Are drow inherently evil? And other D&D racial restrictions that have been loosened over the years

[mediocrepoet]

Separating threads is disgusting, whoever does this is retarded sociopathic cuck

It was pretty justified in this case. This took a hard turn from anything related to BG3 directly into a discussion of RPGs in general and the history of tabletop specifically.

If you were looking at the BG3 thread for BG3 information as should be expected, you'd find this instead. Whereas with the move, there are people more knowledgeable about the history of the TTRPGs weighing in which is great.

Yeah and this thread will never see the light of day once everybody will move on, while this type of discussions is what makes BG3 thread an outstanding read. Not to mention that this retarded practice works very selectively in a weird way ignoring boring autistic off-topics, while moving genuinely good discussions.

I kind of see what you're getting at, but I also see why admin would move stuff around. Like unless you're going for a history of D&D megathread that would encapsulate all the CRPGs and TTRPGs, etc. I don't really see any way around it. This particular discussion moved really far afield from any ability to track back to BG3 other than many people thinking 5E is a shit show.

Anyway, fair enough.

 

[Alex]

Of course drows are evil. They are, after all, elves.

 

[BruceVC]

This has been an interesting debate and their have been some good points made. My takeaway from most of the posts is that the majority of Drow are inherently evil due to their culture and worship of Lolth and thats normal and to be expected and I agree with that sentiment

Going back to Viconia, she is NE alignment. Do we all agree that if she wants to she can work hard and become NG for example? In other words do we all agree that anyone in D&D world can change their alignment if they studiously work towards that goal with their actions and deeds ?

 

[mediocrepoet]

This has been an interesting debate and their have been some good points made. My takeaway from most of the posts is that the majority of Drow are inherently evil due to their culture and worship of Lolth and thats normal and to be expected and I agree with that sentiment

Going back to Viconia, she is NE alignment. Do we all agree that if she wants to she can work hard and become NG for example? In other words do we all agree that anyone in D&D world can change their alignment if they studiously work towards that goal with their actions and deeds ?

That's like... literally her plotline.

 

[BruceVC]

This has been an interesting debate and their have been some good points made. My takeaway from most of the posts is that the majority of Drow are inherently evil due to their culture and worship of Lolth and thats normal and to be expected and I agree with that sentiment

Going back to Viconia, she is NE alignment. Do we all agree that if she wants to she can work hard and become NG for example? In other words do we all agree that anyone in D&D world can change their alignment if they studiously work towards that goal with their actions and deeds ?

That's like... literally her plotline.

Good, then we in agreement. Because thats also one of the reasons why I Romance her so I can participate in her transformation

But my post was also asking a broader question thats about anyone being born inherently evil in D&D and them being able to change and more importantly " can a leopard change its spots "

So the debate is more complex and nuanced that just Viconia

 

[mediocrepoet]

This has been an interesting debate and their have been some good points made. My takeaway from most of the posts is that the majority of Drow are inherently evil due to their culture and worship of Lolth and thats normal and to be expected and I agree with that sentiment

Going back to Viconia, she is NE alignment. Do we all agree that if she wants to she can work hard and become NG for example? In other words do we all agree that anyone in D&D world can change their alignment if they studiously work towards that goal with their actions and deeds ?

That's like... literally her plotline.

Good, then we in agreement. Because thats also one of the reasons why I Romance her so I can participate in her transformation

But my post was also asking a broader question thats about anyone being born inherently evil in D&D and them being able to change and more importantly " can a leopard change its spots "

So the debate is more complex and nuanced that just Viconia

Eh. For game rules or lore? Alignment change has always been a part of D&D. The rule is basically that if a character isn't acting within alignment to the point that it's deemed to actually be something else, there are some XP penalties and stuff. The issues are more severe for characters like paladins that will lose their powers unless they atone, or for clerics that may offend their gods, etc.

The XP penalty is temporary and reflects the character undergoing internal turmoil.

 

[BruceVC]

This has been an interesting debate and their have been some good points made. My takeaway from most of the posts is that the majority of Drow are inherently evil due to their culture and worship of Lolth and thats normal and to be expected and I agree with that sentiment

Going back to Viconia, she is NE alignment. Do we all agree that if she wants to she can work hard and become NG for example? In other words do we all agree that anyone in D&D world can change their alignment if they studiously work towards that goal with their actions and deeds ?

That's like... literally her plotline.

Good, then we in agreement. Because thats also one of the reasons why I Romance her so I can participate in her transformation

But my post was also asking a broader question thats about anyone being born inherently evil in D&D and them being able to change and more importantly " can a leopard change its spots "

So the debate is more complex and nuanced that just Viconia

Eh. For game rules or lore? Alignment change has always been a part of D&D. The rule is basically that if a character isn't acting within alignment to the point that it's deemed to actually be something else, there are some XP penalties and stuff. The issues are more severe for characters like paladins that will lose their powers unless they atone, or for clerics that may offend their gods, etc.

The XP penalty is temporary and reflects the character undergoing internal turmoil.

I use to DM for 12 years in 2E so thats the ruleset Im mostly familiar with but I am no expert and stopped in 1996 due to RL commitments. So my knowledge is based on PC D&D nowadays

But I remember a campaign in the Dragon magazine that I used about 2 elven adventurers who encountered a Greater Succubus and were both defeated and turned into Vampires and for years were evil. But one of the Vampire brothers was exploring a dungeon and unintentionally put on a Helm of Opposite Alignment and he became good and never went back to evil

I dont remember all the details but it was a good campaign and unusual to encounter a legitimate good Vampire

 

[Nortar]

Alignment change has always been a part of D&D.

I dont remember all the details but it was a good campaign and unusual to encounter a legitimate good Vampire

I suspect most table-top roleplayers pass through their own phase of experiments with alignment before either accepting wisdom of Gygax' absolutism or going into ever declining spiral of relativism.

At one point I too had a character with a twist on alighment corruption.
The usual cliche is when a good person gets tempted, seduced or lured to the evil side.

And I had an evil cultist and murderer who was slowly being corrupted into being a good person by a splinter of shattered holysymbol of a good diety stuck in his heart (long story).
Can an evil man become good if forced into continous "do-gooddery" against his will by a threat of death?

 

[Jasede]

The older I get the more compelling Lawful Good gets...

 

[Cael]

Alignment change has always been a part of D&D.

I dont remember all the details but it was a good campaign and unusual to encounter a legitimate good Vampire

I suspect most table-top roleplayers pass through their own phase of experiments with alignment before either accepting wisdom of Gygax' absolutism or going into ever declining spiral of relativism.

At one point I too had a character with a twist on alighment corruption.
The usual cliche is when a good person gets tempted, seduced or lured to the evil side.

And I had an evil cultist and murderer who was slowly being corrupted into being a good person by a splinter of shattered holysymbol of a good diety stuck in his heart (long story).
Can an evil man become good if forced into continous "do-gooddery" against his will by a threat of death?

Read The Empyrean Odyssey trilogy.

 

[Naveen]

The older I get the more compelling Lawful Good gets...

I believe (and I read a very old piece by Gygax where he said something quite similar) that LG is the natural (or, perhaps, I should say, ideal) alignment of humanity, followed perhaps by NG & LN. At the very least, the Lawfuls should be the most common, with LG, NG, and LN being the alignment of 80% of humanity. LE should be the most common of (human) Evils. Human Chaotics should be way less common than they usually are in games/books... But that's probably because most people start playing D&D when they are kids or teenagers, so Chaotic sounds cool, while Legal uncool and for squares. It's unfortunate that no edition gave much thought to this and, implicitly, they all seemed to endorse the view that all alignments are more or less equally likely to be found, except, perhaps, for CN.

Different species/races can have different rules, so I have no problem accepting Chaotic (more so if they are highly magical or very powerful) or Evil races.

 

[Karwelas]

All of that shit started with that fucking hack Salvatore not giving a fuck about drow lore while writing it down and casually looking over it with: "Yeah, I will write it like that" and bandwagoning fans of his pulling his wagon. While Drow were almost inherently evil, they weren't stupid as fuck about it - at least in case of most males. One could describe them as harsh, pragmatic people, ready to sacrfice shit for Lolth (again, females), while males were trying to go by tenets of force and might. In fact, one of drow gods is all about emancipation of males and kicking Lolth in her hairy spider ass all the way to the Abyss. So yeah, evil, pragmatic and strength loving, but not retarded.

 

[Camel]

This has always bugged me, most recently while playing Pathfinder Kingmaker.

At first, Orcs were all evil. Then Orcs became playable, then later they had no inherent alignment. Then the same thing happened again with Drow, then it happened for Tieflings. People can't help playing the Chaotic Good character from an Evil race archetype and each edition retcons the previous villians into being morally grey. Nowadays race is basically meaningless outside of the stat implications, basically a palette swap.

Then, in Kingmaker, I realize that Goblins (at least, by the game rules) are supposed to be treated as fully fledged characters with any range of morality. Which just doesn't make any fucking sense in the game world. Nok Nok, despite being written as an idiot, actually has 12 INT. He is in fact "smarter" than ~65% of the other potential party members in the game. There's such a complete discontinuity here. He is in fact still registered as Chaotic Evil in-game but he's really just Chaotic Neutral at best, maybe even leaning Chaotic Good. And this is supposed to go for every goblin in the game in theory. It just does not jive with the fact that they are universally in-game depicted as stupid joke creatures that we're supposed to murder en mass.

At first it was just general watering down over time, but I'm going to assume its all due to SJWification at this point. Designers are afraid of saying that anything is intrinsically evil or stupid any more except for creatures that are axiomatically evil or stupid (e.g. devils or animals).

Also, extra points for when the description for these races still says "uhh yeah most people hate orcs/drow/tieflings/etc and you should totally expect to be an outsider among civilized society" then literally none of this happens and in fact these same races make up important, respected story characters in charge of shit.

I think moves to make all evil(Drow, Orcs etc.) DnD races into morally gray like humans started long ago. I blame Robert Salvatore for starting this trend. Moral relativism is mixed with neo-puritanism, an unlikely union of SJW and wokeness. It's not limited only with video(tabletop) games - for every Drizzt and Viconia I can raise you comicbook movie Loki and Harley Quinn. Loki and Harley Quinn were chaotic evil villains in their comics origins, Loki was a three-dimensional and nuanced character but still a villain when written by J. Michael Straczynski, then a homicidal maniac when written by Joss Whedon, he morphed into a full-fledged antihero in his last outings. Ditto Harley Quinn or Black Widow.

 

[Fedora Master]

https://dtdnd.neocities.org/books/player/Drow of the Underdark.pdf

Just read up this shit yourselves before engaging in inane speculation.

 

[Karwelas]

https://dtdnd.neocities.org/books/player/Drow of the Underdark.pdf

Just read up this shit yourselves before engaging in inane speculation.

3.0/3.5
Dodge my ass with that shit, FM.

 

[Fedora Master]

https://dtdnd.neocities.org/books/player/Drow of the Underdark.pdf

Just read up this shit yourselves before engaging in inane speculation.

3.0/3.5
Dodge my ass with that shit, FM.

What you want your sources to be even gayer with 4e/5e?

The 2e version isn't publicly available.

 

[BruceVC]

https://dtdnd.neocities.org/books/player/Drow of the Underdark.pdf

Just read up this shit yourselves before engaging in inane speculation.

What a detailed link, thanks for sharing. I will download it and read later because its long, 226 pages of information

Hopefully their are some " chainmail bikini armor " images which display the aesthetics of Viconia types. My favorite AD&D module of all time is Queen of the Spiders


https://ghwiki.greyparticle.com/ind...odules, often referred to as a "supermodule."

 

[Aarwolf]

https://dtdnd.neocities.org/books/player/Drow of the Underdark.pdf

Just read up this shit yourselves before engaging in inane speculation.

"In fact, the submissive status of males in drow society actually inspires many of them to excel. Male drow can lay claim to little authority, and they are constantly at risk of being discarded by their female leaders, so only those with skills and abilities that are not easily replaceable can be relatively confi dent of their positions"

And now imagine anyone trying to write and publish something like this, but with females in place of males. Oh, the outrage...

 

[JamesDixon]

3.0/3.5
Dodge my ass with that shit, FM.

The original version from AD&D 2E was just as bad.

What you want your sources to be even gayer with 4e/5e?

The 2e version isn't publicly available.

It's not publicly available so far...

It's uploaded to Steam Workshop for TTS as part the complete AD&D 2E series of books.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

It was pretty justified in this case. This took a hard turn from anything related to BG3 directly into a discussion of RPGs in general and the history of tabletop specifically.

If you were looking at the BG3 thread for BG3 information as should be expected, you'd find this instead. Whereas with the move, there are people more knowledgeable about the history of the TTRPGs weighing in which is great.

Half the posts in the Baldur's Gate 3 threads consist of hard tangents onto D&D/AD&D or other interesting topics. Those are the posts worth reading.

 

[mondblut]

Other than that, the "not all drow" crap started in 2E...

Non-evil drow originated with Drizzt Do'Urden in R.A. Salvatore's novel The Crystal Shard from 1988, thus predating AD&D 2nd edition. The later presence of non-evil drow options in rulebooks and setting books stems from the popularity of these novels.

Yeah. First, you have a special unique snowflake character. Then everyone wants to be that special unique snowflake character and suddenly the special unique snowflake character becomes a second most common choice after the human fighter.

This hobby would be spared so much garbage if every author who said "I want to write about a special unique character" would have been fired on the spot.

 

[Norfleet]

The drow were actually created to be the dominant human-like race in the vast subterranean world. What little I know about how they have been treated by other authors since then is not at all palatable to me. The drow are purely malign by temperament, as hateful as wolverines, as opportunistic as hyenas. they have absolutely no angst, save when facing an immediate threat from a more powerful drow or demon.

— Dragonsfoot, Q&A with Gary Gygax, 2005

Ah, but wolverines are solitary animals. They don't live in a society. The hyena might be a valid comparison, as at least some species have a social structure, but, well, that structure is not "evil" anymore, it is just their social structure.

I suspect most table-top roleplayers pass through their own phase of experiments with alignment before either accepting wisdom of Gygax' absolutism or going into ever declining spiral of relativism.

Absolutism is a convenient tool if you assume a fixed perspective, that of the heroes and those aligned with them. But obviously, the "evil" races must necessarily have their own values and order, even if it disasteful and repugnant by the standards of "good". Otherwise they wouldn't exist in a society. Just because that society is what we deem evil and therefore we kill them because, well, do unto others before they do unto you, doesn't mean it's not a society. They obviously have to have rules of order and hierarchy, or they wouldn't be able to function anymore. Within that structure there must be some sense of what is proper and improper, their version of "right" and "wrong".

But more importantly, they worship different gods opposed to those of ours, so they are infidels and must die. Deus Vult, etc.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Ah, but wolverines are solitary animals.

He's referring to one aspect of their character with that comparison, their hatefulness, nothing else. Same with hyaenas.

It's clear what he meant. He was speaking poetically and wasn't consulting a wildlife expert for his metaphor.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

https://dtdnd.neocities.org/books/player/Drow of the Underdark.pdf

Just read up this shit yourselves before engaging in inane speculation.

3.0/3.5
Dodge my ass with that shit, FM.

https://ia601008.us.archive.org/2/items/tsr09179gdq17queenofthespiders/tsr09179 - GDQ1-7 - Queen of the Spiders.pdf

Most NPC drow encountered are Chaotic Evil in the extreme. They are cruel, corrupt, and contemptuous of ‘‘lesser’’ races. All others exist to serve them in attaining their particular goal, primarily, and secondarily, the goals of the drow as a people. They have seen the benefits of banding together, and will not betray their people for a handful of coins, though they agree to help if it help advances their own schemes. Afterward, of course, their non-drow allies may be fed to the spiders while they laugh and applaud. Drow are always looking for their “angle,” and how they can benefit to the greatest degree in any particular situation.

Edit:
Or the 2nd Edition of DotU here:
https://archive.org/details/tsr09326for2drowoftheunderdark

Spoiler

According to 2e, Drow can be good, but mainly if they're exiles and adapted to surface cultures. Similar to 1e, but making it more clear that there are Drow NPCs who've adapted to surface life. This isn't a first edition though, and I don't have the original to be sure.

IMO, this doesn't mean that Drow culture makes them evil, but merely that it reinforces it. A "good" Drow might wind up exiled and find that in a world where he no longer needs to kill or enslave the innocent, he is free to behave according to his nature. An evil Drow exiled for some other reason might still be evil, but no more so than the average surface.

15% is a pretty big number of "good" Drow though.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

Hi.

Drow should always be evil.

Anyone saying different should be raped by driders.