Chupacabra
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The dwarves in my campaign are short.
What are dwarves like in your campaign?
- Thread starter punkorange
- Start date
Benben
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The main nation of dwarves has gone from a pretty traditional dwarf society with trolls as their blood enemy to a Necrocracy ruled by death knights and liches. The refuges of this change live in human/gnome cities and are generally considered lazy and members of organized crime.
I can sum up the dwarves in the World of CITY with one word: nonexistent. I replaced dwarves (and gnomes) with the Garahjah; a race of tea-drinking, axe-wielding, drug cultivating mole-men who excel at topiary gardening (and smiting the enemies of nature). Think The Wind in the Willows meets the Earth Liberation Front as performed by Sid and Marty Croft... with a dash on Alan Moore's Parliament of Trees eco-mythmaking thrown in for good measure.
In my old World of the Islands game, dwarves were a far-future starfaring offshoot of humanity adapted to a higher-gravity planet who returned home to something that resembled the Golden Age of Greece fused with The Dying Earth. They were known for their tenacity, love of democracy, and demon-fighting skills.
In my old World of the Islands game, dwarves were a far-future starfaring offshoot of humanity adapted to a higher-gravity planet who returned home to something that resembled the Golden Age of Greece fused with The Dying Earth. They were known for their tenacity, love of democracy, and demon-fighting skills.
Just did some work on my dwarves...
The dwarves of my setting are swarthy with dark brown or black hair. They don't live nearly as long as D&D dwarves (most of my races have basically human lifespans) but do live to be older than humans in general due to their increased hardiness.
My setting is fairly young, with mortals only truly having free will the past 250 years or so, but the dwarves held the first and greatest empire after the fall of the old gods. The culture had a vaguely egyptian feel. Dwarves were responsible for the first animation of corpses (there are no true undead in the setting, animated corpses are just animated objects or lesser golems of a sort). They mummified the bodies to keep the constructs in working order for longer periods of time and wrapped them in ceremonial wraps to hide the previous identity of the corpse. They were not the all around craftsmen that D&D dwarves are, but were expert stonemasons.
Why all the past tense? About 100 years after the empire was formed the dwarves angered a dragon by hunting the wyrmlings under it's protection (dragons are terrible, truly epic, beasts in my setting) which then decimated the empire in a night of smoke and fire. The orcs, long mistreated by the dwarves, came out of the mountains, conquered the decimated dwarves, and took their empire within days of the attack.
All of that, for this: The majority of my dwarves (several hundred thousand strong) are slaves to the orcish empire (a cultural mix of old arabia and klingon). Every orc city has a "slave quarter" where it's dwarven slaves are kept and used for all manner of work. They live in poverty and fear. A few dwarves live free among the rocky wastes bordering the desert. They have formed tightly knit clans that are untrusting of outsiders and constantly on the run from the orcs. They are based loosely on the tribes from Dune. They are also one of the few instances of cultural atheism in my setting (believing that they were forsaken by god).
That's my dwarves... broken slaves and desert wasteland freedom fighters.
The dwarves of my setting are swarthy with dark brown or black hair. They don't live nearly as long as D&D dwarves (most of my races have basically human lifespans) but do live to be older than humans in general due to their increased hardiness.
My setting is fairly young, with mortals only truly having free will the past 250 years or so, but the dwarves held the first and greatest empire after the fall of the old gods. The culture had a vaguely egyptian feel. Dwarves were responsible for the first animation of corpses (there are no true undead in the setting, animated corpses are just animated objects or lesser golems of a sort). They mummified the bodies to keep the constructs in working order for longer periods of time and wrapped them in ceremonial wraps to hide the previous identity of the corpse. They were not the all around craftsmen that D&D dwarves are, but were expert stonemasons.
Why all the past tense? About 100 years after the empire was formed the dwarves angered a dragon by hunting the wyrmlings under it's protection (dragons are terrible, truly epic, beasts in my setting) which then decimated the empire in a night of smoke and fire. The orcs, long mistreated by the dwarves, came out of the mountains, conquered the decimated dwarves, and took their empire within days of the attack.
All of that, for this: The majority of my dwarves (several hundred thousand strong) are slaves to the orcish empire (a cultural mix of old arabia and klingon). Every orc city has a "slave quarter" where it's dwarven slaves are kept and used for all manner of work. They live in poverty and fear. A few dwarves live free among the rocky wastes bordering the desert. They have formed tightly knit clans that are untrusting of outsiders and constantly on the run from the orcs. They are based loosely on the tribes from Dune. They are also one of the few instances of cultural atheism in my setting (believing that they were forsaken by god).
That's my dwarves... broken slaves and desert wasteland freedom fighters.
When working out how dwarves should be in my campaign I took a look at them in Core D&D and saw alignment LG.
I couldn't reconcile this with the common view of Dwarves - beer swilling battle-ragers is all I ever seem to see.
So my dwarves are an intensely lawful society, bound by complex social structures and rules, they rarely leave their massive citadels and are known for their martial tradition. Most dwarves study one of the three circles of battle, (Hammer, Sword or Axe) which is a fighting style structured so that every possible enemy manouvre has its proper counter and the higher level dwarves can react to it in an instant - so ingrained is it into them. (I always intended to make some feats but never got around to it, at the moment they just play defensively - expertise etc).
A minor subculture of dwarves is the Rangers (not necessarily the class), these are dwarves that either don't fit into thier society or have performed certain criminal acts. These do tend to be more chaotic in nature and are the ones that humanity most often deal with. Thier official duties are to keep the mountain lands of the dwarves relatively free from threats, though in reality many of the Rangers just leave and travel among humans.
I couldn't reconcile this with the common view of Dwarves - beer swilling battle-ragers is all I ever seem to see.
So my dwarves are an intensely lawful society, bound by complex social structures and rules, they rarely leave their massive citadels and are known for their martial tradition. Most dwarves study one of the three circles of battle, (Hammer, Sword or Axe) which is a fighting style structured so that every possible enemy manouvre has its proper counter and the higher level dwarves can react to it in an instant - so ingrained is it into them. (I always intended to make some feats but never got around to it, at the moment they just play defensively - expertise etc).
A minor subculture of dwarves is the Rangers (not necessarily the class), these are dwarves that either don't fit into thier society or have performed certain criminal acts. These do tend to be more chaotic in nature and are the ones that humanity most often deal with. Thier official duties are to keep the mountain lands of the dwarves relatively free from threats, though in reality many of the Rangers just leave and travel among humans.
ColonelHardisson
What? Me Worry?
solkan_uk said:
Y'know, to be honest, in 25 years of gaming, I've never seen this in actual play.
sniffles
First Post
I don't DM, so I'm not sure why I think about this stuff, but I'm always inventing worlds with the thought of turning them into campaign settings someday. Lately I've been considering a setting in which dwarves have the most advanced civilization. They're not just mountain-dwelling miners and metalsmiths; they're the engineers, shipbuilders, and explorers of this world. I'm trying to figure out how to make a Star Wars-style Republic with D&D races. The dwarves are the movers and shakers in this Republic. They're the ones who got the whole thing started. They're not the beer-swilling, axe-wielding types one sees in stereotypes (like Col. Hardisson, I've never run into that cliche' in actual gameplay). I like the concept of them being very pious, too.
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