D&D 5E Gamehole Con Live Tweeting Perkins Panel

[Hussar]

Just as an aside, I must have lived in a cocoon all these years, despite me living in South Africa, because I always equated the Elves and by extension the Drow as fantastical creatures despite them being a playable race so I never even dreamed of attaching modern view points of human skin colour on them until this thread.

But I do yield that if people wish to take offense to Drow, as presented in our hobby, on film, especially those not educated in D&D, they will. Pity.
I find it strangely similar to the overzealous religious of the 80's who viewed D&D as evil due to the inclusion of demons/devils etc.

Our hobby is based on mythology, religion and history of various periods so dark skinned elves, demons/devils, busty wenches, religious fanaticism, violence, public executions, slave races, the occult...etc is very much entrenched in the game's fluff. So many people we can possibly offend.

The trouble is, the mythology that the game is based on, is often very, very entrenched in racial politics. Trying to pretend or whitewash the history of the genre is very blind to the realities of where these stories came from. I mean, good grief, all you have to do is read the "golden age" fiction that much of D&D is based on to see just how racist the underpinnings of much of our hobby is. Whether you're looking at Lovecraft or Howard or even Tolkien, there's a pretty long established train of outright racism and bigotry in our chosen hobby.

Pretending it doesn't exist or, even worse, telling people that their concerns are not important enough to address is culturally and socially tone deaf.

 

[Morrus]

I think it's fair to say that much of mythology has roots that are unacceptable today; and that "that's how they used to do it" has never been a good excuse. We know better, so we do better. That's how we, as a civilisation, moves on.

We can note historical racism, sexism, homophobia, slavery, and s thousand other things. Nobody's suggesting whitewashing history and pretending attitudes never existed.

But we don't need to repeat or continue them now that we, as a human race, know better just to satisfy somebody's desire for historical verisimilitude.

 

[pemerton]

I'm curious... how many other people in this drow discussion are black/african-american?

That's a fair question.

I'm white. Through both personal and professional connections, I'm fairly intimately involved in the more radical (Black Power-esque) aspect of Australian anti-racist advocacy, at least on the intellectual side (writing, training, teaching, supervising students, etc). The only thing that's surprised me in this thread, from you or others concerned about the drow, is that no one seems to have noticed the casting of Maori as orcs (esp uruk-hai) in the LotR films. When I have viewed those films with Australian people of colour, it's one of the first things they comment on (also the lack of non-white heroes).

I am a huge fan of Robert E. Howard, and Sword and Sorcery from that era. One unfortunate aspect of that era's pulp fantasy, however, was the use of race as a way to label things as not good. Howard did this a lot, with plenty of black skinned people being shown as being everything from near ape-like savages to vile sorcerers of necrotic aspect.

The trouble is, the mythology that the game is based on, is often very, very entrenched in racial politics. Trying to pretend or whitewash the history of the genre is very blind to the realities of where these stories came from. I mean, good grief, all you have to do is read the "golden age" fiction that much of D&D is based on to see just how racist the underpinnings of much of our hobby is. Whether you're looking at Lovecraft or Howard or even Tolkien, there's a pretty long established train of outright racism and bigotry in our chosen hobby.

I agree with both these posts.

I find HPL almost unreadable as fiction - reading those stories is, for me, an exercise in intellectual history. The racism is very overt. It is also overt in REH (as is the sexism), but I overlook it when I read because other elements of the fiction are engaging. But I wouldn't expect my friends who are black/brown women to read and enjoy REH.

In Tolkien, because the most racist elements are fictionalised (into the presentation of orcs), and the southrons and easterlings play little role in the stories, I find it less overt but still very evident. The inevitably visual character of the LotR films makes it more overt, as I've commented above and upthread.

Was this in the books? Was there artwork with dark-skinned elves in it? My memory may be faulty but I don't think there was much if any in either department

The AD&D MM described both dwarves and gnomes as typically brown-skinned, but in art they are almost always white. D&D has a history of disregarding its own canonical descriptions to present protagonists and even side-characters as white.

5e seems to be making a modest break from this, although from memory the dwarf illustration in the race chapter is still of a white person.

Wait, you mean Maori hatch from pods as fully-grown adults? Hmm, I guess you do learn something every day.

You can laugh, but I can tell you that those who have pointed out to me that the only visibly dark characters in the LotR films were the Maori playing southrons and uruk-hai weren't laughing. For them it was an unhappy aspect of an otherwise compelling film.

From memory, in the Laketown scenes in the second Hobbit film there is one visibly black woman in a sea of white faces. That stands out too.

And to add to what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said above, it's not just that Tolkien happened to be writing a mythology for northern Europeans. Non-European peoples figure in his stories. They just figure in the stereotypical ways typical of the unreflective fiction of Victorian and Edwardian England: nameless "easterlings" and "southrons" who swarm in hordes to serve the Dark Lord; and band-legged swarthy-skinned scimitar-wielding orcs.

It mars what is otherwise (in my view, at least) a masterpiece of romantic fantasy.

 

[The_Gneech]

Now the full disclosure: I love the idea of the Forgotten Realms drow, I love their culture and themes and how original they feel next to generic fantasy. I know women who love the drow for their female dominated society. My wish is that the drow be rewritten to be more realistic as a society. Controlled by an evil cult, but not evil because they're born, but slaves to Lolth under a heavy burden. The dynamics of a morally gray take on the drow question would make for far more interesting stories, dispel the awkwardness of skin colored morality, and provide more opportunities for players to play them as a race and not have to come up with some crazy reason why they're not totally evil through and through. Detailing out more of drow culture, especially those cults and temples that weren't dedicated to Lloth, would make them far more 3 dimensional.

Yes, this exactly! That's certainly the way I try to portray them (and they tend to come up a lot in my games). Drow are elves, with all that's potentially good and potentially bad about elves, and then they have this overlay of a ruthless and amoral society that's distorted their beliefs. One of my favorite player characters is a drow bard who fled to the surface after her family was wiped out in the usual internecine politics. But far from being the usual "turned against my wicked background and now crusade against evil" type, she's actually true neutral. In drow society, she would poison, murder, and enslave with the best of them and not think twice about it, but she's learned since that such things are frowned on "topside" and has changed her ways accordingly. While she would never betray her adventuring party now, she does periodically talk about the days of trying to kill her sister while avoiding being killed herself, as casually as if it were nothing. Because to her, raised in such a society, it is nothing.

In my Starter Set game, the PCs are likely to run into the drow in Wave Echo Cave soon, after having run into his agents multiple times, and I suspect they're going to be quite flummoxed as to what to do with someone who is casually evil and has tried to murder them because it was expedient, but is just as likely to turn around and offer them a job because upon seeing their capabilities he's decided they're more useful as assets than corpses.

-The Gneech

 

[Sadras]

@Imaro

Ok, we know ehre you are from, but what race are you and how is your race generally characterized in the media? I'm asking because that may be why you hadn't thought of it until now. It's been in my mind (though not always in the forefront) since I was first introduced to drow as a child.

I'm white, and you're 100% right, the Drow issue wont have played in my mind as it did in yours. I accept that. Why it didn't mostly, I believe, and I'm reiterating is that I have always viewed elves as fantastical and the fact that they weren't drawn as African as someone else pointed out never encouraged me to associate them with anything remotely African.

As for the media, it is probably best I don't view my thoughts on that, I'd more than likely get banned for life for doing so.

I don't think people "wish" to take offense and phrasing it that way is kind of silly, either something is or isn't offensive to people. Your phrasing makes it seem like black people went looking for something in D&D to be offended by and that's not the case... on the other hand I could see why introducing the concept of drow could be offensive to blacks, especially coupled with the fact that until recently there were not dark-skinned elves other than drow in D&D... are you saying you can't in any way see how that might be offensive in a major motion picture release?

Firstly, I think as humans we seem to complain or take offense to a lot of things, we do not need race for that to happen. We don't even have to go very far, we bicker continuously over D&D Not to trivialise what we are talking about, but to reflect on how terrible as a race we are and have butchered and over analysed things just look at what psychologists have mentioned over the smurfs, or noddy and big ears...etc.
So yes a Drow movie could raise a stink.

I absolutely can see where people could take offense, especially in a motion picture, that is why my ideas upthread were not to focus on "black = evil" but rather the struggle with the elfwars and the motivations of the "pre-drow" choosing Lolth, how they became more corrupt, how their society evolved, the split and tensions with the Eilistraee serving drow elves and dangers of the underdark - Illithids. My attempts were to put their dark skin in the background rather than the foreground. Your post thereafter expressed that it could not be done and offense would be taken. I added pity as I would love to see such a story on film.

My phrasing was silly, but let me explain my thought process.
Would you take offense to a Drow movie where the Drow are depicted with black skin? I presumptuously and maybe even incorrectly thought not, but that your comments where it would be offensive was in relation to black people in general and those specifically not familiar with D&D. That is how I saw it. So I wasn't referring to your objections being trivial or that you 'wished' to take offense. My bad if you thought that.

Our hobby has also modernized and evolved over the years to be more inclusive and to offend people less... it's what you do if you want mass market appeal... which is what the original discussion centered around.

True, it has modernised, we don't get random harlot tables anymore or ability maximums for gender/race etc. No issue there.

Well as @MerricB showed above... the creation of the drow has already been altered from their original design because now every source on them I have been able to look up on the interwebs makes a point about them being "cursed" with dark skin... does that change to the original design bother you? Or has that change become a necessary part of the design for you?

Well I've always thought they were cursed with the dark skin to go along with the dark deity they served. I never really knew anything more than what was written in The Complete Elves Handbook - I have never played/DMed in FR/Greyhawk. I have only read the Maztica novels which introduced the Drow.

And if so, why are you ok with that change to the original creation but not something as simple as making their skin a different color in a movie? Is black skin integral to the concept of drow? If so could you explain why?

I don't want to see an Asian Superman, or Michael Jordan played by a white guy in his biographical movie or Drow looking like the race from the movie Avatar. I do enjoy a different takes on things - for instance the Troy movie where they removed all inference of the gods meddling but paid lip-service to how some deific stories originated. I enjoy some Elseworlds comics too with their "what if" storylines or Marvels attempt to draw in the younger/new generation of spiderman-lovers with Brian Michael Bendis's run on Ultimate Spiderman (I haven't collected after the 1st Spiderman death).
Look I suppose they can change their skin colour, it could still be a great movie, I guess it is more of a personal preference for me.

I want to admire the strength and cruelty of this black elven race with their white flowing hair that inspires dread to surface dwellers, I love the exotic look of them and that they are a matriarchal society and the terrifying deity they serve. Yeah I think they are cool as they are - why would I want to see that changed. Their dark skin is a part of that coolness and that ability to inspire fear with that shocking contrasting white hair. That's where I'm coming. I know that is not what everyone sees I understand that. That is why I think it is a pity.

The trouble is, the mythology that the game is based on, is often very, very entrenched in racial politics. Trying to pretend or whitewash the history of the genre is very blind to the realities of where these stories came from. I mean, good grief, all you have to do is read the "golden age" fiction that much of D&D is based on to see just how racist the underpinnings of much of our hobby is. Whether you're looking at Lovecraft or Howard or even Tolkien, there's a pretty long established train of outright racism and bigotry in our chosen hobby.

Pretending it doesn't exist or, even worse, telling people that their concerns are not important enough to address is culturally and socially tone deaf.

I'm very much aware of that and I'm not pretending it doesn't exist. I suggested options upthread for possible directions a drow movie could take to steer it away from racial backlash, you might have missed that. If I was socially and culturally tone dead as you have implied I wouldn't have bothered at all.

But Hussar I expect to have your support when I make the request for pink Nightmares and yellow Pegasi and Brown Unicorns

 

[Hussar]

What's wrong with a brown unicorn? I would assume that unicorns come in horse colors and it's not like horses aren't brown. A D&D unicorn is hardly the mythological one, and I know of at least three different black unicorns in the various monster books. Funnily enough, the black ones are always evil... As far as a yellow pegasi, well, again, palomino horses are pretty yellow, so, I'd hardly have any problem with that. Funnily enough, black pegasi are considered evil too. And, doing a quick Google image search for both brown unicorns and yellow pegasi, there are fantasy images of those already. So, not a problem.

Pink nightmare? I might draw the line at that one. Bit too jokey for my taste. It's not like Pink inspires fear. But, I certainly don't think all Nightmare's have to be black. Red would be fine. Or maybe a dark purple? That's sufficiently sinister. Maybe a really nasty, mankey green one. That might be cool for a more poisonous style nightmare.

I'm all about what looks cool. Not caring too much about maintaining any sort of tradition. Me, I'd make Drow look like Nightcrawler or Mystique from the X-Men movies. Dark purple is going to nip any racial underpinnings in the bud and still makes them look totally bad assed.