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Jay R
2020-07-11, 01:35 PM
I’ve been in a couple of 19th century gold mines, and they are no taller than they have to be. I can stand up straight in them, but I’m a little short for an adult male. Taller people sometimes can’t.

So wouldn’t Dwarven tunnels be only 4 1/2 to 5 feet tall? This would make them easier to defend against orcs, humans, elves, and many other enemies.

My next Dwarven mine may make the party stoop. [Or most of it, anyway.]

Silly Name
2020-07-11, 01:42 PM
Logically, yes. But dwarven in fiction have a tendency to make everything far bigger than they strictly need to be comfortable (see the mines of Moria). While an human-sized creature may feel cramped in a dwarven settlement, open areas and road may be large enough to accommodate them.

Also I'd say there's a difference between things that are strictly mines (and therefore are just as big as they need to be because it's a waste of time and effort to dig through stone you don't need to), living quarters, important buildings and "roads" are obviously made to be a bit larger in order to be comfortable. Most human houses have ceilings tall enough that people don't scrape their heads on them, and our roads are for the most part wide enough to allow multiple people to walk side by side, because it's better than having to walk in a line.

Service tunnels will probably be just big enough to allow dwarves and what they're expected to carry to move through, and will be hard for humans and larger creatures to crawl through.

Luccan
2020-07-11, 01:43 PM
Depending on the edition of D&D (or other TTRPG of your choice), this may be hard to rule. I'm pretty sure all WotC era editions assume that creatures of the same size can all fit in the same spaces without issue (and Dwarves are Medium, just like Humans, Elves, Orcs, etc.). The main exception I can think of is the 3.5 kobold web supplement, which specifically lets them fit through smaller spaces than they should be able to.

Also, even if this is the case, where they're actually mining is probably the last place they want to or are going to be fighting. Dwarven "mines" tend to be huge because they also live there 24/7 in most fiction.

Edit: I think Silly Name sums it up nicely.

LibraryOgre
2020-07-11, 03:28 PM
I would also add that many dwarven cities will be in semi-natural caverns, not strictly excavated spaces, and that would open them up a lot. Furthermore, I would imagine that a forge-heavy race like the dwarves would need more vertical space for air flow... the forges need oxygen, and the dwarves are going to be well acquainted with firedamps.

Lacco
2020-07-12, 01:38 AM
I agree with you: it makes sense for both mines and security chokepoints (you must be at most this tall...or kneel before our ancestors). But for actually living underground?

You should check salt and coal mines in Poland. Especially salt mines in Wieliczka and Krakow: people actually lived down there for some time if I remember correctly.

The other factor is time: while gold mines were usually relatively quickly mined out, salt mines were mined for several centuries in a row, so the time miners spent there was proportionate to effort a dwarven colony would put in.

Will try to find photos and links once I am at my computer.

Kaptin Keen
2020-07-12, 04:22 AM
Well ....... human miners didn't live there.

So I'd say a dwarven mining tunnel might be as cramped as you please, but anywhere the dwarves chose to live, or even travel, would be roomy enough to accomodate wagons, guards carrying banners, or their favourite ogre slaves - or whatever. They may be built to impress, or simply to be pleasing to the eye.

hewhosaysfish
2020-07-12, 06:32 AM
Logically, yes. But dwarven in fiction have a tendency to make everything far bigger than they strictly need to be comfortable

We dwarves value thu wide oopen spaces, ye ken. (https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1455.html)

Spellweaver
2020-07-12, 08:41 AM
This is a bit of game vs reality.

Size does matter a lot, but it's very complicated and would take something like a 500 page Size Handbook. So as D&D is a simple game, they just handwave it away to all human sized folk just fit everywhere.

If you want more of a realistic simulation game, then sure things like tunnels would be of all sizes.

Silly Name
2020-07-12, 12:05 PM
This is a bit of game vs reality.

Size does matter a lot, but it's very complicated and would take something like a 500 page Size Handbook. So as D&D is a simple game, they just handwave it away to all human sized folk just fit everywhere.

If you want more of a realistic simulation game, then sure things like tunnels would be of all sizes.

One of my personal D&D houserules is that dwarves can fit in any space a Small creature can without the usual penalties imposed on Medium creatures, both because they're the smallest a Medium creature can be and because they're all used to mining or moving through these tight tunnels if the need arises.

Psyren
2020-07-12, 12:45 PM
I would also add that many dwarven cities will be in semi-natural caverns, not strictly excavated spaces, and that would open them up a lot. Furthermore, I would imagine that a forge-heavy race like the dwarves would need more vertical space for air flow... the forges need oxygen, and the dwarves are going to be well acquainted with firedamps.

I like this explanation in particular; dwarves do a lot of activities underground like smithing and brewing and engineering that need decent airflow. So getting massive undeground spaces like Moria, Orzammar, Ironforge etc does make sense.

Storm_Of_Snow
2020-07-12, 01:23 PM
Well, the more volume there is, the more air you've got to breathe before it starts getting too full of carbon dioxide to support life. Smoke from fires, torches and so on would also be above the dwarves heads with more headroom, so they're not getting suffocated by them, it's not impeding their vision etc.

But you're still going to need air vents and pumping stations somewhere along the line.

More practically, residental areas may need to get carts in and out to carry larger/bulk goods, and while Dwarves might be shorter than the average human, pit ponies don't shrink depending on who their masters are. And, if we assume dwarves do use swinging weapons like hammers and axes as their main weapons, rather than thrusting weapons like spears and swords, the more headroom they've got, the easier it is to swing those weapons.

Another possibility might be aesthetic - the larger the walls, the more space you have for ornate carvings, both for the actual decorative qualities and for the sculptor to show off their skill level. And to an extent, the larger the space, the more difficult it is to carve out and make safe, so again, a larger tunnel may be a way for those that dug it out to advertise how good a stonemason they are and thus generate more work in the future.

Grek
2020-07-13, 08:15 AM
Emptying out a big cavern underground is a lot of work, which in turn makes it into a status symbol. A dwarf with a big tunnel is like a peacock with a brightly coloured tale - very attractive to female peacocks.

InvisibleBison
2020-07-13, 08:28 AM
Emptying out a big cavern underground is a lot of work, which in turn makes it into a status symbol. A dwarf with a big tunnel is like a peacock with a brightly coloured tale - very attractive to female peacocks.

Why would a dwarf want to attract female peacocks?

farothel
2020-07-13, 01:35 PM
Probably the mine shafts started out dwarf sized (I've been in old mines before and they had small shafts where they used kids to do the mining as they were smaller) but the longer the place was used and the more people would live in it instead of only mining it, the bigger and wider they would make the corridors.

Grek
2020-07-14, 07:29 AM
Why would a dwarf want to attract female peacocks?

They're very cute:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/03/97/ce/0397cebe1175acc5cab613cd4f01ed00.jpg

Silly Name
2020-07-14, 07:35 AM
Why would a dwarf want to attract female peacocks?

How else are they supposed to start their peacock farms?

King of Nowhere
2020-07-14, 08:51 AM
another thing: a small dwarven settlement probablty won't bother with high ceiling, but a large city or capital would have plenty of trade with other races, and would be quite cosmopolitan. the important areas would be made to fit everyone.

Imbalance
2020-07-14, 10:38 AM
Dwarves play Minecraft in survival mode with the added challenge of OCD. Sure, all you really need is some coal at first, but then you start looking for iron, and you have a few starter tunnels, that you need to keep lit, so you keep digging coal to line the halls with torches, and more iron because the distance is pretty far and rails are efficient, then you need gold and Redstone to power the carts, and all the while you keep widening the tunnels, which reveal new deposits, and you can't just leave a hole there so you turn it into a room, then you add a bed so you don't have to all the way back to your surface home, which in turn leads you to spending all of your time underground, until one day you strike diamond over a lava lake, which requires careful planning to build scaffolding and access paths not just to reach the deposit but to test around the deposit to make there isn't also lava above it, and by the time you've gone to that effort you also inadvertently dug up into another old passage or cave system and now have this enormous cavity to refine and construct your shrine to Dumathoin...

Darth Tom
2020-07-14, 02:40 PM
Dwarves play Minecraft in survival mode with the added challenge of OCD. Sure, all you really need is some coal at first, but then you start looking for iron, and you have a few starter tunnels, that you need to keep lit, so you keep digging coal to line the halls with torches, and more iron because the distance is pretty far and rails are efficient, then you need gold and Redstone to power the carts, and all the while you keep widening the tunnels, which reveal new deposits, and you can't just leave a hole there so you turn it into a room, then you add a bed so you don't have to all the way back to your surface home, which in turn leads you to spending all of your time underground, until one day you strike diamond over a lava lake, which requires careful planning to build scaffolding and access paths not just to reach the deposit but to test around the deposit to make there isn't also lava above it, and by the time you've gone to that effort you also inadvertently dug up into another old passage or cave system and now have this enormous cavity to refine and construct your shrine to Dumathoin...

If you haven't tried Dwarf Fortress, I suggest you give it a go. Based on the above, you might find it fun. Also based on the above, I should try Minecraft.

Reathin
2020-07-15, 10:56 AM
Could be a cultural thing. Make it a point of pride to build something that catches the eye and makes you stop and think "wow". Bigger is very commonly a part of the "awe" reaction. It has uses when taller folks visible, sure, and maybe lets you send things like golems through more easily, but grand halls should be mostly for style. And, of course, it gives the artists and such a larger canvas. To a culture that's stereotyped as craft-loving, that's a big factor.