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<blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8312279" data-attributes="member: 58172">The Drow legacy is complex, getting reinvented about every edition.The 5e Drow lacks Intelligence, but has Charisma, and Charisma can be &quot;smart&quot;.The biggest difficulty is lore. The Drow have black or dark skin. Therefore anything said about the Drow is sensitive in reallife.The D&amp;D legacy says the Drow became black because of &quot;curse&quot;. Even in 5e, the lore makes being black part of a punishment. Obviously problematic.The 5e designers recently changed the &quot;curse&quot;, from becoming black, to instead gaining a tattoo-like spiderweb marking around the face, neck, and upper torso. The markings display favor from Lolth. Not all Drow have these markings.These web markings are white in color. Intentionally or accidentally, this new lore suggests, if a black person becomes too white it is Evil. Is this reallife cultural trope a new problematic? Probably it is tolerable, even if potentially anti-white racism. At least it is conspicuous spiderweb imagery, that obviously is not an ethnic trait. But it shows how difficult lore can be if a D&amp;D lineage associates with a reallife ethnicity.I assume, the new lore is, the Drow have always been black or dark. (In Ancient Egypt, black skin displayed fertile soil and womblike transformation, rebirth, whence was also a color of healing.) Note, the recent art in Tashas shows the Drow are grayish, ranging from near black to near white. I approve of this direction. The color of any rock or soil resonates the under-earth tropes, and the gradation from black to white avoids reallife implications.Potentially, the Drow have always been a sunless culture, but not always a Lolth Uda culture.I havent thought about the mechanics for the Aeven culture and the Loren culture. Either they will also be sunless cultures with Darkness magic, so that these traits now have nothing to do with Lolth, or else they have alternate mechanics that are very different from Udadrow, thus are effectively new Elf subraces.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Yaarel, post: 8312279, member: 58172"] The Drow legacy is complex, getting reinvented about every edition. The 5e Drow lacks Intelligence, but has Charisma, and Charisma can be "smart". The biggest difficulty is lore. The Drow have black or dark skin. Therefore anything said about the Drow is sensitive in reallife. The D&D legacy says the Drow became black because of "curse". Even in 5e, the lore makes being black part of a punishment. Obviously problematic. The 5e designers recently changed the "curse", from becoming black, to instead gaining a tattoo-like spiderweb marking around the face, neck, and upper torso. The markings display favor from Lolth. Not all Drow have these markings. These web markings are white in color. Intentionally or accidentally, this new lore suggests, if a black person becomes too white it is Evil. Is this reallife cultural trope a new problematic? Probably it is tolerable, even if potentially anti-white racism. At least it is conspicuous spiderweb imagery, that obviously is not an ethnic trait. But it shows how difficult lore can be if a D&D lineage associates with a reallife ethnicity. I assume, the new lore is, the Drow have always been black or dark. (In Ancient Egypt, black skin displayed fertile soil and womblike transformation, rebirth, whence was also a color of healing.) Note, the recent art in Tashas shows the Drow are grayish, ranging from near black to near white. I approve of this direction. The color of any rock or soil resonates the under-earth tropes, and the gradation from black to white avoids reallife implications. Potentially, the Drow have always been a sunless culture, but not always a Lolth Uda culture. I havent thought about the mechanics for the Aeven culture and the Loren culture. Either they will also be sunless cultures with Darkness magic, so that these traits now have nothing to do with Lolth, or else they have alternate mechanics that are very different from Udadrow, thus are effectively new Elf subraces. [/QUOTE]

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