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

[HammerMan]

It's how discussion works, dude. Not just on this board, but all of them. It's called social interaction. You have the burden of proof for your claims.

you are incorrect. You think that all social interactions need scientific proof and bibliography's that isn't how it works int eh real world

Excellent. I agree with that statement. Unfortunately it's not enough to support your position that dwarven women should not have beards as the default. A non-0 number of people want AC to go away. A non-0 of people want hit points to go away. A non-0 number of people want racial stat penalties to return.

none of those are the same as "Cuting the player base by not listening" none of those are changing the secondary sexual characteristics of a PHB race.

You need a LOT more than "a Non 0 number of women have been vocal about these issues."

no you don't

 

[HammerMan]

So your argument is that no woman could possibly identify with a woman with facial hair? That's a... bold claim.

it is also not what I said at all.

I'm not arguing that dwarven women MUST have full beards, no exceptions, I'm arguing for the option for people who want bearded female dwarves to have them. If you want to play a beardless dwarf (male or female), play one! Why is "give us both" such a negative option for you?

giving the option should default to they don't... if someone wants to play one that is fine but that is more the exception.

If you're having a problem with a GM insisting that your dwarven woman must have a beard despite how much you dislike it, then the issue isn't with the beard, it's with the GM.

 

[BrokenTwin]

it is also not what I said at all.

giving the option should default to they don't... if someone wants to play one that is fine but that is more the exception.

Why does it need to default to one or the other? Just put in their physical description that male and female dwarves can both grow beards, though not all do. Give us artwork with dwarven women with and without facial hair. Done. Grooming almost never comes up in a game anyway (I have never once had a player mention that their character needs to shave their legs), so why is facial hair so different?

 

[Oofta]

You know there are still bearded woman around today, its not some weird historic phenomena.

one of the reasons I like female dwarf beards is that it challenges standards of feminine beauty as well as being a helpful marker that dwarfs arent human and thus don’t have the same gender dimorphism as humans.

So called "freak shows" are generally a thing of the past, that's what I was referencing.

 

[HammerMan]

Why does it need to default to one or the other? Just put in their physical description that male and female dwarves can both grow beards, though not all do. Give us artwork with dwarven women with and without facial hair. Done. Grooming almost never comes up in a game anyway (I have never once had a player mention that their character needs to shave their legs), so why is facial hair so different?

the last part is important... "Why is Facial Hair so different"

I have only 2 sources for this answer, and I am paraphrasing both (but they were close) "The same reason you may choose to play a guy with no private parts but the game shouldn't assume you are need to"

 

[Oofta]

Honestly, my primary influence is Discworld. Tolkien factors into it, obviously, but D&D's lore has never been a factor for me in this regard.

Edit: Until reading this thread, I didn't know D&D had ever had dwarven women with beards.

True confession time, I've never gotten into the discworld novels. I know, revoke my geek card but they just didn't work for me. On the other hand, if you want your elves to be short and chubby while living in trees and baking cookies more power to you. You just need to be clear with your players what your source material and imagery is. So from that point of view, of course female dwarves could have beards. They could just as easily have horns, have rock like skin texture or be 7 foot tall.

The reference to bearded female dwarves in D&D is something I put into the same category. As part of world building the group can do whatever they like. However you should also be aware that some women are bothered by what they see as a joke and people should be sensitive to that.

 

[jayoungr]

All right, since the thread has been revived and this was a direct response to me...

Tolkien's unpublished Later Silmarillion writings, as annotated in "Morgoth's Ring," "The War of the Jewels," and "The Peoples of Middle-earth," alongside the "Unfinished Tales," are just as important as anything written in "Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion" when it comes to Tolkien's canon thoughts. Yes, sometimes they disagree. So does "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit," and so do "The Silmarillion" and "The Lord of the Rings." It's the nature of the beast. There are issues that are irreconcilable because Tolkien never reconciled them. That doesn't make them "secondary canon." It makes the canon as a whole more nebulous.

"Secondary canon" is my own description (probably borrowed from George Lucas now that I think of it). But personally, I think that the stuff Tolkien actually committed to putting in print has greater weight than ideas he noodled around with outside of that. I see those unpublished writings as a peek into his thought process, and I don't assign more weight to any particular step of that process than to what he considered a final product ready for public consumption. So just because he at one point said dwarven women had beards, I don't take that as gospel and forever settled, especially since @delericho says that some of his other writings imply that they might not (I haven't checked out The Nature of Middle-Earth yet). If he had ever published the Silmarillion himself, then he would no doubt have given us a definitive answer on the appearance of female dwarves in Middle-Earth, but since he didn't, I consider the question to be still open.

However, given the uproar over the beardless female dwarf seen in publicity material for that upcoming Amazon series, my approach may be a minority one.

The Extended Editions do much to alleviate the "evil Faramir" issue - which I believe was Boyens and Walsh trying to push back against Tolkien's "Aragorn-lite Faramir" and make the pull of the Ring more evident and menacing

I have seen the extended editions, and I don't think they really help much. Maybe he comes across as less evil and more weak/incompetent, but I don't think that's a big improvement. And as for the Ring, when they completely eliminated the temptation of the one character whose tempting we actually see from his POV in the book--meaning Sam--they forfeited any right to make that argument.

 

[Stormonu]

In the end, I think the whole thing is a DM/player decision. DM makes the decision for the appearance of NPCs, the player makes the decision for how their player appears.

As an aside, I’m currently running a dwarf who has joined (conscripted) the local (human) army. He has shaved ALL his hair off, as a sign of his short life expectancy.

 

[Maxperson]

you are incorrect. You think that all social interactions need scientific proof and bibliography's that isn't how it works int eh real world

Here. I made a claim and now I'm backing it up, as I'm supposed to.

The Burden of Proof: Why People Should Support Their Claims – Effectiviology

effectiviology.com

Shifting of the Burden of Proof

Making a claim that needs justification, then demanding that the opponent justifies the opposite of the claim. The burden of proof is a legal and philosophical concept with differences in each domain.

www.logicallyfallacious.com

Who has the "burden of proof" in debates, arguments, discussions, etc?

Answer (1 of 6): The burden of proof lies with the person making a truth claim. The default position on anything is "I don't know." Ignorance doesn't require proof. If you claim "X is true", that is a truth claim and requires proof/evidence/justification. If you claim "X is not true" or "X i...

www.quora.com

Your logical fallacy is burden of proof

You said that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove.

yourlogicalfallacyis.com

Burden of Proof: Meaning, Standards and Examples

Burden of proof is a legal standard that determines if a legal claim is valid or invalid based on the evidence produced.

www.investopedia.com

I could keep going and going and going, but I think you should understand that the burden is upon you to prove that claim of yours. A claim without proof deserves little or no weight being given to it by anyone reading the claim. If you want your claim to mean something, you need to back it up with proof.

none of those are the same as "Cuting the player base by not listening" none of those are changing the secondary sexual characteristics of a PHB race.

Another unsubstantiated claim! The player base will now be cut because dwarven women other than the PC might have beards!

no you don't

Yes. Yes you do. As I showed in my last post, a non-0 number of people exist on every side of an issue. It's impossible to change for all of them. If you want change to happen, you need more than an unsubstantiated claim consisting of arbitrary numbers.

 

[BrokenTwin]

True confession time, I've never gotten into the discworld novels. I know, revoke my geek card but they just didn't work for me. On the other hand, if you want your elves to be short and chubby while living in trees and baking cookies more power to you. You just need to be clear with your players what your source material and imagery is. So from that point of view, of course female dwarves could have beards. They could just as easily have horns, have rock like skin texture or be 7 foot tall.

The reference to bearded female dwarves in D&D is something I put into the same category. As part of world building the group can do whatever they like. However you should also be aware that some women are bothered by what they see as a joke and people should be sensitive to that.

For me, dwarves having horns or stone skin isn't a part of the dwarves that I (and a lot of my friends male and female) have grown up with. But men and women both having beards is. And the only dwarf I've seen close to seven feet tall is one Carrot Ironfoundersson (sorry, Discworld reference, couldn't resist ).

the last part is important... "Why is Facial Hair so different"

I have only 2 sources for this answer, and I am paraphrasing both (but they were close) "The same reason you may choose to play a guy with no private parts but the game shouldn't assume you are need to"

Are you playing a game where your private area is frequently visible? Because if so, you're playing a very different game than I am.

I'm very resistant to the idea that just because a non-zero number of women might be against something it should be changed. I can trivially point you towards a lot of women who are against a lot of things that the progressive world considers good. Dwarven women having the option to have facial hair and it not be treated as abnormal seems like a more progressive stance to me than saying that we can't have dwarven women with beards because an unknown number of women find it unattractive. I can point to my own anecdotal experiences of women who enjoy dwarven women with beards, should we listen to your theoretical women or mine?

I just can't see how keeping the option of bearded dwarven women is more bigoted or anti-inclusive than keeping it out. Yes, a small group of people use the idea of women with body/facial hair as a joke. Those groups tend to use a lot of other progressive and inclusive things as jokes as well, so I'd advocate we ignore and remove those people instead.