The drow are, in some ways, the ultimate villainous race. But their very power and popularity with DMs and designers alike have made them ubiquitous to the point of cliché.
In this space we will—to borrow a notion from Dr. Seuss—move on beyond drow. We'll create other evil elves for characters to fight. We'll come up with new subraces to stymie (and aid) your PCs. And we'll try to create cultures that feel alive, fresh, and fantastic.
By "we," of course I mean "me." This is a place for me to jot down and share ideas. If you're intrigued by what you read here, feel free to comment, contribute, and/or riff. Just be sure that if you borrow an idea, it's for your personal use and not something to be published or posted somewhere else. That's how intellectual property works. Cool? Cool.
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A (Not So) Quick Look Back
Before we begin, maybe I should answer the question the title of this page provokes—namely: what’s wrong with drow?
The answer is “Absolutely nothing.”
And perhaps that’s the problem. Drow are awesome. Drow are awesomeness cubed. And that much awesome can be too much if it begins to dominate your gaming table.
So like that high-rolling 20-sider that everyone fights over…or that game controller with rapid fire that guarantees the winning kill…we need to seriously discuss whether the drow might need to sit out of your next campaign.
As you can imagine, I’ve got a lot to say on the subject, so I figured it was more blog-friendly to tuck it here in the Comments section, rather than clutter up the main page.
Part I: Drow as Villains
Why are drow such exceptional villains?
They’re elves but they live underground. They’re inherently magical. They make pets of giant spiders. They cavort with demons for sport. And they stand a good chance of beating the stuffing out of your character, especially if they take you by surprise.
Drow embody and embrace the opposite of everything we hold good and pure and true (admittedly a highly problematic statement, given their skin tone and matriarchal society, but that’s the material we’ve been given to work with, so we’ll overlook it for now). The dominatrixes of D&D, dark elves embrace an existence others would consider vile and craft it into something bold and new and so… dang…sexy.
Smart, evil, organized, and a twisted version of everything we love, drow are the villains we love to hate. You can catch a dragon napping, hide in a beholder’s antimagic cone, turn a vampire, and banish a fiend. But unless you can take advantage of their natural inclination toward backstabbing each other, there’s no surefire trick to stopping the drow, because they’re every bit as capable as your adventuring company. Even the sun won’t stop them—after all, it has to set sometime…
For these reasons then, drow have become D&D’s default evil villain, particularly after 2nd Edition sidelined fiends. Other villains have come into vogue—dragons, cultists, beholders, illithids, and liches, to name a few. (For the first year or so of 3rd Edition, it seemed every villain was a half-dragon.) But once the 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was released, the drow sat comfortably on top. And they’ve stayed there ever since, secure in their place as our favorite schemers, rivals, and high powered baddies.
Part II: Drow as Heroes and Antiheroes
Gamers like the dark. We like things that go bump in the night. And it’s even better when we’re the ones doing the bumping,
So we especially love dark elves. They’re fantasy’s favorite race—elves—but with a shady twist. When Drizzt Do’Urden first received scimitars from R. A. Salvatore in The Crystal Shard, he was supposed to be a supporting character, but he soon took over the following novels. And why not? He is Captain America’s honor and Wolverine’s body count. He’s Batman with a better sidekick. Every gamer wants to be him.
(I’m ignoring the howls of the contrarians shouting, “Not me!” Of course, not you. You are a unique and beautiful snowflake. Please return to refining your homebrewed spell-point systems.)
At first Drizzt was unique—the lone good member of an evil race. But that changed, thanks to Ed Greenwood and Dragon #176. Suddenly good drow had a whole temple complex in Undermountain (not to mention a deity who majored in modern dance and was an exhibitionist besides). By 3rd Edition, Ellistraee was as integral to the Forgotten Realms setting as Tymora, and drow were practically a PC race.
In the process, the good drow as tortured outcast became a cliché. Rich Burlew’s The Order of the Stick character Nale said it best: “Now the whole species consists of nothing but Chaotic Good rebels, yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin.” A great gag indicative of an archetype past its expiration date.
Part III: Drow Ubiquity
Now of course, drow are everywhere. In some cases this is good. In the Forgotten Realms setting, the drow’s conquest of Cormanthor raises the stakes for the Dales and the setting as a whole (recalling the shadow elves’ takeover of Alfheim in The Known World/Mystara’s Wrath of the Immortals). Meanwhile, Dambrath, long rumored to hold drow, turns out to be an intriguing (and still not nearly developed enough) drow-controlled nation run in tandem by half-drow aristocrats and the temple of Loviatar. The Silence of Lolth is a compelling twist as well, though I only know about it secondhand (I’ve read none of the novels but have heard City of the Spider Queen is quite a product).
But the problem is that everything is about the drow now. They’re behind every plot, every schism, every dark deed. The Cult of the Dragon and the Zhentarim were neutered long ago, and until everyone buys a copy of Serpent Kingdoms, the yuan-ti/sarrukh still have a lot of mindshare to capture. Drow are the ur- and the über-villains. Open any Realms product, and at least one drow will appear. Meanwhile, I hear World of Warcraft has night elves or something. I’m sure the list goes on…
And this ubiquity causes drow to lose their magic. They lose their mystery.
One reads in gaming magazines that the revelation of drow in Greyhawk’s Against the Giants was earth-shattering surprise. But now drow manipulations are expected. In short, drow are getting overexposed.
Part IV: On Beyond Drow
So what do we do about it?
We renounce drow. At least temporarily—we can give them up, in a kind of role-playing version of Lent.
We’ll imagine worlds without drow. We’ll imagine other evil elves. While we’re at it, we’ll imagine new elves of all kinds…and other subraces, too. We’ll see what happens when we throw races and classes together in interesting new ways. We’ll move on beyond drow.
Let’s begin…
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