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AWW: Dwarves
Apr. 21st, 2013 10:26 amSo, some bits are firmer than others, but I basically have the 12 "core" Qualities ready for playtesting. I just need to re-write/re-arrange the actual rules of character creation into a more cogent form and I can put the whole thing up for people to play around with. The tier 2/tier 3 stuff is all more prospective than the tier 1 stuff, as it's harder to predict high level play before testing it, but I wanted to at least have something to test there.
To celebrate, here's the 12th Quality, Dwarf. The introductory box fulfills a slightly different role on a Folk Quality than another one, spending more time describing the folk in-world than talking about the game specifics. Long term, I will probably give each folk a separate longer introduction and then use the box more like on the other Qualities, but for the initial effort I'm going to be keeping it simple.
The description of female Dwarves was very much inspired by the concept art that's been floating around the internet in connection with The Hobbit movies... I think it's a more interesting interpretation than either making Dwarven women fulfill our concept of femininity by having smooth faces or being indistinguishable from Dwarvem men. The idea that to a human-like race with human-like genders abundant facial hair, facial hair could be feminine or masculine depending on the wearer and how it's worn rings very true to me, because it's certainly true of our heads of hair.
Describing the predominant skin tones as dark or ruddy is not an attempt to invert a fantasy gaming trope as it was with the dark-skinned Sun Elves, but rather it's a return to the source. I could write an essay on "Dwarves Weren't Actually Supposed To Be Light-Skinned", but I don't really want to get into that on a gaming post. The short version is that the names in mythology that modern interpretations use as a basis for the "Dark Elf" trope actually were used to refer to dwarves, it's just that post-Tolkien we assume anything that was an "Alf" (elf) in the original must be a magic forest vulcan.
To celebrate, here's the 12th Quality, Dwarf. The introductory box fulfills a slightly different role on a Folk Quality than another one, spending more time describing the folk in-world than talking about the game specifics. Long term, I will probably give each folk a separate longer introduction and then use the box more like on the other Qualities, but for the initial effort I'm going to be keeping it simple.
The description of female Dwarves was very much inspired by the concept art that's been floating around the internet in connection with The Hobbit movies... I think it's a more interesting interpretation than either making Dwarven women fulfill our concept of femininity by having smooth faces or being indistinguishable from Dwarvem men. The idea that to a human-like race with human-like genders abundant facial hair, facial hair could be feminine or masculine depending on the wearer and how it's worn rings very true to me, because it's certainly true of our heads of hair.
Describing the predominant skin tones as dark or ruddy is not an attempt to invert a fantasy gaming trope as it was with the dark-skinned Sun Elves, but rather it's a return to the source. I could write an essay on "Dwarves Weren't Actually Supposed To Be Light-Skinned", but I don't really want to get into that on a gaming post. The short version is that the names in mythology that modern interpretations use as a basis for the "Dark Elf" trope actually were used to refer to dwarves, it's just that post-Tolkien we assume anything that was an "Alf" (elf) in the original must be a magic forest vulcan.