The gaming/fiction disparity, or "Why are dark elves cliche?"

[BSF]

Dark Elves are the subject of much debate amongst those who study Norse mythology. They are often considered to be Dwarves. And they are not black (that I can remember), but live underground, hence the Dark.

Definitely! Norse mythology is something that I wish I could find more authoritative accounts of. Part of the problem is past scholars mingling different time periods and lumping them together as the same thing. Part of the problem is overlaying different cultures on top of their studies and assuming there are direct correlations between cultures. It seems like there is a lot of conflicting information. Perhaps I just haven't found the right books/research, but I don't feel like I have a full overview.

When I was younger, it took me a while to figure out that a lot of DnD stuff is only loosely based on the underlying mythology that the names came from.

 

[BSF]

*said in a classic Scooby Doo villian voice*
Dangnabit! If it weren't fer dem pesky kids I wouldna had a double post!

 

[WizarDru]

See, this is why I'm allergic to oriental settings. My players are all so sane and normal, but I'm afraid that if I allowed ninja something annoying would happen. Drow, ninja and a few other archetypes all strike me as being...I dunno...middle school-ish, I guess.

Well, blame the mid-80s fascination with Ninjas for that. A good oriental setting can make for fantastic role-playing. Of course, an oriental setting means different things to different folks: some just want Rokugan, while others really want something like Inu-Yasha, and still others want Ninja Scroll. And then are folks like me, who ran a game tied more closely to myth. I ran a game in the Ashikaga shogunate, at the time of two courts. My players were a shinto priestess, a ronin, a buddhist monk and...a silk merchant. Their adventures included escorting a tea master to a ceremony with a fox (as a result of a drunken bet), banishing ghosts from a haunted inn, fighting the Angry Stump God and secretly supporting what would become the Go-Daigo rebellion.

Oh, and there were ninja, too. They tended to die a lot, but they did manage to poison the ronin. But that's another story.

As for Dark Elves...they're overexposed, politically dicey and far too popular with the fanboy element for some. They were once considered the big bad guys of D&D, but then became too familiar. I also agree that people were playing them poorly prior to Drizzt...but he validated the concept for many, unfortunately. That, and the perception that adding in 'drow' substitutes would constitute broader intellectual theft, legal or not.

Oh, and where does Jordan's Wheel of Time have elves of any kind, let alone the drow variety? What's amusing is how many fictional series actually draw upon actual D&D games, which some changes. Ray Fiest's Riftwar Saga took directly from Tekumel/Empire of the Petal Throne...so much so that Barker threatened to sue him and Daw books, as I recall (but notice he had his mordhrel, the dark elves). Steven Brust's Jhereg series comes from a game he ran back in the day. Rosenberg's is about D&D players who actually get transported to a D&D world. There are others. You get the idea.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Steven Brust's Jhereg series comes from a game he ran back in the day.

Really? Which system? One of the things I always like about his books was the setting. It wasn't just more of the 'let's get a dwarf and an elf and go questing' type fantasy.

 

[WizarDru]

Really? Which system? One of the things I always like about his books was the setting. It wasn't just more of the 'let's get a dwarf and an elf and go questing' type fantasy.

AFAIK, it was AD&D, modified sixteen ways to Sunday.

 

[billd91]

See, this is why I'm allergic to oriental settings. My players are all so sane and normal, but I'm afraid that if I allowed ninja something annoying would happen. Drow, ninja and a few other archetypes all strike me as being...I dunno...middle school-ish, I guess.

Depends on the player's concept of drow, ninja, or quite a few other archetypes. If he's into the ninja=spy or ninja's motto "A ninja's duty in life is death" type of conception, then I think it works just fine. If his concept is as a pizza-chowing, dual-weapon wielding acrobat, then I think he should be playing Toon.
I love the oriental setting, but then I play a bit more of a hard core style keeping a lot of Kurosawa movies and Usagi Yojimbo comics in mind.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Depends on the player's concept of drow, ninja, or quite a few other archetypes. If he's into the ninja=spy or ninja's motto "A ninja's duty in life is death" type of conception, then I think it works just fine. If his concept is as a pizza-chowing, dual-weapon wielding acrobat, then I think he should be playing Toon.
I love the oriental setting, but then I play a bit more of a hard core style keeping a lot of Kurosawa movies and Usagi Yojimbo comics in mind.

To add to the bad conception of ninja list:

Or, if the player's concept is a mute, black-clad, uber-melee fighter with a pet wolf, a hot redhead girlfriend who can also kick butt, & has a former-best-friend/swordbrother-turned-enemy ninja who wears all white . . . well, there's another possibility for the whole ninja thing.

Not to mention any Batman or Daredevil stuff done by Miller, or those 80's movies with the sorta-feathered hair white guy hero facing off against a ton of ninjas wearing brightly-colored ninja outfits.

 

[ruleslawyer]

As for Dark Elves...they're overexposed, politically dicey and far too popular with the fanboy element for some. They were once considered the big bad guys of D&D, but then became too familiar. I also agree that people were playing them poorly prior to Drizzt...but he validated the concept for many, unfortunately. That, and the perception that adding in 'drow' substitutes would constitute broader intellectual theft, legal or not.

Dead on, IMHO.

Personally, I love the drow. They're disturbing, alien, and elegantly evil; while the latter has become a bit trite, that is, after all, through overuse. My players have been with me for 14 years now, and have run through the GDQ modules 1 1/2 times. The drow have featured as behind-the-scenes villains for long chunks of the campaign. Yet my players are not bored of drow for the simple reason that the drow remain alien, mysterious, and scary to them due to how I've run the game.

I must say that I am surprised at people not liking the actual concept of drow or, even more so, the Underdark. IMHO, the latter is the most truly original campaign setting that D&D has ever offered in its various incarnations; the sheer lack of real-world "consistency" inherent in a world peppered like swiss cheese with caverns in which grow alien fungi, weird slimes and oozes, and strange monsters of all sorts, with portals to various planes, great cities, and underground waterways as well as illithid spawning-pools and ancient undead battlefields, is what makes the setting so fascinating. Also, IMHO, the Underdark and the drow have yielded some of the best source material ever produced for the game; whether The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide or Ed Greenwood's Drow of the Underdark, it's hard to imagine more adventure hook-laden material.

But that's just IMHO. Part of what I imagine creates the problem is (a) the overabundance of drow in D&D game fiction; (b) allowing drow PCs (an idea that by definition ensures that an exotic race is rendered no longer exotic); and (c) the myriad treatments of drow in the game. No other race (except dragons) seems to have received quite as much publicity, which for a reclusive race of underground villains doesn't seem so smart.

 

[Dogbrain]

Partly because while dragons, elves, etc., are common fodder for fantasy fiction since day 1, drow/dark elves are (at least to my recollection) a D&D creation, and so unavoidably associated with it.

http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=44
http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=65

 

[Orius]

The Sex Kitten: A lot of guy gamers have the hots for drow chicks, for some reason. They consider them to be the epitome of sensuality. Thus, I've seen many players and DMs create female drow characters who wore revealing, domanatrix-like outfits, were described as being incredibly gorgeous, and tried to seduce everyone in sight.

Hell, I'd say the fact that female drow get a +2 Cha bonus is part of this cliche.