D&D General Drow & Orcs Removed from the Monster Manual

[Hussar]

but it's not thar off it.

I saw what you did there.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Amongst other things, I tend to think one of D&D's lore problems is its depiction of the good species - elves and dwarves and the rest are just too sanitised, too nice. I tend to prefer the view that "while we may sometimes look like you, we are not you" (Babylon 5 is fairly obscure, especially now, but that's where that quote comes from), or "I may be on the side of the angels, but don't for one second think that I am one of them" (Sherlock).

So for elves I prefer the depiction in "The Broken Sword" - the elf lord is ultimately on the side of 'good', but he is proud, arrogant, and sometimes cruel. (I also tend to think they should have established that all elven societies are matriarchal, so that it wasn't quite such a shock when we met the drow.)

(I'm a fan of the depiction of the elves of Taladas and Spelljammer from 2nd Ed days, who are far from nice. But I think it's disappointing that WotC felt the need to introduce a new elves subrace (as was) for their new Spelljammer boxed set, thus once again hiving off the unpleasant bits to an annex, away from the 'real' elves.)

For dwarves... well, I grew up in a former mining community, so I can relate somewhat to their frequent depiction. Except that they should be a lot more hard living, hard drinking, hard fighting, hard swearing... and dying. I'd note that all of the dwarves we meet in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are from the privileged class of nobles, and princes, and mine owners. But the cost of all of those treasures those dwarves had amassed is more accurately measured in the blood of their kin - and it's likely that many more dwarves lost their lives digging out Khazad-dum than did when it fell. (I'd be inclined to note somewhere that while a dwarf in good health can live to 250, most of them enter the mines at 50, work for 20 years, have 10 years of retirement in ill health, and then die.)

Make the evil species less monolithically and multiversally evil, yes. But also make the good species also a lot less monolithically and multiversally good too.

Strangely elves in D&D seem less complex than Tolkien's are - have a look at some of the stuff they got up to in the Silmarillion.

All of this is testament to WoTC's general lack of imagination and wimpiness when it comes to these things - instead of complexity and diversity we just get vanilla blandness and cutting and running from anything difficult lore-wise.

 

[delericho]

But I do think appearance is a big factor "we can't punch elves because they look pretty"; "We can't punch halflings because they look like kids"; "we don't mind punching orcs because they are big and ugly".

Very true. I'm not sure that I want to think about what that means regarding drow...

 

[Hussar]

Heh. It's funny. When WotC brings out things like Eye of Gruumsh orcs and various other "Insert Proper Noun" Name orcs, they get roundly criticized for trying to feed into the miniatures market and it's 100% a money making ploy to monetize D&D IP.

But, when they remove that, they get criticized for not being creative enough.

It's almost like folks have never read a module. How many NPC's are there in a given module where their statblock isn't "Orc" but, "NPC X is a INSERT NPC TYPE FROM THE MONSTER MANUAL HERE, with the following changes"? Good grief, it's all over the modules. About the only time you see baseline humanoids is just nameless trash mobs.

So much for wanting unique stat blocks. Every time an NPC actually has a name, it almost never uses the baseline stat block from the MM.

 

[AnotherGuy]

"Volo's Guide to Monsters" is another book that really hasn't aged well. It's not the absolute worst... but it's not thar off it.

I'm actually quite a fan of that Gazetteer as it was the first book where it made the baddie humanoids interesting for me - their diversity, their way of life, enemies within and enemies without, the struggle of Thar to keep them united against vastly superior opponents, shamans and sacrifices, war machine, mushrooms, younglings, classed humanoids, Oenkmar...and the quest for the Blue Knife, which in my campaign is a shard (one of the pieces of the rod of 7 parts).

 

[delericho]

I'm actually quite a fan of that Gazetteer as it was the first book where it made the baddie humanoids interesting for me...

I was too, back when I first encountered it at age 13 (I think). Time hasn't been kind - I wasn't aware of quite what I was reading until later.

That's not the worst experience I've had revisiting stuff from the past. A few years ago I went through all my old homebrew notes, scanned everything and got rid of the hard copies. I'm not going to say what I found, but... ouch.

 

[delericho]

Heh. It's funny. When WotC brings out things like Eye of Gruumsh orcs and various other "Insert Proper Noun" Name orcs, they get roundly criticized for trying to feed into the miniatures market and it's 100% a money making ploy to monetize D&D IP.

To be fair, everything they do is an attempt to monetize D&D IP. Which, also being fair, is exactly as it should be - they're a publicy traded company, so fundamentally they're there to make money.

 

[Hussar]

To be fair, everything they do is an attempt to monetize D&D IP. Which, also being fair, is exactly as it should be - they're a publicy traded company, so fundamentally they're there to make money.

Oh, no, I totally get it. My point is simply that the irony is delicious. As usual, WotC is damned if they do and damned if they don't.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Very true. I'm not sure that I want to think about what that means regarding drow...

It's the moustaches.

 

[delericho]

Oh, no, I totally get it. My point is simply that the irony is delicious. As usual, WotC is damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Bear in mind that it's not necessarily the same people complaining both times. And with so many D&D players out there it is probably impossible to make any move that would be universally liked - even making the game entirely free for everyone would have people complaining about job losses or something.