Garnfellow
Explorer
I should also pimp a thread over on the conversion section about D1-3 Descent/Kuo-Toa/Drow. We've had some pretty good discussions about making "old school" drow.
[Drow] 3rd Edition/AD&D 2E vs. AD&D
- Thread starter Melkor
- Start date
Ron
Explorer
The drow was the great surprise of the GDQ series. There were not described in the old rulebooks, although there were some metion of evil elves in the monster manual. When I played the series, meeting them was a great surprise to me and the other players. In Greyhawk, drow are unknow to the surface population. The elves know about them but will not discuss with anybody else. To encounter a highly modified evil version of the elves is the great twist in those old modules. If you don't care about canon and want to reproduce this, create your drow differently from the books. Surprise your players. Make them albinos, a far more logical variation, and give them a different culture and powers. That might work better.
Garnfellow
Explorer
Ron said:
I've been DMing a 3e conversion of G 1-2-3 for the last six months or so, and Monday night the PCs finally learned who was behind the giant raids. I have to say, it was pretty darned sweet. Many of my players have gamed for years, but by strange coincidence none of them had actually ever read or been run through the GDQ modules.
Of course, I used a couple of rat bastard tricks to throw the PCs off the track of true villains.
First, the PCs were actually hired to fight the giants by disguised agents of Lolth. These agents wanted to use the PCs to crush the giant rebellion and Eclavdra's heretical cult, but these same agents fully intend on betraying and killing the PCs before they can return from the Hellfurnaces. Assuming I don't have a TPK, I am hoping this eventual betrayal will fuel the PC's interest in following the drow all the way back to the Vault for revenge.
The agents of Lolth dearly wish to keep the very existence of the drow a secret from the surface world, and so they have withheld important information and have actively misled the PCs. The disguised agents claimed that the giants were being manipulated by cultists using a powerful artifact of evil, possibly the Hand or Eye of Vecna, and maybe even both.
So all through the G series the PCs have been "seeing" signs of Vecna cultists. When they captured a stone giant who told of a horrid “Temple of the Eye” on the second level of Snurre's Hall, the PCs were immediately thinking of Vecna's eye.
The PCs have made about four or five forays into Snurre's Hall, and by attrition have seriously weakened the defenses. By a combination of good play and lots of luck, they actually killed Snurre their first time out. They have also killed, in succession, all the other monsters who assumed command of the first level of the Hall: Obmi, Jarl Grugnur, Boldo, and even the red dragon Brazzemal. The cloud and stone giants have abandoned the Hall, and there aren't many male fire giants left.
I have assumed that the few remaining fire giants are utterly demoralized. Their king is dead, their allies have abandoned them, and a relentless force continues to raid their home at will. The poor giants are now left to cruel, foreign creatures from deep beneath the earth, creatures who force them to worship some horrid alien being.
For general mood in the Hall, think Berlin, right at the very end of Hitler. Only Queen Frupy (now half-mad) and a handful of trusted guards survive to rule the rest of the fire giants. Several giants have tried to revolt, but the drow mercilessly put down this feeble rebellion.
Monday night the PCs cleared the first level and started in on the second level. Right before the big communal room they found a pile of hacked-off arms: arms from young fire giants. In the communal room they found a cluster of terrified giantesses, clustered around the few surviving giant children.
In exchange for a promise of safe passage, the giantesses sold out their drow overlords. Eclavdra, you see, had ordered the children mutilated in order to keep their mothers and fathers in line.
My players were horrified by this turn of events. But now they are getting ready to assault the Temple of the Eye. Of course, they are also expecting to find a certain evil artifact there.
Allandaros
Explorer
Ron said:
Like the Shadow Elves from the oD&D known world? I think there's even a booklet about them in the WotC Classic Downloads section on the website.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Graz'zt always seemed like a natural fit for the drow, with his sensuality, love of magic, lust for power and heck, he can even claim he created them in his image. I've never understood why he was a second-tier demon lord.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Whizbang Dustyboots said:
Second tier nothing, he's probably the most dangerous of the top three Abyssal Lords, simply because he's more subtle than overt, and he's willing to be pragmatic and less stereotypically Tanar'ri in the short term if it accomplishes his base goals in the end. While he never seemed to get as much attention in the earliest material, which tended to promote Orcus and Demogorgon and give everything else short shrift, the later material really gave the guy a sense of style.
Plus, on top of everything else, his bloodline is nothing to scoff at, both the children that he's spawned, his sibling Abyssal Lords in the Abyss, and his mother. And viper trees. Musn't forget the viper forest of Zrintor. Nothing says cool like a possibly endless forest of hissing trees.
But more on topic, it'd be an interesting idea for Graz'zt to try to insinuate himself into the worship of various drow nations on the prime material, either undercutting Lolth or supplanting the worship of Kiaransalee who is already at a negative for having fled the Abyss from the time being.
Infernal Teddy
Explorer
What was that whole "War of the Spider-Queen" thing, anyway?
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