Allegory, as a literary device, is millennia old. So much of our stories make use of it, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find one that doesn't. None come to mind.
Having said that, drow (as Salvatore wrote them) are not an intentional allegory. This is an example of "death of the author." The author isn't actually dead, but what they've written can be interpreted in a context they did not intend. And not all interpretations and opinions are created equal. They aren't all justifiable or supportable. Like all forms of literary criticism, it needs to be backed up by something. And, sometimes, even the author can be wrong. As one story goes, Isaac Asimov once lost an argument with a Columbia University professor over the meaning of one of his stories. Because we carry biases which influence our work; even if we don't mean to.
Whether you think something is stupid or not is irrelevant. Using fiction as allegory to tackle real world issues is a tried and true method of writing. That's practically the entire body of science fiction works, as a genre.
Allegory, as a literary device, is millennia old. So much of our stories make use of it, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find one that doesn't. None come to mind.
Having said that, drow (as Salvatore wrote them) are not an intentional allegory. This is an example of "death of the author." The author isn't actually dead, but what they've written can be interpreted in a context they did not intend. And not all interpretations and opinions are created equal. They aren't all justifiable or supportable. Like all forms of literary criticism, it needs to be backed up by something. And, sometimes, even the author can be wrong. As one story goes, Isaac Asimov once lost an argument with a Columbia University professor over the meaning of one of his stories. Because we carry biases which influence our work; even if we don't mean to.
Whether you think something is stupid or not is irrelevant. Using fiction as allegory to tackle real world issues is a tried and true method of writing. That's practically the entire body of science fiction works, as a genre.
You're right, of course, and I agree.
What annoys me about the whole thing is the people saying that their interpretation of literary tools is the more valid, simply because the existence of said tools offends their sensibilities. What annoys me, even more is the people who say that the Drow can not be evil, sadistic etc., because they have black skin and are led by women and ascribing black oppression or toxic feminism in the face of vindictive patriarchy to everything is currently en vogue.
No-one really says this though. You are just making a strawman to justify not having to respect other people.
Those people are trying to take away a literary tool because they disagree with it.
No, that is actually what you are doing by trying to force people to adher to a certain outdated description of the Drow.
I genuinely don't understand how people can not separate reality from fiction.
Again, just a strawman. Fiction is influenced by reality, reality is influenced by fiction.
Oh, look, a black-skinned female elf sacrificing white human babies to a demon God --- it must be anti-feminist and racist -- nuke it -- nuke it from orbit!
Then when Wizards say, okay, people don't like this, so let's change their skin colour, so they don't so closely resemble black people from the real world and let's make it more clear that Drow have personal choice and free will; that most of them choose to follow Lolth, but some don't and fight against her evil, those same people from before start accusing Wizards of all sorts and crying -- burn it -- burn It with fire!
It is all ridiculous.
Your strawman and lack of respect of people is what is ridiculous.
It is nothing more than people who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality projecting their own twisted biases onto a mindless literary tool.
In this case, you are the one who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality and the one projecting.
Asimov admitted a mistake in the science, not the meaning. He admitted that the oxygen molecules would have been too large to breathe by the miniaturized humans in Incredible Voyage. He also admitted a science mistake int he atmospheric effect on human bodies in Like Stars, Like Dust. Sorry to get nerdy, but we are all playing D&D here.
There's a story told by Gary Larson. In summary, he created the cover for In Search of the Far Side. During a signing, a kid pointed out that there was a rather phallic design in the artwork for the cover. Realizing the kid might be right, Gary called his publisher in a panic that evening. She told him, "So? People are going to see what they want to see."
There you go. People are going to see what they want to see. Nobody can control that (and nobody should try to control that).
WotC is giving people options. That's all WotC is doing. They've been doing that since the original release of 5e. It's right there in the big 3 sourcebooks. Change it how you wish. Don't like something? Change it.
People seem to think that they need WotC's permission to change something. They never needed it, but WotC already gave it. Yet, that doesn't seem to be good enough for a vocal group. Squeaky wheels get the grease, but even if the vocal groups get all the catering, the same thing still applies as it always has. Don't like something? Change it. Even if WotC posted new options, you decide how you see it and decide what to do with it.
(Trivia: Gary Larson vowed that when someone pointed out something he didn't intend, he would respond with, "So?")
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
To be faaaaair, some of these changes affect their official tools that do not have the ability to handle Chapters 8 and 9 of the DMG. It opens up more possibilities in such tools as DDB, but we're still in control of what we do with it.
I have access to these new options, but I'm still doing my characters as they were before the additions.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
If you don't even know what kinds of societies are all over Faerun, just avoid posting such comments.
It is not called Matriarchal directly but it is literally an all female order of witches that have the power to appoint and remove leaders in Rashemen at all times, and the whole country always opposes Thay so i wouldn't bet on them being an evil society. Further more the rite of passage for young men is to protect a young witch during her initiation journey at any cost.
While not many of the damn countries in FR are described in the trickle that is 5e lore, there are a lot of content and lore from earlier editions. Learn the lore before screeching.
If you don't even know what kinds of societies are all over Faerun, just avoid posting such comments.
It is not called Matriarchal directly but it is literally an all female order of witches that have the power to appoint and remove leaders in Rashemen at all times, and the whole country always opposes Thay so i wouldn't bet on them being an evil society. Further more the rite of passage for young men is to protect a young witch during her initiation journey at any cost.
While not many of the damn countries in FR are described in the trickle that is 5e lore, there are a lot of content and lore from earlier editions. Learn the lore before screeching.
That’s awesome. That makes me feel a little better about the drow. So does the creation of the new Aevendrow and Lorendrow cultures to counter-balance the evil Udadrow of Menzoberranzan.
If you don't even know what kinds of societies are all over Faerun, just avoid posting such comments.
It is not called Matriarchal directly but it is literally an all female order of witches that have the power to appoint and remove leaders in Rashemen at all times, and the whole country always opposes Thay so i wouldn't bet on them being an evil society. Further more the rite of passage for young men is to protect a young witch during her initiation journey at any cost.
While not many of the damn countries in FR are described in the trickle that is 5e lore, there are a lot of content and lore from earlier editions. Learn the lore before screeching.
That’s awesome. That makes me feel a little better about the drow. So does the creation of the new Aevendrow and Lorendrow cultures to counter-balance the evil Udadrow of Menzoberranzan.
See, to me, it's only just a cheap retcon.
Two big good Drow societies that pop out of nowhere, they managed to stay hidden without trading or interacting with anyone and stayed out of Lolth's reach despite canonically she manages to hunt down "traitors" even on the surface... not only it doesn't make sense(cause it invalidates older lore and says "look they were always perfect"), it also diminishes the image of Lolth so that she looks like an incompetent being.
What really angers me is that R.A. Salvatore ignored the good Drow that were already in place and their goddess so that he could spawn two good cities from nowhere and say they were always good Drow. That's cheap.
Imagine if he had started to outline the Eilistraee resistence and her slowly gaining purchase, with more and more good Drow rebelling against Lolth and managing to capture/severely undermine a few of the main cities.
That would even make for a good and organic campaign premise! But no... let's just retcon whole civilizations out of nowhere.
You and I see it as cheap, but other people see it as a much needed change.
I won't pretend to understand why they felt they needed the change or why RAS agreed, but it happened and I won't try to change that.
What I can change is what I do with it. I simply won't use it in my own campaigns. As stated, I also find it cheap.
I have no say in whether other people use it. If I'm in a campaign where the table is using those changes, I'll go along with it. To me, it's more about playing with people and enjoying it in the end. You have to ask yourself if you can enjoy it with the cheap alterations or if you cannot.
Know what you can and cannot change.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Two big good Drow societies that pop out of nowhere, they managed to stay hidden without trading or interacting with anyone and stayed out of Lolth's reach despite canonically she manages to hunt down "traitors" even on the surface... not only it doesn't make sense(cause it invalidates older lore and says "look they were always perfect"), it also diminishes the image of Lolth so that she looks like an incompetent being.
I guess this depends upon how they retcon in her treatment of these other factions, as she must surely have known about them.
I too would prefer them to be more tied in to Lolth's rise to power though to explain some of this; for example, if when she was unable to control them she'd had followers perform some terrible ritual to destroy those cities, but only succeeded in trapping them in a domain of dread/the astral sea/the shadowfell/whatever, – as something that actually separated them so they couldn't be found would explain better why they could suddenly be a thing, and why even other gods may not have known about them anymore (or believed them lost forever).
I dunno, with all the options in a high fantasy setting it just feels weird to handle this in a way that kind of indirectly blames every other race for not bothering to check if those elves (who were definitely there before, we promise) aren't there anymore. It kind of weirdly retroactively makes literally every other race lazily racist if there isn't some good explanation for not only why, but how they have remained hidden for so long in spite of everything that has happened in the world since they disappeared.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Like... yeah, Drow might be dark-skinned in a very 'fantasy' way, but it's still a bad look to have an always-evil race with dark skin being their identifying physical feature?? Feel like that shouldn't be a controversial take, it's not like anyone can stop you in your own game from playing the way you want, but this isn't just a change for people who want to play Drizz't.
it's still a bad look to have an always-evil race with dark skin being their identifying physical feature??
I think that's the wrong thing to take away from it; Drow are not a placeholder for black people in the game just because they have dark skin, in fact deciding that that's the case would be its own form of racism (judging by skin colour alone). The Drow are not evil because of their skin colour, they're evil because of their society, because of the malign influence of Lolth, because of generations of favouring cruelty over compassion or open mindedness.
The Netherese empire was arguably not much different, and they were white humans, so evil is not restricted by skin colour in D&D. And there are plenty of other dark skinned peoples in D&D, Drow are not the only ones, they're not even the only dark skinned elves.
The problem is that basically all Drow being evil means that the racism of surface dwellers is justified, which is hugely problematic as it creates a form of racism in the game that is dangerously close to acceptable, which should never be the case. The other problem is that we have a sentient race that's evil, and Drizzt and others are simply exceptions, rather than a sign that the Drow could be saved from the influence of Lolth. The problem is a lack of nuance, the lack of an impression that the Drow are subjugated as opposed to willingly going along with it etc.
This is why retconning in two new Drow cities that someone lost down the back of the couch is such a weird "fix", as it still leaves the Lolthites as irredeemable scum that it's okay to hate (and in D&D that will often mean massacre on sight). It's a weird solution to a complex problem.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Good drow that live on the surface? Well yes let's just ignore the fact that Dambrath is already a nation of drow living on the surface, and it even has a few worshippers of Eilistraee. Let's completely ignore that there are plenty of drow living in the Al-Suqut mountains near the city of Akota. Let's put a drow city in the North, where the giants already had a civilization.
Are you just pulling Akota out of the air as an example, or did WotC actually reference Akota somewhere in this new Lore?
I like the idea of diversity and may even implement some of the new subraces. I read all of R. A. Salvatore and just recently wrote a background for a male Drow. I made him born into house Baenre and even given up to the Bregan D'aerthe. I made the character born in 1391 cause we are currently in 1491 starting in Phandalin. But the player choose a chaotic neutral and I wouldn't know any lore making him a good dark elf that wasn't born in the Underdark. Still give me more options I just follow the old school ways and will look for opportunities to introduce the new Drow if the time comes.
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Live or say die !! Let the fun roll on being creative and adventurous
The Aevean Drow and Loren Drow might end up being cool, not enough information to judge yet. But I’m not a fan of them never having been on Lolth’s side, their relation with her is the Drows’ big theme. What I’d prefer is if they were groups that realized very early on-perhaps back in the First World days-that realized Lolth was bad news and broke away in significant numbers.
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Allegory, as a literary device, is millennia old. So much of our stories make use of it, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find one that doesn't. None come to mind.
Having said that, drow (as Salvatore wrote them) are not an intentional allegory. This is an example of "death of the author." The author isn't actually dead, but what they've written can be interpreted in a context they did not intend. And not all interpretations and opinions are created equal. They aren't all justifiable or supportable. Like all forms of literary criticism, it needs to be backed up by something. And, sometimes, even the author can be wrong. As one story goes, Isaac Asimov once lost an argument with a Columbia University professor over the meaning of one of his stories. Because we carry biases which influence our work; even if we don't mean to.
Whether you think something is stupid or not is irrelevant. Using fiction as allegory to tackle real world issues is a tried and true method of writing. That's practically the entire body of science fiction works, as a genre.
No-one really says this though. You are just making a strawman to justify not having to respect other people.
No, that is actually what you are doing by trying to force people to adher to a certain outdated description of the Drow.
Again, just a strawman. Fiction is influenced by reality, reality is influenced by fiction.
Your strawman and lack of respect of people is what is ridiculous.
In this case, you are the one who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality and the one projecting.
Asimov admitted a mistake in the science, not the meaning. He admitted that the oxygen molecules would have been too large to breathe by the miniaturized humans in Incredible Voyage. He also admitted a science mistake int he atmospheric effect on human bodies in Like Stars, Like Dust. Sorry to get nerdy, but we are all playing D&D here.
There's a story told by Gary Larson. In summary, he created the cover for In Search of the Far Side. During a signing, a kid pointed out that there was a rather phallic design in the artwork for the cover. Realizing the kid might be right, Gary called his publisher in a panic that evening. She told him, "So? People are going to see what they want to see."
There you go. People are going to see what they want to see. Nobody can control that (and nobody should try to control that).
WotC is giving people options. That's all WotC is doing. They've been doing that since the original release of 5e. It's right there in the big 3 sourcebooks. Change it how you wish. Don't like something? Change it.
People seem to think that they need WotC's permission to change something. They never needed it, but WotC already gave it. Yet, that doesn't seem to be good enough for a vocal group. Squeaky wheels get the grease, but even if the vocal groups get all the catering, the same thing still applies as it always has. Don't like something? Change it. Even if WotC posted new options, you decide how you see it and decide what to do with it.
(Trivia: Gary Larson vowed that when someone pointed out something he didn't intend, he would respond with, "So?")
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
To be faaaaair, some of these changes affect their official tools that do not have the ability to handle Chapters 8 and 9 of the DMG. It opens up more possibilities in such tools as DDB, but we're still in control of what we do with it.
I have access to these new options, but I'm still doing my characters as they were before the additions.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Drow the only matriarchal society?
Rashemen says hello?
If you don't even know what kinds of societies are all over Faerun, just avoid posting such comments.
It is not called Matriarchal directly but it is literally an all female order of witches that have the power to appoint and remove leaders in Rashemen at all times, and the whole country always opposes Thay so i wouldn't bet on them being an evil society. Further more the rite of passage for young men is to protect a young witch during her initiation journey at any cost.
While not many of the damn countries in FR are described in the trickle that is 5e lore, there are a lot of content and lore from earlier editions. Learn the lore before screeching.
That’s awesome. That makes me feel a little better about the drow. So does the creation of the new Aevendrow and Lorendrow cultures to counter-balance the evil Udadrow of Menzoberranzan.
See, to me, it's only just a cheap retcon.
Two big good Drow societies that pop out of nowhere, they managed to stay hidden without trading or interacting with anyone and stayed out of Lolth's reach despite canonically she manages to hunt down "traitors" even on the surface... not only it doesn't make sense(cause it invalidates older lore and says "look they were always perfect"), it also diminishes the image of Lolth so that she looks like an incompetent being.
What really angers me is that R.A. Salvatore ignored the good Drow that were already in place and their goddess so that he could spawn two good cities from nowhere and say they were always good Drow. That's cheap.
Imagine if he had started to outline the Eilistraee resistence and her slowly gaining purchase, with more and more good Drow rebelling against Lolth and managing to capture/severely undermine a few of the main cities.
That would even make for a good and organic campaign premise! But no... let's just retcon whole civilizations out of nowhere.
You and I see it as cheap, but other people see it as a much needed change.
I won't pretend to understand why they felt they needed the change or why RAS agreed, but it happened and I won't try to change that.
What I can change is what I do with it. I simply won't use it in my own campaigns. As stated, I also find it cheap.
I have no say in whether other people use it. If I'm in a campaign where the table is using those changes, I'll go along with it. To me, it's more about playing with people and enjoying it in the end. You have to ask yourself if you can enjoy it with the cheap alterations or if you cannot.
Know what you can and cannot change.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I guess this depends upon how they retcon in her treatment of these other factions, as she must surely have known about them.
I too would prefer them to be more tied in to Lolth's rise to power though to explain some of this; for example, if when she was unable to control them she'd had followers perform some terrible ritual to destroy those cities, but only succeeded in trapping them in a domain of dread/the astral sea/the shadowfell/whatever, – as something that actually separated them so they couldn't be found would explain better why they could suddenly be a thing, and why even other gods may not have known about them anymore (or believed them lost forever).
I dunno, with all the options in a high fantasy setting it just feels weird to handle this in a way that kind of indirectly blames every other race for not bothering to check if those elves (who were definitely there before, we promise) aren't there anymore. It kind of weirdly retroactively makes literally every other race lazily racist if there isn't some good explanation for not only why, but how they have remained hidden for so long in spite of everything that has happened in the world since they disappeared.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Thank you!
Like... yeah, Drow might be dark-skinned in a very 'fantasy' way, but it's still a bad look to have an always-evil race with dark skin being their identifying physical feature?? Feel like that shouldn't be a controversial take, it's not like anyone can stop you in your own game from playing the way you want, but this isn't just a change for people who want to play Drizz't.
I think that's the wrong thing to take away from it; Drow are not a placeholder for black people in the game just because they have dark skin, in fact deciding that that's the case would be its own form of racism (judging by skin colour alone). The Drow are not evil because of their skin colour, they're evil because of their society, because of the malign influence of Lolth, because of generations of favouring cruelty over compassion or open mindedness.
The Netherese empire was arguably not much different, and they were white humans, so evil is not restricted by skin colour in D&D. And there are plenty of other dark skinned peoples in D&D, Drow are not the only ones, they're not even the only dark skinned elves.
The problem is that basically all Drow being evil means that the racism of surface dwellers is justified, which is hugely problematic as it creates a form of racism in the game that is dangerously close to acceptable, which should never be the case. The other problem is that we have a sentient race that's evil, and Drizzt and others are simply exceptions, rather than a sign that the Drow could be saved from the influence of Lolth. The problem is a lack of nuance, the lack of an impression that the Drow are subjugated as opposed to willingly going along with it etc.
This is why retconning in two new Drow cities that someone lost down the back of the couch is such a weird "fix", as it still leaves the Lolthites as irredeemable scum that it's okay to hate (and in D&D that will often mean massacre on sight). It's a weird solution to a complex problem.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Are you just pulling Akota out of the air as an example, or did WotC actually reference Akota somewhere in this new Lore?
I like the idea of diversity and may even implement some of the new subraces. I read all of R. A. Salvatore and just recently wrote a background for a male Drow. I made him born into house Baenre and even given up to the Bregan D'aerthe. I made the character born in 1391 cause we are currently in 1491 starting in Phandalin. But the player choose a chaotic neutral and I wouldn't know any lore making him a good dark elf that wasn't born in the Underdark. Still give me more options I just follow the old school ways and will look for opportunities to introduce the new Drow if the time comes.
Live or say die !! Let the fun roll on being creative and adventurous
The Aevean Drow and Loren Drow might end up being cool, not enough information to judge yet. But I’m not a fan of them never having been on Lolth’s side, their relation with her is the Drows’ big theme. What I’d prefer is if they were groups that realized very early on-perhaps back in the First World days-that realized Lolth was bad news and broke away in significant numbers.