* What about the drows in Pathfinder? I have read they are going to dissapear because they will be not in the SRD or like this.
Thankfully being deleted. Or at least no future reference to them. Too many fans to just say the word 'delete' even though the effect will be the same.
While it is OGL, there is other stuff staying that arguably needs just as much tweaking to be free of OGL. Like Orcs. Both have little to do with the etymology of the words they come from and little to do with prior to D&D versions of creatures like them (Tolkien's Orcs were arguably an Elf with a subclass or heritage).
But Drow also have the legacy of being a 'race who started out White, and had their skin turned black because they rejected the Elf God.' And you can argue all day about 'was that African Black or Obsidian Black' but it doesn't matter - that same story is known as the '
Curse of Ham' and was used during the Atlantic Slave Trade to justify enslaving Africans...
And while it was retconned out of the Drow before the D module series was even done... it appeared again in Elder Scrolls, AND in Pathfinder 1E (a version of it was on the Pathfinder wiki last I checked a month ago). So it's become part of the 'mythos' of the 'dark elf' that they were 'turned' when they rejected the elf god(s). Which is the Curse of Ham.
Drow then got novels about a 'black guy who wasn't like all the other black guys, he was one of the good ones, so he worked to help the non-Black people go out and hunt down black folks...' (
so um yeah, they went there...)
And again we can have a pointless argument about what kind of black is that - but that's not the point. He could have been a 'white guy who isn't like the other white folk and helped the non-white people hunt white folks' and... the problem would be the same.
It ain't the color that matters - it's the concept.
So... yeah...
Drow have a very messed up legacy.
When the Darklands book comes out we will see some serpent people take the role of the bad guys down under, and there will be cavern elves (who look suspiciously like drow anyway) living in cities that offer places of refuge for the tourists from up above.
I still think it's a mistake to make a 'race' of bad guys... but if they make factions of serpent people and 'this nation is up to no good but that one is just doing it's thing' then it'll be good. But I suspect they won't do that.
...
Anyway...
I won't debate this topic. Folks can Google Curse of Ham and get educated, or they can refuse to see it and get mad on their own. Enough threads have been locked by people that don't like to see things or only want racists to be able to speak but never like the folks that counter them getting a say back. So I'm out on this one. The above will hopefully be my mic drop and you can Google it or not to see what I'm speaking of.
