Café de Nuit

I've been re-reading my copy of the Ravenloft Dungeon Master's Guide for 3.5, which contains rules for determining Outcast Ratings for non-standard PC races. It's a fairly simple system, with a certain degree of personal interpretation-based wriggle room, but it was the entry on using a race's reputation that's fired my curiosity.

See, it's always been a major part of Ravenloft that the Demiplane of Dread is more low fantasy/humanocentric than the traditional D&D world. Its planar isolation means it lacks many of the standard villainous races. There are no orcs in Ravenloft, there are no drow, there are no duergar, there are no gnolls or minotaurs or dragonborn or what have you. That's all well and good, even if I personally prefer a more higher magic Dark Fantasy take, but it's made me contemplate something...

Given this planar isolation, it stands to reason that the absence of many "traditional" D&D monster races would lead to a corresponding lack of stories depicting those races in-universe. And since the Reputation portion of the Outcast Rating mechanics literally revolves around "how is this race (or the race it's mistaken for) seen in-universe by the human cultures of the Core", wouldn't it be fair to give players a certain amount of leeway on that aspect?

I mean, yes, outside of the Demiplane of Dread, it's well known that drow and duergar are evil. But the Misty Realms don't have native drow or duergar populations. They don't tell stories about the evil elves and dwarves of the Underdark - they don't have an Underdark! So is it really so implausible to rule that an outlander drow or duergar doesn't get the +2 OR for a "Predatory" reputation? In fact, I'd actually argue that the isolation from the multiverse means that, in most domains except maybe Darkon, drow or duergar would just be mistaken for regular elves and dwarves, which means they'd actually get the -1 OR for being considered "Good" races!

But what do you guys think? Do you think it's fair to let players of Outlander characters actually make the Demiplane's status as a planar backwater work to their advantage for once?

On a related topic... what races would you personally consider to fall into the Appearance categories of the aforementioned Outcast Rating generation rules? Do drow & duergar count as "Slightly Inhuman" (+1 OR), since they're the same physiologically as dwarves and elves, or do their unusual colorations bump them into the "Distinctly Inhuman" (+2 OR) or even "Monstrous" (+3 OR) categories?

Even without native drow (though the zelldrow of the Shadow Rift are present), I imagine that negative drow legends may persist among the elven populations. However, humans who don't know much about elves might not think there is much difference.

I'll give you the duergar, however they still would look odd to those familiar to dwarves, possible resulting in them being regarded as calibans of dwarves by populations familiar with dwarves.

Drow however do exist reportedly under Darkon and their reputation does still exist albeit combined with that of shadow fey.

other more monstrous intelligent humanoids (orcs etc) would be regarded as calibans at best but monsters at worst based on their appearance.

At the end of the day it would probably be best to judge it on a case by case stance, as due to the nature of the demiplane it can be difficult to explain away all of the bumps for example, why in a land without dragons does that noble have a dragon in his coat of arms, why is that bottle of holy water marked with a cross, etc.

Populations from domains based on Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk would know about drow, and there are a bunch of outlanders wandering around who would know about them.

In domains that have no exposure to such races I would go with a milder hit but... drow have their spider thing. And they avoid the sunlight. Those two things are bad for one's reputation. A bit less for Duergar I would think as they don't have spiders everywhere but they are still avoiding the sunlight.
And of course, we have the svinfebli. Not evil, but they avoid the sunlight...