She whipped me

>The only other reason you would play them is to be fedora or ERP. You're either an edgelord refugee from the "misandrists" or you're a sexy dominatrix/bullyable elfboi.
One of my players likes playing lady drow. They tend to be properly dressed, not sexualized at all, but just kind of irritable and hold disturbing worldviews.

Also Drizzt is a thing.

There are many other possibilities, like being a drow who managed to escape, and just kind of wants to learn the ways of decent people instead of a crazy backstabber. Or being a drow of either sex who was exiled and wants to gain wealth and respect on the surface before returning. It doesn't take much to make a good one.

I posted this in the drow thread from a yesterday (I think)
Basically what I like to do is to just play them or have them around as mundane elves that just happen to come from somewhere else, kinda like what does.

They lead normal lives, maybe come off with a weird accent or don't understand certain practices, but generally try to fit into their context, assuming they haven't already blended in with the locals.

It's still everybody stabs everyone in the back, but its also still sexy dominatrix matriarchy. This wouldn't be bad if they did something interesting with it, like had an interesting examination of a theocratic matriarchy or how Drow culture and viewpoints would be alien to humans but as in pic-related its mostly just dumb bullshit.

Them being independent with no references to drow politics is one way you could do them well. You could even do an agent of the underdark well, or a male sorcerer/warlock fleeing persecution. But there's still issues with that.

There's nothing edgelord about fleeing persecution, but its really easy for it to fall into dumbass That Guy territory. If I was DMing and one of my players suggested it, I'd need to know them well before I approved that kind of character.

An agent of the Underdark is similarly interesting, but you're also secretly working for the forces of evil, which can lead to inter-group problems when that player's real allegiance comes out. Like if they try to sabotage their fellows and PvP erupts. With mature or experienced players this could work. Or it could lead to a bunch of players dying out of the blue and ooc fighting. I've got a once-bitten-twice-shy attitude to this kind of thing after a first hand experience with it.

I'd live in the underdark if it meant I got to be some sexy drow woman's pet.

If you want a society of elves with dark skin that most prominently features women in their leadership and military while being pretty badass, just adapt Night Elves.

Recently WoW has you flying around space and jumping around dimensions, so just figure some of them got here through a portal or on a spaceship.

How about if you play a Drow character as exactly what they are? An irrational arachnophilic lunatic from a society that makes literally zero sense and would collapse in days, maybe even hours, if not for the micromanagement of an insane sadistic deity who actively works to sabotage and undermine it for shiggles.

Alternately, if you want to play as a non-lunatic but see the "male drow flees oppressive-yet-sexy matriarchy" as seeming uncomfortably /r9k/-esque then you could always play as a drow (male or female really) who realized that their society is fucking retarded and booked it the fuck out of that shithole in search of somewhere less retarded.

Would that be fedora?

>An irrational arachnophilic lunatic from a society that makes literally zero sense and would collapse in days, maybe even hours, if not for the micromanagement of an insane sadistic deity who actively works to sabotage and undermine it for shiggles.

Tbh, Drow have been flanderized into that since their society's initial appearance in the Vault of the Drow.

Why does nobody bat an eye at a Drow PC able to overcome their Chaotic Evil nature, but Orcs are forever forced to be CE?

I think I know the answer already and it's skin deep.

I guess not. Cheers user.

But user, honorable, redeemed orcs have been a thing since Warcraft 3.

Hell, even Baldur's Gate 2 had a group of ogres are stealing cows and you can convince them to just work as town protectors and they end up becoming pretty damn honorable and self-sacrificing.

be a nice guy

You are a male or a underpriviliged young woman who left Ust'Natha because it was just a shit place to live for you and you couldnt' bear that shit anymore. Now you're a mercenary wearing a hood and mask wherever you go because obsidian skin is a problem. That way you can keep whatever alignment you want.

>But user, honorable, redeemed orcs have been a thing since Warcraft 3.

Hell, non-evil orcs been a thing since Daggerfall. Possibly earlier.

I wonder how a matriarchy would work, at least with humans. I would imagine it wouldn't be "Middle Eastern shithole with the gender roles reversed", but instead it would be a society that sees all men as expendable and emotionally untrustworthy by default, but are valued, and sometimes even exalted, as physical labor. The women are more trusted with management, presiding, and people-oriented jobs, but are discouraged from "dirty and rough physical labor".
The problem is how would a matriarchy ever form organically? Ambition and competitiveness are very masculine traits in humanity. One possibility is that instead of ambition pushing society it instead pulls it. Honor and social conformity could ensure that the men won't collectively feel "uppity", but I think the most important thing is that the men have to feel exalted and valued by the women, and the idea of expendability has to be spun into a virtue such as courage.

Give me some ideas.

Dance naked under the full moon with a bastard sword.

But that just comes as off being Ed Greenwood

I remember capping that post. I was really sick with the flu

9/10ths of the reason much of Drowning society is the way it is comes from the fact that worship one of the biggest bitches in the entire pantheon. There is nothing organic about living under the rule of a power hungry nutball who Jill's herself to watching her followers stab each other in the back.

>how would a matriarchy ever form organically?
The most important god in your pantheon is thought of as a woman (or is literally one).
Maybe the language uses "she" by default, and "female" forms have more superlative connotations.
Maybe there are just fewer males - again, Warcraft did their Night Elf semi-matriarchy by having most males become druids who then fucked off to the Emerald Dream, so people"on the ground" were the girls.
Also the sci-fi movie "Sex Mission" is about two guys who wake up in apost-apocalyptic future where a war wiped out all males and the females that survived in the shelter decided that maledom causes wars and thus through mad science completely eliminated the male gene or the need for it.. The two protagonists are now attempting to run away from becoming bimbo'd. Film features a lot of tits.

Space drow with skintight bodysuits

Even for the males

Especially for the males (No homo)

FR had this asinine insistance that it was ok for Drizzt but orcs were super duper evil for real and forever and that everyone just "knew it was true".

Got a link? That sounds fucking amazing.

Here you go Some other ones

>She is worse than a Dwarf. She is, may the Spider Queen forgive me for uttering this, a Kender

>Is beatings the only way to get rid of drow masculinists?
>So it seems, so it seems....

>What is the cure for such disorders? Drider transformation.

Sounds like the Tchamburi. Or to a lesser extent the Hopi.

The Tchamburi aren't a matriarchy, granted -- they're actually an interesting "separate but equal" society in which men take all roles related to war, hunting, and chieftainship (since leadership of a tribe basically means being warleader) because women are seen as lacking the strength and courage necessary to make good warriors, but women take all roles related to gathering, trade, and diplomacy because men are seen as too hot-headed, emotional, and obsessed with warrior machismo to be effective diplomats or peacekeepers. Both of these sets of roles are viewed as equally important, and most members of Tchamburi society agree with their culture's views of gender roles; that is, most men figure they'd make shitty traders/diplomats and most women figure they'd make shitty warriors/hunters, but they're both fine with that and see that as something they wouldn't want to do anyway. IIRC the men also cook the meat, under the logic that it's only fitting that the one who catches it should be the one who cooks it.

But the Hopi actually are a matriarchy. Only men can be chieftains, but the role of a chieftain is largely to lead warriors, lead male rituals, and deal with outsiders. In practice the Hopi operate on an egalitarian level, but philosophically they consider women superior to men, and they favor daughters. That's not to say they consider men stupid, but they view the roles and duties of women (things like grinding cornmeal, husking corn, cooking, and making pottery) as far more important than those of men (which include things like weaving, hunting, fighting, and disciplining children). Weaving is good, but hunting is considered unimportant and warfare (indeed, any sort of violence) is actively despised, and only women can birth new life. Lineage and inheritance are traced along the female line, and land is generally owned by the woman.

Nothing wrong with this
>only half kidding there desu

*Tchambuli. Or Chambri. It's transliterated a few different ways.

bitter, devious and cowardly for males
arrogant, temperamental and persuasive for females

I thought the whole thing hinged on the fact that, like the spiders they revere, the females of the drow race were larger and more powerful than the males or at least had some masculine traits to their personalities that were exchanged with the males

>tall Amazonian dark elves

As if they could become more fetishy than they were before

...

Drow are still canonically smaller than regular elves.

So you're saying that they are the best elves for sexual bullying?

>tfw ywn bully a qt3.14 drow twink

I know we are talking drow here, but insertign every fetish into them doesn't help them.

Well we've gotta insert something into them.

Ourselves, as we play them in traditional games?

That's more TSR and hack writers.
Early FR had good/neutral orcs but TSR got buttmad about it and forced a retcon to say they were a different race altogether that just happened to look like orcs.

TSR is a fucking cancer.

More Lorraine Williams than TSR, but she was the face of the company for a long time, so yeah.

You have half-orcs for that.

>not having an alchemist or a wizard create magical sunglasses that alleviate all of your handicaps while out in the sun

Fucking plebs. USE YOUR IMAGINATION!

>"misandrists"
>In quotes
Drow society is blatantly misandric.

In Drow society the females are not taller or more physically powerful, but physically speaking they are the EQUALS of male Drow. So anything that a male can do a female can also do. In the Origin novels one of Drizzt's sisters is described as basically the Drow equivalent of She Hulk. But she's so damn stupid and sadistic (even by Drow standards) that their Matriarch keeps her on a short leash.

They achieve and maintain this by selective breeding. In another novel, during the attack on Mithral Hall (or whatever the fuck it's called, been too long since I read it) one of the Drow warriors is a male that stands head and shoulders taller than all the other Drow. Not only that, but he's seriously fucking strong. It talked about him spearing and carrying around a full grown Dwarf Warrior on the end of his trident as if he weighed nothing more than a piece of paper. This male (I have no recollection of what his name is) was also used as breeding stock by his House.

This is probably why they permit males to become warriors in the first place. Think about it, males in Drow society are basically slaves in everything but name. Why the fuck would you deliberately educate your slaves in how to fight and use weapons? That's just asking for a fucking uprising and or civil war. But Drow society HAS TO do this. It's all part of their eugenics program.

If Drizzt hadn't of escaped his House probably would have traded or outright sold him to another House as fresh breeding stock.

So after thousands of years of eugenics where the weak are weeded out, both among the females and the males, you wind up with a biological egalitarian society where everyone, regardless of your sex, are SUPER STRONK.

If they were humans instead of elves each one would be Hitlers fucking wet dream.

>I wonder how a matriarchy would work, at least with humans.
>a society that sees all men as expendable and emotionally untrustworthy by default, but are valued, and sometimes even exalted, as physical labor. The women are more trusted with management, presiding, and people-oriented jobs, but are discouraged from "dirty and rough physical labor"
>the idea of expendability has to be spun into a virtue such as courage
>Honor and social conformity could ensure that the men won't collectively feel "uppity"
So like real life?

Seriously though, fuck RL. I WISH we lived in a god damn patriarchy.

A patriarchy doesn't appeal to me any more than a matriarchy does. I want actual equality, not just "Give women liberation and more stuff but keep men in their gender role prison."

This is actually really interesting. Thanks for the read.

>The problem is how would a matriarchy ever form organically?
9/10 males die from sexual cannibalism so they need to be treated as property for lineages to continue

>inb4 no such thing as matriarchy in history

Pretty much, yeah.

No wonder Drow armor sucks.

>This male (I have no recollection of what his name is)
Uthegental.

But yes, Drow have actively engaged in breeding programs to ensure that their females are bigger and stronger than most.

>Uthegental

Thanks user, it was bugging the heck out of me that I couldn't remember his name. I wonder, is the reason why all Drow are so short is because over the generations male Drow were bred DOWN just as much as the female Drow were bred UP to be as big and strong as their male counterparts? So even though the females were getting taller, the males were getting shorter, and thus the average height for Drow society is much lower than their surface dwelling cousins?

Hey anthropology student here.

Speaking officially, patriarchy or matriarchy isn't measured by who has the power, because practically speaking it's impossible to say who has power or not. Most power is hidden, and the people with the most hidden power are probably some of the most powerful. Saying who's a power-patriarchy or power-matriarchy would basically be a guess and not a useful judgement, so that's not what's done.

Whether a culture or society is considered matriarchal or patriarchal is measured by who has the most prestige, not power, and by that reckoning all human societies are patriarchies. This is thought to be pretty much a continuation of a general trend in the animal kingdom, that males tend to show off more. Putting more effort into reproduction (at the very least by producing the larger gametes, and usually by expending more energy, nutrients and inconvenience on it) is the deciding factor in what half of a species zoologists call the female, so females are generally more choosy about their mates and, as a consequence, males need to demonstrate their worthiness by being the ones who make fancy nests, have bright colours, do dances, et cetera. In humans this manifests as men (generally speaking) going to further lengths to make themselves look impressive and become well-known, whereas women tend to care less (comparatively, again just as a trend because humans are super variable mentally) about showing off. It's as an extension of this that more men than women become famous and celebrated and there are generally more stories told about men than women.

tl;dr regardless of who actually has the power the measure of a patriarchy or matriarchy is which sex gets to play the heroes and villains most often.

Appreciated.

#y-you too

>Society engaging in selective breeding of itself

If they weren't in a fantasy setting they'd probably have piles of genetic disorders. Historically speaking, anyone who tries to do that fucks it up. Hell, we've done it to a bunch of animals, and from the perspective of their original wild ancestors they're basically all crippled, mentally retarded mutants who are really vulnerable to disease. They're better for our purposes now, but by any broader view of them as animals.

Selective breeding always reduces diversity, which is a bad thing in itself because it makes you more vulnerable to environmental change and disease, and the best you can get out of it is a creature that's better for maybe two or three particular jobs and shittier at everything else its ancestors could do.

They do have tons of genetic disorders. Why do you think it's virtually impossible for them to live on the surface, at least during the day?

Underneath the curse that turned their skin black they are probably 90% albinos. Not only that, but it's also why they all have red eyes. In the Drizzt Origin novels when Drizzt was born his sister thought that he was blind, and was surprised when he could track the movements of her fingers with her hands. They are so fucking inbred that anyone with non red eyes that isn't blind is considered exotic. Where as among any surface dwelling species differently colored eyes is perfectly normal. I wouldn't be surprised if being albino is also why they all have white hair, as well.

Not to mention that they probably are really damn vulnerable to diseases. It's just that the Underdark makes for the ultimate quarantine zone. And for the few times they do suffer widespread disease/plague, well that's what you have magic for. And if that doesn't work, just sacrifice a dozen of your sons to Lolth.

all those piercings and body tattoos just make it even more fedora
Also, grey skin is no where close to Obsidian

This, Drow with grey skin are halfbloods. It's canon.

>drow male
>weak feminine twink because the Underdark is Lolth's magical realm
>be bullied constantly by drow women
>escape to the surface to get away from all the bullying
>be bullied by human men instead

Poor drow men, they have it so great

>you will never be a feminine Drow twink trapped in an alley surrounded by buff sexy human men who take turns fondling your ear tips because they think all the squirming and high pitched squeaking is funny

He probably put in in quotes so that he distances himself from MRMfags.

Except women in general aren't trusted with management and leadership, even by other women. Not necessarily because they are generally not as good at it, because I don't know if that's the case, but because men are generally more confident or at least better at projecting confidence than women are.
While women might be discouraged from harder or dirtier jobs outside of childcare or medical fields (which is not very pretty), they usually stay out of it because they simply don't like them. You're likely not going to see garbagewomen because not only is it dirty but it requires significant strength exertion. Construction jobs that require significant strength exertion is an uphill battle for women, "patriarchy" or no "patriarchy", because most women don't have the upper body strength to be efficient in that field.
Also, ambition ensures that men are more willing than women to take risks, and those that succeed usually have enough pride and sense of earning to keep those rewards and have power, which is why most powerful people are men.

I wonder what the evolutionary rationale for sexual cannibalism is. Do the females really have trouble finding the proper amount of nutrients for their eggs? I imagine that reproduction is quite taxing to body substances, but a lot of animals don't have to resort to that.

I wonder if men should have a backup woman, but it's probably not easy for guys to get one when women are the choosy gender and men aren't.

Reminds me of those male peacock spiders that dance in order to impress cannibalistic females.

>He probably put in in quotes so that he distances himself from MRMfags.
Which is stupid, but not surprising, given how most people are ignorant and think MRA = traditionalist/TheRedPill.

>Except women in general aren't trusted with management and leadership, even by other women. Not necessarily because they are generally not as good at it, because I don't know if that's the case, but because men are generally more confident or at least better at projecting confidence than women are.
>While women might be discouraged from harder or dirtier jobs outside of childcare or medical fields (which is not very pretty), they usually stay out of it because they simply don't like them. You're likely not going to see garbagewomen because not only is it dirty but it requires significant strength exertion. Construction jobs that require significant strength exertion is an uphill battle for women, "patriarchy" or no "patriarchy", because most women don't have the upper body strength to be efficient in that field.
>Also, ambition ensures that men are more willing than women to take risks, and those that succeed usually have enough pride and sense of earning to keep those rewards and have power, which is why most powerful people are men.
Interesting how you didn't say a word about men being considered expendable and untrustworthy, being conditioned to view expendability as a virtue, and being shamed into conformity if they question it in order to stop them from collectively rebelling.

Actually yes, it is indeed incredibly hard to find enough resources. Remember, very very few insects raise their young. So species like spiders and praying mantis have to pump the eggs themselves up with as much protein to ensure their offspring don't die as soon as they hatch. It's the same difference between a snake that hatches very small but fully formed ready to catch it's first prey, and a baby mouse completely bald, blind, and in desperate need of it's mother's milk. It's the reason why female mosquitoes evolved to suck blood. While male mosquitoes happily survive their entire lives off of flower nectar.

This makes me wonder if the extremely poor women in Drow society, the absolute bottom of the barrel kind of poor, kill and cannibalize their own male lovers in order to feed their children.

It's a bit interesting actually, how Christian European values often women's more than men; like the women and children first 'rule' of ship evacuations and chivalrous code often stressing respect of all women, those especially are intriguing.
I think it's honestly a patriarchal thing, in that men are seen as generally better, so being respectful to the 'lesser sex' should happen. It's pretty fucked as a value nowadays, but I can see in some way why it was so.
And I do see in modern times the huge "you can't hit women [regardless if they hit you or not]" value and things like it. It honestly seems to root from a tribalistic value of men as things of power or something, except in the way that it respects women for being less brawny.

What would be really interesting is if someone created a Drow society that was still 100% matriarchal. But it was also chivalrous. So women are told to never ever hit men, and in times of emergencies it's men and children first. Unless it's a pregnant woman, because she's viewed as basically just the packaging around the unborn child.

>Interesting how you didn't say a word about men being considered expendable and untrustworthy, being conditioned to view expendability as a virtue, and being shamed into conformity if they question it in order to stop them from collectively rebelling.
I didn't feel a need to argue against it, although now you mention it I would consider most societies to consider men and women to be considered more trustworthy for certain tasks than the other, such as childcare for women and leadership in military and hunting for men.
I think that expendibility isn't a virtue in our society, but a vice that men are considered to have by default, but that's just my theory.
I heard this theory that men are complacent in most societies because society promises each of them with a wife. If men don't get their partner, they become dissatisfied and start having "beta uprisings" or "jihads". I have no confidence in that theory.

But how would that make sense? If populations were decimated or worse it would be a greater setback if more women died than men than the other way around.

Backstabbing silvertounged bastards.

Just tone down the edge.

>Why does nobody bat an eye at a Drow PC able to overcome their Chaotic Evil nature, but Orcs are forever forced to be CE?
Because you're playing the wrong edition.

>not
>they have it so hard

One task, simpleton!

*lashes*

Because a single woman can give birth to lots of children. But each one of those children requires a dedicated parent to raise it. One woman would struggle raising 8 children. But one woman with a harem of 8 husbands, each one dedicated to the child they are raising (especially if they know that child is their own biological child) will do just fine. In order to do the bare minimum, after giving birth she only needs to see the child each day long enough to nurse it. And after it's weaned she doesn't need to see that child at all. Not to mention the less time she has to spend on her previous child the sooner she can give birth to her next child.

>I wonder what the evolutionary rationale for sexual cannibalism is.
it's just a glitch. they don't do it as much in the wild.

>fedora

>a gif that doesn't giffy

What the flippity flapjacking fuck is wrong with you?

Righteous punishment for wrongful use of terminology. Those two seconds of waiting for something to move are two seconds you'll never get back.

I wasn't even the user you responded to, you asshole.

>not automatically looking at the filesize of gifs before you bother hovering over them
It's like you're intentionally being inefficient or something

Nobody is innocent.

Yes

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Yes, forget the lore and extrapolate from the mechanics.

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