Let Bad Guys be Bad.

I remember when Drow Elves were just one of many entries in the old first edition Fiend Folio. They were simple, strait forward bad guys. They tried to kill your characters, and you killed them. Then came the option in the Unearthed Arcana supplement to have Drow as player characters.

A very good friend of mine, who had a habit of playing characters that were a bit outside the norm, diced up a female Drow cleric/fighter/magic user and it was one of many great characters that sprang from his slightly erratic but brilliant mind. To this day, after twenty years or so, that characters is still my favorite of all his characters. I, to my mild shame, even rolled up a character or two that were essentially poor copies.

Then came RA Salvatore’s Drizzt Do'urden. You need to understand, my gaming buddy had played his Drow for years before the scimitar wielding Drow ranger stepped out of the Underdark to make the Drow trendy. Now good Drow are becoming more and more common place from player characters in campaigns, to novels, and the newer game supplements. Drow are no longer mysterious or exotic, the allure is gone.

Why is there such a perceived need to make villains into heroes? I suppose the darkly erotic overtones that are inherent with the fictional Drow society (and Mister Salvatore’s talent for writing) are to blame for the popularity of the Drow, but what about other villainous people or races throughout sci-fi and fantasy?

In Star Trek there were the Borg. The Borg were implacable, merciless, unfeeling enemies that simply could not be reasoned with. They were the perfect foil for the Federation, and they were also wonderfully creepy. Then, a few seasons later, nice, friendly, even cute Borg were introduced. The whole thing was ruined. There were still bad Borg out there, but you just knew that the good Borg would win over the other Borg and everyone would just get along. The coolest Trek bad guys lost their edge.

There are other examples that I won’t go into for the sake of brevity, but my question is: why can’t bad guys stay bad? A hero is not heroic unless the villains are equally villainous. So why water down the bad guys?

My buddy has pretty much retired his Drow, and that is a shame. But I can see his point. The Drow have had what made them unique and mysterious taken away. One good Drow trying to live down the evil reputation of the race is intriguing. Hundreds or thousands of Drow making nice is passé. Bad guys are as much a part of any hero’s story as the hero.