Things I did not know

[james_davis_nicoll]

Apparently in their current version, the skin of Drow who convert to good becomes lighter coloured while the "blackness of the drow's skin has become a permanent sign of their depravity". The Curse of the Lamanites angle seems to have been introduced by self-confessed Canadian author Lisa Smedman in The Lady Penitent.

Nicked from arielstarshadow

Comments

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Ah, like Eberron was?

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I didn't look much at Eberron - did it keep the myriad of non-humanoid races?

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

It did, and it generally threw the idea of race-based alignments out of the window. That said, it wasn't perfect - the enemy races tended to be enemies because they wanted the same sort of land that the 'player' races, though, more than because they were born evil.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

The myriad of races was pretty much a requirement in the contest that spawned Eberron. (Oh, it might not have been totally necessary--I don't remember the rules precisely--but an entry would have had to be pretty awesome if any significant player races were dropped.)

[kynn.livejournal.com]

Al Qadim also rejected "permanent race war" in Zakhara.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that setting had the opposite problem of having all the PC (And some of the monster) races integrated into a single homogeneous monoculture, without considering any of the implications of the differing living requirements of, say, elves and ogres. It also suffered from the stndard "Ethnic Fantasy" flaw of being slavishly devoted to the surface trapping of the source material, while downplaying or outright ignoring any aspects of it that would confuse or squick American readers.