How To Run Drow In Your DND Campaign

Deep beneath the earth, a goddess schemes among her webbing, her half-arachnoid body picking its way through the abyss. The bodies of third-born sons lie around her, sacrifices that continue to empower her. Every corpse serves to pave the path of her revenge against Corellon, the god of the elves in the Dungeons & Dragons canon.

This is Lolth, and her worshipers are the drow, a subspecies of elf that had long betrayed the elven god and paid dearly for it, cast deep into the earth to live and fester in their shared hatred of all those who wander the surface. At least, that’s how the surface-dwelling folk understand them.

Drow Culture

To run the drow or a drow character, you, as the Dungeon Master, have to understand their mindset. Though the drow are not a monolith, it’s important to understand how these characters were raised culturally. This will better help you to make decisions for the drow NPCs and their place in your story.

Like most subspecies and species within the Dungeons & Dragons canon, the lore, culture, and religion of the drow will be heavily setting-dependent. While this article covers Forgotten Realms’ understanding of the drow, Eberron and Wildemount will have far different interpretations of how these elves behave. Your homebrew may do little with these interpretations other than use them as inspiration.

The archetypal drow is from the Underdark. According to Drizzt, the most famous drow in Dungeons & Dragons canon, station and status is the Way of Lolth.

The station of oneself and one’s family is everything. Ambition is the birthright of the drow, and Lolth revels in the chaos sown by the backstabbing, treachery, and total annihilation of her followers’ rivals—all in pursuit of station and status.

To speak of unity in a drow city like Menzoberranzen would be the equivalent of a joke, and not a particularly funny one. Unity, as far as the drow are concerned, is a myth.

In drow society, the matriarchy reigns with an iron fist, oppressing their men and enslaving sapient creatures. The matriarchy is upheld by priestesses of Lolth, undercutting any attempts by commonfolk to improve their lot in life. When running a drow character, you may wish to examine their relationship with Lolth and the matriarchal culture.

To live comfortably, someone must be beneath you, and someone else must be beneath them. This hierarchy has been enforced and perpetuated for generations, creating chaos within the Underdark.

Lolth is a spiteful goddess, and the drow have been living under her for longer than their oldest matriarch can remember.

They are as much prisoners to her as the prisoners they keep, though many cannot see it. Those who do are often excommunicated, killed, or flee to the surface in search of a new understanding.

Udadrow

Udadrow will align with the drow as the surface dwellers know them. In fact, many surface dwellers are not aware that there are any other subspecies of drow, assuming that the udadrow are the beginning and end of it.

Udadrow are typically raised within the culture of the Underdark and the matriarchy of Lolth.

However, some udadrow do not worship the Spider Queen. There is a divide between the two, with the worshipers referring to themselves as being ‘Lolth-sworn.’

Lorendrow And Aevendrow

You may not be entirely comfortable playing with these themes. This is okay!

While udadrow are the dominant culture of the drow, and likely the one your players will be expecting you to run, the Lorendrow and Aevendrow disavowed Lolth, splintering off from their brethren to forge their own way in the world.

The Lorendrow live amongst the trees in a jungle, living similarly to wood elves and their kin. Aevendrow refer to themselves as ‘starlit elves,’ taking pride in learning magic in their secretive communities north of Toril.

Not much lore has been established for either of these subspecies, so you can get creative with how you present their cultures. Consider researching isolated communities and remote areas to help you with this!

Understanding The Drow

In past editions, the drow were given the evil alignment, which perpetuated the alarming idea that some species in Dungeons & Dragons were inherently evil.

Not only is being ‘the only good drow’ a heavy burden to place on Drizzt Do’Urden’s shoulders, but the concept cannot and does not work for a game based on any facsimile of realism.

Consider doing away with the concept of inherent evil. It becomes cartoonish, and
can eliminate a lot of nuance from drow characters.
There’s a difference between choosing an ideology with evil tenets and being born evil. WOTC itself is already departing from the idea that any creature can have an inherent evil nature.

A useful way to think of this is that many of the drow are not evil by birth. In the Forgotten Realms, many drow are evil because they choose to uphold evil institutions. Drow are not inclined to treat other species poorly inherently, but because they are indoctrinated to do so.

In the Drizzt novels, Drizzt is taught that the surface is an unbearable, vile place full of people who will betray and kill him. When he emerges, he sees this isn’t so.

A good amount of the xenophobia in the Underdark is perpetuated by Lolth and her worship. When playing the drow, keep this concept in mind.

You can play a drow sinisterly, and you don’t have to go into the social nuance of it all to do so, but you may wish to avoid falling into a creative pitfall. This concept is a great way to explore characters outside what’s been done for years.

The Matriarchy

Every city in the Underdark dominated by drow has noble houses headed by a matron mother. Typically, these matron mothers would rule together over their respective cities, but more often than not, are trying to covertly kill each other.

An idea that might help you to expand on this concept is that the creator of these houses based them on the Five Families in the New York mafia. That’s the sort of Game of Thrones-esque politics you’re dealing with.

But you don’t have to run it this way! In your game, you can decide how strong Lolth’s influence still is, and how the matrons might be dealing with it. How many are left, and what are they doing to maintain their power?

Are the drow starting to sicken of their oppression, or has zealotry gone too far?

Ultimately, it’s hard to run the udadrow in the Forgotten Realms without the matriarchal tendencies and the view that weakness will lead them to their deaths, so you may want to turn your attention towards it when choosing to run the drow, as it can and will affect how other species of your world will view them.

Roleplaying The Drow

It’s worth noting that noble drow in Menzoberranzan will be different from the soldier who thought to avoid a death on the street by choosing a death on the battlefield. In turn, that soldier will be different from drow homesteading in the unfamiliar Underdark or the drow baking for a living.

Commoners will still live under the dominating chaos of Lolth’s influence, but they may be slightly more worried about weaving spidersilk shirts for their children than they would be assassinating their rival matron’s eldest daughter. You may even want to focus on those stories more, as they’re still relatively untold from a lore perspective.

Drow are diverse, dynamic, and fun to play. They can have vast personalities, like every other species, and may lend some much needed nuance to a campaign.

Here are a couple of ways to roleplay them, if you need help:

Pragmatic

Years of living in the Underdark would understandably harden a person. Your drow may have been exploring the tunnels of the Underdark for hundreds of years, or watched their siblings get picked off one by one in the higher court.

Perhaps they cannot afford to be idealistic, like those around them. They’re sensible when making decisions, if not a little pessimistic.

Distrustful

They have never been able to trust someone before without checking to see if they were holding a knife to the soft part of their belly. When they trance, they do so in short bursts. When offered kindness, they reject it firmly, believing the party will turn it into a favor they owe.

Clever

Your drow has always had a bright mind. They can make sense of labyrinthine puzzles the way an explorer winds through a tunnel they’ve traversed before. They always have some knowledge they’re prepared to share.

Manipulative

Leverage, seduction, and control. This is what this drow knows, and they aren’t about to stop now. They know what people want before they want it, and they’ll make sure to offer it… for a price.

Driven

Working hard has got them into the life they have now. Fighting for status was just the beginning, and they aren’t shying away now from what they want achieved. They push others to be as hardworking as them, for who knows what happens if they fall behind?

Drow are sometimes sacrificed to Lolth for the crime of being weak. Uh oh!

Principled

It may not be the principles of the world they live in now, but where they’re from, they’re considered quite steadfast. They hold strong opinions on what the party should do and how to get it done.

Perceptive

Fighting for one’s life in the hostile environment of the Underdark would require a heavy amount of observation at all times, both within drow cities and outside of them. Perhaps this character notices what others don’t, watching people’s words for deceit and their cups for poison.