D&D 5E Dwarves Could Use A Rethink

[doctorbadwolf]

Hey! Don’t get me wrong, Dwarves are cool. But…they’re at risk of getting a bit stale in D&D.

what if we went back to origins and rethought what a Dwarf can be?

For instance, and mind this ain’t a scholarly source because this ain’t an academic discussion, this article goes into just how ambiguous stories about dwarves are in Norse myth. Dwarves in Norse Mythology

Now I’ve done a decent amount of research on this topic over the years, myself, and yeah, Ivaldi is never said to fear the sun, nor the Bricings, nor Gandalfr, nor Alberich IIRC, nor the 4 who hold up the sky, etc, and none of them are described as short, either.

So perhaps a line of dwarves, Dvalin’s kin, fear the sun, while others simply live underground, and still others live in the forest.

What do Norse dwarves have in common?

Well, they’re very magical, for one.

For another they are excellent craftsfolk.

They seem to tend not to like outsiders much to me, and they are almost certainly related to elves. Too many of thier names have variants of alfar in them to be otherwise.

Okay, so this sounds more like gnomes than dwarves in a lot of ways, but let’s roll with it. How can we make more magical dwarfs while keeping them dwarfy?

Anyone here knowledgeable about dwarves from other cultures, or have some really interesting tales on them?

 

[BookTenTiger]

I do not have a lot of knowledge about dwarves from real world mythology, but I have been playing in a long-term campaign with three to five dwarf characters and a dwarf BBEG.

To me, the most defining features of dwarves are not their beards, their mountains, their crafts, or their mining... it's tradition.

Dwarves (again, to me) are tradition personified. Whether that tradition is magical, mineral, or martial, I think dwarves are still dwarves as long as the emphasis on tradition is there.

 

[Umbran]

Hm.

Want a rethink of dwarves? Go check out Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" series, which starts in The Dragonbone Chair. It is a rewrite of Lord of teh Rings, with more modern sensibilities. The dwarves don't actually play a large role in the work, but the rethinks of dwarves and halflings are quite interesting.

 

[Reynard]

Hey! Don’t get me wrong, Dwarves are cool. But…they’re at risk of getting a bit stale in D&D.

what if we went back to origins and rethought what a Dwarf can be?

For instance, and mind this ain’t a scholarly source because this ain’t an academic discussion, this article goes into just how ambiguous stories about dwarves are in Norse myth. Dwarves in Norse Mythology

Now I’ve done a decent amount of research on this topic over the years, myself, and yeah, Ivaldi is never said to fear the sun, nor the Bricings, nor Gandalfr, nor Alberich IIRC, nor the 4 who hold up the sky, etc, and none of them are described as short, either.

So perhaps a line of dwarves, Dvalin’s kin, fear the sun, while others simply live underground, and still others live in the forest.

What do Norse dwarves have in common?

Well, they’re very magical, for one.

For another they are excellent craftsfolk.

They seem to tend not to like outsiders much to me, and they are almost certainly related to elves. Too many of thier names have variants of alfar in them to be otherwise.

Okay, so this sounds more like gnomes than dwarves in a lot of ways, but let’s roll with it. How can we make more magical dwarfs while keeping them dwarfy?

Anyone here knowledgeable about dwarves from other cultures, or have some really interesting tales on them?

D&D is lousy with Norse inspired dwarves. It's just that they are divided up into a handful of other creatures, such as duergar and deep gnomes.

 

[Charlaquin]

That article may not be a scholarly source, but it is pretty closely aligned with scholarly thinking on the matter of dwarves - they are almost certainly the same beings referred to as svartalfar by Snori Sturluson (and seemingly only by Snori Sturluson). And they were probably not short. The scholar I consulted with for my reenactment work referred to the idea of short dwarves derisively as “Tolkien Stuff,” and when I asked him what I should say if asked what they did look like, he had a long think and then hesitantly said “like… dead people?” which makes sense to me, given that they live underground, which is also where hel is. And it jibes with the general ancient world conflation of hidden folk and ghosts. Maybe that’s the angle to take - tie them to the shadowdark.

 

[Reynard]

I recall thinking that the dwarf character from Paul Andersons "The Broken Sword" would be an interesting take

 

[Grendel_Khan]

That article may not be a scholarly source, but it is pretty closely aligned with scholarly thinking on the matter of dwarves - they are almost certainly the same beings referred to as svartalfar by Snori Sturluson (and seemingly only by Snori Sturluson). And they were probably not short. The scholar I consulted with for my reenactment work referred to the idea of short dwarves derisively as “Tolkien Stuff,” and when I asked him what I should say if asked what they did look like, he had a long think and then hesitantly said “like… dead people?” which makes sense to me, given that they live underground, which is also where hel is. And it jibes with the general ancient world conflation of hidden folk and ghosts. Maybe that’s the angle to take - tie them to the shadowdark.

It'd mean ditching the term "dwarves," but even if you kept everything else about them and just make them "not short," to me that would be hugely refreshing. Though I do love the idea of having them be tied to death, the underworld, etc.

I'm too lazy/stupid to come up with an actually replacement name right now, but hell, even if they were just called Duergar by default that could work. (Yeah yeah, then something would have to be done with existing Duergar for D&D folks, but call them trolls or whatever...it's not like they were all that interesting to begin with)

 

[Don Durito]

Dwarves in Symbaroum are interesting and go back in some ways to their original Norse mythological origins.

I'm going to copy someone else's summary because I'm lazy

Dwarves are ...weird and I'm here for it. They emerged as worms from the body of the World Serpent and were shaped by Symbaroum's Sorcerors into a labour force. Their birth tied them to the fate of the world, and could never be truly controlled, and developed an extreme sense of community and complex coded speech that is basically cockney rhyming slang mixed with a book of proverbs, and never wrote anything in case their Symbar masters would read it. They moved to a fortress city in the mountains, and most of the dwarves in human communities are ex-nobles who were kicked out after a bloody rebellion. They get the perks of Perfect Memory (which means nothing in rpgs) and Earthbound, which means they take physical damage instead of Corruption, because they don't have a soul in the usual sense. Their semi-magic language also lets them take a Curse ability as if it wasn't magical.

Also, no beards.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Want some more Fey/Norse dwarves?

Here's a Spiderwick dwarf;

And here's a Trudvang dwarf;

Or Fyreslayers, if you want to go heavy metal;

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That article may not be a scholarly source, but it is pretty closely aligned with scholarly thinking on the matter of dwarves - they are almost certainly the same beings referred to as svartalfar by Snori Sturluson (and seemingly only by Snori Sturluson). And they were probably not short. The scholar I consulted with for my reenactment work referred to the idea of short dwarves derisively as “Tolkien Stuff,” and when I asked him what I should say if asked what they did look like, he had a long think and then hesitantly said “like… dead people?” which makes sense to me, given that they live underground, which is also where hel is. And it jibes with the general ancient world conflation of hidden folk and ghosts. Maybe that’s the angle to take - tie them to the shadowdark.

Yeah I mostly point out that it isn’t scholarly because it doesn’t show its sources, and I don’t wanna be nit picked when the exact details aren’t the point. I mean there is a guy on these forums who blocked me because I pointed out the academically uncontroversial fact that Norse stories of dwarves vary pretty widely, and we certainly don’t need to feel beholden to Alviss or Dvalin specifically when presenting a Norse dwarf.

But yeah, from this and several other replies, I think maybe take the Duergar and some elements of the deep gnomes, and work out a sunless creature of deep earth magic, with innate genius or insight in craft, and some magic that feels right like maybe a stone camouflage ability and the magical ability to create hidden encampments when underground or surrounded by stonework.