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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9147492" data-attributes="member: 58172">The D&D Elf traditions are too entangled with reallife racism, to go there. The 2024 Elf design needs to discontinue "elven racism" decisively.I worry how the Udadrow culture will play out in 2024. Besides the culture flavor being a narrative that expresses overt racist extremism, ... it normalizes slavery.(D&D threw the Dark Sun setting into a blackhole because of the issue of slavery, despite Dark Sun also having many redeeming and relevant tropes.)The existence of Non-Uda communities allows players to explore other Drow cultures, and these relativize the Uda culture. In a way, this could allow the DM to make the Udadrow culture more monstrous. But the Udadrow culture is a reallife popculture phenomenon. It is impossible to "prevent" players from embracing it. So how the culture treats issues like slavery, race, feminism, and so on, invokes reallife ethical responsibilities.Part of the solution is, the Lolth followers are a "faction", literally a demon cult. Meanwhile, most of the Udadrow culture isnt members of this faction. Reasonably, there is open resistance against faction, even when the faction has political hegemony and many fear it.There are plenty of examples of how a culture fears the party that is in power.An ethnographer needs to ask, what does an Uda culture look like before the faction gained power, and what might it look like after the faction is gone?Generally, the Udadrow cities are in the Underdark below Western Faerun. Most are autonomous city-states. It is easy to make Menzoberranzan a city where the Lolth faction is securely in power, while elsewhere an other Udadrow city has overthrown its Lolth faction. If necessary, there can be Udadrow communities elsewhere in Faerun, or on planet Toril, that never followed the Lolth faction.When it comes to D&D Elf "subraces", they are exactly describing human-esque ethnicities, and doing it offensively.By the way, I am looking at the term "Drow" similar to the way I look at the term "English speaker" (or Anglophone). English speakers are a cultural group that include many diverse cultures. Likewise, "Drow" is comparable to a language that includes diverse cultures: Uda, Aeven, Loren, Seldarine, etcetera.)</blockquote>

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