D&D 5E If you were to rename the Drow for a neutral setting, what would you name them? (thread 3/3)

[Ancalagon]

It's the 3rd thread he made on the subject.

Though I disagree "drow" is neutral. Within D&D circles there are very weighted expectations on what you'll see with "drow" (mostly hot sadistic chicks with a fetish for spiders). Many of the other elves have much much lower expectations about how they'll appear. IMO this stems largely from the use of non-copyrightable terms like "high elf", "wood elf" and so on seeing use in a variety of other fantasy material. Drow however, do not have such a shared presence and "dark elves" in other material don't come with the same implications (sadistic hot chicks with spider fetishes, or dual-wielding loners).

... but if you change the drow, then they aren't drow anymore. You aren't just renaming them, you're creating a different kind of elf...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Uncool-cheesemongers.

 

[Sunseeker]

... but if you change the drow, then they aren't drow anymore. You aren't just renaming them, you're creating a different kind of elf...

Huh, I guess I misread, I thought he was shooting for a more setting neutral Drow.

 

[epithet]

While the word "Drow" might have come from folklore, it now has a specific meaning to anyone who has played D&D. If I were speaking of anything other than the underground elven followers of Lolth, I'd use the term "dark elves." If they lived on or near the surface and danced in the moonlight, I might call them night elves instead.

In my campaign, for example, I found it unreasonable to believe that the drow would be so completely culturally unified. While the dominant culture of the subrace is the "standard" Lolth worshiping spider fetishists, there are other groups who follow other gods (or Demons) and are hunted as heretics by the Lolth adherents. I call these dark elves, as in "all drow are dark elves, but not all dark elves are drow." Graz'zt in particular goes out of his way to cultivate dark elf cultists.

 

[Bitbrain]

Elven counterparts to the Yuan-Ti. Obsessed with spiders instead of serpents.

drat, I forgot that Yuan-Ti are considered product identity . . .

 

[guachi]

Shadow Elves, because Mystara

or

Schattenalfen, also because Mystara

 

[cbwjm]

I liked the shadow elves in mystara. Tend to think of them as completely different to drow but the name is cool so I could see using it.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I ran a game many years ago where there were two branches of elfkind, namely dokkalfar and ljosalfar. The inspiration came from Norse mythology, particularly that used in Elizabeth Bower's books.

Dokkalfar, or dark elves, were so-called because they lived in the dark (underground). They were not actually an evil race, but were the victims of hundreds of years of propaganda from the ljosalfar. Many individual dokkalfar were evil, mostly because of the attitude of, "Well, the ljosalfar all think we are evil, so what's the point in trying to behave otherwise?"

 

[WonderfulSuggestion]

Dark Elves is the obvious simple choice.

You could always make them more ominous with a vague title:

The Others

Stalkers of Shadow

Boogiemen

Denizens of Darkness

 

[WonderfulSuggestion]

as in "all drow are dark elves, but not all dark elves are drow."

Like the whole German - Nazi conundrum. Europe still treats Germany with suspicion even now.