Why does everyone hate drow?

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I actually played my first Drow character not too long ago.

The worst part was losing out on spellcaster levels for the L.A. ... >.< DOH.

It was a flavor-consideration for the campaign setting we were in, and even though the party was ostensibly "the good guys", I was true to my dastardly roots and went with L.E. and a strong linking backstory.

I think it was alot of fun for me, because I almost NEVER use Drow. I think they're generally over-done elsewhere, and I was there for the Drizzt Clone Wars.

Personally, they'd be better without the SR and some of the other stuff that pump them up to LA2 ... both as PCs and as NPCs. If they weren't rare, elusive, and hard-to-convince-the-DM PCs, they wouldn't be PCs so often. I imagine there are FAR more Drow PCs out there than, say, Orc PCs ... If they just had a hefty bonus to Saves Vs. Spells, they'd be much easier to run in large and multiple encounters.

--fje

 

[SpiderMonkey]

I think it isn't the race so much as the kewl, sexy evilness that has been done to death in novels and in some campaigns. Drow can be excellent villians or PCs I suppose but I think you are going to have to avoid some cliches if your players are a bit jaded to the race.

Chris

A guy I know once described a game someone lured him into, composed of all the worst stereotypes of gamer-geekdom (constant flow of monty python references, dumb insults that were supposed to pass for humor, an effluvium of b.o.). For this particular game, they were supposed to make up what they, as people, would be if they were in a medieval game setting. And what did everyone one of them down to a person make?

...you guessed it: "bad ass," mysterious drow. I cried I was laughing so hard as he told me about it.

This pretty much embodies why I can't stomach drow.

SM

 

[The Shaman]

For example, your drow do not have to worship a "Spider Queen" or have pet arachnids, they could be more feylike in the classical sense. Think unseelie court evil, the kind of darkness that haunts ancient elven woods as opposed to the underdark. Maybe they like it underground but they also corrupt forests and blanket them in shadows. They are elves after all and there is no reason that they couldn't retain their woodsy nature.

This pretty much describes the dark elves from my 3.0 campaign. I also ran goblinoids as more like their folkloric counterparts, and the dark elves and goblins worked as allies (though there was plenty of animosity from each toward the other - "Filthy kneebiters!" "Pointy-eared freaks!" - which made for some fun intriguing).

Canon drow are done to death - there's way too much player-knowledge about them for me to run stock drow in any campaign. The last thing I want to hear from a fanboi is, "But that's not how they do that...!"

 

[KenM]

One guy I played with wanted to bring a a Drizzit clone EVERY CHARACTER. :\
The DM had to ban him.

 

[IronWolf]

I think their increase in amount of time seen in print contributed most to their current unpopularity. Sourcebooks, modules, novels and then with Drizzt lots more players wanting to play the dual wielding scimitar drow character. After awhile people probably just got tired of it. Or one of those things that it becomes cool to dislike *because* of their popularity.

In either case, if you and your players think it would be fun to run an all drow campaign then have fun with it! It's your game, so you should do what the group thinks will be fun!

 

[WayneLigon]

Is it just that they are overused?

Yep. Overexposure. They combine the cool factor of elves with the cool factor of evil and multiply it by the cool factor of being an outsider, so everyone and his brother had to make them the main villains, the power behind the secret evil infesting the land, etc.

 

[ssampier]

I think it's the same reason many people hate elves in general, a few annoying souls that can't get enough.

I like elves and by extension drow are okay (I call mine dark elves), but I'm not obsessed with either of them. I like the idea of having dark elves wrap trees and wilderness in shadows; yoink.

 

[RangerWickett]

I hate drow because they killed my family and burned my village to the ground!

 

[dontpunkme]

Drow have lost what made them so great in the first place--mysteriousness. In an age long ago they were this fearful pseudo-myth. And then everybody played one (who here can not honestly say they never played a drow campaign). We've seen good drow and evil drow and they've just become so commonplace.

I'm not saying that I dislike drow (far from it, I still love reading Salvatore novels), but they're no longer an enigma. In my current campaign, the drow are a mystery. The elves know of them and will not even speak of them. The only humans to have encoutered them are left a gory mess (to which most people blame the deaths on everything but the drow). Dwarves are aware of them and do despise them, but like the elves do not want to draw awareness to the threat.

Parties of drow do get boring though. Besides the aforementioned poison, SR, and darkness, there is still the problem that as a DM it is next to impossible to argue logically why the drow don't end up killing each other (certainly Lloth wouldn't discourage it). This just leads to ill will and distrust (which logically as drow should be the mindset), but this does create headaches trying to maintain a semblance of group chemistry.

From personal experience one of the greatest races to play in an all same race campaign is dwarves. When played properly dwarves are a force to be reckoned with and there still remains an air of mystery. Surface elves also make for good groups (especially if the characters play Elves as Elves should be played and use harry and trickery to defeat oponents), but even this has become too cliche in my group. I've been considering running a Sniverberfli (yeah I know my spelling is off but I'm lazy and don't feel like looking it up) campaign as I think there remains a lot of mystery to a group that is really best known for Belwar Dissengulp.

But if your DM persists and you do play a drow campaign, knife some punks in the spine for me.

 

[drowdude]

Back in the day, my original group ran alot of drow-centric campaigns. My second character was indeed a Drizzt-clone (even though he eventually developed into something very different)... but hey I was 16, and the Drizzt novels are what got me into the game in the first place, so whatever...

2 examples from what we ran...

1.) The PCs were "Suicide Runners". Basically a group of drow displaced from their houses who were "chosen" (forced) into taking on missions for the city. Usually involved heading out into the wilds of the Underdark into hostile territory to assassinate someone or retrieve some item for the Matron of the 1st House. Generally the missions were handed down to them because the perceived chances of success were miniscule... thus the name of the group
The campaign eventually evolved away from that as the characters developed ties in the world outside the city/underdark. But it was a fun way to get things rolling.

2.) "Gangstas of the Underdark"; Inspired by some articles in the Dragon magazine way back when. It was only a half-serious campaign but it was ALOT of fun. It was based around tensions between the criminal elements in Skullport.