Should Dwarf Women be Bearded?

[Lvl45DM!]

IMHO Yes. Tolkein stated in his appendicies that Dwarf women were indistinguishable from Dwarf men, and all Dwarf men have beards.
Books set in the early editions of Dungeons and Dragons (Specifically Darkwalkers on Moonshae) had a female dwarf with a prominent beard.

Its common (though not universal) in fiction that Elf men don't have beards. So obviously Dwarf women should! It increases the thematic role of having both dwarves and elves in your fiction!

Plus its a way of making a separate species actually feel different to humans. Saying Dwarves have completely different beauty standards is a great way to allow us to immerse ourselves in a different role or character and, as a side note, might make people more open to accepting different forms of beauty in the real world!

Totally in favour of dwarf women having beards, or at least naturally being hairy. Maybe they shave to look pretty which could be interesting.

What do you think?

EDIT: Is this the right forum for this? I am speaking not just about RPGs but all fiction so I think it is.

[Devonix]

IMHO Yes. Tolkein stated in his appendicies that Dwarf women were indistinguishable from Dwarf men, and all Dwarf men have beards.
Books set in the early editions of Dungeons and Dragons (Specifically Darkwalkers on Moonshae) had a female dwarf with a prominent beard.

Its common (though not universal) in fiction that Elf men don't have beards. So obviously Dwarf women should! It increases the thematic role of having both dwarves and elves in your fiction!

Plus its a way of making a separate species actually feel different to humans. Saying Dwarves have completely different beauty standards is a great way to allow us to immerse ourselves in a different role or character and, as a side note, might make people more open to accepting different forms of beauty in the real world!

Totally in favour of dwarf women having beards, or at least naturally being hairy. Maybe they shave to look pretty which could be interesting.

What do you think?

EDIT: Is this the right forum for this? I am speaking not just about RPGs but all fiction so I think it is.

Tolkien didn't invent Dwarves though. And since they are a fictional race they can look however the author wants them to look.

You want your Dwarven women bearded fine. Want them clean shaven, Nothing stopping you there either.

[Kalmageddon]

I don't know, I think it's just one of those things that made dwarves into silly comic reliefs in a lot of settings.

[Lvl45DM!]

Tolkien didn't invent Dwarves though. And since they are a fictional race they can look however the author wants them to look.

You want your Dwarven women bearded fine. Want them clean shaven, Nothing stopping you there either.

Of course they can, and Dwarves can be flaming 30 ft tall lizard-octopi. Noones stopping anyone from doing that.
This isnt about CAN its about SHOULD. Im arguing (purely for fun) that Dwarves are BETTER with bearded women

[Lvl45DM!]

I don't know, I think it's just one of those things that made dwarves into silly comic reliefs in a lot of settings.

I don't think thats the reason they were comic relief. Warhammer and AD&D all had badass bearded women. Its just an easy thing to make fun of.

[Psyren]

I think it's fine in a comedy setting, and honestly even some of our own women occasionally have facial hair so I don't think it should be completely unheard of outside of that, but I don't see much of a point in making it widespread. It would just make female gamers unwilling to play dwarves I think.

[Kantaki]

Maybe it is because I am human, but female dwarves with a full beard sound ridiculous. A little bit of fluffy facial hair? Sure, no problem. Anything more and its distracting my imagination with the attempt to picture it.

[Pokonic]

I think 'dwarf women have beards' should stick to being one of those in-universe jokey suggestions about how non-humans work from a human perspective, like Elves growing from trees and such.

[thorgrim29]

It could work if you do it like Discworld where dwarves have very little sexual dismorphism compared to humans. Just having them be women with beards is gratuitous, think about what that means for their society.

How are gender roles affected? A lot of human mythology (at least western, not that familiar with other cultures) is based around the relationship between the domineering and aggressive masculine and the nurturing but sometimes utterly terrifying feminine, how does the dwarf pantheon reflect their difference? How do they react in contact with other species that have more dismorphism, do they think it's weird, envy them a bit? What's their relationship with elves, who similarly have less sexual dismorphism then humans but in the other direction?

There's a lot to work with here beyond bearded ladies.

[Hazzardevil]

I like the approach from Goblin's Comic, which has Dwarf women having beards, but it's a very small fluffy bit of hair, as opposed to a full on beard.

[Calemyr]

It should be what the setting's creator wants it to be. Things like bearded dwarf gals say a lot about the intention of the setting. If they are the rule, the world is generally meant to evoke either a sense of absurdist comedy (like Terry Pratchett's Discworld series), or it's meant to evoke a sense of true separation between the races. It creates a fundamental difference between them and a cultural gulf that may or may not be overcome. If you want to make the non-human races seem alien and strange, these are the kind of rules you impose.

If it is not a rule, it enforces the impression that dwarves are people, too. Maybe not the same kind of people, maybe a different culture and such, but the differences are not so great as the similarities. It creates a "melting pot" setting, where humans and dwarves and elves share the community rather than faction themselves off. The races are not so alien from each other that they can't get along (save a few exceptions, of course, even alien races have a few people big enough to overcome the difference like Gimli and Legolas).

Both sorts of settings have their merit and many great stories to tell. I would not dare decide for the storyteller.

[LibraryOgre]

Question: Do dwarf women have beards?

Answer: The pretty ones do.


I like big beards and I can not lie
You other dwarves can't deny
When a girl walks in with a big thick waist
And hair all over her face
You get sprung
Wanna pull up tough
Cuz you notice that face was scruffed
Deep in the helm she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh, baby I wanna get with ya
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me
But that beard you got
Make Me so horny
Ooh, ain't got smooth skin
You say you wanna get in my clan
Well use me use me cuz you aint that average groupie
I've seen them smithin'
The heck with romancin'
She sweats, wet, gots whiskers like my uncle Chet

I'm tired of elven queens
With their smooth little things
Take the average dwarf and ask him that
Her face has gotta scratch, so
fellas (yeah) fellas (yeah)
Has your dwarf-girl got the beard? (heck yeah!)
Don't let her shave it, shave it
Keep that healthy beard...

Baby got beard...

Hairy face makes for dwarven beauty...


To the tune of Older Women by Ronnie McDowell

Dwarven women, are beautiful lovers
Dwarven women, they understand
I've been around some, and I have discovered
That dwarven women know just how to please a man.
(Verse)
Everybody seems to love those human women
Buck eighteen on up to twenty-five
Well I love 'em too, but I'm tellin' you
Dwarves know to really love, and boy it sure is fine
(CHORUS)
(Verse)
So baby don't you worry about growin' whiskers
Those elven girls ain't got nothin' on you
Cause it takes some whiskey, to get 'em frisky
And frisky dwarves may just be the ones to teach 'em a thing or two.
(Chorus)

More seriously, I think it works quite well for dwarven women to have beards. It helps to provide a bit of difference in the races and their perceptions of the world. While some folk view it as "comical", I think it's simply a matter of differing standards of beauty between separate species.

[Spiryt]

It could work if you do it like Discworld where dwarves have very little sexual dismorphism compared to humans. Just having them be women with beards is gratuitous, think about what that means for their society.


That's honestly not very defend-able statement.

They could in fact have sexual dimorphism very similar to humans, (so governed by androgens and their receptors all around the body) and still have beards.

Males would just have even more hair, thicker ones and so on.

Would seem weird/funny to your Standard Human, but that's the point of different species thing, after all.

[thorgrim29]

If they need to be almost naked for even other dwarves to tell (like in discworld) then they have little to no dismorphism.

[Spiryt]

If they need to be almost naked for even other dwarves to tell (like in diskworld) then they have little to no dismorphism.

Actually no, sexual dimorphism doesn't have to be visible. It covers all functions and capabilities of organism.

And TS is not proposing 'indiscernible' sexes either, just women with beards. They even can have visibly different beards than men.

[Lord Raziere]

only if elven men have breasts. I mean at least be consistent.

[LibraryOgre]

only if elven men have breasts. I mean at least be consistent.

Hell, elven women usually don't have breasts. An entire race built like 12 year olds.

[Gnoman]

IMHO Yes. Tolkein stated in his appendicies that Dwarf women were indistinguishable from Dwarf men, and all Dwarf men have beards.


Tolkein said the first - not the second. We don't see any beardless dwarves, but we see very few dwarves to begin with, and the majority (all?) are full-grown adults, not youths. It is entirely plausible that Dwarven women look much like younger Dwarves that haven't had a beard grow in yet. Note that, despite the concept of "elves don't have beards" being attributed to his work, there are bearded elves in Middle Earth, Dwarves being obsessively devoted to their beards is likewise a later concept that was back-attributed.

[thorgrim29]

Actually no, sexual dimorphism doesn't have to be visible. It covers all functions and capabilities of organism.

And TS is not proposing 'indiscernible' sexes either, just women with beards. They even can have visibly different beards than men.

Wrong term then, let's say they have no or almost no secondary sexual characteristics. And I know that's not what OP was talking about. I just thing that having dwarfesses (totally a thing) being just short women with beards is good for a laugh but not very compelling story-wise. I was just giving an example of a way I think it would be more interesting.

[TheThan]

I think 'dwarf women have beards' should stick to being one of those in-universe jokey suggestions about how non-humans work from a human perspective, like Elves growing from trees and such.

I kinda like the idea that racial stereotypes in a DND setting are a thing.

Female elf: so where's your beard?
female dwarf: what do ya' mean, where's mah' beard?
female elf: don't all dwarf women have beards?
female dwarf: Nae, that's ridiculous, who told ya' tha'?
female elf: oh i just heard it somewhere...

[Aotrs Commander]

Almost twenty-five years of Being In Panto (barly less than long as I've been gaming full stop) says absolutely no to me, personally.

That said, I though PJ Hobbit's compromise was reasonable.



I kinda like the idea that racial stereotypes in a DND setting are a thing.

Female elf: so where's your beard?
female dwarf: what do ya' mean, where's mah' beard?
female elf: don't all dwarf women have beards?
female dwarf: Nae, that's ridiculous, who told ya' tha'?
female elf: oh i just heard it somewhere...

Also this. Very MUCH this.

To the point that "people actually think this is the truth because this and if your monster knowledge check isn't high enough, you might believe it's the truth and get a nasty shock" levels in my own gaming worlds.




Hell, elven women usually don't have breasts. An entire race built like 12 year olds.

Depends very much on your Elves, rather like your Dwarves. (As to whether, for example, your Dwarves are Scottish or not...)



While I'm all for extracting the frack out of Elves, I also very much fall on their side of the Elf/Dwarf divide...

[Tiki Snakes]

If they need to be almost naked for even other dwarves to tell (like in discworld) then they have little to no dismorphism.


only if elven men have breasts. I mean at least be consistent.

*snrk*

Uh, yeah. So one day, I will run a very silly Fantasy RP game. One of the ideas I had toyed with for inclusion touches on this.
There's no such thing as a Lady Peacock. They are Peafowl, the male is the Peacock and the female is the Peahen.
A male pig is called a Boar, a lady pig is called a Sow. Male cattle are Bulls, female are Cows.

For our closest Fae cousins, the male are called "Dwarves". The female are called "Elves".

Some of both identify in ways that we as outsiders may view as more "traditionally masculine" or "traditionally feminine". (A buxom, beardless dwarf or an Elf with a sharp, precise goatee perhaps?) which has confused the matter and lead outsiders to mistake them for two separate and unrelated races. They traditionally live apart, which compounds matters and contributes to their low birth rate and tendency towards population decline. Their intense mutual distrust should, in retrospect, have been a bit of a giveaway. :smallwink:

I dunno, I just find the idea hilarious, subverting the idea that both have next to no sexual dimorphism and it explains so much.

[Bulldog Psion]

As I've noted before, Tolkien never said dwarven women had beards. He merely noted that they looked and dressed similarly enough to the men so that outsiders had a hard time distinguishing them.

So, some human of Gondor -- whose culture probably has highly gender-distinctive clothing -- sees a band of taciturn, clannish dwarves waiting for a river barge while on a trading mission.

They are all wearing bulky, unisex clothing over stout, somewhat androgynous bodies, and all of them seem to have fairly deep-toned voices. And all their facial features are blocky and coarse to the human's view.

There are young beardless dwarven men and a couple of older ones who shave, and several women. To the human, this group all looks pretty much the same, especially since the dwarven women are talking in deeper voices than he expects from women, are wearing identical clothing to the men over stocky bodies, and kind of treat him in a gruff, aloof manner like the rest, thus giving him little opportunity to make closer inquiries.

Voila! Dwarven women are "difficult to distinguish from men" for 99% of the other races in the story, without the need for a single beard hair. Or even a cookie duster mustache. :smallwink:

[Lvl45DM!]

More comments than i expected! Woot.

Um ok.

Its comical if its played for comedy but it doesnt have to be.
In a melting pot setting its generally more interesting to have the various pieces that have melted be different, thats most of the point of those settings. While neither way is right, I would say making Dwarves more different from humans is easier to do better

Obviously elf men shouldn't have breasts. Its already being fair by taking away their beards (and in some books, like Eragon, all their body hair)

And there are 14 dwarves seen in the Hobbit and LOTR books, ALL of whom have beards. Seems a tad unlikely unless the author was going "Dwarves have beards you guys". While its POSSIBLE that they don't its seems the more likely possibility

[Rodin]

I've always found it interesting that Dwarven women are so rare in the first place. The only female dwarfs I can think of in fiction are Dagna from Dragon Age (where she's a minor character), and Cheery from Discworld (where her being a female dwarf is a huge deal). Oh, and OOTS of course. Even in MMOs it was a problem - I remember WoW releasing statistics on their races, and female Dwarves were the absolute rock bottom. I don't even think I ever met a female dwarf during all my time playing.

[TheThan]

I remember WoW releasing statistics on their races, and female Dwarves were the absolute rock bottom. I don't even think I ever met a female dwarf during all my time playing.

I played one back in the day.

I think there were like two of us on the server I was on. I was a paladin, the other was a hunter. It was quite lonely. We were a bit on the unique side of things, (no we didn't hang out together).

[Calemyr]

I've always found it interesting that Dwarven women are so rare in the first place. The only female dwarfs I can think of in fiction are Dagna from Dragon Age (where she's a minor character), and Cheery from Discworld (where her being a female dwarf is a huge deal). Oh, and OOTS of course. Even in MMOs it was a problem - I remember WoW releasing statistics on their races, and female Dwarves were the absolute rock bottom. I don't even think I ever met a female dwarf during all my time playing.


I played one back in the day.

I think there were like two of us on the server I was on. I was a paladin, the other was a hunter. It was quite lonely. We were a bit on the unique side of things, (no we didn't hang out together).

Well, what would be the attraction to playing a female dwarf in WoW? They aren't cute like gnomes, they aren't attractive like humans or elves or badass like the horde races. When you play a female dwarf, you're playing to be awesome in spite of your race rather than because of it.

[Rodin]

Well, what would be the attraction to playing a female dwarf in WoW? They aren't cute like gnomes, they aren't attractive like humans or elves or badass like the horde races. When you play a female dwarf, you're playing to be awesome in spite of your race rather than because of it.

Edit: Nevermind, I can't read.

[TheThan]

Well, what would be the attraction to playing a female dwarf in WoW? They aren't cute like gnomes, they aren't attractive like humans or elves or badass like the horde races. When you play a female dwarf, you're playing to be awesome in spite of your race rather than because of it.

It's those curvy hips.

Plus I had gigantic red pigtails that whirled about whenever I used my paladin spells. Once you see one in leather skorpinox armor or whatever the other one had. (hot, I tell you, Hooot)

[Zea mays]

Tolkein said the first - not the second. We don't see any beardless dwarves, but we see very few dwarves to begin with, and the majority (all?) are full-grown adults, not youths. It is entirely plausible that Dwarven women look much like younger Dwarves that haven't had a beard grow in yet. Note that, despite the concept of "elves don't have beards" being attributed to his work, there are bearded elves in Middle Earth, Dwarves being obsessively devoted to their beards is likewise a later concept that was back-attributed.

The idea that "All dwarven men" are bearded is heavily implied in The hobbit.

- When leaving Hobbiton, Bilbo consoles himself that even though he is wearing Gloin's cloak and hood, no one would mistake him for a dwarf as he has no beard. Full beard / beardlessness is a main distinguishing feature between dwarves and hobbits.

- As mentioned above, all the 13 main dwarves are bearded. When the Iron Hill dwarves show up, they are described as having long forked beards tucked into their belts.

- As the group descends into the Rivendell valley, the elves are said to love to poke fun at the the dwarves' beards.

It would have been nice to see more dwarven youths and she-dwarves in Middle Earth but sadly, it was not to be. Now that I consider it, dearth of mothers and youths is a recurring thing in the non human races.

[Ranxerox]

https://41.media.tumblr.com/cdd055bc9562b86112bfe373b13ed786/tumblr_ncslzb56YT1rs0y1io1_500.png
http://36.media.tumblr.com/fb2f74b150480537418d7b5558b7e7da/tumblr_ncslzb56YT1rs0y1io2_500.png

[Lvl45DM!]

https://41.media.tumblr.com/cdd055bc9562b86112bfe373b13ed786/tumblr_ncslzb56YT1rs0y1io1_500.png
http://36.media.tumblr.com/fb2f74b150480537418d7b5558b7e7da/tumblr_ncslzb56YT1rs0y1io2_500.png

Except really..isnt she just conforming to the traditional beauty values of everyone BUT Dwarves?
Now theres an interesting angle! Dwarf women are torn between not sucking up to their ancestors but also dont want to be like the humans and elves. Go for bushy mustaches instead

And as for the "theres no reason to play girls if they aren't hot or badass" Well...dwarf women are badass!

[Ranxerox]

Except really..isnt she just conforming to the traditional beauty values of everyone BUT Dwarves?
Now theres an interesting angle! Dwarf women are torn between not sucking up to their ancestors but also dont want to be like the humans and elves. Go for bushy mustaches instead

And as for the "theres no reason to play girls if they aren't hot or badass" Well...dwarf women are badass!

I just included it because I thought is was funny.

That is Violet of the Rat Queens. She has been shown in full beard, short beard, no beard and with five o'clock shadow and she rocks all these looks. Dave the Orc is a lucky guy.

[Eldan]

Except really..isnt she just conforming to the traditional beauty values of everyone BUT Dwarves?
Now theres an interesting angle! Dwarf women are torn between not sucking up to their ancestors but also dont want to be like the humans and elves. Go for bushy mustaches instead

And as for the "theres no reason to play girls if they aren't hot or badass" Well...dwarf women are badass!

That seems pretty much how it is with Pratchett's dwarves. Which is why I like them so much. Except in Raising Steam, which ruined them.

[hamishspence]

I think Pratchett got tired of the whole "dwarven women keep their gender as secret as possible, and pretend to be dwarven men" as early as The Fifth Elephant - and started lampshading the iffiness of it from there onward - Raising Steam is just the point where Dwarven King Rhys finally reveals that she is female.

[Raimun]

Depends on the setting.

Some should have it. Some don't.

[Grim Portent]

I think Pratchett got tired of the whole "dwarven women keep their gender as secret as possible, and pretend to be dwarven men" as early as The Fifth Elephant - and started lampshading the iffiness of it from there onward - Raising Steam is just the point where Dwarven King Rhys finally reveals that she is female.

I'm pretty sure that was revealed as early as the Fifth Element when Rhys talks to Cheery at the end. It's not outright stated sure, but it's not exactly subtle in what it's implying.

[hamishspence]

Reveals to everyone, rather than just to Cheery.

The Fifth Elephant was when it started being treated more seriously - Raising Steam was where one might have expected it to end up. It's a good follow-up to Thud.

[otakuryoga]

I like big beards and I can not lie
You other dwarves can't deny
When a girl walks in with a big thick waist
And hair all over her face
You get sprung
Wanna pull up tough
Cuz you notice that face was scruffed
Deep in the helm she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh, baby I wanna get with ya
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me
But that beard you got
Make Me so horny
Ooh, ain't got smooth skin
You say you wanna get in my clan
Well use me use me cuz you aint that average groupie
I've seen them smithin'
The heck with romancin'
She sweats, wet, gots whiskers like my uncle Chet

I'm tired of elven queens
With their smooth little things
Take the average dwarf and ask him that
Her face has gotta scratch, so
fellas (yeah) fellas (yeah)
Has your dwarf-girl got the beard? (heck yeah!)
Don't let her shave it, shave it
Keep that healthy beard...

Baby got beard...

Hairy face makes for dwarven beauty...



that is so full of win

i award you 1(one) internet

[Eldan]

I think Pratchett got tired of the whole "dwarven women keep their gender as secret as possible, and pretend to be dwarven men" as early as The Fifth Elephant - and started lampshading the iffiness of it from there onward - Raising Steam is just the point where Dwarven King Rhys finally reveals that she is female.

See, it might be entirely head canon, but I didn't take it as "dwarven women disguise themselves as dwarven men". I took it as "Dwarves have no concept of gender", which was much more interesting, before Raising Steam blew it up. That dwarves looked a bit like male human warriors was coincidental.

[hamishspence]

We had plenty of allusions to them having a concept of gender in Fifth Elephant and Thud.

[Tvtyrant]

The best Dwarves are the least human IMO. Our concepts of gender and cultural norms are not universal in a single species, why would they apply to other species? The bearded females is one way to do it, but is largely cosmetic (especially in Diskworld where it turns out that Dwarves are really just short people).

[hamishspence]

It was established that "there was dwarf blood in the Ogg family, and that meant a skull you could go mining with" - I think in Maskerades.

[TheThan]

The best Dwarves are the least human IMO. Our concepts of gender and cultural norms are not universal in a single species, why would they apply to other species? The bearded females is one way to do it, but is largely cosmetic (especially in Diskworld where it turns out that Dwarves are really just short people).

Maybe its like brilliant plumage on tropical birds.

The longer and thicker the beard, the more attractive you are to the opposite sex.

OOh maybe it's reproductive. The beard is not actually hair but egg sacks that look like beards. they grow out until it's time to reproduce then fall off. baby Dwarves spawn from the hairs. Naturally they won't grow and reach reproduction time while in direct sunlight. So they're kind of like fish. Maybe we can make it salmon runesque; where the dwarves must return to their spawning chambers to breed...

[Thrudd]

http://paratime.ca/v_and_v/pics/jeffdee/a3_femaledwarf.jpg

http://paratime.ca/v_and_v/pics/jeffdee/jdee_art_01.jpg

Yes, female Dwarves have beards. And luxurious manes of hair.

[GloatingSwine]

Maybe Dwarf women don't want to be denied the awesomeness of a beard on account of their gender.

Did you ever think of that?

[Rodin]

We had plenty of allusions to them having a concept of gender in Fifth Elephant and Thud.

Yeah, they definitely had genders and preferred the male/female matchup. The difference was that they didn't have gender stereotypes because they were overwritten by the Dwarven stereotype. You could be any gender and do any job...as long as it was a traditional Dwarvish job and did so while acting in a traditional Dwarvish fashion. And since traditional Dwarves in Fantasy are 99% male, that meant acting like a Dwarvish male.

The speed with which female Dwarves start following Cheery's example just shows how unsatisfied they were with this arrangement.

[Lvl45DM!]

So I've gone through this thorougly enjoyable thread and I'm just wondering. Does anyone have a reason why Dwarf ladies shouldn't have beards that isn't "Its better as comedy?"
It's been good to get the Playground on this. I'm going to be running a dwarf heavy game and i was kinda playtesting with you guys. I should expect my players to giggle at first but they may or may not come to accept it as just "Dwarves gonna Dwarf."

[Tvtyrant]

Maybe its like brilliant plumage on tropical birds.

The longer and thicker the beard, the more attractive you are to the opposite sex.

OOh maybe it's reproductive. The beard is not actually hair but egg sacks that look like beards. they grow out until it's time to reproduce then fall off. baby Dwarves spawn from the hairs. Naturally they won't grow and reach reproduction time while in direct sunlight. So they're kind of like fish. Maybe we can make it salmon runesque; where the dwarves must return to their spawning chambers to breed...

Maybe they are a defense mechanism like the hairs on Tarantulas, and can be jettisoned at foes? Their whole bodies grow the stuff, but they release it at night before bed to show that they are not hostile. "A long haired dwarf" is a saying referring to a hostile individual.

[hamishspence]

Maybe they are a defense mechanism like the hairs on Tarantulas, and can be jettisoned at foes?

I think 4E did that with duergar - their beards are actually quills, which can be fired.

[Tiki Snakes]

So I've gone through this thorougly enjoyable thread and I'm just wondering. Does anyone have a reason why Dwarf ladies shouldn't have beards that isn't "Its better as comedy?"
It's been good to get the Playground on this. I'm going to be running a dwarf heavy game and i was kinda playtesting with you guys. I should expect my players to giggle at first but they may or may not come to accept it as just "Dwarves gonna Dwarf."

There are many reasons not to.

Let's start with the fact that it's simply unrealistic. Dwarves simply aren't that alien, it makes no sense for a race as close to human to have their females displaying such major male sexual characteristics.

Secondly, it reduces an entire species to a single feature. Dwarf = beard. This does the race a huge disservice.

Thirdly, it's not just that it works better in comedy, it's that it reduces the dwarven race to a joke. This works great in the absurdist context of Pratchett, played straight and then examined under a microscope. Outside of that I always found it just felt unpleasant, having an unavoidable aftertaste of transphobia to it.

Fourthly, you better believe it puts people off from having anything to do with playing them. I've had to put together a whole visual sales-pitch to convince people that dwarf girls don't have to be bearded and that they can be legitimately pretty in a more interestingly dwarfy way before they would even consider playing them before and I'll admit to having some reluctance to playing a dwarf in any setting where the tired old "they all look like men!" joke is in play because it doesn't bode well for them being taken seriously or treated with respect.

And if nothing else, final reason, it's visually limiting. It reduces the range of aesthetics the race can employ by homogenising the race, making them inevitably less visually interesting as a whole.

[Aotrs Commander]

There are many reasons not to.

Let's start with the fact that it's simply unrealistic. Dwarves simply aren't that alien, it makes no sense for a race as close to human to have their females displaying such major male sexual characteristics.

Exactly. If you want Dwarves to be more alien, you need to start with EVERYTHING ELSE first, including all the traditional Dwarf tropes that virtually EVERY system and game (with almost no exceptions) draws from.

And, frankly, I suspect if you took away those, what would be left would not be easily associated with "dwarves" in most people's minds. Basically, I don't think you CAN make Dwarves alien, though you might be able to make an alien that looks like a Dwarf.

If I may make a dangerous generalisition (which of course does not apply to everyone), many people like Dwarves BECAUSE they are short-tempered, booze-loving, (often with bad hygiene), frequently violent, (ironically) manly men (because beards): they are dangerously close to being a male power fantasy (because they allow to one to do all the "manly" (sic) things without having to worry about social nicities), more often than not, or at least derive their characteristics from same.

(Let's be honest, the Dwarf-Elf divide is close to being an analog to a male-female divide. After all, Dwarves are often joked about being "manly" and Elves for being "girly" or "pretty boys" or whathave you.)

Basically, Dwarves just aren't alien enough to make that line of reasoning work.



I also concur with everything else Tiki said.




Edit: And on having a bit of reasearch - because if you want alien with beards, you need to have a reason they developed beards - and basically, beards are a secondary sexual characteristic and belived to have evolved as the literal human equivilent of a male peacock's feathers. (Which sort of makes sense if you think about it - how many male authority figures - the equivilient of alpha males - are depicted with beards?) So...there's... not an immediately obvious way around that one.

[Grim Portent]

Personally I'm fond the the Dwarf Fortress fanon explanation for beards on dwarfs as a whole.

It provides them with the capacity to 'see' underground by detecting minor shifts in air currents and smells, the vibrations from sounds and movement. This also explains the cave adaptation phenomenon that DF dwarfs undergo, the increased stimulation from the surface compared to the underground overloads their senses and causes nausea in dwarfs who have acclimatized to the underground. This explanation would make the beard comparable to an insects antennae, the tendrils of a star nosed mole or the adaptations of any number of animals that dwell in darkness.

[Kantaki]

The dwarven species shows an extreme case of sexual dimorphism. That means that technicaly spoken all dwarves are female. What others percieve as beards are the male members of the species. Due to the darkness under the mountains making it hard to find a partner this permanent bond - similar to some deepsea creatures - ensures the procreation of the individual and the survival of the species. The fact that larger and more complex „beards” seem to indicate higher status is right in so far as dwarven leaders are often those that have bonded with the most males.

[An Enemy Spy]

I'm writing a stpory in which the main character, a faerie girl, is with her companion, a male dwarf. In this story, dwarfs ironically are the big tall people because everyone in it is less than six inches high. They basically all look like big strong muscly guys, facial hair completely optional. I am planning a scene that essentially goes like this when the protagonist meets other dwarfs for the first time.

Faerie: Why aren't there any women?
Dwarf: What are ou talking about?
Faerie: There isn't a single woman here.
Dwarf: There's plenty of them. See, that's one right there. And there's another one.
Faerie: Those are female?
Dwarf: Of course they are.
Faerie: But they all look like you.
Dwarf: Of course they do. Their dwarfs, aren't they?
Faerie: How can you tell the difference?
Dwarf: It's easy. They smell different.
Faerie: Oh. (beat) Are... are you a girl?
Dwarf: (Laughing) No, of course not. What, are you?
Faerie: Of course I'm a girl!
Dwarf: Well how am I supposed to know?
Faerie: Because I look like a girl.
Dwarf: Not like a dwarf girl, you don't.

[Lvl45DM!]

There are many reasons not to.

Let's start with the fact that it's simply unrealistic. Dwarves simply aren't that alien, it makes no sense for a race as close to human to have their females displaying such major male sexual characteristics.

Secondly, it reduces an entire species to a single feature. Dwarf = beard. This does the race a huge disservice.

Thirdly, it's not just that it works better in comedy, it's that it reduces the dwarven race to a joke. This works great in the absurdist context of Pratchett, played straight and then examined under a microscope. Outside of that I always found it just felt unpleasant, having an unavoidable aftertaste of transphobia to it.

Fourthly, you better believe it puts people off from having anything to do with playing them. I've had to put together a whole visual sales-pitch to convince people that dwarf girls don't have to be bearded and that they can be legitimately pretty in a more interestingly dwarfy way before they would even consider playing them before and I'll admit to having some reluctance to playing a dwarf in any setting where the tired old "they all look like men!" joke is in play because it doesn't bode well for them being taken seriously or treated with respect.

And if nothing else, final reason, it's visually limiting. It reduces the range of aesthetics the race can employ by homogenising the race, making them inevitably less visually interesting as a whole.

The only thing that would be 'alien' is their concept of beauty, something I already would think is alien since you don't see many half dwarves running around implying most dwarfs bang dwarfs

All elves have pointy ears and all halflings have furry feet but Elves=/=Ears and Hobbits=/=Feet

I really don't see how it reduces the whole race to a joke, and I really don't see transphobia. They still will be Dwarves, miners, drinkers, great clerics and fighters, surprisingly good at math, like axes and hate orcs. Im baffled by transphobia. Please elaborate.

And the idea that women are only ok to play if they are pretty seems...not good. While that may be the case I don't think it should be. Besides you can play female minotaurs or orcs and they aren't pretty at all.

Visually limiting? Look at the Hobbit. 15 named dwarves on screen all with different, visually amazing and awesome beards. If the story was ONLY dwarves sure, it'd be limiting. But theres so many other races in DnD I don't see how changing 1/3 of 1 race really ruins anything.

Plus making the beards a peacock thing, but both ways is actually a great idea. Theres no explanation for dwarf beards as is, making it a sexual characteristic for both works for me.

[Tvtyrant]

Let's start with the fact that it's simply unrealistic. Dwarves simply aren't that alien, it makes no sense for a race as close to human to have their females displaying such major male sexual characteristics.


Right, the species which has an undisclosed food supply, seems to be immune to CO2 levels, and lives in a completely inhuman environment is totally normal. Even the Dwarves depicted in the OotS have less in common with the other races than they do with Mindflayers and Grell.

[An Enemy Spy]

I think a good question is, why do dwarves need beards at all?

[Lvl45DM!]

I think a good question is, why do dwarves need beards at all?

Cos its awesome?
Cos they are a Norse myth and Norsemen are famously bearded?
Because tradition?
Because they're fabulous?

They don't NEED beards. Anyone who wants to write a dwarf without a beard go nuts, I don't mind. I just wanted to put bearded dwarf women in my game and was wondering what the playground thought of it. Because seeing Chibi Durkon with his chinstrap but Sigdi with nothing stimulated my mind.

And its an excuse to have a different culture.
"Look theres an unbearded dwarf! He must have been cast out from his society or felt a great shame or dishonor!"
"That dwarf has more gems in his beard than most human women have on their entire bodies"
*After being fireballed by the party mage* "ME BEARD! DANGBLAST YE SPELLSLINGER YE BURNED OFF ME BEARD!"
(I was the trigger happy fire mage in a party with 2 dwarves 5 years ago. Good times)

[YossarianLives]

http://paratime.ca/v_and_v/pics/jeffdee/jdee_art_01.jpg.
There's something about that magic-user that I don't trust...

[Tvtyrant]

There's something about that magic-user that I don't trust...

That hat is eating his head. It clearly has eyes and the mouth is around his face.

[Kantaki]

And the idea that women are only ok to play if they are pretty seems...not good. While that may be the case I don't think it should be. Besides you can play female minotaurs or orcs and they aren't pretty at all.

Orc-woman are not pretty? That would depend on your point of view. And the orc-lady I mean Therklas mom was quite good looking by Stick-human standards. I give you the Minotaurs (there are female ones?) after all there has to be a reason the men prefer to abduct females of other species to mate with them.

And yes dwarf-woman can have a beard just like the men could shave.

[Lord Raziere]

Heh, just look up orc women on google, theres tons of art out there depicting them as hot, green pointy-eared amazons. best kind of orc women in my opinion. :smallcool:

[Tiki Snakes]

I'm writing a stpory in which the main character, a faerie girl, is with her companion, a male dwarf. In this story, dwarfs ironically are the big tall people because everyone in it is less than six inches high. They basically all look like big strong muscly guys, facial hair completely optional. I am planning a scene that essentially goes like this when the protagonist meets other dwarfs for the first time.

Faerie: Why aren't there any women?
Dwarf: What are ou talking about?
Faerie: There isn't a single woman here.
Dwarf: There's plenty of them. See, that's one right there. And there's another one.
Faerie: Those are female?
Dwarf: Of course they are.
Faerie: But they all look like you.
Dwarf: Of course they do. Their dwarfs, aren't they?
Faerie: How can you tell the difference?
Dwarf: It's easy. They smell different.
Faerie: Oh. (beat) Are... are you a girl?
Dwarf: (Laughing) No, of course not. What, are you?
Faerie: Of course I'm a girl!
Dwarf: Well how am I supposed to know?
Faerie: Because I look like a girl.
Dwarf: Not like a dwarf girl, you don't.

The problem, (problem is probably too harsh a term. Issue?) with this twist is like so many of the silly ideas proposed earlier in the thread. Simply put, it could conceivably be used to explain why you can't spot female dwarves easily, but what it doesn't do is leave Dwarves unchanged. It doesn't jive with the usual depictions of male Dwarves, who usually have no trouble at all spotting females and even have been known to appreciate other races beauty.

In the context of a story you're writing, this isn't a problem at all, because they are your Dwarves. But if this was an RP setting, it would be a problem in-as-much as that is a shared space and that's going to pretty directly contradict a lot of peoples ideas of what a Dwarf is.


The only thing that would be 'alien' is their concept of beauty, something I already would think is alien since you don't see many half dwarves running around implying most dwarfs bang dwarfs

All elves have pointy ears and all halflings have furry feet but Elves=/=Ears and Hobbits=/=Feet
Elves have pointy ears. Each Gender is likely to have broadly similar ears. Hobbits sometimes have furry feat. Both Genders will likely have broadly similar feet.
But beards are specifically a male sexual characteristic. If Dwarf girls are given beards, it's saying that they aren't Dwarves without Beards, despite that not matching their gender at all. Which is to say, the beard makes the Dwarf and Dwarves are little more than Beards occasionally soaked in ale.


I really don't see how it reduces the whole race to a joke, and I really don't see transphobia. They still will be Dwarves, miners, drinkers, great clerics and fighters, surprisingly good at math, like axes and hate orcs. Im baffled by transphobia. Please elaborate.
Because Dwarf girls having beards is always treated as a joke. You just need to look back at this thread to realise the truth of this. The problem with that for me when people insist upon it, is that the punchline is that the women look like men.

You want your Dwarves so endowed? Good for you. Have fun with that, but I'll pass on having much to do with Dwarves in that particular game every time, thanks.


And the idea that women are only ok to play if they are pretty seems...not good. While that may be the case I don't think it should be. Besides you can play female minotaurs or orcs and they aren't pretty at all.
The player in question strongly identified with whatever character she was playing. She was a good roleplayer, but she played it very close and things that happened to her character were very important to her. Simply put, she was careful about choosing characters to play and for her escapism she wanted to be beautiful and powerful and if at all possible live forever. That's broadly what she wanted out of it. What she didn't want is to be relegated to being "the bearded lady".

Make of that what you will, I have no interest in judging it. We were trying to get an all-dwarf game started at the time and it never panned out for unrelated reasons. I doubt somehow that she was alone in being put off from having anything to do with dwarves because of the bearded-dwarf-ladies thing.


Visually limiting? Look at the Hobbit. 15 named dwarves on screen all with different, visually amazing and awesome beards. If the story was ONLY dwarves sure, it'd be limiting. But theres so many other races in DnD I don't see how changing 1/3 of 1 race really ruins anything.

Plus making the beards a peacock thing, but both ways is actually a great idea. Theres no explanation for dwarf beards as is, making it a sexual characteristic for both works for me.

Essentially removing an entire gender in terms of outward appearance outwardly removes that gender. If you carry the Tolkein line through that outsiders don't spot Dwarf women because they look like the men, then you have no thread of female aesthetics running through your Dwarven culture. From a visual design point of view and from a cultural point of view you're straight up losing a lot. If the only difference between dwarven genders is their intimate plumbing then you have basically removed the gender altogether. At which point you might as well do something more interesting with it, remove gender altogether and have them be a race of egg-laying hermaphrodites or literally sculpted from clay by master Dwarven Artisans.


Right, the species which has an undisclosed food supply, seems to be immune to CO2 levels, and lives in a completely inhuman environment is totally normal. Even the Dwarves depicted in the OotS have less in common with the other races than they do with Mindflayers and Grell.

Undisclosed food supplies and being able to happily live underground are pretty much par for the course in Fantasy. They are non-issues.


I think a good question is, why do dwarves need beards at all?

They don't, and don't even always wear them. See for example the excellent Dark-Sun, where even the male Dwarves make a point of being fully-hairless.


Cos its awesome?
Cos they are a Norse myth and Norsemen are famously bearded?
Because tradition?
Because they're fabulous?

They don't NEED beards. Anyone who wants to write a dwarf without a beard go nuts, I don't mind. I just wanted to put bearded dwarf women in my game and was wondering what the playground thought of it. Because seeing Chibi Durkon with his chinstrap but Sigdi with nothing stimulated my mind.

Because it's a meme, basically. It's made into a big, big theme in Warhammer and so many things simply copy that without thinking. And even in Warhammer, the female Dwarves are beardless. (They wear their hair long, braided and unshorn etc like the male dwarves wear their beards, iirc).

[Aotrs Commander]

I agree with Tiki.

The logical extension on "all Dwarves look alike" is shown on Discworld, which means you have a VERY sexist society. Sexist to the point they don't want to acknowledge that females even EXIST.

And it means that if you really want to do this, right out of the gate: Dwarf males are not allowed to be attracted to any non-Dwarf females. At ALL. Because they don't have beards (which as, as stated, a secondary sexual characteristic).

(Further there's an arguement that, if sexual dimorphism is negliogable in dwarves, they wouldn't have breasts, at least not to the extent that human-like species do, but be more like nonhuman mammals where the mammaries are only prtuding (slightly) when actuall lactating. Assuming you want to treat them as mammals at all, of course, otherwise they are even less likely to have breasts at all.)

If you want to have female Dwarves with beards, that's fine: but be aware that you're ultimately doing it because you want to have female Dwarves with beards, not because you can somehow work it to be more "logical."

(Discworld did it because it was a joke to start with, that Pratchett decided to take to its logical (and somewhat unpleasant) conclusion.)

[hamishspence]

Maybe that's why Pratchett's more recent work is less well received - because these unpleasant conclusions are being revealed?

[Aotrs Commander]

Here's a thought that would let you have female Dwarves with beards and them keep their external typical Dwarf characteristics... With one ever-so-slight change.

The joke about you can't tell which Dwarves are female? The Dwarves are quietly laughing at you, because they are ALL female. ONLY female Dwarves have beards. All the Dwarves you meet in the street are female.

You never see the unbearded males, which, like seahorses, do all the carrying of progeny and childcare (i.e. female dwarves deposit their eggs into the male's sperm-pouch ala seahorse) and are stay-at-home recluses. Female Dwarves are like hyenas, so awash with testosterone, they develop male mammal sexual characteristics because they compete over the males (and even sound like males to human ears). It would also mean that you can even keep the "Dwarves are attracted to nonDwarf females" thing, because they are attracted to something that looks like a male to them.

There you go, perfectly plausible explanation behind the scenes, allowing you to keep the external appearance and society of Dwarves the same, while allowing you to have female Dwarves with beards.

Somehow, though, I doubt this is what you're looking for.

Even though it would be a sort of fascinating twist, actually.

[Kantaki]

Aotrs Commander: Now that is an interesting idea. But I still prefer my Variation. The dwarves are all female because the "beards" are the male ones. They just look like beards to non dwarves.

[GloatingSwine]

Aotrs Commander: Now that is an interesting idea. But I still prefer my Variation. The dwarves are all female because the "beards" are the male ones. They just look like beards to non dwarves.

A related story (www.tor.com/stories/2013/09/equoid) (except unicorns not dwarves).

[Kantaki]

A related story (www.tor.com/stories/2013/09/equoid) (except unicorns not dwarves).

I don't know if I want to click that link...
My Inspiration came from certain deep sea fish that live the same way. The male is more or less a symbiote that allows the female to procreate in Exchange for feeding on her.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't know if I want to click that link...
My Inspiration came from certain deep sea fish that live the same way. The male is more or less a symbiote that allows the female to procreate in Exchange for feeding on her.

It's a proper story (Hugo award winner last year, even), and probably comes from the same inspiration.

[Kantaki]

It's a proper story (Hugo award winner last year, even), and probably comes from the same inspiration.

That is comforting.

But the concept is fun. The heroes have to hide and one of them suggests the dwarf should shave and pose as a halfling or gnome.
"You want me to kill my mate? Just to allow us to hide? What kind of Monsters are you?"
"Wait, Your what?:smalleek: You dwarves are really weird."

[thorgrim29]

A related story (www.tor.com/stories/2013/09/equoid) (except unicorns not dwarves).

Well that was disturbing...

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Maybe that's why Pratchett's more recent work is less well received - because these unpleasant conclusions are being revealed?
IMO, it's unfortunately because the last stories weren't anywhere near as good as the earlier ones (Snuff sort of lost it's way with where it wanted to go, Unseen Academicals was so-so and Raising Steam was a mess).

Back OT:
Slight aside to start with - given the presence in a good number of fantasy systems of half-elves, humans and elves have to be fairly closely biologically compatible, so chances are both races have similar hormones. Ditto for Orcs.

For Dwarves, I can't think of any particular settings that have half-Dwarves, but if they are possible, or there is a common Dwarf/Human ancestor anywhere, then again, the same biology would apply.

So, human, orc, elf, dwarf, whatever - it's only males who have facial hair.

Although post-menopausal women may well grow facial hair as a result of feminine hormone levels dropping off - if Dwarven women don't venture out into the wider world until after they've had children (ensuring the next generation), there could be a number of dwarven women with beards out there - especially if they hit menopause at roughly the same age as human women do, but still live decades longer.

But then again, you could say a wizard did it, and go for whatever you feel like. Or you could channel a certain scene in Life of Brian - just don't say a certain name starting with 'J'. :smallamused:

[Tiki Snakes]

For Dwarves, I can't think of any particular settings that have half-Dwarves, but if they are possible, or there is a common Dwarf/Human ancestor anywhere, then again, the same biology would apply.

See again, Dark Sun.
In that setting, they are possible. Highly valued slaves, in-fact. They are force-bred for, as the resulting pregnancy is almost never survived by the mother.

Simply put, it posits that when you combine the bulk and density provided by dwarf genetics with the height of human genetics, the resulting mix is incredibly dangerous for the mother for the same reason they are desirable gladiatorial slaves; Their greater mass and sturdiness.

[Kantaki]

See again, Dark Sun.
In that setting, they are possible. Highly valued slaves, in-fact. They are force-bred for, as the resulting pregnancy is almost never survived by the mother.

Simply put, it posits that when you combine the bulk and density provided by dwarf genetics with the height of human genetics, the resulting mix is incredibly dangerous for the mother for the same reason they are desirable gladiatorial slaves; Their greater mass and sturdiness.

But that is the exeption from the rule. There are more stories and settings where dwarves can or do only mate with dwarves. In some cases they were even created indipendently from the others.

[Tiki Snakes]

But that is the exeption from the rule. There are more stories and settings where dwarves can or do only mate with dwarves. In some cases they were even created indipendently from the others.

"Half" races, (Half Elf, Half Orc, etc) seem to largely be a Dungeons and Dragons conceit in the first place. I'm sure they have appeared elsewhere, but for the most part in media derivative of D&D.
At least as far as I'm aware.

[Kantaki]

"Half" races, (Half Elf, Half Orc, etc) seem to largely be a Dungeons and Dragons conceit in the first place. I'm sure they have appeared elsewhere, but for the most part in media derivative of D&D.
At least as far as I'm aware.

Not entirely true, fay-wifes (elves, nymphs,merfolk, animal-women) are kind of a staple in mythology. And their children often have gifts from their mothers side. (I am sure there are examples of fey-husbands but I think they are less numerous.)

[Grim Portent]

Not entirely true, fay-wifes (elves, nymphs,merfolk, animal-women) are kind of a staple in mythology. And their children often have gifts from their mothers side. (I am sure there are examples of fey-husbands but I think they are less numerous.)

Oddly enough I don't think any Norse folklore had half-dwarves.

Humans, gods and giants all have halfbreeds if I recall correctly, but I don't think the dwarves or elves do, at least in the stories that survived to the modern day.

I think half-dwarves are rather uncommon in fiction as well, it's just not a pairing that seems to inspire much.

[Kantaki]

Oddly enough I don't think any Norse folklore had half-dwarves.

Humans, gods and giants all have halfbreeds if I recall correctly, but I don't think the dwarves or elves do, at least in the stories that survived to the modern day.

I think half-dwarves are rather uncommon in fiction as well, it's just not a pairing that seems to inspire much.

Well Freyja had to sleep with a group of dwarves to gain the Brisingamen, a necklace. Odin forced her to start a war as a punishment but there were no consequences.

[LibraryOgre]

Let's start with the fact that it's simply unrealistic. Dwarves simply aren't that alien, it makes no sense for a race as close to human to have their females displaying such major male sexual characteristics.

Lots of human women have facial hair, to varying degrees. It's not terribly unreasonable that some human relative would have that in a far larger degree.


Secondly, it reduces an entire species to a single feature. Dwarf = beard. This does the race a huge disservice.

Thirdly, it's not just that it works better in comedy, it's that it reduces the dwarven race to a joke. This works great in the absurdist context of Pratchett, played straight and then examined under a microscope. Outside of that I always found it just felt unpleasant, having an unavoidable aftertaste of transphobia to it.

I think it only reduces them to a joke if you make a joke out of it, and only reduces them to a single feature if you let them. Dwarves have a lot of stereotypical features... beards, beer, hatred of orcs, resistance to magic, love of money, mining... that saying "all dwarves grow beards" doesn't reduce them to it unless you make it obsessive for them... until you turn it into a joke.

For transphobia, again, I think it comes down to how you play it. Are you tittering at the dwarf woman who has a beard tucked between her bosoms? Or is it simply a feature of that character? Do some dwarf women and men have valid reasons (cultural or practical) that they shave their beards, or variations on how they wear their beards? Maybe married dwarves grow beards, but unmarried ones do not. Or certain professions have long eschewed beards because they're impractical in their line of work... while others take pride in their beards, despite their impracticality. Humans have all sorts of rules about hair, ranging from cultural (cannot show hair as a woman) to practical (have to restrain hair when working food service).

In short, a dwarf's beard only becomes a single-note joke if you don't do anything with it other than say "dwarves have beards, even <hee-hee> the girls."



For Dwarves, I can't think of any particular settings that have half-Dwarves, but if they are possible, or there is a common Dwarf/Human ancestor anywhere, then again, the same biology would apply.


Half-dwarves are relatively common in the Forgotten Realms. Dwarves Deep mentions that, due to dwarven women having some difficulty with reproduction, human women who will join clans and help are highly valued and respected, and their offspring are considered dwarves.

Dragonlance is somewhat inconsistent on its treatment of half-dwarves; they're considered possible, but half-dwarves are either what causes Gully Dwarves, or gully dwarves are gnome-dwarf crossbreeds.

[Zmeoaice]

Every objection people have made pretty much boils down to "Bearded women aren't pretty". Not a very good argument.

[Aotrs Commander]

Every objection people have made pretty much boils down to "Bearded women aren't pretty". Not a very good argument.

Inaccurate, as at no point have I - deliberately - made ANY reference to attractiveness aside from mentioning that displayed by in popular media by male Dwarves to nonDwarf females1).

But if you want to make sweeping generalisations, at least some of the arguements for boil down to nothing more than "'I want bearded women (but I still want their society to function identically to a human one)" which is an equally poor argument.



1For the record, I don't find I don't find ANYONE attractive, male, female, beared, clean-shaven, humanoid, nonhumanoid, organic, technological, alive, dead or otherwise and I find your generalisation offensive, actually.

[Tiki Snakes]

For me, it's more that it boils down to being dull, lazy and poorly justified.

Specifically talking about the tolkein-derived idea that Dwarven Women are indistinguishable from their menfolk to non-dwarves, for the record. I find that it adds little, is often chosen because it's easier than doing something interesting or simply because Tolkien said so and strains my suspension of disbelief because there simply isn't a precedent for such a prominent display of exclusively male sexual characteristics either in comparable nature or established by most portrayals of Dwarven Culture either.

Reducing a whole gender and their associated culture to an academic plumbing variation is just so unnecessarily wasteful. For it to be done purely to provide some tongue in cheek and/or off-colour humour is...well, just not a choice I would personally make and not a setting element I'm interested in.

When you have the other viewpoint where Dwarf girls aren't hard to distinguish from the men because their facial hair or facial hair grooming habits are noticeably distinct, you get around the whole erasure angle at the cost of losing what flimsy justification you had for them being bearded in the first place (harking back to Tolkien). You end up with the circular argument that you want them to have beards simply because you want them to have beards.

Except we are told repeatedly, that this is not a joke and shouldn't make it any harder to take them seriously, right alongside advice to channel monty-python whilst portraying them.

There is no obvious justification for making Dwarf Girls bearded beyond it either being deliberately ridiculous or simply aping a one off line in the back of a Tolkien book. Anything else would require significantly bigger changes to Dwarf Culture as a whole to make sense and takes all dwarves, not just the girls, further away from existing examples and portrayals.

[Aotrs Commander]

For me, it's more that it boils down to being dull, lazy and poorly justified.

Specifically talking about the tolkein-derived idea that Dwarven Women are indistinguishable from their menfolk to non-dwarves, for the record. I find that it adds little, is often chosen because it's easier than doing something interesting or simply because Tolkien said so and strains my suspension of disbelief because there simply isn't a precedent for such a prominent display of exclusively male sexual characteristics either in comparable nature or established by most portrayals of Dwarven Culture either.

Reducing a whole gender and their associated culture to an academic plumbing variation is just so unnecessarily wasteful. For it to be done purely to provide some tongue in cheek and/or off-colour humour is...well, just not a choice I would personally make and not a setting element I'm interested in.

When you have the other viewpoint where Dwarf girls aren't hard to distinguish from the men because their facial hair or facial hair grooming habits are noticeably distinct, you get around the whole erasure angle at the cost of losing what flimsy justification you had for them being bearded in the first place (harking back to Tolkien). You end up with the circular argument that you want them to have beards simply because you want them to have beards.

Except we are told repeatedly, that this is not a joke and shouldn't make it any harder to take them seriously, right alongside advice to channel monty-python whilst portraying them.

There is no obvious justification for making Dwarf Girls bearded beyond it either being deliberately ridiculous or simply aping a one off line in the back of a Tolkien book. Anything else would require significantly bigger changes to Dwarf Culture as a whole to make sense and takes all dwarves, not just the girls, further away from existing examples and portrayals.

Precisely.

[Zmeoaice]

Inaccurate, as at no point have I - deliberately - made ANY reference to attractiveness aside from mentioning that displayed by in popular media by male Dwarves to nonDwarf females1). .

Hmmm let's see.


And on having a bit of reasearch - because if you want alien with beards, you need to have a reason they developed beards - and basically, beards are a secondary sexual characteristic and belived to have evolved as the literal human equivilent of a male peacock's feathers.

Nope that still boils down to "Beared women aren't pretty".

[Kantaki]

Hmmm let's see.



Nope that still boils down to "Beared women aren't pretty".

In your opinion, to me it reads like an "Well okay but you need a reason because of irl biology." Which is still odd since we all know the first dwarves were formed from rocks deep in the mountians. But it does not imply that bearded women aren't pretty.

[Zmeoaice]

In your opinion, to me it reads like an "Well okay but you need a reason because of irl biology." Which is still odd since we all know the first dwarves were formed from rocks deep in the mountians. But it does not imply that bearded women aren't pretty.

Well, it kind of is because Aotrs's saying beared women wouldn't be selected to be mated.

We all know a biological explanation isn't needed because this is fantasy, so I wonder why Aotrs is asking for one. Do we need a biological explanation to why Elves live so much longer than humans, or why Orcs have green skin?

But if you are looking for a scientific explanation, I don't see why the ape-dwarves modern dwarves evolved from wouldn't have have found beards attracted on both gender. I don't see why this wouldn't be valid.


Lots of human women have facial hair, to varying degrees. It's not terribly unreasonable that some human relative would have that in a far larger degree.

[Kantaki]

Well, it kind of is because Aotrs's saying beared women wouldn't be selected to be mated.

We all know a biological explanation isn't needed because this is fantasy, so I wonder why Aotrs is asking for one. Do we need a biological explanation to why Elves live so much longer than humans, or why Orcs have green skin?

But if you are looking for a scientific explanation, I don't see why the ape-dwarves modern dwarves evolved from wouldn't have have found beards attracted on both gender. I don't see why this wouldn't be valid.

A: Orcs have black fur not green skin

B: Elves are that Long lived cause they are Magic, they didn't evolve but the first of their species stepped out of the light.

C: Obviously dwarf women evolved beards to carry theyr children around while having theyr Hands free and a strong beard indicates a good mother. Or my theory earlyer in this tread is right and the beards are the male dwarves.

[Aotrs Commander]

Well, it kind of is because Aotrs's saying beared women wouldn't be selected to be mated.

No, I'm saying that the females wouldn't have developed beards (as well as the males) in the first place without a reason.


We all know a biological explanation isn't needed because this is fantasy, so I wonder why Aotrs is asking for one. Do we need a biological explanation to why Elves live so much longer than humans, or why Orcs have green skin?

Yes. I'm saying there should ALWAYS be a reason. Even if that reason is "because I think it is cool." Which is perfectly fine - that's get that absolutely CLEAR; but one should be aware when one makes that choice, one is making it because one wants to make that choice and for no other reason, and even if you can make an entirely credible rational around why it happens in-universe. (See: all mecha anime/BattleTech ever, wherein a somewhat impractical idea is held signficantly above more practical ones (e.g. tanks and non-transforming fighters) solely because of "rule of cool;" indeed in that instance is is genera conceit).) And not, like the OP implies, because it is objectively better than any alternatives.


But if you are looking for a scientific explanation, I don't see why the ape-dwarves modern dwarves evolved from wouldn't have have found beards attracted on both gender. I don't see why this is valid.

It is literally same thing as what Glyphstone said about males Elves having breasts way back. Both are secondary characeristics of humans (which the Dwarves are far too close to to be even distantly credibly alien from.) If you want to go down that route, then yes, there is no reason why males Elves couldn't have breasts by the same extension of logic (or any other secondary sexual characteristic), if you wanted to.

Or like, I said, you could just invert the traditional visible Dwarf gender, make all the females bearded, and make them prominent ones, and call it a day. And you've already got something slightly more "alien" that "something that acts identically to a female human in dwarf-shape1 (while male dwarves act like male humans in dwarf-shape), except has a beard."

Basically, you don't (under normal typically normal broad circumstances, individuals aside) generally get secondary sexual characteristics on both sexes - that's entirely why they ARE secondary sexual characteristic, by, like, definition.



Whether or not a particular person does or does not find beards attractive on either gender shouldn't really enter into the argument (as I am general against anything being designed solely for the titillation of anyone's fantasies on principle, outside of pursuits specifically designed to that end.)



Also an interesting question - how many of us posting here are male or female and on which side of the argument are we all on? (Raziere is the only one in the thread displaying her gender as female.)



1Let's be brutally honest: dwarves are barely a different species at all, and even their more well-though-out cultures (e.g. Discworld) don't have them THAT much removed - if at all - from the variance of human culture to human culture.

[Almarck]

My understanding of the problem of bearded dwarf women is that the idea is perhaps... well... silly.

Now that is not to say that it's not possible to have badass, awesome bearded ladies, but let me ask you this. When a person completely unfamiliar with Tolken and has only a passing interest and know how in fantasy encounters one of these dwarves, do you think the most likely reaction is going to be wondering if it's some sort of joke about all dwarves being the same ever?

[Lord Raziere]

Nope that still boils down to "Bearded women aren't pretty".

and whats wrong with having pretty dwarven women huh? our fantasy races can't be beautiful? I'm sorry but I don't buy into "fantasy races should be alien and different from us for alieness sake" or whatever. I play and write dwarven women however I want them to be, and if I want them to be pretty lasses with a plump, muscular beauty with no beards, I'm going to do them that way. Just because its beautiful doesn't mean it invalidates my choice of dwarf women.

[Zmeoaice]

It is literally same thing as what Glyphstone said about males Elves having breasts way back. Both are secondary characeristics of humans (which the Dwarves are far too close to to be even distantly credibly alien from.) If you want to go down that route, then yes, there is no reason why males Elves couldn't have breasts by the same extension of logic (or any other secondary sexual characteristic), if you wanted to.


Sure why not.

EDIT: Although there is a more integral reason to give dwarven women beards, since beards are associated with Dwarves, and have cultural influence- such as different beard styles. It would also give them a choice whether to have the characteristic or not, since they can shave.



Basically, you don't (under normal typically normal broad circumstances, individuals aside) generally get secondary sexual characteristics on both sexes - that's entirely why they ARE secondary sexual characteristic, by, like, definition.


Except in this case they wouldn't be secondary sexual characteristics.



1Let's be brutally honest: dwarves are barely a different species at all, and even their more well-though-out cultures (e.g. Discworld) don't have them THAT much removed - if at all - from the variance of human culture to human culture.

They live underground, and have disporportinate body parts (Usually large hands/feet, noses & brows). They are alien enough.


and whats wrong with having pretty dwarven women huh? our fantasy races can't be beautiful?


Sure they can. Why would having a beard make them less beautiful? :smallamused:


I play and write dwarven women however I want them to be, and if I want them to be pretty lasses with a plump, muscular beauty with no beards, I'm going to do them that way. Just because its beautiful doesn't mean it invalidates my choice of dwarf women.

And that goes for the reverse, bearded dwarven women aren't invalidated either.

[LibraryOgre]

Reducing a whole gender and their associated culture to an academic plumbing variation is just so unnecessarily wasteful. For it to be done purely to provide some tongue in cheek and/or off-colour humour is...well, just not a choice I would personally make and not a setting element I'm interested in.


Isn't this more or less what Rich has done with V, though? Elven culture is gender-blind, the language seems to be agendered (when we've seen sections in "elven", everything is gender-neutral), and V is somewhat confused as to why the gender distinctions humans make matter so much to them. V obviously can tell the difference between a male elf and a female elf, but considers it an utter irrelevance.

Not dissimilar from what's usually presented for dwarves, only in elven androgyny instead of dwarven hirsutiry. If you go with the Tolkienian version, you'd be unable to tell males from females... not simply because of facial hair and clothing, but because the distinction doesn't matter to dwarves, save for reproduction.

(FWIW, I was rooting for at least one of the dwarves in The Hobbit to be incidentally revealed as female... someone referring to them as their sister, or the like).


No, I'm saying that the females wouldn't have developed beards (as well as the males) in the first place without a reason.


Two possible reasons:

1) Dwarves, in most game mythologies, are a case of special creation. The God or Gods of the dwarves made them more or less as they are now. Why do female dwarves have beards? A wizard-dwarf-god did it.

2) You are ascribing to reason what can simply be chance. Humans have evolved so it is relatively uncommon for females to have substantial facial hair. A human relative... even modern humans... going through the process again or in parallel could easily have wound up going a different way, so that it's not uncommon. Evolution is not always about REASONS, especially not for relatively minor traits. It's about adapting what genes an organism has to the circumstances the organism finds itself in and some things being selected for or against based on fitness... and then dragging along a host of related things because they don't mess up that fitness selection.

[Tiki Snakes]

Isn't this more or less what Rich has done with V, though? Elven culture is gender-blind, the language seems to be agendered (when we've seen sections in "elven", everything is gender-neutral), and V is somewhat confused as to why the gender distinctions humans make matter so much to them. V obviously can tell the difference between a male elf and a female elf, but considers it an utter irrelevance.

Not dissimilar from what's usually presented for dwarves, only in elven androgyny instead of dwarven hirsutiry. If you go with the Tolkienian version, you'd be unable to tell males from females... not simply because of facial hair and clothing, but because the distinction doesn't matter to dwarves, save for reproduction.

Sure, he has in fact done that. Of course, OOTS is inherently a comedy, so playing up to that stereotype works perfectly. It would be a lot more out of place outside of that context.


(FWIW, I was rooting for at least one of the dwarves in The Hobbit to be incidentally revealed as female... someone referring to them as their sister, or the like).
It's funny to think, but this would actually be closer to canon than the majority of what we actually got in the films.

[brionl]

Cos its awesome?
Cos they are a Norse myth and Norsemen are famously bearded?
Because tradition?
Because they're fabulous?

They don't NEED beards. Anyone who wants to write a dwarf without a beard go nuts, I don't mind. I just wanted to put bearded dwarf women in my game and was wondering what the playground thought of it. Because seeing Chibi Durkon with his chinstrap but Sigdi with nothing stimulated my mind.

And its an excuse to have a different culture.
"Look theres an unbearded dwarf! He must have been cast out from his society or felt a great shame or dishonor!"
"That dwarf has more gems in his beard than most human women have on their entire bodies"
*After being fireballed by the party mage* "ME BEARD! DANGBLAST YE SPELLSLINGER YE BURNED OFF ME BEARD!"
(I was the trigger happy fire mage in a party with 2 dwarves 5 years ago. Good times)

One time way back during Burning Crusade, in a dungeon everybody died except my Hunter, who successfully feigned death. Then I got up, and used my jumper cables. And they worked! Except I rez'd the dwarf warrior tank, instead of the dwarf paladin healer. :annoyed:

[Rodin]

I was thinking about why we don't have half-dwarves that often. My best guess is that they're really hard to visualize.

Half-orc, you make them look humanish but give them fangs and green skin.

Half-elf, give them pointy ears, the eyebrows, and the eyes.

Half-dwarf, you...make them a bit taller and give them a thick beard? Isn't that called "a regular bearded dude"?

I honestly don't know how you would draw a half-dwarf. With a dwarf, you can make them short and stocky and compact and that translates into a miniature armored tank. Take them upwards though, and you lose the alien portion of it - you just have a 5 foot tall human.