Second Darkness

The Second Darkness Adventure Path has come to Paizo’s Pathfinder. And as the series name portends, drow are the main antagonists.

You might assume I’d be down on this prospect—I do call my little blog here On Beyond Drow, after all—but you’d be wrong. I’m thrilled.

In the foreword to “Shadow in the Sky,” Editor-in-Chief James Jacobs does some talking about the history of drow in D&D and fantasy—from Hall of the Fire Giant King to The Crystal Shard and beyond—and their growing popularity over time. What he then goes on to write is revealing and heartening. I quote him here (without permission, but with much respect and interest):

Of course, with such sudden popularity came the to-be-expected backlash, and today you can hardly mention drow in the presence of gamers without sparking an argument. Some players love playing drow characters, while other players won’t play in a game that allows drow PCs. Some GMs love the concept of “renegade” drow who have turned against their sinful ways to become champions of good, while others gag and gnash teeth over the very concept. Even the name riles up gamers—there are at least two good ways to pronounce the word, and I wouldn’t put it past someone to come up with a third and a fourth. No matter how vocal people get about drow, the fact remains that everyone knows about them and everyone talks about them.

Sound familiar? It reads an awful lot like my long-winded editorial in the Comments section of my first OBD post. He goes on:

So they seem like a perfect choice for the villains of Pathfinder’s third Adventure Path. For those of you worried that the next several volumes are going to descend into angst-ridden, misunderstood dark-elf heroes, let me repeat myself.

The drow are villains.

During the course of Second Darkness, you’ll meet more drow NPCs than any other race, and I can pretty much guarantee you that they’re all going to be bad guys. The drow of Golarion are not to be trusted. They worship demons. They’re slavers and sadists. They perform hideous experiments on innocent victims. The drow are back to being evil, in other words.

As a result, you should encourage your players NOT to play drow characters in this campaign. I fully understand the attraction of playing a drow. Hell, two of my own favorite characters that I’ve played are drow (one of them even ended up in the Shackled City Adventure Path!). Playing a misunderstood hero who’s forced to live with the fact that her heritage brands her a villain can be quite fun and rewarding—but Second Darkness isn’t the place for drow PCs. If a player wants to play a misunderstood hero here, try to talk them into playing a half-orc. Or a goblin. Or a half-fiend. Or even one of the other Darklands-dwelling races, like a duergar or a troglodyte.

Drow can be PCs in all the Adventure Paths after this one. For now, though, give them a chance to be the bad guys again.

The folks at Pathfinder and Paizo get it. They managed to avoid using drow as main antagonists throughout five full Adventure Paths in Dungeon and Pathfinder. And when they did decide to use drow, Jacobs’s foreword indicates that they’ve done their best to rethink them, reapproach them, and most importantly, make them evil—not dark, not Gothic or Romantic (note the capitals), and not cool—truly evil. Drow are a mystery in Golarion—even most sages don't even know they exist—and by nixing drow PCs, the writers are returning mystery to the race. If well executed, the revelation of drow in Golarion could be almost as shocking a moment as it was when Gygax created them decades ago.

All in all, it’s a great start, and I’m excited to see what comes of it.