Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

I am guessing timemonkey is right. From a game designer point of view, they were necessary and Lolth reflects all their pride, arrogance and perfectionism to the extreme.

Let's not go too overboard on the misogynistic nature of Indo-European mythology. Hera wasn't a devil figure, even if she was often in the role of antagonist to certain Greek heroes (particularly the ones who were the product of her husband's infidelities). She remained queen of the gods, after all. Same with the Roman variant on that mythos, with cow-eyed Juno having considerable status and her favored city of Carthage and its queen Dido being shown as clearly the victims in the Aeneid.

Also if you look at Indian mythology it's pretty clear that women had a much higher status in Vedic culture than in classical India, even if the most important gods in the oldest Hindu stories were male.

And anyway, in this comic Lolth comes out more like Courtney Love than like a demoness .

There's a difference?

Hahaha! I love the comparison...spot on!

There is a way to defeat every god - just start worshipping some long begone rebelious Drow male (Drizzt? or better not...) and if all the males would worship him, he would quickly start to rival Lolth's power (who would be worshipped by Drow females). Even if he wouldn't become stronger than her, he would at least be able to save rebelious Drow males from eternal suffering.
I mean, this is DnD. Gods are weak enough to get punched out every other campaign. *I* make gods in my campaigns so strong that they can one-hit kill even an epic character. Just to make them worthy of their divine status.

Never happen. Such a thing would take a VERY long time, not only would they have to find someone male drow would actually consider worshipping they'd need thousands of devoted clerics with genuine faith to even get him to the demi-gopd stage. Lolth is a greater diety, one of the most powerful gods around, and does not take lightly to anything, divine or otherwise, getting in the way of her supremecy.

Not to mention the drow already have a male diety who favors male drow and not only is his following small but even those male drow who know of him still mostly stick with Lolth.

Well, Lolth was upgraded in a Forgotten Realms story. She evolved herself into a greater power. -_- *cough* Hmyeah. I'm not the biggest fan of that story, although it does apparently involve Vhaeraun dying when he tries to assassinate his sister. That's funny and gives a power boost to Eilistraee, which I hope will be beneficial down the line in that setting.

If you are reading the books I'm feeling sorry for you. When the first book came out I heard the ugly rumours of where the story would go and waited for the last one to decide if I would buy them or not.....

Eilistraee is dead, she died of plot-induced stupidity, possessing a mortal body in an encounter with someone who had a blade that could slay gods. Vhaeraun died before that while attacking Eilistraee, Kiaransalee had her name erased from every mind in the FR and her powerless clergy slain. Lolth is the only remaining Drow goddess in the Forgotten Realms. And if that wasn't enough Corellon Larethian changed back all Eilistraee-worshipping Drow who weren't demon-tainted (yeah, they never were before, but now Drow are tainted by demons since the crown wars) into brown-skinned dark elves

I had only glimpsed at the books in the store and read a few online summaries. Having read this news, I feel fully justified in saying this: "SonovaLolth". Talk about jumping the shark... =_=

I read the first three and liked them, but you convinced me not to bother with the rest .
I will stick to the 2nd edition version of Loth, a Lilith like demoness endlessly plotting to rule the world and tripping herself on her eight legs.

At that time I was quite active on the WotC boards. I believe there were multiple threads begging them to not do that/reverse their decision. A lot of the gods of the Forgotten Realms were either slain under ridiculous circumstances, retroactively merged with other gods or demoted to archfeys or primordials... Of course, Lolth was allowed to stay unchanged because she's the standard-drow-spider-goddess of almost every D&D-setting. I guess if we want to further discuss what happened to the FR we should open a new thread down in the Gaming Board.



With the first three you mean the "War of the Spider Queen" series?
Unfortunately I started with D&D after the switch to 3.0, even though I technically started with BG2. So I can't make out a big difference between those versions of Lolth. But it seems that failing is what Lolth does best. Unfortunately she's as good at coming back.
Makes me wonder where the story arc with her in YAFGC will go. She can't just sit around and drink forever. Maybe it will end soon, she appeared when Lewie had to go. Now Lewie is back.

War of the Spider Queen was a good read. Haven't got around to reading the follow ups yet.

Big problem is they wanted to shake thinsg up for the 4th edition so they basically tossed aside everything that wasn't a huge money maker and scrapped the established world.

Par for the course with edition changes.

I gave up on gamefic when I realized that most of their 'evil' people were basically in need of some therapy. The drow are pretty much paranoids with a touch of schizophrenia. Having dated someone with that designation, I can tell you it isn't very threatening (although default labeling 'crazy people' as evil is...worrying).