Is Dwarf something to keep, and good alternative names for Dwarves

[Witty Username]

In the traditional settings, non-human races are always derided as humans with bumpy foreheads. What's the point of removing humans and keeping standard-dwarves, standard-elves and standard-halflings?

It does radically shift astetics, take say a setting like Lorwyn from mtg. It doesn't have humans but has several approximate human creature types, however the differences catch in weird ways.
The closest to how humans are portrayed in magic are the giants (all five colors, tend to play into other tribes as opossed to strictly their own) but the spot they occupy in art and game state feels wrong for want of a better word. It ends with both similarity and differences emphasized depending on the context.

And it is an easy source of whimsy. If the closest you have to humans are humanoid wolves or green treefolk people, it is easier to loosen the grip on reality.

[Satinavian]

In the traditional settings, non-human races are always derided as humans with bumpy foreheads. What's the point of removing humans and keeping standard-dwarves, standard-elves and standard-halflings? You're just leaning into what makes those races basically just humans even more; you've emptied the "this is what you are used to, it's neither exotic nor strange" narrative space.

It will

a) lead to standard dwarfs, standard elves and standard halflings to not only pop up when their stereotypical niche is asked for and naturally get more diverse and flavorful
b) it also naturally leads to standard dwarfs, standard elves and standard halflings to get fleshed out cultures that are actually explored in some depth because you can't hang around in human settlements and realms all the time.

I mean, if your players actually live in a stereotypical dwarven mountain hold, the group will natually ask and answer questions like "what do they even eat here without extensive overland farms" or maybe even "what do they do for recreation ? Are there things like dwarven operas ? Is there possibly art that plays to the dwarven stone senses ?". In the traditional game, you have your dwarven smith in the human town and the hold is only relevant for foreign policy.

[Darth Credence]

I mean, if your players actually live in a stereotypical dwarven mountain hold, the group will natually ask and answer questions like "what do they even eat here without extensive overland farms" or maybe even "what do they do for recreation ? Are there things like dwarven operas ? Is there possibly art that plays to the dwarven stone senses ?". In the traditional game, you have your dwarven smith in the human town and the hold is only relevant for foreign policy.

Unless, of course, the DM has actually fleshed out their world and answered questions like what dwarves do for recreation - in my world, there are indeed dwarvish operas, most related to wars and fighting and more specifically related to the last great war of the Holds that led to the extinction of a particular subrace. My players know nothing about this because in all the time we've been playing, they have never gone to a dwarvish hold - the game has never flowed in that direction. Doesn't change that if they ever do, that's already created.

That some DMs do not do this does not mean that eliminating humans will cause it to happen. A DM who is willing to flesh out the culture of the dwarves will do so whether there are humans or not. A DM who is not will simply have all of the dwarves in the dwarven village be the same as the blacksmith in the human village, or everyone will be a human with a Scottish accent.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

It will

a) lead to standard dwarfs, standard elves and standard halflings to not only pop up when their stereotypical niche is asked for and naturally get more diverse and flavorful
b) it also naturally leads to standard dwarfs, standard elves and standard halflings to get fleshed out cultures that are actually explored in some depth because you can't hang around in human settlements and realms all the time.

I mean, if your players actually live in a stereotypical dwarven mountain hold, the group will natually ask and answer questions like "what do they even eat here without extensive overland farms" or maybe even "what do they do for recreation ? Are there things like dwarven operas ? Is there possibly art that plays to the dwarven stone senses ?". In the traditional game, you have your dwarven smith in the human town and the hold is only relevant for foreign policy.

I'll be honest: A strikes me as just the result of unimaginative GMing, and B as a combination of unimaginative GMing plus not actually something that matters very much. Whether halfling culture is fleshed out or not matters only in the context of the game happening at the table. If you're running Broadchurch but set in the Shire, then yeah, it matters a lot, and you as the GM should be delving into the nuances of that culture whether there are humans or not. If it doesn't actually matter in context, then it's up to your players whether they're interested, and it's okay if they're not. Players asking questions like 'what do they eat here without farms' is the kind of thing that makes more sense if their characters aren't dwarves; if they are they should know those answers in-character. Those questions are more likely to come up when the characters are fish out of water, which is more likely if they're four bog-standard humans on an adventure to Dwarfland or Elvenville. And maybe you can say 'well, it'd come up if they're elves in Dwarfland too', and that's true, but it also doesn't fundamentally change anything. The setting is 0% more interesting or believable because you've removed humans; the interest and investment comes from having interesting answers to the questions the players want to ask.

Edit:

Unless, of course, the DM has actually fleshed out their world and answered questions like what dwarves do for recreation - in my world, there are indeed dwarvish operas, most related to wars and fighting and more specifically related to the last great war of the Holds that led to the extinction of a particular subrace. My players know nothing about this because in all the time we've been playing, they have never gone to a dwarvish hold - the game has never flowed in that direction. Doesn't change that if they ever do, that's already created.

That some DMs do not do this does not mean that eliminating humans will cause it to happen. A DM who is willing to flesh out the culture of the dwarves will do so whether there are humans or not. A DM who is not will simply have all of the dwarves in the dwarven village be the same as the blacksmith in the human village, or everyone will be a human with a Scottish accent.

Earlier and shorter than my post, and also completely correct.

[Satinavian]

Unless, of course, the DM has actually fleshed out their world and answered questions like what dwarves do for recreation

DMs tend to flesh out what is more likely to show up and what the players ask about. The rest gets very broad strokes.
And in the standard human dominated setting where most countries are human majority, the PCs start out in a human majority settlement and other races mostly show up as small minorities. enemies or at best places for a short visit, that means human cultures and habits get fleshed out and little else.

If the group starts out in a non-human community and only interacts with/stays in nonhuman countries and various nonhumans are always in the spotlight, that leads to a whole other level of detail.

[Darth Credence]

DMs tend to flesh out what is more likely to show up and what the players ask about. The rest gets very broad strokes.
And in the standard human dominated setting where most countries are human majority, the PCs start out in a human majority settlement and other races mostly show up as small minorities. enemies or at best places for a short visit, that means human cultures and habits get fleshed out and little else.

If the group starts out in a non-human community and only interacts with/stays in nonhuman countries and various nonhumans are always in the spotlight, that leads to a whole other level of detail.

I disagree. That does not reflect the games I run or the games I've played in. That it represents the games you are familiar with is fine, but it cannot be said about the game in general.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

DMs tend to flesh out what is more likely to show up and what the players ask about. The rest gets very broad strokes.
And in the standard human dominated setting where most countries are human majority, the PCs start out in a human majority settlement and other races mostly show up as small minorities. enemies or at best places for a short visit, that means human cultures and habits get fleshed out and little else.

If the group starts out in a non-human community and only interacts with/stays in nonhuman countries and various nonhumans are always in the spotlight, that leads to a whole other level of detail.

I mean, maybe, but that seems tautological. If humans are the only characters the players encounter, only humans will be fleshed out, fine. The level of detail isn't changing, just who it's being applied to. If the DM only uses humans, only humans will get detail. If the DM only uses nonhumans, only nonhumans will get detail. Ideally, the DM uses whatever beings fit the scenario, and detail is applied to give the players whatever feeling of verisimilitude they need. Corellia and Chandrilla should feel different, even though both are human-majority planets. Bothans from Bothuwai and Bothans from colonies should have differences in their attitudes. If they don't, that's indicative of limits to the GM's ability or performance.

Ultimately, a DM who can't generate interesting non-human NPCs has a problem with generating interesting NPCs of whatever species, in my opinion. Exoticism is not a substitute for interest. A guy who creates boring humans is going to create boring elves too, even if actually those elves hate trees and only eat yogurt on Wizentaday (which is their version of Wednesday because they have nine days in their week!) and their primary form of art is smell-based. That's all just... stuff. I don't think you can make individual NPCs, which are what players care about, interesting by piling on quirks and traits at the species level. A good GM can get players invested in an elf who likes trees, has a bow, is tall and slender and has a little bit of magic (but not too much!) and sings sad songs by starlight just as easily as they can an elf who lives in a city, throws his garbage in the canal, and wears moleskin trousers to his job in the coal mine every day. Players aren't at the table to read setting documents and sourcebooks; they're there to interact with the world. Detail is not a substitute for engagement.

And, again, none of this makes the case that removing humans makes the game more interesting. If anything, it makes the opposite case -- that the most interesting games are like Out of the Abyss, where a group of surfacers are thrown into the Underdark, or Descent into Avernus, where a group of Primes travel to the First Hell. In both cases, the party are strangers in a land they're not equipped to survive, they need to learn strange customs, they need to find ways to communicate and cooperate with beings of more-or-less alien morality and values. Arguably the best party for a game like that would be four humans, because it maximizes the strangeness the characters are encountering and minimizes the tools they can use to cope.

[Kyovastra]

It also does not help that Dwemer are...not Dwarves, in any sense of the word. They do not fit the general Tolkienesque trappings of the race (being largely a race of agnostic artificers most well known for building robots and other wildly incongruous technology, so more similar to Dragonlance's Gnomes if anything), known mostly for their contributions to academia and philosophy (their name translating as "Deep Elf" is meant to refer to "deep thoughts" like "Wow that's deep bro" not that they lived underground), are in fact a subtype of elf, and maybe most importantly: are not short. Dwemer stand about the average height for a human, making them somewhat tall compared to some other types of elf (eg. Bosmer). They were given the moniker "Dwarves" by a race of GIANTS which stood about 20 feet tall.

Dwemer brings a very specific image to mind, being very much an extraordinarily rare case of "Our Dwarves are Different".

Also I'm pretty sure it's copyrighted.

I'm not sure that word can be copyrighted, at least not any more than any other ordinary English word. Dwemer is just a more phonetic spelling of dweomer, which is a variant spelling of dwimmer and dwimer from Middle and Old English, respectively. "Dwimmer" is the native Germanic cognate to the Latinate "illusion" that displaced the word in modern English, with the same meaning of apparition, phantom, or trickery, and also referring to magic, not only of the illusory sort but all other kinds too (e.g divination, including necromancy, originally meaning literally death divination).

Tolkien used the word referring to magic, and Gygax used it too in D&D, specifically to refer to the auras of magic items, but I'm guessing that's not well known anymore, since I haven't seen anyone use it since I started playing D&D sometime in 5e years ago. It used to be common enough it was in the pronunciation guide on WotC's website found in the DnD Archives FAQ ('Dweomer: DWEH-mer (rhymes with "hem her"), or DWIH-mer; sometimes DWEE-mer').

I imagine it was a play on words from whichever Morrowind writer came up with it, since Elder Scrolls dwarves went too far with their magical trickery and disappeared, except for some ghosts you can find in their ruins. I have to disagree that they aren't dwarves in any sense of the word; dwemer are, like the dwarves in Norse literature and in Tolkien, renowned artificers that dwell underground ("artificer" is identical in meaning to "crafter").

The dwemer's mysterious phantom nature as a people who vanished, and who were seen as wicked by their enemies, is also in line with dwarves, gnomes, goblins and the like (same thing really, if not in D&D) of folklore, which are found in almost every language and culture on every continent, dwelling in caves, hills or mountains; sometimes forests, the sea, or air; usually described as hairy, often capricious, frequently malevolent, and preferring the darkness of dusk to dawn. Some of the possible etymologies of "dwarf" mean spirit or demon, and dwarves and gnomes in mythology can often make themselves become invisible or disappear, like the dwemer did (and like duergar can in D&D, as well as change their size and form like na Daoine Maithe).

I think dwarves have become uninteresting in fantasy since authors and DMs used to have deeper wells to draw from than now, and were more interested in mythology, folklore, and history, where there's a ton of variety and inspiration. Now, most fantasy is self-referential drawing only from other fantasy, and not many people read books anymore. People have one image of dwarf and stick to it. It shows that everyone thinks of them as European and from Tolkien, which the modern idea of them is, but you can find supernatural "dwarves" with the above listed traits and generally small and hairy (if varying in size, and neither define them very much) everywhere. E.g., in Shona, they are called tokalosh; in Sierra Popoluca, chaneques; in Nahuatl, yeyecatl; in isiZulu, amatongo; in Tzeltal, ?ihk'als; etc.

[Rynjin]

I'm not sure that word can be copyrighted, at least not any more than any other ordinary English word. Dwemer is just a more phonetic spelling of dweomer, which is a variant spelling of dwimmer and dwimer from Middle and Old English, respectively. "Dwimmer" is the native Germanic cognate to the Latinate "illusion" that displaced the word in modern English, with the same meaning of apparition, phantom, or trickery, and also referring to magic, not only of the illusory sort but all other kinds too (e.g divination, including necromancy, originally meaning literally death divination).

Context matters for copyright. Specifically the word wouldn't be copyrighted, but the concept of the very specific type of Dwarf in question combined with the name Dwemer would be. While it is etymologically similar to those words it is transformatively different, and used for something very specific that is not implied by the actual word.

Use of the word in general would likely not be an issue, especially if you were using it, as you say, in the context of the older meaning, but I imagine you'd be getting sternly worded C&D's from Zenimax's and/or Bethesda's lawyers if you tried naming your dwarves that, especially if it could be argued that they're too similar to the actual unique elements of them.

I think dwarves have become uninteresting in fantasy since authors and DMs used to have deeper wells to draw from than now, and were more interested in mythology, folklore, and history, where there's a ton of variety and inspiration. Now, most fantasy is self-referential drawing only from other fantasy, and not many people read books anymore. People have one image of dwarf and stick to it. It shows that everyone thinks of them as European and from Tolkien, which the modern idea of them is, but you can find supernatural "dwarves" with the above listed traits and generally small and hairy (if varying in size, and neither define them very much) everywhere. E.g., in Shona, they are called tokalosh; in Sierra Popoluca, chaneques; in Nahuatl, yeyecatl; in isiZulu, amatongo; in Tzeltal, ?ihk'als; etc.

I disagree that Dwarves are necessarily uninteresting, though do agree that a lot of fantasy writers seem to just include them in their default capacity for no particular reason. The archetypal Dwarf can often be very interesting and entertaining when they have a focus put on them, but often they're just kind of a lazy background element. The Dwarves is a very good fantasy series focused on very archetypal Tolkienesque Dwarves for example.

[Satinavian]

The level of detail isn't changing, just who it's being applied to.

And that is the whole point. Fantasy humans have been done to death with all the human centric settings. The other races usually only get cameos and most of those still life among humans. So they rarely get a proper treatment.

And, again, none of this makes the case that removing humans makes the game more interesting. If anything, it makes the opposite case -- that the most interesting games are like Out of the Abyss, where a group of surfacers are thrown into the Underdark, or Descent into Avernus, where a group of Primes travel to the First Hell. In both cases, the party are strangers in a land they're not equipped to survive, they need to learn strange customs, they need to find ways to communicate and cooperate with beings of more-or-less alien morality and values. Arguably the best party for a game like that would be four humans, because it maximizes the strangeness the characters are encountering and minimizes the tools they can use to cope.

So it is suddenly interesting when the adventure is in exclusively nonhuman lands ? Because those and their inhabitants are now focus of the game not just a rarely touched bakcground element ? And that is supposed to be an argument against getting rid of humans ?
Sure, there is also the explorer angle with "PCs are not from here and discover everything only in game". But that also does not require humans.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

And that is the whole point. Fantasy humans have been done to death with all the human centric settings. The other races usually only get cameos and most of those still life among humans. So they rarely get a proper treatment.

This is a you and your group problem, not a setting problem.

So it is suddenly interesting when the adventure is in exclusively nonhuman lands ? Because those and their inhabitants are now focus of the game not just a rarely touched bakcground element ? And that is supposed to be an argument against getting rid of humans ?
Sure, there is also the explorer angle with "PCs are not from here and discover everything only in game". But that also does not require humans.

No. Those adventures are interesting (assuming they are; I don't actually agree that DiA is) because they immerse the players in strange and alien places. A GM could hit the same themes and feelings of challenge and confusion with a party of tinker gnomes from Mount Nevermind traveling to the human city of Palanthas or a party of lightfoot halflings visiting the uthgardt barbarians of the north in the Forgotten Realms; Peter Jackson speeds through this in about 30 seconds in the Bree sequence of Fellowship of the Ring. Whether humans are involved or not is not related.

I think you're continuing to operate under two mistaken assumptions. The first is that your experience at the table is universal. You seem to think that all games take place in human-dominated areas and that all NPCs are humans unless otherwise specified. That certainly isn't true at tables I run or tables I've played at. Where it may be more true is in 5E published adventures, which tend to rely on lots of GMing skills that 5E doesn't bother to teach. But that's not a problem that can be fixed by removing humans from the setting.

The second is that players really care about background information. In my experience, they basically don't, except how it informs how their characters fit into the world and can interact with it. Your experience seems to be that players will walk into Kelethin, City in the Treetops, and start asking questions about how they can have forges if everything's made of wood and built in a tree. My experience is that those questions come up for two reasons: one, the players think the answer is relevant to their goals (the bloody dagger at the crime scene was stamped Made In Kelethin but wood elves don't have forges; they trade for all their metal goods, so it must be a forgery! But is it an attempted misdirection?) or if I as the GM have left a massive gaping hole in my design or presentation (wait, there's a forge with a roaring fire and it's all wood? Why isn't it burning down? Is it magic wood? Will I get fire resistance if I make armor out of this stuff?). Players will absolutely ask questions if I design a settlement or civilization that doesn't pass the smell test and shove it in their faces. They're reacting to a lack of plausibility. But that's a problem with me, my worldbuilding and GMing, and not evidence of some genuine interest in the Deep Lore. Reading details from your setting document isn't a substitute for providing an interesting or engaging playing experience.

[t209]

Part of me had a thought and maybe the general source of this forum topic. Like when did Fantasy Dwarves are called “dwarf/dwarves” instead of Germanic mythological words (it’s like calling Medusa as snake hair woman equivalent).
Definitely not Snow White, which was made before Tolkien published Hobbit.

[Satinavian]

Part of me had a thought and maybe the general source of this forum topic. Like when did Fantasy Dwarves are called “dwarf/dwarves” instead of Germanic mythological words (it’s like calling Medusa as snake hair woman equivalent).
Definitely not Snow White, which was made before Tolkien published Hobbit.

1) probably since either the Normans or the Anglo-Saxons

2) looking at dwarf, Old English dweorgh and e.g. German Zwerg, it is obviously the same word with some added language evolution.

[Anonymouswizard]

Part of me had a thought and maybe the general source of this forum topic. Like when did Fantasy Dwarves are called “dwarf/dwarves” instead of Germanic mythological words (it’s like calling Medusa as snake hair woman equivalent).
Definitely not Snow White, which was made before Tolkien published Hobbit.

Part of me is still very annoyed that D&D uses the word Gorgon for a different monster. Although honestly I don't know Greek myth well enough to know if the other gorgons were also like that, my attempts at reading actual mythology have focused on Norse and Irish stuff.

Honestly if I have a problem with D&D's races it's that there's so many of them and sometimes an assumption that they all appear in any particular setting.its not that I dislike having both elves and catfolk as an option, it's that I rarely see a need for both in a setting (and honestly I'd rather have the catfolk, I know so many catgirls).

Dwarves have a few extra issues due to the name, but they are perfectly fine. My own dwarves tend to break stereotypes somewhat to the point where they could come off as worse, being incredibly vain and putting a lot of effort into their appearance. Also short hair and cropped beards, long ones are too impractical for the vast majority.