CapnZapp
Legend
This always makes me shake my head.1. Read book 1 carefully to memorize the motivations and political scene if you want to run that. You need to have it down pat. Don't be too disappointed if your players get sick of dealing with Drow and decide that genocide is more palatable than politics though(thats what happened to us).
I do understand the Drow are kewl, and the reasons for more Drow modules popping up.
What I don't understand is why so many of these modules contain elaborate (or not so elaborate, I haven't checked DQE) instructions for diplomacy and alliances.
WTF? Everybody knows Drow are the least reliable most back-stabbing surface-hatin' kind of all. Why include all of that when few if any adventure parties will ever see it.
I mean, my last 3E campaign was in City of the Spider Queen. What a waste!
Our party contained both a Paladin and a (ranger) Elf. Of course we immediately switched over into genocide mode!
I guess I will never understand why they keep doing diplomacy-with-monsters adventures when these apparently always assume these adventures will be run by standard generic PC parties... which means surface dwellers, which means elves and dwarves that hate most pople from the Underdark, and which means humans who put their faith in gods decidedly different from the ones from below.
If these modules were geared towards special PCs, where you play other Drow, or I don't know, Troglodytes, then I could understand why the designer would bother with pages detailing the diplomacy and power struggles.
But a standard party of five allying with Drow? Nah.