But speaking of black being white and up being down, I'm going to turn my attention toward the Underdark for a minute. I had a thought on an idea someone had suggested a few pages back about whether drow should be presented with different skin colors. I'm against that idea for several reasons.
First and foremost, I don't think the same argument in favor of presenting different human races applies here. To the extent that drow are a monster race, people aren't intended to be able to "relate" to them, so there's no imperative to make the drow a race with a great degree of variety.
Secondly, the drow are already a different "race" of elves. You've got sun elves, wood elves, dark elves, etc., so having different "races" of drow would just be redundant.
Ah, now this is one of those interesting real-world questions. Well, as real-world as D&D gets.
Here's my suggestion for the drow. Instead of "elf with black skin," the art direction on drow should be "elf who's part spider." All elves have large eyes, but drow eyes are a little
too large and round, and entirely red without whites or pupils, suggesting spider eyes. Their black skin is glossy and has small folds around the joints, so it looks like a carapace. Their hair is very fine, and not so much white as translucent, like spider silk. Their poses are often crouching, arms and legs splayed. Some might have short fangs. Others would have birthmarks in the shape of red hourglasses.
Then give regular elves a wide variety of skin tones, comparable to humans. Some will have pale skin and flowing blond hair. Others will have dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair. This would let D&D get away from "light-skinned elves good, dark-skinned elves bad," while preserving the distinctive appearance of the drow. (A big part of the problem with drow is that they have traditionally been the
only dark-skinned elves in the game. Even elves who are stated in the text to have brown skin are almost always depicted looking like white people with heavy tans.)
Back up these changes in the text by stating that the appearance of the drow is deliberately cultivated, both by breeding and by magic, to bring them closer to Lolth. Driders represent the pinnacle of this effort and are regarded as the height of beauty in drow society. (Yes, this is a change to the concept of driders as outcasts, but lots of people have observed that that concept never made much sense. Why should a spider's body be a mark of
shame in drow society? Shouldn't it be a badge of honor?) Drow communities that move away from the worship of Lolth would revert over generations to more natural skin tones--or perhaps, since they live underground, they would lose all pigmentation and take on an albino-like appearance, like most subterranean critters in the real world.