Good Resources For Dwarves?

[Sparky McDibben]

Hey all,

I'm in need of some solid adventure hooks and other stuff for a dwarven-centric campaign I'm looking at. The campaign would be set in a mountainous region, focusing on a dwarven empire that was formerly a source of great pride but is now suffering a serious decline as a result of plague, civil war, and intolerance. Y'know, totally disconnected from the real world.

The vibe I'm looking for is "The world is screwed up, everything is terrible, and the only people you can rely upon are yourselves." Unfortunately, there is something of a paucity of dwarven-centric content. Specifically, I'm looking for:


Anything that would give me new or different views of dwarves and how they interact with their neighbors
Supplements I could mine for dwarven cultural ideals
New dwarven weapons, armor materials, or magic items
Belowground maps spanning large distances (think the Deep Roads from Dragon Age)
New sources on dwarven religion
New dwarven racial feats
Any systems or scenario structures that make mountaineering cooler than a skill check
Adventure hooks, villains, or conflicts I could leverage into my game


I own Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Volo's Guide to Monsters, and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, so if you suggest those sources please tell me what specifically you can use, how you'd give those sources a twist, or what you found neat or useful.

Thanks!

[Decoy69]

If you can find a copy of the old 3.5 book "Races of Stone". That's got loads of good info on dwarven people and culture.

[Sparky McDibben]

Man, I can't believe I forgot about Races of Stone! Good call, Decoy!

[Rowan Wolf]

For non-crunch that is a lot of the novel (first in a series) The Dwarves by Markus Heitz.

[HappyDaze]

The Earthdawn game provided the Kingdom of Throal. Search that for that on Amazon for several products that cover it over multiple editions of that game.

[GorogIrongut]

While it's not Dnd, I've found that Warhammer provides a fair amount of fluff that is transferable. Get your hands on a copy (pdf or otherwise) of Stone and Steel. You won't regret it.

[Emongnome777]

SCAG chapter 3 has fluff about dwarves in Faerun as well as some dwarves strongholds in the geography section. Greyhawk Gazetteer from 3.X has much about dwarves of Oerth as well (generic enough to maybe glean something from).

Forge of Fury from TftYP has a map of a dwarves fortress, though long since vacated of dwarves.

And +1 to everything else mentioned. Good stuff.

[Democratus]

Check out the dwarves in Dragon Age, Origins.

They are a fading empire torn by internal strife, social bigotry, and scheming.

Bonus: Any dwarf who choses to go to the surface world is forever exiled as being "lost to the stone".

[Iku Rex]

Keith Baker (Eberron creator) talks a little about Eberron dwarves on his website.

Based on a quick search:
http://keith-baker.com/rising-from-the-last-war-the-dwarves/
http://keith-baker.com/mror2/

[sambojin]

The Dwarf Fortress version of dwarves is always a fun one (especially their relationship with elves/ nearly everyone, and the standard "we dig deeper, until we dig too far, and all hell breaks loose").
It's a PC game.

[VoxRationis]

Mithril if you can get it; gold or silver; iron.
Coal, of course, because all those forges won't fuel themselves.

[BurgerBeast]

Complete Book of Dwarves (2e PHB supplement). It’s awesome.

[Sparky McDibben]

These are all really awesome suggestions, y'all. Dwarfs - Stone & Steel is very solid, and I think I can see Warhammer's influence on Dragon Age, too (with the Underway, et alia). That's excellent, because I was actually basing this on the Dragon Age dwarves - they captured that slowly disintegrating feel that I really wanted, and going back to Warhammer as the source material is a great way to make sure it doesn't feel too derivative. The lore-building is awesome, given the Trollslayers, the magic rune table, dwarven names, and legendary dwarves to drop into my setting. Absolutely fantastic; thanks!!!

The Complete Book of Dwarves is a decent recommendation too; I particularly like the dwarven stronghold generator.

So I'm left with a couple of questions:


The society I'm envisioning marks honor as a key component, but how is honor raised or lowered? What would cause you to gain or lose honor?
How is honor loss remedied? Is this all social pressure, in which case there is no redress? Or is there a formal system to resolve these complaints in order to stop feuds from springing up?
Finally: Should lady dwarves have beards? Yea or Nay?


I've watched Zee Bashew's video on dwarven Honor scores, and I dig what he's saying, but I'm struggling with how exactly to actualize it so that my player doesn't need to ask "would this lower my honor?" Like, I don't want to hand her a list of dwarf sins.

[LibraryOgre]

Some older sources: Dwarves Deep (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16822/FR11-Dwarves-Deep-2e?affiliate_id=315505) and Dwarves of Rockholme (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16999/GAZ6-The-Dwarves-of-Rockhome-Basic?affiliate_id=315505).

[Emongnome777]

The society I'm envisioning marks honor as a key component, but how is honor raised or lowered? What would cause you to gain or lose honor?
How is honor loss remedied? Is this all social pressure, in which case there is no redress? Or is there a formal system to resolve these complaints in order to stop feuds from springing up?
Finally: Should lady dwarves have beards? Yea or Nay?



Personal opinions here, not drawing from existing material for this response (at least knowingly).
1) I feel like honor is fairly rigid, mostly based on family / clan / profession. Reaching professional goals could increase it (like apprentice to journeyman to master in a craft), as well as enlisting. Substantial deeds in battle, or military rank could impact. But only major milestones. I don't feel like it should go up and down like the volume of ale in a dwarf's mug.
2) Loss should be rare, but if there is a loss, it's major and it would take a major gain to restore honor. I feel like dwarven society is one where one's honor loss can affect the whole family / clan potentially. There should be a formal system, but make it archaic, clunky, slow, and difficult to work through. It just feels right.
3) I can't say for sure, but it seems like older editions had the ladies with beards (or optional) while more recent versions dropped the beards. I say give 'em beards! :smalltongue:

[LibraryOgre]

The society I'm envisioning marks honor as a key component, but how is honor raised or lowered? What would cause you to gain or lose honor?
How is honor loss remedied? Is this all social pressure, in which case there is no redress? Or is there a formal system to resolve these complaints in order to stop feuds from springing up?
Finally: Should lady dwarves have beards? Yea or Nay?



You might want to take a look at Hackmaster (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/104757/HackMaster-Basic-free?affiliate_id=315505), which makes Honor a component of character creation.

Basically, Honor in Hackmaster has 4 components: Adherence to Class, Adherence to Alignment, Defense of Honor, and General Role-playing.

If you're LG but keep acting CE, you're going to get a poor Honor Rating at level up (I prefer monthly).
If you're a fighter but you keep acting like a coward, or a mage and keep charging into melee, you're going to get a poor Honor Rating.
If you let people talk smack about you all the time, your honor will plummet.
If you don't role-play well, your honor drops.

Now, in addition, groups you belong to (such as an adventuring party or a clan) will have their own honor rating and, over time, your honor will trend towards theirs, if you don't do something to change it... if you have a consistently high honor and spend your time with honorless scoundrels, your honor will slowly go down, and theirs will slowly go up... you bring the average up.

[Tvtyrant]

The old Spelljammer books have space Dwarves. They are partially an explanation for why dwarves are always in decline but never gone; they are one of the major powers in space by flying around in flying mountains powered by mining. Probably my favorite dwarves.

Midgard dwarves from 3.5 are more like the dwarves from mythology.

Psurlons and Grell are closer to the original dwarves though, which are death spirits inspired by maggots.

Honor: Remember they aren't Humans. Their honor code doesn't need to map to ours at all. The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition where trusting someone is dishonorable would be an example, or maybe it is honorable to get someone to contradict themselves in a lie but dishonorable to call someone out for one. Maybe all confrontation is dishonorable and passive conflict is honor.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I like the eberron banker dwarves.
They get a bit of explaination in ErftlW, but keith baker goes into a bit more detail in some articles.

[Chronic]

I would suggest the comic books Dwarves. A French comic book in 15 tomes (you can find it in English) , composed of 3 cycles of 5 tomes, each tome of a cycle focus on 1 of the 5 castes of the dwarves. It's both completely inspired by the usual take on fantasy dwarves and something fresh. They are obtuse, strong, unyielding and greedy. But they more than that, they are people, with all the complexity that comes with it. You'll see dwarves fighting to preserve the ways and honor of their race, you'll see dwarves that fight to get free of the traditions of their race, and much much more.