Did WotC get an idea from OotS?

[2D8HP]

Some Elven deities have had mutable genders at least since Jim Ward wrote up Corellon Larethian in the 1980 Deities & Demi-Gods book, but I noted while watching
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hgP6JnWh4Ig (at about 10 minutes into the video) that it looks like for an upcoming 5e D&D book some mortal Elves will be "blessed by Corellon", and may "once per long rest" change to female, male, or neither, and the evil Drow who "unlike other Elves are gendered" regard this as "subversive", and Drow with this ability become "heroes" that non-Drow Elves "welcome at temples of Corellon".

I'm very curious to see if that lore makes it into the book that's supposed to come out later this month, but I'm even more curious if this lore developed from old lore, or if just maybe someone read a certain webcomic and said "Hey, let's make more Elves like Inkyrius and Vaarsuvius!"?

Since I gather that that aspect of V started as an off-hand joke because some readers said they "can't tell from the drawing of Vaarsuvius", that some Elves will now have this "blessing of Corellon" in official D&D lore seems to be an example of a "mighty Oak" grown from "a tiny acorn", as well aa making Elves less like "humans with pointy ears"!

If 5e Dwarves will now have an alternative afterlife in the lore then I know that WotC is reading OotS!

[factotum]

I think that's a bit of a stretch, to be honest? V's gender is ambiguous, but that doesn't mean he can change it at will--whatever it is, is fixed and unchanging, we just don't know what it is. The thing you're talking about is a power which allows someone to change gender at will.

[Cazero]

D&D elves have always been androgynous by contrast with the "manly men" inspired from Conan. V simply started as a comical exaggeration of that trait.

[Zyzzyva]

Yeah, I think that's just coincidence.

That said, the 5e DMG's boots of speed illustration shows them as being bright green. :smallwink:

[AstralFire]

I think it's extremely unlikely to be a reference to OotS, and more a result of a few things:

- Elves being more androgynous than humans and dwarves is a very long-running joke in D&D circles (and probably only helped along by later attempts to separate them from Tolkien's elves, who were physically very accomplished).
- Players are in many ways leading WotC on this. From the sexually gratifying to the philosophical, elves are frequently ground zero on any sort of player campaign that toys with the boundaries of sex and gender. In one move you can manage to get both sides of the spectrum on-board by introducing the idea of magical fluidity and leaving the details unsorted.
- Mike Mearls is very vocally supportive of LGBT rights (his twitter pictures are usually plastered with the stuff) and gender diversity.
- The literally magical part of their fluidity helps bring the magic-even-in-the-mundane back to elves, which they were slowly losing outside of 4e.
- The Drow are awkward as heck. This provides a new opportunity to recontextualize them with a form of oppression that actually makes sense and moves their at-times uncomfortable overly-titillating elements into the background in favor of a focus on heterosexism.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see a reference to Vaarsuvius or OotS there. But I think it's more likely to be a bonus than the primary cause.

[hamishspence]

I speculated a few years ago that "some elves are made in Corellion's image" from the PHB might be a shout-out to V:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?332532-Vaarsuvius-s-gender

however, it may be a case of them independently coming up with a similar concept. I'm not sure if The Giant has ever commented on 5e-isms. I thought I'd seen him reply with approval, to a post quoting that - but I can't find it in any of The Giant's posts, when searching.

[Yendor]

I speculated a few years ago that "some elves are made in Corellion's image" from the PHB might be a shout-out to V:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?332532-Vaarsuvius-s-gender

however, it may be a case of them independently coming up with a similar concept. I'm not sure if The Giant has ever commented on 5e-isms. I thought I'd seen him reply with approval, to a post quoting that - but I can't find it in any of The Giant's posts, when searching.

He said something on this on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/RichBurlew/status/492520533456461824)

[Manga Shoggoth]

Some Elven deities have had mutable genders at least since Jim Ward wrote up Corellon Larethian in the 1980 Deities & Demi-Gods book, but I noted while watching ... that it looks like for an upcoming 5e D&D book some mortal Elves will be "blessed by Corellon", and may "once per long rest" change to female, male, or neither, and the evil Drow who "unlike other Elves are gendered" regard this as "subversive", and Drow with this ability become "heroes" that non-Drow Elves "welcome at temples of Corellon".

You could make a better argument that they have been reading Ranma 1/2 (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/RanmaOneHalf) or Futaba-kun Change! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/FutabaKunChange) as these stories deal with characters that do actually switch gender - the latter getting bonus points for not being human but a descendant of a gender-switching race in the first place.

[Peelee]

D&D elves have always been androgynous by contrast with the "manly men" inspired from Conan. V simply started as a comical exaggeration of that trait.

IIRC, the Giant was surprised when he first heard that people didn't know if V was male or female, and only started playing that up afterwards.

[2D8HP]

I speculated a few years ago that "some elves are made in Corellion's image" from the PHB might be a shout-out to V:

5E PHB had what may be a nod to Vaarsuvius:


p121. Personality & Background

You don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender. The elf god Corellon Larethian is often seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic, for example, and some elves in the multiverse are made in Corellon's image.

however, it may be a case of them independently coming up with a similar concept. I'm not sure if The Giant has ever commented on 5e-isms. I thought I'd seen him reply with approval, to a post quoting that - but I can't find it in any of The Giant's posts, when searching.


Oh by Crom, I read the PHB and didn't remember that!


He said something on this on Twitter. (https://twitter.com/RichBurlew/status/492520533456461824)

@RichBurlew

24 Jul 14

I choose to believe Vaarsuvius was main inspiration for new 5E D&D language on gender-ambiguous elves. Confirm or deny, @aquelajames?


@aquelajames

24 Jul 14

Replying to @RichBurlew

@RichBurlew I can neither confirm nor deny...


@RichBurlewReplying to @aquelajames

.@aquelajames I also choose to read that response as, "Yes, I enjoy my job at Hasbro very much, thank you."

9:02 PM - 24 Jul 2014


Well that looks like The Giant had that suspicion to me!


You could make a better argument that they have been reading Ranma 1/2 (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/RanmaOneHalf) or Futaba-kun Change! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/FutabaKunChange) as these stories deal with characters that do actually switch gender - the latter getting bonus points for not being human but a descendant of a gender-switching race in the first place.


I suppose, but I'm not a fan of those like I am of OotS, so I don't care about their influence.


IIRC, the Giant was surprised when he first heard that people didn't know if V was male or female, and only started playing that up afterwards.


That's what I remember as well.

Anyway, the idea that OotS has gone from being influenced by D&D to being an influence of D&D pleases me.

[Corneel]

I have in my mind that the gender ambiguousness of Corellon dates back to at least the 2nd edition (Legends & Lore) but I might be wrong.

[Elanasaurus]

I have in my mind that the gender ambiguousness of Corellon dates back to at least the 2nd edition (Legends & Lore) but I might be wrong.We know.
Some Elven deities have had mutable genders at least since Jim Ward wrote up Corellon Larethian in the 1980 Deities & Demi-Gods book:elan:

[MReav]

Yeah, I think that's just coincidence.

That said, the 5e DMG's boots of speed illustration shows them as being bright green. :smallwink:

Those are the Boots of Elvenkind in the DMG.

[Honest Tiefling]

Pretty sure that there are plenty of stories where figures or gods change genders, so it isn't surprising that it would crop up somewhere. Elves are also just really androgynous in DnD art, so maybe the bigwigs just got frustrated that they couldn't remember the gender of a character. Or maybe they just make a game out of it and refuse to disclose gender.

I think exalted has plenty of iconics that swapped genders in their reincarnations, and pretty sure many fantasy stories involving reincarnation are going to do, even if it's a bad idea. I've heard that a female character on Babylon 5 was supposed to undergo a change (well, it wasn't quite a long rest), but I can't confirm it. Pretty sure some digging into sci-fi will produce similar results.

[Zyzzyva]

Those are the Boots of Elvenkind in the DMG.

Nope, both of them:

Elvenkind: https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com/avatars/thumbnails/7/134/315/315/636284714003984245.jpeg

Speed: https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com/avatars/thumbnails/7/136/315/315/636284714256851023.jpeg

[2D8HP]

Yeah, I think that's just coincidence.


:frown:


That said, the 5e DMG's boots of speed illustration shows them as being bright green. :smallwink:


Speed: https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com/avatars/thumbnails/7/136/315/315/636284714256851023.jpeg


Aha!

[brian 333]

I maintain that Belkar was based on my halfling ranger from a long-running Neverwinter Nights Persistent World.

Or it could be that some obvious ideas are obvious. Halflings in 3rd ed are easily optimized as rangers. The thing is, they optimize around Dex. Making a duel-wielding melee character out of a halfling ranger is gimping the character. Belkar is a very good example of how to begin with a viable character build concept, then choose all the wrong feats. But that is itself a common issue among players who want to create "kill'em all" type characters.

In many ways OotS is about taking all the things players commonly do and rolling them around so we can see all the sides.Especially in the early comics where game rules and player decisions were the focus of many strips. I was not the first player to choose Halfling Ranger as a character concept, nor was my build optimal fof combat, but Merogo was, like Belkar, a very fun character to play.

So many things in D&D are built on stereotypes that the game could have been called Swords And Stereotypes. So, of course, players wanted to 'break' the stereotypes. Evil elves and good drow, for example, are so obvious that the very first Greyhawk novels back in the 1980s featured one of each. Drizzt wasn't even marginally original by the time Salvatore rolled around.

While there is feedback among writers in the game system, so much of what we discuss and write about is so derivative that coincidental duplication is obvious. I used to regularly play Traveller, and I conceived a graveyard of spaceships left over from a war and built several adventures there. One of my players also designed a different boneyard for adventures and we surprised one another when we compared notes. Then GDW published their Imperial Encyclopedia in which the remains of the Battle Of Two Suns was mentioned as a potential adventure zone. Then Star Trek TNG used the idea twice, once for wargames and once for smuggling.

We all stole the idea from previous authors, not from each other. D&D began as a derivative product built on the work of many others. We've all been influenced by a relatively small pool of writers. While 5e may have 'stolen' green boots of speed from Rich, where did Rich get the idea?

It may be that there were eight color choices for boots, and green was the next color in the rotation, or the artist may have read Crystal's 'nice boots' strip. Or the artist may have played in a game where Boots Of Speed are green without ever realizing the DM read OotS.

Unless someone asks the artist, or whoever selected the image to go with the description, we'll never know. But there is so much cross-pollenization among fantasy writers that all of us are influenced by writers we've never read.

[MReav]

Nope, both of them:

Elvenkind: https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com/avatars/thumbnails/7/134/315/315/636284714003984245.jpeg

Speed: https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com/avatars/thumbnails/7/136/315/315/636284714256851023.jpeg

That's what I get for assuming the picture would be on the same page as the item.

[Fish]

D&D has always had a fair number of sex-changing devices, usually in the form of curses; the Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity was just the most well-known. The random side effects table for Artifacts and Relics had "user's sex changes" listed there. The AD&D module S1, Tomb of Horrors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Horrors), also written by Gary Gygax, had a sex-changing mirror. Sex-changing was included in the table of wild surges for Wild Mages starting in 2nd edition. There are probably others.

Thus, it's possible to imagine that they got the idea simply from playing D&D. But I still want to imagine that someone thought of it because of OOTS.

[factotum]

The AD&D module S1, Tomb of Horrors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Horrors), also written by Gary Gygax, had a sex-changing mirror.

Which, if memory serves, was by far and away the least horrendous trap in that place...

[Zyzzyva]

Which, if memory serves, was by far and away the least horrendous trap in that place...

My guess is that it wasn't even the most horrendous trap in that room.


Thus, it's possible to imagine that they got the idea simply from playing D&D. But I still want to imagine that someone thought of it because of OOTS.

On a related note, your profile pic continues to be some A+ fanart. :smallbiggrin:

[Lord Raziere]

elves being the place that toys with sex and gender is oddly poetic, given that elves were inspired by things like fair folk, who were originally conceived in folk tales to explain changelings. Changelings themselves were what people thought neurodiverse and/or mentally ill people were when they didn't think they were demons. a lot of old superstitions and myths are actually old explanations for things we see as normal today, and now they can re-purposed to explore these things in a positive light.

[Fish]

On a related note, your profile pic continues to be some A+ fanart. :smallbiggrin:
Thanks! I actually get surprisingly few comments on it. :)

[Raphite1]

I seem to recall some chatter about the Flumph being included in the 5e MM as a nod to its use as a running gag in OOTS, but I don't have any links handy.

[2D8HP]

I seem to recall some chatter about the Flumph being included in the 5e MM as a nod to its use as a running gag in OOTS, but I don't have any links handy.


Now that idea makes me very happy, as:

I like soft Flumphs I cannot lie!

[Peelee]

Now that idea makes me very happy, as:

I like soft Flumphs I cannot lie!

You other plumbers can't deny?

[2D8HP]

You other plumbers can't deny?


Want to pull up tough.

Flying Jellyfish!