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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 9299904" data-attributes="member: 93670">"That"? Sometimes specificity is important.  In this case you are asking me to elaborate on an assumed interpretation of the word "that"... So I will and it's on you to remember both the couple posts exchanging what is being discussed in addition to clarifying if my assumptions of "that" seem to miss the intended mark.All of the previously explained"plot armor" supporting dwarves society and civilization with an impenetrable curtain of "nothing to see here" are a big problem for any dwarf concept that's not basically just some flavor of the usual masculine beard beer mining blacksmithing cave dwelling  Tolkien dwarf. What little fabric that there is to work with is devoted to propping up gimli and such while the plot armor deflects attention away from developing anything else in service of the usual monolithic tropes.  I think it was earlier in this thread but it could have been another recent thread where someone mentioned how you can invent a new language but if nobody else understands it you've not invented anything.  Your two <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/no-dwarf-halfling-and-orc-suborgins-lineages-and-legacies.702946/post-9299089" target="_blank">earlier</a> characters don't bring up anything different so inherit mining beards beer and cave cities from Tolkien.  Look at the "original" stuff they bring to the table..  boy leaves for war and returns to swear vengeance when his love is killed in his absence is a trope I have no doubt was ancient when the Greeks and Romans were flogging it. Hard/cold hearted clergy who don't want to act?... These be the beer drinking bearded cave dwelling clergy of miners and blacksmiths?.... Princess favored by gods/spirits goes against their parents to travel and learn is a trope that goes back as long as arranged marriages have been a thing.... Morgan Le Fey was taller lacked a beard and probably drank less bear with miners who moonlight as blacksmiths.In order for dwarven society/civilization to work it needs to be shaped by events outside their mountains that would make the surface fairly unlivable for anyone or the dwarves need to have a technological step up on par with being a step or two up the the kardashev scale∆.  The surface might be dangerous at times, but underground fortress living needs zombie apocalypse and standard system apocalypse trope level Kaiju/spirit beast/demon infestation that just is not there. You could say that dwarves are skilled craftsmen, but they lack the zilargo style paranoia to justify holing up in self imposed isolation in what is very much not a dark forest type word.  Even if dwarves are a fractional step up like elves it still runs into all the plot armor servicing beards beer and blacksmithing miners to avoid the exploration of anything new that would have supported the fractional step like you could do with elf characters.You could play PCs with those two generic trope "original" backstories as almost literally any species but in doing so after choosing dwarf as the race you leave the table to fill in beards beer blacksmithing miners everywhere that it might go somewhere ∆each step is absolutely massive, we (humans as a whole) are far from being a type 1 civilization  and the even higher steps are almost unimaginable in ways that might as well compare us to storage cave dwellers.</blockquote>

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