Good Drow

[psychophipps]

I'm afraid not, Redleg06. Seems that quite a few of people actually bought and played Earthdawn and Shadowrun. However, these systems lacked an alignment system at all so mentioning them in this discussion was simply a waste of perfectly good posting space...

While I will agree with the evidence given above about certain creatures deviating from the norm like the evil elf mentioned above, please also note how there was ONE of those deviations that were notable in the entirety of the series, both novels and RPG suppliments. Similarly, there was ONE good Drow of note for many years until a separate writer, who really didn't care about the previously written materials because good Drow are "Neato" in his opinion and he was probably tired of his DMs telling him to take a flying leap, decided that a cabal of good Drow would make an interesting addition to the game world.
Please also note that good or neutral Drow also tend to only be brought forward or even discussed by players/DMs who have actually read the Drizzt(sp?) stories, which group i'm not a member of, and they feel a need to drown the setting with them because, again, "They're neato!" despite the fact that 99% of the PCs and NPCs out there should carve their necks on GP.
Drow PC: "But i've been a good guy the whole time since you met me!"
Everyone else: "But that only means that you were well trained to infiltrate our ranks for your race's evil schemes, Drow! Die spawn of Lolth!"

Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

 

[Ravellion]

Drow PC: "But i've been a good guy the whole time since you met me!"
Everyone else: "But that only means that you were well trained to infiltrate our ranks for your race's evil schemes, Drow! Die spawn of Lolth!"

LOL! or:
Drow PC: "But i've been a good guy the whole time since you met me!"
Greedy PC: "Hmmm. You're right. If you'd kill a few babies first, I'd probably get a lot more gold for your severed head. Hmmm. Perhaps I'll just kill a few at night disguised as a Drow. They all look alike to everyone anyway."

Rav

 

[Stormwing]

That's not entirely true -- Drow may not be native to Krynn but thanks to the Dragonlance module DLS4 "Wild Elves" the Drow are definitely there...

You´re kidding ? I knew they drove the Dragonlance setting in the chesspool with abandon, but DROW on Krynn?This is so.... cheap!

 

[Bartholomew Fair]

You´re kidding ? I knew they drove the Dragonlance setting in the chesspool with abandon, but DROW on Krynn?This is so.... cheap!

I guess if you want to be really technical about it, a Drow first made an appearance in the Dragonlance adventure gamebook "The Soulforge" (not to be confused with the later novel) -- although I think they later retconned its appearance out of the DL continuity and the Drow weren't seen again until "Wild Elves"...




"Wild Elves" spoiler ahead!




In the "Wild Elves" module it turns out a spelljammer ship filled with Drow was marooned on Krynn a long time ago, and its crew has been secretly making trouble for the Kagonesti ever since...

 

[Bookwyrm]

Doesn't the Forgotten Realms have the Ondonti: peaceful Orcs persecuted by the nearby humans?

And don't forget Mystara, where an enclave of friendly Orcs live smack dab in the middle of Alfheim, the Elven kingdom.

If we want to get away from Orcs and look at "humanoids" in general, aren't there Goblin nations in Birthright that get along just fine with their human neighbors?

Aren't these presented as exceptions to the rule, though? In much the same way that Drizzt is presented as the exception to the rule that all Drow are evil? This implies that there is a rule. In fact, the only race that's presented as having a free range of alignments is humans.

 

[Bookwyrm]

All I can really say about good Drow is that if you want to use them in a game... be careful.

We're playing CotSQ and the GM introduced a TN drow as a PC the second game. He was disguised using a hat of disguise as a Human so that we wouldn't be ticked off at him right away.

This wouldn't be much of a problem but I cast true seeing to look for something else and got a good look at him. I'm playing a Cleric of Shevarash. Dogma: Kill drow. all drow. now. quickly. painfully.

Killing him was not my best moment.

GM's... be careful with Drow. Perhaps not everyone'd kill them right off, but a decent number of people should, and that will cause a lot of problems.

Sounds like a d*mn fine moment to me. After all, the player got exactly what he asked for when he said "Can I play a Drow?"

 

[Redleg06]

Which is the challenge of playing a Drow. I don't have a problem with people playing evil Drow, because IME, there are less of them than there are playing good ones. If you can handle the pain in the a$$ that playing an evil Drow entails, I say go for it!

 

[Bookwyrm]

Fantasy milieux can be in three flavors:

1. "Strict" high fantasy, where alignment and ideals are almost inherent (LotR, Dragonlance, perhaps the "Old Grey Box" version of FR)
2. Middle-of-the-ground fantasy (today's Forgotten Realms)
3. Low, "grey area" fantasy, almost like real life, where there is no real good or evil (except for those celestials and infernals) and/or a different moral scale is used (Oriental-based worlds, George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire)

<snip>
In "grey" fantasy, drow are just elves of a different skin color and magic resistance. Lolth may be lawful good, or a sect of her religion "hijacked" to chaotic evil (or vice versa), but few, with the exception of those who follow or normally fight against such religion, really care whether or not one or the other is right.

I think you miss the point of the 'grey' fantasy setting. It's not that Drow are good instead of evil, it's that no-one is good or evil - mostly the choice is nasty or nastier. And it's far more interesting than 1 or 2.

For me, (1) is great for a fantasy epic, but utterly stupid for a campaign simply because you are "railroading" with some cardboard cutout. (2) is most optimal for what I like in a fantasy setting that I play, and (3) feels a little too much, perhaps except in those vampire campaigns.

1 and 2 are identical for all practical purposes. Having one or two good *insert evil race here* doesn't make the players reconsider their actions. They are simply there as exceptions to the rule to make everyone feel better about slaughtering every other *insert evil race here* they come across.

3 is much better (when done properly), but then I like to roleplay.

Put your setting in one of these three flavors and from there, tell if so-called "evil" can become good. We are not just limiting ourselves to drow here. Drow are the most common archetypes for this argument simply because of R.A. Salvatore and his cheesy drow ranger, who seems to get far more credit than he deserves.

The point is not to make 'evil' into 'good', but to get rid of the concepts altogether, and actually have pc's and npc's that are more than cardboard cutouts. Yes, this requires effort, but it's ultimately more rewarding than yet another 'find evil, kill evil' campaign.

Back to the subject. Compare the drow to, say, the Muslim Middle East. (No, they aren't evil, 'xept Al-Qaeda and those who support homicide bombers, but bear with me. I apologize if I offend anyone in this topic.) There, if you (a) fail to follow the tenents of Allah, or (b) dare to treat a Jew with respect, you would probably be executed. Strict, huh? The ideology of following faith in this real-world example is just as strict as the Llothians in Menzoberrenan (sp?) (I'm Roman Catholic, but anyway...)

You don't know much about the middle east, do you?

Firstly, the whole Arab vs Jew thing is socio-political, not religious, in nature. Religion is only used to easily define 'us' and 'them' (in exactly the same way it is in Northern Ireland).

Secondly, Sharia law actually requires a higher standard of evidence than western law, and if this is not met the case defaults to the civil courts. Yes, there are miscarriages of justice, but this is because the system is corrupted, not because the principles it rests on are unsound. Equally, the same is true of western justice.

Thirdly, Al-Qaeda and homicide [sic] bombers aren't evil, they are simply following a code of beliefs antithetical to the West. To say that they are 'evil' is to deny the possibility that they might actually have valid greavances. Doing this reduces it to childish name-calling. I think that if their code of beliefs is wrong it should be fairly simple to demonstrate this with reasoned argument.

Are there outcasts? Yes. Any of them inherently "good", at least to the U.S.'s POV? Yes (i.e. Turkey and post-Taliban Afghanistan). Are there followers under Saddam and the like kicking down doors, rooting out every single home, and searching if you dare break the two general rules? NO. There are rebels all over the place ready to take out these dictators and post a U.S.-like democracy. Ergo, there are always some kind of deviates in certain situations. As a realist, I think that evil and good exist in EVERY race, real or (logical) fantasy, and telling that so-and-so is good or evil, lawful or chaotic merely points to the status quo. I allow good cambions, evil half-celestials, and MOST DEFINITELY good drow.

Inherently good?? as in "involved in the constitution or essential character of something". Would this be the same inherently good that Iraq was until they invaded Kuwait? Or that Iran wasn't, again, until Iraq invaded Kuwait?

As a realist, you might like to believe good and evil exist, but as a pragmatist, I'd like to see you demonstrate an absolute ethical standard that everything can be measured against. Personally, I think good and evil are simply relative terms, and depend greatly on where your interests lie.

 

[Redleg06]

As a further example, take the Christian sacking of Jerusalem in the First Crusade (* this is NOT a religious discussion *). The crusaders slaughtered men, women, and children. Jews, Muslims and Christians (who ethnically looked like everyone else and were mistaken for Muslims).

Now these guys thought they were doing the work of God. (Yes the leadership was after land, but I mean the average crusading Knight). But I would say causing the streets of Jerusalem to litterally flow with the blood of the dead is decidedly NOT a Christian thing to do.

Now the act was without a doubt evil. Howver, in their ignorance the crusaders thought they were doing good. So were they good or evil?

As I tried to point out to ladyofdragons, if you are running a campaign that uses the allegedly "superior" technique of not blanketly assigning alignment to races, or nations etc., why use alignment at all? Just play your character and let his / her actions define his / her alignment. ( I would argue many, many characters would end up CN! But that's another thread...)

The alignment system is not a role-playing crutch. In fact in some ways it is more of a challenge, esp when you have players playing a character that is not of an alignment they usually play.

I am playing a human fighter. (Just a plain old fighter, no special anything, he's even a commoner that can't read nor write*gasp*) He's LN. For the first couple adventures it was pointed out I was playing him closer to CN. (His WIS and INT are 9 with the -1s that go along with it, he's not real bright.) Anyway I was concentrating on the fact he's kind of a block head and ignoring that he's also of a rather Prussian soldier follows-orders-to-the-T kinda guy. So I started to focus on that.

Harly a role-playing crutch. In fact I think it was quite the enhancer to the game.

 

[Bookwyrm]

As I tried to point out to ladyofdragons, if you are running a campaign that uses the allegedly "superior" technique of not blanketly assigning alignment to races, or nations etc., why use alignment at all? Just play your character and let his / her actions define his / her alignment. ( I would argue many, many characters would end up CN! But that's another thread...)

Actually they turn out Chaotic Greedy, but then I found that even with an alignment system. Paladins were no exception, the standard argument was that the more treasure we collected, the more he could tithe to his church, and hey, there's a body over here we haven't looted yet!