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

[arwink]

You can have adventuring parties, spellcasters that memorize spells, gods that have militant clerics, angsty broody rangers, and dragons of different colors that do different things, but if you have an underdark, or anything from D&D associated with it, people think you're cliched and derivative. Is anyone else seeing this, or is this just something I'm getting from my friends?

Actually, it's hard to have any of the above in a fiction peice and escape the feeling of DnD'ness. The genre conventions of fantasy fiction and the genre conventions of gaming aren't exactly the same, and if you include to much of one in the other it tends to become noticable and if it isn't handled with care it can be very disruptive to the story.

Drow, for me, only become a cliche when people let them become a cliche. I don't mind having outcast drow in gaming or fiction, but I really want to see and interesting and new twist on *why* they became an outcast and the kinds of troubles they face as a result. Outcast or shunned characters are a classic fantasy trope - one that only feels like a cliche when handled badly or without any sense of newness.

 

[RangerWickett]

How's it going, Peter? Oh, hey, how do you feel about Claudio Pozas's art? He's doing illos for your Eternal Court article.

I'm encouraged by your statement. While some people here do find dark elves cliche (or, more specifically, they find evil, spider queen-worshipping "Drow" cliche), not everyone does, and in fact a lot of people like them. Hooray. I'm in the mood to write me some fiction.

 

[Dogbrain]

It does have racist overtones but so does practically the whole monster mythology of D&D. Orcs are believed by many literary scholars to be thinly veiled turks.

From descriptions in his Letters, Huns are a closer match.

 

[Dogbrain]

Actually I think they do have a source in mythology... I think both Scandanavian and Babylonian mythology include light and dark elves which are fairly similar to D&D elves. At least in Scandanavian mythology the 'svart' elves are the bad ones.

It's a very old distinction. There is a proto-indo-european root, *āter-, which is speculated to mean "fire". From this root we get "atrabilious" (sullen--literally "black-biled"), atrocious, atrium (place of the fire).

To contrast, we have "Elf", from the PIE root *albh-, meaning "white" or "shining".

 

[billd91]

I do think D&D could use a good white european type villain race, it would certainly not be hard to find some examples in history.

DB

That's already been done. Greyhawk has the Suel. They are one of the human ethnic groups in the setting and they are notorious supremacists. In a diaspora from their original homelands (after conducting a genocidal war), a few groups integrate with other human groups but most don't. One group migrates to form a few tribes of northern, viking-like barbarians, frequently raiding. And another forms the Scarlet Brotherhood, an evil and secretive organization dedicated to Suel supremacy.