The second quote is a collection of posts by myself in the Mature board in the D&D section on the Drow Question. As I regularly post the relevant sections of the other person's post in my own, I shall not post the whole exchange, just my side. Hopefully this will help people understand society in a dialectical manner, and help them not make stupid fantasy worlds which make no sense when they organise an RP of any sort.
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Ok, looking at it from a historical perspective, but one which takes into account the traditional D&D world, and not only that world, but ours as well, as that is the only world we have evidence for these types of social phenomena, and not any of the other worlds that exist for the D20 rules, fantasy or not, I will merely explain the effects of these weapons on the world. As it is generally agreed that it is mostly a flavour issue, the original question is moot, but there is still confusion over the effects of gunpowder on society and how gunpowder would be brought upon a society with wizards.
Firstly, we take the standard fantasy world, with completely unreal sexual equality and magic. That is fine. We have different races, that is fine (and why must it always be the Dwarves that make guns? I thought they were more into axes and such?), the different races serve just the same difference as the different evolutions of humanity (as we stand now, and our long dead cousin, the Neanderthal).
Now, Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, and all other races without a penalty to INT must be assumed to be on a relative tech level(here I take tech as it would mean in D&D, both magic and unmagical means of doing things) and social stage as appropriate to their environment.
I mean that Elves would not just be living in village-communes because it is Elf culture, they would be living in such because they had not yet attained a higher development of technology, magical or no.
Extend that to all races. For instance, Orcs could be said to still be in a tribal state, right next to feudal humans, on the same land, purely because they are less able to make the innovations which make the transition from nomad-tribalism to village-commune because they are not as smart. One could say that they have clerics who could make some of the effects that wizards can, but I would reply: 'what does it matter if an Orc cleric can cast a spell on plants, making them better crops if he isn't smart enough to figure out that he should?'. Apply that to all races and societies as needed.
Now, assuming the societies in a late feudal stage of society, we see Nobles with their horses and their armor and their specialised way of fighting. We also see large peasant masses at battles to, but just like in RL history, they were there merely for the sake of having someone your nobles could kill with impunity. But not all nobles would go into combat as Knights. It is rather pointless. If there is magic, why? So we see that the smart ones, not the ones to realise the importance of magic, but rather the ones smart enough to have decent skill in magic, would turn to the Arcane.
High INT, being something you acquire and not something you are born with, will therefore be present in most of the aristocracy, taught from birth, and also, they will have the use of magic. In such a case, I will not say that the majority of the Aristos will be INT18, no, not at all, that would be stupid, as personal aptitude also comes into it, but most will be around INT11-13. Enough for a few levels of wizard spells anyway.
From this we see the manifestation of feudalism in this case being very different at a glance from that which dominated Europe, but only as different as that which dominated Japan was different. That is, only in looks. It is still feudalism. Now there are lots of other things to take into consideration, like the ability of high level wizards to bring beings from other Planes to ours. This will make the feudalism more resilient, or rather, it will make the epoch of 'High-Feudalism' longer, but there will still be the inherent conflict in the feudal class itself, the desire for unity, driving them at once toward central authority with the monarch, but also the desire for separation, driving them away. Also, we shall see the same situation as always occur in feudalism, like the one Aristos holding lands under one kind in one area, but holding other lands in another area under another king, but at the same time having his lands held as vassal by his own king. So we see the same social forces manifesting themselves and in the same way, just through different means. Magic, as opposed to steel.
But, this being late feudal, and not merely feudal, some changes to this conception have to be made. There are bankers in the towns, the ability to acquire the spell components so necessary to the maintaining of the feudal structure will come from trading, an occupation few Aristos will deal with as they are more interested in their feudal right to crush the serf. Not only will the spell components come from the traders, but also the luxury. These traders, possibly sorcerers, possibly down on their luck Aristos, in all cases not part of the economic structure necessary for the preservation of the old order, will get their goods and their wealth not from the always from the east, but from other planes possibly. It doesn’t matter. The fact that an Aristos wizard can create a nice ornate chair means nothing if a merchant can sell him one for half the price. But that half price chair is still a luxury, and as the output of the serfs farm increases not, the Aristos needs income. He presses his serf harder, taxes him. He takes out loans from the bankers and merchants. In some cases he leaves his own class and joins them. In every case the Aristos are destroying his ability to maintain himself as an Aristos. He has his feudal rights, and he fights to maintain them.
The merchants, the rising middle class has its own political agenda. The feudal obligations and dues expected of it as the third estate are a burden to its growth, and the feudal rights, exemptions and privileges of the Aristos are barring its way to political power, that which must always accompany economic power.
The kings in their ever lasting conflicts with the Aristos cease relying on them for their armies, if they are in conflict with the nobles, why are they using them as troops? They need their own armies. They begin to make their own armies.
As the Aristos are put further into debt by his luxury and his class occupation (the Arcane) he realises that he cannot get any more wealth out of his ever crushed serf. He sets him free. The serf buys himself his freedom. He buys with that his land.
But as always, the land is shrunken from the size he had as a serf. The Aristos takes the common land and the sizable portions stripped from the plots he gives to the now free peasant and turns it over to profitable agriculture. Here that was sheep. There? It matters not.
The serf, formerly crushed by the imposts of the Aristos, is now crushed by the taxes made on him as a landowning member of the third estate, combined with his now small land, he is poor. Worse off now than as a serf, though politically free. This class of yeomen develops, trained in a simple art of war. In England it was the Longbow, France used foreign merc's, Switzerland used Pikes. The weapon doesn't matter. Its democratic nature does.
This, combined in RL with the Trebuchet meant that the Aristos were no longer safe. Guns didn't pierce the Knights armor, the expense of the merchants goods deprived him of it. The cannon didn't batter down the Nobleman’s castle, the king's Trebuchet did. These weapons were only available because a class with considerable social power, the merchants, the middle class, the infant bourgeoisie, needed them to make its own revolution. The kings in their conflict with the Aristos used these forces against the Aristos, and won, but as soon as their victory was granted, the abandoned the bourgeoisie.
But just saying this happened is not enough. "Sure," you will say, "That is what happened here, on earth, but there? You yourself said that the Nobles had magic, and you make no mention of this applying to the middle-class apart from a few class-traitor Nobles and some Sorcerers. How can they compete?"
That is just my point, with such little magic on their side, just how can they? They do not have the priesthood, as the upper echelons of that are exclusively Aristos, and all the third estate priests, or clerics, or druids, are low level, with little experience outside their section of the town, or their peasant community, so they matter little. How does the bourgeoisie gain control? In any war like the English Civil War, or the French Revolution, they must surely be crushed, as Fireball beats Trebuchet, in fact, Fireball burns Trebuchet.
What is needed is something which nullifies the advantage of the Aristos and their Arcane ways. This may be a situation like that in England where a large portion of the Aristocracy was Bourgeoisie-ified, or it will simply be the advance of non-Arcane technology.
It has been said above that when someone invents gunpowder, wouldn't the wizards just kill/amnesia people to solve the problem? Yes, they would, however, inventions are made again and again, and those spell components are getting more and more expensive.
But then look at the other social phenomena associated with the decline of feudalism. There are the twin features of the already mentioned bourgeoisification of a portion of the Aristocracy, and the Aristocrification of a portion of the bourgeoisie. In each case, the exclusive nature of magic is lessening, and the instinct to simply dismiss gunpowder from the world is growing less and less in proportion.
Only when the commons have a level playing field, either by enough magic coming into their hands, or by a combination of magic and gunpowder, will they be able to create the bourgeois republic, whether its result is a compromise between the Aristos and the Bourgeoisie as in England, on as the complete destruction of the Aristos as a class in the territory of each particular state will depend in the given circumstances of that state.
But one must return, at the end of all that to the original question posed, that of the effects of these weapons on the world. Unlike in RL where the Aristos was defeated mainly through debt and then soundly crushed on the battlefield through pikes, bows and Genoese crossbows, the D&D Aristos can only be defeated by such if their wealth becomes so low that they cannot afford the components for Fireball, but if that case occurs, it will not matter as the third estate will have more advanced weaponry, be it low level magic devices, or gunpowder, mass produced.
So the answer is thus: If you see the feudal order in your campaign collapsing soon (not necessarily in the timeframe of your campaign, but soon historically, decades or so.) then gunpowder should by all means exist, and should be used against the Aristos whenever possible, but not only gunpowder. If, however, you see the feudal order lasting for centuries more, then gunpowder will not have been invented, as no one needed it yet.
However, most people will ignore this and say Elves live in the forest, cities being rare because they don't like them not because there weren’t many cities in the feudal age, and that Orcs live in tribes because they are not disciplined enough to settle, even if one gave them a +2INT modifier, and ignore all comparisons with history, because it is fantasy, and they want fantasy, not real life feudalism with magic.
Firstly, we take the standard fantasy world, with completely unreal sexual equality and magic. That is fine. We have different races, that is fine (and why must it always be the Dwarves that make guns? I thought they were more into axes and such?), the different races serve just the same difference as the different evolutions of humanity (as we stand now, and our long dead cousin, the Neanderthal).
Now, Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, and all other races without a penalty to INT must be assumed to be on a relative tech level(here I take tech as it would mean in D&D, both magic and unmagical means of doing things) and social stage as appropriate to their environment.
I mean that Elves would not just be living in village-communes because it is Elf culture, they would be living in such because they had not yet attained a higher development of technology, magical or no.
Extend that to all races. For instance, Orcs could be said to still be in a tribal state, right next to feudal humans, on the same land, purely because they are less able to make the innovations which make the transition from nomad-tribalism to village-commune because they are not as smart. One could say that they have clerics who could make some of the effects that wizards can, but I would reply: 'what does it matter if an Orc cleric can cast a spell on plants, making them better crops if he isn't smart enough to figure out that he should?'. Apply that to all races and societies as needed.
Now, assuming the societies in a late feudal stage of society, we see Nobles with their horses and their armor and their specialised way of fighting. We also see large peasant masses at battles to, but just like in RL history, they were there merely for the sake of having someone your nobles could kill with impunity. But not all nobles would go into combat as Knights. It is rather pointless. If there is magic, why? So we see that the smart ones, not the ones to realise the importance of magic, but rather the ones smart enough to have decent skill in magic, would turn to the Arcane.
High INT, being something you acquire and not something you are born with, will therefore be present in most of the aristocracy, taught from birth, and also, they will have the use of magic. In such a case, I will not say that the majority of the Aristos will be INT18, no, not at all, that would be stupid, as personal aptitude also comes into it, but most will be around INT11-13. Enough for a few levels of wizard spells anyway.
From this we see the manifestation of feudalism in this case being very different at a glance from that which dominated Europe, but only as different as that which dominated Japan was different. That is, only in looks. It is still feudalism. Now there are lots of other things to take into consideration, like the ability of high level wizards to bring beings from other Planes to ours. This will make the feudalism more resilient, or rather, it will make the epoch of 'High-Feudalism' longer, but there will still be the inherent conflict in the feudal class itself, the desire for unity, driving them at once toward central authority with the monarch, but also the desire for separation, driving them away. Also, we shall see the same situation as always occur in feudalism, like the one Aristos holding lands under one kind in one area, but holding other lands in another area under another king, but at the same time having his lands held as vassal by his own king. So we see the same social forces manifesting themselves and in the same way, just through different means. Magic, as opposed to steel.
But, this being late feudal, and not merely feudal, some changes to this conception have to be made. There are bankers in the towns, the ability to acquire the spell components so necessary to the maintaining of the feudal structure will come from trading, an occupation few Aristos will deal with as they are more interested in their feudal right to crush the serf. Not only will the spell components come from the traders, but also the luxury. These traders, possibly sorcerers, possibly down on their luck Aristos, in all cases not part of the economic structure necessary for the preservation of the old order, will get their goods and their wealth not from the always from the east, but from other planes possibly. It doesn’t matter. The fact that an Aristos wizard can create a nice ornate chair means nothing if a merchant can sell him one for half the price. But that half price chair is still a luxury, and as the output of the serfs farm increases not, the Aristos needs income. He presses his serf harder, taxes him. He takes out loans from the bankers and merchants. In some cases he leaves his own class and joins them. In every case the Aristos are destroying his ability to maintain himself as an Aristos. He has his feudal rights, and he fights to maintain them.
The merchants, the rising middle class has its own political agenda. The feudal obligations and dues expected of it as the third estate are a burden to its growth, and the feudal rights, exemptions and privileges of the Aristos are barring its way to political power, that which must always accompany economic power.
The kings in their ever lasting conflicts with the Aristos cease relying on them for their armies, if they are in conflict with the nobles, why are they using them as troops? They need their own armies. They begin to make their own armies.
As the Aristos are put further into debt by his luxury and his class occupation (the Arcane) he realises that he cannot get any more wealth out of his ever crushed serf. He sets him free. The serf buys himself his freedom. He buys with that his land.
But as always, the land is shrunken from the size he had as a serf. The Aristos takes the common land and the sizable portions stripped from the plots he gives to the now free peasant and turns it over to profitable agriculture. Here that was sheep. There? It matters not.
The serf, formerly crushed by the imposts of the Aristos, is now crushed by the taxes made on him as a landowning member of the third estate, combined with his now small land, he is poor. Worse off now than as a serf, though politically free. This class of yeomen develops, trained in a simple art of war. In England it was the Longbow, France used foreign merc's, Switzerland used Pikes. The weapon doesn't matter. Its democratic nature does.
This, combined in RL with the Trebuchet meant that the Aristos were no longer safe. Guns didn't pierce the Knights armor, the expense of the merchants goods deprived him of it. The cannon didn't batter down the Nobleman’s castle, the king's Trebuchet did. These weapons were only available because a class with considerable social power, the merchants, the middle class, the infant bourgeoisie, needed them to make its own revolution. The kings in their conflict with the Aristos used these forces against the Aristos, and won, but as soon as their victory was granted, the abandoned the bourgeoisie.
But just saying this happened is not enough. "Sure," you will say, "That is what happened here, on earth, but there? You yourself said that the Nobles had magic, and you make no mention of this applying to the middle-class apart from a few class-traitor Nobles and some Sorcerers. How can they compete?"
That is just my point, with such little magic on their side, just how can they? They do not have the priesthood, as the upper echelons of that are exclusively Aristos, and all the third estate priests, or clerics, or druids, are low level, with little experience outside their section of the town, or their peasant community, so they matter little. How does the bourgeoisie gain control? In any war like the English Civil War, or the French Revolution, they must surely be crushed, as Fireball beats Trebuchet, in fact, Fireball burns Trebuchet.
What is needed is something which nullifies the advantage of the Aristos and their Arcane ways. This may be a situation like that in England where a large portion of the Aristocracy was Bourgeoisie-ified, or it will simply be the advance of non-Arcane technology.
It has been said above that when someone invents gunpowder, wouldn't the wizards just kill/amnesia people to solve the problem? Yes, they would, however, inventions are made again and again, and those spell components are getting more and more expensive.
But then look at the other social phenomena associated with the decline of feudalism. There are the twin features of the already mentioned bourgeoisification of a portion of the Aristocracy, and the Aristocrification of a portion of the bourgeoisie. In each case, the exclusive nature of magic is lessening, and the instinct to simply dismiss gunpowder from the world is growing less and less in proportion.
Only when the commons have a level playing field, either by enough magic coming into their hands, or by a combination of magic and gunpowder, will they be able to create the bourgeois republic, whether its result is a compromise between the Aristos and the Bourgeoisie as in England, on as the complete destruction of the Aristos as a class in the territory of each particular state will depend in the given circumstances of that state.
But one must return, at the end of all that to the original question posed, that of the effects of these weapons on the world. Unlike in RL where the Aristos was defeated mainly through debt and then soundly crushed on the battlefield through pikes, bows and Genoese crossbows, the D&D Aristos can only be defeated by such if their wealth becomes so low that they cannot afford the components for Fireball, but if that case occurs, it will not matter as the third estate will have more advanced weaponry, be it low level magic devices, or gunpowder, mass produced.
So the answer is thus: If you see the feudal order in your campaign collapsing soon (not necessarily in the timeframe of your campaign, but soon historically, decades or so.) then gunpowder should by all means exist, and should be used against the Aristos whenever possible, but not only gunpowder. If, however, you see the feudal order lasting for centuries more, then gunpowder will not have been invented, as no one needed it yet.
However, most people will ignore this and say Elves live in the forest, cities being rare because they don't like them not because there weren’t many cities in the feudal age, and that Orcs live in tribes because they are not disciplined enough to settle, even if one gave them a +2INT modifier, and ignore all comparisons with history, because it is fantasy, and they want fantasy, not real life feudalism with magic.
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I really do not understand the Drow society. A matriarchal society with slaves? Here is my problem: As happened here, whenever slaver became a generalised system of production that 'pride' associated with free labour went down... As did that of being a woman. For and example, look at Sparta and Athens as examples. The helots, being closer to serfs than slaves, while having no authority were not able to be commanded around to do just anything, and could be taken away by the state. Because of this, spartiate/helot sexual relationships, while far from unheard of, were not the norm. Because of this, women were prided (still just glorified bakeries, though...). In Athens(and most other hellenic cities) Where slave labour was the norm, and the slaves were chattel, the men could have their way with the women slaves (and, of course, as was more common, with the male), Just as free women were able to have their way with their male (and, not unheard of, female) slaves. The women there were relegated to pumping babies and their household duties made them, in effect, nothing more than the Head Concubine. Also: USA/CSA for another example...
So, in such a society as the Drow, either Matriarchy must be given up or slavery. It is one or the other, unless one assumes that the slavery is a relatively new phenomenon among the Drow, such that these tendencies have not had the time to build (as for economics, the same thing holds, Matriarchy, or slavery...)
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Well, as I said in that post:
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The thing is, with the necessity of protecting the birth-giving capacity of the population, the male drow would have to be the warriors and the ones who capture the slaves. This will lead to claims of property ownership and heredity on the part of the males. Only through divine intervention could the tendency to father-right(inheritance through the paternal line) within drow society be overcome. But in that case, the male drow would abandon their worship of the spider queen and follow other gods.
This situation would destroy the drow civilization as we know it. Either the males and their new god win, in which case the cult of Lolth would be suppressed and possibly destroyed. Or the females win. The drow economy would be set back greatly due to the fact that the females would have to assert their dominance so far that the males become slaves, and outside slaves are shunned. With the reduction in productive capacity the drow economy would be shot for generations, and untill the males are freed and another source of labour is found, either free or foreign slaves. In either case the tendency toward father-right would rise again. Still assuming the female drow won, the males, becoming slaves would no longer be fit for use in the army, as the army is a class organisation: It is the organ of dominance of the slave holder over the slave... The males are the slaves... Because of the new nature of the Drow state, either things would become more peaceful or, more likely, intra-drow conflict would increase as each city state tried to gain more slaves. Because of these conflicts, female drow will die, reducing the reproductive capacity of the drow.
If the civil-war between male and female drow were to come to a stalemate, either they would be destroyed from outside or a compromise would be reaced whereby the cult of Lolth still exists and there is father-right -- or at least some great concessions toward it. In such a case Lolth will slowly dwindle in importanceas she is eclipsed by the god of the males, untill eventually she is nothing more than a fertility goddess.
Why not?
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I really want to disagree, and say that constant purging is possible in theory(barring self extinction), but I cannot, you make a compelling argument.
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To Key:
Ah, you misunderstand.
It is not that the individual drow warrior wants to keep a captured domocile when attacking another settlement, or wants to keep the captured slaves, but rather the thought that: "The females get everything, but we do all the fighting. Without us there would be no drow army, no slaves. I demand the right to own slaves, and to give them to whoever I want should I die."
As the importance of the males in a combat role increases, so to will support for these ideas, so there will be more ferment in a really big war where that side is losing, or just after a big war whether they won or lost.
The reason you do not demand these rights is because you already have property rights as they exist in capitalism, whether your wallet is able to excersise them or not.
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Not the same. Look at it like this: What if women were allowed to own property, apart from the occasional veto of a male? The difference is, whith the drow, it is a racial necessity to have the males as loyal soldiers, and therefore without that veto. Of course one could imagine such a veto dwinddling into disuse, but when the time comes to get rid of it in law, there would be a reaction.
But that dwinddling of the females right is predicated on an unusually peaceful period in which drow society is not upset by anything: Maintaining leadership for many generations, no wars of a more than limited nature, no economic collapse, no war of the gods...
In short, not a great chance of that happening.
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Please realize that I have offered the following disclaimer in a previous post:
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I am basing everything I am saying in this assumption. Female drow rule, and that is, as you said, the cultural norm, but not everyone agrees with the cultural norm. As objective factors increase the possibility for change, support for opposing view will grow, untill the old cultural norms can no longer hold their ground at which point the system collapses and a new system arises. This is how all revolutions (and counter-revolutions) happen in real life, is it so hard to imagine that things would be so similar.
Just as it used to be, but that has changed for the better over the last 200 or so years. The main difference between any standard patriarchal society and the drow is that the male dominance was a product of more or less organic economic development, whereas with the drow, that development didn't happen and the women also being backed by a deity.
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So, in such a society as the Drow, either Matriarchy must be given up or slavery. It is one or the other, unless one assumes that the slavery is a relatively new phenomenon among the Drow, such that these tendencies have not had the time to build (as for economics, the same thing holds, Matriarchy, or slavery...)
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Do you think it's unreasonable for a female drow to keep a slave for sexual pleasure?
Well, as I said in that post:
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[...]women were able to have their way with their male (and, not unheard of, female) slaves.
This situation would destroy the drow civilization as we know it. Either the males and their new god win, in which case the cult of Lolth would be suppressed and possibly destroyed. Or the females win. The drow economy would be set back greatly due to the fact that the females would have to assert their dominance so far that the males become slaves, and outside slaves are shunned. With the reduction in productive capacity the drow economy would be shot for generations, and untill the males are freed and another source of labour is found, either free or foreign slaves. In either case the tendency toward father-right would rise again. Still assuming the female drow won, the males, becoming slaves would no longer be fit for use in the army, as the army is a class organisation: It is the organ of dominance of the slave holder over the slave... The males are the slaves... Because of the new nature of the Drow state, either things would become more peaceful or, more likely, intra-drow conflict would increase as each city state tried to gain more slaves. Because of these conflicts, female drow will die, reducing the reproductive capacity of the drow.
If the civil-war between male and female drow were to come to a stalemate, either they would be destroyed from outside or a compromise would be reaced whereby the cult of Lolth still exists and there is father-right -- or at least some great concessions toward it. In such a case Lolth will slowly dwindle in importanceas she is eclipsed by the god of the males, untill eventually she is nothing more than a fertility goddess.
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So, if a leader is in power, she can not start purging her followers to remain in control, or assassinate downwards.
Why not?
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Because drow need to worry about threats [...]
I really want to disagree, and say that constant purging is possible in theory(barring self extinction), but I cannot, you make a compelling argument.
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To Key:
Ah, you misunderstand.
It is not that the individual drow warrior wants to keep a captured domocile when attacking another settlement, or wants to keep the captured slaves, but rather the thought that: "The females get everything, but we do all the fighting. Without us there would be no drow army, no slaves. I demand the right to own slaves, and to give them to whoever I want should I die."
As the importance of the males in a combat role increases, so to will support for these ideas, so there will be more ferment in a really big war where that side is losing, or just after a big war whether they won or lost.
The reason you do not demand these rights is because you already have property rights as they exist in capitalism, whether your wallet is able to excersise them or not.
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Doesn't the male drow have this right, apart from the occasional veto of a female drow? Sort of like an American has property rights, except for the occasional veto of eminent domain.
Not the same. Look at it like this: What if women were allowed to own property, apart from the occasional veto of a male? The difference is, whith the drow, it is a racial necessity to have the males as loyal soldiers, and therefore without that veto. Of course one could imagine such a veto dwinddling into disuse, but when the time comes to get rid of it in law, there would be a reaction.
But that dwinddling of the females right is predicated on an unusually peaceful period in which drow society is not upset by anything: Maintaining leadership for many generations, no wars of a more than limited nature, no economic collapse, no war of the gods...
In short, not a great chance of that happening.
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This might have been possible if males completely dominated drow "armies", but I don't think this is the case. Afaik female clerics (of course, not the highest-ranking ones) are present in many battle group, and males get to see first-hand what they can do. Likewise, female warriors are not uncommon either, as iirc at least in the Realms female drow tend to be bigger and stronger than their male counterparts. As far as I know, drow warfare is not even close to an all-male occupation, despite what the new DotU claims.
Please realize that I have offered the following disclaimer in a previous post:
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As the importance of the males in a combat role increases, so to will support for these ideas, so there will be more ferment in a really big war where that side is losing, or just after a big war whether they won or lost.
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In other words, it's important to look at the cultural norm. The cultural norm for drow is that female drow rule the roost.
I am basing everything I am saying in this assumption. Female drow rule, and that is, as you said, the cultural norm, but not everyone agrees with the cultural norm. As objective factors increase the possibility for change, support for opposing view will grow, untill the old cultural norms can no longer hold their ground at which point the system collapses and a new system arises. This is how all revolutions (and counter-revolutions) happen in real life, is it so hard to imagine that things would be so similar.
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If our cultural norm was that men bossed women around, then I don't think most women would be upset when vetoed by a male. Our current cultural norm is that the government rules, and there aren't that many anarchists running around.
Just as it used to be, but that has changed for the better over the last 200 or so years. The main difference between any standard patriarchal society and the drow is that the male dominance was a product of more or less organic economic development, whereas with the drow, that development didn't happen and the women also being backed by a deity.
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The underlined 'similar' was in the original, 'different'... which made no sense, and in fact was the exact opposite to the word I intended.
So, the big question is this: was it all in vain, did it help you at all? Do you have any disagreement with my on matters of fact or method?
