't Suck
I think this is important. The Drow have a relatively solid concept - they're evil elves that worship a Demon Spider Goddess and live underground - but they aren't developed terribly well and the basic pitch is extraordinarily problematic, both from a fluff standpoint (i.e. Drow are dark-skinned having many racist overtones; Drow society doesn't make any functional sense, etc.) and from a mechanical viewpoint (i.e. PC drow tend to be handicapped, Drow magically evaporating equipment is bullshit as presented).
Part of this goes into a lot of very old talking points, but let's hit the big one:
2) D&D's Approach To Evil Is Bad
Evil is not simply the opposite of "Good." Evil has to be more than holding up a mirror image to something you've declared as good. It might be the
absence of good, or the direct effort to undo or corrupt the work of
good, but having "evil" just be a tag is what led to shit like positoxins and Drow sleep poisons (which don't get a lot of talk in either of these books, weirdly enough) and Paladins being okay with killing orcs because they're an "evil" race. When people hate the Nazis, it's because the Nazis are evil - but they're evil because they were racist, committed to conquest and genocide, trampled on human liberties, and were responsible for the deaths of millions of people in pursuit of their goals of racial purity and world domination. The Nazis had evil goals and evil means to achieve those goals. That doesn't mean that the people opposing them were automatically the
good guys except in propaganda. Stalin was a monster - he just happened to be the monster on our side. There are flavors of evil in WWII that people still can't sort out today...and D&D has never been good at that, because they're till running on the Tolkien playbook.
That's terrible. Drow deserve better than that. Yet in both these books, it's clear that many D&D writers just weren't up to understanding or delivering on that.
3) D&D Still Doesn't Get "Monster Races"
This comes together in the Drow books because while the Drow don't actually suck as a concept, and they were obviously very attractive to players that wanted a different roleplaying experience, neither book actually does well at delivering that experience to players. There are options for Drow PCs, but they are pretty much not
good options - either mechanically, or from a setting perspective.
It's seriously at the point where webcomics with poorly-drawn fanservice put more thought into this than the official books.
Frank
The 1991 book was an embarrassing relic of a bygone age
when it was written. The inherent themes of racism and sexism are pretty hard to miss, and while I like to think that the average reader is a bit more woke in 2018 than they were in 1991, even at the time it was uncomfortable and kinda bad. This book came out when I was 12, and it sounded embarrassingly racist and sexist to me at the time. It hasn't aged particularly well. To the extent that this book served any purpose, it was to mainstream a couple of high powered player character options and give Ed Greenwood a paycheck for writing down the preludes to a few of his stroke fantasies. That probably doesn't sound like much of a reason to publish a book, but 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was cranking out a
lot of books and didn't need much of a justification for writing them. In 1996 they made a book called “Player's Secrets of Tuarhievel” that is so obscure that you probably need to google up what the fuck it was even about.
Simply put, 2nd edition had a very low bar for getting a book approved. That bar was generally “Someone in our writing stable wants to write it.” And I could see how the twin motivations of “I want to play a higher powered character” and “I want to beat off to images of dark skinned petite women in bathtubs” could be sufficient motivation to get someone to the writing desk. TSR never had any editorial
direction. Yes, they had editorial
control, and wouldn't let authors write naughty words or refer to the denizens of the Abyss as “demons” due to an ill-considered idea that they could somehow avoid offending fundamentalist Christians with their game about sorcerers fighting monsters and worshiping strange gods. But there was no
vision. Even the attempts at creating a series of book lines degenerated into having the black covered “Forgotten Realms Resource Books” that are
literally just “this is the placeholder book line for whatever the fuck the Forgotten Realms team has decided to write.”
The 2007 book is completely the opposite. It exists because a marketing focus group decided it should. Every chapter is preordained by the master plan, and the master plan is always and forever to simply repeat what had already been done. It isn't just that these little essays fit into the precise molds of previous essays in previous books, it's that they were literally and obviously commissioned for no other purpose than to do so. Each writer was given assignments to fill some space Madlibs style and the end result is not only repetitious and inane, but also contradictory and vapid. With several people being tasked with writing essays about various highly similar topics without giving a shit or seemingly talking to each other at all, there are
many of these essays that simply don't need to be in the book and would be better replaced by absolutely anything else –
including nothing.
It may not surprise you that the shaggy guy who wears no
pants also does not wear expensive
pants.
We talked about this a bit while talking about the various sections, but you didn't need or ask for a paragraph description of Quaggoth Typical Treasure. You
especially didn't ask for a two paragraph entry on the Typical Treasure of Lizards. Not Dragons, I'm talking about fucking
lizards. This is the result of the completely rote commissioning of writing contracts based on check boxes and fixed formatting combined with a set of authors whose only goal was to fulfill the bare minimum of their contract to get paid. So while the 1991 book suffers from a lack of managerial oversight, the 2007 book was managed to death even before a single word was written.
AncientH
AD&D never got its elf shit together in any real sense.
The Complete Book of Elves came out in 1993 and should have tied in more deeply with
Drow of the Underdark. Both books should have been worked more comprehensively into the existing settings, or had more of their material reprinted, expanded upon, and built up into something more coherent. Instead, they let the novelists do whatever they want and they let the RPG writers do whatever they want, and as a consequence the materials regarding elves and drow are spread out, sometimes contradictory, often just...there. They don't interact like they should. But that's AD&D in a nutshell.
D&D3 had fewer excuses. They should have known better, but they didn't. They had perfected a machine for content generation, but not for making sure that any of that content actually worked together thematically. That's part of the reason you have so many shitty feats and prestige classes in the 2007 book, but it's also why so much of the material in that book is essentially standalone - it doesn't tie in with much of the the Drow material presented in 3e in other books. It barely references some of it.
Why?
Because that's hard, and it becomes harder to make these books essentially independent. I don't think Wizards of the Coast had a focus meeting on the concept, but the basic idea is something fundamental to a lot of contemporary RPGs. Game design these days tends to be focused on tiers:
1) Essentials - These are the books you absolutely need to play. Maybe only a single massive book, like the big fat main books for Shadowrun; maybe three books, like D&D's Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monstrous Manual. They tend to be few, because if there are too many, people won't play your game. Because they are essential, these books sell a lot.
2) Expanded Play - These are the Player's Option books for AD&D; the Grimoire and Matrix and Guns and Augmentation books for Shadowrun; the Complete series for D&D 3 before those jumped the shark...these were the books that weren't absolutely essential, but were designed to greatly expand the play space
in a specific area. They were supposed to be important, the basis for later expansion, and in common reference.
3) Even Further Beyond - These are specialist books. These are the books which are based off of the Essentials and at least one of the Expanded books. They might be setting-specific like
Magic of Faerun or concept-specific like
Drow of the Underdark, but they should focus on that thing and do it well, because they already have material to draw upon. And because specialist books are always just MOAR, they should refer to and build off each other, as much as possible - to help build consistency in the setting, but also just to build the game, period. To develop and maintain coherency, rather than just let everybody spout out random shit.
And you can sort of see how D&D was aiming for something like that, but never really stuck with that approach. They didn't have the discipline, or maybe they wrote themselves into a corner, or maybe the A, B, and C teams weren't talking to each other. It doesn't matter, ultimately; that edition is dust on the wind. But it's indicative of a larger level of game design which was never really pushed...maybe because they were afraid players wouldn't want to consult six sourcebooks to see how one NPC worked, even if the players themselves had no problem with using 6+ sourcebooks to build their PC.
Frank
I'm definitely not saying that all the solicitations in the 2007 book were bad ideas to solicit. I can see the advantage in requesting that every monster have an Ecology paragraph, and I am 100% in favor of every book having a “50 adventure seeds” rant. What I am saying is that
many of those sections were given out as writing assignments because of the outputs of dubious formulas and inertia rather than good sense. And
all of the sections were commissioned to writers who didn't have any interesting ideas and didn't really give a fuck about the final product. There's no reason in Lolth's dark earth that the ecology section of Monstrous Spiders should be 4 paragraphs long if you aren't even going to mention what they normally
eat, that's just people spamming text to fill quotas and get paid. And the idea of droning on for 4 paragraphs about the ecology of Venom Oozes is just sort of insulting – it's a fucking ooze monster, it rolls around and envelops things. That's 100% of everything there is to say about it unless you want to get into the fantasy science of it all, which they don't.
The 50 adventure ideas are bad ideas. The first and most important reason that they are bad is that:
The list offers ideas for drow PC, non-drow PCs, and characters who are enemies or allies of the dark elves.
There's no ordering to this. Obviously they just told everyone to submit 10 “Drow Campaign Adventure Seeds” and some people thought they were submitting ideas for campaigns where the Drow are the protagonists, some thought they were submitting ideas for campaigns where the Drow were the antagonists, and some people thought that they were submitting ideas for regular D&D campaigns where there happened to be some Drow in an adventure. And let's be honest, even if these weren't an unordered mess of potential adventure inspirations that are are explicitly hidden randomly in a pile of three kinds of suggestions that have nothing to do with the campaign you're actually trying to play, there's still the fact that these seeds aren't particularly
good.
A PC wakes to find spider legs growing from her back, and she learns that Lolth has chosen her for a special mission.
OK, that's actually not an adventure idea. That's a reason you have to go on an adventure, but it doesn't tell you dick diddly about what the adventure actually is. Also it's extremely ham handed and kind of insulting. “The gods chose you to go on this mission” is like the
most “Mister Cavern is slapping you with his penis” kind of intro you can have. And it doesn't even go anywhere. That's the end of the entire entry. There's no actual ideas for the Adventure itself, just the idea that you could break the fourth wall and tell the players that they don't have any fucking choice, they got to go on the adventure you prepared. Providing that you actually do all the adventure preparations your own damn self.
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[/img]
This mission... should you choose to accept it... not that you have a choice because the goddess is going to turn you into a fucking spider monster.
AncientH
I think D&D lost the thread of what RPG advice was supposed to be a long time ago. Maybe when Dragon Magazine died, maybe before. They understood that there were sections they needed to write because they'd found those in other RPG books, but it's all cargo cult mentality. They write RPG advice not because they have anything to say, but because we know we're supposed to have some here. And that's terrible.
The Drow books have it worse because, again, it's a monstrous race book. They should provide separate motivations for non-Drow PCs to encounter the Drow, and motivations for Drow PCs, full stop. Neither is really addressed in any meaningful way, because they don't develop Drow society in such a way that characters have any real motivations. Do Drow want to conquer the surface world? Kill/rape/eat some surface elves? Stage elaborate tea parties for kidnapped children? Maybe all of the above! But it's hard to get a grasp on a good reason to deal with the Drow when you have no idea what they want or why they want it. Any adventure seed where you could replace "Drow" with "Orc" is fucking worthless, since it's so generic as to be pointless.
Frank
Ultimately the Drow are popular relative to other evil races because they look cooler. That's about as far as it goes. They are also the
only villain group whose artistic aesthetic has not changed dramatically since the 1970s.
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[/img]
The AD&D Gnoll was described as a crossbreed of Gnome and Troll, and gets the whole hyena monster aesthetic from the fact that their patron demon prince was a hyena head demon dude.
The 2nd edition Kobold was rat
based, and had a scaly tail in the sense that rats have naked scaly tails. By 3rd edition they were like tiny dragon dudes.
Heck, with the exception of Dwarves, I don't think
any race has maintained a fixed artistic sensibility like the Drow have.
The 2nd edition Forest Gnome is basically David the Gnome, and the Pathfinder Forest Gnome is one of the chicks from Elfquest.
But Drow had a look and feel that was immediately approachable. Yes, the
size of the Dark Elves has changed radically because there just generally isn't agreement in the D&D community as to whether we should be talking about Tolkienian Elves who are tall and basically Vanir or Santa's Elves who are short and basically Alfar.
[img]data:image/jpeg;base64,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[/img]
Obviously, the Dark Elves in particular take a lot of inspiration from Dokkalfr, which would make them short, but since a lot of people are thinking of Vanir when they think of the Light Elves, those height differences become really noticeable in art.
The Dark Elves are evil elves with dark skin, sexy ladies, and spider motifs. The specifics of apparent height and acceptable ranges of eye colors obviously change depending on what gets individual writers and authors dicks hard, but the overall look and feel has been extremely stable.
This dude isn't drawn all
that well, but it's from the fucking AD&D Fiend Folio and it wouldn't be weird to see this exact picture in a 5th or 6th edition product because Drow still basically look like that.
It's not to say that there aren't problems with the verisimilitude and underlying racism of having evil dark skinned versions of normal people who live under ground. That is actually kind of fucked up on both a scientific and racial equality standpoint. But it does genuinely
look cool. Dark Elves who basically looked like that (minus the spider fetish) have been with us in Viking mythology for a thousand years and the addition of sexy spider ladies makes everything better – or at least more memorable.
But Drow never really got past the “look and feel” stage. Which is fine for a dungeon crawl, which is all they were ever really intended to be. You need the enemy temple to look cool and you need to paint an awesome picture in the mind's eye of the players of the enemies they are stabbing in the face. And... that's it. That's as far as it needs to go. The Drow were completely fit for purpose in 1978 in a way few other enemies were. That's woefully insufficient
today, when people want to interact with the races in terms other than as pieces on a wargame's battle mat.
As long as we're just doing setpiece battles, this is as good as it's going to get.
Once that had been done, people had more questions. They wanted to know what it would be like to play the game
as one of these Drow. They wanted to know what it would be like to
trade with them, to talk with them, to drink with them, and yes obviously to have sex with them. To roleplay absolutely any of the possible kinds of interaction other than stabbing them between the tits. And I'll be honest, none of the books in any of the editions have done a terribly good job of making that a reality. But to the extent that any of the books achieved
any of these secondary goals, it's pretty clear that the 2nd edition book from 1991 was way ahead of any of the others. The Priestesses of Eilistraee aren't very attuned to Drow culture and indeed appear to be essentially outcasts from Drow society on every possible level – but they are a thing that you can play which maintains most of the masturbation inspiration that drives the Drow in the first place. And in the context of the 2nd edition AD&D rules, they are if anything
too playable. The 2007 version spends a lot more
text on player character options, but I don't thing any of this shit is remotely workable in a game of even medium optimization. The 1991 book did not set the bar particularly high, but I don't think any official D&D publication of any edition has come especially close to hitting that bar.
AncientH
And a lot of this goes back to the creation-myth. The Drow and Lolth were cast-out by the other elves, literally forced underground. But instead of doing anything useful with that quasi-Christian allegory, they...basically made the Drow and Lolth PG13 edgelords. Matriarchal society! Slaves! Backstabbing! Demon sex! It's a heavy metal cover.
...and I get it. D&D generally tops out at
Temple of Doom as far as evil goes. They don't want to look into the more complicated realities of religion, socioeconomics, or anything. They're trying to sell sexy dark-skinned elves to 13-year-olds. But that reductionist approach leaves the Drow almost as boring and caricatured as orcs. And that's a point that should be emphasized: the Drow
need to be different than Orcs. They need to be a different kind of monster, they need different goals and motivations, aesthetics, and mechanics. And you can see that in Drow magic powers, equipment, the spider-motif...but not in any real motivational sense. Orcs and supposed to be stupid while Drow are supposed to be smart, but Orcs are the ones living above ground. The differences are largely mindcaulk because the books have always
assumed differences without
exploring differences. Which is what they should have been doing in the first place.
Frank
Dealing with the Drow racism connection is a little bit tricky, but only a little bit. The original mythological Trow and Dokkalfr were not stand-ins for black people, they were stand-ins for how the night time is fucking scary.
It's not like people are claiming these Dark Elves are ugly or stupid, so you've dodged a lot of racist stereotypes right off.
You can just go ahead and keep these ladies having black skin. To avoid associations with racist tirades of the past all you have to do is to have them have dark skin for any reason that
isn't “cursed by god” or “comes from Africa.” The fact that the Complete Book of Elves went with “Mark of Cain” and the 1991 Drow of the Underdark went with “comes from Africa” as their dark skin explanations can be waved away with “casual racism was casually ignored in the early 90s,” but it's not like it was all that acceptable even then. And it gets less acceptable every year. Come up with any sort of alien biology explanation, and the whole issue pretty much vanishes. My personal favorite explanation would be that Elves who are exposed to inhaled carbon particles get anthracosis on their skin – the coal dust or ashes are filtered from their lungs and sequestered in their dermis – like what humans do only it goes all the way to outside of their bodies rather than just to the outside layer of their lungs. Thus all Drow are born without black skin but become blotchy as children due to the fact that they live underground in coal mines, so they voluntarily expose themselves to coal smoke to homogenize their skin color. I like that one because it's biologically plausible and has mammalian analogs while not being directly related to any human group or racist story
about a human group. Also it provides for the possibility to turn light elves into dark elves against their will, which is something that from image searching Drow appears to be incredibly popular.
But really you could do all kinds of stuff. Like, the Day Elves and the Night Elves used to live in the same place and the Day Elves were various colors of green and light brown while the Night Elves were various shades of dark blue and black and then the Night Elves decided they didn't like sharing and fucked off to a land of endless night. That's simple enough to grok without having the Drow be direct stand-ins for Africans in any obvious way.
Honestly, this is not a difficult problem to fix, but it's an important one. Going into a new edition I don't think I would accept any draft that could reasonable be interpreted as being an allegory for black people being bad.
There are black gamers. They significantly out number neo-Nazi gamers, and there is no reason to not piss off the deplorables in order to be more inclusive with minorities.
AncientH
It's true for more than just race.
There's no reason why the Drow shouldn't be a good excuse for D&D to reflect on
what the fuck is up with elves in general. That's one of the points of having a mirror-race: you can flip the coin and re-examine your biases, what makes things work and not work. There's no reason why, in 2007 or 2018, you might not have a look at the ways Elves and Drow have similar or different approaches to things like
sex. If Drow tend to be matriarchal, that's a way bigger difference in gender norms than most PCs are used to, and there is a
non-zero market segment that might like to explore that. You don't have to make it D&D: Fetishlife or anything like that, but you can re-examine the Elf enmity with Orcs & Dwarfs, or their acceptance of half-Elves, or...anything, really. What is life like for an Orc or Human in a Drow city? What if a surface elf decides to worship Lolth because the other elf goddesses don't accept her female human lover? There is roleplaying space here which is never developed because it is never addressed.
Frank
Sexism in Drow land is a difficult issue to tackle. The Drow are matriarchal villains. The sexism is baked into the cake. You could make that a lot less insulting by making the Light Elves be matriarchal too. Like, if Elves just have queens and the head gods are all goddesses such that following a woman isn't literally the main distinguishing feature of the bad guys.
The core problem with Drow and sexism isn't Lolth, it's Corellon Larethian. As long as the good guys follow a manly man with manly man parts and the bad guys follow a womanly woman with womanly woman parts, your setting is sexist. If Yang is Male and Good, and Yin is Female and Evil, you've got a problem. On the other hand, if Elves are all female-dominant societies, then that's just more Elven princesses to woo. It gives people more of what they want (sexy Elf Princesses),
and it's less sexist. To be completely honest, I don't think I've ever met anyone who thought Corellon Larethian was cool. There just isn't a lot of CL fanart on the internets, leading me to believe that the fanbase of Corellon Larethian just isn't there. Isn't anywhere. It's time to admit that a lot of the racial deities written up in the 1980 Deities and Demigods book were actually failures and should be quietly forgotten about. Some gods like Moradin and Lolth have some amount of traction, but Corellon Larethian never did and if we replaced him with Titania we'd all be happier.
There is an absolutley unreal number of Titania cosplayers in various states of dress and undress and we are going to link none of them in this review.
It's important to note that there is a big difference between something being sex
y and something being sex
ist. People are definitely going to want to talk about and draw and masturbate to half naked elf ladies. They've been doing that since long before Dungeons and Dragons was a thing and they are not going to stop. But I think it's possible for sexy elf ladies to be empowering and inclusive for women rather than the opposite. And getting rid of the “Good elves follow men and bad elves follow women” dichotomy is a really important first step there.
To be honest, when it comes to the sexiness issue, WotC probably should have just had the Drow book have the Adults Only sticker on it like the Book of VD. It's clear that Drow nipples is desired both by the producers and consumers of such books, and every edition of the book absolutely strains at its PG rating constantly.
AncientH
Going off on a tangent, let's consider Eberron for a moment. Eberron took a very different tack with its Drow, making them desert-dwelling scorpion-worshippers. It's the kind of hot take which honestly there should be more of. The Drow as presented in 1991 and 2007 are all aggressively
monocultural. It's sexy spider-worshipping pointy-eared fucks all the way down. You don't have heretical Drow cults, you don't have Drow on a different continent who primarily worship oozes, you don't have Unfallen Drow and Elves living in perfect harmony in some secret city that the PCs stumble across...in D&D, for the most part, Drow are Drow are Drow wherever you encounter them.
Then compare that to humans.
That's one of the funny things about humans in RPGs: it is
acknowledged that humans are mechanically about identical, but their cultures can be fundamentally different. By contrast, non-human races tend to be mechanically very different, but culturally monolateral. Non-humans are stereotypes, and the pushing and pursuit of those stereotypes is terribad.
Frank
Dungeons & Dragons has always floundered when it comes to actually describing Good and Evil in particularly compelling terms. The original alignments were expected to mix and match, where you had Good and Evil characters in the same team because moral considerations were tertiary at best. But the basic absurdity of that notion wore on people and the general consensus was that the protagonists should in general be “Team Good” and the antagonists be “Team Evil” became pretty well established before I was even born. But what that left us with was basically Team Red Laser and Team Blue Laser.
Other than fight the bad guys, what do the good guys do that's good? Other than fight the good guys, what do the bad guys do that's bad?
Now the heart of the matter is that basic D&D action is normally set up in the Adventurer motifs of the 16th century. The main characters go exploring, find new civilizations, kill an entire generation of young warriors, loot the temples, and run off with the city burning in their wake while they have a Santa Sack full of swag. And the thing is that modern historical perspectives are perhaps
not as kind to Conquistadors and Missionaries as previous generations of historians were. Indeed, the act of finding a new civilization and then trying your level best to wipe it out and take all the gold away is generally regarded as something of a dick move. Presenting this sort of thing as positive or even morally neutral takes a fair amount of work. And that's work that D&D authors have historically not chosen to even begin to attempt to do. Certainly when it comes to either of the versions of Drow of the Underdark the basic question of why it is remotely acceptable for the player characters to be doing Viking raids on the homes and shops of distant Dark Elf cities is not something that is particularly grappled with. Yes, the Drow conduct various Viking raids of their own (especially in the 1991 book), but again we're back to Red Lasers and Blue Lasers. We aren't
really presented with an argument in favor of sacking Erelhei-Cinlu as a positive moral good. The people there are dicks and wouldn't particularly mind doing the same to you, but they don't actually seem to be an existential threat or to be doing anything in their own towns that is worse than you running through those same streets on a mass murder spree.
Heroes at work. As pained by Edward Hale.
Back in 1978, the Drow were an alien other and they reacted with hostility and violence to the player characters approaching their realm. The escalating conflict was justified simply in the sense that “they started it.” It didn't need to be more complicated than that, because it was at its core a pretty simple story. But familiarity breeds acceptance. The first books that posited that were good people born of Drow wombs that the players could interact with or even play came out almost thirty years ago. People who were not yet born when 2nd edition AD&D presented rules for playable good Drow have grown up and had children who have themselves grown up enough to be being taught how to play D&D by their parents. “We kill all the Drow ladies because they are the bad guys in this story” is not something that particularly flies anymore. And it honestly didn't really fly in 2007 either. The moment that D&D conceded that some number of Drow were actually good guys, the act of declaring Drow to be kill on sight became obviously unconscionably monstrous. And that was made before 3rd edition started putting qualifier words on the alignment line in monster entries.
A big problem here is that actual evil on a level that would morally validate a Just War is pretty icky. Getting into the nitty gritty of things that a civilization could do that would make it morally OK for you to march into their cities with lethal force against their mothers and daughters is not something you can probably do in a book aimed at children. For the most part, the best you're going to be able to come up with is “They attacked us, they are going to keep attacking us, we need to take the fight to them to break the back of their war machine.” That's a moral high ground of sorts that you can allude to without spending a lot of time talking about rape, torture, and institutional murder. But when you're making an entire book about the Drow, you have less excuse. You could slap a “For Adults Only” sticker on this fucking book and talk opening about death camps and shit. There could be an actual set of
reasons by which it was justified to indiscriminately slaughter people in Drow civilization because the world would genuinely be a significantly better place once the spires of Erelhei-Cinlu were ground into dust and empires of the followers of Lolth were spoken of only in histories. Or you could walk that back a bit and have the Drow have good and bad like fucking everyone else and have some real discussions about what some Drow did that made them deserving of getting stabbed right in the face.
Repeling a Drow raiding party with lethal force is not particularly contentious from a moral standpoint.
AncientH
We're at the point where Night Elves are part of the Horde.
...and the Horde and the Alliance are just two sides of the PC coin for World of Warcraft. Those definitions exist because having political coalitions that transcend race and neither of which is inherently good or evil is, well, expected. The world is more complicated than that presented in Tolkien's epic. It always has been. There is no reason why D&D couldn't take a page from WoW and have separate PC guides for surface and underdark. Maybe the surface world is digging too greedily and too deep, encroaching on Underdark domains; maybe there are
things in the shadows under the world, and the peoples of the Underdark are being driven to the surface. There are stories that can be told with the Drow that can require them to be opposed to a lot of "normal" PC character types but don't make them outright "evil." When people were fleeing from the Golden Horde, and invading Europe, the invaders weren't necessarily evil...but there was a definite conflict.
Conflict is good. Conflict drives stories. Drow...don't have a lot of conflict.
Frank
Honestly, if it was up to me, I'd just have the Drow be folded into the coalition of player character races with no bullshit. Have the mainstream Drow civilization make barely enough concessions to the other Free Peoples that they are allowed to be counted as a member of the alliance. Light Elf versus Dark Elf conflicts are only actually interesting if they
aren't at kill-on-sight war with each other. Like, having an Elf and a Drow in the same party is a good roleplaying prompt if they have an ancient grudge but are expected to work together. It's not interesting at all if they are just expected to stab each other to death as soon as they meet. If the Drow are something you immediately fight, they might as well be Owlbears or something.
The fact that she hates your people is only interesting if you are talking rather than fighting.
It's basically the same issue as with the Gith and the Declaration of Two Skies. The fact that there is bad blood between the Yanki and Zerai Gith is interesting only if they are both
in the Coalition or both
out of the Coalition. If they are both antagonists, then you can have three way conflicts where Githyanki pirates and Githzerai strike teams are fighting each other and the player characters at the same time. If they are both
in the Coalition then you can have them rant at each other and politically maneuver and shit. If the Githzerai are in the Coalition and the Githyanki are enemy combatants, then the entire Declaration of Two Skies is just a long winded explanation for why today's random monsters have a modest race-based preference in target selection. And such explanations do not need to be particularly longwinded.
Landsharks have a preference for attacking Halfling characters, because Hobbits smell delicious to them. That is the beginning and the end of the explanation for why this particular monster attacks one of the characters in preference to the others.
In my personal setting, Lolth betrays the other Fiend Lords and has the Drow help with the war of liberation against the Fiend Lords. And as a consequence, the Drow have to give up enslaving Dwarves or murderstabbing Elves, but the high houses and spider demon priestesses get to keep their positions and their heads. So Drow society is basically “as bad as it is possible to be and still be technically members of Team Good."
- Drow: Of course we are committed to the Alliance. We released our slaves in order to prove it.
Elf: You released most of your slaves! What of the Duergar?
Drow: The Duergar are prisoners of war. Do you know what the Grey Circle does with any of our people they acquire? The “pain engines” are not called that because they inflict pain. They are called that because they consume pain.
AncientH
...and there are a lot of other possible concepts that can be pursued here. But they would require a radical re-think and re-presentation of the Drow, one which we probably won't get unless we write it up ourselves at this point.
It's heartbreaker material. Most of D&D is. We grow up with it, and then we grow out of it. Some of us revisit it, because as we get older and more experienced with the world, we want to bring some of that back to what we loved and read growing up. And while I might not have
loved the Drow as a young dice-slinger, I do think they have gotten the shorter end of the stick. I want them to be...more complicated, more interesting. To add depth to what were Star Trek rubber forehead aliens.
This, basically.
Drow have never had that opportunity to "grow up," except in very slight ways, mostly on the fringes where it's ignored.
Frank
D&D has often suffered with the creation of evil economies. Some of this has to do with the fact that there isn't general agreement as to what constitutes “evil.” But even more of it has to do with the fact that the people who wrote D&D materials rarely gave a single shit about what goods were actually in marketplaces or how they got there or whatever. Considering how much time you spend finding treasure, it's actually kind of shit that no one puts together lists of stuff you could plausibly do with the treasure you have.
Now, I'm not saying you have to go the whole Starflight 2 thing and have an elaborate list of goods that have different prices in different civilizations. But honestly,
why the fuck not? Like, the 2007 book is 221 pages long and contains a sidebar about what to do if you want to set your game between Book 1 and Book 4 of the six novel War of the Spider Queen series (which you do not, as it happens). There is fucking obviously room for a list of “Fifty things that cost more in Menzoberranzan than they do in Waterdeep” and “Fifty things that cost more in Waterdeep than they do in Menzoberranzan.”
Maybe some of the things for sale are going to be slaves. But sometimes you need to know how much those cost.
The terms “King Cotton” and “Silk Road” refer to periods when oppressive regimes had control over high quality textiles and leveraged this into a large trade advantage and fabulous wealth for the rule class. I have no particular problem imagining that Drow spidersilk cloth is just substantially superior to the nettle and linen clothing made by most of the surface folk in your typical D&D land. And that in turn could create the basics of the kind of webs of trade that would allow Drow nobility to have sumptuous feasts and decadent lifestyles.
Those caravans you're always guarding from Goblin raiders at 1st level are filled with tomatoes, lemons, and spices going to the Underdark or Drow-made lingerie going to surface cities.
AncientH
D&D has suffered with "economies" in general, because macro-economics, micro-economics, and dungeon-economics don't mesh well. It's the rare D&D setting which actually plays with things like different coinage, much less exchange rates and flow of trade. Most of the setting, when it is concerned with economics at all, is geared toward the adventurer - i.e. largely small, portable, high-value goods exchanged for coin. That's not exactly practicable from any kind of medieval economics standpoint, but it's what PCs largely want, and it's easy to simulated in video games.
And maybe expecting the Drow to be better at it than the Illithids isn't reasonable. But again...there is no try. Economics are largely just given a pass in these books. Where are the stone masons, the miners, the forgers of dark elf gear? Where are the spider-herders, the slave-wranglers, the growers and movers of food-stuffs? The Drow live in what is essentially an alien world, and yet we see so little of it, and that is heartbreaking.
Frank
All I am filled with is disappointment.
AncientH
I am filled with resignation. For what could have been, but was never realized, not even dreamed. Because there was room for a lot of interesting stuff that just never came to pass. Because people took money to write things that they had no interest in and produced flavorless pap. Because we never got Drow Civil Wars against telepathic spiders or PCs that didn't suck or vast mushroom farms fertilized by the captured dead of Drow raids or ancient Drow tombs sealed with weapons too terrible for the Children of Lolth to use, even against their surface kin.
That's the books.