What's the official cannon on dwarf beards?

[darkgod]

We are rising to epic proportions !

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

I'm pretty sure the epic proportions are higher up then the deep bellow. Though they must be epic indeed, to demonstrate the awesome dwarfliness of the dwarf.

I still vote for bearded females. And I always picture them like Terry Pratchetts dwarves. Long ankle-length beards, male or female. At that point, a long ankle length braided beard might look better, but would obviously be more difficulty to draw.

[Impy]

I still vote for bearded females. And I always picture them like Terry Pratchetts dwarves. Long ankle-length beards, male or female. At that point, a long ankle length braided beard might look better, but would obviously be more difficulty to draw.

I like Discworld dwarves too, but that largely has to do with the fact that it's a humorous setting. If ToME was filled with coffee drinking vampires, elderly barbarians and orangutan librarians, then bearded women would feel right at home. Let's also keep in mind that the dwarven ladies of Discworld were distinguishable by their leather skirts, steel high-heeled boots, fancy hairstyles and makeup. None of these things (with a possible exception of makeup) can be incorporated into a PC sprite due to the fact that you have to have switchable gear. So while a bearded NPC dwarf can be made to look womanly, I really don't think that the same can be done for the PC. At the very best it will look like a male dwarf attempting to cross-dress and not doing a very good job of it.

[Atarlost]

One thing that might help is huge tracts of land. That would mean having another set of armor images, but might be worth it.

Or they could just be hard to distinguish. I can't tell elves apart (except the Naloran and that's just because they tend to not wear shirts) so there's a precedent for it.

[Jeoshua]

Well ToME is unique in its canon, and is of course free to do whatever the devs want to do as far as it's Dwarf ladies. It doesn't matter highly what Terry Pratchett or J.R.R. Tolkien or Gary Gygax thought, as this is not their game, and not their Dwarves. Terry Pratchett, especially, should be ignored as a source of wisdom about Dwarves as he is a satirist, using the fantasy elements to tell stories and jokes about modern day, and not truly using them for classical fantasy world-building. He's great as an author, but not as a source of fantasy world-building wisdom. He's a joke-teller, and he's telling a fundamentally different type of story using these elements. ToME is fundamentally Darkgod's fantasy world... I think... Not sure how much help he had making the canon but the point still stands, regardless.

That being said, I think that the whole idea of Dwarf lady-beards is a bit odd. I think they should be hairy, but a full-on neckbeard is strange and off-putting to me. I could see them having mutton-chops and gemstone beaded braids. And tho it undermines my point, neither J.R.R. Tolkien nor the original European myths mention much of anything about female dwarves, much less them having beards of any kind. In fact, the original myths specifically state that there is no such thing as a female Dwarf, them being magical creatures that don't follow a birthing life-cycle like humans do, springing full grown from the earth, itself, not being born. That obviously isn't the type of Dwarf that is in ToME, but that does go to show why there is a controversy, in the first place.

[Atarlost]

Pratchett may be a satirist, but except his first period his worldbuilding is usually very good, and late period it's top notch.

I fully support using his dwarves, trolls, or golems. They are all entirely reasonable and internally sensible and would fit just fine in a serious work because they're designed for satire not parody and satire is in its own way serious.

[Jeoshua]

But Satire, by its very definition, takes an idea and runs with it to it's logical absurd. Pratchett's bearded lady dwarves that are indistinguishable from the male dwarves in any way except a particular hair style that male dwarves also, sometimes, style their beards with, is a perfect example of running with an idea to a logical absurdity. Meaning that his lady dwarves are actually NOT distinguishable from male dwarves at all. Why? Because he's taken the idea and run with it, pointing out in the process that the reason in other fiction that lady dwarves aren't mentioned explicitly is because other people can't tell they're ladies! It's a joke, and I say that in and of itself, that joke doesn't play any part in how Dwarves could, or should, be seen in other fiction, precisely because it's absurd for the sake of pointing out a logical inconsistency in the very idea of Dwarves in other fiction that has come before.

If anything, I say that Pratchett's satirical view of lady-beards should be a reason to NOT give them beards, and place lady-dwarves into a higher visibility role, since his satire of them hinges on the fact that they're never explicitly mentioned in previous works of fiction, except as to sometimes say that they don't actually exist.

[Atarlost]

It's not absurd. It's a self consistent culture that doesn't happen to be yours. The reason why it was constructed that way is trivial next to the quality of the world building.

You cannot tackle themes like racism with a one note caricature of a culture, so Discworld trolls and dwarves are fully fleshed out fantasy cultures that make sense by their own internal logic and far more serious than those found in mainstream fantasy settings like the Forgotten Realms.

[Jeoshua]

Certainly Pratchett's world is internally consistent, I was never claiming that it wasn't. That's one of his strengths. Regardless of how an idea gets into that world, he sticks to his guns and thinks out all the implications thereof. But this isn't Tales of Discworld. This is Tales of Maj'Eyal. To take his ideas as some kind of building block means that one has to take ALL of his ideas, which fit so well together in an internally consistent and dependent way, or risk missing some part of the equation. The alternative is to not take his ideas at all, recognizing them, instead, as a good story that doesn't quite fit into the world that Darkgod is building. ToME has no libraries run by Orangutans, it isn't a flat disc sitting on giant elephants standing on the back of a giant space turtle, and it doesn't have a grim reaper with an electric guitar. By that dint, it doesn't need to have bearded lady dwarves indistinguishable by non-dwarves from the menfolk just because Pratchett said so.

(Also, great discussion )

[Jeoshua]

Okay, so after a touch of research, I couldn't find too many examples of what I'd personally like to see. Most examples of the search term "female dwarf" on google show completely unbearded, non-hairy, stocky halfling looking women. But I did find some examples:

http://th03.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2 ... 61z9ky.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hYOUO.jpg

Hairy enough to have people say they're bearded, not hairy enough to make them ever be confused for a man or seem to be a joke played for kicks.

Also of note: ToME does not follow the rest of the pieces of the trope below:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... AllTheSame

Dwarves are not magic restricted in any way, actually far from it, being among the better choices for a magic user. They are not all similar in the lore, being ax-wielding, magic-despising, elf hating pseudo-Scotsmen with long flowing beards, as many works of fiction would have you believe. I say that basically it's lazy writing to stereotype a whole race of people as Gimli-clones.

[Grey]

By that dint, it doesn't need to have bearded lady dwarves indistinguishable by non-dwarves from the menfolk just because Pratchett said so.

By that dint we shouldn't have elves and dwarves because that's just copying Tolkien :P Plus the dwarves are distinguishable by men.

I love those pictures, Impy! Number 3 looks pretty spot on to me :)

[Jeoshua]

Impy: Could you try one more sketch? Beard long full and braided, around the sideburns, cheeks, and neck area, but not around the "goatee" area. Keeping the chin, lips, and throat mostly clean and hair free. That's what I'm thinking a "proper" Dwarf-lady looks like, in my head.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Wow giant Pratchett discussion. Not saying we should 'do what Pratchett did' for ToME. I'm just saying that (even before reading Pratchett) I pictured female dwarves loosely, about the way he did. And that the long braided beard instead of silly goatee length short ones, is how I always pictured dwarves. By all means, if someone else has a different mental image, be welcome to suggest it. I just cited him as a convenient example.

And seconded for Impy to do some full-length beards. Or any other artists around.

[Impy]

Number 3 looks pretty spot on to me

I don't know about that. The only one that looks passable to me is 4 and even then it's not as good as the first. If 3 were to be sprited it would look nearly identical to the male dwarf.

Impy: Could you try one more sketch? Beard long full and braided, around the sideburns, cheeks, and neck area, but not around the "goatee" area. Keeping the chin, lips, and throat mostly clean and hair free. That's what I'm thinking a "proper" Dwarf-lady looks like, in my head.

I'm not sure how close this is to what you wanted but it looks kind of alright. I don't think that I like it better than the beardless version, but it's probably the best beard design that's been proposed thus far.

[Jeoshua]

To be sure, I was thinking a touch fuller and less length than that, but excellent as an example of the hairline pattern I was trying to convey. I like it... beardy without being too off-putting, and sufficiently different from other races as to look dwarfy... something an onlooker could call a beard, something a male dwarf could admire and stroke lovingly. A beard for the ladies to be proud of, to be sure!