How do you do dwarves well? Is the Gimli type of dwarf stale nowadays? Is disdain for elves overplayed?

Gimli being comic relief was just a movie thing. Peter Jackson fucked his character right in the ass desu. It's actually one of the big problems I have with the movie.

Also there are a lot of reasons Dwarves and Elves dislike each other, going back to the First Age.

Yes.
It never runs out

Muh glorious dwarven heritage!

In my post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, dwarves were beings born from the very elements of storm, earth, metal, ice and fire, and so they were big masters of elementalism. Then they got into a war with the elves (fleshcrafting necromancers & plant-wizards from another planet) and they caused the apocalypse. Now the "pure" dwarves are a minority hiding themselves away, and the majority of dwarves you meet are either blatantly elemental (5e translated Forgeborn dwarves) or have turned into more fae-like magiteknecians - aka, rock gnomes.

A reminder that Tolkienian Dwarves were originally Jewish caricatures:
>Hairy, with beards
>Big noses
>Stout
>Greedy
>Legalistic
>Highly religious

Tolkien's dwarvish language was even based off Hebrew.

>Highly religious
What?
The most religious moment I remember was when they begged Aulë not to stomp them.

Nobody in Arda was particularly religous if respecting and remembering their ancestors and whatnot doesn't count.

Do dwarfs get along with Stone Giants?

Do humans get along with regular giants?

If you were a giant slab of living stone would you get along with a rampant race of mine-o-holics with more pickaxes than braincells?

>Is the movie version Gimli stereotype of dwarf stale nowadays?
Yes. Actual Tolkien dwarves, no.

In my recent world I made the dwarves giants!

Humans can get along well with Storm Giants.

>tfw Japanese Dwarves are shotas & lolis

lolis yes, shotas no.

I prefer dwarves as buff manlets/short (maybe shortstack) muslegirls. The shota/loli look seems more appropriate to halflings to me.

(dammit, lost my pictures of young Chilchack from Dungeon Meshi.)

I wish I saved a screenshot of the 12 year old dwarf arguing with his father from that show

in fact sometimes they are pretty handsome

I feel like this is the correct opinion to have.

After a few years, it just runs away.

all of nipland's contributions to fantasy creatures are shit to be honest, family.

I prefer dog kobolds to lizard kobolds.

Go take one. Presumably you remember roughly where it is?

Like your picture, actually.

Outbreak company had some funny moments, but not enough that I'd save it on my computer after watching it. Also no, but near the end of the season

>tfw a miserable pile of secrets talks shit about you

Gross.

So both dwarven and elven women have beards then?

What I'd like to see for a change are dwarves that don't live in mountain halls. Humans, elves and orcs alike have diverse habitats but dwarves are confined to mountains... somehow.

What habitat would their small stature be suited for, other than le ebin mountains?

Grumpy bunkers.

Their low center of gravity may make them more comfortable on unstable footing; together with their strong stomachs they might be uniquely well suited to the rigors of seamanship.

What if these dwarves lived in little hill houses just beneath the ground, and the hill houses had little round doors and windows and the dwarves really liked smoking pipes?

Ant-like commie dwarves.
They dig in soil and go for large population.

Honestly, in your standard D&D world I imagine the Dwarven lifestyle would be pretty common across all species. When you have to worry about dragons flying by and eating/burning everyone, undead hordes, goblins riding owlbears etc. moving all your shit into underground bunker complexes filled with traps and chokepoints would be mighty attractive.
Also a good explanation for where all the dungeons you're looting come from. Every town of any size would have its own dungeon for the same reasons towns in the midwest have tornado shelters, and if a village fails the dungeon gets left behind.

The dwarvish language in Tolkien was based on Arabic and Spanish and used Norse inspired runes.

castlevania dracula is literally the best dracula
he's a vampire archlich whose phylactery is an entire castle which has evolved from so many centuries of atrocities on its grounds to become an esoteric creature of chaos with a life and mind of its own, returning more twisted and alive every 50-100 years.
they eventually manage to kill dracula by seling the castle in another dimension before delivering the final blow, but they never did figure out how to kill the damn castle, which still keeps coming back to fuck with people, and his soul is still out there, looking for a successor

but they're so dense, they sink like rocks

Not going to argue with that. Castlevania Dracula WAS the best.

But I call bullshit on not being able to kill the castle. Sufficient amounts of fire and/or siege engines should do it, surely?

Stereotypical dwarf:
>Stocky
>Horned helmet
>Beards
>Axes as the main weapon
>Obsession with alcoholic beverages
>Have large feasts with lots of meat
>Are known to value strength, and dislike those thy see as lacking
>Have Scandinavian accents
Dwarves are literally just ground Vikings. Just throw them on a boat and bam, dwarves in a whole "new" setting.

at what point do you consider a building dead?
especially a building that likes to crumble by itself only to appear a century later on a spot that never had a castle on it before?
a non-eulcidian building made mostly or in part of ghosts, nightmares, and possibly infinite shoggoth guts?
the castle was such a bitch that they settled for just cutting off drac from it rather than trying to destroy it

I like the idea of a cult of dwarves whose high priest is a Stone Giant that speaks to a sealed powered beneath the earth.

That honestly sounds really fun, would play.

we're talking about this castle, after all

and THIS castle

>Ground Vikings
Now I'm imagining Dwarven raiders that tunnel to their targets, emerging into basements and cellars in the dead of night, striking and then vanishing into their labyrinthine networks where no 'skyling' can ever follow.

>implying that acting dorfy wouldn't be the best thing

Point taken, but I still stand that if your problem is not solved by fire, you simply need to apply MORE FIRE until you no longer have a problem.

spoken like a true vampire killer

What about all the stuff that already lives underground and wants to loot/kill them?

>They travel in massive drills they call "boats".
>Villages soon to be attacked by them are warned by a loud rumbling before a giant drill pops out of the town square and ground Vikings come pouring out to raid the entire village.

Considering what happens to most people who try, it would probably make the situation worse.

sky dungeon

That's why you have traps and chokepoints everywhere instead of just at the entrances.
Also this.

Now you're back to square one with dragons and shit.

space dungeon?

Then you have to deal with astro-liches and their space ziggurats.

metaphyiscal concept dungeon?
they'll never find you there!
no pic, because the dungeon is in your mind!

Now you have to deal with the horrors of your own mind.

...

IS THERE NO SAFE PLACE?

Well, a dungeon is safe once it no longer exists, but that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

You'll just have to make one.
With rampant, unchecked, nonstop murder.

And how do you expect to prevent the dungeon being destroyed by the end of the universe?

How does one even do a metaphysical dungeon in a real game?

I have matriarchial dwarves in my setting, though everything else is relatively the same and there's none of the drow-tier shenanigans (in fact, the worst thing you can call a female dwarf in power is the Drow word for Matriarch because of the implications involved).
Hairstyle is important and denotes rank, especially in women, though men are expected to pay attention to their beards in the same way. Insulting a dwarf's hair is tantamount to spitting in their face, and though there's no penalty for men being clean-shaven on their chin (though it's either required by their work or considered cross-dressing depending on circumstances) having a truly bald head (usually accompanied by tattoos) is basically a declaration someone is a criminal.

Lich with an imaginary phylactery guarded by a metaphysical dungeon. Could make for a trippy campaign.

>mfw everyone claims the modern dwarf stereotype is gimli
>MFW he never touched a drink in the books
>MFW he was silver tongued and claimed the heart of one of the highest elves to ever live.
>MFW he spoke from his heart about the beauty of the deep places of the world.
>MFW forever people will think of gimli,modt noble dwarf as a drunk grumpy little piece of comedic relief because of a shitty movie.

Wherever the modern dwarf sterostype came from it was most certainly not LOTR,this is a stupid meme.

Bonus points: the imaginary phylactery and accompanying brain is /inside/ the brain of one of the PCs.

Back in AD&D 2e, everyone still patterned their dwarves off Gimli.

DnD dwarves yes. Tolkien dwarves we're stout little men with a deep love of their trades. They didn't value war and strength those are virtues of men.They dug deep places so no one could come bother them while they perfected their crafts,from jewel cutting to toymaking metal smithing.

You missed the part where I said stereotypical. I mean this is the common image of dwarves.

Have you read the books? Describe gimli to me,because he is nothing like the sterotypical d&d dwarf that is apparently based entirely off him. Sure maybe they started pulling some things off him but saying that D&D dwarves are gimli clones is jsut wrong.

Give them real physiological differences that drive their behaviors.

My dwarves don't sleep except for during two 6 year long hibernations in their 30-40 year long lives. In addition to their ability to see in total darkness, this is why they invest so much time and effort in their halls (which are pitch black, better defense for them). "No dwarf should have to sleep Outside" is the phrase, because it's so tragic and dangerous to have to do it without a Hall, unless you own a house with GREAT security.

This is also why it seems that they have such great craft skills. They work all through the day and night, if they're obsessed. They can pump out product.

They're also kept as slaves a lot, because they seem tireless. But when they have to sleep, they're just discarded as dead by certain organisations.

It lends for a lot of interesting stuff.

For dwarves in the classic sense I'd day either living high on the mountains,in the middle of deserts or on islands potentially. Because the reason tolkien dwarves tended to live in holes was because they wanted to shut themselves off from the world,they are a race of autistic craftsmen who want to work their trades without being bothered,most of them don't even marry because it will effect their time set aside for working.

>draw a halfling
>call it a dwarf

>looks at a picture of a gnome
>calls it a halfling
There's a special place in hell for people like you.

An imaginary phylactery? Sounds pretty...

Complex.

>gnomes
>without jew noses

It's clearly a dwarf you plebeians

First off the nose in that pic is in no way jewish,your gnome looks like a rosey cheeked welshman. Secondly the drawing all together lacks a nose,not even terribly sure how the creature in it is alive.

And it's full of kender.

>Is disdain for elves overplayed?

No, elves don't get enough hate, fuck elves.

Well, to be fair, dorf fortress elves are different.

I keep the Elves faggy though
And no, the Dwarf women don't have beards.They have mustaches

Funny enough, elves and orcs were the source of every major problem in my current setting, because they came from the Forgotten Realms and brought Vancian-style magic with them, which pissed off the current goddess of magic something fierce.
Eventually, Corellon and Gruumsh got kicked out by the head of the setting-specific pantheon because they couldn't play nice, but by that time magic had already changed from an ability everyone could just do to a skill that was studied. So the goddess of magic got pissed and ended up causing a massive cataclysm trying to put everything back to normal (she lost).
So now she's evil.

That room wasn't in the castle it was in some random-ass building in the countryside you pass through on the way to Drac's castle.

I'm mad. Threat officially ruined.

I suppose if you burn the entire world it draculas castle will cease to be a problem.

Sounds like a memetic infection.
Overdone 10 years ago.

>Funny enough, elves and orcs were the source of every major problem in my current setting, because they came from the Forgotten Realms and brought Vancian-style magic with them

forgotten realms magic only works because of the weave managed by their own goddess of magic, mystra. without the weave "memorize"-type magic doesn't work at all. So any forgotten realms wizard that travel to a different plane will immediately lose their powers

change the place they're coming from to literally any other D&D setting and it would work just fine.

Yeah, the part the goddess of magic was pissed about was being voted out by divine majority so that she would have to act as the 'Mystra' of that world.
Since elves and orcs couldn't cast naturally in the setting, they lobbied for the FR systems. It 'passed', so she's forced to provide magic to people regardless of what she thinks of them under threat of divine conflict should she deny it to anyone.
Currently, she's trying to set things up so that the general population answers to her so she can bypass divine vote and push for a reset.
Failing that, she plans on bailing from the setting altogether and taking her magic with her - which would crush the current status quo and turn the place into a Dark Sun equivalent- but no magic or even psionics at all.

I remember I think it was the 2nd or the 3rd book, but Gimili and Legolas was talking after the battle of Helms deep that since Legolas went with Gimli when he wanted to see the caves, Gimli had to join Legolas when walking in a forest. I think it either was his home forest or the Fangorn forest. My memory is a bit fuzzy

>Posted: 5 years ago
Man, he's been doing this for a while