shaaknaa:

prokopetz:

The thing about the default setting of Dungeons & Dragons is that evil is self-defeating not in a metaphysical sense, but in the sense of each individual force of evil being comprised principally of people who suck.

Mind flayers are so invincibly convinced of their own cleverness that their collective history is just an endless litany of them suffering completely predictable ass-kickings at the hands of their own creations, to the point that they’ve lost their empire and been forced to live in caves and still can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong.

Beholders assume that everybody everywhere is just as treacherous and scheming as they are, and consequently spend most of their time quivering in fortified bunkers freaking out about elves on the moon and completely failing to notice the adventurers on their doorstep.

Chromatic dragons are individually unstoppable, but are incapable of even the most basic coordinated effort because two chromatic dragons in the same geographic region will spend all of their time and energy fighting over which one of them should be in charge.

The collective infernal armies of the Abyss and the Nine Hells could conquer the multiverse basically any time they felt like it, but they never will, because they’ve spent the last billion years slaughtering each other in what amounts to a massive ideological slapfight about the correct way to be evil.

And the funny part is that there’s no overarching authorial agenda that got us here. It’s a bunch of different writers in a bunch of different versions of the game published over many decades independently arriving at the conclusions that a. it’s beneficial for the game if the players can have stupid arguments with the monsters, and b. those arguments will be more entertaining to play out if the monsters are a bunch of dork-ass losers.

I remember reading an in depth source book on the drow (3.5) and it specifically said “you may be wondering how their society has survived so long like this. The answer is Divine Intervention. Lolth likes them like this.”

My conclusion to this is that Drow Society is like a Soap Opera. Not only does everyone have a contingency plan upon dying, but there’s a possibility Lolth will res someone just to make it more dramatic.

The reason there are skull thrones is an extension of “if you didn’t see the body, they aren’t dead” and even *that* is suspect.

lolth eating popcorn and watching the local dutchess of an underdark city be assassinated by her advisor: oooo this is juicy. lets see what happens if i bring her back right after they name the next ruler