D&D General Should Bearded Female Dwarves be the Default?

[Paul Farquhar]

Tolkien was pretty explicit that all the 13 dwarves in the Company were male.

Actually, if you look closely at the LotR appendix there are a few in Thorin's company where the gender isn't at all apparent. Bilbo's choice of pronoun in The Hobbit can't be considered 100% reliable.

, but I also think it's very important to not fundamentally change characters…

The point about dwarven gender is it is not a fundamental change. It's just not that important, on a par with eye colour.

 

[delericho]

Possibly of note, in "The Nature of Middle Earth" there's a chapter titled 'Beards' in which Tolkien specifies that it is his view that all male Dwarves have beards. (The emphasis is actually his - those words are in italics in the book.) The fact that he specifies "male Dwarves" and not just "Dwarves" suggests that at least some female dwarves didn't have them... or, at the very least, that he wasn't entirely decided on the issue. (Also, incidentally, he specifies that Aragorn and Faramir did not have them.)

As for my campaign:

• I've specified that many, but by no means all, female dwarves have beards... and also that many, but by no means all, male dwarves have beards.
• I've also specified that dwarves are actually born sexless, and only adopt a sex at puberty (after which it is usually fixed). As a consequence of this gender roles are much more equal in dwarven society than human ones.
• Finally, I've made sure to specify that it's your character. So if a player wants a female dwarf with a beard, no beard, or whatever then that's their choice - somehow, I'll cope. (The "it's your character" thing doesn't just apply to the question of beards, so if the example seems rather odd, that's why. )

(In general, my preference these days is for non-human races to be non-human. So I like having things, preferably fairly obvious things, be different from the human standard. An even better example is dragonboobs - I don't particularly object to them, as a fantasy race can be whatever they need to be, but I do tend to think it better if dragonborn don't have them, and some other way of distinguishing the sexes is used.)

 

[Marandahir]

Actually, if you look closely at the LotR appendix there are a few in Thorin's company where the gender isn't at all apparent. Bilbo's choice of pronoun in The Hobbit can't be considered 100% reliable.

The point about dwarven gender is it is not a fundamental change. It's just not that important, on a par with eye colour.

I think Tolkien would have considered it a fundamental change, as the gender binary was a fundamental part of his world view - as wrongheaded and queer-denying as that is.

He was very upset about the replacement of some dwarves with a Princess of Laketown in the first Hobbit movie. I dare say he would have been upset with Warrior Arwen or Tauriel or now Warrior Galadriel, because to him a woman-warrior like Éowyn was an extreme exception. In fact, he may have even said making one of these dwarves into a female would undermine the Macbethian motif of Éowyn’s triumph over the Witch-King.

Not that ANY of this should affect what we do NOW with Dwarves or any other element of the Fantasy. D&D is emphatically supportive of gender equality.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think Tolkien would have considered it a fundamental change

I'm not not concerned about what Tolkien would think. The artist is dead, both literally and metaphorically.

 

[Weiley31]

Man, my one post in this thread is blowing up here with likes.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I prefer my dwarven women to have beards, and in-setting, have gone with the concept that old-fashioned traditional dwarves still grown their beards out, younger dwarves, especially those who spend significant amounts of time among human cultures tend to go with shorter beards or entirely clean shaven. This applies to males and females.

I like dwarves and elves being mirrors of each other. Elves are androgenously 'feminine' (graceful, thin, pretty), while dwarves are androgenously 'masculine' (steady, stocky, rugged). Humans find it difficult to tell males and females apart in either species, and there's a not-small percentage of the human population that's pretty sure dwarves and elves are the males and females of the same species.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How about a compromise position: they have bushy sideburns but not actual full beards?

 

[Marandahir]

I'm not not concerned about what Tolkien would think. The artist is dead, both literally and metaphorically.

Fair

 

[Weiley31]

How about a compromise position: they have bushy sideburns but not actual full beards?

I'm totally for badass dwarven women with Sideburns and 80's Mullets.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Agreed. I would posit that it would've been far less disruptive than, for example, the addition of Legolas.

I do think the Hobbit movies missed a trick by not having some of the Thorin's company played by women. No other change, just have women under the beards.

Ultimately for my campaigns, I think it's a player's choice whether their dwarf woman is bearded or not. Heck, I had a player once that played a male dwarf that shaved his face entirely (shudders).