Female Dwarves...

[calithena]

...have beards. It's a well-known fact.

Furthermore, what is apparently the last post Gary made on Enworld upholds it:

www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=193204&page=54&pp=30

So let there be no more ridiculous argument on this subject.

[coffee]

Who said they didn't? Who's doing all this arguing?

Personally, I prefer the Terry Pratchett description of dwarven genders, in that "and, after the children are on solid food, there is no such thing as 'women's work'."

[badger2305]

I'm vastly equivocal about dwarven women and beards.

I must admit I've rather liked the idea that dwarves mine themselves out of the living rock, rather than engage in all of that messy reproduction stuff that humans do. But if there are to be dwarven women, then beards? Hmmm. (I know this must sound odd coming from a guy who has no trouble imagining Shen or Ahoggya on Tekumel.)

[James Maliszewski]

Female dwarves? What are they? The next thing you know, you'll be claiming there are female orcs and we all know there are no such things.

[doc]

I do Dwarves a bit differently in my world. In my campaign, there are no female dwarves. Dwarves, however, can crossbreeed with most other demi-human races. The whole reasons that Dwarves leave their great stone halls and enter the realms of Man is to find and win a bride to take back with them into the mountains. Dwarves hope to gain great reputations as superb problem solvers or matchless warriors to attract a female. Traditionally they wed human women, but eves are preferred since (1) they live for many centuries and can produce offspring for nearly 500 years, and (2) they are just hotter. All unions between a dwarf and a female result in baby dwarves.

In my game it is not unheard of for female elf characters to posses Dwarven skills and knowledges due to having spent a century or so in a Dwarf kingdom and deciding to leave upon the death of their spouse (reflected in the Detail: Dwarf Widow). Females are considered by the clan to be fully-fledged Dwarves with all of the clannish rights that this entails.

Yeah, I know that's an unusual way to do Dwarves, but in the 23 years I've been gaming, I've never seen a single female dwarf PC, so after awhile I had to come up with an interesting reason as to "why."

Doc

Oh, and by the way, there are indeed female orcs, and they are just about the most dangerous things going. If you don't believe me, then delve into the history of the Tunnels & Trolls world setting.

[James Maliszewski]

doc said:

Oh, and by the way, there are indeed female orcs, and they are just about the most dangerous things going. If you don't believe me, then delve into the history of the Tunnels & Trolls world setting.

I was mostly joking, although I do prefer a "non-naturalistic" approach to a lot of the evil humanoids of D&D. Orcs are born of darkness in my campaign settings (usually); they are manifestations of Chaos in the mortal realm rather than mortal beings like Men. Thus, there are no females or children. All orcs enter the world fully formed and ready to spread chaos immediately.

[murquhart72]

As heterosexual as I am, I find female dwarven beards to be sexy! Maybe I'm just weird...

[doc]

When it comes to orcs and other dark races, my take is that the alignment listed is the general racial alignment, but it does not hold true in every case. While most dwarves can be expected to be Lawful, there will be many that are Neutral or even Chaotic. While most orcs will be Chaotic, it is possible to find ones that are neutral or Lawful (though you'd have to look hard, as orc tribes tend to kill off such deviants young).

Orcs are evil because they are aggressive, territorial, and have a social system based on physical strength, ruthlessness, and the ability to survive. They rarely make a conscious choice to worship specifically evil gods and do battle against specifically good races; that's just the way that it turns out.

Doc

[Finarvyn]

Funny, but I can't recall anyone ever asking these questions in my game.

I guess I always assumed there would be Dwrven females but they would be somehow similar to Dwarven males only probably beardless. In the LOTR movies Peter Jackson shows female Hobbits and they mostly come off as cute and such, and I guess I just assumed Dwarven girls would be cute as well.

I don't allow orc PCs. They're monsters and as such I rarely bother with gender. I do remember a few campaigns where I had Orc villages so I guess I've treated them as normal in that regard before, but I kind of like the "enter the world fully formed and ready to spread chaos immediately" theory that jamesm states as well.

[James Maliszewski]

admin said:

I guess I always assumed there would be Dwrven females but they would be somehow similar to Dwarven males only probably beardless. In the LOTR movies Peter Jackson shows female Hobbits and they mostly come off as cute and such, and I guess I just assumed Dwarven girls would be cute as well.

That's interesting. I distinctly recall bearded female dwarves being a topic of regular conversation, both in the pages of The Dragon (Gygax even wrote about it in his column) and at my gaming table. We all thought it weird but it's from Tolkien, so we accepted it as legit. I think there were even illustrations in various places that supported it, like Roger Moore's article on the dwarven gods.

[foster1941]

Jim Holloway's illustrations of female dwarfs in The Shady Dragon Inn (Classic D&D supplement of pre-rolled characters) all have beards but they less full than the males' beards and usually braided or "styled" in some other manner. That's pretty much always the way I've visualized it.

[James Maliszewski]

foster1941 said:

Jim Holloway's illustrations of female dwarfs in The Shady Dragon Inn (Classic D&D supplement of pre-rolled characters) all have beards but they less full than the males' beards and usually braided or "styled" in some other manner. That's pretty much always the way I've visualized it.

Yes, me too. I don't think it was until recently that non-bearded female dwarves received any official sanction. That's not to say everyone liked or used the bearded variety, but they've been a part of D&D lore for as long as I can remember.

[Rhuvein]

Yep, it's my understanding that dwarf males as well as their women, axes and clams are bearded. ;D