White-skinned Drow

[David E]

Wow. Let's all be a little more touchy about this, please.

Back to the purpose of this thread, I'm in the camp that thinks that if dark elves are actually going to be pale-skinned, they should be the "I live in a cave and never see the sunlight" kind of pale. Makes them kinda creepier, I think.

 

[Mighty Veil]

You could have drow be albino in your game. Their king could be named Elric ;-)

 

[Phlebas]

I had a discussion at university a while back trying to defend RPG's and it drifted into accusations of racism in the whole 'black is evil' drow thing. Since then i've made my drow slightly paler than my tan coloured elves and it just makes sense (as well as allowing them to blend into society better).

Eberron has the Drow as southern jungle dwellers, and High elves as necromancers so there the RAW works

Best thing to base fantasy skin colour on is latitude .....

 

[frankthedm]

Drow have unnatural jet black skin. Not the brown of human skin pigmentation to protect from Sol, but black as the absence of light with eyes just as alien to our own.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

So if I were to play a good albino drow, who is a brooding, introspective loner who goes to the surface, and is also a ranger who dual-wields scimitars -- would that be an original character concept?

 

[Crysmalon]

Bringing this back in line - the 'drow' are whatever you want to make of them.

Interesting side note: pale-skinned subterranean dark elves (not drow) are the default assumption in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy (www.necromancergames.com). 'Dark' because of evil naughtiness, not skin color. Mechanically, I treat them about the same as MM drow.

Green Ronin's "Plot & Poison" is a great drow source book. Again, several options are presented for making drow a little different or fresh, many of which aren't rules-based, but change the appearance in some way.

 

[Rel]

Let's have this thread be more about fantasy stuff and less about reality stuff. M'kay?

 

[Klaus]

Everything when some tries to drag real life political disagreements to enworld.

Drow have unnatural jet black skin. Not the brown of human skin pigmentation to protect from Sol, but black as the absence of light with eyes just as alien to our own.

I agree with frank. Drow skin isn't black as a black human's would be. It's black like oil or pitch. This is one of the reasons I dislike when artist use black humans as a basis for drow. They become black elves, not the unnatural, eerie alien creatures they should be.

That said, Todd Lockwood's female drow in the 3.5 MM is all kinds of awesome.

 

[Thanee]

The drow skin color is a punishment, created by the gods. It doesn't need to make sense in a dermatologistic way. In FR, anyways.

Bye
Thanee

 

[variant]

Why has this thread gotten completely derailed? Every last one of those posts derailing this thread and bringing it into real world political discussion needs to be edited and deleted.