A survey about dwarves

How different can dwarves be before you start to disagree with the author that this race should really be called that?

Have you ever actually had that happen with something you read (or wrote and got feedback on)?

What are the most critical aspects of archetypal dwarvenity to you? (Shortness? Sturdiness? Fondness for drink and industry? Diligence? Living underground? Mining? Sophisticated stone architecture? Technology? Strict social hierarchy? Respect for tradition? Having trappings of Norse, Russian, German, or Scottish culture? Axes? Beards?) What aspects do you care about least, or are most interested in seeing changed?

(Obviously these are going to be personal opinions; I'd like to know your personal opinions. I didn't get any answers from my NaNo group besides that, and it wasn't very informative...)

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I have to say, between Dwarf Fort's dorfs grabbing the "dwarvenness" dial and turning it so high that the Deep-Downers would back off while muttering about not taking it too far, and Eoin Colfer's...well, I have no idea how to describe Mulch Diggums other than "weird", I'm prepared to accept that almost everything that the author calls a dwarf, may as well be a dwarf.

"Short height" and "beard" are about the only constants (the former by definition, the latter in the sense you're referring to: I can imagine beardless dwarves but it just doesn't seem right). The affinities for machinery and mining are, in my mind, optional; pint-sized sturdy seafarers or peasants do register as "dwarves" in my mind, as long as they possess the requisite facial hair.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

One unusual case worth noting is Pillars Of Eternity — it has dwarves, but there is no such thing as a "dwarvern culture". The closest is Sagani's people, a small, apparently dwarvern-only village, but they're an isolated tribe who are more Inuit than any conventional sort of dwarf. Anyhow, in Eora, nationality supercedes species, so a Glanfarthan mountain dwarf has far more in common with a Glanfarthan elf than he does a Valian dwarf. But there's still no doubt that these short, heavyset folk, be they scheming Dyrwoodan politicians, Glanfarthan tribespeople, brightly-dressed and eloquent Valians, or whatever else, are... well, dwarves.

I've never played that game, but this sounds like a pretty refreshing take on dwarves. Honestly, my major pet peeve with fantasy races is that a lot of the time all of the members of a race act pretty much identically, as though they're a hivemind, not a race of individuals. (Well, unless it really is a hivemind, in which case it's justified.)

What is a dwarf to me? Well, they're shorter than most humans, and also have beards. And even the latter isn't set in stone. (Pun mostly unintended.)

edited 20th May '15 5:33:20 PM by Collen

Gave them our reactions, our explosions, all that was ours For graphs of passion and charts of stars...

For me, they can be anything, and for as long as they are called "dwarves", they are "dwarves".

Oh, sure, they might not be the dwarves as envisioned by people who think that there's only one true kind of dwarves as described in this-or-that story. But they will be dwarves nonetheless; it is nothing more than a name, one we'd gotten used to carrying certain connotations, but one that does not have to be automatically linked with those connotations.

In fact, because it is at least implied that many fantasy worlds have their own language, the use of the word "dwarf" (or "dwarves") is nothing more than fantasy-specific Translation Convention applied to something like a nationality or ethnicity (or a name of a human-like race, as it often is).

Think about it this way: the word "elves" originally applied to one among many groups of the "fair folk". Yes, really. So if we protested use of the word "elf" to refer to anything that is not close enough to the original meaning, we'd be protesting the use of this word almost every time a fantasy story featuring "elves" is written. And yet we do not. So there is no reason why it shouldn't be the same with "dwarves" or "humans" or "kobolds" or whatever other name of a race happens to get used in a fantasy story.

Because language changes. And while some of the changes (the ones attributed to laziness and wilful inanity) are not at all a positive thing and the ones forcing those probably deserve to be smote (or alternatively set on fire), some words change in meaning because they are associated with cultural concepts that either evolve or become obsolete and cause the word to get attached to some related concept.

And that is why the word "dwarf" is used when talking about a "dwarf". Because, due to being entrenched in people's perception of what a "dwarf" is, it provides the writer with an easy-to-use shortcut to describing characters with features similar or the same as what people came to associate with "dwarves". But it does not have to be used in such a way.

I have to second Sabres Edge. "Dwarf" to me is shorthand (no pun intended) for "short and bearded". Everything else can be changed, but tall dwarves are oxymoronic and beardless dwarves - at least when they're lacking other "traditional" characteristics, anyway - make me wonder why the author called them that instead of something else.

Well...I think dwarves MUST be small because I see them as the opposite of giants, which MUST be large. I'd like to see dwarves who were less Viking expies and more pint-sized nature spirits primarily connected to the earth. I hate how unmagical they've become in mainstream fantasy. I also hate how hyper-masculine they've become, so I'd like to see them be more...androgynous, I guess.

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

Etymologically speaking, the word "Dwarf" was used to describe "small people." So to me at least, the only real requirement for Dwarves is that they be short. Everything else is just an "it-would-be-nice" addition. That includes beards, industrialism/stoneworking, gruffness, etc.

Make 'em short, call 'em Dwarves, and I'll be just fine.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

See, the only reason I add "beards" to "short height" is that if they don't have beards, the temptation is strong to stick them in Bavarian national costume, give them an accordion, and set them out to wreak havoc (and incidentally be responsible for a measurable percentage of Welch's List).

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

Well, why not? That'd be WAY more interesting than the copy-and-paste "Hollywood Scandinavians" we have running around. Plus, accordions are the shit

Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.

Shortness is really the only major thing, since, y'know, that's what "dwarf" means.

ok boomer

Similarly to others here, the only requirements that I really have for considering a species/race/whatever to be "dwarfs"/"dwarves" is that the author refer to them as such and that they be short. Beards, axes, mining, etc. are all optional as far as I'm concerned.

(I'm quite happy for "dwarf" to be a synonym, subset, or superset of "gnome" if a given work has it so, personally.)

My Games & Writing

If "gnome" and "dwarf" are synonyms, does this mean that all those Welch's List entries about gnomes would apply to dwarves as well? Because I am ready for this.

Oh god yes I am so ready for this.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

A shaved dwarf always seemed weird to me, but yeah, I'd accept it. Dwarves should still be short, but they don't have to be excessively short (I'd buy a dwarf that was four-five feet tall).

So yeah, shortness is the only thing that dwarves really need, and even that one is negotiable. Personally, I think of it as a chart, where they must have at least two of the following; short, live underground, greedy, racial tendency for alcoholism, good with tech.

Sounds to me like we have a general consensus: "Short" plus at least one other standard trait, with room for interpretation.

edited 21st May '15 9:47:04 PM by AwSamWeston

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

Thank you all for your input! :D

(For what it's worth, the inspiration for this question is I've been worldbuilding a dwarven society that actually hits most of the points that I mentioned, with only a few exceptions; they don't actually live underground, they're only about a head and an half shorter than their neighbours and aren't really 'stocky', beards are a symbol of authority forbidden to commoners, and most overtly, I drew inspiration from human cultures that are nowhere close to northern Europe... ^note You can probably guess them if you think about civilisations best known for massive stonework, advanced science, strict social traditionalism, and inventing fermentation. :P)

(I won't be changing anything I've already decided, but I wanted some data for thinking about what to emphasise or downplay about individual dwarves and their society as a whole, and to inspire ideas for dwarves in other settings.)

Followed link. Need to see this game now. :D

<3

The shortness bit interests me because I can think of exceptions to both of those qualities... Carrot Ironfoundersson gets away with being both because he surprises everyone even in-story, which in turn is because all the other dwarfs in-story draw from the same well as the stereotype, just deeper. The dwarf king in The Dreamland Chronicles is huge, but he's the same shape as the other dwarves (so apparently dwarves are fundamentally stout and never stop growing). The Elder Scrolls has an entire race of normal-height dwarves, who were still subterranean technophiles, and felt it necessary to justify their name because they were originally called that by the giants.

...the fantasy I enjoy most tends to be very low on magic or the supernatural in general, but I agree with the principle. :P And I definitely sympathise with the latter - it seems like "beardy" is the second most critical feature to an acceptable dwarf, and most everyone assumes that's synonymous MANLY without thinking about it. (The contingent that insists dwarf women must also be bearded used to bother me because it was just an in-universe joke in LOTR, but now it only bothers me that so few writers do anything interesting with it.)

Yessssssss. :D I think modern gnomes are just stealing various traits from dwarves and hobbits, and combining their shortness attributes. :P Actually, now that I think about it, "gnome" would be perfectly serviceable as another word for "hobbit", which compared to "halfling" is a bit less semiotically recognisable, but equally uncopyrightable, and much closer to folklore and can be used without being a wacky comic relief caricature of some kind.

(Sabre - of course dwarves would have a god of heavy artillery. Probably a sort of mixture of Thor, Loki, Athena, and St. Barbara. :D )

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

brb. Making a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Gerald of Bull.

Actually, that'd be a hell of an explanation for ziggurats. Burial temples? Who do you think we are, humans? Those are gun platforms. Or the entryway for Project HARP.

edited 22nd May '15 4:47:44 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

(Oh, but naturally dwarves wouldn't spend months or years building a weapon that can only ever be used to attack one specific target, when with just a little more effort it could be omnidirectional! Make the ziggurat hollow, with the cannon muzzle emerging from a hole in the roof of the apex temple, fixed in place with a pivot. The interior is approximately shaped like a cone with a section of a sphere attached to the base (I'm sure this shape has a name but I don't remember what it is offhand), with a massive gear mechanism and folding supports that allow to rotate 360°, and lower the butt from 45° to almost vertical to fire closer than its maximum range. :D The rest of the building is shielding, munition storage, habitation... and shrines to St. Gerald.)

edited 22nd May '15 6:24:36 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Make of this what you will, but for most of that, I was thinking "Mayans", not "Sumerians".

I designed my dwarves to be Chummy Commies if Communism was born in Scotland instead of Russia. They're still beardy, short, scottish cave dwellers, but they call friends "Comrade" rather than "Laddie". Also, they're Sparks because reasons.

edited 1st Jun '15 8:03:18 PM by dvorak

Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!

That's correct, actually - or partially correct, which is more correct than Sumerian. I didn't realise Sabre was guessing that. <_<

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

If the description fits... (And they both had step pyramids, too!)

Although now I'm seeing giant obsidian-encrusted cannons and some hilariously up-scaled variations on the Mayan ball games.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

My dwarves are similar, but I kept zeir Russian accents.

Dwarven artillery is pretty primitive, but it does exist; however, firing them does tend to knock off the mosaic tiles. :P The big immobile guns that are thick enough not to explode in twenty-some shots but too heavy to move get built into fortifications and thoroughly engraved, though. Other Maya-derived inventions: obsidian astronomy mirrors, and a calendar combining interlocking solar and lunar years into cycles of 50+ years, which is formally tracked by an elaborate gearwork clock in the central temple. :D

Upscaled in what way? Dwarves can't reach the hoops without at least standing on each others' shoulders, if not more complicated gymnastics? ...that might actually work...

(The other two cultures I'm drawing inspiration from also basically match the aforementioned description, but one is an actual mountain-dwelling civilisation, and the other loves cats.)

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Well, I was thinking "really comedically impractically upscaled"; since the objective is to get the ball through a hoop in the air, it does bring to mind some variant rules giving those huge siege cannons some use when they're not at war.

Really, the biggest tech issue is going to be metallurgy; gun barrels are notoriously hard to construct properly if you don't know what you're doing, and their failure modes tend towards the spectacular. (Then again, if you've got metalworking down to the point that you can build huge gearwork clocks...) The second tech issue is going to be the safety issue dealing with the amounts of gunpowder involved (unless you want them to skip blackpowder and jump directly to, say, guncotton), which may not mesh well with traditional dorfy attitudes towards workplace safety.

After that, the sky's the limit. Perhaps literally, if someone gets it in their mind to build a Columbiad, Jules Verne style...

edited 25th May '15 9:20:37 PM by SabresEdge

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.