Should dwarves be good at technology?

Could you repeat the question?

You're not the boss of me now.

Why do you hate me so, friend?

It makes sense if they are great engineers and craftsmen. With all the mining they do and if they want to take on another stronghold good siege would help.

Should they be like that? Each to his own really. I like my dwarves advanced but not musket tier advanced.

This is my opinion. Also I don't mind them being good at hinges and what not such as making armour. So dwarves could be running around with plate armour in 11th century technology or something.

Yes, HOWEVER, it has to be simple, brutalist and non-magical, and I don't think it should be any more advanced than steam power.

Counter question: Can dwarves into clockwork? Because that seems more like a gnome thing.

I bet dwarves can make clocks just fine. I personally go the route that dwarves are some of the best craftsmen that exist, but automatically assume any new features to a design are bad. They make wonderful clocks, but they are still using the design their ancestors came up with when clocks were first invented/discovered. If you want anything other than the basic features of their design then you are going to have to wait out a century of design testing because they aren't going to risk subpar craftdwarvenship just because you are impatient. Genomes on the other hand think anything other than a live-fire test cannot be a true test of their designs.

Dwarves are the mechanics, they make things go. Gnomes are the engineers, they do wacky shit to see if it'll work.

Life is unfair.

What they have they would practice to perfection, but change would be slow. In pretty much every setting ever dwarves are a very conservative people, and are often dismissive on new ideas until they have proven themselves worthy of consideration. They won't be at the cutting edge of new innovation but they would be highly proficient with whatever they adopt.

Fuck you Pete. I'll never not be mad about the Hobbit movies. I'll go to my grave pissed that you shat the bed so hard you had barrel dwarfs and no dialogue

The dwemer swords where just brutal weapons that where sharp.

They weren't finely crafted like the elves weapons, just far superior in terms of metal.

That's how dwarves should be

No. Because they are manlets and can never learn.

Underrated joke right here.

>Dwarves riding on rams
I never understood this

mountain folk
mountain goats

youtu.be/f0jMzdbEui0
If you saw how badly designed khazad-dum is,you wouldn't be asking this question.

People confusing Goats, Sheep, and Mountain goats, which are all quite distinct.

I feel like dwarves should be good at practical engineering and mathematics and construction, so yes having basic Steam Engines and Clock work (which was developed in fucking ROME orginally, before the collapse) makes sense for them.

Agree, Dwarves should ride on Yaks.

ps: proving it's possible

warisboring.com/chinas-got-yak-troops/

They all have buttholes, that's good enough

Superior in craftsmanship and materials, but their magical smiting is uncreative. Useful, but very simplistic.

Sure, they'll make you a thing that'll still be perfectly usable in two centuries. But it'll take a year to make and a two years' wages to pay for.

I love when fantasy dips into renaissance (most already do it with armor, but fewer do it with things like guns and sailing). And given that dwarves are this stoic and hard working people with little to no access to magic, I find it perfect to give them the technological advantage of the setting.

That being said I feel like dwarves should have rockets and cannonades at most, MAYBE early arquebuises. Nothing on the high end like Warhammer with it's flamethrowers and helicopters and tanks

I see, a friend of the Grummles!

youtube.com/watch?v=VSgzkKxTgLk

Thanks for reminding me of this.

they should be good at making it.

using it is optional

Then again, a possible counter point!

>all these interesting races
>WoW continues to focus on the shittiest ones

Yes, so we can replace gnomes.

Blame Kossak, also they added an entire sapient race of turtle men to Ungoro via fucking Hearthstone. (They may be straight up fictional FOR the card game though.)

GG Blizzard, GG.

You have no purpose, and there are too many little people with you.

thats so sad, they only ever showed you kindness..

Yes. Being good at making things means making things which make making things a lot easier.

North Korea Best Korea?
or Central China Best China?

My dwarves are good at tech because of their small, more articulate hands.

well a point to note - the industrial revolution grows out of mechanisation of cloth production and the shift of steam engines from incredibly inefficient to actually useful for commercial purposes, starting with powering pumps in mines. Which do you think might be a goal for dwarves?

>Should dwarves be good at technology?
You mean inventing new things and using the newest technological toys? No, instead dwarves should be masters of old crafts and methods, artsans perfecting them to unmatched levels.

He and his wife die.

I can't answer this question with a decisive yes or no, I can only ask a follow-up question. Dwarves are always depicted as being technologically advanced engineers, and if you need some kind of anachronistic technology then the dwarves are the go-to inventors. My question is why the dwarves aren't the rulers of the known world. The Romans were at best on par with the civilizations of the Mediterranean in terms of mathematics, philosophy and whatever passed for science at the time (heavily borrowing what they had from the Greeks). What they did excell in beyond anything their neighbors could do were statecraft and, you guessed it, engineering. Caesar explicitly mentions how the Chad Gauls pissed their pants when they saw manlet Romans moving gigantic siege engines to tear down their walls.

I don't care what race you decide to make good at engineering, but military engineering is also engineering and you shouldn't forget that. If the engineer race isn't ruling the world or at least on the verge of ruling it, you'd better have a damned good reason for why they're not.

And it's getting really tiresome

You have to understand, he wanted to post this webm so badly.

Dwarves are very particular about where they settle. There are elves in the forests and humans in the plains but so what? That's no place for a dwarf. Dwarves are interested in mountains and hills -- particularly where there's ore deposits and good stone to be had.

Lower numbers, naturally conservative and non-expansionist, poor (if any) cavalry, poor magic skills etc etc. pick your poison.

Also their technological skill may not be that much better than their adversaries in both LotR and Warham humans are fairly close to Dwarven level of technology

Their steel should be very good.

If the setting is fairly realistic then dwarfs would be top tier in technology. I also think that they would be the first to use black powder, for blasting mines and such. but leonardo da vinci giant steam cog machines is really a choice about setting then dwarfs.

But there is very much a benefit in having hummies and knife ears as client states, enforced by military supremacy. You can either trade those ores for food, or you can force landdwellers to offer you food and other resources in tribute while you still keep trading that ore. Empire building can happen with resettling only a minimal amount of dwarves.

Alright, that makes more sense.

China was very advanced technologically, but they never expanded beyond their natural borders and were conquered by Mongols. Ancient Greeks were in many ways very advanced in terms of engineering, but apart from Alexander's short-lived empire(which was really Macedonian, not Greek) never went much beyond squabbling city-states. Germans are renown for their skill at engineering, but never managed to create a real empire. Being good at engineering helps, but it doesn't by itself transform a race or kingdom into an empire or a world-power.

And dwarves have plenty of natural disadvantages when it comes to trying to conquer the world, as well.

They should definitely be master craftsmen.
Whether they are good at technology depends on the setting.

My nigga
Llamas are a perfect pack animal and steed for dwarves. Though yaks are not a bad choice either.
Could be a regional thing in-setting.

Insular and clannish. They already rule the parts of the world they care about.

On top of what you've said, magic changes a lot of what would allow a state to form an empire. A single city-state ruled by the most powerful wizard could conquer multiple planes while the Rome expy might collapse shortly after it was first founded because the city was unknowingly built on top of a giant barrow of wights. Technology, depending on how much magic is available and how the magic works, might be the most insignificant factor of the relative power difference between states.

There is /wsg/ for that.

I don't think they should be any better or worse than the average with technology, with the exception of mineralogy and other stone related works. Slower to adopt brand new, untested technology, but put more time and effort into making said technology masterwork.

In my setting they are master siege-enginers with them able to take any settlement from another race and in turn their own castles are near impenetrable.

Problem is that their main competitor (humans) have superiority in terms of numbers and mobility (especially thanks to cavalry) leaving the dwarves at a disadvantage in open battles.

History of warfare between the two races can be summed up as an eternal back and forth with each side eventually being repelled/give up after initial aggression.
Dwarves initate campaigns sacking some human cities but eventually gets repelled when all the humans unite against them, driving them back to the mountains.Humans raid outlying settlements but are incapable of getting into the dwarven heartlands before the dwarven armies arrive to drive them off.

Gnomes are fine if they're little magical fuckers taking care of houses with minimal interaction with others, as they should be.

gnomes are smaller than dwarves or many othe rlittle people. They not even reach the knee of an adult huan, and the smallest versions could fit in a hand.
They take care of the environment they live in, making sure that all works well, be it natural or mechanical, providing regular maintenance.
They live close or even within human settlements, but humans are rarely aware of their presence.
they are experts at passive protections, be it magic barriers, or traps, or technological means.
So if you live around gnomes you are safe from attacks from evil creatures, especially small and insidious ones.
Of course gnomes themselves can be a bit mischievous at times, and play pranks or cause problems to humans they don't like, but nothing that would get people seriously hurt.

And of course they are wise and serious and hardworking.