As part of their move away from WOTC’s OGL, Paizo is removing Drow as the Big Bads of the UnderDark. Their role is to be replaced by SerpentFolk.
Drow Underdark cities are being removed save for one exception, their largest pre-retcon city, Zirnakaynin, is now a ruin built by “unknown folk”.
The quote below is from James Jacobs, Creative Director in a forum post about the change.
“Perhaps the most mysterious and legend-haunted location in all Sekamina is the ancient city of Zirnakaynin. This sprawling ruin features architectural styles echoed today among many other cities, yet curiously Zirnakaynin lacks sekmin influence. Sekmins consider it forbidden, and they dedicate considerable effort to guarding all tunnels leading to this city. Who—or what—built Zirnakaynin, and what may live there today, remains unknown.”
The article DOES leave a “back door” open for us some day in the future to still have some sort of “cruel demon-worshiping elves” involved in it if we decide to retain that, but it’s just as easy to say anything else about it. It IS sad to see a lot of the familiar OGL monsters having to go away… but for the health of the company, the long-term strength of the brand, and to help us as employees feel more invested in building something WE built rather than ride on popular coat-tails from other companies… drow no longer being a part of Pathfinder is a necessity.
While the Drow and the concept of Dark Elves were not unique to Dungeons and Dragons, it technically was D&D that established them within the various different universes under its umbrella back in the early 80’s. Drizz’t Do’urden is such an intrinsic part of the franchise. He’s even the main example character in the 5e PHB and specifically cited as the only reason Drow are even playable as a subrace.
Drow as they are were almost entirely created within the D&D license. It makes sense that Paizo would want to distance themselves from that and build up something of their own. I wish them luck in it.
Personally, I don’t think that they have a snowball’schance in Hell. Pathfinder has been around a long time, but you’re neve going to see a Dwayne Johnson or a Steven Colbert bragging about how they played Pathfinder any more than you see this for GURPS which has been around longer. There’s simply no room for more than one Brand in such a niche hobby.
D&D 5e came out in 2014. Pathfinder already had a pretty healthy playerbase by that point because 4e was so poorly received. So, players went over to experience the new hotness? Okay, but that never really diminished Pathfinder’s market share. People were still playing it. Hell, even Critical Role was playing it before it even became a web series and they only switched over to 5e because it was easier to play while streaming.
Paizo developed 2e because a lot of the mechanics in 1e were starting to become outdated and they needed something fresh. It released in 2019.
They’re about to release the Remaster, mainly to apply a lot of what they’d learned and took player feedback over, and they wanted to replace the OGL with the new ORC.