D&D General So what colour are your dwarfs and elfs?

[Tonguez]

So I was reading up on the green children of Woolpit, UK who were found in the town in the 12th Century. They were (apparently) human but green skinned, spoke a strange language and said they came from St Martins Land. Some modern speculation has suggested the story was a garbled retelling of a real event with the children suffering from chlorosis (green skin anemia) and that lead me to investigating other skin colour variations/defects like the blue skinned Fugate family of Kentucky (1820s)

Anyway with all the recent threads on race/ethnicity and colour I got thinking on how Races are depcited in games. SO when you think of dwarves and Elfs how do you see them?

DO you see them as having skin tones of Europe or do they run the gamut of human types (eg would a dwarf being described as Black skinned fit your expectations?).
DO you allow for any skin and hair variation - Green-skinned humans, Blue skinned elves, tan skinned humans with purple hair?

 

[aco175]

My favorite is the orange-skin Sunny D kids which caused their stock to plummet.

We never really explored skin color in my games but assume mostly real life colors with (non-drow) elves being paler and dwarves being darker or ruddy. Nobody has come and said they want to play a blue human, maybe asimar.

 

[Weiley31]

Well, an Eldarin Bladesinger NPC I have doesn't change skin color when she changes her aspect of seasons, but her hair color is constantly changing between different colors. Teal/Grey highlights during Winter, Scarlet Red during summer, etc, etc.

 

[Charlaquin]

Elves: Generally dark-skinned, apart from drow, who are extremely pale, almost albino.

Dwarves: Generally fair-skinned, although families who have lived on the surface for multiple generations will often trend more tan.

Halflings: Same range of complexion as humans.

Dragonborn: Colored like dragons.

Gnomes: Similar to dwarves.

Orcs: Shades of green.

Tieflings: Varies wildly depending on lineage. Those with the strongest Turathi noble blood have vibrant colored skin, prominent horns, and may have other fiendish traits like goat-like legs or vestigial wings. Those further-removed from their noble heritage may have subtler features and skin tones closer to the normal human range, albeit with undertones of the colors associated with their lineage.

 

[pukunui]

I primarily play and run games in the Forgotten Realms, where skin tones are already well established.

Moon elves are generally pale with a blue tinge, while sun elves have more bronze skin. The wood elves, unsurprisingly, have a wooden complexion. Drow are generally depicted as either being full-on black or a shade of grey.

Gold dwarves have dark chocolate-colored skin, while shield dwarves are pasty and pale.

And so on.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

My dwarves vary from red-rust to deep brown, all the earthen colors are covered.
Elves tend more toward pale metallic: copper (tarnished or not), gold, silver. My drows are obsidian black and their skin as the same vitrified look as the stone.

All the others covers the same colors as humans.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

My word is quite colorful.

Dwarves & Gnomes: Grey to sandstone brown.

Elves: Anything from orange to gold to green to blue to purple.

Goblins: Poison green

Orcs & Half Orcs: Royal purple

Hobgoblins: Rusty scarlet

Bugbears: Electric blue

Gnoll: Sandstone brown fur

 

[Voadam]

I generally go with whatever is in the PH or MM or campaign setting source I am using, though I am partial to punk rock gnome hair from Golarion. I am also very much a proponent of letting my PCs describe their characters how they want.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Why, red and blue, of course...

No, wait, that was the gnomes in the garden.

GET OFF MY LAWN YOU PESKY GNOMES!!!

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I tried to respect differences by creating a spreadsheet of all the races and ethnicities, so I can distinguish by sight a Bedine human from a Imaskari human. It went down well. I had two players deliberately choose an ethnicity different to their own. One player picked a Turami human simply because he said there weren't enough black people in the game.

Shield dwarfs are visually distinct from gold dwarfs. Same for silver elfs and gold elfs and for lightfoot and strongheart hin.