Different Dwarves

So, they looked like the demiurg?

Dwarves are 1.5 times the height of humans and they live in complex series of labyrinthine tunnels built freestanding above mountain ranges.

True, I had forgotten about the ES Dwarves. I figure the dwarfags might get a bit pissy if I rewrote them into being Elves (there are two in my gaming group), so I probably won't be using that particular twist.

Pseudo-Samurai Dwarves.

Do the whole Sengoku thing but with dwarves.

Too many factions; Three Kingdoms Era China reads better for a story.

Sorry, let me clarify, I basically just mean from a cultural standpoint. The whole bushido and shogun thing.

Ooh, that's good. Caste systems with a handful of warlords dominating different parts of the Dwarves' territory, all loyal* to a high king. The Gnomes and Halflings could even be different castes that have actually started to become separate species!

I like dwarfs and I like shamanic stuff. I think they could go well together.

Dwarfs are long lived and very tradition bound, complementing a culture of stories and more oral traditions. The greatest of stories of heroes and history would be carved in to stone monolith/pillar things, something young dwarfs all aspire to.

Their shamans keep the pacts with the spirits, many ancient indeed, as what more would a spirit ask for than to be venerated by long lived, long memoried, tradition-bound people? The oldest dwarf-holds would be able to call upon terribly ancient and powerful spirits for aid. This has a side effect of holds being able to be smaller and still viable. Tradition could set a maximum size of a hold before it must split and half has to go found a new one or something maybe.

I'd probably have them live closer to the surface, with ready access to farming and hunting and more accosiation with wild life, but still mountain-focused, building out their holds deep rather than high.

In many ways they would be the same, grumpy, isolationist, traditionalist, hard drinking and hard fighting honorable warrior race. Just different.

They're less mercantile and more self-sufficient. Also you could find quiet dwarf holds anywhere in mountains, waxing and waning over time with less regular contact with outsiders.

Make them all sweaty, hairy hermaphrodites.

They are made of stone and died out long ago, leaving behind halls of stone, which while dwarfed by kobolds are filled with magical items.
Also they made loads of statues of some powerful titans.

Make 'em a race of bandits/thieves/rouges/ninjas or whatever.
Let them use that natural low profile they've got.

>Dwarf Fortress type dwarves
>require alcohol to function, without it they become sluggish and distracted
>entire mood determined by surroundings and personal taste. e.g: my wife was killed today by a horrible monster that emerged from the darkness of the caverns... on the other hand I dined in a legendary dining room lately and admired some very finely crafted statues, so it kinda balances out.
>no conception of conventional good or evil, only concerned with the continued existence of the fortress.
>highly collectivist and socialistic in their day-to-day operation, but for some reason they also have a largely useless aristocracy, an arrangement that baffles outsiders.
>oblivious to danger, will attempt to retrieve valuable items in the middle of a raging battle
>completely retarded in a tactical sense, will rush in and try to fight anything that they can see, crosbow-wielding dwarves will vault over fortifications and try to hit attackers with their crossbows.
>despite being apparently retarded with tactical combat they are still excellent warriors, can design deadly fortifications and defenses, and are capable of crafting items of the highest quality.
>respect for other races largely revolves around their craftmanship and what they bring to trade with, elves usually bring nothing but wooden trinkets, beads and other trash, while complaining if you cut down too many of their stupid trees. Humans are okay but their metallurgy isn't nearly as good dwarven work.
>no difference between the sexes, childbirth is a minor distraction and will hardly interrupt a dwarf's working day.Female soldiers will often unwisely take their carry their babies into battle, maybe to make this less retarded there could be some kind of armoured baby sling that female soldiers use, in the game the babies are basically just ablative armor.
>no magical ability whatsoever

I based my dwares on the cossacks.
They liked to haggle.
They liked to loudly play music wherever they went.
They liked their mounts.
They were semi-nomadic.

The only difference is that they lived in cavernous mountain ranges and rode fuggin bears instead of horses.

I have a subset of dwarves in my setting that settled in the jungles. They've got a bit of Aztec in them, in that they build pyramids and do (animal) sacrifice and the like, but they as a people really like sports, make up new sports, and have annual competitions around these sports.

Also they shave all but their head hair, which they keep relatively short. A large amount of hair is considered unattractive and smelly, and indicates a lack of prestige among their people.

I feel that’s giving up though?

I merged my dwarf and orc races when I realized they were getting too similar. The result is a race of short, inhumanly muscular creatures with pig-like heads who love brawling and drinking, but the lower class often sink into addiction, becoming filthy savages. They are a proud race who value honor, metalcraft, mining and trading, but those who sink so far into their addiction that they turn to a life of crime and are deemed lost causes are banished and often become bandits.

Don't make them a generic mortal race, like every god damn setting does. Elves, and Dwarves aren't just variations on humans, with boring shit like economies or politics. They're supernatural beings from other dimensions.

This is basically what I want to do for more dwarves. How do you make dwarves different? Make them even MORE dwarfy. Skin as hard as rock, a metabolic need for alcohol, stubborn enough to sit in the same spot for 5,000 years and not budge an inch, etc.

>What would make for an interesting twist on the Dwarves?
they have sensible sized weapons

Kill yourself. A Dwarf without a gigantic weapon might as well be an Elf.

Ganon Dorfs. Do evil sorcerers.

Messing with physiology and letting culture develop organically from that is a fun way to go about changing a race. I've been working on dwarves that store iron in their bones, so much so that they basically have an iron skeleton. Explains their physical toughness well. Also gives an opportunity for new cultural details.

"My dwarves" have a very practical variant of ancestor worship: they forge their honored dead into tools, armor or weapons, depending on their deeds in life. A great smith might be wrought into a fine hammer that his heirs continue to use for generations, where a warrior will become an axe or shield to continue to protect his people. In this way, dwarves continue to serve their clans and hold even after death, rendering the concept of death much less morbid or taboo to dwarves compared to other races. Dwarfbone items are even named and recognized as the dwarf they were in life; a smith who uses his father to work metal sees no difference between two dwarves working a forge and one swinging the other. A dwarven adventurer will address his ancestral warhammer as he would a living dwarf, and may even consider him/her another member of the party.

The dwarves are naturally very protective of their dead, and funerary rites are extremely important. The priesthood of Brund (dwarven death god) are the only smiths allowed to work Dwarfbone, and for a non-dwarf to wield such an item is a grave offense. Necromancy is an unthinkable blasphemy, which is problematic given how appealing an army of iron skeletons would be to a necromancer.

Dwarves that are not forged to serve are instead cast into ingots, inscribed with stories of their life and the details of their lineage, and stored in great mortuary libraries managed by the priests.

These practices do make them seem profoundly morbid to other races, though. Skull motifs and comfort with death give them a very creepy aesthetic.

I always enjoy it when they're more like fairytale specifically snow white) dwarves. They may be hardy but they're not really stout, strong or resilient. Or at least don't have any of that as their defining features. They're actually weaker than men due to their smaller size, which doesn't mean they're weak willed.

Why would supernatural being from other dimensions not have politics or economies?

Male dwarves have semi-vestigial sensory appendages around their nose and mouth akin to a star-nosed mole. Their beards are grown to protect the sensors and make their faces less alien to other races.

Or maybe they have whiskers like a cat in their beards and eyebrows if that's too much.

wow I had something similar with mine, but instead of the iron skeleton, they just put bone dust and did more of an honorary smelting with their ancestors.

mind if I take this shit user?

Because both are mundane human constructs.

The thing about dorfs is that as much people say they tend to be the same, there's actually three models to go on that are roughly analogous to the three models of elves: Mountain Dwarves, Wild Dwarves, and Fallen Dwarves.

Mountain Dwarves are the classic dorfs. Underground dwelling, greedy, axe-loving, heavily armored, slow-moving, conservative, drunken viking/jews. Typically have braided beards decorated with gems and rare metals.

Wild Dwarves have a macho, mountain-man kind of attitude. Unlike the Wood Elves and their peaceful "harmony with nature" attitude, Wild Dwarves view nature more as a challenge to wrestle with, but in a respectful way. Often shirtless or clad in furs. Often heavily tattooed. More likely to have completely loose, undecorated beards, or to use natural materials like leaves, pretty stones, etc. A common backstory is that these Dwarves are descended from the Mountain Dwarves, but were nature lovers who didn't like living underground. Pictured is the "Nikua", from the upcoming Ashes of Creation, a polynesian based Dorf culture that fits this model.

Fallen Dwarves are a dark reflection of the Mountain Dwarves. They're usually defined by leaning heavily on the more negative qualities of dwarves: xenophobia, short tempers, obsession with efficiency, greed, etc. and pairing them with something distinctly NON-dwarven like magic, ruthless ambition, slavery, or-gasp-beardlessness. They're not necessarily an EVIL counterpart though; it could be said in their favor that they are more progressive, forward thinking, and innovative than the stubborn and traditionalist Mountain Dwarves, or the simple-living Wild Dwarves. Most likely to have really strange beards, or very bizarre stylings. Unless you've decided that beards are optional for all your dorfs, these guys are most likely to be the only ones without them.

So really, the central concepts of dwarfiness are pretty flexible and really aren't explored as much as they should.

Cont.

Only in their mundane human forms

>Philosophy crafting
>story crafting
>theory crafting
>theoretical crafting
>crafting of craft theory

In any form. Which is why, when Dwarves take up physical form in our world, they become obsessed with treasure. It's completely alien to them and something they can't get in their world.

Here's a few good examples of both cultures and individuals that are great examples of each type:

>Mountain Dwarves: Most examples really. Tolkein's Dwarves, The Dawi, Clan Bronzebeard, Shield and Gold Dwarves, Norse Mythology, Discworld's Dwarfs (a parody example). Thorgrim Grudgebearer, Belegar Ironhammer, Gimli, Thorin Oakenshield, Magni Bronzebeard, Muradin Bronzebeard, Zoltan Chivay, Khelgar Ironfist, Dorna Trapspringer, Bruenor Battlehammer.

>Wild Dwarves: Forgotten Realms' Wild, Arctic, and Chultan Dwarves, Dark Sun's Dwarves, Boreal Dwarves, Clan Wildhammer, Kogolors, Shannara's Dwarves, Dawi Rangers. Musharib, Hendel, Sagani, Falstad Wildhammer, Shardra Getl, Harsk, Bardin Goreksson.

>Fallen Dwarves: Duergar, Chaos Dwarfs, Clan Dark Iron. Dagran Thaurissan, Urgraz, Astragoth Ironhand, Drazhoath the Ashen.

I hope I've shown that Dwarves are more flexible and varied than they get credit for.

I like the idea of taking Dorfs in this direction. Maybe instead of being miners and masons, they can be bakers and chefs. You could milk a lot of comedy out of them still behaving like serious, stoic master blacksmiths forging magical artifacts that will change the fate of the world, except all they're really doing is baking very delicious cakes.

On a less silly note, you could do the whole "everything in life is a craft" kind of attitude. Dwarf bards conceptualize sound itself as a natural material to be harvested and shaped. Dwarven wizards turn raw magical energy into spells the same way a blacksmiths turns a hunk of iron into a sword. Dwarf tax collectors believe that if the government is well funded enough to run smoothly than everyone is better for it, and he is the "repairman" (repairdwarf?) of the machine of civilization.

My Dwarves are based off of Bavarians and Tyroleans. I can still play with a lot of the classic Dwarf concepts, but with a few different spins on it. Salt is a bigger deal to them than Gold.

Go right ahead, it needs to see the light of day. Not sure I'll ever actually get to run it.

In my setting there was a huge war between the mortals and the gods that ended up fucking up much of the world and created a ton of apocalyptic weapons and monsters in the aftermath. Seeing how unstable the world was and how one idiot with a magical wmd could destroy the planet thedwarves took it upon themselves to become the fantasy FBI. Each dwarven city is basically a giant vault to seal away whatever doomsday weapon was made during that apocolyptic war. One houses a library of reality-warping magic, another keeps a tarrasque-level monster sleeping in the earth's core, and another has sealed away the corpse of a slain god to keep its corrupting from seeping out and infecting the planet. Each clan's culture and religion is shaped on whatever their charge is. The library dwarves are super anti-magic and go out hunting mages, the tarrasque dwarves are in the middle of a civil war because half their population has turned to worshipping the beast, etc.

Blind dwarves with an extremely heightened sense of touch and smell.

Considering they live most of their lives underground the gift of sight would be of little use for them.
Being able to sniff out veins of ore from rock and feeling their way through the underground using their feet and hands akin to pic related would be far more useful.

Also, if they were blind and lived their lives mostly underground, would they even understand the concept of time?

>Maybe instead of being miners and masons, they can be bakers and chefs.
They already are user, they just don't share
But seriously, this is how dwarves already are, It's just not highlighted often.

>Maybe instead of being miners and masons, they can be bakers and chefs.
Have you read Dungeon Meshi?

Everything works on cycles. Time is a concept useful to everyone, they would just probably operate on different scales. Day/night would be mostly irrelevant to them, except in instance where they'd need to interact with the surface. I recall once that a group of cave explorers began living on a 50 hour wake/rest cycle, sleeping for like 12 hours and being (mostly) wakeful for the rest.

I think you're right in the respect that you don't need to make an entirely different race and call them dwarfs to make them interesting, if you're gonna do that why not go and make a separate race all together. I think making culturally different dwarfs is 10x better than making them eat rocks or make them machine men or the like

I used something like that but with different metals delineating different subraces of dwarves (and mixed race or "alloyed" options), plus dwarfbone was close to the only source of metal in the setting, cementing the dwarf-smith connection further by having them the only culture with ready access to metal (and also giving rise to the genocidal tendencies of other warlike races who want to kill dwarves to get raw material for weapons).

Senshi is a reject that other dwarves find shameful. The Dwarf girl was disgusted by how he treated his weapons and shocked that he repurposed an adamantine shield into a cooking pot. Guy can't even tell ores apart. He's a terrible dwarf and he knows it.

Would such things not also make them culturally different, especially in ways that can't be mimicked by other races just living the same lifestyle? I don't see why you can't have both. The issue for me is the more fantastical elements often come off gimmicky. Though the blatant not!cultures are also a thing that irritates me. Maybe it's just laziness that ruins them.

It might seem surface level but I think the literal appearance of dwarves is a considerable chunk of their appeal. They're exageratedly masculine and have bizarre, non-human proportions despite their bipedal frames are basically humanoid. Everything about them is designed to exagerate stereotypically masculine qualities, with gigantic chests and arms. Even their short legs just make the beards look bigger.

I'm also not a huge fan of taking a fantasy race and just giving it a weird supernatural power and calling it creative. If your dwarves are stout, sturdy creatures fond of drink and industry who love axes and beards and have Scottish accents...but also they can phase through walls and turn to stone, you haven't actually done anything that interesting unless the differences that the dwarven culture has with human culture is a result of that.

Considering that dorfs are so deeply ingrained in the collective conciousness anyway, if you want to make a universe with a unique take on dwarves you have to change their outlooks, attitude, and relations to each other. Don't make them nordic or scottish, don't make them grumpy and short tempered, extend their love of craftsmanship past stone and metal exclusively. The best thing I think you could do though is make it so they don't all necessarily get along. Inner conflict is an easy way to provide contrast and make a given country, race, or faction more diversity.

TLDR: Don't just slap weird new powers on the standard issue dwarf and pat yourself on the back. Consider the core concepts defining their identity and present them through another lens, or alter/remove one of these components and explore the effects it has on the others.

And for gods sake, don't give the women beards!

>What would make for an interesting twist on the Dwarves?
Having an actually good player play them. Seriously, that’s all it takes. A good roleplayer can take a boring archetype and make him interesting, hilarious, dramatic, anything the character needs to be.
Conversely, trying to change something to “force” interesting into the character will literally never work (and it never has, by the way), because the character is just a bunch of words and numbers on a paper and the real defining factor is the player here.

One of the funnest games of D&D I ever played was basically Lethal Weapon but with the two main characters as city guards.
The dwarf was a family man (wife, three kids) who had been in the guards for 20 years and both hated and enjoined his human partner’s “hot-headed young guy” hijinks.
Together they fought crime and conspiracies.

I feel like warcraftian dwarves could be interesting if expanded upon
All dwarves descend from stone dwarves called earthen, so it makes sense they are tough

You have 3 main types of dwarves:
>Ironforge Dwarves
The most dwarfy dwarves out of all, although with few notable traits. The biggest one is that they are proud they descend from stone. They are commonly archeologist, also their titanic origin allows them to change their skin to stone (or diamond, although this was an accident)
>Wildhammer Dwarves
The wood elves of Dwarves. Strong connection to nature, autistic about gryphons, actually love flying. Are mostly bare-chested for some reason,
>Dark Iron Dwarves
"What if we took that deamon and put it into this sword" dwarves. Evil counterpart to dwarfy dwarves (living underground, having evil smiths) and to wild dwarves (using elemental spirits instead of working with them) although now they are reformed.
You can see the 3 biggest stereotypes as said in . You actually have a lot more dwarfish stereotypes: Eberron's sand dwarves, AoS and WC tinkerers, mad dwarven barbarians and by extension Warhammer Slayers

I believe the problem is with how prevalent is for Dwarves to be just in one "dwarven Dwarves" flavour while elves are commonly found in at least two (wood and high) variants

Dwarves as the low-level, medium-size version of Giants.

They should emphatically NOT favor divine magic.

dwemer

They don't live in the mountains, just near them. They've got a miners culture, and are strongly religious (think West Virginia). Coal is a big part of their economy, which powers their steampunk machines.

On the flip side of this, I've always been entertained by the Gilded Age Robber Baron archetype when it's applied to Dwarves. Smoking jackets, giant cigars, late 19th century/Victorian Era flair.

>are strongly religious (think West Virginia).

I think you're asking the wrong question.
Most people use token Tolkien dwarves because it became a fantasy trope.
Unless you look at what spawned the idea of a dwarf, then the word loses all meaning.
Deeper in Norse mythology, dwarves are considered dark elves.
Maggots in the flesh of the being that would make the world (Ymir), that were then given sentience. It is because of this that dwarves are always seen underground, and hate elves.
Really there aren't many limits to how dwarves would potentially be changed.
Just remember to keep the idea that they spawned from the flesh of a god, or the soil, and they are mostly underground.
They could be small furry creatures or something like sentient moles.
Maybe they're insect-like creatures, that predominately nest underground.
I wouldn't mind seeing a world that totally scraps Tolkien's universe, but keeps the Jungian archetypes, and Anglo mythology just because Tolkien has been milked for all it's worth.

Think rural West Virginia, then.

Doesn't have to be exclusive. Dwarven "nobles" could be Robber Barons while their peasants could fill the coal miner archetype.

Chinese Dwarves

> Crafty dwarves of coastal mountains
> they did build boats of fine workmanship to hunt fishes among the shoals
> they did build long ships to carry their wives to islands just beyond the horizon
> they did build tall ships to take all of their people to far, unknown lands
> long ago, now, they sailed beyond the seas
> now we hunt for clues about them in the houses and jars and graves they left behind.

Alternatively, I also run a first age setting where dwarves live in villages of dug-out hut-pits as the first race to settle to single plots of land. Their bright knives and axes baffle in a land of Neolithic tech.

This is how i've done dwarves in my campaign world, made from my my own and stolen ideas from various blogs.

Dwarves define themselves via ethnic materials. These are the materials they are known for, or hold a special importance to them.

Dwarves are parasites or lice to giants, and so associate themselves with a kind of giant, thus defined by their relationship to their giant progenitors.

Dwarves having souls of greed have an intense desire for treasure. Each kind of dwarf has a specific desire, but all dwarves desire things that glitter.

Using these three things, i've come up with eight different kinds of dwarves.

The way I see it you can go two ways with dwarves. You can either have them live above primarily above ground with humans, or you can attempt to justify them living below ground.

What are the consequences of having dwarves live above ground? We get dwarves that are traditional aesthetically. They are free to be as stereotypically scottish and drunk or as culturally diverse, sober and beardless as we please. We get creatures that fit our preconceived notion of dwarves, but are also extremely similar to humans, and not really different from humans save for being a bit shorter and a bit hardier, because there's no reason humans and dwarves can't share the same culture at this point.

What does below ground living dwarves give us? It gives us something unique about dwarves; humans don't live underground because it's too costly for us compared to living above it. We have to explain how and why dwarves can live underground. It's a low light and low energy environment, so perhaps they can spend long periods in inactivity via hibernation. Dwarf lives might be longer and their societies more conservative due to this biological predisposition towards hunkering down for a more bountiful season. They need some way to make more land for themselves, which means hallowing out caves. Perhaps they've domesticated animals like purple worms that can tunnel through rock for them. If so then the worms would likely hold a high place in dwarven society in a similar way to dogs or horses in ours. We need to explain how dwarves deal with cave gasses. Dwarves are usually resistant to poison to account for this and are probably even getting high off of fumes that would kill other races. These gases might even have more powerful cultural and religious significance than alcohol in dwarf culture, not that dwarves couldn't make alcohol still. We get dwarves that are less human, more distinct, but perhaps not even dwarves at all after a certain point.

Dwarves that dug too deep, and now worship the dark powers they have unleashed.

Bonus if they have a Mesopotamian theme.

I don't like monocultures.

Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages revisited the maggot concept. Making them large sentient maggots that reanimate and inhabit dead bodies.

Rat eating, rough housing shit bags that take their love for war all the way to their cuisine. War bread or GTFO. Also all Dwarves have beards, even the females.

I kind of did this, took many of the usual traits of dwarves and broke all dwarves up into different castes/cultures, each taking some of the typical traits but also having new ones. For a small example, "typical" dwarven societies in the mountains are actually split between a sedentary caste that excels in craftsmanship and engineering as well as philosophy and art but dislike violence and things like loosing control of one's emotions and have an almost aristotelian pseudo-religion; then you also have semi-nomadic warrior and animal herder clans who spend their free time drinking and raiding and have a shamanistic religion but often are politically and economically linked to one settled dwarf city-state or another. These cultures have a symbiotic relationship, the craftsmen provide political stability and access to trade, culture, and manufactured goods; while the nomads provide a strong military to be used both defensively and against outsiders or other dwarf cities. Other dwarf groups include the underground dwellers, lava sailors, swamp dwarves who also participate in river trade routes, and a !notMedievalJews group that live in large cities all over the world.

Also, Gnomes were an ancient slave caste that lived underground in the mines for so long they became a different race.

Have Not!dwarfs things in my setting.
>they are depicted more or less traditionally on some of humanity's ancient trinkets, live in almost complete isolation in mountains
>on those trinkets, they are depicted as short and wide men
>in reality, they have similar proportions, except they are 2.5m tall
>physiology works other way around, they need much more metallic elements to function
>blood coagulates in metal-like mass
>which is why some clans have dudes who go in battle naked, blood coagulates and forms natural armour
>when they pass 50-70 years, they insert a huge halo-like ring in their skull
>metallic and mineral growths around the body, including face, and thus on the halo-like ring
>some females unironically have beards, most shave them though
>shiny hair, because much metal
>can live for thousands years, and when they decide that they left enough kids and they are tired, petrify while conserving sentience
>grow in petrified state, up to the size of a mountain
>balls with so much steel that they are considered equals by most militaristic and warloving species of the setting

That's pretty neat. Though if they have close to human proportions, why do you consider them dwarves instead of, say, halflings? Not that the name matters a whole lot when you're adding this much, but if you tell players a setting has "dwarves" they probably won't picture what you're describing.

>My last DM made Halflings and Gnomes into cultural offshoots that moved out of their mountain homes for literal greener pastures, while the Dwarven Dwarves are tradition-bound die hards with an esoteric connection to "the Stone." Which is why they're so damn heavy & stronk compared to the soyboys in the valleys.

So how exactly does it make them different from other dwarves because it sounds like you got sidetracked sucking you GMs cock and failed to explain the thing that makes them different.

>"my ___ isn't like the other setting's ___" list for worldbuilding,
Why do you you have to do it anyway?
What is wrong with Dwarves and Elves exactly?
You being a subhuman hipster who heard some schmuck on Youtube talk how X or why Y is generic because of Tolkien doesn't actually make it.

I am so tired of this meme and of uncreative people like you who are such disgusting tryhards at trying to reinvent the wheel and who just end up with ITS DWARVES/ELVES WITH JUST A DIFFERENT EARTH CULTURE APPLIED TO THEM, SEE HOW UNIQUE AND THEY ARE TOTES INTERESTING NOW.
Pro-Tip: They arent.

Faggot OP here. I suppose I gone into more detail about HOW my DM made Dwarves different, but ironically enough, I decided to keep things short to avoid retards like you bitching about me sucking my DM's dick. The only common theme between all the different bloodlines and cultures of Dwarves was their focus on keeping themselves busy with crafting. The Dwarves who still lived in the mountains were a clerical society, with different ancestral heroes venerated as guiding figures in different clanholds - a particular clan's social rituals, war doctrine & architecture might be a radical departure from the next, but all of them were... well, set in stone. Innovation was limited because the entire city had it's collective head up some long-dead 20th level character's ass. The Mountain Dwarves have lived in a stagnant society for ages, but they're too hung up in grudges and the good old days to admit it.

The Dwarves in the valleys and plains are adapting and changing to suit environmental pressures that the species simply hasn't had to deal with in a long time. Dwarves are only as strong as they are because they live in ancient cities that were built to channel elemental energy, and they have spent generations living in mild magical radiation - the knowledge of how to make such wonders still exists, but the leftover essence of creation that would be needed to make another city like this is long gone. As such, any Dwarves that spend more than a few generations away from their cities will eventually end up with the actual proportional strength of a 4'6" manlet. Without their race's literal superstrength and with excessive sunlight, an overabundance of directions for bandits to come from, and an increased need to work with non-Dwarves, "halflings" have adopted all manner of new business practices and organizational structures - you can't just default to tradition when there's no precedent for your situation, after all.

Cont. for Gnomes

Not him but this isn't actually sounding very different from standard dwarves. Personally I don't mind it, but it isn't proving the point of "but my DM does it different!"

"Halflings" split off for various economic reasons - overcrowding, ambition, irreparably burned bridges with influential individuals, etc. Villages and towns just build up over time as Dwarves trickle out of their ancestral homes to look for opportunity. Gnomes, on the other hand, were formed in a very organized schism.

Dwarves haven't had a tradition of arcane magic in along time, and that's largely because of election fraud. In summary, the Dwarven wizards set up a series of scrying mirrors and pools to allow communication across hundreds of miles for the Dwarven nobility. This magical series of communication relays proved to be extremely useful, until it was discovered that the Dwarven mages had designed them specifically to be vulnerable to outside manipulation, and that they had been controlling the inner workings of the government for centuries by collecting information and rewriting important messages. Basically, the majority of the Dwarven mages were exiled for high treason - they would have been executed if there weren't so damn many of them to punish, and if they didn't have near-godlike magical powers. The "gnomes" are the remnant of these families and schools of Dwarven mages.

A debate over whether or not this supposed breach of confidence really happened is questionable to say the least, and to this day many "gnomes" claim to have been slandered by an insane, power-hungry king that wanted to get rid of his most ardent opponents. Dwarven records partially support both claims, although there are holes in both stories.

It's a slight twist that keeps the major themes intact for the more Dwarfy Dwarves, while simultaneously inverting the tropes associated with them - you have your big manly man Dwarves living in oversized mountain holds, sure... they just happen to be roided up on arcane magic, while their hobbit-like outcasts and emigrants are not only significantly closer to their natural form, but also confronting more immediate and existential threats than their mainstream culture(s) usually have to. As I started to get into a bit in the part about Gnomes, they're basically Jews - which Tolkein had originally based his Dwarves on, but taken in a much more literal direction.

Egyptian

And their "natural form" got offloaded onto the Halfling archetype when they literally were named halflings. Saying they're actually dwarves doesn't mean much when you still call them halflings and apply the halfling stereotypes to them.
If anything what your dm did was narrow the description of dwarves down further by taking the jewish portion of their stereotypes (which Tolkien repeatedly said was not intentional) and given it to gnomes and then taken the actual original idea of being feeble without their magic steroids and given it to halflings (though dwarves of norse mythology were small and weak so I guess it's not actually original, you just don't see it used much) Now what the setting calls dwarf is strictly the hyperconservative, magic hating, stubborn-headed stereotype and anything else gets labelled by some other fantasy race archetype, even if they're all still technically a kind of dwarf.

Again, not saying any of this is bad, but it's not doing what you claim it does.

Making dwarves elves doesn't really solve the basic problem of the fact that dwarves tend to all be depicted the same way, though. That is, their ORIGIN isn't the issue, its their present day.

Mind, I say this without having ever played any Elder Scrolls game, so I don't know if the fact that they're elf in origin has any major effects on how they are portrayed in the current time.

Dwemer slant more elven than dwarven in stereotypes, they just have the materialistic and stubborn elements of dwarves coupled with fabulous beard fashions. Lore wise they're trippy vaguely vedic existential craziness, as is to be expected of anything TES related

Making them elemental spirits.

TES dwarves are actually legitimately interesting. They just happen to also be extinct.

Basically, they were a race of ruthlessly logical, technocratic mad scientist elves with beards and a Mesopotamian aesthetic who lived under the earth and built vaguely steampunk magitech that ran on trapped souls in gems. They suddenly, mysteriously vanished en masse over a thousand years ago, leaving brass automatons behind to patrol their ruins in the present day. This disappearance may or may not have actually been their collective enlightenment and ascension, or they might have annihilated themselves in an attempt to reach said ascension. Nobody knows.
Also, they were actually pretty tall. The nickname "dwarf" was bestowed upon them by giants.