Pathfinder ditches the Drow.

[Shrieking Banshee]

I disagree about it not bring about Wokeness.

I'm only saying it was 30% woke motive, and 70%-ish business oriented (they gotta scrap a TON of their expensive backlog art for this). Honestly, I don't care.

[BoxCrayonTales]

I have no idea how anyone can say phrases like "evil-aligned countries practice slavery" with a straight face. Every real society that practiced slavery, human sacrifice, etc originally promoted it as a moral good. They didn't act like Saturday morning cartoon villains who constantly went on about how evil they were and how great it was be to evil. Fantasy gaming's use of alignments based loosely on Enlightenment values for entire countries just feels really fucking stupid to me. Maybe it's because I watched The Good Place which had one character teaching another about moral philosophy, but in real life and history nobody has ever treated morality like competing sports teams. It's commonplace to engage in blood libel that accuses another culture of being demon-worshiping psychos, but no real culture has literally been demon-worshiping psychos. If any ever existed, they obviously weren't stable long enough to leave any record of their existence. As shown by real life cases of murderous Satanists, they're invariably mentally ill people who couldn't possibly maintain a stable society. But fantasy fiction expects us to believe they can.

This isn't to discount evil acts. (By "evil" what I technically mean is "anti-humanist".) Societies have generally become less sadistic and more humanistic over time. We abolished slavery, human sacrifice, etc. There's still a lot of abuse still going on, obviously, but we're not vivisecting people in front of crowds anymore. But the people who did these horrific acts didn't consider it evil, but good. Their morality was based on two things: 1) simple tribalism, which is ultimately the foundation of all morality if we get to the root of psychology, and 2) "do whatever horrific acts your god tells you to that doesn't destabilize the tribe because the priest high on peyote told you it would stop the natural disasters and we don't have livestock to substitute."

And even within those societies you had disagreements. Supposedly Quetzalcoatl opposed human sacrifice and got banished across the Atlantic Ocean by Tezcatlipoca. I have no clue whether that's a real myth or was invented after the Spanish Conquest, but obviously you had the tribes allying with Cortez to stop the Aztecs sacrificing them.

But the Aztecs and Carthaginians and so on didn't believe themselves to be evil demon-worshipers. To promote such a thing, even in fantasy, is anachronistic. Honestly, fantasy is just hugely anachronistic and incoherent anyway.

Anyway, one of the problems with treating morality as simply competing sports teams means that they're no longer actually about morality or consequences of actions anymore. How do you convince someone that it is better to be good than evil when good and evil are just competing sports teams who can function equally well as civilizations? Why are people good or evil in the first place if good and evil are just competing sports teams? How did good and evil even come to exist? Can what qualifies as good or evil change over time? Why? Why is good preferable to evil?

You can imagine why I prefer to use the original Moorcockian idea of cosmic balance between order and chaos instead, where the difference between heroes and villains depends on where the pendulum has shifted for the world in question.

Sorry for the tangent. Just need to get that off my chest.

[hedgehobbit]

I disagree about it not bring about Wokeness. After all this is the same company that for the 2E of Golarion had every country including the evil factions controlling suddenly abolish slavery. I get the good or neutral aligned countries where it make sense. Why would Cheliax or any other evil aligned faction do it let alone care.

Despite the OGL many creatures such as the Duegar are simply being renamed and possibly re-skinned though otherwise kept whole. If the never jumped on the progressive bandwagon  I would believe it was only the OGL. Given how they behaved the caved to the woke mob and removed the Drow.

If they did remove the Drow for Woke reasons (and I'm not 100% sure they did), it is significant that they didn't just say that. Which would mean that they are just as afraid of the non-Woke player base as the Woke "players". Most RPG companies are walking that fine line, doing things to their games for wokeness and then claiming that they are doing it for other reasons like "game balance."

[honeydipperdavid]

I disagree about it not bring about Wokeness. After all this is the same company that for the 2E of Golarion had every country including the evil factions controlling suddenly abolish slavery.

Sure, the article says as much. But it's also true that the Drow were created for/by early D&D, and the Dark Elves of Pathfinder are blatantly copies "inspired" by them. It makes sense creatively to drop/change them just to do something different.

Well seeing as its the month of the Saudi Arabian VPN change, they should make "Pride Elves".  Underground elves that all of them can get pregnant, they can change sex or have no sex at all, its common for the parents to realize their "sprouts" are the wrong sex even though sex is meaningless and to give them a sex change ritual where they go to the "High Priestess of Marginalization", the most oppressed of the Pride Elves, they have one more rainbow color than the other and more than 4 millenia one of their ancestors were cut in like at the welfare office, so they had it hard.  The High Priestess of Marginalization then does the magic pronoun ceremony that makes everything better.

There you go Paizo, free lore for your "right side of history" company lore.

[Abraxus]

It concede it's not the only reason and it is also from the business end due to Wotc OGL shenanigans. Yet why can they take what seems to be IGL content and skip port it over yet Drow are so difficult to do, Beyond needing to change the Dragons which so I can see because Wotc has their unique take on them. Drow and only Drow seem to be targeted more.
Even then instead of just saying m"  hey we removed Drow because of the OGL, it's also oh and Btwthey also never really existed and it was some kind of mass illusion or con done by the serpent folk we plan to replace them with".

It's like how Bobby died in Dallas TV show and they brought the character back because it was all a dream.

[honeydipperdavid]

It concede it's not the only reason and it is also from the business end due to Wotc OGL shenanigans. Yet why can they take what seems to be IGL content and skip port it over yet Drow are so difficult to do, Beyond needing to change the Dragons which so I can see because Wotc has their unique take on them. Drow and only Drow seem to be targeted more.
Even then instead of just saying m"  hey we removed Drow because of the OGL, it's also oh and Btwthey also never really existed and it was some kind of mass illusion or con done by the serpent folk we plan to replace them with".

It's like how Bobby died in Dallas TV show and they brought the character back because it was all a dream.

Paizo is happy to keep Duergar but not the Drow, give me a break Paizo.

[Orphan81]

Slavery was not removed from Pathfinder. It was 'removed' from two of the biggest countries which took part in it, and Paizo has stated they won't have Adventure Paths that Spotlight it anymore. That being said, Slavery does exist and is still legal in many parts of the Inner Sea Region.

In the case of Cheliax and Kapatesh, specific story reasons were used to 'get rid' of slavery, and in the case of Cheliax, it's still slavery, just under a different name (Indentured Servitude). House Thrune 'abolished' slavery in order to weaken the revolutionary abolitionist movements within the country. The 'Firebands' movement lost a lot of power when one of their primary sources of recruitment and rebellion was removed. Allowing the Lawful evil Devil worshipping nation to maintain it's power. Contracts of indentured servitude and putting the former slaves into what amounts to 'debt slavery' has now taken it's place.

In the case of Kaptesh, there were so many escaped slaves that new the process used in order to create the magic flowers, they started getting competition from them. For economic reasons they stopped using slaves.. That being said, the Gnoll slavers outside of Kaptesh still operate.

What this amounts to is Paizo wanting to have it's cake and eat it too... Slavery is now easy to 'ignore' for the super woke fields... but just as easy to focus on and maintain for those who want it as story elements in their own home game.

Yes this was done to appease woke mobs... But again, as I mentioned, Paizo is one of those woke companies that's 'tolerable', the elements are there, but again, not in your face and easy to ignore.

As for the "Duregar" no, Paizo is NOT keeping the Duregar... they have a completely different name for the "Dark Dwarves" and have changed their culture to make it more distinct from the Duregar. The new dark dwarves of Pathfinder are going to have a heavy focus on debt, wanting people to be in their debt, and trying everything they can to not be in other people's debt.

[Grognard GM]

The new dark dwarves of Pathfinder are going to have a heavy focus on debt, wanting people to be in their debt, and trying everything they can to not be in other people's debt.

In before article about how dark Dwarves are a thinly veiled analogy to Jews, in 3...2...1...

[Old Aegidius]

I personally am supportive of dropping Drow, if only because it feels like every Drow PC I've ever encountered was a headache to deal with. Everyone goes through their Drow phase where they realize that TTRPGs enable their imagination to go anywhere and so they start rolling more and more exotic characters, but then swiftly losing interest in them as they move to the next idea. The Drow is like the canary in the coal mine that somebody is going through this phase and it's disruptive to a campaign and bad for group cohesion if you indulge it too much. Considering how I severely limit or ban options at the table (including Drow) until people prove themselves responsible enough to handle embodying that more exotic culture and outlook, I see losing Drow as a non-issue for me.

For worldbuilding purposes or whatever, I associate Drow with D&D. If you have an equivalent to the underdark full of purple-skinned dark elves who worship a spider goddess, you're just ripping off of D&D and should try to be a little more creative (IMHO). There are good adventures with them, but none I've heard of which were published recently. As random throwaway NPCs however, it feels like people love sprinkling weird stuff like Drow in places which feel dissonant to me. Keep the fantastical fantastic by limiting demihumans, and push unusual demihumans like Drow into the recesses of the setting so they're actually rare and unusual. Drow are good as an adversary for a short campaign or adventure I think, but I feel like that's about the extent of their utility.

[THE_Leopold]

Went with the Jim Butcher line of Elven "Courts" in our campaign so drow vanished from our world completely.  No one is missing ole Eclavadra sadly enough.

[migo]

The new dark dwarves of Pathfinder are going to have a heavy focus on debt, wanting people to be in their debt, and trying everything they can to not be in other people's debt.

In before article about how dark Dwarves are a thinly veiled analogy to Jews, in 3...2...1...

The woke don't care about anti-semitism, or perhaps do and fully support it. That would only be something they would bring up for a company that doesn't bend the knee.

[migo]

I personally am supportive of dropping Drow, if only because it feels like every Drow PC I've ever encountered was a headache to deal with. Everyone goes through their Drow phase where they realize that TTRPGs enable their imagination to go anywhere and so they start rolling more and more exotic characters, but then swiftly losing interest in them as they move to the next idea. The Drow is like the canary in the coal mine that somebody is going through this phase and it's disruptive to a campaign and bad for group cohesion if you indulge it too much. Considering how I severely limit or ban options at the table (including Drow) until people prove themselves responsible enough to handle embodying that more exotic culture and outlook, I see losing Drow as a non-issue for me.

For worldbuilding purposes or whatever, I associate Drow with D&D. If you have an equivalent to the underdark full of purple-skinned dark elves who worship a spider goddess, you're just ripping off of D&D and should try to be a little more creative (IMHO). There are good adventures with them, but none I've heard of which were published recently. As random throwaway NPCs however, it feels like people love sprinkling weird stuff like Drow in places which feel dissonant to me. Keep the fantastical fantastic by limiting demihumans, and push unusual demihumans like Drow into the recesses of the setting so they're actually rare and unusual. Drow are good as an adversary for a short campaign or adventure I think, but I feel like that's about the extent of their utility.

Half-Orc PCs really aren't any different. It's an embodiment of the 'normally evil/villain race/species with the one good exception' (you've got that in Wing Commander as well, with a good Kilrathi featuring, and Star Trek also did it with Worf and Seven of Nine).

This also points out that playing a good Drow PC is only appealing because Drow are evil. Make Drow non-evil, then there's nothing special except the colour of the skin. If you have any evil race that has roughly equivalent power to standard PC races (or perhaps a little bit more powerful), players will want to play a good version of it.

[Orphan81]

I personally am supportive of dropping Drow, if only because it feels like every Drow PC I've ever encountered was a headache to deal with. Everyone goes through their Drow phase where they realize that TTRPGs enable their imagination to go anywhere and so they start rolling more and more exotic characters, but then swiftly losing interest in them as they move to the next idea. The Drow is like the canary in the coal mine that somebody is going through this phase and it's disruptive to a campaign and bad for group cohesion if you indulge it too much. Considering how I severely limit or ban options at the table (including Drow) until people prove themselves responsible enough to handle embodying that more exotic culture and outlook, I see losing Drow as a non-issue for me.

For worldbuilding purposes or whatever, I associate Drow with D&D. If you have an equivalent to the underdark full of purple-skinned dark elves who worship a spider goddess, you're just ripping off of D&D and should try to be a little more creative (IMHO). There are good adventures with them, but none I've heard of which were published recently. As random throwaway NPCs however, it feels like people love sprinkling weird stuff like Drow in places which feel dissonant to me. Keep the fantastical fantastic by limiting demihumans, and push unusual demihumans like Drow into the recesses of the setting so they're actually rare and unusual. Drow are good as an adversary for a short campaign or adventure I think, but I feel like that's about the extent of their utility.

Half-Orc PCs really aren't any different. It's an embodiment of the 'normally evil/villain race/species with the one good exception' (you've got that in Wing Commander as well, with a good Kilrathi featuring, and Star Trek also did it with Worf and Seven of Nine).

This also points out that playing a good Drow PC is only appealing because Drow are evil. Make Drow non-evil, then there's nothing special except the colour of the skin. If you have any evil race that has roughly equivalent power to standard PC races (or perhaps a little bit more powerful), players will want to play a good version of it.

This is the advantage of making the Orcs a neutral race, and making them a player character option right out the gate. We all know World of Warcraft has popularized the concept of Neutral Orcs.... Rather than being a half-step 'Half-Orc' cut out the contrivance and just be an Orc... The in Golarion setting still has plenty of Orc Tribes that are warlike and barbaric and serve the whispering tyrant or still have a blood feud with the Dwarves to provide canon fodder when wanted.