D&D 5E Tasha's Drow Art and the Future of Their Depictions in D&D

[Oofta]

Do we really need to start arguing about race and alignment again after we just had another thread shut down? I mean, no one has said that believing it's okay for effectively all members of a fictional species to be evil is racist yet, but traditionally in D&D it has been up to the campaign setting on how to handle this. In many settings, drow that are not evil has been one in a million if any. If that's not the case in your campaign setting, more power to you.

I mean, I think it could be interesting to discuss the role that monsters play in D&D (not just drow) but sides are pretty much set in stone and I already have a pretty good idea of who would respond. I mean, technically this thread isn't about that other species that shall not be named, but it sure seems to be headed in that direction.

 

[Scott Christian]

In many settings, drow that are not evil has been one in a million if any.

The last campaign I played in, drow were part of the feywild. But those dwarves, ugh; those warmongering, resource hungry, kill anything that slows down their objective to ruling the entire realm - ugh... they were bastards!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And this is kind of my point. You choose to play a fantasy game that has an entire chapter (one of the first in fact that players read) describing race and culture in combination with one another. You choose to to play a fantasy game where thousands of pages of lore have been written about this one group, and their wrongdoings. And as others have pointed out, a lot of lore exists of outliers and other members of said group that exist elsewhere that are not amoral. You choose to play a game that has an alignment system.
And that is the part I do not understand. People are upset by drow being portrayed as evil, wanting the individual approach to trump the cultural approach. Yet, that is not how morals exist, especially when creating a fantasy society. And people are upset about the race being evil, yet they choose to play a system that makes character creation focus on race and many tables focus on alignment.

No, I do not choose to play a RPG with alignment. The first thing I do with any edition of D&D is to remove the alignment. Thankfully in 5e this is super simple as the alignment has practically no mechanical impact.

I agree with you about skin tone. I do not agree with you about culture. If you could turn back time, and make every race embedded with all the skin tones of the human race, where every society of dwarves had heterogenous mixes of skin color, and all drow had the same mix, and all elves had the same mix, etc. would the drow that live in Menzoberranzan still be an issue? Are you opposed to all orcs in Middle Earth being evil?

I love the Middle-Earth but it is a product of its time. And even Tolkien himself was bothered with inherently evil orcs. I want modern fantasy products to stop trying to badly imitate LotR and and move past the simplistic black and white morality.

Making people ideological diverse is fine. But for the sake of culture and what a society considers moral and amoral, it is a group census. And that group census chooses what is right and wrong. And some of the things they choose may be evil, especially in a fantasy world where a spider demon goddess grants incredible powers to her followers.

Even Lolth doesn't need to be 'evil.' She can merely be a fierce and ruthless patron of the drow. A frightful deity for sure, but give her more depth. She can be more like Kali instead of one dimensional cartoon villain.

Like I said, the skin tone is, and always has been ridiculous. It should have been corrected in the second it started. But to insist a culture can't be labelled evil because of the things they do seems to dumb down the discourse much more than a label ever could. It is to deny morality exists within a culture.

Describe what they do and let the reader be the judge of whether it is 'evil' to them. And yes, the label of 'evil' definitely dumbs down the discourse. Instead of giving things realistic motivations or the reader/player trying to understand those motivations, we just go to 'they're evil so they do evil stuff.' That doesn't produce interesting drama, it doesn't even produce good villains.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

And this is kind of my point. You choose to play a fantasy game that has an entire chapter (one of the first in fact that players read) describing race and culture in combination with one another. You choose to to play a fantasy game where thousands of pages of lore have been written about this one group, and their wrongdoings. And as others have pointed out, a lot of lore exists of outliers and other members of said group that exist elsewhere that are not amoral. You choose to play a game that has an alignment system.
And that is the part I do not understand. People are upset by drow being portrayed as evil, wanting the individual approach to trump the cultural approach. Yet, that is not how morals exist, especially when creating a fantasy society. And people are upset about the race being evil, yet they choose to play a system that makes character creation focus on race and many tables focus on alignment.

I agree with you about skin tone. I do not agree with you about culture. If you could turn back time, and make every race embedded with all the skin tones of the human race, where every society of dwarves had heterogenous mixes of skin color, and all drow had the same mix, and all elves had the same mix, etc. would the drow that live in Menzoberranzan still be an issue? Are you opposed to all orcs in Middle Earth being evil?
Making people ideological diverse is fine. But for the sake of culture and what a society considers moral and amoral, it is a group census. And that group census chooses what is right and wrong. And some of the things they choose may be evil, especially in a fantasy world where a spider demon goddess grants incredible powers to her followers.
Like I said, the skin tone is, and always has been ridiculous. It should have been corrected in the second it started. But to insist a culture can't be labelled evil because of the things they do seems to dumb down the discourse much more than a label ever could. It is to deny morality exists within a culture.

Whereas Salvatore proved his point with Drizzt, and more power to him in examining inherent biases, etc., I am of the opinion that one does not throw out the baby with the bathwater.. We are only great Heroes in such games if we have great Enemies, and the Drow, IME, are one of the greatest body of enemies conceived by Gary e'en though they were borrowed and massaged from Norse myth. Some things are just too good (in the creative sense) to tamper with and IMO this is one of them. Skin tone? No prob. The rest should be left to individual DMs and not be tampered with by D&D's present designers no matter the point of cultures and societies because, in the end, a good story element is how I see it. And if it had not been for what the Drow were Salvatore would have had no story as well. Worth thinking about...

 

[Oofta]

Whereas Salvatore proved his point with Drizzt, and more power to him in examining inherent biases, etc., I am of the opinion that one does not throw out the baby with the bathwater.. We are only great Heroes in such games if we have great Enemies, and the Drow, IME, are one of the greatest body of enemies conceived by Gary e'en though they were borrowed and massaged from Norse myth. Some things are just too good (in the creative sense) to tamper with and IMO this is one of them. Skin tone? No prob. The rest should be left to individual DMs and not be tampered with by D&D's present designers no matter the point of cultures and societies because, in the end, a good story element is how I see it. And if it had not been for what the Drow were Salvatore would have had no story as well. Worth thinking about...

It would have been kind of hard to have stories about a hero fighting against the culture of his upbringing, and being truly exceptional while doing it, if the culture he came from was not based on cutthroat evil. Heroes have to have opposition, I think D&D works better for a lot of people if the lines between good and evil are pretty clearly drawn.

 

[Azzy]

And this is kind of my point.

If it was, I didn't get it from your post.

You choose to play a fantasy game that has an entire chapter (one of the first in fact that players read) describing race and culture in combination with one another. You choose to to play a fantasy game where thousands of pages of lore have been written about this one group, and their wrongdoings. And as others have pointed out, a lot of lore exists of outliers and other members of said group that exist elsewhere that are not amoral.

Right. We all know that drow that worship Lolth or other demons are evil. We also know that there are drow (both individuals and societies) that are not evil. So why were you saying, "I am always curious to hear this, the inherently evil" to someone that said "I too wish they abandoned the inherently evil deal"?

You choose to play a game that has an alignment system.

Right.

And that is the part I do not understand. People are upset by drow being portrayed as evil,

Yeah, I think that this is the disconnect here. No one is complaining that demon-worshipping drow are evil. We already have drow individuals and societies that are non-evil (even if the PHB does little to convey that), so there can't be any of that "inherently evil" that some want to apply to some other races (at least, not without being disingenuous). The big complaints are: 1) The most notable dark skinned (and matriarchal) race in D&D is portrayed as evil. 2) That the drow's dark skin is the result of a curse.

wanting the individual approach to trump the cultural approach. Yet, that is not how morals exist, especially when creating a fantasy society. And people are upset about the race being evil, yet they choose to play a system that makes character creation focus on race and many tables focus on alignment.

Yet again, the race itself isn't evil, it's the culture of many of the race. So, that seems to be a misconstruing of the actual complaints.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

It would have been kind of hard to have stories about a hero fighting against the culture of his upbringing, and being truly exceptional while doing it, if the culture he came from was not based on cutthroat evil. Heroes have to have opposition, I think D&D works better for a lot of people if the lines between good and evil are pretty clearly drawn.

Right. Good stories always involve tension. Without tension there's nothing there. Drow create great tension.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It would have been kind of hard to have stories about a hero fighting against the culture of his upbringing, and being truly exceptional while doing it, if the culture he came from was not based on cutthroat evil. Heroes have to have opposition, I think D&D works better for a lot of people if the lines between good and evil are pretty clearly drawn.

Yes, but you're saying that a whole race's culture has to be the same all across that race, even if there are millions of different members of that race that live in a variety of different locations. In Exandria, the Drow people as a whole broke free of Lolth's grasp and are now capable of being any alignment, which is what the Orcs, Goblinoids, and Gnolls are in the process of doing with their patron deities. The Drow in Exandria don't have to be Lolth worshippers, the vast majority of them aren't, but there are still groups of Lolth-cultists (primarily made up of old-fashioned Drow) that live in secluded locations in the world.

You can have a character that grew up fighting against the culture they were raised in even if the whole race's culture(s) is more diverse than "WE EVIL" and "DEMON SPIDERS ARE GOOD!!!".

And humans are known for having a ton of cultural diversity. We have stories of people growing up in cultures and fighting against them. So, you saying that if we make Drow capable of having diverse cultures would make these cool stories be impossible is very, very incorrect.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, but you're saying that a whole race's culture has to be the same all across that race, even if there are millions of different members of that race that live in a variety of different locations. In Exandria, the Drow people as a whole broke free of Lolth's grasp and are now capable of being any alignment, which is what the Orcs, Goblinoids, and Gnolls are in the process of doing with their patron deities. The Drow in Exandria don't have to be Lolth worshippers, the vast majority of them aren't, but there are still groups of Lolth-cultists (primarily made up of old-fashioned Drow) that live in secluded locations in the world.

You can have a character that grew up fighting against the culture they were raised in even if the whole race's culture(s) is more diverse than "WE EVIL" and "DEMON SPIDERS ARE GOOD!!!".

And humans are known for having a ton of cultural diversity. We have stories of people growing up in cultures and fighting against them. So, you saying that if we make Drow capable of having diverse cultures would make these cool stories be impossible is very, very incorrect.

I'm not arguing anything, just stating my preferences. There is no one true way.

 

[Mithril Maiden]

Honestly I'm ambivalent about this change, leaning somewhat negative. I think there absolutely is a problem with how the Drow are portrayed that needs solving, but I think this solution is really only half a solution. Like having the almost-always evil race be the most prominent black race is highly problematic and D&D needs to move away from that, I'm not disagreeing there. Especially in Pathfinder with the whole "Drow being black is a punishment and really good Drow literally become white" thing. Yea that's not good. I just don't love "So we'll just get rid of the black people" as a solution. I also honestly just really, really love the charcoal/obsidian skin and white hair look and don't want it to go away. I don't really like the new silvery aesthetic, personally. This also doesn't address how misogynistic the Drow come off as. Race was never the sole problem, here.

But, like, I worldbuild my own setting, so I guess this doesn't effect me. My Drow will remain black as coal. But then again, people are talking about giving Drow diverse skin tones, and that's kinda my approach in a way. I just don't treat Elves and Drow as seperate races. All Drow are Elves. They're just black Elves, because the flip side of Elves being pale and not having pinkish skin is that their skin goes grey and then black when it darkens (so if you like the grey Drow art more that me, that's still a thing). So similar to Eberron, Drow live outside in very hot environments, rather than underground.

So yea I guess my point is, yes the Drow need serious fixing within D&D, and I don't want them to remain the same, but I actually like the charcoal skin and I'll be sad if it's never used in official WOTC art again.