Art

Hm.. difficult to see how that'd work unless the pigment's adsorption spectrum drops off sharply beyond the visible blue range. Otherwise it'd do the same job as melanin, regardless of what it's chemical make-up is.

That said... I don't think a heck of a lot of thought was given to the logic behind the D&D world in the early days. But I suppose the move to the Underdark could've been 'recent' in evolutionary terms, and they haven't yet lost pigmentation like other cave species.

*shrugs*

Logic?

ID. (*cleanup in aisle twelve.*)

I think the drow started from Svartalfar, which refers to Dvergar and it accreted from there. The sex with infernal beings being the route to power for the women on top society of the drow...

Yeah, you don't want to go in there.

Yeahhh... mind you, magic makes a mockery of pretty much everything else too. When it comes to D&D, anything really freaky probably has 'ancient mages' at the bottom of it. Or gods, gods are like the Chernobyl nuclear reactors of metaphysics.

Both melt down.

Well, ancient mages, writers of early D&D, gods, they all can have subscriptions. I've got corsage pins, I can lance boils.

Well, I admit I tend to work backwards... I come up with an idea that sounds cool, then think of how and what it would take to make it work out. It's easier figuring things out if you know what the answer should be.

That said... I did create one world where basically, I just threw in everything, every daft idea, every bad joke & pun, every 'wouldn't that be cool', and every 'what the hell was I thinking?' ... plus a ship-load of humour.. and it turned out to be the most popular one I ever created. There are people at my old club who are still playing it twenty years after I left leaving behind a pile of notes and lot of happy players...

Go figure...

I don't know if you've seen the post on my LJ, but I wanted to run a game where the stereotypical "Overlord and Rebels" scenario was going on in one kingdom, which got started when a town got trampled in a border dispute between two nobles. The next couple of paragraphs are in the background of the campaign, though they could be a series of scenarios for the players to experience as well.

One of the survivors of the townsfolk was the blacksmith's daughter, Anne. She was rescued by a crew of thieves who were also part-time camp followers, and gradually the idea of rebellion flourished as she understood why her town was destroyed: Neither of the local lords gave a flying cowflop about the peasants in the middle of their fight until the taxes stopped coming in, but would bring swift death to anyone they thought defiant.

As she'd studied at her father's forge, Anne took up smithing as a disguise and a means of supplying her friends in the rebellion; they started calling her Anvil Annie.

Later, a monastery in a swamp (The Abbey on Mosley Isle) on the way to a battle was raided for food and supplies, but otherwise considered harmless. The monks were driven out and the monastery was burned to prevent enemies from using it for shelter, but much of the stonework remained intact. Annie and her crew decamped from the war trains and moved in, repairing and fortifying the place, which was already in a fairly isolated and secure position (if tactically undesirable in the border war). The lord whose land the monastery was on eventually caught wind of this and besieged it to prevent attack from behind his lines.

So now we come to current history: The players are coming there to deal with a quest of some sort (there could be several plot hooks that draw them to the swamp, and the siege can sort of hang in limbo for a while if necessary until they arrive). They get there and if they talk to the guards, they are told that there is a fortress on Isle Mosley, "the hive of that scum Anvil Annie!" Would they care to gain favor with their lord by helping them destroy this rebel base?