What I Would Do With the Drow

[jhkimrpg]

This is another post following up on the previous post, "Regarding the Drow..." which looked at their background and racial connotations. In comments on that post, eyebeams wrote:
What you have to ask yourself is whether or not your suggestion, if followed back in the 70s, would have been followed in such a way as to create anything as compelling, and if

Comments

[eyebeams]

The thing I find interesting here is that it comments less on skin colour and more on the problem of supernatural evil in roleplaying games. Your response is a good one, but it points to a flaw that really prefigures race

Reversed Hollow World

[layniapetrovna]

In the D&D Known World/Mystara setting, there were two different cultures of "dark(ness) elves": the Shadow elves and the Schattenalfen.

The Shadow Elves are not really "evil" but despise surface elves. They fled the surface after a nuclear disaster. The only aspect of their culture which could be considered evil by our standards is their harsh treatments of their mutant children with a kind of eugenic exposure. I don't remember their complexion. On the cover, they look like pale Drows.

The Schattenalfen live deeper, in the Hollow World of Mystara. In spite of the German name, they are more influenced by the Mystara counterparts to the Aztecs. They are white-skinned and they can't bear the sunlight (but they are not vampires). They worship the cruel immortal Atzanteotl, who seems to be the usual Evil Deity who plans to destroy the Shadow Elves.

What I did with the drow

[anonymous]

In my D&D campaign, I had to figure out how to interpret the drow. I was not trying to confront racial stereotypes, but just how to make them a plausible culture while keeping most of the features players would be familiar with. As the PCs were entering the drow lands, I gave them a sheet of tourist facts about the drow. By the way, in my campaign, drow live above ground in dense forests (cf Mirkwood) and were adapted for living in permanent shadow. At some points, I inconsistently described them as having mottled black and white skin (i.e., tiger-stripe camauflage) rather than the pure black skin of the text, but I don't think it really stuck. They have the elven ``one-with nature'' shtick, but interpret nature as ``survival of the fittest