Why are dwarves always the exact same? Why is their beard+beer+axe/hammer+stoic+hatred for elves combo so extremely prevalent in fantasy? It really hurts them as a player race, having such a strongly predefined personality that no other race seems to suffer, at least to this extent.
Why are dwarves always the exact same...
Jack Garcia
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Ayden Cruz
Because faggots like you complain instead of changing it.
Jason Gomez
Tell us more about your shitty, contrarian OC dwarves who turn the fantasy genre on its head breaking ALL the rules.
Jonathan Barnes
Because dwarf-fags want it that way. There are actually some different dwarves out there, so I heard. But nobody cares. They want to play the exact same Gimli-clone every game.
Jaxon Brooks
>Why are dwarves always the exact same?
Because every time someone attempts to change dwarves the result is "did you mean Stone Genasi?"
Nathan Cox
It's not about breaking the rules, it's just moving from a single stereotype. Even if you play along with the classic dwarf, anything you do differently is considered a sin because you're not reenacting Gimli. If you do anything against the norm you're "roleplaying dwarves wrong", which is something you don't see much in other races, they don't have as much weight put into them, and it bothers me a lot.
I love dwarves, they're a stoic, mountain-dwelling and traditional people with a knack for craftsmanship, but that gives you a lot of room to work with or against the norm and do your own thing.
Maybe you're a scholar dwarf who wanted to make a good map of the cave system near their city and once that was done he wanted to expand cartography for his people by mapping or obtaining maps of the outside world and set out to do so. Maybe you're a dwarf wizard who put his people in danger with his magic and it got him kicked out. Or perhaps you're just another dwarf who wants to go out and see the world sometime. There's a shitload of ways to play a dwarf.
But every single time I've had a dwarf as a player near me, it's the exact same. He's Gimli. He's a fighter with an axe or hammer (rarely a shield to go with it) who's really into drinking and shit-talking elves and boasting about supaerier dworven creftsmansheep.
Luke Stewart
And it's the same with elves if you're not acting like Johnny Depp.
Robert Rodriguez
Because it's what people want/expect when they think of dwarves.
Matthew Torres
What does Johnny Depp has to do with elves tho?
Aaron Jackson
Primarily living in plateaus or rocky regions, the dwarves are a heavily religious culture, believing in a strict caste system based largely on what stars a person was born under. Their religion is that of sun worship, believing that their thick, porcelain white skin that resists tanning no matter how long it's exposed is evidence that they are the favored ones of the sun, which they call the Forge of Creation. Because of this, dwarves born during the summer months are generally put into higher positions of authority, since the sun is stronger then.
Their preferred climate has made them naturally inclined to be goat ranchers, and the selective breeding that resulted from this has led to massive goats being a common sight. This has also caused a kinship between the dwarves and the satyrs, which is what originally introduced the dwarves to conflict with the elves. In times long past, the elves tried to subjugate the satyrs, and the dwarves fought alongside their allies. In more recent times, the dwarves are the ones instigating fights with the elves, while the satyrs have taken a more vassal-like role.
In combat, dwarves are used to large flat battlefields, and so have adopted phalanxes and strict formations. They use the abundance of bronze and iron available to them to make heavy metal armors. The creation of these armors is often overseen by a Fire Mage, who are high ranking members of the clergy. In fact, all magic users are given high status, though it should be noted that frost magic is forbidden. Necromancy is allowed, though uncommon because of the cremation rites the dwarves practice.
Jason Watson
Because Dwarf is less of a race and more of a class.
Owen Perez
>It really hurts them as a player race, having such a strongly predefined personality that no other race seems to suffer, at least to this extent.
It doesn't.
It makes it a very good race to play as a somewhat new player since it's easy to roleplay in a fun way.
You don't have to adhere to the stereotype though, so it doesn't hurt them at all as a more experienced player.
You're wrong.
Henry Clark
t. Gomlo/Gemli/Ilmig
Ian Nguyen
Needs more Egypt.
Christian Ross
Is Egypt-y enough, or should it be more Egypt still?
Nathan Fisher
>"sssh, don't tell him he's a manlet"
Evan Ross
you dont mess with perfection
Anthony Rivera
I've only seen the snob elf thing on NPCs, honestly
All elf players I've seen have been less traditional humans that kinda do their own thing
Nathan King
Then you have boring elf players.
Christopher Hill
Because people enjoy the stereotype?
I see more dumbasses overthinking it like Who are so scared of the stereotype they trudge through inane boring shit to try and make them unique.
Don't try it, embrace the stereotype like Warhammer did and you can do fucking amazing things with it.
See: WHFB Dwarves vs the AoS Kharadon Overlords.
Literally the same archtype, taken to different degrees by method, not meddling with the archtype itself.
Ryder Hernandez
> a couple paragraphs to make a race your own is inane and boring
You must be great at worldbuilding.
Xavier Young
I am fantastic at worldbuilding.
I just don't need to try and hide any type of stereotype behind a wall of inane bullshit.
>My dwarves are white skinned pre-islam Arabs in't I so unique.
It's pathetic man.
Gavin Phillips
>Why are dwarves always the exact same?
They aren't?
Ian Foster
There's a great deal more to dwarves that just being bearded miners skilled in craft. They were also said to be akin to maggots or lice to the giants, and given reason by the gods. What if there was a kind of dwarf for every kind of giant, closely tied to one another.
Michael Harris
>tfw dwarves have to be elves to become interesting
Sebastian Barnes
>Elves need to become ancient aliens to be interesting.
Gabriel Sullivan
this
Brody Ross
Playing a female dwarf bard in a campaign right now. She's young, extroverted, likes to dance, and joined a troupe. She wants to be a world-famous entertainer, and is adventuring to gain the funds to build her own theater.
Gavin Young
They aren't always...
William Jones
If you're going to change everything about them then why even call them dwarves at that point?
These types of dwarves stand out because they contrast with the norms of the setting. FR still has regular dwarves but Chult has savage dwarves. They may as well be a subrace like Duergar
Adrian Stewart
Jaxon Adams
The best Dorfs are Ganondorfs.
Anthony Torres
Dragon Age had beardless dwarves and they had no ll will toward elves...
Warmachine/Iron Kingdoms has the same.
Luis Thompson
Pipes > Cigarettes
Michael Anderson
>having dwarves in your campaign
And why. Boring shit, either have humans only or come up with something new. Copying a copy of a copy is just shitty
Hudson Barnes
Cigars>Pipes>Cigarettes>Elf Penis>>>Vaping.
Parker Sullivan
...
Thomas Wilson
>He castrates elves and smokes their shriveled dicks after stretching the foreskin to stuff them with tobacco/cannabis/other smoked drugs
William Harris
>implying more than one miligram of substance would fit in an elf foreskin, nevermind a dried one
Robert Morris
I'm fine with Dwarves as they are until someone can prove that there's a cooler way to do them. All I see is people just copypasting a random culture onto them and thinking it automatically makes it good.
Aiden King
See
Oliver Roberts
If you want to make a pre-existing fantasy race more interesting, make them the protagonists of a very weird-fantasy story/setting, then drop them back into the setting where you found them too boring.
Dwarves eat add powdered gems and metals to their food because it tastes like literal spice to them. It accumulates in their body over time, and manifests visibly on their skin with age, appearing as "veins" of metal or a dusting of tiny crystals.
Different castes in dwarven society eat different metals or crystals based both on cost and tradition. Surface dwellers are untouchable outcasts. Those who live below but work growing food and livestock above ground are the lowest laborers. Higher social castes live deeper, with warriors somewhere in the middle, miners below where metal is plentiful, craftsmen and artisans deeper, where volcanic vents stoke their forges, and the rulers and priests deepest, close to the home of their deep chthonic gods.
When dwarves die, they're cremated in a funereal smelter, and the metal from within their body is crafted into an ancestral artifact of great significance. Rather than manifesting as ghosts or other undead, dwarves have a lingering willpower that clings to ancestral artifacts, and can even restore them to sentience in the material world with a strong enough connection to their descendants. The heads of crafting hammers are the most traditional use for ancestral metal; beard ornaments are collected by those of very long lineages.
Dwarves who ate more metal leave behind more for the making of artifacts; as metal is costly, these are usually the rich and significant. Powerful red dwarves (the typically iron-eating warrior caste) wield great weapons with the minds of their ancestors who guide them in battle.
Michael Rivera
Or you don't fluff your stories out with pathetic padding to hide the utter lack of depth within.
Ethan Watson
People who like dwarves like it that way, people who don't like dwarves just ignore them.
Andrew Howard
They don't need to but it helps
Hunter Stewart
Wild hunt elves sucked
Thomas Torres
My dwarves are jolly wizards with a knack for woodwork.
Colton Hill
Canadian (specifically Newfie) dwarves that live between the high mountains and the cold but very pretty bays, where they work as toiling miners and mariners, shipping their goods throughout the land.
And then also the Vaulters except Russian.
Brody Sullivan
Jaxson Reed
I like technomancer dwarves.
The ones in the setting I'm currently working on have a sort of Mechanicum vibe to them, at least visually, though they're actually extremely anti-theistic due to the gods having once destroyed their greatest creation.
Lincoln Russell
You should check their visas. I think they might be Gnomes trying to con you.
Liam Jenkins
Well, first of all, most of the basic fantasy races are just as repetitive. Hobbits, elfs, and orcs have equally limited variation, appearing as the same tropes over and over countless times.
But as for dwarfs, based on what I feel about them and what a lot of people I've known and played with have said about it, I think to a great extent, dwarfs are the defacto "anti-elf" race. Elfs are SUPER fucking popular, especially if you play with teenagers or weeaboos, who are super common in this hobby, or girls, who are also increasingly common. A lot of people like elfs because they are very obviously the "perfect" race. They are more graceful and more wise and more attractive and more special and more exotic and all that jazz, and people pick them for those reasons. On the other hand, you have a lot of people who find that boring, or who are just fucking sick of so many bisexual bishonen asshat characters all over their games, and they tend to gravitate back to dwarfs because dwarfs have a very oppositional vibe to elfs. I think that sort of pigeon holes them for a lot of people.
Colton Edwards
Dwarves in my setting are an all-Female race. :3c
Hudson Stewart
Dwarves can't be wizards
Anthony Cruz
Because dwarf players like it and dwarf players are the most boring people on the planet
Luke Richardson
Why are all snakes the same?
Parker Nelson
Theyre not
Christian Barnes
They're all about as same-ish that dwarf variants are
Adam Hall
I made my dwarves divided into more traditional dwarves and those that are essentially lava genasi. They're also highly religious and hate heavy industry.
Gavin Howard
>implying a cobra is the same thing as an anaconda
Justin Ortiz
look at this faggot
Adrian Phillips
they're both snakes
Even just in a lore as shallow as Warcraft, the Earthen and Ice Dwarves are different to normal dwarves
Grayson Reed
If dwarves weren't dwarves, they wouldn't be dwarves. Stereotypical dwarves with some key, flavorful twists that still leave them identifiable as dwarves makes for best dwarves. Though ideally there'd be one or two other major caveats on the stereotype, Warhammer dwarves do this well in at least one twist by taking the whole dwarven stubbornness to such an extreme that it's actually responsible for the decline of their race (which I also appreciate since many takes on dwarves ape the whole declining race thing without giving a reason for it), what with the book of grudges, obsessions with honor and vengeance and extremely conservative attitudes that hold back their top tier engineering and results in their age-old inventions not being the best around (though still way up there for things invented centuries or millennia ago).
Jason Cook
>that no other race seems to suffer
Do you know what Elves are?
Angel Gray
Says who?
Dylan Gonzalez
Yes, easily the most modified race of all time, to the point where the only prevalent thing about elves is their pointy ears. The fact that elves have a snobby, naturephilic ranger stereotype doesn't make them all the exact same elf like dwarves do.
Isaac Adams
The rulebooks of the only good D&D editions
Hudson Lewis
Almost all elves and elf-likes are defined more by their penchant for magic or agility just like dwarves are defined by their constitution and strength. Many elf-likes are hoity toity just like dwarves are down and dirty drunks.
The only difference is in aesthetics because elves are tall and very humanoid while dwarves are basically buff babies and changing that just makes them look funny.
Nathan Collins
>muh warhammer dorfs
Out of all the good warhammer races like the skaven, the lizardmen and the humans the dwarves manage to be more generic than the fucking elves
Levi Reed
>he lets shitty rulebooks of shitty editions dictate his fun
Lmao
Anthony Wilson
It's really quite sad, really. There are very interesting things that can be done with some of the more over the top aspects of Warhammer dwarves but they don't manage to every apply them to anything more than underscoring traditional dwarf tropes.
Carson Clark
> fluff is bad
t. Buzzkill
Luis Watson
I said ideally there'd be more to them. For a singular detail, it's good and with complex ramifications without completely departing from core themes of dwarvishness.
Eli Jenkins
That's the point.
Jeremiah Roberts
I think you're missing the point of the thread, user. It's not about their overall strong points as a race and how they define them, it's about every dwarf being Bootleg Gimli.
Jack Miller
because they are metaphorically jews
Brody Rogers
Yes, but what are the core themes of "dwarvishness" and why are they so important to people on Veeky Forums that they never vary, falter, or be reinterpreted?
Cameron Foster
That's just your anti-antisemitism.
Camden Phillips
Chaos dwarfs>Dwarfs. Actually why didn’t they get brought up more with GW’s chaos wank anyways?
Jaxon Smith
Because a dwarf is a dwarf. Even elves vary in their stereotypes (high elf, wood elf, various dark elves), whereas there's really only one kind of dwarf. That singular dwarf stereotype also has more to it than those elf stereotypes on their own. It may be well-worn, but it's iconic for a reason.
You need to keep enough of the dwarf identity to it for them to still be recognizable as dwarves, or you might as well just create your own new race of stunties.
That's not to say you can only tweak existing dwarf traits, I was just praising Warhammer for managing to change things up in a way without actually adding or changing anything in the formula. You can still innovate with additions/changes, you just need to leave enough of the dwarf identity intact that they still feel like dwarves.
Nolan Hall
I stan for dwarves and always run them as super jewish. I usually drop the hatred for elves and alcoholism for a general distrust of outsiders. Then have hill dwarves just be dwarves who live among other races, their hatred of goblins and giants is because goblins destroyed their homeland, etc. The huge thing about ancestors is "You must always remember the sacrifices of your people." and their law is less about "muh honor" as much as it is a millenia long running argument between various sages. Dwarves actually work really well if you go full jewish with them.
Ryan Williams
>Chaos dwarfs
Not enough sales probably
Ian Martin
The only elf that pop-culture recognizes; Legolas.
Bentley Murphy
It’s a Veeky Forums post, not a novel. The fluff is the only thing that fits and the only thing anyone is going to read.
Quit trying so hard to shit on everyone’s parade.
David Torres
Insightful and correct.
Jordan Moore
That the wrong Pirates of the Caribbean actor user
Camden Mitchell
Nog = jogged
Elijah Brown
I'm gonna get shit on for this, but
Dragon Age dwarves were different. They didn't give two shits about elves, they didn't really drink much (and their beer was actually kinda shitty, because they live underground and could only ferment mushrooms; anyone who wasn't a dwarf described it as 'gravelly'), and they had a much more rigid caste system and more... plausible? warrior culture than you usually see with dwarves. Often, they've just kind of got this 'yeh, fighten's gret, laddeh!' and that's... it. DA dwarves had the kind of hard-line class divides that warrior cultures tend to establish.
They were, frankly, Tokugawa era Japan more than they were sort-of-not-really Scottish. Hidebound honor rules for (relative) peace time that everyone tried to game instead of actually following, an emerging (and emergingly powerful) merchant class, political machinations and powerful dynasties. It's all there, even down to the ridiculous honor duels that no one actually gave a shit about.
Jackson Ortiz
>Earthen
Okay, so Ice Dwarves haven't been relavent at all (and they're more Elementals than dwarves, anyways) until literally a few months ago, but they are.. different ish, I guess.
But you're going to sit there and tell me that playable, PC Warcraft dwarves from Ironforge aren't the most stereotypical, fuck-off bland dwarfdwarfdwarfSCOTSdwarfBEERdwarfdwarfdwarf you've ever seen, I don't know what to tell you.
Nathaniel Morris
In case you were actually look for the answer, OP, it's right here. Dwarven players are conservative. That's it. Dwarves are stereotypically conservative, like stone. Enduring, immutable, and willing to die instead of change, and so they attract people who find that appealing and who, in turn, refuse any kind of change.
tl;dr TRADITION! (tradition!)
Andrew Wright
instead of playing them like little vikings play them like little samurai
Gavin Sullivan
>Many elf-likes are hoity toity just like dwarves are down and dirty drunks.
>A down and dirty wood elf appears!
Thomas Green
Aren't newfies just over freindly dwarfs already?
Nathaniel Morris
I'd say they were fleshed out as opposed to different. Like you said they still adhere to a majority of dwarf tropes, they're just thought through and integrated by someone who gave two shits about worldbuilding.
Noah Sanchez
goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz
your ideas have been articulated better elsewhere.
Aaron Flores
You are a tasteless nigger and a cocksucker.
Adrian Foster
I don't even think this is incorrect. Maybe on a technical level but I don't think you're wrong
Xavier Cruz
Form, makes function.
When making a race you need to first design their physiology and psychology, and then extrapolate culture based on that. The problem with dwarfs is they are dead set into the "small study cave dwellers" body type. Now you could make your dwarfs thin black skinned claustrophobic psychics, but calling them dwarfs is meaningless just name them something new.
Tl;dr
>A dwarf is a dwarf and if you're going for something other then a Veeky Forums manlet in a mountain name it something else.
Christian King
They turned into a fucking joke at halfway into the game, what a sham
Carter Kelly
Interesting that you say that, friend.
I'm playing a 5e game where my dwarf is a fighter with the samurai archetype. He is even east asian looking and dawn's full samurai gear as full plate.
His whole shtick is that he was raised in a mountain that was home to an ancient gold dragon. On the day that the dwarf is to become a man, he must speak to the dragon and be given something. On his day, the dragon was gone. To himself he is not a man, and mist find the dragon.
it's alot of fun. Despite probably being the oldest and mature in the party, he'll sit at the kids table at events and shit. It's all on principal of course.