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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 8025581" data-attributes="member: 1465">Great OP!FWIW, I've never associated drow with dark-skinned humans, much less anything african-american. I think I've always clearly described as coal-black with white hair and odd eyes color (yellow, red, pink...). Even though I have african-american friends with whom I've played D&D, no issue has ever come up about the drow color, or at least they didn't tell me... but naturally this is just a single person's experience.The discussions these days have started to make me think there are two separate issues.The first issue is certainly the black = evil equation. Black being associated with death or at least danger (i.e. darkness is dangerous) and therefore evil things in general is probably a very old idea in many cultures. It is going to be important to make sure the equation does not hold when it comes to the color of the skin. Besides WotC revisiting drows, what about having more white-colored evil creatures and black-colored good creatures?The second issue is that of players' representation*. Worse than drow being black, is the fact that perhaps too many books depict elves (and halflings) as white by default, with rare exceptions. That's not good. Imagine an african-american or dark-skinned kid playing their first game of D&D, and being told how amazing elves are with their mastery of nature, magic and archery, and you can play one! Only for that kid to find no picture of elves to which they can identify to. I know that someone (white, of course) will jump up and say there are no pictures of white drow (or else) and so we're even... well, we're not even! A black kid receives the message that good elves are white, so if he wants to play a good elf, (s)he must imagine her/himself white, or alternatively play a good drow... except that it would be an outcast surrounded by lots of others as dark as her/him and all evil.*this is not dissimilar to the issue of traditional lack of representation of female characters (although this was gradually improved at every new edition) or non-binary-gendered charactersI think it would be very beneficial if drow's "blackness" is clearly described to be nothing like human dark skin tones, and if at the same time we would get more artwork of elves/dwarves/halflings with said dark skin tones. WotC has already improved representation of non-white/westerner characters when depicting humans, maybe they need to do an effort for the same on the other traditional demihuman protagonists of the game.</blockquote>

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