What Drow Thread(s) Taught Me

[Rhifox]

I don’t even know she’s a witch lol he thinks she’s that Nice Barkeep lady that worked at the Lyre.

Poor Mr. Tally-ho Man.

[Shadowspinner70]

We even got tally-ho man in here too! This really is a party.

Also! Also! In regards to genocidal hatred, in regards to even orcs, is going in, clearing out the area, and then picking off the women and children is considered to be an evil act. Orcish women are far from defenseless -- hey Luthic -- but even then, it is an evil act defined by this book or another that defined what certain acts can cause.

Evil aasimar aren't abnormal either. It's one of the first things I learned while researching the viability of an aasimar cleric of Shar, admittedly because I wanted more wisdom and charisma to pump points into intelligence. Shar especially likes corrupting aasimar and a lot of people forget that they too face discrimination. Also another thing I learned: they're not always seen as blessings because they're freaky and different. I know one DM from elsewhere who likes to have NPCs ask aasimar for blessings and then get angry when they just can't deliver. What a shame Maztica hasn't been "discovered" yet. No Xochiquetzal for you, BG.

I also know someone from over yonder on NWN1. He speaks of near civil wars and conflict sometimes getting so intense that there's near constant gank fests. All on the surface.He makes this server sound like a care bears episode.

It's interesting as hell to put things in perspective, too. Like the UD is insanely empty here, but our DMs still make the effort to reach us. Elsewhere, and I might have just gotten unlucky, I played for several weeks in an Underdark with a population and saw no DMs except to smack someone about a potential rule break. In some ways, we are insanely lucky here. In other ways, we have a lot to improve upon.

So, yeah. We have a couple things to be grateful for. And sorry again, Dalo! It was 4 am.

[Hoihe]

We even got tally-ho man in here too! This really is a party.

Also! Also! In regards to genocidal hatred, in regards to even orcs, is going in, clearing out the area, and then picking off the women and children is considered to be an evil act. Orcish women are far from defenseless -- hey Luthic -- but even then, it is an evil act defined by this book or another that defined what certain acts can cause.

Evil aasimar aren't abnormal either. It's one of the first things I learned while researching the viability of an aasimar cleric of Shar, admittedly because I wanted more wisdom and charisma to pump points into intelligence. Shar especially likes corrupting aasimar and a lot of people forget that they too face discrimination. Also another thing I learned: they're not always seen as blessings because they're freaky and different. I know one DM from elsewhere who likes to have NPCs ask aasimar for blessings and then get angry when they just can't deliver. What a shame Maztica hasn't been "discovered" yet. No Xochiquetzal for you, BG.

I also know someone from over yonder on NWN1. He speaks of near civil wars and conflict sometimes getting so intense that there's near constant gank fests. All on the surface.He makes this server sound like a care bears episode.

It's interesting as hell to put things in perspective, too. Like the UD is insanely empty here, but our DMs still make the effort to reach us. Elsewhere, and I might have just gotten unlucky, I played for several weeks in an Underdark with a population and saw no DMs except to smack someone about a potential rule break. In some ways, we are insanely lucky here. In other ways, we have a lot to improve upon.

So, yeah. We have a couple things to be grateful for. And sorry again, Dalo! It was 4 am.

Things we should be grateful for, and fight to protect with tooth and nail when threatened.

And ideally, improve upon the parts that still need improvement.

[YYA]

That people on this server still do not understand the importance of communication and that disagreement in and of itself is not the end of the world.

I do not like the idea of surface being opened to Underdark races for a great multitude of reasons. But if it is something people insist on doing, well, there could be some mechanical precautions that could be done. Namely, some script that temporarily removes innate Spell Resistance if a character rests on an exterior area, and only regains it if that character rests in an interior map. It gives a mechanical incentive towards the 'drow hiding from the sun' kind of gameplay, or just temporarily removes the mechanical advantage of Spell Resistance from 'drow that live under the sun.' It could be explained away as a lack of 'Faerzress' or something, a DM decision. And another thing could be some 'safe' wildereness area or two without any monsters of any kind -- maybe a few non-hostile deer that could be attacked and thus hunted -- so that you could have some kind of a neutral area to put out your placeables, tents, and campfires... A place where you could potentially build in character relationships with those 'good' drow that wish the escape the Underdark. It would also prevent some of the 'drow' conflicts taking place on the streets of Soubar.

[Almarea90]

By it's core D&D is filled with violence,racism,xenophobia and a constant battle between good and evil.
When looking at this server people rather tune this down a bit and like to take liberties, which can often lead to some disagreements.Though in the end it's just a disagreement over a game and not a personal attack or slander how some one enjoys the game. I don't particularly find good drow trying to redeem their race, nice tieflings seeking acceptance or a NG grey orc druid bad RP or a boring characters. It's just the same as with drizzt to me, when there is too much of that it feels less like D&D.

Although there is room for the opposite in the setting, it is undoubtedly true in Faerun there are many cases of racism and intolerance. D&D though was born to be played at a table with few players who had the freedom to be the snowflakes (depending on the DM) and the rest of the world was made of NPCs. Since many people like to play a good tiefling/orc/drow or someone who would not kill those races on sight and not the most lore-common counterparts, my question is how do you suggest, in practice, the purity of the setting is maintained? I myself cannot think of any other way other than actively policing the players choices through the DM and allowing a random 1 every 100 characters to rp such archetipes, which really is not ideal as at the end of the day it would force people to play what they don't enjoy.

So, yeah. The lore supports exceptional drow (rare NPCs and PC adventurers) being found and able to conduct business on the surface. The lore also supports surfacers fearing, distrusting, and being hostile to drow. There should be room for both on BG, dictated by the RP of the characters (PC and NPC), rather than OOC rules. Also, IMO travel between the surface and UD is just too easy atm and the ogre cave entrance should be removed, or at the very least this 'path' needs to have its difficulty level adjusted. Characters who make the trek should have no (OOC) rules governing their stay, but that trek itself should be harsh.

I completely agree. Both styles are equally valid and give variety to the game world which imho is always a good thing.

(mind, I consider our pvp rules in general to also be OOC rules we could do without. KOS should IMO be the law of the land for everyone everywhere except where IC laws and IC guards exist to stop the violence).

With free for all KoS I fear two things may surface:
1) Hipsing characters being in great advantage because they can just oneshot people from the shadows.
2) People ganking low levels and characters that have RP builds absolutely sub-par for PvP just because they are easy targets even though they do what they possibly can to avoid conflict.

It is certainly true that a rule that requires a legitimate RP reason to attack another player would partly mitigate the problem, but that would require very clear and specific rules in place and active policing by the DMs, who would then be flooded by complaints as what constitutes a legitimate reason for one party might not be for another.
For example, a Bhaalist who has to murder a sentient being every ten days would make perfect sense in RP and that would allow them to target the aforementioned easy targets. This in turn would encourage people to play powerbuilds, even if they make no sense in RP or with the concept they have in mind, just to avoid being ganked as soon as they set foot outside the safe zone.

Evil aasimar aren't abnormal either. It's one of the first things I learned while researching the viability of an aasimar cleric of Shar, admittedly because I wanted more wisdom and charisma to pump points into intelligence. Shar especially likes corrupting aasimar and a lot of people forget that they too face discrimination. Also another thing I learned: they're not always seen as blessings because they're freaky and different.

True. Especially Planetar blooded Aasimars who have green skin can easily be mistaken for hag spawns. Another thing that must be considered is that even when aasimars are considered a blessing, the fact they can "get away with everything" just because they have celestial blood may make them feel entitled to enforce their will on others believing they are doing the right thing. Just like a child-emperor might do.
Same goes for tieflings. Those who are raised in faerun would have likely grown up with surface values which usually condemn evil (unless they are Luskanites, those are evil by default ). On top of that, a tiefling might feel pressured to "prove people wrong" and act in a virtuous way, or a chaotic one might feel constrained by the push of the blood of a distant ancestor that they didn't even meet and decide to rebel against it.
At the end of the day, there are many different ideas and concept that allows freedom from the usual aasimar good / tiefling evil.

[Snarfy]

And Snarfy, your fantastic, sour blueberry of an elf absolutely can shoot a couple arrows at me.

Remember that one time they met and he actually didn't even shoot at her? ... and instead tripped over a log trying to get out of there after "it" spoke to him. Who woulda thunk it?

I actually was initially leaning towards voting yes on that poll(*gasp*) because, quite frankly, I don't think it would be as much of a setting-breaking thing as some suggest(depending on the area(s) that were on the table). ALAS... a few salient posts and a poll that totaled one hundred and fifty-four votes, including ninety-four yes's, on a server that maybe has eighty active and invested players logging in, pushed me into the big fat "No" category. Basically, if the playerbase cant be trusted to vote responsibly, and without logging onto their multiple forum accounts(highly likely, for both yes's and no's), or plumbing the depths of discord to drag inactive/disenfranchised players back to skew the vote count, then what's the point? Now, if we had ninety-four players either A. visting the UD on a regular basis to RP with those friendly UD types, or B. playing a character in the UD, perhaps the suggestion might warrant serious consideration... although, if this were the case it's more than likely SB's topic would not have been made at all.

So, here we are again, endlessly discussing and forever pondering why we cant have nice things! It's kind of like that lyric from Radiohead, "You do it to yourself, you do. And that's what really hurts."

Aaaaanyways. Soooo, am I the only one here that is too lazy to read source material and simply uses the original Baldurs' Gate game as their main setting reference?

[KOPOJIbPAKOB]

And Snarfy, your fantastic, sour blueberry of an elf absolutely can shoot a couple arrows at me.

Remember that one time they met and he actually didn't even shoot at her? ... and instead tripped over a log trying to get out of there after "it" spoke to him. Who woulda thunk it?

I actually was initially leaning towards voting yes on that poll(*gasp*) because, quite frankly, I don't think it would be as much of a setting-breaking thing as some suggest(depending on the area(s) that were on the table). ALAS... a few salient posts and a poll that totaled one hundred and fifty-four votes, including ninety-four yes's, on a server that maybe has eighty active and invested players logging in, pushed me into the big fat "No" category. Basically, if the playerbase cant be trusted to vote responsibly, and without logging onto their multiple forum accounts(highly likely, for both yes's and no's), or plumbing the depths of discord to drag inactive/disenfranchised players back to skew the vote count, then what's the point? Now, if we had ninety-four players either A. visting the UD on a regular basis to RP with those friendly UD types, or B. playing a character in the UD, perhaps the suggestion might warrant serious consideration... although, if this were the case it's more than likely SB's topic would not have been made at all.

So, here we are again, endlessly discussing and forever pondering why we cant have nice things! It's kind of like that lyric from Radiohead, "You do it to yourself, you do. And that's what really hurts."

Aaaaanyways. Soooo, am I the only one here that is too lazy to read source material and simply uses the original Baldurs' Gate game as their main setting reference?

It's been 60/40 from the start, it remained roughly 60/40 to this day without any major, noticeable shifts, which simply means the poll reflects the correct community disposition. It's possible somebody used 1-2 extra usernames to vote, but these cases would be grains in a desert that didn't change the statistic. If they did, everyone would notice.

I understand that you're in the 40%, but implying that supporters of the change somehow rigged the poll is at the very least impolite, especially when all the evidence you (and others sharing the same idea) have is bare speculation.

On another note, it's really a shame that thread wasn't limited to 1 post per username.

[Shadowspinner70]

I have a feeling that this 3 page tldr of a 17 page thread, this glorious example of threadception, will get ever longer.

But yeah, once more: you're all valid. It can be true that 15% of drow aren't evil and also true that the vast majority of drow are evil since 85% is the vast majority. People can use violence or nonviolence, there's examples of legit everything in lore for better or worse, and we can all agree that 4th edition needs to burn in a fire.

Most drow we see are evil since those are down under and surface drow have to hide really well or catch themselves a crusade of elves, and Eilistraee currently seconds Vhaeraun in surface drow populations.

Then we have surfacers freaking out when one pops up because one means many and like I said. Valid. Will they mix like oil and water? Yeah. But valid. I probably sound like such a hippie right now.

I'm gonna go have a pumpkin spice cold brew with pumpkin flavored cold foam while I hope you all read this in zefrank's voice.

[Deathgrowl]

we can all agree that 4th edition needs to burn in a fire.

[Ewe]

What do you guys think the answers are?


1. When should "drowmon" be used in IC prose?

A. We should never use "drowmon" in any situation, it is not real Drow speak

B. We should always use "drowmon" in every situation possible, it adds a lot of RP flavor

C. "drowmon" should only be used between surfacer and drow and never between drow and drow, drow would never speak to each other like this

D. In-game "Undercommon" selection should be used instead of "drowmon" in all cases


2. How many times should the word "lithe" be used in an IC Drow character description?

A. 0

B. At least once

C. More than once

D. One time for each usage of the word "Drowess"


3. What color should Drow eyes be?

A. Red, becuase it is the most common

B. Purple, because Drizzt has them

C. White, snowflake options make the best RP

D. All of the above are okay


4. What alignment should drow be?

A. Chaotic always

B. Any alignment is fine

[Snarfy]

... but implying that supporters of the change somehow rigged the poll is at the very least impolite...

(highly likely, for both yes's and no's)

... especially when all the evidence you (and others sharing the same idea) have is bare speculation.

It's equally as speculative to suggest this:

It's possible somebody used 1-2 extra usernames to vote, but these cases would be grains in a desert that didn't change the statistic. If they did, everyone would notice.

... whether it was the yes'ers or no'ers. And people did notice, if their remarks in the other thread and this one are any indication.

As for evidence, well, I could easily comb through the other thread and count the number of players who definitively said which way they voted and why(based on one per player name)...

*Goes to do just that* <insert elevator music here>

Yes: 25
No: 21
And about 5 or so who sounded on the fence.

^ - This, to me, is a far more accurate indicator than the poll.

... and we can all agree that 4th edition needs to burn in a fire.

Is it any worse than my old Dragonlance modules? Because those are pretty awesome. *ducks*

[Ewe]

Yeah... that poll should not be taken seriously at all. There's no way for us to tie a vote to a person, it's easily rigged. Counting unique IPs won't even work.

It would be easily possible for someone who is savvy enough to evade ban to setup a system to flood one option with votes from seemingly unique people.

Let alone rallying up your friends who have long since quit to throw a vote for you.

On most small communities like this (MUDs, etc.) only "active" players get to vote during a period, and only one vote per account (cdkey in our case). Where activity is measured by some algorithm based on your play time, etc. on that cdkey. Without taking extra measures like this, there's no way to have a fair vote.

[mastajabba]

And Snarfy, your fantastic, sour blueberry of an elf absolutely can shoot a couple arrows at me.

Remember that one time they met and he actually didn't even shoot at her? ... and instead tripped over a log trying to get out of there after "it" spoke to him. Who woulda thunk it?

I actually was initially leaning towards voting yes on that poll(*gasp*) because, quite frankly, I don't think it would be as much of a setting-breaking thing as some suggest(depending on the area(s) that were on the table). ALAS... a few salient posts and a poll that totaled one hundred and fifty-four votes, including ninety-four yes's, on a server that maybe has eighty active and invested players logging in, pushed me into the big fat "No" category. Basically, if the playerbase cant be trusted to vote responsibly, and without logging onto their multiple forum accounts(highly likely, for both yes's and no's), or plumbing the depths of discord to drag inactive/disenfranchised players back to skew the vote count, then what's the point? Now, if we had ninety-four players either A. visting the UD on a regular basis to RP with those friendly UD types, or B. playing a character in the UD, perhaps the suggestion might warrant serious consideration... although, if this were the case it's more than likely SB's topic would not have been made at all.

So, here we are again, endlessly discussing and forever pondering why we cant have nice things! It's kind of like that lyric from Radiohead, "You do it to yourself, you do. And that's what really hurts."

Aaaaanyways. Soooo, am I the only one here that is too lazy to read source material and simply uses the original Baldurs' Gate game as their main setting reference?

*shakes head* you had one job my dude

[mastajabba]

We even got tally-ho man in here too! This really is a party.

Also! Also! In regards to genocidal hatred, in regards to even orcs, is going in, clearing out the area, and then picking off the women and children is considered to be an evil act. Orcish women are far from defenseless -- hey Luthic -- but even then, it is an evil act defined by this book or another that defined what certain acts can cause.

Evil aasimar aren't abnormal either. It's one of the first things I learned while researching the viability of an aasimar cleric of Shar, admittedly because I wanted more wisdom and charisma to pump points into intelligence. Shar especially likes corrupting aasimar and a lot of people forget that they too face discrimination. Also another thing I learned: they're not always seen as blessings because they're freaky and different. I know one DM from elsewhere who likes to have NPCs ask aasimar for blessings and then get angry when they just can't deliver. What a shame Maztica hasn't been "discovered" yet. No Xochiquetzal for you, BG.

I also know someone from over yonder on NWN1. He speaks of near civil wars and conflict sometimes getting so intense that there's near constant gank fests. All on the surface.He makes this server sound like a care bears episode.

It's interesting as hell to put things in perspective, too. Like the UD is insanely empty here, but our DMs still make the effort to reach us. Elsewhere, and I might have just gotten unlucky, I played for several weeks in an Underdark with a population and saw no DMs except to smack someone about a potential rule break. In some ways, we are insanely lucky here. In other ways, we have a lot to improve upon.

So, yeah. We have a couple things to be grateful for. And sorry again, Dalo! It was 4 am.

Oh we’ll meet again…

[Calen]

By it's core D&D is filled with violence,racism,xenophobia and a constant battle between good and evil.
When looking at this server people rather tune this down a bit and like to take liberties, which can often lead to some disagreements.Though in the end it's just a disagreement over a game and not a personal attack or slander how some one enjoys the game. I don't particularly find good drow trying to redeem their race, nice tieflings seeking acceptance or a NG grey orc druid bad RP or a boring characters. It's just the same as with drizzt to me, when there is too much of that it feels less like D&D.

Although there is room for the opposite in the setting, it is undoubtedly true in Faerun there are many cases of racism and intolerance. D&D though was born to be played at a table with few players who had the freedom to be the snowflakes (depending on the DM) and the rest of the world was made of NPCs. Since many people like to play a good tiefling/orc/drow or someone who would not kill those races on sight and not the most lore-common counterparts, my question is how do you suggest, in practice, the purity of the setting is maintained? I myself cannot think of any other way other than actively policing the players choices through the DM and allowing a random 1 every 100 characters to rp such archetipes, which really is not ideal as at the end of the day it would force people to play what they don't enjoy.

There isn't an easy solution for this though I believe balance and comprising from both sides is the best way to achieve a good immersion while giving freedom to players.

- When it comes to making less lore common builds, ask people write a small application to the DM team and as DM team be lenient.
If something doesn't fit the lore, help the person a bit by giving them pointers. You'll still have plenty of build/RP freedom but for the special cases have atleast the DM verify your rp intend for the sake of sticking to the lore.

A: When you roll an elf that follows Malar/Talos/vhaeraun or is CE.
B: When you roll an Aasimar blackguard or cleric of Gargauth .
C: When you RP a CG druid of Talos that befriends elves.
D: Characters that went through sexual abuse,extreme torture,excessive self mutilation,slave rp etc.
E: Tiefling Paladin
F: Good aligned drow that wants to go to the surface.
G: Grey orc paladin
H: Chaotic good necromancer raising corpses left and right
I: When you emulate a vampire as character or want to roll a cat girl tiefling or in general uncommon things.


- As DM team make minor DM events that just involve one or two npc's approaching characters and put them in difficult situations through short 5-10 min events.
With the named characters above it's fairly easy to come up with a situations that are conflicting for a tiefling paladin, but it can be done with any character.

I remember that General Scar played by a DM treated my LE racist assassin from the slums of Athkatla with a certain amount of kindness and respect which resulted in him questioning when ever he truly wished to continue down this dark path he was on. At first he didn't and actually started making friends with different races and joined the watch to fight the devil invasion. Eventually it rebound and he ended up abducting a priest of Illmater that ended up being sacrificed, manipulating different factions and turned out worse than he was before. The impact the DM had with a 10 min of RP time was enormous for this character, he still ended up evil however with a genuinely regret for that death and concluding that with his bloodstained hands changing isn't easy and in his case not desired.

These little events help immensely with building your character, most of all they are confrontational.


- The server is tuned towards power building and gathering loot thus people will pick races that benefit these builds.
With the 3/20 rule and limited amount of classes to pick as a big chunk are race/deity bound thus most people end up with cookie cutter builds.

A: What I would suggest is installing Kaedrins pack , by injecting a larger variety of choice you present players to roll characters to distinguish themselves from others and be special by just playing that class.

B: Remove the 3/20 rule, it's a OOC mechanic that pigeon holes people into cookie cutter builds and encourages picking specific races

C: Allow sub types with stat benefits for all races/sub races so there is a bigger choice.

D: Remove 19 dex requirement from SD, and make HIPS work like the rogue hide in shadow.



-Remove all epic levels and stick to level 20 and make content/DM events based on that.
This one is extreme but I genuinely believe that the epic levels causes big powergaps and shift RP towards people walking around like demi gods.
We've reached the point where a single character can just punch a dragon to death and honestly, I don't think it does the RP any good.
The coast will feel a lot more dangerous like this, people have to work more together to achieve something.Further more it will also make it for DM's a lot easier to make an event that is interesting for every one.


I'm not a fan of giving players total freedom in D&D however forcing players to RP like you think it should be is not the right way to treat them.
What I would suggest is to offer alternatives such as named above and I believe you'll see a bigger variety in RP and races.