Dwarves are not heroes...

[Bluenose]

Tolkein is NOT the original source for dwarves.

 

[wingsandsword]

Tolkein is NOT the original source for dwarves.

Howeve, the Tolkien dwarf is the overall source for the dwarf in D&D. It certainly had more of an impact on Gygax, than say, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs did.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Tolkein is NOT the original source for dwarves.

More accurately, Tolkien IS the original source for dwarves, but there are lots of sources for dwarfs which predate Tolkien.

 

[Dausuul]

What?! You mean they are a nuanced race with members being every shade of good and bad?! Impossible!!!!1

Either that or Ferengi with axes.

 

[Pbartender]

I recently reread the Harry Potter series, and thought that the concept of ownership that she uses in those books for Goblins would work well for dwarves as well.

The idea being...

An object always belongs to the object's creator. When someone buys something, it's as if they made a single large payment to lease it for life. When the purchaser dies, the object should be returned to its creator.

The idea of passing an item on as an inheritance, or reselling it, is akin to theft from whoever made the item.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Gnomes tell badgers to poop in your boots.

Only because we have no respect for people who shop at Payless. If you would buy yourself some decent hiking boots with some proper arch support, we'd call off the badgers. It's not like we're kobolds or something.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

The idea of passing an item on as an inheritance, or reselling it, is akin to theft from whoever made the item.

It's certainly an amusing view of property rights.

Therefore, all the sewage in the world belongs to the farmers of the world, then.

Or, to use a less smelly variant...do the goblins melt the metalwork down to slag and give it back to the miners?

I read that, and really, it makes no sense whatsoever. The goblins really haven't thought it through, except as an Aristotlean ideal for the goblins if *they* were in charge. You know, standard power fantasy for a race/species that's obsessed with money.

Brad

 

[Cyronax]

This is a strange thread. To call it racist would be moronic, but ......

The thread title seems to possibly have been taken from an article about JRR Tolkien being an anti-Semite.

Its an interesting article........


Another question, which is somewhat related to this article. In what edition or legacy D&D game are the dwarves the most non-heroic? BECMI, AD&D, 3.X, 4e, PF? There can only be absolute answers here. Much like politics, there can never be any nuance when discussing fantasy races.

 

[Reynard]

This is a strange thread. To call it racist would be moronic, but ......

The thread title seems to possibly have been taken from an article about JRR Tolkien being an anti-Semite.

Its an interesting article........


Another question, which is somewhat related to this article. In what edition or legacy D&D game are the dwarves the most non-heroic? BECMI, AD&D, 3.X, 4e, PF? There can only be absolute answers here. Much like politics, there can never be any nuance when discussing fantasy races.

So there I was, re-reading The Hobbit, which was serving not only to re-acquaint myself with Tolkien and the significant differences between that work and the Lord of the Rings, but remind me of my early days of D&D -- The Hobbit could quite easily, IMO, pass for an account of a Red Box adventure played by my ten year old self.

And while so reading, I came across a strange little passage about dwarves, one that did not jive with the stocky, stoic super-hero of the modern fantasy rpg, born of some aberrant mingling of Warhammer, Warcraft, Dragonlance and morce recent fantasy offerings. It was interesting and, in a way, refreshing.
Enough so that I decided to post about it. Perhaps others would recognize the quote and we could all riff on how Tolkien and D&D con- or diverged, not just on Dwarves, but on a variety of subject (e.g. drunken elves).

Others chimed in, though mostly in jest. And it was good.

Then Cyronax came into the thread and it got locked.

 

[Cyronax]

So there I was, re-reading The Hobbit, which was serving not only to re-acquaint myself with Tolkien and the significant differences between that work and the Lord of the Rings, but remind me of my early days of D&D -- The Hobbit could quite easily, IMO, pass for an account of a Red Box adventure played by my ten year old self.

And while so reading, I came across a strange little passage about dwarves, one that did not jive with the stocky, stoic super-hero of the modern fantasy rpg, born of some aberrant mingling of Warhammer, Warcraft, Dragonlance and morce recent fantasy offerings. It was interesting and, in a way, refreshing.
Enough so that I decided to post about it. Perhaps others would recognize the quote and we could all riff on how Tolkien and D&D con- or diverged, not just on Dwarves, but on a variety of subject (e.g. drunken elves).

Others chimed in, though mostly in jest. And it was good.

Then Cyronax came into the thread and it got locked.

I googled your thread title to start searching for the Hobbit quote. 'Dwarves are not heroes' was the third thing that came up for me. I posted it here. Even in the wikipedia entry, Tolkien's quotes about his development of Middle-Earth dwarves mentions parallels to real world cultures.

Read the article, its not what you think it is.

In Chapter 12 of The Hobbit -

"..dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots;some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company if you don't expect to much."



C.I.D.