I think all versions of Dwarves are awesome, but I have a weakness for the classic Tolkein mountain-hollowing Scandinavians.

I made my hill dwarves way more India and way less Scotland, with a very lawful caste system and their own pantheon that barely interacts with the other races' gods. Sure, I've had a few jackasses say that, because hill dwarves in the rule book are said to have brown skin (though it's very rare that this shows up in the art unless talking about FR's gold dwarves), this is racist. I told them to fuck off.

I'm working on a fantasy-setting (not intended for publication) and I wanna bring it back to basics.

My dwarves are the 2nd oldest race on the planet (behind my semi-lizardman race), and they're Norse-ish with a dash of Tolkien and Warhammer. Old, clannish, honor-and-duty bound to a fault. And unlike most fantasy games where they're dwindling - they have the longest contiguous civilization on the planet. They're the mountains that the ages have crashed upon, and these tough bastards are still standing.

It's not that I'm trying to re-skin Dwarves to make them totally different. I want to re-affirm them AS THEY ARE. Not some side-line race that just happens to be there. They're movers, they're shakers. They have created and solved some of the biggest problems the setting faces, and they do it with dwarven steel and tenacity.

I give my Dwarfs ale, after a few pints they are definitely not boring...

My players just got the first hint that Dwimmermount dwarves are not the dwarves they expected:

• all male
• can't have children
• they're gathering gold & gems to *make* children
• kobolds are what happen when the child-making process goes wrong

It felt a bit epic, actually, all motivated by random encounters and morale rolls:

Around session 2, the party befriended a bunch of "scrawny, starveling, coarse-haired dwarf-like" creatures who are camped out in the first room of the dungeon "looking for the new fathers".

In sessions 4-5, the party survives 3 consecutive encounters of 6-7 orcs each, and rescue their dwarf prisoner.

• Open unscouted door while backlit by torch, in easy sight range of alert orc guard: surprise javelin volley.
• That group of orcs is losing, two run away. The party mops up and gives chase.
• Those two come back with reinforcements. Zero-range encounter.
• That group of orcs is losing, one runs away and tries to hold the dwarf prisoner hostage while shouting for friends. Party druid shapechanges into a household spider, scouts, sees the lone orc, and tries for a backstab.
• Wounded orc with only 1hp left finally screams loudly enough to be heard by the last group of orcs nearby, who end up between the druid and the rest of his party.

The party spikes doors, deploys traps, and rests for an hour undisturbed, then tries to exit the dungeon. Rescued dwarf is given axe & shield looted from orcs.

On the way out of the dungeon, the party comes across a confrontation between a rival adventuring party and their friends in the first room. Most of the players don't want to get involved, and successfully negotiate passage past their rivals and out of the dungeon.

The rescued dwarf berserks into the scrawny dwarf-things - kobolds! - because he knows they're an abomination. The kobolds are not trying to kill him, just dogpile him and take him away. One of the party members tries to get the dwarf back. Rival party recognises the dwarf. Chaos ensues.

Once they're outside, have a truce with the rival party, and have taken another hour rest, they demand some answers from the rescued dwarf, who still doesn't understand why they didn't join him in slaughtering the unclean and leaves them with all sorts of dire warnings rather than the reward they were hoping for.

I don't see it that dwarves are boring.  You can have race/species characteristics of dwarves, elves, whatever that are fairly tame or more wild, depending on how fantastical you want that aspect.  That's where the dwarves as underground miners versus dwarves made of living stone kind of distinctions come in.  Either one can be made to work, but within any one take there is only so much variety and interest generated.

However, for me the more interesting aspects are the various cultures that emerge once the races/species characteristics are set.  Which is why I prefer all cultural aspects stripped out of the mechanical race.  That is, I want race boring and easy to clear ground for cultures to become more interesting.

The only "boring" part I see in the trend of D&D races in particular is the way more and more can see in the dark easily.  Much more interesting in general when most of the party--if not all of them--cannot.

The issue is they've become seen largely as caricatures of what they could/should be.

People say "dwarf" and immediately the stereotypes of what people associate with dwarves happens, completely free of context. Putting that context into play (like all cultural elements of different races in your game) is the only way to combat that.

Quote from: tenbones on November 06, 2020, 11:51:03 AM
People say "dwarf" and immediately the stereotypes of what people associate with dwarves happens, completely free of context. Putting that context into play (like all cultural elements of different races in your game) is the only way to combat that.

I'm not sure if that's inherently negative. Fantasy settings have a LOT of backstory to get into, and having a sort of shorthand can help get people into the setting that much faster, especially for TTRPGs. If you want there to be a race that isn't much/anything like traditional dwarves/dwarfs - just call them something else to avoid confusing people.

Should the trope be played around with at the edges? Of course - but the baseline being the same is a positive, not a negative. Myself - I'm a fan of the Warhammer Dwarfs. They strike a good balance, as they are totally recognizable from their Tolkien roots, but they gave them enough of a Warhammer spin to be different and fit better in that setting.

If you have to spend 20 minutes explaining what the "dwarfs" are in your setting before the PCs can dive in and start playing as one and/or talk to one, you have failed at worldbuilding.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on November 06, 2020, 02:39:16 PM
If you have to spend 20 minutes explaining what the "dwarfs" are in your setting before the PCs can dive in and start playing as one and/or talk to one, you have failed at worldbuilding.

I think this is one of advantages my dwarves have actually, because they're pretty much "Dwarves+." All the standard tropes of short, but stocky miners/craftsmen are still there, but with steampunk cybernetics added on top.

And it's specifically a steampunk style because those tropes reinforce the craftsman/engineer aspects of the dwarves so you don't even have to explain WHY the dwarves use steampunk tech... because of course the engineer race will use anachronistic tech to solve any problems they run into.

Similarly, mining is dangerous. So is working with molten metal, steam and machinery in general. War is also obviously dangerous. I included the notion that they were so shoddily created that their organs and limbs fail at different rates just to make the cyborg angle more central to their society, but I almost didn't have to because the idea of a miner or metalsmith or warrior might be down an eye or an arm or have their lungs scorched by toxic/superheated fumes isn't something alien to stereotypical dwarven professions... all the organ failure angle did was shift how prevalent the steampunk cyborging is rather than trying to graft something more unusual onto them.

It also lets you play with some of the other dwarven stereotypes... sure they might not be made of stone, but a starting PCs arm might be made of metal and an elder dwarf might be little more than a brain in an entirely metal body.

Quote from: Chris24601 on November 06, 2020, 03:06:09 PM

And it's specifically a steampunk style because those tropes reinforce the craftsman/engineer aspects of the dwarves so you don't even have to explain WHY the dwarves use steampunk tech... because of course the engineer race will use anachronistic tech to solve any problems they run into.

Being a bit steampunk is actually a somewhat common tweak to the standard dwarf - even the aforementioned Warhammer dwarfs have that a bit with gyrocopters etc.

But yes - your variation of dwarfs is in the realm of what I had in mind. (Though I'm not personally a fan of steampunk cyborgs myself - as it stretches the imagination too much IMO. If if's pushing the edge of mage-tech, I'd be onboard.)

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on November 06, 2020, 02:39:16 PM
I'm not sure if that's inherently negative. Fantasy settings have a LOT of backstory to get into, and having a sort of shorthand can help get people into the setting that much faster, especially for TTRPGs. If you want there to be a race that isn't much/anything like traditional dwarves/dwarfs - just call them something else to avoid confusing people.

Should the trope be played around with at the edges? Of course - but the baseline being the same is a positive, not a negative. Myself - I'm a fan of the Warhammer Dwarfs. They strike a good balance, as they are totally recognizable from their Tolkien roots, but they gave them enough of a Warhammer spin to be different and fit better in that setting.

If you have to spend 20 minutes explaining what the "dwarfs" are in your setting before the PCs can dive in and start playing as one and/or talk to one, you have failed at worldbuilding.

Agreed. There's a reason why the races from Talislanta and Tekumel never got the traction that Tolkien knock-offs did. It's because, learning new backstory is work, in a game. But if it's already part of the cultural consciousness, you can just draw on those shared tropes, and only have to convey any exceptions, minimizing the effort needed. And those exceptions are good to have, because you don't want to become too generic or cliched. Your dwarves should be dwarves, but they should have something that breaks with the dwarven fantasy tradition.

And ideally, that difference should be expressed as part of the gameplay, say a racial secret that the players uncover over the course of a campaign, rather than through infodumps. After all, the way Tolkien dwarves became part of the collective consciousness in the first place is through the stories he told, not because of the footnotes. Same is true for oral histories and mythologies that form the basis for the collective mental model of a fantasyland. The equivalent in RPGs is gameplay, not dense setting books.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on November 06, 2020, 03:09:31 PM
Being a bit steampunk is actually a somewhat common tweak to the standard dwarf - even the aforementioned Warhammer dwarfs have that a bit with gyrocopters etc.

But yes - your variation of dwarfs is in the realm of what I had in mind. (Though I'm not personally a fan of steampunk cyborgs myself - as it stretches the imagination too much IMO. If if's pushing the edge of mage-tech, I'd be onboard.)

Oh, its absolutely magitech; it just uses steampunk (brass, clockwork, lens, etc.) for the aesthetic. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

The dwarves of my setting are the literal inventors of arcane magic; not discoverers (implying its a natural energy), but inventors. Arcane magic simply did not exist (only the magic of the primal spirits existed previously) until the dwarves created it as a weapon against the fallen primal spirits now called demons.

So, yeah, their arcane artifice (as it is called in-setting) is powered by the same Arcane Web that allows arcane spells to be cast. Its essentially an advancement of one of the two branches of arcane magic; gadgeteering (the other path being wizardry); that encodes spells into objects to allow them to be used (wizardry by contrast inputs the spell formulas into the Arcane Web using the Arcanos language, trading speed of effect for more versatility).

The Dwarves-as-Scots thing is totally racist, man.

Anyway how about Dwarves as Russians? Work hard, like a drink, good at tech. Darker version: they are locked up in their mountain gulags by some sort of evil boss (plot twist: who no longer exists, but the religion/culture they evolved during their millennia of slavery is now self-perpetuating).

I had an old Runequest campaign that borrowed the premise of Dark Conspiracy.  That myths and legends are misunderstood glimpses of something people saw.  So the "goblins" are an alien hive race, the evil goatmen are unjustly persecuted saviors of the world, and the dwarves are insect people with antenae and whiskers all over their bodies.

Was brainstorming a campaign world and how to put different races into it, and I got to dwarves. Instead of the usual hill- & mountain-dwelling Scottish-like folk, I decided I wanted them to be seafarers and grand shipbuilders (this latter part explains why the elves despise them, as the dwarves have deforested a lot to make their fleets). I also wanted them to be less Viking-like (the typical dwarven alternative to Scottish-like) and more along the lines of ancient Greeks, with dwarven hoplites and triremes fighting for their city-states (no big dwarven kingdoms).