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I just want to be sure before I start it.

There will be an underground dark elf city, it's a slave holding society that can't stand sunlight and worships a spider goddess.

I will not make them overly matriarchal except having a queen and priestesses, and not ~everyone~ will be super evil just because. But is this still too specific? I don't know if dark elves are generic enough that you can use them just anywhere like regular elves.

No. It isn't.

Well that is very Forgotten Realms/D&D sounding due to the spiders, slaves, dislike of the sun and underground.

Dark elves in most versions of fantasy settings are generally assholes so them having slaves is fine. Even in Elder Scrolls they had slaves.

Underground dwelling and dislike of the sun is eh. There's a lot of fantasy races like with similar traits so it's not really a big deal to have them like that, but it means you have to distance yourself even more from their obvious inspiration. Which leads to...

Spider worship. I'd get rid of this one entirely because with the other two traits in place, now they really are just FR drow with the serial numbers filed off. Having them worshipping some eldritch horror would be a perfectly fine substitute what with them living underground being evil and all.

And they sound pretty matriarchical if they got a queen and priestesses running the place. A better way to change that without completely reverse mirroring it would be having an oligarchy running the city and all the council members scheming against each other for various reasons. Scheming and backstabbing are pretty dark elfish without it being specifically linked to FR.

At first I thought she was asking if it would be a fanfiction of Eternal. :p

I respect that she didn't even feel the need to explain what she thought it might be fanfic of. Just knew by instinct she was in among proper nerds.

I would agree with End that while some of these things are pretty generic and not tied to the classic D&D portrayal of drow, combining literally all of them (especially the spider goddess, because you can make up another entity for them to worship pretty easily) gets into the realm of D&D. I would also recommend trying to stay away from the generic stereotypes in general, as it would be more interesting to read something where dark elves are unique, rather than a copy-paste from D&D.

Are there plot reasons they need to be allergic to sunlight? And if it matters, can you have a queen and priestesses without spelling out that there are no penis havers allowed?

But yeah to the spider goddess has got to go if you want to distance yourself from FR, everything else is just like 'eh, dark elves', but that's the most obvious setting specific thing.

Pity, because that's a very metal story title you have.

Always found it sort of odd that in dark elves in FR lived underground for centuries are dark skinned. Surely they would become really pale with no exposure to the sun.

That's the main reason why I didn't have them living underground in Eternal. Makes more sense for them to have dark skin if they're exposed to the sun. (Even more so when they've been living like nomadic mercs for some of their existence.)

Plot twist: they're just ruled by Shelob. It's actually a LotR fanfic, not at all related to D&D.

Two short men with hairy feet must travel to Mordoberrenzan with their wizard friend Ganminster.

Lol

Dont forget they must be lead by their untrustworthy acquaintance, Seagull.

Through the Mines or Morial, where they encounter the Bullrug.

I ended up getting rid of the spider goddess and changing a few other things, mostly based on Endmaster's post. I've been writing this out more as a novel and I've got loads of setting notes for areas it hasn't even touched on yet, but I still plan to convert it all into a storygame someday.

This will also be a much larger story than originally planned as I decided to have a whole path where you can adventure aboveground. I wanted to avoid that to avoid comparisons to a certain famous dark elf, but after a couple of roleplay campaigns as the main character is turns out this was much too fun to leave out.

Writing progress is still a little slow, because I'm married now and have two stepsons. It's been an eventful few months!

Glad you're still working on this, I think it's a cool idea.

And congrats on the wedding! (Technically you're supposed to get majority approval from the admins before adding anyone new to the family, but since you're a promising noob we'll let that slide.)

How much money does he make? We'll need to audit you to determine how much tithe is owed to the Church of Endmaster.

I'm sorry but all our income is already going to Cthulhu and Mehrunes Dagon and we have no say in the matter. The Church of Endmaster will have to take it up with them in court.

Is there a major preference for second person over third person here? I know second is what most authors are doing, but do readers mind when it's third person for instance?

As long as it's done well, anything can work. It's all about what you're aiming for in your tale.

Only from the last Endmaster contest, we got a 3rd person story from TharaApples and a 1st person story from some guy called enterpride. Moreover, MadHattersDaughter has all her three featured storygames in the 1st and 3rd person if you want more examples of things done really right.

Thanks. I still feel the most comfortable with 3rd person.

Spiders have an interesting duality. People are naturally afraid and disturbed by them, but they do a lot of good in the world by keeping other pests in check.

I've decided the dark elf goddess appears simply as a beautiful woman, now being held in check by a spider spirit created by the sun god. All the religious factions around her focus on the way she might be freed. There is one in particular going the route of breeding their own spider to take on the sun spider. In the storygame the player will encounter them the most due to their need for a steady supply of slaves.

Sounds pretty neat. World building is so much fun, I just hope we see all this translated into an actual storygame someday. It seems like a natural fit for Grimdark Fantasy.