Veeky Forums Dwarfs

Ideas for Campaigns centered on Dwarfs? How have you used them on your setting?

Once I made an Arab-Israeli wars wargame where gnomes attempt to settle in a greenskin-infested regions and must rely on their superior craftiness and technology to win out.
It could be dwarves instead, where they rely on their superior masonry and tunnel-fighting ability to just be too obstinate to be uprooted

>Israeli dwarves
>Palestinan orcs
>Orcs did nothing wrong

The dwarves do what they will and the orcs do what they must, no matter how much pampered Waterdhavians shake their fists from across the continent.
It is what it is.

I like my dwarves to be the most stereotypical Gimli Scottish accented clones as possible. It's a good trope and anyone who tries to do variations of it are retarded

OP Have you ever tried to go deep on their cultures? Honestly, they are my favorite race.

I have some ideas here for a campaigns entirely about a group of Dwarf players, doing dwarf things and adventuring on dwarvish places. So the story take space among mountains, the hills around it and deep inside earth.

I have some ideas for variations of dwarfs too, including a pale group that lives on the very deep inside the mountains, and have mushroom farms and hunt giant blind fishes.

But I would like to know if everybody else on Veeky Forums tried doing a dwarf focused campaign before, and how things went.

You could just read this and shamelessly steal ideas

It's pretty shit though.

Eh, 4 and onwards are pretty good

They are the link between the surface world and the underworld since they are the only civilisation that live both above and under ground instead of exclusively one or the other. Their wealth doesn't just come from mining but from exclusive trade routes between the two worlds.
While they have their classic ancestral fortresses, they also have trade posts all over the worlds. If you were to adventure yourself in the underworld, it's most likely that you will do so by going from dwarf posts to dwarf posts.

Dwarves (along with the other slightly different than human races.) kind of bore me.
Usually I just replace them with Bugbears or something.

Is that dwarven women are supposed to look like? I've never actually seen one. I thought that they were supposed to have beards.

I like em more as traders than crafters desu. Good taste.

How are these books by the way?

They are both, sorry. I think dwarf archetype is fine and just need fleshing out. The usual argument on Veeky Forums about dwarf being boring is, I think, simply solved by fleshing out.

The issue that dwarves often have is that they are generally only represented by one character and maybe a group of soldiers and a lost keep. So we have no opportunity to see their society. Meanwhile we frequently see several human nations and probably an elf kingdom while their inhabitants are still in it.

But dwarves are very rarely the focus of the story, unlike humans and elves, so they only get a passing attention.
The warhammer dwarves are sometime used as an example for well done dwarves and they are plenty caricatural but have been fleshed out along the years because they are the focus of at least their army book. Hell even in freaking Eragon the dwarves are said to be one of the best part just for looking like an actual society, all because they are important in one the book and so finally get some thought.

Nice art, meh writing. Each issue is a ~50pg independent story loosely tied to the others, usually following the life and struggles of various dwarf MCs. Light but mildly intriguing worldbuilding. Second issue is probably the lowest point, issue 4 and onwards are considerably better than the rest, enough so that'd I'd say the writing graduated to "good". Every issue also has at least a couple pages of dwarf titties because I guess the french can't abide by comics that don't have some titties in them. Worldbuilding/characters tie into the Elves comic, which has much the same qualities but with an overarching zombie apocalypse plotline where the elves get their shit fucked more and more as time goes on

I'd say they're both worth a read if you're into that brand of fantasy.

I had Semetic dwarves who lived in the desert and basically worshipped the old testament god. They called themselves the Adamah, the Biblical Hebrew word for ground which gave the created from earth Adam's name.

I played up a lot the connection to earth like Adam and focused their magic around fire as well due to the whole, holy fire thing. It let me keep the forging, mining and rock/earth aspect of dwarves and helped play strongly with their traditionalist clan based cultures.

Also they built the fuck out of golems.

Nah, just a little bit of sideburns.

pretty kewl.

Depends on the source.
Pre-Tolkien... kind of hard to know for sure.
From Tolkien into older D&D settings, yes dwarven women have beards.
From the late-90s onward, dwarven women with beards started to vanish though.

Dwarves are humans magically altered to live underground for a period where a magical catastrophe, climate change or invasion ravages the land (I used an Ice Age). The Dwarves build several cities underground (citadels), only for most of them to fail somehow. The PCs are from families that were left behind or abandoned the citadels. All contact with the citadels have ceased... the PCs have to find out what happened. In my case it was Mind Flayers, disease and civil strife (caused by mind flayers).

tangential question: what is the weapon in his left hand called?

Depends on the region, but most dwarven women looked like ordinary peasant women, just much smaller, similar to their husband.

Of course, in the original myths, dwarves could have all kinds of magical powers, from superhuman strength to illusions - that's partly why we have gnomes.

It's basically a fantasy take on a sword, is my guess.

It looks related to a bar mace with half its striking surfaces missing, but also sort of like an overblown fantasy sword. Presumably the glowy bits compensate for its structural failings.

Angry sword the anger bringer, forged by a violent, emotionally unstable dwarf trying to forge a mastercraft weapon, but in only managing to tune into his soul's frustrations instead of the metal's own harmony it ended up resembling a giant tuning fork more than an actual sword.

It was actually pretty interesting how they elaborated on how dwarven crafting magic works, even if it was drenched in a bunch of edginess.

I like the shortstack take.

I was brewing something for a setting, where there would be viking dwarves, with rock ports and giant tower fortresses defending the entries to their islands.
thats about it. sorry.

Where is this from?

I'm going to be honest, I have a dozen dwarf cultures in my setting because I wanted to bust out every single dwarf from my considerable collection of dwarf miniatures. Only one of them is scottish, one is lifted from Tolkien, two are lifted directly from warhammer for obvious reasons, and the list goes on.

Can you tell us more about the difference between their cultures?

>Hell even in freaking Eragon the dwarves are said to be one of the best part

Fucking this, it was the most enjoyable aspect of the books. Would rather read a story about dwarf society.

Egyptian

Ganondorf is best Dorf.

This thread seems like an appropriate place to ask.

I don't have dwarves in my setting. I have about 9 distinct human cultures and 6 distinct elves. I just didn't think dwarves were necessary. I take a lot from European mythology and the Elder Scrolls, neither of which has much of the stereotypical dwarves I know.

What sort of role do they play/value do they have? Is there any subversion of the "dwarf" trope that isn't just contrarian trash? Most importantly, what kind of mythological sources are there on the short folk?

I almost want to put in a society of humans with dwarfism, who live in their own town or are employed at royal courts or for jewelers, because historically those with dwarfism were thought to be trustworthy, crafty, and excellent at counting money. But I want to hear what Veeky Forums thinks

>about 9 distinct human cultures and 6 distinct elves. I just didn't think dwarves were necessary

If you have more than half a dozen distinct anything, that's probably a good indication nothing more is necessary.

I use a very human oriented setting where everything else is actually rare, and have about 6 distinct human cultures and 3 distinct elven cultures, but I still have all sorts of other creatures to fill in the blanks. Dwarves are almost completely all underground, except for the occasional merchant w/ guards.

If you want to double down on dwarfism and humans, maybe employ some ancient curse which follows a lineage and twists their limbs, either for reasons deserved or undeserved, depending on the realism / grim of your setting. I would utilize as the source of the cursing either a principled stance against something evil and magic, or punishment due to hubris by some god(s).

It tends to work better if every place your players go talk to and ask about them, they each have their own rumored reason for why they were cursed, and nobody knows the real truth.

I did a colonial-era DnD setting where the Dwarves were basically the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Trudvang did dwarves best.

>The only tabletop fantasy setting where I have actually liked the dwarves a lot would be Trudvang.

>There they truly honor the mountains they live in. They don't mine the mountain out of greed, but they do it because they view it as something that's more similar to tender gardening. They remove what they considers impurities in the mountain and the gatherded ore that they treat as something sacred that has a potential that needs to be divined.

>Humans desiring to trade with the dwarves mistakingly regard the dwarves as greedy and selfish for not selling their smithed items and for being hoarders. However, every item that the dwarves create in their forges is believed to have a destiny in wait. It's not items they would carelessly send out into the world unless they viewed it as part of that destiny. The ore can spend many years as ingots in vaults until their destiny is revealed to the dwarves and the time is ripe.

>Their love for the mountain is so great that when a new mountain is being formed in volcanic activity, they will travel to the volcano. With them they will bring stones to be thrown into the lava. They believe that these stones contains the dwarves wellwishes, hopes and love for the newly born mountain.

What about oriental dwarves?

Conversely, they also did trolls and goblins best as well.

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>Egyptian

Egyptian Dwarves? That would be pretty cool, a clan of dessert dwelling Dwarves that got sick of not having a mountain to call their own, so they built one. A grand pyramid that would be their home. Each stone within mined cut and placed by Dwarvish hands...

I like it! Also, desert dwarves might be fun!

Tolkien was sort of vague on the matter--he said dwarf men and women were largely indistinguishable in appearance to outsiders. But maybe some dwarven men didn't have beards (insert outrage here). We know Bilbo thinks all dwarves had beards, but Bilbo is a hobbit and doesn't know much about anything.

Honestly sounds like a cozier, more wholesome Dwarf Fortress. I approve. I like dwarves who have a connection to the earth beyond "well it's where we live innit?"

I don't know but i do prefer the OP image over anything i've seen so far.

Dwarves built huge underground empires, laid the foundations for all science, astronomy, medicine and even magic, and then quietly disappeared.

Now the party of adventurers must get to the bottom of this mystery, exploring ancient dwarven ruins filled with all sorts of bad things, overcoming still-functional dwarven defenses, and uncovering the secrets of the dwarves.

By the way, not a single living dwarf will appear the entire campaign, because dwarves are actually kinda shit.

In my setting there are a few Dwarven fortresses at the bottom of the Starfall basin where a fuckhuge meteor wiped out the Human capital and sank most of the northern continent. There are a few scattered Dwarven refugees but they are basically done as a species. Same with Elves, Humans, Halflings, and Gnomes. All the allied races got completely fucked in the Starfall and either got enslaved by Dread Emperor Sanzir (a lich) or moved out to one of the goblin or beastmen kingdoms to try and scratch out a living.

Shitsmacker.

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In my setting dwarven doctors and surgeons are frequently employed by human nobility because dwarves figured out germ theory and antiseptics. Plus, dwarves are a hardy yet accident prone lot, so dwarven doctors accrue quite a bit of experience.

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Dwarf topside expedition to another hold that has gone dark. Topside is a spooky place where they have to evade roving herds of orc, goblins, or humans, and stick together and keep an eye out at night or the group of elves constantly on their heels with pick them off.

The point is not what happened to the other hold, it's how close they'll get before they're all dead.

How?

I still want to write my novel based on the three little pigs. The way legends erode facts have turned dwarves in to pigs and orcs into wolves. Its the epic tale of the first people to settle land, their searching and failure to find a suitable home and their discovery of metal.

Mythology wise no they don't have beards. They are only very rare.

Cool art, regular/poor writing. Generic fantasy setting with some nice characters and interesting ideas, but nothing beyond that.


Ideas? You can never go wrong with exploring recently unearthed, ancient dwarven ruins. Lots of spoopy things in there.

In my setting, dwarves are mostly the generic fantasy dwarf (I'm not not very good subverting fantasy tropes); I think the only original idea I have is there are different ethnics, and one of them are the "silver dwarves"; stockier, slighly shorter than other dwarves, bald and with less face hair. These guys invented monks, and their not!Himalaya mountains hold their fortress-monastery, where their elite warriors train in different fighting styles. Think of them as small, strong Air Nomads.

>ancient dwarven ruins.
I've got to admit I'm kinda tired of the "all that was lost" nostalgia theme that seems stuck to dwarves. Why not doing the opposite, trying to find a site for a new to be built dwarf city?

Scout the area, find resources for the future city, take out potential threats, escort the construction convoy...
Then the newfound post is your new base camp and every time you come back from an adventure it has grow bigger and offer new possibilities!

Players often care less about building mundane things than they do about finding fantastical things. Hence the "ancient ruins" tend to be more common than "new settlements"

I think it's unused concept art from The Hobbit.

>superior tunnel fighting ability

My dwarves found a Jules Verne-esque underground through a mountain chain, and they used it to travel to another continent far to the Northwest and settle multiple colonies all around it.

The Southern ones have a Babylonian culture, but the Northern ones are closer to the Nordic stereotype

The Egyptians did have a Dwarven god who protected the women and children of homes and later on came to be recognized as an enemy of all evil doers. He was also a bit of a party animal. He was so well liked that a few other Mesopotamian cultures adopted him into their pantheons.

>be dwarf
>in military since i can remember
>bitchin mountain fortress, never have to worry about invasions
>sweet little halfling village to the south
>we sell them jewels and shit for way too much gold
>get assigned to protect a wagon going to the halfling village
>arrive
>shit. is fucked.
>halfling elder comes up to my party, says a crazed sorcerer showed up with a warband of goblins, and besieged the town.
>says they'll be back
>says that if we help fortify the town, he'll make sure we get a seat of power in the halfling town.

thoughts?

Whats your rank? You're not really in a place to agree or disagree unless you head back to your fortress to ask your commanding officer. Exactly how long is the village from your fortress?

I use them as wizardy explorers. They dug too deep, found some weird shit and tried to magic it, accidentally causing a zerg apocalypse. Then they left their old civilization and quarantined the continent they came from by magicking the tectonic plates, accidentally causing a volcanic apocalypse halfway across the world.

Basically my dwarves fuck up a lot.

corporal, approximately a day and a half with a party of five and a wagon.

corporal, approximatley 1 and a half days with a party of five and a wagon

You're just a corporal and you're the commanding officer of the squad? How many goblins typically make up a warband? What kind of equipment does your caravan guard have? How many halfing villagers are around to help? How powerful is the sorcerer?

I say there are to many risks for to little of a reward. If the area is good then eventually more halflings or maybe some other race will show up to settle the area once the Sorceress gets bored and leaves. Your best bet is taking the remaining halflings with you to the safety of the fortress as temporary refugees and then mounting a larger expedition force to clear out the area of the sorcerer and goblins.

>you're just a corporal
good point. anywhere from 10-24, a few muskets, lots of ammunition, powder, and oil, as well as the aforementioned valuables. about ten that are fit to fight, 13 wounded or unfit. we don't really know, it seems as though he was testing himself. thanks for the constructive criticism, any ideas on how to up the importance?

If you want the classic handful of heroes helping the small untrained militia fight off raiders a simple step is that your fortress has in the past already agreed to protect the halfling village and increasing the distance between the two locations so that its not a simple task to just temporarily take those refugees to a mountain. It may also be preferable that the Sorcerer has been merely extorting the halflings for now and your Caravan is just there to see why the halflings economy seems to be so poor lately. Preferably your dwarf would be an actual officer with some experience at leading. A corproal might be in over their head in such a scenario.

Maybe have it that your dwarves keep around a bird (Or maybe a bat in their subteranean case?) in order to send an emergency message for reinforcement to the fortress. Then you got the classic formula of surviving the hoard till morning when the cavalry arrives.

thanks, user

I mean, you could always go for the (grimm) dwarves from snow white where they're cannibal slaver isolationists.

PDF FUCKING WHERE???

Some douche in an old Symbaroum announced he had it, ages ago... only to never be heard from again. :

Dwarven holds are always a great place for adventure

they always need building, defending or finding the ruins of

>Lady dorf
>No beard
Shit taste desu

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