What did you do to differentiate your setting's dwarves from Beer And Beards dwarves?

They're polar/arctic islanders. Stocky and sturdy with large noses to warm the air, small because islands. They still have recognizable "standard Dwarf" elements wherever those can possibly fit, but there's naturally a lot of ice-fishery and sea-mammal-hunting and bone weapons and navigating in canoes.

I-I didn't put any dwarves in my setting!

What have I done!?

Nice, reminds me of some of the dwarves in Pillars of Eternity (which were basically just Inuit peoples but dwarves)

They shave their faces but keep their armpit hair lush and braided

>instead of making them all exactly the same dwarf.
What if they ARE all exactly the same dwarf? Would a dwarven hivemind be too weird of a concept?

>it's been done to the letter

Aw not again. Everyone beats me to the good ideas.

Warmongering mech soldiers. Drove the relatively peaceful orc villages off of most mountain ranges, so now they hate eachother

Mine are the oldest race. They call themselves dwarves because they compared themselves to the mountains and redwood trees and such.

Their more like giants, compared to the other races.

Nothing. Dwarves are perfect the way they are.

Roman Empire. Dwarven shield walls and formations are legendary. In narrow tunnels, individual dwarf soldiers with tower shields can defend an entire tunnel. Proficient mostly with spears, picks are common sidearms along with gladius. They are in an endless war with the aberrant horrors from the ocean of dead lights, leagues beneath the surface.

Also important; they are essentially heads with limbs. This means their mechs can be decently compact since it's a fantasy setting

In a last ditch effort, they can easily eject from the robot and fight on the ground

Magitek

Is it true?

Well all dwarves being all one character would make them unplayable.
All of them being made of the same mold and sharing some collective overmind could be interresting.

Yeah but not in any way they imagine it. They're trying to science and/or alchemy their way to immortality but Ancient Dwarf King became immortal because he accidentally touched magic soul-recycling fire hidden deep underground and it severely fucked him up in the head.

The humans have legends about him as a wanderer who taught them agriculture and the like but he's not a dwarf in their version.

There a bunch of reclusive, angry mountain dwellers who, inspired by the Giants, fucking love magic and true-naming, and as such, work obsessively to perfect and master the art of word smithing and to conquer the arcane on all levels. They are beer and beard dwarves, but those that show their beards off are commoners or low ranking Speakers, as the higher up the rank of arcane mastery you are in their society, the more you will cover yourself, hiding away not just your face, and beard, but your words and knowledge as well. Wordsmiths are exempt from these cultural staples, but at the same time they either have very little or no facial hair, and if they do have any, it is very carefully groomed, because they believe facial hair can lead to mispoken or tainted words, which can ruin a Wordsmith's careful crafting of spells and magical tools, and thus it is best to keep any and all hair away from the mouth. A clear mouth is a clear word.

That's neat, thanks for sharing that tidbit.

Fuckable females

>dwarven gestalt hivemind entity
>extremely hardworking
>can carry incredible weight on their backs without issue
>have advanced technology
Basically humanoid ants?

If you do something cool with the idea, sure. Maybe you could have them be kinda like the omar from deus ex, just kind of spread out everywhere hawking crazy tech to people who help their inscrutable goals.

My setting's dwarves are a collection of around 30 or so immortals who have been around since day one. The gods first made giants to shape the world and tend to nature, while the dwarves were made to watch after the races that were gifted intellect and, later, the races in whom intellect would emerge. Feeling that their job is more or less done now that everybody's got their shit together, they all fucked off to places devoid of life and civilization. Then as soon as they find some life beginning to crop up, they take it under their wing, give them civilization, and decorate their surroundings lavishly in a competition with the other dwarves. Some like lavish decorations, others sturdy and able to withstand the test of time, some for novelty, one or two just like to see how abjectly pants-on-head retarded they can design a civilization without having it collapse. Though they hold boundless paternal love for the denizens of the world, they have completely alien moralities and tend to express their love in odd ways.

The dwarves' little game of dressing up settings and civilizations is little more than a long-term pedigree dog show with disastrous consequences. Many of their experiments end up creating problems for the established civilizations, but the dwarves don't really give a shit since they've either got supreme confidence that they can take whatever the dwarves throw at them, or just like their new toys better.

You are describing MODOK.

I used 4e's dwarves with a dash of the "tinker gnome" archetype; they're particularly adept at applying magic and science together.

That's for my "vanilla" setting. In another setting, I had dwarves who were hairless and lived aboard a floating continent rich in psi-crystals, with a culture heavily dependent upon ki manipulation - they were basically the go-to "monk" race.

In an Inner World setting I'm trying to flesh out, I replaced dwarves with the hybrid offspring of renegade drow & duergar, resulting in mystical smiths who control an iron-fisted monopoly on worked metal in the otherwise stone age environment.

Wine & Whores instead of Beer & Beards.

>dwarf female
>just a busty human woman
>not shortstack
shit manga tbhsmhfam

I've got two sort of dwarves in my setting: one that is predominantly Russian up in the forest mountains in the north and one that is predomimately Assyrian/Babylonian in the desert mountains in the south. The northern dwarves are typical stoic, sturdy, conservative peoples emphasizing kinship, while the southern dwarves are the poster children for debauchery and decadence that emphasize wealth and what power that wealth can buy.

Svartálfar, as in I made them the Dark Elves.

>shortsack
>not even as THICC as dwarves should be

>elf female
>just a pointy eared human woman
>orc female
>just an occasionally big toothed green amazon
>dragon female
>murderhobos still fuck them

Fun fact: 4e actually decided that shortstack was the perfect look to canonize for dwarf women in that edition. You can see their arguments in "Wizards Presents: Races & Classes", which also has some artwork that never made it into any other 4e splat.

rpg.rem.uz/Dungeons & Dragons/D&D 4th Edition/Core/Wizards Presents Races and Classes.pdf

What won’t murderhobos fuck?

>it's another "Veeky Forums needs to subvert tropes by inserting their shitty oregano donut steel fanfiction into everything" thread again

Thoughts on 4e duergar?

I do not include dwarves in my setting because dwarves are retarded.

still better than literal human woman figure (your pic related isn't even that thicc)

The poison spikes in their hair were kind of silly, but worshipping the god of slavery, torment and pain rather than creating their own god who covered those exact same things but was "dwarfier" was kind of a step up, in my opinion.

>it's another "not fun allowed, only published authors have the right to imagine anything, any forms of creative inputs is cringy."
Damn you must be real fun to play with, do you also complain if one of your friends dare to like drawing without being a profesionnal?
I don't understand the mentality of people like you.

4e was truly ahead of its time.

Nuh uh your retarded

t. Dwarf apologist
All of you dwarf fanboys are nothing more than pathetic beta numales who latch onto the race because they represent the masculinity that you do not possess yourself.

Actually, talking of 4e's dwarven shortstacks, does anyone have any of the art 4e did for its female dwarves? I'm particularly looking to try and get my hands on the female dwarves from "Races & Monsters" - that dwarf warlock is hot, but I don't have the savvy to take her out of the book.

I made them extinct.

Nothing, he created literally the perfect dwarf archetype.

Seeing another "well MY [insert race here] is different because they're [insert "exotic" culture here] thread gets real boring after the millionth time.

Your dwarves aren't cool or interesting because they're "different." They're fucking lame and we've seen them all before. Some of the "dwarves" listed ITT would be better-served with a different name but unfortunately the people who post in these threads aren't creative or ballsy enough to do that. They continue to call things "elves," "dwarves," "orcs," and so on despite their abominations hardly resembling the original races that were created by people much more talented than themselves.

Yeah, I get it. Your dwarves are forest-dwelling archers or they're Babylonian-themed giants. It's always the same shit and it's always garbage.

>projecting this hard

So would you be happy if that was instead a thread about creating new races or would you stil, complain about MUUUH DONUTZ STEEEALLZZ?

>human women are THICC

Mine are just the same guy exact displaced and copied thousands of times trough time fuckery.

It works out just fine.

Fuck off you closeted homosexual, go jack off to your step dad.

>So would you be happy if that was instead a thread about creating new races
Yes.

>rdeanig cmproheneiosn

i meant that your pic isn't thicc, not that human women are thicc, you dolt.

Fine, I don't personally think these threads are that bad but I can understand your opinion if that's not just hating on any attempt from Veeky Forums to be creative.

the problem with not making your race an exotic culture is that you WILL end up making them resemble an earth culture. Then your players will ask "so they are [insert culture here]?" and you will realize that yes, they are right.

So i just go by the path of least resistance and choose base culture for my donutsteel races then switch things around until they are only barely recognizable.

But user, if he had a stepdad, he would be legally required to fuck him.

I'm not likely to ever actually use it as I'm really not a fan of just sticking elves and dwarves and so on in my settings just because it's the done thing, but incorporating feudal Japanese elements and less celebrated aspects of Tolkien and Lewis's dwarves seemed like a fun idea.

Dwarven honour and importance of oaths/loyalty.
WHF's slayers echoing seppuku as a means of coping with dishonour in a shame society, or scruffy outcast dwarves as ronin.
Clan based politics notionally united under a High King/Emperor. A dwarven Sengoku campaign mixed with the Volsung Saga and King Lear/Ran could be fun.
Rune magic/ Ofuda
Dwarven craftsmanship and the exagerated version of traditional Japanese sword craftsmanship
Ancestor worship given a Shinto spin
Japan is really mountainous with volcanoes as a bonus
Bows are the cultural weapon, particularly lop-sided longbows similar to the kind Bushi used on horseback which here mitigate the height disadvantage. It also harks back to Narnia Dwarfs, who were acomplished archers and woodsmen.
Melee weapons follow Norse (Dane-Axes, spears and shields as primary, swords and handaxes as secondary) model to keep the feel and not be total copies of samurai as blends are more interesting. Axes are prominient but have to share the spotlight, avoiding the monomania some settings have and acknowledging Tolkien's dwarves also used swords and spears and so on. Armor based off Vendel period designs but with more coverage.

If I were to do it, it would be a dwarf focused game rather than trying to slot Different-Dwarves! into a wider kitchen sink setting. Oaths, Greed, Treachery, Honour as the realm descends into civil war.

Since the swiss are the closest real world people to fantasy dwarves I just made mine all swiss.

Bankers, clockmakers and unstopable mercenaries who have perfected the art of charging with pike formations?

Hey man the life of an adventurer isn't for everyone. Some men enjoy the finer things like murder and possible death by kinky mixed race sexy time.

I decided to have several different subcultures of dwarves. The northern ones that are more akin to vikings, and have a fierce distrust of southern dwarves after they accidentally dug an opening into hell. Most of the southern dwarf warriors were lost in the battle, and the refugees moved south into the human kingdoms, plying their trade skills as they integrated themselves into that culture. Some of the warriors who escaped in turn wandered elsewhere, the humans not as trusting as the heavily armed dwarves, and eventually they wound up as an elite guard in the halfling lands, forming a warrior clan there, the halflings trusting them more readily to be a loyal fighting force.

So basically only one society of dwarves still lives in mountains, and the main thing they have in common is often their dedication to a craft, skill, or trade, using their longer lifespans to help hone it. There also aren't as many elves about for them to hate.

>I decided to have several different subcultures of dwarves.
THANK YOU.

I didn't. I embraced every trope. Every meme. Every reference.

Why would you fuck with one of the most perfectly designed fantasy races?

They both also like to dig large impractical tunnels into mountains.

>Fixing something that isn't broken...

My dwarves are the scholars and wizards of the universe. They have miles upon miles of libraries, some of it permanently engraved on stone, some of it on more modern mediums, and if a dwarven librarian doesn't know of it, only an Aboleth will.
Dwarves don't drink particularly more than other races, but the drinks they have tend to be much more alcoholic to overcome a dwarf's poison resistance, and while abroad a dwarf can casually drink as many mild alcoholic beverages as it wants and not get intoxicated.
They do have beards though, for little reason other than image.

It's called exchanging ideas. Maybe someone finds a missing ingredient for their dwarves here, or just finds a way to make boring human until proven otherwise settlement #28 a bit more memorable.

Remember when this place actually used to get shit done?

>Iron Kingdoms: Mercenary venture capitalist
>Glorantha: Mechanical isolationist obsessed with fixing the world machine.

Embrace the jew in them and make them greedy.

My dwarves are more similar to Warhammer Dwarves than anything else, but I guess that still makes them basically Tolkein Dwarves. But that's fine, I fucking love Tokein Dwarves.

But yeah, they're real rule sticklers. They meter out justice by the book, no exceptions. The last Human-Dwarf War was started when the Dwarves executed a human ambassador for breaking a law where the penalty was death, even though it was an accident.

Dwarves won the war too. Unlike their human counterparts Dwarven armies are always fully armored, and although they field pike formations their pikes are still a bit shorter. Even still, their armies are completely armored unlike human armies that field armored knights and lightly armed and armored footsoldiers for the most part. A Dwarven pike bloc is almost unstoppable, made all the harder to break by Shield Bearers, who heft big spiked tower shields on the front line, and nothing else. They're not mobile, but they're tough and their hedgehogs can withstand any charge or barrage from anything that's smaller than a ballistae unscathed.

Polearms are a Dwarven specialty. Also, my dwarves are about twice as wide as an average human, and stand between 4 and 5 feet, so they're not super duper short. They end up weighing more than your average human. They also eat about twice as much. Dry veins of ore are re purposed for mushroom and other underground farms, while their mountaintops are covered in terrace farms. They also buy a lot of food, as they love meat but have difficulty in maintaining herds of animals. What herd animals they do have is mostly used to create cheese, goats and the like.
They still maintain a positive trade balance because they're amazing smiths, but they purposefully make lower quality weapons and armor to sell to humans that are still of higher quality and worksmanship than what your average human blacksmith can create.

Gameplay wise, your average level 1 Dwarf Fighter sports full plate and wields a Glaive or Pike.

They're like the lice or maggots of giants. Where giants are or once were, dwarves will likely be there.

Their natural state is like a grimlock before they were enlightened.

so, dorf fort dwarves.

Battle hardened Dwarves have +1 weapons and armor, the level 7 elite shock troops or what have you. Commanders and important dudes have +2 stuff, and might even have protective runes engraved to give them protection from fire or cold or evil, Dwarven Kings and his retainers all sport +3 weapons and armor, heavily runed with all maner of things, maintained by the Dwarven Clergy and improved for thousands of years, handed down over generations. One Dwarven King has a +4 Poleaxe (same as a Glaive just different name) that deals an extra 1d10 Fire Damage to most things but it changes to deal 2d10 Radiant damage to Undead or Demons. His armor is +3 and it's Resistant to Everything. Also completely nullifies 3 spells each day, and because it's a perfect fit, magically sealing against its wearer complete with a facemask and long neck guard, it makes him immune to things like Sneak Attack and Critical Strikes. They say the armor was forged by Dumathoin Himself, and gradually made even more powerful by the Legendary Smiths and Dwarven Clergy over two millennia until it became what it is today.

Don't really plan on my players killing him or getting the weapons or armor, just kinda wanking over my own lore here.

Oh so scandinavian dwarfs - or you know, scandinavian dragons

What's wrong with beer and beards?

Dwarves who control an empire that stretches beneath an entire continent, and lay claim to all minerals below a certain depth even if they aren't currently mining them. They also don't believe that any species other than dwarves can own property, so on the few occasions they do wander the surface world they steal everything that isn't nailed down without remorse.

Dwarf society is built on mercantilism and property rights to the degree that every dwarf is a slave owned by another dwarf. These slave dwarves can own things though and with enough money you can, not buy your freedom, but buy some other dwarf to make your slave. Accumulating a pyramid of slaves below you is the social imperative of every dwarf, meaning that a dwarf will be greedy but also make sure that his slaves can make money which they can spend on more slaves.

How do dwarf society grow do you ask. Simple. Dwarves use something called the slave meld. As slaves live and work for their masters they become less and less empathic and more and more greedy. When a dwarf can collect a sufficient number of slaves that have become totally empty inside, he will gather them in a special chamber. They will then cut off parts of their bodies which will be stitched together by a special doctor-nursemaid slave. In the process they will be mutilated but not critically wounded. Old dwarves will have many scars from this sort of procedure. The stiched together parts will be awakened as a new dwarf, one that is not empty inside but soulful and empathic. He is then free, without a master, cast into dwarf society without any possessions and will have to indenture and sell himself into slavery to survive.

See

The world in question is a hollow planet with a "reverse gravity well" at the center that "pushes" against the walls
"Dwarves" are just a variation of humans that live in a sky city held up by giant towers, around the gravitational core, which happens to be the source of magic in this world. They have become small and stout over generations because they live where the gravity is strongest, and are also the magocracy that rules over groundlings (who are lithe and thin, because gravity is a lot softer on the inner crust of the planet) and despise physical work.
I actually realized that they kinda fit reversed elves and dwarves months after writing this all up.

They're basically demons, they killed god and used dark magic to fuse their race with the corpse, now they are short bearded immortal sadistic vampire demons, and in their war with god they devastated the surface and turned it into medieval fallout. Elves hate them because killing God stole their immortality, Elves are basically barbarians going on crusades in the underworld because they think they can "save" God by genociding the dwarves. Most humans died and the only ones that remain are superhuman wizards.

I lied though i don't have a setting i just came up with all that shit on the spot.

>I lied though i don't have a setting i just came up with all that shit on the spot.
So did everyone else in this thread.

Dwarves are still a dying race, but even harder after they saved the world from the Undead Superfriends. Their cities of skyscrapers and subways and other mdoern shit in a fantasy setting are now in ruins, occupied by the leader dwarves that reached the center of the planet and somehow gained magnetic powers. Their liquified remains are kept alive in bronze and plexiglass coffins that are mobilized by magnetism and they command armies of bronze body-coffins containing their dead ancestors, shaped and functioning as robots by applying magic to them. In madness they still patrol the world looking for undead to slay, and anything else that gets in their way.

The dwarf remnants are like fantasy dwarves, having decided that going back to basics was best for them.

>Lawful
>Manlet
>Muh Tradition
>Forge weapons

Why have you not made Dwarves into Samurai yet?

I..... fuck

There are two races of dwarves, split into 3+ cultures. The races are descendants of two progenitor dwarves, Ungrim and Birun, according to mythology. (specifically the mythology of the Ulani elves, who are merchantile swamp venician elves formerly ruled by the dwarven Empire of Durgulin, technically still a vassalstate, and the PCs)

The children of Ungrim the Rager went below the earth after the Godswar, to hunt the last pieces of Ogolumgul the Devil, which has gone below ground. There they've split into a few factions, those who dwell in the earth, those who dwell on the perpetually dark other side of the world (flat, disc shaped world). These groups are divided between those who have succumb to the Devil's evil, those who have lost their way and gone native, and those who hold true to the rage of Ungrim. Nobody on the surface knows of this, as there has been no contact for millennia.

Culturally, they appear almost insectoid, wearing chitin and metal designed to look like chitin, having magically tamed many species of great worm and insects. Savage and relentless, these are warriors at their heart- they are often nomadic and always warlike and ready to fight. They prefer to smear themselves with strange concoctions created from their insects, which hides their scent, a vital thing, in the lightless dark. They're tolerated as demonhunters by the native Dark Trolls of the Underworld, but are often feared- especially those that have fallen to evil. They rarely drink alcohol, but do concoct hallucinogens and opiates to alter their perception or numb themselves to pain, for various reasons.

The dwarves of Birun Mountainfather, however, remained on the surface, digging but shallowly into the earth. They forged great mountainhomes, and filled them with children and vast wealth. One mountainhome, however, saw the divided nature of the dwarves as a great flaw, and so through terrible sacrifice and many adventures in the Godsplane, crafted the Imperial Crown, an embodiment of the runic principle of Rulership and Mastery. This granted the rightful bearer of the crown total dominion over all that held loyalty to him- man, beast, and the elements themselves. With this artifact, the city, lead by the First Emperor, Rathvass I, founded the first and greatest empire in the whole of the world, stretching far, far further than can be known in these days. However, unfortunately, after a terrible accident wiped out much of the Imperial Line, the Crown fell into the hands of a candidate who had not been vetted properly due to his distance from rulership til then. This emperor, whose name has been scoured from all records, caused such harm to the world that after his death the Crown was sealed away, beneath the Imperial Capital. After that, the dwarves went into a decline.

Ascthetically, they're very babylonian- curled, oiled beards, tall hats, long tunics and robes, and a great deal of jewelry- for the Imperial dwarves anyway.

Currently, they're divided into 3 cultures- or more accurately 2 1/2.

First, the Mountainhome dwarves. Clever craftsman and doughty fighters, these folks dwell in great fortress built in defensible terrain. Most of their populace lives in said Mountainhomes, but they supply themselves with tributary towns and farming forts. Extremely clannish and traditional, they tend to be fairly austere, save for their love of gold. Even so, this is used primarily for decoration and trade- their main currency is literally just a cut up bar of silver or gold. Tend to be practical, and look down on their Imperial kin as decadent and debased, even as they submit to their rule.

Sercond, the Imperial Dwarves- these dwarves, founding their capital on a flatland penisula, have long divurged from the Mountainhome culture. They're far less practical, favoring brilliant displays of wealth and beauty over function, though their works include the latter. Extraordinarily wealthy and once vastly powerful, they hold an ancient arrogance. Their politics is now extremely corrupt and prone to intrigues- byzantine describes them well. Magically they focus on alchemy and golemcrafting- the Emperor upon his ascension drinks a potion of Immortality, dons a cloak of living, deadly mercury, and is then forever guarded by two 10 foot golems forged of Mithril. Much of their greatness remains apparent, but they're often crippled by infighting and the fact that the number of dwarves willing to fight has dramatically lowered over the generations- over 75% of the Imperial Army is made of fighting automatons or barbarian mercenaries, mainly the latter. Not all Imperial Dwarves serve the Emperor- quite a few kingdoms are merely "vassals" or outright independent. Pic related.

Finally, Minotaur enslaved dwarves. The Minotaur empire (name unknown) stormed the Mountainhome provinces several decades ago- in a brutal and terrifying campaign, they destroyed every Mountainhome they took, enslaved the entire populace, destroyed every place of worship or culture, killed every priest, and tortuously broke or enslaved every sorcerer. Years later, these dwarves, shaved and forced into whatever chore their overlords desire of them, have had their spirits crushed, as have so many races before them. Now they cannot even imagine a way of life other than their servitude, and actively embrace their slavery, for the Minotaurs kill not merely people but also cultures. Only one mountainhome remains, and the Minotaurs were just recently repulsed, at terrible cost, from conquering the Imperial remnant via PC action.

Currently the PCs are helping the former emperor, Rathvass IV, who was cast out by the current Emperor, his son, to sneak into the Imperial Vaults, reclaim the Imperial Crown of Rule, overthrow his son, and revitalize the dwarven people. They do this because Rathvass IV was hiding as the Dwarven ambassador to their city, and charmed the shit out of them due to being ultra polite all the time, as is the standard in Imperial Dwarven culture (which has entire dialects dedicated to tone- polite, formal, informal, casual, and regal, among others). If they succeed, the Dwarven Empire may again stretch across the map.

Why would you ever want to do that?

This one? It's easy as heck with photoshop, it just takes a while to find the right images in the big ol list of things in the pdf.

I took the trope up to maximum
>all dwarves are mountain liches, their phylacteries are diamonds in the heart of their mountain
>To protect their heartstone they have to mine out their mountain and construct defenses in the form of a dungeon
>They don't age so they have all the time in the world to make it more and more labyrinthine and to improve their blacksmithing and science
>Each dwarf is material limited to what's in their mountain primarily, trade is relatively recent in their time spans
>Dragons love enslaving them, creating an ancient hatred that goes all the way up to the gods
>If they think their heartstone is finally safe they can venture out
>they then proceed to get as insanely drunk as possible and party nonstop on adventures to finally live like a mortal

That kind of happened on Discworld.

One of the gods with bad spelling blessed a king so that everything he touched turned into Glod. Glod the dwarf found himself transported hundreds of miles away and relentlessly duplicated. Several hundred Glod's later the spell wore off.