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

[shesheyan]

Whatever the PHB, the Monster Manual or adventure says.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Depends on the setting I'm running, though broadly speaking I've always followed the descriptions in the PHBs where dwarves have darker skin, rather than the art, where they're typically viking-pale, and have always enjoyed elves having weird skin tones like pale blue.

Drow I tend to do the reverse and follow the art and describe them as "slate-grey-skinned" or the like, or greyish-purple.

I don't run Tieflings as all looking like Hellboy/the Lord of Darkness from Legend, but rather go with 2E-style variable appearances, so it varies wildly there.

I'm always open to suggestions from players, of course, and I don't think I've ever had to say no there. The most outre request was for some kind of lizardperson with rainbow-sheen scales, which seemed fine to me.

Human-wise the first settings I came across and was strongly influenced by (Taladas particularly) featured a lot of non-white characters, and I grew up in London, so it didn't even occur to me to have most NPCs be white - rather they've always been pretty varied, albeit not necessarily matching up to RL ethnicities at all.

(As an aside, on the "science means underground races should all be pale thing", I think there's bit more going on with D&D there, and legit to not follow that. A sightless race who have always lived in total darkness and don't have darkvision, nor interact with things that do, would indeed presumably be pale, but any other group of creatures, especially ones that only went down there in the last few thousands of years, and haven't necessarily been subjected to selective pressure so severe that skin pigmentation becomes an issue, might not be. I mean, for starters being able to live underground means you must not need to be pale for vitamin D's sake, because your vitamin D - if your species even needs it - must be coming from somewhere else.)

 

[MarkB]

I like my dwarves the way I like my coffee.

Spoiler

Rich.

Why, what did you think I was going to say?

I assumed you were going for "under ground".

 

[Voadam]

Depends on the setting I'm running, though broadly speaking I've always followed the descriptions in the PHBs where dwarves have darker skin, rather than the art, where they're typically viking-pale

Yeah, it is surprising that 3e, where they deliberately had a diverse cast of iconics (hispanic paladin, asian sorcerer, black monk), went with red haired fair skinned Tordek for dwarf when the MM description was

Dwarves favor earth tones in their clothing and prefer simple and functional garb. The skin can be very dark, but it is always some shade of tan or brown. Hair color can be black, gray, or brown.

He could have been a mountain dwarf "have lighter skin and hair than hill dwarves" but viking motif divorced from other descriptions I think is the most likely explanation.

 

[Fenris-77]

That works, ground down into powder and plunged into boiling water is also an option

Well obviously, otherwise they come back. Plus, dwarf tea is a big seller in some of the larger urban centers.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Generally speaking, it is the player's choice within the realm of real-world human skin tones. If the player wants something out of that range (like, say, you're playing a Spring-season Eladrin, and want a pale green skin tone) they need to speak with me first.

Are not eladrin those colors by default. In lore.

 

[Umbran]

Are not eladrin those colors by default. In lore.

Yep. And that likely makes the conversation easy. But, "because it is in lore" is a lousy reason to just assume stuff.

 

[delphonso]

Dwarves, if subterranian, should be very pale and preferably blind.

I've always been fond of avian elves - harsh sharp features and bright colors either from actual hair color or decoration.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Yep. And that likely makes the conversation easy. But, "because it is in lore" is a lousy reason to just assume stuff.

I can come round to using lore as inspiration.

 

[Coroc]

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?

Everything has a slight reddish glow with infravision turned on. Don't believe me? Try it within BG1 or BG2