D&D 5E Player's Handbook Races

[Lwaxy]

Aw, come on, @steeldragons ... you can't have the Forgotten Realms as the newly assumed standard D&D campaign world and NOT have DROW... how will children play angsty Drow scimitar dual-wielding Rangers?

I wish I were joking.

You know, all the children I played FR with actually wanted to keep the drow evil. Simply so they could have something to rally against. Clear black and white thing and all.

Young adults are no children. And I never had a teenager playing anything "angsty" either. Evil rebel was much more likely.

 

[steeldragons]

Aw, come on, @steeldragons... you can't have the Forgotten Realms as the newly assumed standard D&D campaign world and NOT have DROW... how will children play angsty Drow scimitar dual-wielding Rangers?

I wish I were joking.

I know. I know.

[I wish you were too. ]

 

[Kaodi]

Would it be worthwhile to fork this conversation into a new thread called something like, "PlanesCraft: Aasimars & Tieflings" , or has thread been irrevocably possessed at this point?

 

[Kai Lord]

So let's not pretend dark-is-cool is either:

1) New.

or

2) Popular solely or even mainly with people half your age or less (let alone actual children).

Plenty of people of all ages like such stuff, and plenty dislike such stuff. We should not be calling anyone "kids" or "children" because they do.

I agree. And "dark and angsty is cool" isn't even confined to just males. Think about the Twilight movies/books which are a global phenomenon and appeal to tween girls all the way up to 60 year old women. A huge percentage of their fan base are known as "Twilight moms," married or single moms from their 20's to 50's.

Now that I think of it WOTC really needs to release some YA books for gals. Drizzt was the original Edward if you think about it. Brooding, ever young, stays out of sunlight, and from an "evil" race.

They could make a killing with a supernatural romance novel.

"You're impossibly fast, love spiders, and can see in the dark."

"Say it. Out loud."

"Dark elf."

 

[Herobizkit]

I don't think anyone particularly loved NWN2 so that seems a little implausible.

Come on, the city building part was worth slogging through the rest of the game. And they had Warlocks!

You didn't say "kids", though, you said "children", which is much more specific, and extremely demeaning if applied to adults, like, say, late-teens and young twenties. Or to imply that anyone who likes such a thing is such.

Kids ARE children. And by extension, most people I know were kids AND children when Drizzt began his heydey, so those of us who 'lived it' eyeroll and snicker and shake our heads and go "oh boy here we go again..."

So let's not pretend dark-is-cool is either:

1) New.

or

2) Popular solely or even mainly with people half your age or less (let alone actual children).

Plenty of people of all ages like such stuff, and plenty dislike such stuff. We should not be calling anyone "kids" or "children" because they do.

@Kai Lord gave the best example - re-casting Drow as Twilight-like vampires. For myself, Drizzt IS Edward (having all the benefits of his race and the only downside being that he can't make many friends and is a 'tortured soul'), and all the guff that people gave Twilight is the same or similar guff that my circle of gamers had given Drizzt.. and still do.

Sarcasm? Wrong word. Irony, I think, is what you're trying to say, but really, to me it read nasty, not intentionally ironic, so you may have messed that up.

Basically, yes. People who agree wth the gist of what I was going on about nod knowingly, and those that don't may have assumed I was trying to be offensive, when all I was intending was to be tongue-in-cheek.

No, no "we all" did not. A small, devoted, cult-like minority did that, and jesus, they were a problem, in my experience, because they were ten times more obsessed than the fan-iest Drizzt fan (who could easily be diverted to making "A Highlander" or "A Jedi" or whatever - anything as long as it was cool and had a sword). I remember my first reaction to this Elf-obsession (my early D&D PCs largely being human) was "What is wrong with you guys? This is creepy." - especially because there was a lot of quasi-racial-superiority stuff with elves.

This was because a) Elves got the best of practically everything, even with their Con penalty; b) because most Fantasy works that include Elves make them out to be some kind of messiah race; c) because [many] Elves traditionally are haughty and see themselves as racially superior - specifically, the Drow and the Grey/Sun/Eladrin Elves.

And 2e Bladesingers. But I think we can all say that they and the players who played them were horrible, horrible people.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

"Dark is cool" dates way back to at least the 19th century and probably even before if you look hard enough, with those "angsty" and "edgy" authors like Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker...

There's many who people who to play character types who don't quite in fit into society, because the game isn't exclusively about playing upstanding and model citizens, and there's certainly a bunch of races for this. Half-Elves are on the light end of that scale, Half-Orcs at the middle of the scale with Tieflings, and Drow are at the further end of that scale. But even if I think Drizzt is the ridiculous example because he has too much exposure and is the most overblown example of an outsider, I can certainly see the appeal of playing outcast type characters, because most D&D players I know of are sort of outsiders themselves.

 

[gyor]

I loved and adored Neverwinter Nights 2 and I mantain its the best FR video game ever, although I loved Baldur's Gate asw ell.

To me the most iconic drow is Liriel Baenre, not Drizzt. Liriel is the opposite of emo, fun loving, good sense of humour, wild, sexy, friendly, and so on.

Other people see Drow and think Drizzt, I think of Liriel Baenre instead and some of the Evil drow.

Oh and that half drow/ half Alu fiend Paladin of Torm whose name I forget.

 

[gyor]

I will saying the whole Drizzt = Emo, Moody, Goth, Tormented is greatly exagrated.

He has friends, he seems generally happy now that he has the companions back.

People just think he's emo because he had a bad childhood and because he's very brooding.

 

[Morrus]

I loved and adored Neverwinter Nights 2 and I mantain its the best FR video game ever

Except for Neverwinter Nights 1.

 

[gyor]

Never played Neverwinter Nights 1, so I can't comment on the story, but from what I've read of the mechanics I prefer Never Winter Nights 2.