So are you looking for an original dwarf race, or for original characters that belong to if not stereotypical, then an at least more traditional kind of dwarf race?
Off the top of my head: stargazers (astronomy, astrology, the works), bird raisers (birds of prey for hunting, fishing birds, songbirds, ...), amazons (matriarchal society), proselityzing communists, teetotalling vegans or all of the above?
I kinda like the stargazers idea. Maybe I should post something in house rules, or world building section with some of my other ideas. Have to run it by my players see if they like the idea.
Believe it or not, protagonists in virtually every story are not normal examples of people, or of members of their individual races. It is this exception that makes them interesting enough to be the central figures of a story, and D&D characters are no exception to this. There is always a hook, and sometimes (oftentimes, especially in D&D) it involves a character playing against the normal cliches of their race. Whether it's Drizzt, the good-natured elf in a race of chaotic evil monsters or Worf, the Starfleet-raised klingon, the characters of stories are never as simple as everyone else of their kind.
Firstly, as I've already said a few times, there is 'atypical' and there is 'opposite.' There are degrees of everything. Worf doesn't try to ignore the fluff of klingonness. The facts of klingonness are actually a big part of his character. For the story Heart of Glory to have any meaning at all, klingonness must actually be important to Worf. Otherwise, there is no conflict. That he ultimately turned away from Klingonness wouldn't represent a loss if it weren't an ingrained part of his character.
Nor does a character who draws on the fluff for his race ever have to be simple. I never said 'use the racial fluff and stop there', nor did I say 'absolutely always use every bit of fluff.' Just don't ignore it. Don't throw it away. And please, please stop playing the complete opposite in every respect. Incorporate something that ties you to your race. It makes the character seem more like a part of the world. I think this is a point that keeps getting missed in what I am saying. My point is less extreme than it seems.
In fact, my real point was simple: 'characters against type' aren't automatically fresh, original, and interesting and they don't automatically make you a better roleplayer, but they do have the potential to strain the reality the game world presents.
As for Drizzt... Drizzt never struck me as a deep or interesting character, but I understand that a great meany people love him so I will refrain from commenting further. I'll just concede that people can love 'characters againts type.' The trouble with Drizzt is that he has become something of joke, or rather, characters that in any sort of a way even barely resemble Drizzt have become a bit of a joke. And that is precisely the danger. You can pull off such a character once. Maybe twice, but that is stretching it.
Decivre wrote:
That said, D&D really doesn't have any of the limitations you speak of. A playgroup that wishes to delve deeply into backstory will probably spend days doing just that, while a playgroup that doesn't won't. D&D is only time-constrained in the sense that players are... and if the players have all the time in the world, then the game does as well.
I disagree. There are always limitations. No one can game for as many hours as they want to (how I wish I could). That time around the table, in the game, has an inherent value because you can't have as much as you want. However immersed or interested in the story, there will always come a point when it is time to move on from exposition. And every member of the group will have a different attention span for exposition. Because it is a group game, you almost always have to compromise somewhere on some aspect.
The trouble is that every minute spent on one aspect of the game is a minute away from every other aspect of the game. No one wants just one thing out of the game, we all want a mix, and we all prefer different ratios. There is also a limit on sheer verbiage. A 200 book might take 9 hours to read. A 50 page adventure could the same time, spread over two sessions. A book can afford to take its time, wander and meander, but a DM has to be aware of pacing and make sure that everyone is getting their fill of the parts of the game that make them happy.
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I agree that you can pull off a nonstandard character much better in a novel than in a movie, but I'm going to say that D&D has many of the same limitations that movies do and, even more. I touched on them in my big, long post just before this one. But, in a nutshell, you don't have unlimited time for exposition and you don't have whatever word count you want. D&D operates under a heavy time constraint. Beyond that, in D&D, the only action on the screen is that directly involving the protagonists. DMs can't spend time establishing secondary characters in scenes that don't involve the PCs and most DMs can spend only limited time on one character having a scene without the rest around.
And yet, even in the movies, they still saw fit to allude to the fact that Merry, Pippen, Frodo and Bilbo were not "ordinary" hobbits, that Aragorn and the Numenorian line in general were not "ordinary" humans, Elrond and Arwyn were not "ordinary" elves, and so on. That would seem to put somewhat of the lie in the idea that the limitations of the medium prevent these characters from existing.
how I handled my dwarves. It gives a nod towards the old dwarves in style, but in execution they are widely different. (I went and made them more than just stubby drunken Scotsmen ((by Scotsmen standards)) ) Totally standard dwarves in my opinion are only cool when they have technology.
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So are you looking for an original dwarf race, or for original characters that belong to if not stereotypical, then an at least more traditional kind of dwarf race?
Off the top of my head: stargazers (astronomy, astrology, the works), bird raisers (birds of prey for hunting, fishing birds, songbirds, ...), amazons (matriarchal society), proselityzing communists, teetotalling vegans or all of the above?
One though that occurs to me, if you wanted to keep the mechanical dwarf but use "fresher" flavor justifcation for them:
Hardcore religious ascetics. All of their toughness abilities are now a consequence of the harsh regimen of asceticism (perhaps with a lot of survivalism mixed in?) that individuals are subjected to in dwarven culture from early childhood.
Firstly, as I've already said a few times, there is 'atypical' and there is 'opposite.' There are degrees of everything. Worf doesn't try to ignore the fluff of klingonness. The facts of klingonness are actually a big part of his character. For the story Heart of Glory to have any meaning at all, klingonness must actually be important to Worf. Otherwise, there is no conflict. That he ultimately turned away from Klingonness wouldn't represent a loss if it weren't an ingrained part of his character.
Nor does a character who draws on the fluff for his race ever have to be simple. I never said 'use the racial fluff and stop there', nor did I say 'absolutely always use every bit of fluff.' Just don't ignore it. Don't throw it away. And please, please stop playing the complete opposite in every respect. Incorporate something that ties you to your race. It makes the character seem more like a part of the world. I think this is a point that keeps getting missed in what I am saying. My point is less extreme than it seems.
In fact, my real point was simple: 'characters against type' aren't automatically fresh, original, and interesting and they don't automatically make you a better roleplayer, but they do have the potential to strain the reality the game world presents.
As for Drizzt... Drizzt never struck me as a deep or interesting character, but I understand that a great meany people love him so I will refrain from commenting further. I'll just concede that people can love 'characters againts type.' The trouble with Drizzt is that he has become something of joke, or rather, characters that in any sort of a way even barely resemble Drizzt have become a bit of a joke. And that is precisely the danger. You can pull off such a character once. Maybe twice, but that is stretching it.
Okay, now you're argument is delving into ridiculous territory. No one has talked about characters with oppositive traits. A sickly dwarf isn't the opposite of normal dwarves... he simply has one trait that is different from the norm (his abnormal health). The same goes with characters like Worf or Drizzt: part of what makes them special is their ties to their race, along with the fact that they aren't your typical members thereof. Nobody here has talked about creating ridiculous super-oppositive characters... not a single one. Everyone has talked about characters that were unusual in concept (and to be frankly honest, the typical character of a story or roleplaying game party).
That said, playing against type isn't special in itself... but in 99% of all cases, it is the core basis behind a character concept. Romeo and Juliet were special because they put the typical hatred of their families behind them for the sake of their relationship; Elric of Melniboné was special because he was a sickly and kind-hearted man amongst a culture of hardy, amoral warriors; even the character Arthur Dent, despite his otherwise mundane demeanor, was special for his comically-portrayed (and very unusual) propensity for being put into various crises one after another. It is these special characteristics that are unusual for the average person (or average member of their race) that make them interesting enough to be the central figure of a story.
Simonides wrote:
I disagree. There are always limitations. No one can game for as many hours as they want to (how I wish I could). That time around the table, in the game, has an inherent value because you can't have as much as you want. However immersed or interested in the story, there will always come a point when it is time to move on from exposition. And every member of the group will have a different attention span for exposition. Because it is a group game, you almost always have to compromise somewhere on some aspect.
The trouble is that every minute spent on one aspect of the game is a minute away from every other aspect of the game. No one wants just one thing out of the game, we all want a mix, and we all prefer different ratios. There is also a limit on sheer verbiage. A 200 book might take 9 hours to read. A 50 page adventure could the same time, spread over two sessions. A book can afford to take its time, wander and meander, but a DM has to be aware of pacing and make sure that everyone is getting their fill of the parts of the game that make them happy.
Either way, these aren't direct limitations, but rather personal voluntary decisions on what is necessary and what isn't. The fact of the matter remains that a movie will be however long or short the producers and directors make it... and leave none of that choice to the end-consumer. D&D is different in that the end-consumer also acts as the producer and director of their own campaign setting, and if they choose not to spend so much time delving into backstory it isn't because of an uncontrollable limitation, but because of a choice.
One though that occurs to me, if you wanted to keep the mechanical dwarf but use "fresher" flavor justifcation for them:
Hardcore religious ascetics. All of their toughness abilities are now a consequence of the harsh regimen of asceticism (perhaps with a lot of survivalism mixed in?) that individuals are subjected to in dwarven culture from early childhood.
In my setting, dwarves are a hardy race which thrives on their ability to survive harsh climes. Rather than building vast underground or mountain cities, they build their cities in places that are otherwise intolerable by other races (on the inside of an active volcano, in the most humid jungles, out in the open in the deepest parts of the tundra). They also live on foods which are largely toxic to other races. The idea is that by living in places that people won't go, and living on things that people wouldn't live on, it makes their otherwise pacifistic race a very unappetizing target for raiding and pillaging.
Also, dwarves in my setting aren't very dwarf-like. They're only slightly shorter than humans, and not all tubby.
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Ironically, mine aren't because one of my players said he couldn't possibly play a dwarf if that were the case... rocky dwarves were his "dragonboobs".
Elric of Melniboné was special because he was a sickly and kind-hearted man amongst a culture of hardy, amoral warriors;
Heh. You must have read a different Elric than I did. The Elric I read had some glimmer of feelings, and he even held on to them. At least until he cut the throats of those he loved, or fed them to demons, or abandoned them to horrible fates. He even occasionally felt a little bad about it. I'd hardly call him a kind-hearted individual, though :P
even the character Arthur Dent, despite his otherwise mundane demeanor, was special for his comically-portrayed (and very unusual) propensity for being put into various crises one after another.
I wouldn't call fate a racial trait, though.
Either way, these aren't direct limitations, but rather personal voluntary decisions on what is necessary and what isn't. The fact of the matter remains that a movie will be however long or short the producers and directors make it... and leave none of that choice to the end-consumer. D&D is different in that the end-consumer also acts as the producer and director of their own campaign setting, and if they choose not to spend so much time delving into backstory it isn't because of an uncontrollable limitation, but because of a choice.
You're right. Some things going against the typical racial stereotype are good. Worf is a prime example of that. However, Drizzt is not. He is in no way a drow other than being born a dark elf. He has completely abandoned his culture and gone against all that it means to be drow.
) So that's unlikely. 
