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Have you thought about playing a Drow, and never really wanted to grind the levels alone? Or tried and the place was empty? Well its not now folks. We are averaging around 10-15 folks between the hours of 3 to 9pm pst, and would gladly welcome more. There is a multitude of houses to choose from, and the forming of low level to mid level patrols into the wilds are regular. Come give it shot or dust off your UD character if you have one!

Or don't play a Drow and play one of the 6+ other races that can party with Drow :lol:

Yussssss. Someone play duergar. I love duergar.

I'm already playing a Duergar!

Edit: I will have to find you.

Gremin wrote:

Have you thought about playing a Drow, and never really wanted to grind the levels alone? Or tried and the place was empty? Well its not now folks. We are averaging around 10-15 folks between the hours of 3 to 9pm pst, and would gladly welcome more. There is a multitude of houses to choose from, and the forming of low level to mid level patrols into the wilds are regular. Come give it shot or dust off your UD character if you have one!

screw Drow...... Caraigh and Wiltun is where its at.

screw Caraigh and Wiltun...... Amia Forest is where its at.

I am goingbto have to come back. My svirfneblin was lonely down there assassin didn't have anyone to assassinate .... stopped playing her.

We welcome everyone, even surfacers since we need sacrifices :twisted:

oshizo2 wrote:

I am goingbto have to come back. My svirfneblin was lonely down there assassin didn't have anyone to assassinate .... stopped playing her.

Assinate Surfacers?

Assinate? Is that the kiwi code word for when you jump sheep from beh. . .

Its what drow do instead of Assassinate.

Better yet play a drow who realises the error of his ways, goes to the surface gets a band of plucky young other heros to surround and support him and at some time is given a statuette to fill the role of "Oh fuck he needs a companion we TOTALLY forgot rangers have those and it wouldnt make sense for him to mount an umberhulk" companion.

All the while showing us through his actions just because the color of his skin is pitch black is he in no way like his other ghetto souled brothers and is a fairly stand up if whiny as fuck good guy. Which in itself isnt a giant fuck-off allegory for real life but if anyone were even a tenth as racist as fantasy fiction commoners were they would be the next hitler.

Oh..wait..thats been done? And someone made ~MONEY~ on it? Well now I dont know what to think, maybe I might just have to take my own life now. How are those murderous not-gnomes coming along again?

Godwin!

I want there to be so many drow that they actually have surface raids to steal us away to the dark to do some kind of sick, naked ritual.

not as fun as killing other underdarkers. besides everyone on the surface is a paladin and doesn't hire assassins. well.. in her view.

Being a long time Orog player, the Underdark is rather active at the moment. 95% of those are Drow players... but I'd like to encourage anyone with a non-Drow Underdarker to make their mark.

I think I might have talked myself into trying a drow monk, in the Lore thread.

Anyone have any thoughts on where such a thing might fit in, in the current UD environment?

Blackened Fist monk? Well, the last one we had joined the OV (currently somewhat inactive because leadership is inundated in tests, essays, exams...), but the character seemed like he'd be more comfortable in Edonil, what with it being... rather orthodox! Lawful monk etc. So Edonil's fine, I'm sure most of the Houses could use a Blackened Fist (they do make good assassins and bodyguards...). Either that or set up in L'Obsul (that's where all the low-level hunting is anyway) and maybe the OV can get their claws in...

That said! Yeah more other races! Although since all the alternatives are ugly (...especially half-drow!) I'm not confident that we'll ever get a more comfortable ratio of non-drow.

Yeah, I kind of doubt it too... the excellent recent efforts of the OV notwithstanding, the Underdark is still (and probably always will be) a place that's thought of as being dominated by drow, beholders, and illithids. Two of those aren't PC races, leaving really just one option for anyone who doesn't want to play either a slave or a character who struggles to escape the "lesser race" pigeonhole that the drow (quite justifiably) want to keep them locked into.

I had originally thought of making my new character (which turned into Ranallas) out to be a Deep Imaskari.

While the community is predominately Drow I see no reason why a good size contingent of another race could not leave their mark in Edonil, or elsewhere for that matter.

I will remain respectfully skeptical until I see it.

Last edited by Galenson on Mon, Oct 03 2011, 8:39 AM, edited 1 time in total.

Drow have several distinct advantages over the other races:

1) They are the icon when most players think of the underdark (kind of like Space Marines for warhammer 40k) which makes them most popular for new players

2) For a long time, Drow have been well supported with a playerbase and the foundations to support themselves: it was only once the new Underdark kicked in that the other races once more had a feasible start location that wasn't Lolthite controlled (yes... there was Underport but it was an alternate location and not well supported for the get go new toon)

3) Dwarves, Gnomes and Half-Orc phenotypes aren't as popular as the human or elven ones by default, which means Orogs, Duergar and Svirfs by default will never be as popular. (If you go online and compare the base phenotype of individual characters, I would say 80% are human and elf alone with the rest divided into the remaining 20%)

4) Alienation and heavy restrictions for non-Drow in a Lolthite controlled environment creates a very bored and disinterested duergar/orog/svirf/kobold (I'm not pointing fingers here... but in the past there was being treated like dirt and being treated like dirt all the time as your two options.) And finally,

5) The generalised interpretation of the nature of the Underdark races themselves: everyone wants the whole cake, not just slices which means the other Underdarkers spend alot of time alone which creates a bored and disinterested player.

So for all intents and purposes... I do agree with Tormak about remaining skeptical. That's not saying its impossible however, just more difficult.

Actually No. 2 is wrong. I believe when Amia first began, back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and people cybered in public, all the underdark races had their own starting area's. But they were unused, so I believe they were removed. I remember Duergar started in an underground fortress that was soaked in an aura of red.

I stand corrected and will edit accordingly.

However, as you said they were removed and the time that spanned between those days (if it has escaped my memory... then it truly is a relic) and the implementation of the current Underdark on B was a few years, so the point still stands... if not as strongly.

Selvec Darkon wrote:

Actually No. 2 is wrong. I believe when Amia first began, back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and people cybered in public, all the underdark races had their own starting area's. But they were unused, so I believe they were removed. I remember Duergar started in an underground fortress that was soaked in an aura of red.

... No. Unless I really missed something.

Selvec's been at the kiwi juice. Back in the early early days, the only race with a different starting point was drow, and they began in Udos Dro'Xun.

Are you sure? I had this discussion with either Disco or Nekh a while back, and someone confirmed it was the case. Like one of the first characters I ever made was a Duergar, which I abandoned fast because nobody was playing Duergar and I couldn't find anything. I could have sworn someone said they pulled the area's because they never got used.

Ayep, I'm sure! I can recall the original Underdark fairly well and there was nothing like that. Duergar were practically unplayed because of their poor ECL giving them a big handicap, so there was never any sort of support for them back then.

Odd, I wonder what I'm remembering then...

...Regardless of what he was drinking or smoking at the time, Selvec reinforced one of my points regarding segregation between Underdark races by the playerbase's actions, requests and decisions in the past. It is another reason the other Underdark races will never really take off unless something drastically changes: They quite literally shot themselves in the foot long term with the need to stay "strictly canon."

But lets not go into that.

Galenson wrote:

Drow have several distinct advantages over the other races:
4) Alienation and heavy restrictions for non-Drow in a Lolthite controlled environment creates a very bored and disinterested duergar/orog/svirf/kobold (I'm not pointing fingers here... but in the past there was being treated like dirt and being treated like dirt all the time as your two options.

FYI: Tinnerai has an Orog and deep gnome as official house members & work with duergar & kobolds. Not to mention other races whom we work with for mutual benefit.

This is not to say that a Matron Mother will put up with anyone being rude. She still considers any race but Drow as lessor just as Lolth tells her to. This does not mean she isn't polite.

I have examples of players asking if such-and-such would fit in a Lolthite society and my first reaction was that it would be really hard for them to do it. Then during in game RP they presented their character in a fashion that made it so the ify character fit wonderfully. Absolutely brilliant as a matter of fact.

So, nows the time to try again Galenson so when next you post you don't have to use words like "in the past".

PS. This is not an invitation to think that Lolthite Drow are cuddly stuffed rothes, btw.

I'm sure you have seen that Fierene Havenstar
But fact remains that there's really few other UD races - And the drow attitude , Both IC and OOC, is to blame here.

No doubt you're right, Svensk, but when we assign that blame to the "drow attitude," it should also be mentioned that the drow attitude is pretty thoroughly justified. There are not a lot of things that each and every source of drow lore agrees on, but one of those universal constants is that drow are prideful and arrogant, and that as a culture, they're unshakably certain that they're the embodiment of perfection and that all other races are inferior.

I think that that will be the case unless someone manages to find a plausible way to implement the other stereotypically dominant UD races (illithid, beholder) as PC races. (Which is unlikely.) Until then, though, the prevailing drow-centric attitude in the UD not only won't change, but also shouldn't change.

till some group of peoeple make a bunch of said lesser UD races as a lark, powerbuild them then gank all the drow PCs and take over the town

WHOS WITH ME....OVER THROW THE DROW! PUNCH LOLTH RIGHT IN THE BABY MAKERS!

Quote:

Until then, though, the prevailing drow-centric attitude in the UD not only won't change, but also shouldn't change.

Unfortunate. I se my skepticism was properly justified.

Must admit,the imaskari does intrigue me,and well,you cant go wrong with a dwarf build ,can you

TormakSaber wrote:

Quote:

Until then, though, the prevailing drow-centric attitude in the UD not only won't change, but also shouldn't change.

Unfortunate. I see my skepticism was properly justified.

--shrugs-- Just an opinion. The drow are what they are, and I think it's well-established in the lore that drow aren't the sort of people who would change their culture just because their neighbors and slaves find it inconvenient or oppressive. And the portion of the player base who's going to chose to play a "slave race" when one of the "master races" is available is probably pretty small. That's an RP niche that a lot of people just don't find appealing.

Very_Svensk wrote:

I'm sure you have seen that Fierene Havenstar
But fact remains that there's really few other UD races - And the drow attitude , Both IC and OOC, is to blame here.

I'm certain that that might be the case for you personally. But it's not what I've seen for the most part in the UD. Rather than moan and whine about how much drow suck, many players are taking their RP in different directions and being very successful at making real change possible for Amia lore in the UD.

I know of at least one player who created a drow on a dare and is having a blast. More than one is doing RP that, even several months ago would have been unthinkable for traditional drow to support. But again the RP generated in doing so is so good that you have to play a part in it.

My question to Svensk is simple. Why troll a thread and try to start an argument when he could just RP and guide the kind of changes he says need to be made? Don't like that theres not enough other UD races? Make one. Most players, especially drow, only come out when theres the opportunity for interaction. More players, more play. Don't like drow attitude? Fix it IC, don't crap in someone else's sandbox just because you don't happen to like their RP.

My first UD character back in the Ultrinnan days was a duergar. I hung out in the bar area in Ultrinnan when I wasn't hunting RP'd with the drow. He worked as a merchant purchasing items that were easily available is surface shops and selling to the drow as well as often working as a bodyguard for mages, rogues and clerics that needed a good solid warrior to assist them in battle. I played him for four to six months before I decided that I wanted to play a drow. By that time I knew enough lore and enough about the politics in Ultrinnan to make the transition into drow society easy. The players of Edonil are a lot more welcoming than Ultrinnan was.

I agree that in the past it was really difficult to get involved in the role-play if you weren't a drow but a lot has changed over the time I have been on Amia. A lot of the players that made it difficult for a UD character that wasn't a drow to be able to participate are the same players that made it difficult for new drow player to learn their way around their character, lore and politics. Most of those players are no longer on Amia or no longer play drow and are the same ones that make it difficult to roleplay with some of the other factions on the server.

Drow aren't for everyone and quite often I get tired of the RP aswell and play diferent races for a while.

For the most part Edonil is a very open city when it comes to the UD races.

I would be more than happy to play my duergar more often if I saw more deurgar online. Infact I invite duergar players to send me a pm and let me know they are around and I will be more than happy to run around and show your deurgar some of the areas. I can also direct people to a few UD kobold and Orog characters.

Nope, Not taking the bait.

Svensk I'm going to be very plain and blunt here.

Stop Trolling and then trying to claim the moral high horse after you've already blamed the Drow attitudes for the alleged issues IC and OOC. You aren't helping matters, you aren't fixing matters, and its -your- attitude that is the issue here. Cut it out or you can sit out the forums for awhile.

So...

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