D&D 5E New Drow cultures coming in Starlight Enclave, the Lorendrow and the Aevendrow
Vaalingrade
Legend
The internet tries really hard at this propaganda, but as a bitten child, I can assure you this is not true.
Remathilis
Legend
Welp I got nothing then. Sweet Meteor of Doom, any time you wipe this planet clean, be my guest.
Scribe
Legend
2 out of 4 isn't bad.
Evil needs to be defined before we can apply it as a description.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
It's a word with too much baggage for people to ever agree on a definition.
Scribe
Legend
If one needs to get caught up in the weeds of it I guess.
Mod Note:
So, folks have to demonstrate something is objectively not evil, but you reject the idea that we can even define evil. That's not just moving the goalposts, it is whirling them around at speed to the point where they cannot be seen.
And meanwhile, you can't even get behind slavery and genocide being bad things? Like, imagine walking up to a member of the African American community, and say, "I can't commit to the idea that the enslavement of your people was evil." That's... really uncool, and is making some folks very uncomfortable.
Together, these indicate that perhaps the definition of evil is not the issue. I think it is time for you to exit this conversation. For your next outing, try something that doesn't have you saying things that make you look quite so ...unsafe, hm?
Li Shenron
Legend
Meh... I am not convinced that this is significantly better, especially if they decide to give slightly different stats to different drow. You still have one group that is about as inherently evil as before, except it's Udodrow instead of Drow.
To cut to the core of the matter, they could have just moved forward rather than sideways. Instead of popping up new sub-subraces, they could have continued the story of the Drow.
Weren't they supposed to be just the elves who revolted against the Seldarine? They were never a "race" to start with, just unrelated evil Elves who banded together, pretty much because evil is what you do and not what you're born, and these individual elves chose to be evil, lost their war and were cursed as a punishment.
They could have clarified that their color is not "black" in the same sense used to describe black humans, black dwarves and (yes!) black elves, but different (whatever it means, they leave RULES vague, why the hell they can't leave one description vague?). Most importantly, recognizably different, that's the meaning of the punishment, being visibly branded. My favourite shorthand description of drow was "as the photographic negative" of elves (including hair and eyes), if only WotC finally openly depicted elves as varied as humans therefore including all the shades of brown, a "negative-colored" elf could be also white, but somehow still recognizably different from a regular white (as human) elf.
And then... pretty much because of the principle that evil is what you do and not what you are born, after centuries of segregation, despite their own attempts at maintaining an "evil culture" it becomes clear that there are still good drows born just like there are evil high elves born. The curse has failed its purpose on the long terms.
No need for popup subraces "they were always there but we didn't know" shenanigans.
To cut to the core of the matter, they could have just moved forward rather than sideways. Instead of popping up new sub-subraces, they could have continued the story of the Drow.
Weren't they supposed to be just the elves who revolted against the Seldarine? They were never a "race" to start with, just unrelated evil Elves who banded together, pretty much because evil is what you do and not what you're born, and these individual elves chose to be evil, lost their war and were cursed as a punishment.
They could have clarified that their color is not "black" in the same sense used to describe black humans, black dwarves and (yes!) black elves, but different (whatever it means, they leave RULES vague, why the hell they can't leave one description vague?). Most importantly, recognizably different, that's the meaning of the punishment, being visibly branded. My favourite shorthand description of drow was "as the photographic negative" of elves (including hair and eyes), if only WotC finally openly depicted elves as varied as humans therefore including all the shades of brown, a "negative-colored" elf could be also white, but somehow still recognizably different from a regular white (as human) elf.
And then... pretty much because of the principle that evil is what you do and not what you are born, after centuries of segregation, despite their own attempts at maintaining an "evil culture" it becomes clear that there are still good drows born just like there are evil high elves born. The curse has failed its purpose on the long terms.
No need for popup subraces "they were always there but we didn't know" shenanigans.
Faolyn
(she/her)
No, you have to do is show that the actions performed in the name of or inspired by the thing are, for the most part, harmful. You can have a capitalistic or socialistic society, or a religion or lack thereof, that manages to only inspire good or neutral actions. At least in a fantasy world; I'm not talking about reality here.
But it's really hard to say that slavery or genocide isn't harmful, even in a fantasy world. Depending on the circumstances, there may be a "greater good" motivation involved (perhaps you need to kill off the entire species of reality-eaters before they eat reality) but the actions of things like slavery or genocide are still harmful, even if only to the people being enslaved or genocided.
It would have needed to be very well executed to achieve the goal. Not impossible, but very difficult to do in a way that would please everyone (but the current version obviously failed to please everyone, so...)
This story bit has been rejected by some posters on this board, so if they are representative, it's problematic to build on this piece of lore. The reasoning was "being cursed to be black is offensive, irrespective of the obvious reference to Apollo cursing crows to be pitch black".
The second problem is that it establishes Corellon as evil. Cursing a whole people for rebellion, why not, but their descendant? It's a very Olympian (= dickish) move. And Corellon is supposed to be good, and in the current mindset, you can't be good and curse innocents for things they couldn't do anything about.
On the other hand, continuing the story would be consistent with established lore. Introducing two good drow cultures makes "evil drow" a minority. Therefore, all the racism Drizzt had to face made basically a lot of people in the FR racist morons instead of legitimately wary -- in a "all drows are evil, except Drizzt" world, it's rational to assume that a Drow you don't know is evil unless you know Drizzt. In a world were most drows are good but a subset of them have a questionable culture, considering that a random drow is probably evil is stupidly prejudiced, like in real life. The chane certainly increased the level of racism in the FR.
Indeed.
And that more and more people are questionning their own culture. Having heroes helping cells of resistance inside the Menzoberranzan empire is cool, much than facing a monolithic empire. It also allows meeting all sort of non-cooperation within the drow societies (some who will help, some who will say "I can't help but I won't rat on you" and some who say "sorry, I can't not call the guards... if it were only me it would be OK but I have a family". It would make the evil of Menzoberranzan more credible and therefore more palatable. [And keeping the Corellon curse story, the drows elite could have a real reason to plot against the other elves. Misguided, but credible. It would make the curse both heavily criticized and failing its purpose, so the bit of lore could be kept without causing outrage].
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