Fantasy Has A Dwarf Problem

[00:00:00]Close your eyes and picture a dwarf. Not that kind of dwarf, this kind. Unless you've been living under a rock, or in the case of dwarves, living above ground and staying as far away from mines as possible, you know exactly what a dwarf is. Big beards, digging holes, living inside of mountains, and having Scottish accents for some reason. You've seen this character a hundred times before, and that's exactly what I want to talk about today. Why is one of fantasy's oldest races so relentlessly copypasted?

[00:00:28]Are dwarves actually good? Or are we all just recycling these same handful of tropes? And maybe the bigger question, do people even enjoy writing and playing dwarves anymore? By the end of this video, I'm going to answer those questions and show you how to build dwarves that feel fresh without losing what makes dwarves dwarves. Hopefully, we can return these fantasy OGs to their rightful place. So, grab your pickaxe short kings because this is going to be a good one. Before we can talk about what's wrong with fantasy dwarves, we need to answer a simple question. At the risk of being redundant, what actually is a dwarf? Despite what the average casual would have you believe, a dwarf isn't just a short guy with a beard.

[00:01:06]Dwarfs, like most races, are defined far more by their culture than their appearance. Almost every fantasy setting portrays them as industrious, communal, and deeply traditional. They build civilizations that last for centuries, dedicate themselves to mastering craft, and place an enormous amount of value on family, ancestry, and legacy. Not to mention, they tend to be a little bit greedy. That's why you almost always find them underground. Sure, mountains are full of ores and gems, so it's kind of a win-win, but humans tend to have mining settlements, and they're never underground. In my opinion, the mountain is important because they represent the permanence of dwarven society. Dwarfven societies vary from most because they aren't built to expand across the world like humans or live in harmony with nature like elves. They carve out a less than cozy home perfected over generations and expected to outlive them. Their relationship with craftsmanship follows the same philosophy. To a dwarf, forging a sword isn't simply just making a weapon. It's a reflection of the person who made it.

[00:02:05]That's why legendary dwarven smiths appear in almost every fantasy setting.

[00:02:09]Their greatest works aren't just tools.

[00:02:11]They become heirlooms, relics, and symbols of the civilization as a whole.

[00:02:15]Even traits like stubbornness make sense when viewed through these lenses. A society built on tradition doesn't change overnight. If your people have spent centuries perfecting something, you probably are going to be skeptical when somebody suggests a different way of doing it. Something that's commonly forgotten is despite the dwarves aversion to elves, more on that later, and proclivity to crafts, they are also typically heavily involved in the pursuit of knowledge. The difference is that dwarves rarely pursue knowledge for its own sake. As dwarven as this sounds, dwarfs tend to only find value in wealth and tools. That being said, your average dwarf will see knowledge as a tool or a source of wealth, directly contrasting the elven views of wisdom and preservation. A master smith might spend decades studying the properties of different metals, not because he's trying to become a scholar, instead because somewhere in those pages is the secret to forging a blade that won't break. In the same way, magic isn't usually treated as some mystical force to be understood. It's another craft. In Warhammer fantasy, for example, dwarven runesmiths don't hurl fireballs across the battlefield. They spend years mastering the art of carving magical runes into armor and weapons, treating enchantments with the same patience and precision as a blacksmith at the forge.

[00:03:26]So, now that we know and understand the dwarf, let's talk about the origins of fantasy's favorite short guys. The history of the dwarf. Before Tolken, before Dungeons and Dragons, and before fantasy as we know even existed, we can find the original dwarf. Their origins stretch back well over a thousand years into the oral traditions of the Germanic peoples. In fact, the English word for dwarf comes from the reconstructed protogerermanic word dwargas, which eventually became the old Norse var, the old English dwar, and the old high German twer. Trust I pronounced this correctly. Linguists still debate what the original word actually meant.

[00:04:06]Whatever its original meaning, the existence of similar words across nearly every Germanic language tells us one thing. Stories about dwarves were already widespread centuries before they were ever even written down. Our earliest surviving written accounts come from medieval Iceland in the form of the poetic eta and Snory Sterlson's pros eta. Both written during the 13th century but preserving stories that are much older. These texts don't always agree on where dwarves come from. In one famous account found in the pros eta after the gods slew the primordial giant Emir, maggots crawling within his corpse were transformed into intelligent beings, becoming the first dwarves.

[00:04:45]Other traditions simply describe them as being created by the gods themselves.

[00:04:49]Like most of Norse mythology, there isn't one definitive origin story. What remains remarkably consistent, however, is their role. Dwarves are master craftsmen whose skill borders on the divine, capable of creating objects so powerful that even the gods depend on them. Some of the greatest treasures in Norse mythology owe their existence to dwarven hands. After Loki cut off the golden hair of Thor's wife, Cy, he sought out the sons of Evaldi to craft a replacement. While there, they also forged Odin's spear, Gungeanir, and Freyer's magical ship. Not to be outdone, the Dwarfven brothers, Broker and Cry accepted a wager with Loki and forged three more legendary artifacts.

[00:05:29]The golden boar Gulen bursty, the magical ring, Dropne, and perhaps most famously of all, Mjolnir, Thor's hammer.

[00:05:36]What's interesting is how magical these early dwarves actually were. Modern fantasy often portrays dwarves as distrusting magic or relying almost entirely on rock and stone, but the Norse versions were deeply intertwined with the supernatural. They forged enchanted weapons, cursed treasures, and artifacts that routinely bent the rules of reality. The distinction between craftsmanship and magic barely existed.

[00:05:58]Creating incredible objects was an act of sorcery. In many ways, the original dwarfs resembled magical engineers far more than miners or warriors. As Norse paganism faded and Europe entered the medieval period, the image of the dwarf gradually began to change. The larger than-l life craftsmen of mythology slowly merged with local folklore, particularly throughout Germanspeaking and Scandinavian regions, where mining played a major role in everyday life.

[00:06:25]Stories spread of mysterious beings living beneath mountains, guarding veins of precious metals, haunting tunnels, and rewarding or punishing miners depending on how they treated the earth.

[00:06:35]This is likely where dwarves became permanently associated with mines and underground kingdoms. Rather than forging treasures for Odin, they increasingly became the keepers of hidden treasures themselves. This transformation can also be seen in medieval literature. The German epic Ahem Nibu Longite introduces audiences to Alrech, one of the most famous dwarves in European literature. Alrech guards the legendary Nibu Long treasure and possesses a magical cloak that grants invisibility and immense strength. While the story differs significantly from the Norse sagas that inspired it, it helped cement the connection between dwarves, hidden wealth, and enchanted artifacts.

[00:07:14]Centuries later, Richard Wagner would draw heavily from both the Nibu Longan lead and Norse mythology for his opera cycle during Nibulan. Keeping dwarves firmly embedded in the European imagination long before modern fantasy ever existed. By the time the Brothers Grim began collecting fairy tales in the 19th century, dwarves had become familiar figures throughout European folklore. Stories like Snow White presented them as small woodland craftsmen living together in secluded cottages, while other regional legends, such as those surrounding King Luren and his magical rose garden in the Alps, portray dwarven kings ruling hidden realms beneath the mountains. These stories varied wildly from region to region, but they all reinforce the idea that dwarves belong somewhere beneath the surface of the world, close to stone, treasure, and ancient mysteries.

[00:08:02]Then came the fantasy grandpa JRR Tolken, and it's almost impossible to overstate what happened next. Tolken reinvented the dwarves, though he borrowed names like Thoren, Balin, Dwallin, Fely, Keely, and even Gandalf directly from the Degato, the catalog of dwarves found in the poetic eta. Beyond those names, almost everything else was expanded on dramatically. Tolken gave dwarves their own language in Kazdul, seven great houses descended from the fathers of the dwarves, ancient kingdoms like Kazadum and Arabore, complex family lineages, and culture built around honor, craftsmanship, exile, and reclaiming lost homes. He transformed dwarves from reoccurring mythological characters into one of fantasy's first fully realized civilizations. By the 1970s and 80s, Tolken's interpretations had become the foundation of almost every fantasy setting that followed.

[00:08:53]Early editions of Dungeons and Dragons borrowed heavily from his template. So heavily, in fact, that the game eventually had to distance itself legally from some of Tolken's terminology. Dragon Lance, Forgotten Realms, Warhammer Fantasy, and countless other novels and tabletop settings, all built upon the same foundation.

[00:09:11]Interestingly, one of the traits that most people strongly associate with dwarves today, the Scottish accent, doesn't come from Tolken at all. That stereotype largely emerged later through films, video games, and voice acting, eventually becoming so widespread that many people now assume it was always part of dwarven mythology. By the end of the 20th century, something remarkable had happened. Tolken's dwarf was no longer just one interpretation among many. It had become the default fantasy dwarf. And that's exactly where the next chapter of this story begins. Thousands of years of mythology, folklore, and literature eventually gave us the modern fantasy dwarf. A race with one of the richest histories in the entire genre.

[00:09:51]So what happened? Well, ironically, almost nothing. Despite fantasy evolving in almost every other direction imaginable, dwarves have remained remarkably unchanged. By the late 20th century, Tolken's interpretation had become so dominant that for most audiences, it simply was the dwarf. The problem wasn't that fantasy kept using dwarfs. It's that very few creators seriously challenged the original formula. Throughout the 1980s, '90s, and into the 2000s, dwarfs became one of the most standardized races in fantasy.

[00:10:23]Whether you picked up a novel, played a tabletop RPG, watched a fantasy film, or booted up an RPG video game, you were almost guaranteed to encounter the same broad template, a short, stocky race of master craftsmen living in a mountain kingdom. A large part of this came from the explosive success of Dungeons and Dragons. While Tolken undoubtedly established the modern fantasy dwarf, Dn D standardized it. Once dwarves became one of the core playable races, thousands of dungeon masters, authors, and game designers inherited that template almost by default. Later settings like Warcraft, Warhammer Fantasy, Dragon Age, Pathfinder, and countless homebrew worlds all added their own twists, but they all almost always began from the same foundation.

[00:11:04]Instead of reinventing dwarfs, most creators were iterating on an already established archetype. This process is something that I talked about in my last video on the Planet of the Hats trope.

[00:11:13]The basic idea is that an entire race gradually becomes defined by one or two exaggerated characteristics until every member begins feeling interchangeable.

[00:11:23]Dwarves are an interesting example because unlike many fantasy races, they didn't start out as a planet of the hats. Only after decades of repetition that many of those deeper ideas were compressed into a handful of recognizable stereotypes. What's fascinating is that modern fantasy hasn't really abandoned Tolken. It's simplified it in my opinion to a boring degree. Tolken's dwarves weren't memorable simply because they had beards or lived in mountains. Those traits were expressions of a much larger culture. As those themes were copied from setting to setting, they were often distilled into visual shortorthhand. That doesn't mean modern fantasy has failed. There are still plenty of fantastic interpretations of dwarves. And some settings lean deliberately into the classic archetype because that's exactly what their world needs. Others experiment with entirely new ideas while still feeling unmistakably dwarven. The important thing is to recognize that after centuries of evolution, the fantasy dwarf has reached a point where many creators begin with the stereotype instead of the culture. And that's ultimately the central problem. The modern dwarf isn't boring because dwarves are boring. The modern dwarf is boring because we've spent decades copying the finished product instead of asking why it worked out in the first place. So, we spent a lot of time talking about where dwarves actually come from and why they've become one of fantasy's defining races. But that raises a pretty interesting question. Do people actually like dwarves? I mean, I know that they're consistently written in stories, but does that mean that they are actually liked? They're iconic for a reason, and they've earned a place as one of fantasy staple [music] races, but popularity is a funny thing because there's a difference between being recognizable and being chosen. If we look at actual player data, dwarves consistently underperform compared to many of fantasy's other races. In Boulders Gate 3, the three least played races are the halfling, the gnome, and the dwarf. Now, that may just be because people don't like playing short characters, which is completely a fair explanation, but when you look over at Dungeons and Dragons player statistics, the pattern doesn't seem to change very much. Dwarves are still sitting surprisingly low despite being one of the oldest and most recognizable races in the genre. And honestly, that is kind of weird. This is one of fantasy's original races. Alongside elves, dwarves have helped define what modern fantasy even looks like. They're in almost every major fantasy setting ever created. If sheer exposure translated into popularity, dwarves should be one of the most played races in fantasy. Instead, they usually are not. Why is one of fantasy's biggest staples so consistently overlooked when players finally get the chance to choose who they want to be? I've narrowed it down to a few reasons that I would lean towards. I think first and probably the most obvious reason that dwarves aren't as popular is also the shallowest.

[00:14:02]Dwarves just aren't generally that attractive. And before the halfling dwarf fans watching this video start furiously typing in the comments, I know beauty is subjective. I'm sure somewhere out there there's a woman who sees Gimly and immediately starts barking at her television. I'm not judging you, but generally speaking, dwarves aren't designed to be traditionally attractive.

[00:14:20]They're short, stocky, hairy, and usually pretty gruff. Half of them look like they've spent the last 30 years breathing in cold dust, which to be fair, they probably have. Even when a dwarf is supposed to be attractive, they're usually attractive for a dwarf or designed to look less like a dwarf to be attractive. I mean, it's kind of unfair when you have this guy playing Thor and Oaken Shield. But for comparison, nobody introduces an elf by saying she's actually very beautiful by elven standards. Like, we get it. She's an elf. She's just hot. And genuinely, I think this matters way more than people want to admit. Except for my gooner lads and lad s's out there. You definitely do admit it. But when people create a character in a fantasy game, they're often creating some idealized version of themselves or somebody they want to shag. Maybe not literally themselves, but something that they think is cool.

[00:15:06]Maybe you want to be a 7-ft dragon man who breathes fire. Maybe you want to be a mysterious drought with white hair and glowing red eyes. Or maybe your gooner brain has completely taken over and you spend four hours installing mods to make your high el nipples 6% larger. I don't know your life or what you do in your free time, so I won't guess. But then you get to the dwarf. Would you like to be 5' nothing and built like a refrigerator? For a lot of people, especially men, the answer is just no.

[00:15:30]Height is already tied pretty heavily to attractiveness and masculinity in the real world. You can argue whether that's fair or stupid, but it absolutely affects how people see themselves and the characters that they create. So, when a game gives someone the opportunity to be literally anything, choosing the one race specifically known for being short is already a hard sell.

[00:15:48]Then, fantasy writers and DMs have spent the last few decades making that competition even worse. Dwarves used to compete with just humans and elves. But now, they're standing next to Telings, Dragon Borns, Tobaci, Drow, and dozens of other races designed around incredibly strong visual identities. For example, the elves have fractured into 50 different flavors of attractive. I mean, how could I pick a dwarf when I could be nature sexy or demon sexy?

[00:16:10]Dwarves, meanwhile, have barely changed.

[00:16:12]The classic dwarf aesthetic is deliberately heavy armor, thick clothing, enormous beards, broad bodies.

[00:16:18]There isn't a lot of room for the kind of sexualization that modern fantasy communities absolutely love, unless I guess you mention explicitly that your dwarf is hung like a horse. And I don't even mean that entirely as a joke. Look at character creation communities, fan art, cosplay, or modding scenes around any major RPG. People like making attractive characters. Boulders Gate 3 has an entire ecosystem of mods dedicated to making characters hotter than they already were. Dwarves don't naturally fulfill that fantasy. Even their environments work against them.

[00:16:46]Dwarves get glowing forests and beautiful ancient cities. Tlings get the debulttery and excess that comes with hell. Drow get the underdark, but at least they have the decency to make it sexy. And dwarves live in a hole. It's usually a very impressive hole, but it's still a hole nonetheless. And I think that's the first major hurdle that dwarves face. Their visual identity was created around being rugged, practical, and hearty. Those are all great traits for a fantasy culture, but they're not necessarily traits people fantasize about looking like. Fantasy has increasingly become a genre where you can be beautiful, terrifying, exotic, or some combination of all three. Dwarves are just standing in the corner offering you a bearded lady and a short stature.

[00:17:23]The second problem is that dwarves are just a little bit too human. And I know that sounds weird. Dwarves obviously aren't humans. But if you strip away all of that fantasy terminology, what actually separates the average dwarf from a particularly short, angry human who really likes mining? Honestly, not much. We even use the word dwarf to describe real people. In Game of Thrones, Tyrion is consistently called a dwarf, and he's literally just a human with dwarfism. Obviously, the fantasy race in the real world condition are two completely different things, but I think it illustrates how close the two ideas are in our heads. You can put a dwarf in normal clothes, shave his beard, and suddenly you're going to have to explain to me that he is a fantasy race. Compare that to almost anything else on the character creation screen. An orc is green, massive, and has tusks. A teethling has horns and a tail. And a dragon born is literally a [ __ ] dragon. Even elves, despite basically being hot humans with knife ears, have decades of fantasy portraying them as these graceful, almost ethereal beings.

[00:18:17]Dwarves, on the other hand, are short humans. Now, obviously, that's a massive oversimplification. Dwarves have their own cultures, histories, religions, and everything else you would expect from a fantasy race. But that's kind of my point. The culture has to do all of the heavy lifting. Elves are probably the best comparison here because you can be sold on the elf in two completely different ways. Maybe you don't care about their ancient kingdoms, immortality, or connection to magic. You just think the tall, sexy person with pointy ears is hot. That's enough. Or maybe the aesthetic does nothing for you, but you absolutely love the idea of a race that lives for hundreds of years and experiences the world completely different than humans. Dwarves don't really have that luxury. For most people, the culture has to be what sells you on a dwarf. You have to like the minds and craftsmanship and clans and traditions. And if you love that stuff, dwarves are [ __ ] awesome. The problem is that if you don't immediately connect with the dwarven culture, there's not really anything else to pull you in. A lot of the people who are playing grounded, practical characters are probably perfectly happy picking a human. Meanwhile, the people who want to use fantasy to become something completely alien have much more interesting options. Dwarves are stuck somewhere awkwardly in the middle.

[00:19:24]They're too different to be the default, and they're too familiar to feel truly exotic. When you're given the choice between being human, a demon person, a dragon person, or short human who knows a lot about rocks, apparently the rocks are a harder cell. And finally, every dwarf kind of feels the same. Now, on the surface, this can actually be a good thing. If you love the dwarves in the Lord of the Rings, there's a pretty good chance that you'll like the dwarves in Warhammer Fantasy. The specifics of the world might change, but in general, you're getting a lot of the same core ideas. Dwarves are probably one of the safest races in fantasy because you almost always know exactly what you're getting. The Dwmer from The Elder Scrolls are a pretty massive exception to this, and honestly, they're one of the coolest interpretations of dwarves and fantasy, but we're going to talk about the exceptions later. My bigger problem is that dwarves don't just feel the same across different fantasy worlds. Individual dwarves often feel the same standing next to each other.

[00:20:14]They have what I like to call future title incoming the mob problem. With some fantasy races, that's almost intentional. If an army of orcs comes charging over the hill, you just see a mob of orcs. Unless the story specifically pulls one of them to the side and develops them, your brain is probably going to group all of them together. They're big violent green guys. In a lot of fantasy, they're literally there to be a mob that the heroes fight. But dwarves are not supposed to be a mob. These are often main characters, player characters, and entire civilizations were expected to care about. Yet, you put 10 dwarves into a room, and suddenly it becomes really difficult to imagine how any of them are different beyond their beard and maybe what weapon that they're holding. The Hobbit movies are probably the easiest example of this. Thorne Oaken Shield obviously stands out because the entire story revolves around him. But outside of Thor, how many members of his company could the average person actually describe his characters? And I don't mean just naming them. Tolken fans, please put your hands down. I actually mean describe their personalities. The movie obviously tries to give them a few visual differences and a few individual quirks, but a lot of the company still blends together into this larger mass of dwarf. They're loud, they eat, they drink, they fight, they sing, and they follow Thoren. There are examples, but if you swap the personalities of a few of them around, I genuinely don't think most viewers would notice. This is where the plan of the hats problem comes back.

[00:21:32]Again, if you haven't watched last week's video, please do it ASAP. My ad bonus is writing on this. Like I talked about in last week's video, though, when a race has an extremely dominant culture, individual members of that race can start becoming representatives of the culture instead of the actual people. The dwarf isn't a person who happens to come from a dwarven society.

[00:21:50]He's there to be a dwarf, so he talks about the forge. He complains about elves. He drinks and maybe he says something about his ancestors. The audience immediately recognizes him as a dwarf. But recognition isn't the same thing as a character. I think this becomes especially problematic when we're talking about player characters.

[00:22:06]Most people want their character to feel like their character. Even if they're using an established fantasy race, they want some level of individuality. Nobody wants to spend 40 hours playing a character who feels like dwarf number six. Dwarves have such a strong cultural identity that breaking away from it can almost make your character feel less dwarfin. Make an elf who hates nature and people might think that that's an interesting character trait. But if a dwarf hates mining and doesn't care about craftsmanship, shaves his beard, hates ale, and wants nothing to do with his clan. At a certain point, someone's going to ask why you didn't just play a human. And this is the trap that dwarfs have fallen into. Their identity is so clearly defined that it becomes difficult for individual dwarves to escape it. The same things that make them immediately recognizable also make it incredibly easy for them to blend together. And if you push too hard back against it, your dwarf becomes a short human. So, how do we fix dwarves? Well, as a rule of three enjoyer, I think there are three really good ways to do it. You can either completely reinvent the dwarf, you can take the classic dwarf and actually explore their culture, or you can just lean into the dwarf stereotype so unbelievably hard that somehow it becomes good again.

[00:23:10]Starting with the first option, we have the Dwmer from The Elder Scrolls. The Dwmer are probably my favorite dwarves in fantasy, mostly because Bethesda looked at the traditional dwarf and decided to keep almost nothing. First of all, dwarves aren't even short. They're technically myrr, meaning that they're related to the elves of the Elder Scrolls universe. Already, we're off to a horrifying start. Dwarves are elves.

[00:23:31]Tolken is spinning in his grave so violently that we could probably hook him up to a generator and power Bethesda's offices. Despite this, the Dwemers still feel like dwarves. They live underground. They are master craftsmen and they're responsible for some of the greatest creations in the world. The difference is that the Elder Scrolls took those ideas and pushed them into a completely different direction.

[00:23:49]Instead of smithing better swords and axes, the Dwmer created enormous mechanical cities, artificial life, and machines that are still running thousands of years after the creators disappeared. And that's what I mean when I say you don't have to abandon the dwarf to make them unique. The Dwmer are still builders. Their entire civilization is defined by creation and the pursuit of knowledge. They just took the central ideas around the dwarf and asked what those ideas might look like in a completely different culture. Their relationship with religion is probably my favorite example. Most fantasy dwarves are extremely traditional and usually pretty religious. The Dwmer lived in a world where gods objectively exist and basically responded by saying, "We can probably do better." They weren't atheists in the sense that they didn't believe the gods were real. That would be like not believing your neighbor exists when he's actively throwing rocks at your house. know the Dwmer knew that divine beings existed.

[00:24:35]They simply refused to accept that divinity made them worth worship.

[00:24:39]Eventually, they attempted to build their own god and then their entire race disappeared. So, mixed results. But the point is that the Dwmer are complete reinventions of dwarves without abandoning what makes dwarves interesting. Bethesda didn't start with beards and beer and Scottish accents.

[00:24:54]They started with the actual cool stuff.

[00:24:56]Steampunk and Anasser beards. The second option is almost the complete opposite.

[00:25:01]Discworld's dwarves are extremely recognizable. Terry Patchet didn't look at the classic dwarf and decide it needed to be thrown away. His dwarves live underground, carry axes, value gold, have beards, and generally look like exactly what you would expect.

[00:25:14]Instead, Patchet asked what living in that culture would actually mean. One of the most famous examples is gender.

[00:25:19]Traditional dwarfish culture in Discworld makes virtually no visible distinction between male and female dwarves. Both have beards, dressed similarly, and even asking a dwarf sex can be considered an extremely personal question. Relationships traditionally involve the incredibly romantic process of eventually finding out what's underneath all that chain mail, which is honestly still better than Tinder. But Patchet doesn't leave this as a funny dwarf joke. As more dwarves move into cities like Ank Morpac, younger dwarves begin openly identifying as women and expressing femininity. Suddenly, something as simple as wearing a skirt or makeup becomes a cultural and political statement. Cherry Little Bottom is probably the best example.

[00:25:57]She's still a dwarf. She doesn't reject her people or suddenly stop caring about Dwarfish culture, but she wants to openly be recognized as a woman, and that creates tension with the society built around centuries of tradition.

[00:26:08]That's exactly how you use a familiar fantasy race. The dwarves being traditional isn't just something that Patchet writes in their character descriptions and forgets about that tradition actually affects people. It creates generational divides, political movements, and religious disagreements.

[00:26:23]Characters have to figure out where they fit in to a changing culture. So in short, you don't have to reinvent dwarfism if you're willing to actually explore the dwarves you already have.

[00:26:31]And then we have option three. [music] >> Deep Rock Galactic is exactly what happens if you take every dwarf stereotype, inject it with enough steroids to kill a wyvern, hand it a flamethrower, and launch it into space.

[00:26:49]You play as dwarven miners working for a deeply questionable corporation traveling to one of the most hostile planets imaginable to extract resources.

[00:26:58]You mine constantly. You drink beer. You have enormous beards. Half of your vocabulary is just screaming rock and stone at your co-workers.

[00:27:06]>> Did I hear a rocking stone?

[00:27:09]FOR ROCK AND STONE.

[00:27:11]>> ERIC, QUIT IT. YOU'RE GOING TO START >> ROCK AND STONE.

[00:27:13]>> I DIDN'T START IT.

[00:27:14]>> ROCK AND STONE. Deep Rock Galactic has absolutely no interest in escaping the dwarf stereotype. It loves it, and that's exactly why it works. The problem was never that dwarves mine or drink beer. Those things are fun. The issue normally lies when a writer includes them because they think that's simply what a dwarf is supposed to do. Deep Rock takes the mining aspect of dwarves and builds the entire fantasy around it.

[00:27:36]What does a dwarven miner look like in a science fiction universe? Apparently, he's an underpaid corporate employee being launched into a buginfested death cave with three co-workers and absolutely no OSHA representative in sight. It's familiar, but the context completely changes how it feels. And I think these three examples give us a perfect blueprint for writing [music] better dwarves. Reinvent them like the Elder Scrolls, taking the core philosophy of a dwarf and building something completely new around it. You could explore them like Discworld, where we keep the classic dwarf, but actually think about how their traditions and cultures affect the people living within them. Or embrace them like deep rock galactic. Take this stereotype, find the most interesting part of it, and push that idea until it becomes the entire identity of your world. You don't need to kill the dwarf. I've already tried killing the elves. Apparently, I'm not allowed to genocide one fantasy race per fiscal quarter. Dwarves don't need to disappear from fantasy. They just need writers to start treating them like an opportunity again because after more than a thousand years of mythology, folklore, and fantasy, there's still plenty of ore to mine. We just have to stop making the same dwarf. At the end of the day, as usual, these are just my opinions. Your world is your own, so have fun with it. Check out our Discord.

[00:28:44]We're having a worldbuing competition very soon. Sign up will be available.

[00:28:48]Not to mention, our worldbuing Minecraft server is also in our Discord. Also, like, comment, subscribe. It helps so much. Let me know if you agree with my dwarf takes or if you're on your way to come hang, draw, and corner me. Either way, I appreciate the comment. Anyway, thanks so much for watching and I will see you in the next