What's up with Scottish Dwarves?!?

[greywulf]

Come on. Clans. Families. That sort of thing. It's obvious that they should have an italian accent. That's great for dwarves with coarse voices making you an offer you can't refuse.

"Please, please don't send me down the Mines of Mafia!"

I like it

/greywulf imagines Dwarves riding Vespas. Badly.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Warhammer dwarves are very Scots inspired (IMO anyways). Considering how much they dominate the mini's world, I'm sure that has a lot to do with it too.

 

[Dykstrav]

I choose to blame Warcraft for the Scottish dwarf phenomenon. It's debatable as to whether or not it started there, but Warcraft definitely helped to popularize it.

I generally think of my dwarevs as being more ancient Hebrew, yeah, they have magnificent temples and famously tough armies and all that. I usually don't give them any particular accent. When I play a dwarf, I usually try to give them the attitude of a crotchety old person. You know the kind. The kind of old dude who sits around McDonalds from 6:30 AM until about 11:00 AM, bitching about how old people used to get free coffee, how coffee used to cost a nickel, and how awesome the 40's and 50's were. The kind of guy you might politely chat with for a minute while waiting for your order and then he wants to spend 20 more minutes going on about something you've never heard of. I just change "the 40's were cool" to "my dwarven clan is cool" and roll from there.

 

[Aaron L]

I hate Scottish dwarves

I've heard way too many bad fake accents.

My dwarves don't speak anything remotely resembling English, and don't have any corresponding accents. I dislike tying non-human cultures to Earth cultures.

 

[Crust]

No one pointing the finger at Salvatore? He certainly helped engrain the Scottish dwarf, and he's probably the reason that BG dwarves talk the way they do.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No one pointing the finger at Salvatore? He certainly helped engrain the Scottish dwarf, and he's probably the reason that BG dwarves talk the way they do.

More people have played the Warcraft games, all of which have talking Scot dwarfs, than have read Salvatore's novels.

I suspect it all goes back to Warhammer, and thence to Warcraft (and probably Salvatore and others) from there.

 

[occam]

I've seen a number of references here and of course OoTS for Dwarves with Scottish accents. What is the origin of this stereotype?

I've wondered this myself. A friend I gamed with in the early '90s played a dwarf with a Scottish accent. I don't know why he chose to do that, and the rest of us never questioned it, because it just seemed to "fit". It set the standard for all the dwarves in that campaign.

FWIW the Norse drank Mead and the English Ale long before beer was common. In the Middle Ages it was pretty much the Germans that were drinking beer. According the OED, Alehouse and Alewife preceed the word beer.

How are you differentiating between "ale" and "beer"?

 

[Psion]

More people have played the Warcraft games, all of which have talking Scot dwarfs, than have read Salvatore's novels.

Among D&D players? Do you have any figures on that? Because while I couldn't assert to know otherwise, I'm dubious.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Among D&D players? Do you have any figures on that? Because while I couldn't assert to know otherwise, I'm dubious.

Why would you want to limit it to D&D players? Both the books and the Warcraft games have audiences that include D&D players and non-D&D players.

World of Warcraft, the fourth game in the Warcraft series (ignoring two expansion packs, the aborted RPG and the novels) has more than 7 million players. Warcraft III sold millions of copies and, IIRC, Warcraft II sold more than 1 million copies.

Even at D&D's height, those are numbers that TSR would have drooled over. Although there's a fair number of people who read D&D novels who have never played D&D, I would be really surprised to learn that Salvatore's D&D novels have sold more than 11 million copies total.

And each of those Warcraft games have audio for their units, with Scot accents for the dwarves.

Now, the Salvatore novels that have a dwarf in them (less than half, I think) have an accent that some may or may not read as Scot. (I didn't, when I read them.) And then this written accent would have to become so infectuous as to cross over into the game.

(This all ignores the fact that people reported in this thread hearing the accent in the 1980s, prior to the Salvatore novels and Warcraft games -- it's almost certainly the Warhammer games that should get the credit/blame.)

 

[Chupacabra]

Warhammer's to blame?

As an old-school Warhammer FRPG (NOT tabletop...blech! ) gamer, I can't say that the dwarves were any more "Scottish" than not. Just about everything in that game had a strong Germanic flavor, including some of the Dwarven surnames. Sure some dwarves (particularly Trollslayers) had facial tattos and red hair, but no one was walking around in kilts or saying "laddie" or anything like that.

The most famous dwarf in the Warhammer literature was Gotrek Gunrisson. A very Germanic / Scandanavian type name.

I tend to agree that many players and DM's default to scottish accents for dwarfs b/c it can easily be made to sound appropriately gruff. Airy-fairy English accents seem to be the default for elves and/or upper-class humans. Halflings and gnomes probably get the high-pitched kiddie voice treatment. Just broad defaults. Definitely not written in stone. And I'm just an American, I'm sure it may change throughout the world.

What I want to know is how acutal Scottish people play Dwarves? Do they give them a Texas accent or something????