Lolth is an edgelord that makes all the other gods cringe.
Oh, it gets worse.
Don’t look up what blessing Gruumsh’s wife gave to the orcs.
Tried looking that up but can’t really find anything, what is the controversy there?
I guess you do need some background information, especially because Wizards sure doesn’t like spelling it out anymore.
In older editions it was assumed nearly all half-orcs were the offspring of rape, and “the blessing of Luthic” was given to make orcs fertile with nearly every other race.
The implications were clear, even more once you start diving into things like orcish society being a rigid patriarchy with a slave economy and one of Luthic’s domains being not just servitude, but specifically female servitude.
In early DnD’s defense, monster races were objectively, comically evil, and players were pretty heavily incentivised to pick humans (and assumed to be played by extremely nerdy guys), so it wasn’t supposed to come up that much.
The fantasy was in killing the cannibal rape monsters, freeing their slaves, and not having to ask yourself “Are we the baddies doing an imperialism?” for burning down the orc village.
My dad used to play red box D&D (which I believe was the first edition ever released). Still has some manuals, which I got the chance to read.
Not only it was encouraged to play humans, it was assumed! You didn’t get to pick a race, only a class. And while the classes of “elf” (think like 5e’s ranger) and “dwarf” (5e’s barbarian, sort of) were a thing, all of the other classes assumed for the player to be a human. You couldn’t play an elf wizard: you either are an elf OR a wizard. Wild stuff, compared to some of the crazy stuff we get to do in modern D&D.
Like these?
If your first-level halfling is wearing plate mail, you may be playing Red Box D&D.
So, like DCC?
Late reply, but original D&D and Holmes-book D&D came before Red Box. Not sure about OD&D, but Holmes had race-class separation. AD&D has roughly contemporaneous with red box, and had the concept of Elf Wizard.
Red box D&D (both its editions) was pretty different in a lot of ways than other editions.
Early DND sounds a lot like pulp comics.
so, the evil version of big booba goblins?
Is that a thing?
you’re asking if horny people had the idea to give massive honkers to the small green people and make their whole schtick to bonk everyone they see?
if that’s a question that needs to be asked you should treasure your innocence
I can’t seem to find the reference, but I think an echo of this made it into 5e, where the offspring of orcs and other races were always half-orcs.
So…can I get an orc lady for myself and make a half orc clan just for the giggles?
Could not really find anything but that Luthic is a fertility goddess of sorts. Which seems rather normal.
Umm, what? Anything that has gestation similar to a human is probably incapable of this. Could you imagine these fucking alien beans duckin’ and dodgin’ in utero to slaughter each other with nubby hands and fingers? Lmao this is some Morrowind concept art shit
More like The Binding of Isaac. Only game in which aborting yourself can result in a positive outcome.
The ascension endings were rough in that game.
“Aww, he’s got his dad’s knife” - never a phrase you want to hear in the delivery room.
(I assume this is how drow genetics work)
They are a matriarchy.
Well, drow men generally do the physical fighting.
I’m sorry, but this is mild compared to the insanity that is Kirkbride’s Morrowind lore. Gods… how I wish Bethesda hired him for TES 6
It’s not unheard of for one (human) twin to absorb the other in the womb. It’s more along the lines of a cellular mixup, though, rather than a battle. And of course the mother even being aware much less sensitive to it is nonsense.
My favourite bit on drow related lore is from 2E. Non-drow followers of Eilistraee would do black face and travel the world as part of an effort to show drow could be peaceful. There is something hilarious to me about how well intentioned the author seems to be but completely oblivious to what it looks like.
Oh so Señor Chang in the D&D episode of Community.
I mean, Chang is trying to be offensive, because he is a racist, this is very well established by the show and it’s weird how few people understood that.
deleted by creator
Wait, is this real? Surely this is parody, right?
There are a number of really weird things with old D&D lore.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
“Some incredibly unhinged shit…”
No this was the lore.
Hell one of 3.5 edition’s strongest monsters, from the the published books, was the undead, aborted, fetus, that was the product of the rape of another god, or celestial/hell/abyssal creature, by a god of opposing alignment, like an angel raped by an evil god.
They were just keeping with the strong tradition established by the Greeks and Romans of gods that rape everyone and everything.
Not really sure what the hubub is. It’s lore for a dark thing in a fantasy world. It’s like an unpopular opinion on c/unpopularopinion . You don’t like it, persay, but it’s effective content.
Just as an FYI, that’s “per se”
I literally spoke at my phone, call Dr. Googl
Right in the persay.
Persay Jackson?
The issue is due to two primary factors.
First the biology of humanoids in D&D precludes something like this, doubly so when elven gestation cycles is considered. The differences between drow and other elves is not huge. They have some minor physiological differences, and some minor magical bonuses. They would have to be completely different creatures for this aspect of pregnancy to work. They could have said something like their genetics are so competitive one ends up absorbing the others early in development, like vanishing twin syndrome, because the dominant one consumes all available nutrients killing the other embryos. However the explanation makes it clear they are physically killing each other. This, topped with the erotic element, is just bad world/lore building. Bad lore that only exists to be edgy, which is bad storytelling.
The second big issue is that this is mainline D&D. Mainline D&D is not a grimdark setting. This isn’t Warhammer. D&D also has settings for this type of thing. To a lesser extent, places like Ravenloft, which can get pretty edgy, but this would be pushing it, even there. Others would be settings like Dark Sun, which is pretty much built for edgelord storytelling. Though the bad world building surrounding the discrepancies between drow and the rest of the elves would make for bad storytelling even in such a place. If you create a set of rules of nature, those rules can be whatever, but you need to not break those rules. Going through the basic lore of an otherwise typical high fantasy setting, people aren’t expecting to come across cartoonish edgelord shit like this.
I guess we disagree, and that’s fine.
I believe any setting with undead has firmly entered the grim arena, even if not fully branded as such.
Dnd is a rich world, imo a richer world but capturing wholesome, classical adventure, and grim concepts. The edge of grim can indeed be…edgy.
It’s not for everyone, or every character to want to learn about, because it’s literally evil, and alignments.
The world if fuller with good, and bad. (And edgy)
Which is fine, when it’s actually good world building. This particular thing, when you consider all the rules set forth for the biology of the creature, just shoots down that richer world for the sake of, murder fetus gets mom off.
Are you talking about Atropus? Or some other unborn God?
They are called atropals but are not kin to Atropus. Atropus is an actual god and is the size of a moon. Atropals are abominations and large size category, they also lack divine rank.
Oh wow. I knew about them but I guess the FR wiki excised all the gross lore.
Atropals were a race of unfinished immortals modeled after the gods, stillborn godlings, who spontaneously rose as undead[3] abominations
Maybe I won’t put those in my game. I was considering it because they seemed similar to Atropus, who is my ultimate big bad.
Folks could get away with so much edgy bulshit back then…
Sad how hard it is now.
Nah, it’s good that it’s hard. People who want to use with heavy themes, they gotta earn it.
Maybe you should see a doctor about that, then.
I feel like there are better people to commission.
Once I accepted that I am cringe, I was free to be my true self. I am cringe, but I am free.
Never forget what they took from you
That’s some amazing lore!
Did they remove it or something?
Me with WtA’s Thrall of the Wyrm.
