Why were Drow not really part of the "always evil races" discourse compared to Orcs?
The've already been through it back in Drizzt era.
Because non-evil drow were always more prominent. This didn't just happen with Drizzt (in his books, drow in general are just more evil to contrast with him), but other rather "neutral" drow city states, or the existence of Eilistraee.
>>96922034because modern liberal progressives in the west cant proclaim dark elves are a stand in for blacks
>>96922072Yeah drow in general have had so much writing that they are already nuanced and have been for decades.
>>96922034Pic related
>>96922034Because good elves already existed, good orcs did not. Pointless AI thread.
>>96922386>Because good elves already existedNo such thing.
>>96922034I haven't played with anyone who cared for them. odds are it is just the decline in their popularity.
>>96922034They always were, there has been much liberal seething about how them being turned dark for being evil mirrored certain Christian groups' belief that blackness is the mark of Cain. Just because you aren't aware of something doesn't mean it didn't happen.
>>96922093That was always a running joke when I used to play a lot of DnD. Orcs were never conflated with black people. Drow were.
>>96922363I mean, this is literally Rich taking the piss at Drizzt. Hence the scimitars. A character with literature so popular in the niche that it spawned a bunch of knockoff characters.
>>96922034Orcs are typically, I think, in the forefront. They are the "generic" enemy in that they are one note, physical brutes.Drow are more complex even if one of their traits is always evil.
>>96922034Drow are matriarchal so liberals can't pearl clutch them without sounding bigoted and misogynistic
>>96925855>“matriarchal society” in ttrpg>look inside>culture consists entirely of supermodels obsessed with femdomever time
>>96925888>Extremely short supermodels and obsessed with femdomFixed that for you. Also, how you gonna get fat on a diet of mushrooms and cave moss?
>>96925938>Extremely short supermodels Aren't drow women about 5'8" on average?
>>96926009Living underground in caverns makes you short, who knew?
Drow are already a variant race of Elves.Even dragons have the metallic good variants.Orcs have no Good Variant. That's why they are so based.
>>96926066The good variant of Orc is called a Human anon.
>>96922034>non book reader asking questions that are found in the books>>96926088no, they're Orcs, orcs can be good as well
>>96922034You need to remember that Drow and Basic's Shadow Elves at their core are "Evil Elves." Deugar and Derro also get a pass because they are "Evil Dwarves" and "Evil Gnomes." By having them be a faction of another race "always evil" just points to that faction rather than the whole of the race.
>>96926088>Bad variant of human is called orcThink before posting, anon.
>>96926141>no, they're Orcs, orcs can be good as welllmao, no, they are intrisically evil. Saying they can be good is gay.
>>96922034Because they are fuckable
>>96926454You sound like intrinsically evil. Should we call you orc?
>>969260465'8" isn't extremely short.
>>96926492good morning sir!
>>96922034Drows are still "Elves." It's just a evil side of the elves. Orcs had no real good side
>>96922034Because drows were populars before social media, American Culture War and any other bullshit. Hell, nobody even considered it lewd to have an entire race build on mommy dommy fetish and lots of BDSM with extra serving of magical realm.It was better times.
>>96925888It’s a sex thing
>>96927764Remember when people could just say Nymphs were busty naked women that put people on quests? Half of the backstories back then were martials with watery girlfriends.
>>96926009>Aren't drow women about 5'8" on average?nothey're like 5'0 to 5'2, they're on the short end even by elven standards. The "tall" elves are Wild Elves and even then they're not amazonian.Tolkien elves are basically angels and tolkien elf-blooded humans are basically bliblical nephilim where even a tiny drop of elf blood makes your descendants superhuman for millenia. D&D elves have always been short and slender and frail compared to humans, in fanart many people just ignore actual Drow proportions because they want dommy mommies and not midgets in heels
>>96927821any six foot tall elf you see is basically the elf equivalent of Yao Ming.
>>96927821Excuse the akshually, Numenoreans (and Edain) being especially tall or superhuman has nothing to do with a drop of elf-blood, or at least it's not the entire reason. Their people were blessed by the gods with power and knowledge, and the elves brought many gifts to their realm, like plants and of course more knowledge. Not to mention that the Edain themselves were already superhuman (by later standards). Those blessings also gave them longer lifespan, not the elfen blood.
>>96926740Congrats on being a slightly taller than Napoleon bro.
>>96927795I don't have to remember, I have a GM that still does that. The joys of not being American and not being a zoomer, I guess
>>96927821>in fanart many people just ignore actual Drow proportions because they want dommy mommies and not midgets in heelsTiny drow matron trying to act intimidating is cute, though. Like an angry kitten.
>>96927821>5 feet female>midgetWhen was the last time you saw a woman irl that wasn't your mother or sister?>>96929111Friendly reminder cats are still dangerous
>>96927836>>96927821this is cringe actually. Elves should be tall.
>>96927938I don't know anon if discussing the lore and implications of a race from a traditional game isn't considered traditional games than I'm afraid there isn't much that would fall under the banner.
>>96925938>how you gonna get fat on a diet of mushrooms and cave moss?The nobility would have access to imported (read: raided from the surface) exotic food, It's only the peasants that have to eat mushrooms and worms.
>>96929737There is deep rothe too. Hell the noble feasts Greenwood talked are pretty decadent.
>>96922034These, and more questions are answered in my OSR book about dark elves. Twisted Shadows: Compendium of the Dark Elves. It's available both as a pay-what-you-want on DTRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/516466/twisted-shadows-compendium-of-the-dark-elvesbut I'm also cool with you just downloading it directly: https://files.catbox.moe/sgse0p.pdf-----------In my book, I decided to lean more into the "dark fae" aspect of them and also to not require a deus-ex machina to have their society function. Which is why their cave-dwelling is just a cultural choice, the spider demon is just one of the demons they worship, they're dominated by females because only females get access to divine magic, making them a theocratic society. They also don't reproduce naturally, instead buying or kidnapping people to turn into more dark elves via shadow alchemy.
>>96929679>he says, while posting cringe
>>96929793based dark elf PDF poster!
For some reason all the bleeding heart racists didn't look at them and think "Hey these are black people" like they did when they look at orcs. Something something actual civilization something something intelligence.
They didn't care about drow because drow are hot elves, which have built in simpery/sympathy. Orcs didn't have that really, and having an evil race that you can just go around and mindlessly kill without thinking is seen as comparable to eugenicist/racist talking points about non-whites. Consider also that Orcs are just barely human enough in looks to make such connections and how you basically never saw this reaction with very clearly inhuman races like Gnolls because there is no way of seeing them as human.
>>96929810drow T&A is extremely based actually
>>96929793Absurdly based, thank you for the book anon. I'll excitedly see your next ACKS projects too.
>>96926009Not in FR until 3E
>>96925888If it's "Matriarchal society." It's always lesbians and femdoms. Unless it's a guy writing it for SNU SNU. Then it's just being raped by hot women
>>96927821>>96927836>>96935085Hey there.So curious thing.Famously Gygax didn't like the idea of potentially getting sued by the Tolkien estate, which is why he made elves in greyhawk short.Meanwhile other settings did as they wished.In 1e Forgotten Realms, elves are described multiple times as being as tall as humans.In second edition Forgotten Realms this is a back and forth issue.In Greenwood's and Cunningham's writings, elves are tall as humans.In the writings of authors who were writing more generic D&D plots, they were shorter.For Salvatore?Well Drizzt's mom was considered "Tiny Malice", at 5'0".Drizzt was considered a manlet at 5'4".There were several examples of Drow men from other lineages being 6ft tall, just Drizzt was from a short family.To add to this, Qilue, one of the other famous Drow of the setting, is usually described as looking like the "typical Drow matron" and she's 6ft tall.And then to cap it off, Liriel Baenre, one of the Drow leads of an Elaine Cunningham book, is described as being short, delixate, etc, and she is 5'3".So that is 2nd edition Drow.3rd edition D&D, Drow get made shorter (FRCS/Races of Faerun).3.5e D&D, all races now conform to Greyhawk descriptions (PHB/PGtF).4e D&D, all races now conform to PoL descriptions (PHB).5e D&D we are now using FR descriptions but Greyhawk heights (PHB)Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
>>96935259is it really responsible parenting to let a drow babysit your children?
>>96938565>To add to this, Qilue, one of the other famous Drow of the setting, is usually described as looking like the "typical Drow matron" and she's 6ft tall.She's only "typical" because Greenwood's favourite and most typically preferred woman is the slightly Amazonian taller than him type with large breasts and hips and a motherly-to-oppressive and light femdom attitude. He writes what he wants to fuck.>Drow men from other lineages being 6ft tallUthegental is 1/4 human.
>>96939369>>96935259 I'm guessing it's some sort of sad but happy ending story about a good drow boy who was kicked out at the underground Society for not being a psycho who ended up being saved by two retired Avengers who became farmers who got married and now he's a living nanny for the children.
>>96939662>He writes what he wants to fuck.Doesn't change the fact that's a standard.Though I do wish we kept "females are bigger and stronger than the males" like the original DotU says. That could have made for interesting cultural dynamics.>UthegentalI never liked that he was described as abnormally big when in that same series of books there's a whole group of male drow slaves bred to be huge as fuck.Also again, Qilue's existence kind of poo poos his whole "tallest Drow ever" thing.I suppose the easiest way to look at it, is that were it only in Greenwood's hands, Drow would be human height, but D&Disms exist and as we see with literally every discussion about anything fantasy or tabletop RPG related, D&Disms will always worm their way into the writing.Also I should have clarified.When I said 3e made them shorter, they pushed all elves down slightly, with Drow pushed down even more.3.5e pushed them down further to Greyhawk levels.4e brought them to Tolkien levels5e pushed back down to Greyhawk levels.So even under wotc it hasn't been consistent.
>>96922034Probably because they're not as widely seen as orcs. No drow in the Lord of the Rings films, after all. So the grifters didn't go as hard on "drow are black people" as they did with "orcs are black people."
>>96942884>t. zoomershit exposes himself
>>96938565Good post, thanks.
>>96926740made me chuckle
>>96943063Well then tell me what made the LOTR movie equivalent for drow is, boomer.
>>96922034Because they had a matriarchal society and everyone knows that women can do no wrong
>>96942884Or maybe because black people don't act like drow, they act like orcs.Drow also don't look like black people just because they have dark skin either, they are basically just palette swapped white people.
>>96922034Because fantasy Orcs come from Tolkien, and everything that comes from Tolkien has already been blended into vanilla mush by lesser writers. We just accept that, because it's pervasive.Drow, on the other hand, are based most directly on Melniboné. There are other inspirations in the mix, but if you look at the original D-series modules and the description of Erelhei-Cinlu, it's pretty clear that we're dealing with a pulp fantasy "decadent civilization," not the cartoonish capital-E Evil they became in the hands of Salvatore &al. The flanderization happened recently, and in a context where Moorcock had already elevated a pulp trope that was previously flat. Gygax preserved some of the nuance in ripping off Moorcock, but his successors did not.
>>96922034The problem with drow is no one ever wants to play a race that gets fucked up outside in the daytime and if they're already making that sacrifice most people would rather play a vampire-type thing. Vampires are intrinsically evil, get benefits from being nocturnal, but can also sometimes fly and are just widely more popular than drow. I feel like there's enough overlap vampires have straight up stolen their niche.
>>96946782Still didn't stop the grifters from going after them or for WotC to capitulate to them.
Drow in D&D cartoons, vidya, comics>exotic "evil" waifus/husbandos>sex appeal is really focused on>"I can fix her/him">Sympathetic in a sort of pathetic wayDrow in the source book and on tabletops>treated like high level goblins for guilt free extermination, looting, and XP>never talk to any of them let alone get romantically involved>typical encounters end with killing them in creative and brutal ways, like dipping them in pools of flesh eating acidExplain the discrepancy?
>>96948954
>>96948954Because one is for actual games, the other one for secondaries.
>>96948954Because men are massive retarded simps, hence the whole evil women/villainess fixation and forced redemptions over killing. The only way of fixing this is to make it so every time some retard thinks with their dick and tries to be nice to a drow female, or spare them of being killed, they get fucked over by them extremely hard every time as a form of Darwinism.
>>96948954ludonarrative dissonance. There needs to be a way to be rewarded with drow women built into the gameplay mechanics of the game
He doesn't play anything.
>>96938565So I'll never be average height in a aesthetically pleasing race as a 5'5 manlet? That sucks.
>>96949035>>96948962>>96948954Funny when you consider that Elminster has a sexy yandere drow matron who keeps trying to trick/force him into fucking/marrying her.
>>96927821So Drow are all imagine tier?
>>96949418
