Stuart says:
20 Quirks of Dwarven Culture Relevant To Whatever Your Players Are Doing Right Now
I don’t know what your players are doing right now, although I suspect they are eating cheetos or drinking or texting someone while you read my blog. Instead of trying to be universal, I decided to come up with twenty situational quirks, most of which are cultural. There are no numbers on these because they are all 100 percent guaranteed to be equally true.
Dwarves lose *all* their hair if they stay aboveground on sunny days for more than a week.
It takes over a decade to regrow all their hair.
Eighty percent of dwarves are loudly and violently lactose intolerant to the fine cheeses served at most human and halfling courts.
Dwarven women do not have beards, but during the courtship season (autumn) married women are required to wear fake beards. These are usually made from their husband’s beard hair.
If you sneeze near a dwarf, he must say an annoyingly long prayer for the wellbeing of his ancestors, who could have been startled by the sound.
Dwarves are expected to get tattoos of their accomplishments, family tree and a map on the back of any lands they have been to beyond their home.
Dwarves have naturally fresh breath. To one another.
Dwarves are forbidden by ancient custom to eat anything that walks on two legs or less unless they killed it themselves. However, if they kill anything with less than four legs, they must eat at least a small piece of it. This means there are few wars between dwarves.
Every year on this day, dwarves by custom must give away all pay, prizes, gifts, loot or other windfall they receive. They must give it to someone who is not related, not a neighbor or business partner or somesuch and who has nothing. Halflings call this day ‘dress like a destitute’ day.
On any day except the above, a dwarf must accept any tangible gift offered him if it seems harmless. Even a cursed item must be accepted and overcome.
Unless attacked, dwarves do not acknowledge the presence of their above-ground cousins the anti-dwarves (or whatever you want to call them). They are not being rude. They involuntarily do not see them.
Dwarves refuse to help lift anything taller folk are also lifting.
Dwarves are shy when it comes to interracial sex, but frequently fall in love with taller folk.
You cannot get a dwarf to pay the regular price. They always insist on paying more as a sign of pride.
A dwarf will not, however, give you even the smallest discount.
Dwarves have perfect pitch, but only on their own musical scale.
Dwarven villages will provide free hospitality to strangers who can wrestle and best their strongest ox.
Dwarven culture is athiest, but they have gods. These gods are symbolic, but are spoken of as if real. There are no temples, but plenty of god-related booster clubs.
No stranger is allowed to turn down a duel challenge when in dwarven territory.
Their drinking contests are not to see who can drink the most before passing out but to see who can lift the heaviest object after an equal amount of drink.
One hand is for weaponry, the other for wiping. No one is quite sure which (even dwarves) so it varies by individual on occasion.
Dwarves are bad at counting lines of text.
You can make a request here.
Best of the Creeping Doom Part 2
When I started this little project, it was meant only to entertain me. It seems to have entertained a few others. I certainly didn’t expect any sort of audience and I never would have guessed that my most popular articles would be about clerics and halflings.
Let me tell you about the Old School....
The most popular post by a wide margin has been my review of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role Playing boxed set. There has been constant interest in that review since I wrote it. I take it as a sign of interest in what OSR and especially what James Raggi is doing that people are still getting here via googling his game. Looking back at it now, it’s really not a very good review. It was rushed and I’ll admit there was a desire to be one of the first reviews out there. Looking at the boxed set now, I’m still impressed. The “princess box” will be my ruleset of choice when I next DM.
While the LotFP review is still the most looked-at and most googled post, the biggest one-day post was my piece on hobb -er halflings. I wanted to make the hobbits into the nightmare that some people see immigrants to be. In this case, they do take over wherever they settle and the thought of legions of halflings with spears or pikes amuses me to no end. This was a throwaway piece when I started writing it, but in the campaign world in my head, they might be one of the most important features.
Another popular post was a simple idea: mages will become liches after a certain age or level. This seemed to be popular with the folks who hang out at reddit’s rpg community. I’m far from done with mages.
I rarely play clerics, but I seem to have posted more about clerics and their gods than any other subject and as a topic, they are the most popular. The most popular post in this series concerned a goddess of despair that is empowered by the harm her followers do.
Before I wrap up this meta talk, I want to recommend two sites to you that I am sure I do not need to. If you are reading this, you are surely reading them. If not, you should be. First is Ancient Vaults and Eldritch Secrets. Bat puts out a new item, spell, monster or whatnot every day. Holidays and blizzard days too. Each entry is a quality piece and begins with a short setup with a recurring cast of characters. The man has a work ethic and he’s done this enough to get really good at it. You’re my role model, Bat. Now when are you going to publish?
The other site, Swords and Dorkery also needs no introduction. Mike’s presence here as a recurring commenter gave me the first notions that there was anyone visiting this site more than once and for that I must thank him. He participates more actively in the blogging community and has gathered some of his best materials into downloadable files.
To wrap up the navel gazing…
So far, the blog is still dong what I wanted it to do: get me to sit, stretch my imagination and write RPG material for later use. That some people have found it worth reading and perhaps used something in their games is very gratifying. I hope I can keep my personal goal in mind and not get distracted by the number of readers or page views I get. This next year, I hope to post more often, even when extremely busy as I have been this fall.
I wish everyone a great 2011 and I hope we all get in as much gaming as you want.
Happy New Year!