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

[Scruffy nerf herder]

So after getting the Wildemount book I decided to read summaries of past Critical Role episodes. In the course of this I've discovered that in the world of Exandria it is apparently the norm for female dwarves to grow beards, which I'll admit is a detail I'm not a fan of. Personally I preferred the 4E take, where female dwarves often had very long and ornate hair styles. It also kind of bothers me that the short and stocky race is the only one whose females are bearded by default.

Out of curiosity, how do you all feel about this topic?

Not to say everyone has to follow Tolkien but it's a little funny to me people having any issue with female bearded dwarves. Tolkien didn't seem to have any problem saying "the females are indistinguishable by their hair, voices, and gait".

Getting rid of this amusing and really weird aspect of dwarves make them less unique and cool, imo.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I mean, women (NOT ALL) sometimes have slight mustache hair at times.

Plus I think the bearded Dwarven women idea is a kind of a concept/joke in Lord of The Rings too.

So it's not really TOO outta norm for dwarven women to grow beards in that case.

Oh it's not merely an LOTR concept. Tolkien blatantly says that the only people who could tell the difference between dwarf men and dwarf women were dwarves.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not to say everyone has to follow Tolkien but it's a little funny to me people having any issue with female bearded dwarves.

I think the issue is in playing a bearded dwarf. Humans have been indoctrinated to believe beards are unattractive on females, and few people want to play an unattractive character. If you reversed the situation, a (fictional) dwarf player wouldn't want to play as a female human without a beard.

Tolkien didn't create dwarves to be played.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I think the issue is in playing a bearded dwarf. Humans have been indoctrinated to believe beards are unattractive on females, and few people want to play an unattractive character. If you reversed the situation, a dwarf player wouldn't want to play as a female human without a beard.

Tolkien didn't create dwarves to be played.

Wait... Enough people genuinely care whether their fantasy character is attractive or not? My sister in law is playing a literal hag.

 

[Tonguez]

hair, voices, and gait".

Getting rid of this amusing and really weird aspect of dwarves make them less unique and cool, imo.

yeah this, some people just want to play alt-human and call it dwarf or elf or tiefling, when things like female dwarfs having beards emphasizes that they arent really humans at all.
Thats one reason I like do things like make gnomes into a genderless eusocial species covered in fur (though humans might call it a beard). Goblins are amphibians

 

[MGibster]

Wait... Enough people genuinely care whether their fantasy character is attractive or not? My sister in law is playing a literal hag.

Well, yeah, a lot of people who play RPGs seem to care about all sorts of traits their character might have. Do you find that unusual? And D&D especially is an adolescent power fantasy. Don't get me wrong, I've played ugly characters in the past and will again in the future. But in those cases, I cared that my character was unattractive. I designed him that way by choice.

 

[MGibster]

Thats one reason I like do things like make gnomes into a genderless eusocial species covered in fur (though humans might call it a beard). Goblins are amphibians

Why even call it a Gnome if nobody else would recognize it as such?

 

[Tonguez]

Why even call it a Gnome if nobody else would recognize it as such?

it still fills the same niche as gnome in most respects - and the DnD gnomes is partcularly boring anyway so lends itself to further differentiation. I suppose I could call it something like a Twog species, but it fills the gnome niche so why not?

 

[Oofta]

If you really want a female dwarf with a beard you can always go to heroforge or one of the similar sites and make your own like this one. I think it looks odd at best but to each their own.

On the other hand if you were to really follow Tolkien, you would just use male dwarf minis for females. If non dwarves can't tell the difference between male and female, why should the mini give it away?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If you really want a female dwarf with a beard you can always go to heroforge or one of the similar sites and make your own like this one. I think it looks odd at best but to each their own.
View attachment 152866

On the other hand if you were to really follow Tolkien, you would just use male dwarf minis for females. If non dwarves can't tell the difference between male and female, why should the mini give it away?

In other words, dwarves don't have (large) boobs.