Making the drow more alien

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was playing D&D when the drow first appeared as anything other than a cryptic (and retrospect, obviously foreshadowing) reference in the Monster Manual. They were strange, they were frightening, and most importantly, they were ALIEN.

Needless to say, the past two and a half decades have washed off a lot of that alieness, to the point the race is crushingly familiar.

I LIKE the idea of very fey and creepy evil elves, with motives and behaviors that seem inscrutable to the players, which makes them all the more frightening. And while I've tried going back to the original source material, it just seems too well mined to restore that alien quality to the drow. I've thought about somehow reworking the sahuagin or blurring the line between them, but I haven't gotten much further with that line of thought.

Has anyone else attempted to add to the alieness of the drow, and if so, what did you do that worked?

 

[the Jester]

Well, imho (and in my campaign) step 1 is simple: No, and I mean NO Drow pcs. I don't care if the MM gives a level adjustment- the answer is no. It's even a standing joke in my group- "Hey James, can I play a Drow?" "No," answers someone other than me.

Step 2: Flat-out admit that your Drow are different from the pansy watered-down pc-style Drow in the MM. Rewrite their stats to please your vision of them, and don't think twice about making them a "balanced" race for pcs. They aren't for pcs.

Step 3: Don't use Drow unless you must. If pcs see Drow often- hell, enough that it isn't "barely ever"- they lose a lot of their mystique. I haven't used Drow but, oh, I'm guessing 3-4 times in my campaign's 600+ games. I'd say they've appeared, mmm, maybe in four sessions?

Step 4: Don't use many of the standard magic items and spells; invent tons of new (and highly weird) ones. Back in the day (I remember their first appearance with wonder too), they had demon staves, tentacle rods, wands of viscid globs, death lances- just about every Drow item was special and unique to their culture. Even their simple +1 weapons were weird- they would disintegrate in sunlight!

All of this comes from a Drizzt-hating, Greyhawk-loving Drow fanatic... with enough restraint not to use them unless it's very, very special. Like I said, I think I'm averaging about 1 session per 150 or thereabouts.

 

[RigaMortus]

Maybe model them after Night Elves from Warcraft. I beleive there is even a Warcraft d20 game out that probably has stats for them. As far as I remember, they have a purplish tint to their skin, have glowing eyes, and can act normally in the daylight. They are also a "good" race in Warcraft, but like I said, just model them after that. It is common to see a Drow in the underdark... but have your PCs catch just a glimpse of them moving through the forest during daylight and they might get nervous...

 

[painandgreed]

Not just the Drow but all elves. I decided to make their culture based on the law/chaos axis rather than the good/evil axis that humans find themselves on. IMC, normal elves are lawful and drow are chaotic. Good and evil are matters of personal taste and not seen as that great of importance with reguards to their cultures.

 

[Kesh]

I'm planning on making the Drow more heavily based on their spider theme. Adding spell-like abilities such as jump and spider climb, perhaps even web.

Plus, I'd make them live up to their subterranean heritage. Pale white skin and milk-white eyes... long generations underground no longer need sight. They have blindsight or tremorsense.

 

[Turanil]

I second the opinion of NO drow PCs ever.

Then, you could change everything that pertains to their society. No more underground cities of Lolth-worshipping drows. Instead, make drow a rumor. They live hidden among other races, sometimes among elves (although very rarely). They live in small covens, small groups. They create mayhem and evil from behind the scene, "in darkness". And of course they are generally high level and powerful.

 

[Thanee]

Nothing is alien anymore, once you know about it. That's the very nature of alien.

You need something new, if you want alien. There are plenty monster books out there.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Nothing is alien anymore, once you know about it. That's the very nature of alien.

You need something new, if you want alien. There are plenty monster books out there.

Bye
Thanee

I second that. Don't remake drow so suddenly noone knows them any more. Why bothering to try to recreate that touch of mystique they had back then? Just go ahead and create something completely new. Instead of saying "my drow aren't like the ones you all know" you have a new race and noone even presumes that they know it. No "Hm.. in that respect at least, they're just like the normal drow"

In one of our campaigns, we had a long-lost subrace of elves appearing towards the end of it (we were epic at that point). Back then (I think it was even before the Crown Wars), an elven deity was banned by the rest of the Seldarine (for some hideous stuff, we were never able to find out what), and managed to draw the whole subrace with him to carceri. There, they were forgotten by the rest of the elves and fell almost completely under the sway of this Lawful Evil deity. Then, much later, they came back to the material plane, as their deity was able to break free of his prison and now planned to take revenge on the seldarine by drawing all other elves out of the prime and into Carceri, to imprison them.

They had another name, but I only remember them as blue elves, as they had blue skin. They were also quite powerful - even more powerful than drow - and innately psionic (which added to their mystiqueness as we had no psionic PC's at all). Due to their long stay in another plane, their mindset was quite alien, which was compounded by their strong reliance to psionic means (when we were speaking with one of them, they seemed to have poor verbal skills - they seldomly talked with their mouths amongst themselves).


You could do something like that. Want truly evil elves? Create a subrace that lets even drow look like paragons of goodness by comparison. Let them originate form a strange place - an outer plane or even the Far Realm - and give them strange powers - pseudonatural stuff, psionics, whatever.

 

[Carnifex]

In mid-January I finished editing the Tome of Drow Lore, so I guess we'll see it in shops around the end of February or into March. Anyway, that might help with what you want; its main aim is to give the GM options to use other than the bog-standard overarching spider-worshipping matriarchy; it includes four drow sub-species as well that are each quite different from the normal drow. Perhaps you'd like yours to be the cannibalistic demon-worshipping necromancers of the Kanahraun, who dine on the flesh of their enemies and build weapons and structures from the bones and flesh of the undead? Or the deep drow, the Pol'Tah, who live in the mist-wreathed depths far below everyone else and have become entirely blind, dependent on their extremely sharpened other senses for their survival. Things like that

 

[LoneWolf23]

I love the Drow myself, but only as a villainous race. I definetly have to agree on the "No Drow PC" rule, as well as the idea of making the Drow more mysterious and exotic. My take involves making them more arachnid-like in appearance, and making drow/spider hybrids like Driders a better integrated part of Drow society, instead of being outcastes.

In short, my take on the Drow would be more like Warcraft III's Naga: once, they were elves, but they have since mutated into something far more exotic, monstrous and sinister.