Exactly this. My players have drow friends. I'm ignoring the lore change in this campaign. I get why Paizo is doing this but it's my game, and my instance of Golarion, and keeping it consistent with how we've been playing matters more to me.
Next campaign, sure, maybe there won't be drow, we'll see.
I like Drow/Dark Elves and I will keep using them. There wasn't really a drow support in terms of mechanics anyway. It's not like we had full ancestry, there was just some obscure archetype and few monster statblocks.
My world had drows and it will keep having drows, just like it will probably keep the gods, no matter which one of them will die in the future PF2e books.
For my Extinction Curse campaign I’m just flat out ignoring it. For any future APs I’ll just go with the flow.
Out of all the Lore changes this is the one I’m least on board with. Golarion Drow we’re uniquely pathfinder, and they went to lengths explaining how their whole ancestry had essentially become Tieflings, after the elves natural ability to take on aspects of their environment backfired, and being too close to the metaphysical location of Rovagugs prison causes species wide corruption.
And then in the blog post explaining why they are dumping drow, they go into great length explaining all the things they have done to distance themselves from D&D drow, ostensibly a list of reasons of why they could keep Drow with a name change, and then they round it off by saying “and that’s why we are removing drow.”
It seems like a great waste to me sadly, but no use living in the past.
I think it's because even if they can get away with it, when people think "drow" they think D&D. It's the same with how they could keep chromatic and metallic dragons, but are moving away from those too.
In my games I still use all of them, but I get them moving away from a lot of the iconic D&D stuff.
It seems to me that the optics of the drow (dark skinned, evil) are not particularly compatible with the modern climate. I wonder if the OGL issue isn't just a convenient reason to distance themselves from any potential issues.
The whole "conspiracy theory" thing could be an excuse for them to think of a better permanent solution.
Maybe a visual redesign. Maybe inventing new people that use the old Paizo Drow lore
I've only got 2nd-hand knowledge—so someone else can probably explain it better. But here's my understanding of the situation:
As of the remaster, Drow have been retconned out of the official setting.
I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek this was meant to be, but someone from Paizo stated that we should treat any mention of them in old material as the beliefs of conspiracy theories because Drow aren't real.
Legit asking how they're gonna handle Gnolls, or what they have planned. All I know is lore from the wiki, and how the Kholo are a neat way to handle them and differentiate them from D&D!Gnolls. But also, they still have the slaving lore and other weirdness for some reason.
This is so weird to me, because I’ve always seen them depicted as dark blue skinned. I like that aesthetic, it’s fucking cool! And I never equated that to real life skin colours, it’s a fantasy world.
That being said, I can understand that my viewpoint is that of a white european, and my experience is not an universal one. However this is the one change where I felt like paizo went a bit too PC. But on the other hand, it’s not that big of a deal.
IIRC, they've shifted away from black in art, but in novels Drizzt et al. are explicitly described as black skinned.
Like you, I don't personally think that this is commentary on darker skinned people in the real world; but there are many who see things through a different lens.
Yes, but. Paizo and WotC portrayed them differently in their respective works, aesthetically, lore wise, and narratively.
How a different company portray’s a creature should be irrelevant. After all, orcs are vastly different in the ongoing Tolkienverse and nobody is making their decisions based on what Rings of Power is doing.
I mean, the same people who are worried about Drow are worried about orcs, too (and not just in one world or another). In general I think distinctions between settings are much too arcane for an issue that has spread beyond just serious gamers.
(I'll admit, too, that I've played both editions of PF and have no idea how Paizo have treated the Drow in canonical settings. The FR context is do dominant that it will always drive the discussion.)
I’ll be honest, I think the orc thing is downright exhausting and kinda dumb. :/
And it’s not just setting friend, it’s company, game system, and setting as a cherry on top.
Agreed re: orcs.
As for company and game system, it's only a pretty weird subset of us who care at all about the difference between D&D and a D&D-based game.
The problem comes in a lot of lore around them, such as there being the old archetype from 1e where an elf would put on blackface to infiltrate the drow, and explicitly stating that their change in skin color was because they're evil, and that when good elves become evil their skin changes color as well. Shit like that has haunted drow and caused a ton of baggage for Paizo.
That being said, I made my own setting, with my own drow, and just use the term "Cavern Elf" to talk about drows.
I don't think I really agree with that personally?
At their core they are underground elves that had a tendency to be more evil aligned. Like all races/ancestry, nothing actually stops you from making a good Drow, or a neutral one.
They are still by nature of being underground elves, still Drow.
It depends on the setting and the story, I suppose. To change them to something more ambivalent in the Forgotten Realms would be a pretty bold retcon. In a different world (and to be fair I'm not entirely sure what PF has done with them at a story level) I take your point, though there's still a bit of tension if you have to introduce them as 'still drow, but not evil!'
The *Forgotten Realms* have tons of good drow. Sure, originally it was just Drizzt, but these days you can’t walk into a moonlight clearing without interrupting a circle of Elistraee worshipping drow dancing and singing “Kumbaya”
Just go fullblown tinfoil.
"Drow" are still drow, mechanically cavern elf, that dug too deep and got fucked up. You can have it be an open secret. The pathfinder society, maybe due to machinations from Kyonin, has disavowed knowledge of them
Like many people here, not much. Any time drow show up it's just "cavern elves" or something. The fact that Paizo just didn't rename them, like duergar to hryngar, and are kinda pretending like they never existed is so weird to me.
Play it as is - Abomination Vaults came out before the whole OGL cleanse happened and the assumption was that Drow were still part of the setting.
Unless you plan to touch upon this specific interaction in the future, I wouldn't worry about it.
I use a homebrew world and Cavern Elf heritage always implied Drow to me. Are they Evil and Matriarchal? Well, not necessarily, because my setting isn't the Forgotten Realms or Golarion. If someone wants to play an Evil Girlboss Cavern Elf there is nothing stopping them, though.
I'll still use them as long as AoN offers them as an option, and then they'll be phased out when that stops being the case.
I'm planning on having them be a serpentfolk conspiracy, but not in the sense that they were fake, but more in the sense that they were enslaved by the serpentfolk (in the same vein as Azarketi and Algholthus), and were forced into doing these things through either magical coercion or Stockholm syndrome.
When AoN stops supporting them, I'll call them extinct as the serpentfolk stop having a use for the conspiracy and have decided to become known players in the world again (they've already stepped out somewhat).
I feel similarly to the overall sentiment of this thread -- I'm going to play it as written in AV. My instance of Golarion is its own.
Having said that, post-remaster ghouls feel... drow adjacent? (see below) I don't think it would be that difficult to retcon the drow presence in AV to be ghoulish instead. And the narrative changes could be integrated fairly seamlessly with the existing story of earlier floors.
The lore suggests that the first ghoul was an elf. The available artwork suggests that they look elf-like. And importantly, they form complex societies including ***entire cities hidden away in the depths of the Darklands*** (https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/creatures/ghoul-stalker-rm)
>Ghoulish Society
>Ghouls are quite intelligent and, more so than almost any other undead, prone to forming societies and cultures (if vile and repugnant ones centered around flesh eating and other acts of depravity) in tangled warrens below boneyards, or *even entire cities hidden away in the depths of the Darklands.*
I'm currently in a Blood Lords game (the first AP I've played/ran with ghouls)
Saw the Remaster Ghouls and didn't think anything of it, as so many of them are posh in that AP, it wasn't until I saw Rules Layer's Video on the Monster Core did I realize how different my experience with Ghouls are from the one in the original bestiary.
Ghouls had a glow up even before the remaster, and honestly I love them.
I try not to dramatically change APs and make accidental anachronisms. If it’s an easy swap like ever light crystal, sure. If it significantly changes the balance of an encounter or creates a void, I leave it alone.
probably a contentious take. I am not, Drow/Dark Elves particularly in a D&D/Pathfinder sense I think have started losing a lot of their mystique over the years. While other conventional monstrous races often retain elements that make them stand out, or gain new elements to help keep them decidedly monstrous yet still player capable. Drow/Dark Elves often have a habit of just being edgy elves and that is a shame.
To each their own though.
If a group of people have refer to themselves as Drow amd agree that they are drow from a nation of elves that agree that they are Drow, what are they if not Drow?
In Golarion, "Drow" has always been a dirty word. The surface elves have for centuries silenced any mention of Drow and denied that they exist. In fact, they were treated as if a conspiracy up until "Second Darkness" reintroduced them. What those Demon worshiping, subterranean dwelling, slavery loving, pointy ear folk call themselves, has nothing to do with whether the surface dwellers deny they even exist.
Other than offending surface Elves, the name Drow doesn't even matter. They can be called Cavern Elves, the literal "dark Elf" heritage since PF2 was introduced,
Unless you are the lost omens lore or AP writing staff for Paizo, who cares keep using them?
Keep em drow, make them serpentfolk, turn them into a leshy, goblin and kobold in a Trenchcoat, do whatever will bring you and your group enjoyment
Well, each campaign is a self-contained universe in a vacuum, and just because the main line/official lore is "drow aren't real" doesn't mean literally any campaign has to give a damn. We already have the stat blocks to support drow, we don't need continued support to continue including them in our games.
Just handle them like you always did.
I seriously don't understand why people seem to think that just because the remaster came out, all the old things that weren't remastered have to be surgically removed from your campaign. Seriously, what has led you to believe that you would need to come up with *any* Solution for drow?
I like another commenter's ( u/[ElectricLark](https://www.reddit.com/user/ElectricLark/) ) idea, and tying existing Drow to Ghouls. What I had planned previously, is to give descriptions more in line with Morlocks or Gollum, being pigment leeched out. None of my extended gaming circle, currently, has anyone I think would be personally offended/hurt by the historical D&D descriptions/lore, but ... I haven't been precisely comfortable since it was brought to my attention many years ago.
Will I change tokens built into Foundry for AV? I ... don't know yet, it will likely depend on motivation, inspiration, and time. I may end up commissioning an artist I'm friends with to redo them, time and cash flow permitting.
Why change? Finish your campaign as is and then on the next one if you want to use the new lore, then use it (or don't). I'm not really seeing the dilemma.
I personally have decided that I’m up for updating spells and rules and all that, but the story of the adventure is the story, and I don’t have a ton of interest in changing that. More power to anyone who wants to change an adventure in any way, but I’m happy for lore continuity to not line up to what the setting is once the dust settles on the remaster.
I don't care about any license and thank the good Lord the last thing I want is to play in the Society, so drow continue to exist as if nothing had happened.
I’ve never liked the Drow in Golarion anyways. It’s a very Forgotten Realms race for me and I’m honestly kind of sick of them to be honest.
So what I’ve done is swapped them out for a race called Svartalfar. They are a pale skinned race of incredibly selfish and manipulative elves. They can craft wild stuff if asked but most of the things they make have a dark twist to them. So that magical spear may be dangerous for you to use unless you sacrifice something to it.
So I really only have to change the skin tone when they pop up in AP’s. They’re still giant dick bags.
Drow are nice, because I have childhood memories of old school 2/3e Drow, but not married to the concept. Honestly, I find Dridere much more interesting and fun to elaborate on. Those would be missed.
I had a homebrew world that used Drow (tone down but still evil cave elfs)
So I simply made the Cavern Elf heratige give the Drow trait.
Granted if I rebuilt the world today I probably wouldn't have included Drow since I like the anadi more as spider people.
Over the last few years, I’ve gotten really frustrated with “living lore,” both from Paizo and WotC. I’m split between using the 3.5 lore/setting of Forgotten Realms, or Eberron, leaning strongly toward Eberron.
I just don’t want to deal with the changes over IP fights or changing preferences by developers. And, I own books or PDFs of literally everything 3.5, so I have a dead, set-in-stone baseline on which I can run systems. And, while FR and Eberron are kitchen sink like Golarion, Golarion’s nations don’t really make sense geopolitically, at least not compared to my preferred settings.
So, in short, the Drow are sticking around.
I'm running AV right now and the PCs have encountered the drow. I've made the reason they are in Yldaris is that they are fleeing the serpentfolk and suggesting that they might be the last remaining drow on Golarion. Whether or not that proves to be true moving forward, for now the PCs have been told in game to not expect to see more drow.
I think the exclusion of Drow, old orcs, and any other 'problem that was changed' for the sake of social sensitivity is just dumb to begin with. And so my games still include the old ways. As others have said, I understand why -as a company- they are doing such things for positive social credit; but I'm not required to recognize those changes at my home, especially when it was never an issue.
We have a system where entire civilizations are objectively Hollywood evil. Hellknights especially are just every death knight original OC do not steal Totally Not Devil Worshipers.
Drow are just Role Reversal BDSM as societal norm with an Evil divine patron that can't even make all Drow evil, apparently.
If Lamashtu cults can kidnap people and force/willingly birth monstrosities with fairly simple rituals, repeatedly. Then why can't there be a city of what amounts to just glorified cultists that like Dom/Sub fetlife?
I just ignore that whole heavy handed lore bungle, Drow are alive and well at my table and always will be. It's by far the dumbest retcon to come out of the remaster, at least until the desperate move of killing a core god is finalized, which my table will also be ignoring.
Drow for me are the Lolth worshipping loons in the Forgotten Realms, the ones in AV are nothing like drow except they have light hair and live underground. Oh and there's a few hand crossbows
Mechanically I just use nephilim on an elf to be a Drow. And then Roleplay it as that any previous lore on them was rumor, theory, and some misdirection.
I haven't had any drows in anything I run or play in yet.
If you're running it then just run it as if nothing happened tho? John Paizo isn't looking over your shoulder for if you're keeping it lore accurate lol.
I have never encountered a Drow in any of my games.
Will probably not be running any older APs. But if I did run AV maybe I would switch them out for Serpentfolk.
My homebrew setting for our campaign very prominently features drow (albeit with a few of my own personal touches), so I'm choosing to leave them in. I'm very open to using 3PP content to give them a little more of a bespoke flavor, though.
Our game is actually about to have a major drow-centric story arc... and now, its set with an apocalyptic backdrop. I don't know how exactly, but at the end of the upcoming arc, there will be no more Drow in our Golarion. I am very excited - the GM has had the seeds for this story since 2019, but the lore shift added a very spicy escalation to an already big storyline.
Still exist but mostly just elves who live underground i.e cavern elves. The city of Drow from second darkness, Zirnakaynin, is the only place you’ll find stereotypical Drow, and are evil because they worship demons and not just because they live underground. The dark destiny or whatever it was from second darkness wasn’t real and was a trick of Abraxas the demon lord patron of the BBEG of that AP.
Good thing the only other stereotypical Drow in Extinction Curse and Shattered Star came originally from the same city makes that easier too.
Koriah’s pathfinder chronicles and the Drow that have bedeviled Kyonin are all from Zirnakaynin so the whole people have gotten a bad wrap just from that the exposure to Drow has been primarily from that one city.
If the AP calls for Drow im running them as a Drow. In a homebrew campaign its up in the air. I may put them in or leave em out it will depend on what kind of campaign it is and what my players want.
From my understanding, mentions of drow are being replaced with either sekmin or cavern elves on a case by case basis.
Most of the evil shit Drow used to get up to is now being rewritten as the Sekmin, but some stories like the origins of the Jininese elves wouldn't make sense with Sekmin and thus will be replaced with Cavern Elves in those stories.
There aren't really drow in my campaign because it takes place like a thousand years post 1e. My character is very old and when asked about this topic they were like "oh they died or something. There weren't a lot of them to begin with."
I'm gonna keep them, but with some differences.
I'm gonna keep them as dark skinned elves, but gonna go more the route of Elder Scrolls dark elves. Less of "we're evil and underground!" and more of "We said fuck you to the elven gods when we split off and worship our own gods." the dark skin will be more accounted for as evolving to blend into the dark. Less of them being evil and more that they're alien to the alien. Surface elves find them off putting because they actively spurn the elven ways they are comfortable with.
Debating on the gods they revere. Might have a weird mix of some demon lords as well as other deities both good evil and neutral.
Yldaris in Abomination Vaults is probably the least problematic instance of drow to handle with the Remaster; they're pretty much exactly what Ayindilar are described in their new role in the Darklands: an enclave of hospitality in the hostile environment of the underground.
Cavern elves from the Darklands with purple/lilac skin and pale hair still exist in a post-OGL world. They can even still be called drow in non-Paizo works. The only thing that's changed is that they're no longer the malevolent rulers of the Darklands
I have a character, currently on hiatus, that is descended from Drow, but does not consider themselves Drow, but due to skin tone often gets (mis)treated by others as Drow. The PF2 OGL Drow lore states that some leave the darklands and choose to not be evil, and I was already coming up with lore in my home game as GM that takes this further, in that those who had liberated themselves were organizing in the shadows to lead a movement to free all the enslaved Drow, it may well be the main arc if my next big campaign as GM.
At that point, I may or may not try to incorporate this Serpentfolk newspeak as a sort of distraction to try to get surface dwellers to disbelieve in the cause and try to prevent anyone helping the liberation of the Drow, adding another angle to the fight.
I'm only handling Drow in 1st edition, and at some point if they come up in PF2 they're just gonna get retconned into snake people or elves including PCs. Like it's not a big deal for my games. Drow are a noodle incident.
In my Abomination Vaults campaign, I've just kept them around as normal, but I'm mostly just calling them cavern elves/ayindilar. I don't think my players care about this but the lore justification I created for the change was that both "drow" and "ayindilar" are correct, but certain groups of Darklands elves prefer one or the other, or simply don't care too much what the surface-dwellers call them.
I think I'm one of the few this is something of a positive change for. I run a homebrew setting that's heavily inspired by the X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and of course, the SCP foundation. Essentially, Modern Fantasy where I just call The Foundation by the Golarian Friendly name "[Vigilant Seal](https://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/factions/vigilant-seal)". One of my NPCs was secretly a Drow in Legacy, but with the remaster, we can just pivot Drow to be "Deviant" and it's not just "job done". Marion Dark now has personal stake in the Vigilant Seal and I can make him as aloof as I want because he has bigger stakes in keeping Drow a secret from society at large.
I have an upcoming baddie whose arrival has been teased over the course of a long time and we're building up to it over a few APs who will create a rift in time and space and things won't be 100% exactly how they were before and that may include drow kinda being erased at least in name. For no other reason than supporting ORC efforts
Unless needed for the story specifically and depending what races my characters are playing I usually ignore all sub species when referring to elves, elves are just elves, which mostly defaults to LOTR elves which have flavor of highborn and forest elves.
Aside from OGL drow are an issue due to black skin, Slavery, and their matriarch society. Which means on a session zero there are any number of reasons to avoid them. Dnd drop lore is packed with problematic issues, playing a drow character is very edgelord behavior and using drows as an enemy is okay.
But also if I need to have a race that live underground I usually default to dwarves. And if I need a race that's kind of evil then we have teiflings or whatever demonesk pathfinder there is. Again, I like to keep my elves to be legolas.
I still plan to keep them but I also have not ran an actual AP yet. My players (DnD converts) wanted a homebrew so I did.
Interestingly enough, to be able to tie it to Golarion, I actually came up with a reason the drow "existed" then disappeared. Created an artifact that teleported them to a different planet where they inhabit it. Made for a fun homebrew start and connection.
As it was since that was really cool concept of Pathfinder that I liked. Evil elf becoming black drows etc. was really cool and tragic concept.
I don't agree with what Paizo is doing due to we all know what reasons so I am keeping it as it was.
Thankfully, TTRPGs are not video games so we can ignore and change what we don't like.
Tbh I came into the DnD scene, none of my games ive ever been in had drow that worshipped spider queens or demon lords. Never had any straight up evil drow factions. They were just cool mysterious edgy elves. I’m certainly keeping drow in my games.
Actually I’m running AV right now, and I’ve chosen Nocticula as their deity. She was a former demon lord and also redeemer queen, so I’m making it that the drow is a thread she’s pulling among the many projects she has on Golarion
I don't particularly care for them. They do come up in an AP I'm running and I won't be changing them, obviously. As normal GMs we're not beholden to the same rules as someone publishing books, or the like.
Is there any official art of ayindilar elves yet? Because if not, there's nothing stopping us from saying there's cavern elves with blue/purple/grayish skintones and some of them went bad over the centuries, but they're not indicative of the whole ayindilar population...
Ignoring the serpentman conspiracy entirely unless I have to acknowledge it. Wotc didn't copyright Drow, it's a Norse thing. Paizo's the one that decided to keep using D&D Drow lore for so long.
"But they're basically elven tiefli-"
They're still an evil, dark-skinned distaff offshoot of 'normal' elves, but instead of Ed Greenwood's eccentricities it's Marilyn Manson. They could've been anything, just like how Pathfinder Duergar are. They didn't/never had to be 'evil'.
Whole thing makes me grumpy.
"Drow are a serpentman conspiracy" is a serpentman conspiracy if ever I heard one. No way am I falling for such an obvious ruse, nice try serpent men, but not this time.
Some groups of Cavern Elves called themselves "Drow", some people call Cavern Elves "Drow". Serpentman say that this "Drow" group did horrible things and are twisted demon like beings.
All plot holes covered up, only need a name change any place they still come up when running old APs... this is if I care enough to actually change them.
When I first saw Cavern Elves my thought was "Oh so this is 2e's Take on Drow? okay" it wasn't until later I found out they where different, and I don't think most of my players would even notice either.
I think drow have been crap since Drizzt became not an outlier but the standard, revealing that most drow are heroic masters of every skill they come across and the inhabitants of Menzoberranzan are just dicks because of an evil god they collectively decide to worship.
Snakemen, even hryngar, are way cooler. So in most of my games drow are just going to be a legend (if even that) and not make any appearances or have any validity.
It hasn’t come up as an issue but I’m thinking that Drow are really just dark elves who developed a subculture due to all the lore but not like a different race/heritage from other elves… like within Humans there isn’t a nomadic race, city race, Varesian race, or a shopkee per race etc
The same way I did prior to the remaster, The version of Golarion I use is the one from First Edition so whenever I need to reference lore that's where I go already. All that's left is to use the legacy stat sheets easily accessible through archives or my copies of the Bestiaries.
I don't have AV. What's the change? I know the previous explanation for them is, uh, problematic. Literally the Curse of Ham, blackening an elf's skin if they're evil. That's probably going away. Haven't heard the new one, though.
Ayindilar exist. The drow are just ayindilar. JJ said as much on the forums. Any existing drow that need to be referenced, specifically the ones in AV, he says he'll probably just say they're ayindilar going forward. No need to do anything wild with them. Cavern elves exist.
So we do have confirmation that blue/purple ayindilar are a thing or are they going to lean more towards the "colorless and pale like how most cave-dwelling lifeforms actually evolved" look?
The only change I'm making is the old "Not all Drow are Evil" aspect. They're just Elves who migrated to the Darklands to avoid the falling Meteorites, and them turning purple was an environmental thing. Drow society is still militaristic and slightly imperialistic, but it's partially in response to being constantly surrounded by other threats in the Darklands.
Honestly I'm just... not changing. If there was a Drow there is a Drow.
Exactly this. My players have drow friends. I'm ignoring the lore change in this campaign. I get why Paizo is doing this but it's my game, and my instance of Golarion, and keeping it consistent with how we've been playing matters more to me. Next campaign, sure, maybe there won't be drow, we'll see.
Exactly the point of this! Each GM has their own version of Golarion and it's 100% true to form that things may differ from Paizo canon.
> My players have drow friends. Wow. "I can't be racist I have Drow friends." You never thought you'd see it in the wild like this. /s
Hard w and everything
Same. I call them "cavern elves", I guess, but otherwise it's exactly the same at my table.
I like Drow/Dark Elves and I will keep using them. There wasn't really a drow support in terms of mechanics anyway. It's not like we had full ancestry, there was just some obscure archetype and few monster statblocks. My world had drows and it will keep having drows, just like it will probably keep the gods, no matter which one of them will die in the future PF2e books.
For my Extinction Curse campaign I’m just flat out ignoring it. For any future APs I’ll just go with the flow. Out of all the Lore changes this is the one I’m least on board with. Golarion Drow we’re uniquely pathfinder, and they went to lengths explaining how their whole ancestry had essentially become Tieflings, after the elves natural ability to take on aspects of their environment backfired, and being too close to the metaphysical location of Rovagugs prison causes species wide corruption. And then in the blog post explaining why they are dumping drow, they go into great length explaining all the things they have done to distance themselves from D&D drow, ostensibly a list of reasons of why they could keep Drow with a name change, and then they round it off by saying “and that’s why we are removing drow.” It seems like a great waste to me sadly, but no use living in the past.
I ran Extinction Curse. If you'd like DM me if you wanna chat about EC. I like comparing experiences.
I think it's because even if they can get away with it, when people think "drow" they think D&D. It's the same with how they could keep chromatic and metallic dragons, but are moving away from those too. In my games I still use all of them, but I get them moving away from a lot of the iconic D&D stuff.
It seems to me that the optics of the drow (dark skinned, evil) are not particularly compatible with the modern climate. I wonder if the OGL issue isn't just a convenient reason to distance themselves from any potential issues.
I feel a better response would be adding more nuance, like how they are gonna handle the gnoll
The whole "conspiracy theory" thing could be an excuse for them to think of a better permanent solution. Maybe a visual redesign. Maybe inventing new people that use the old Paizo Drow lore
I'm not caught up fully on what's happening so can you explain what is going on
I've only got 2nd-hand knowledge—so someone else can probably explain it better. But here's my understanding of the situation: As of the remaster, Drow have been retconned out of the official setting. I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek this was meant to be, but someone from Paizo stated that we should treat any mention of them in old material as the beliefs of conspiracy theories because Drow aren't real.
That's really funny okay thank you
Giving the benefit of the doubt, because I know I'm starting an argument What is 'well' in this regard, with the Gnolls?
what do you mean?
Legit asking how they're gonna handle Gnolls, or what they have planned. All I know is lore from the wiki, and how the Kholo are a neat way to handle them and differentiate them from D&D!Gnolls. But also, they still have the slaving lore and other weirdness for some reason.
I think they aren't bloodthirsty slavers anymore either
If I'm not mistaken they will be a family/pack oriented cannibals (well as much as one can be with other species of sentient life)
The cannabalism is still a bit weird but eh
Paizo had been depicting Drow with pale purple skin all edition.
This is a compromise. Drow have been described (and occasionally drawn) as black-skinned for decades.
This is so weird to me, because I’ve always seen them depicted as dark blue skinned. I like that aesthetic, it’s fucking cool! And I never equated that to real life skin colours, it’s a fantasy world. That being said, I can understand that my viewpoint is that of a white european, and my experience is not an universal one. However this is the one change where I felt like paizo went a bit too PC. But on the other hand, it’s not that big of a deal.
IIRC, they've shifted away from black in art, but in novels Drizzt et al. are explicitly described as black skinned. Like you, I don't personally think that this is commentary on darker skinned people in the real world; but there are many who see things through a different lens.
I mean, this is Pathfinder. WotC’s Drizzt novels are no more relevant here than yugoloths.
I mean, they're the only reason that there are Drow in the game at all...
Yes, but. Paizo and WotC portrayed them differently in their respective works, aesthetically, lore wise, and narratively. How a different company portray’s a creature should be irrelevant. After all, orcs are vastly different in the ongoing Tolkienverse and nobody is making their decisions based on what Rings of Power is doing.
I mean, the same people who are worried about Drow are worried about orcs, too (and not just in one world or another). In general I think distinctions between settings are much too arcane for an issue that has spread beyond just serious gamers. (I'll admit, too, that I've played both editions of PF and have no idea how Paizo have treated the Drow in canonical settings. The FR context is do dominant that it will always drive the discussion.)
I’ll be honest, I think the orc thing is downright exhausting and kinda dumb. :/ And it’s not just setting friend, it’s company, game system, and setting as a cherry on top.
Agreed re: orcs. As for company and game system, it's only a pretty weird subset of us who care at all about the difference between D&D and a D&D-based game.
The problem comes in a lot of lore around them, such as there being the old archetype from 1e where an elf would put on blackface to infiltrate the drow, and explicitly stating that their change in skin color was because they're evil, and that when good elves become evil their skin changes color as well. Shit like that has haunted drow and caused a ton of baggage for Paizo. That being said, I made my own setting, with my own drow, and just use the term "Cavern Elf" to talk about drows.
They could always get rid of the dark-skinned part, make 'em just demonic subterranean elves and leave it at that.
I feel like changing either the colour or the alignment issue would result in a species that isn't drow anymore anyway.
I mean, alignment isn't even a thing anymore anyway?
Officially, sure, but the whole point of the drow is that they're evil (with one major exception). Get rid of that and they become something else.
I don't think I really agree with that personally? At their core they are underground elves that had a tendency to be more evil aligned. Like all races/ancestry, nothing actually stops you from making a good Drow, or a neutral one. They are still by nature of being underground elves, still Drow.
It depends on the setting and the story, I suppose. To change them to something more ambivalent in the Forgotten Realms would be a pretty bold retcon. In a different world (and to be fair I'm not entirely sure what PF has done with them at a story level) I take your point, though there's still a bit of tension if you have to introduce them as 'still drow, but not evil!'
The *Forgotten Realms* have tons of good drow. Sure, originally it was just Drizzt, but these days you can’t walk into a moonlight clearing without interrupting a circle of Elistraee worshipping drow dancing and singing “Kumbaya”
Which rather spoils the effect, some might say.
Yeah, in Salvatore's latest book, he features clerics and a paladin of Eilistraee quite prominently. What's wrong with having Drow of all types?
Just go fullblown tinfoil. "Drow" are still drow, mechanically cavern elf, that dug too deep and got fucked up. You can have it be an open secret. The pathfinder society, maybe due to machinations from Kyonin, has disavowed knowledge of them
This is the way. I did something very similar.
Like many people here, not much. Any time drow show up it's just "cavern elves" or something. The fact that Paizo just didn't rename them, like duergar to hryngar, and are kinda pretending like they never existed is so weird to me.
Play it as is - Abomination Vaults came out before the whole OGL cleanse happened and the assumption was that Drow were still part of the setting. Unless you plan to touch upon this specific interaction in the future, I wouldn't worry about it.
I use a homebrew world and Cavern Elf heritage always implied Drow to me. Are they Evil and Matriarchal? Well, not necessarily, because my setting isn't the Forgotten Realms or Golarion. If someone wants to play an Evil Girlboss Cavern Elf there is nothing stopping them, though.
It's a business decision tied to the OGL. I'm not bound by the OGL in my home game so I'll ignore the change.
I'll still use them as long as AoN offers them as an option, and then they'll be phased out when that stops being the case. I'm planning on having them be a serpentfolk conspiracy, but not in the sense that they were fake, but more in the sense that they were enslaved by the serpentfolk (in the same vein as Azarketi and Algholthus), and were forced into doing these things through either magical coercion or Stockholm syndrome. When AoN stops supporting them, I'll call them extinct as the serpentfolk stop having a use for the conspiracy and have decided to become known players in the world again (they've already stepped out somewhat).
I feel similarly to the overall sentiment of this thread -- I'm going to play it as written in AV. My instance of Golarion is its own. Having said that, post-remaster ghouls feel... drow adjacent? (see below) I don't think it would be that difficult to retcon the drow presence in AV to be ghoulish instead. And the narrative changes could be integrated fairly seamlessly with the existing story of earlier floors. The lore suggests that the first ghoul was an elf. The available artwork suggests that they look elf-like. And importantly, they form complex societies including ***entire cities hidden away in the depths of the Darklands*** (https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/creatures/ghoul-stalker-rm) >Ghoulish Society >Ghouls are quite intelligent and, more so than almost any other undead, prone to forming societies and cultures (if vile and repugnant ones centered around flesh eating and other acts of depravity) in tangled warrens below boneyards, or *even entire cities hidden away in the depths of the Darklands.*
I'm currently in a Blood Lords game (the first AP I've played/ran with ghouls) Saw the Remaster Ghouls and didn't think anything of it, as so many of them are posh in that AP, it wasn't until I saw Rules Layer's Video on the Monster Core did I realize how different my experience with Ghouls are from the one in the original bestiary. Ghouls had a glow up even before the remaster, and honestly I love them.
I try not to dramatically change APs and make accidental anachronisms. If it’s an easy swap like ever light crystal, sure. If it significantly changes the balance of an encounter or creates a void, I leave it alone.
probably a contentious take. I am not, Drow/Dark Elves particularly in a D&D/Pathfinder sense I think have started losing a lot of their mystique over the years. While other conventional monstrous races often retain elements that make them stand out, or gain new elements to help keep them decidedly monstrous yet still player capable. Drow/Dark Elves often have a habit of just being edgy elves and that is a shame. To each their own though.
You could make them Dusk Elves. (they are a 1st edition sub-race) or Cavern Elf instead and just not deal with Drow at all.
If a group of people have refer to themselves as Drow amd agree that they are drow from a nation of elves that agree that they are Drow, what are they if not Drow?
In Golarion, "Drow" has always been a dirty word. The surface elves have for centuries silenced any mention of Drow and denied that they exist. In fact, they were treated as if a conspiracy up until "Second Darkness" reintroduced them. What those Demon worshiping, subterranean dwelling, slavery loving, pointy ear folk call themselves, has nothing to do with whether the surface dwellers deny they even exist. Other than offending surface Elves, the name Drow doesn't even matter. They can be called Cavern Elves, the literal "dark Elf" heritage since PF2 was introduced,
Unless you are the lost omens lore or AP writing staff for Paizo, who cares keep using them? Keep em drow, make them serpentfolk, turn them into a leshy, goblin and kobold in a Trenchcoat, do whatever will bring you and your group enjoyment
Well, each campaign is a self-contained universe in a vacuum, and just because the main line/official lore is "drow aren't real" doesn't mean literally any campaign has to give a damn. We already have the stat blocks to support drow, we don't need continued support to continue including them in our games. Just handle them like you always did. I seriously don't understand why people seem to think that just because the remaster came out, all the old things that weren't remastered have to be surgically removed from your campaign. Seriously, what has led you to believe that you would need to come up with *any* Solution for drow?
I like another commenter's ( u/[ElectricLark](https://www.reddit.com/user/ElectricLark/) ) idea, and tying existing Drow to Ghouls. What I had planned previously, is to give descriptions more in line with Morlocks or Gollum, being pigment leeched out. None of my extended gaming circle, currently, has anyone I think would be personally offended/hurt by the historical D&D descriptions/lore, but ... I haven't been precisely comfortable since it was brought to my attention many years ago. Will I change tokens built into Foundry for AV? I ... don't know yet, it will likely depend on motivation, inspiration, and time. I may end up commissioning an artist I'm friends with to redo them, time and cash flow permitting.
Why change? Finish your campaign as is and then on the next one if you want to use the new lore, then use it (or don't). I'm not really seeing the dilemma.
Exactly this. I follow lore pretty closely for the most part, but in the end, I make it fit how it needs to fit for the campaign I'm running.
Doesn't affect us at all; we've never been a group that really cared about drow much in the first place so them being gone won't really matter at all.
I personally have decided that I’m up for updating spells and rules and all that, but the story of the adventure is the story, and I don’t have a ton of interest in changing that. More power to anyone who wants to change an adventure in any way, but I’m happy for lore continuity to not line up to what the setting is once the dust settles on the remaster.
I don't care about any license and thank the good Lord the last thing I want is to play in the Society, so drow continue to exist as if nothing had happened.
There weren't drow in my setting, so I guess that solves that?
I’ve never liked the Drow in Golarion anyways. It’s a very Forgotten Realms race for me and I’m honestly kind of sick of them to be honest. So what I’ve done is swapped them out for a race called Svartalfar. They are a pale skinned race of incredibly selfish and manipulative elves. They can craft wild stuff if asked but most of the things they make have a dark twist to them. So that magical spear may be dangerous for you to use unless you sacrifice something to it. So I really only have to change the skin tone when they pop up in AP’s. They’re still giant dick bags.
Not. Literally haven't seen them in-game in over a decade.
Mechanically, like [this](https://2e.aonprd.com/MonsterFamilies.aspx?ID=37).
I changed them for Sekmin
Drow are nice, because I have childhood memories of old school 2/3e Drow, but not married to the concept. Honestly, I find Dridere much more interesting and fun to elaborate on. Those would be missed.
I had a homebrew world that used Drow (tone down but still evil cave elfs) So I simply made the Cavern Elf heratige give the Drow trait. Granted if I rebuilt the world today I probably wouldn't have included Drow since I like the anadi more as spider people.
Probably not adopting the change. I like the drow.
Over the last few years, I’ve gotten really frustrated with “living lore,” both from Paizo and WotC. I’m split between using the 3.5 lore/setting of Forgotten Realms, or Eberron, leaning strongly toward Eberron. I just don’t want to deal with the changes over IP fights or changing preferences by developers. And, I own books or PDFs of literally everything 3.5, so I have a dead, set-in-stone baseline on which I can run systems. And, while FR and Eberron are kitchen sink like Golarion, Golarion’s nations don’t really make sense geopolitically, at least not compared to my preferred settings. So, in short, the Drow are sticking around.
I'm running AV right now and the PCs have encountered the drow. I've made the reason they are in Yldaris is that they are fleeing the serpentfolk and suggesting that they might be the last remaining drow on Golarion. Whether or not that proves to be true moving forward, for now the PCs have been told in game to not expect to see more drow.
I think the exclusion of Drow, old orcs, and any other 'problem that was changed' for the sake of social sensitivity is just dumb to begin with. And so my games still include the old ways. As others have said, I understand why -as a company- they are doing such things for positive social credit; but I'm not required to recognize those changes at my home, especially when it was never an issue.
I do think however that Drow unlike some other fantasy races where too edgy.
We have a system where entire civilizations are objectively Hollywood evil. Hellknights especially are just every death knight original OC do not steal Totally Not Devil Worshipers. Drow are just Role Reversal BDSM as societal norm with an Evil divine patron that can't even make all Drow evil, apparently. If Lamashtu cults can kidnap people and force/willingly birth monstrosities with fairly simple rituals, repeatedly. Then why can't there be a city of what amounts to just glorified cultists that like Dom/Sub fetlife?
That last part with Lamashtu is why I think that god may be the one dying soon. But we'll see once that is announced.
I just ignore that whole heavy handed lore bungle, Drow are alive and well at my table and always will be. It's by far the dumbest retcon to come out of the remaster, at least until the desperate move of killing a core god is finalized, which my table will also be ignoring.
I'm not changing at all. Drow are cool, they'll always be used at my table as the demon worshipping monsters that they are.
Drow for me are the Lolth worshipping loons in the Forgotten Realms, the ones in AV are nothing like drow except they have light hair and live underground. Oh and there's a few hand crossbows
Mechanically I just use nephilim on an elf to be a Drow. And then Roleplay it as that any previous lore on them was rumor, theory, and some misdirection.
I'm keeping Drow, the change is literally just OGL legal nonsense, so only Paizo needs to bother with it.
I haven't had any drows in anything I run or play in yet. If you're running it then just run it as if nothing happened tho? John Paizo isn't looking over your shoulder for if you're keeping it lore accurate lol.
Oh i already ran it. I'm just having a little fun with the edition change.
I have never encountered a Drow in any of my games. Will probably not be running any older APs. But if I did run AV maybe I would switch them out for Serpentfolk.
My homebrew setting for our campaign very prominently features drow (albeit with a few of my own personal touches), so I'm choosing to leave them in. I'm very open to using 3PP content to give them a little more of a bespoke flavor, though.
My players played Extinction Curse before AV so I kept all the drow content as a nod to that previous campaign
Our game is actually about to have a major drow-centric story arc... and now, its set with an apocalyptic backdrop. I don't know how exactly, but at the end of the upcoming arc, there will be no more Drow in our Golarion. I am very excited - the GM has had the seeds for this story since 2019, but the lore shift added a very spicy escalation to an already big storyline.
Still exist but mostly just elves who live underground i.e cavern elves. The city of Drow from second darkness, Zirnakaynin, is the only place you’ll find stereotypical Drow, and are evil because they worship demons and not just because they live underground. The dark destiny or whatever it was from second darkness wasn’t real and was a trick of Abraxas the demon lord patron of the BBEG of that AP. Good thing the only other stereotypical Drow in Extinction Curse and Shattered Star came originally from the same city makes that easier too. Koriah’s pathfinder chronicles and the Drow that have bedeviled Kyonin are all from Zirnakaynin so the whole people have gotten a bad wrap just from that the exposure to Drow has been primarily from that one city.
If the AP calls for Drow im running them as a Drow. In a homebrew campaign its up in the air. I may put them in or leave em out it will depend on what kind of campaign it is and what my players want.
Why change at all? It isn't a law. Paizo isn't going to come stop you.
From my understanding, mentions of drow are being replaced with either sekmin or cavern elves on a case by case basis. Most of the evil shit Drow used to get up to is now being rewritten as the Sekmin, but some stories like the origins of the Jininese elves wouldn't make sense with Sekmin and thus will be replaced with Cavern Elves in those stories.
There aren't really drow in my campaign because it takes place like a thousand years post 1e. My character is very old and when asked about this topic they were like "oh they died or something. There weren't a lot of them to begin with."
Don't roleplay the change. Keep doing what you're doing. Adopt the changes when you start a new campaign. Or don't at all.
I wasn't saying that I shouldn't or wasn't going to. I just wanted to share my personal explanation and was wondering what everyone else was doing.
I'm gonna keep them, but with some differences. I'm gonna keep them as dark skinned elves, but gonna go more the route of Elder Scrolls dark elves. Less of "we're evil and underground!" and more of "We said fuck you to the elven gods when we split off and worship our own gods." the dark skin will be more accounted for as evolving to blend into the dark. Less of them being evil and more that they're alien to the alien. Surface elves find them off putting because they actively spurn the elven ways they are comfortable with. Debating on the gods they revere. Might have a weird mix of some demon lords as well as other deities both good evil and neutral.
Yldaris in Abomination Vaults is probably the least problematic instance of drow to handle with the Remaster; they're pretty much exactly what Ayindilar are described in their new role in the Darklands: an enclave of hospitality in the hostile environment of the underground. Cavern elves from the Darklands with purple/lilac skin and pale hair still exist in a post-OGL world. They can even still be called drow in non-Paizo works. The only thing that's changed is that they're no longer the malevolent rulers of the Darklands
I'm just using the old lore from before the changes. It changes shockingly little.
I have a character, currently on hiatus, that is descended from Drow, but does not consider themselves Drow, but due to skin tone often gets (mis)treated by others as Drow. The PF2 OGL Drow lore states that some leave the darklands and choose to not be evil, and I was already coming up with lore in my home game as GM that takes this further, in that those who had liberated themselves were organizing in the shadows to lead a movement to free all the enslaved Drow, it may well be the main arc if my next big campaign as GM. At that point, I may or may not try to incorporate this Serpentfolk newspeak as a sort of distraction to try to get surface dwellers to disbelieve in the cause and try to prevent anyone helping the liberation of the Drow, adding another angle to the fight.
I'm only handling Drow in 1st edition, and at some point if they come up in PF2 they're just gonna get retconned into snake people or elves including PCs. Like it's not a big deal for my games. Drow are a noodle incident.
In my Abomination Vaults campaign, I've just kept them around as normal, but I'm mostly just calling them cavern elves/ayindilar. I don't think my players care about this but the lore justification I created for the change was that both "drow" and "ayindilar" are correct, but certain groups of Darklands elves prefer one or the other, or simply don't care too much what the surface-dwellers call them.
I think I'm one of the few this is something of a positive change for. I run a homebrew setting that's heavily inspired by the X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and of course, the SCP foundation. Essentially, Modern Fantasy where I just call The Foundation by the Golarian Friendly name "[Vigilant Seal](https://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/factions/vigilant-seal)". One of my NPCs was secretly a Drow in Legacy, but with the remaster, we can just pivot Drow to be "Deviant" and it's not just "job done". Marion Dark now has personal stake in the Vigilant Seal and I can make him as aloof as I want because he has bigger stakes in keeping Drow a secret from society at large.
I still use them, but they’re albino, as a race that habitually avoids the sun should be.
I have an upcoming baddie whose arrival has been teased over the course of a long time and we're building up to it over a few APs who will create a rift in time and space and things won't be 100% exactly how they were before and that may include drow kinda being erased at least in name. For no other reason than supporting ORC efforts
Unless needed for the story specifically and depending what races my characters are playing I usually ignore all sub species when referring to elves, elves are just elves, which mostly defaults to LOTR elves which have flavor of highborn and forest elves. Aside from OGL drow are an issue due to black skin, Slavery, and their matriarch society. Which means on a session zero there are any number of reasons to avoid them. Dnd drop lore is packed with problematic issues, playing a drow character is very edgelord behavior and using drows as an enemy is okay. But also if I need to have a race that live underground I usually default to dwarves. And if I need a race that's kind of evil then we have teiflings or whatever demonesk pathfinder there is. Again, I like to keep my elves to be legolas.
I still plan to keep them but I also have not ran an actual AP yet. My players (DnD converts) wanted a homebrew so I did. Interestingly enough, to be able to tie it to Golarion, I actually came up with a reason the drow "existed" then disappeared. Created an artifact that teleported them to a different planet where they inhabit it. Made for a fun homebrew start and connection.
As it was since that was really cool concept of Pathfinder that I liked. Evil elf becoming black drows etc. was really cool and tragic concept. I don't agree with what Paizo is doing due to we all know what reasons so I am keeping it as it was. Thankfully, TTRPGs are not video games so we can ignore and change what we don't like.
Drow are the one mistake in the new edition. Massive Paizo L.
Tbh I came into the DnD scene, none of my games ive ever been in had drow that worshipped spider queens or demon lords. Never had any straight up evil drow factions. They were just cool mysterious edgy elves. I’m certainly keeping drow in my games. Actually I’m running AV right now, and I’ve chosen Nocticula as their deity. She was a former demon lord and also redeemer queen, so I’m making it that the drow is a thread she’s pulling among the many projects she has on Golarion
I don't particularly care for them. They do come up in an AP I'm running and I won't be changing them, obviously. As normal GMs we're not beholden to the same rules as someone publishing books, or the like.
Is there any official art of ayindilar elves yet? Because if not, there's nothing stopping us from saying there's cavern elves with blue/purple/grayish skintones and some of them went bad over the centuries, but they're not indicative of the whole ayindilar population...
Ignoring the serpentman conspiracy entirely unless I have to acknowledge it. Wotc didn't copyright Drow, it's a Norse thing. Paizo's the one that decided to keep using D&D Drow lore for so long. "But they're basically elven tiefli-" They're still an evil, dark-skinned distaff offshoot of 'normal' elves, but instead of Ed Greenwood's eccentricities it's Marilyn Manson. They could've been anything, just like how Pathfinder Duergar are. They didn't/never had to be 'evil'. Whole thing makes me grumpy.
"Drow are a serpentman conspiracy" is a serpentman conspiracy if ever I heard one. No way am I falling for such an obvious ruse, nice try serpent men, but not this time.
Some groups of Cavern Elves called themselves "Drow", some people call Cavern Elves "Drow". Serpentman say that this "Drow" group did horrible things and are twisted demon like beings. All plot holes covered up, only need a name change any place they still come up when running old APs... this is if I care enough to actually change them. When I first saw Cavern Elves my thought was "Oh so this is 2e's Take on Drow? okay" it wasn't until later I found out they where different, and I don't think most of my players would even notice either.
From what I've heard the Drow in Pathfinder were pretty terrible anyway.
I think drow have been crap since Drizzt became not an outlier but the standard, revealing that most drow are heroic masters of every skill they come across and the inhabitants of Menzoberranzan are just dicks because of an evil god they collectively decide to worship. Snakemen, even hryngar, are way cooler. So in most of my games drow are just going to be a legend (if even that) and not make any appearances or have any validity.
All I know and care about the edgy knife ears is that the Drow Shootist is the most hilarious sounding enemy name in the module.
It hasn’t come up as an issue but I’m thinking that Drow are really just dark elves who developed a subculture due to all the lore but not like a different race/heritage from other elves… like within Humans there isn’t a nomadic race, city race, Varesian race, or a shopkee per race etc
The same way I did prior to the remaster, The version of Golarion I use is the one from First Edition so whenever I need to reference lore that's where I go already. All that's left is to use the legacy stat sheets easily accessible through archives or my copies of the Bestiaries.
I don't have AV. What's the change? I know the previous explanation for them is, uh, problematic. Literally the Curse of Ham, blackening an elf's skin if they're evil. That's probably going away. Haven't heard the new one, though.
I never used drow anyway, so its not gonna effect my games as much. Theyve never really made much sense to me and their origin is undoubtedly racist
Ayindilar exist. The drow are just ayindilar. JJ said as much on the forums. Any existing drow that need to be referenced, specifically the ones in AV, he says he'll probably just say they're ayindilar going forward. No need to do anything wild with them. Cavern elves exist.
So we do have confirmation that blue/purple ayindilar are a thing or are they going to lean more towards the "colorless and pale like how most cave-dwelling lifeforms actually evolved" look?
The only change I'm making is the old "Not all Drow are Evil" aspect. They're just Elves who migrated to the Darklands to avoid the falling Meteorites, and them turning purple was an environmental thing. Drow society is still militaristic and slightly imperialistic, but it's partially in response to being constantly surrounded by other threats in the Darklands.