Dwarven Women

Female Dwarf by Nephilim-Phoenix

We had an interesting HackMaster game tonight.  I won't go into the details due to spoilers...and because I have a different blog for that kind of thing.

The night was lively as it can be facing a small horde of zombies and things happened, one of which was we know have a topless female Dwarf.  The other Dwarf in the party had also survived the zompocalypse campaign and had come around to my idea that wearing armor when fighting zombies was a bad idea.  She shed her armor in preparation for battle.  Again, there was a very brief talk of meta-gaming, but this time it was pointed out the past history that I laid out before in an earlier post.

The problem for Salt (the player likes to name her PCs after spices) was when she fumbled and got a roll result that had her armor getting bound up somehow and giving her a -1 to hit and damage until it is removed, fixed, and put back on.  Since she wasn't wearing armor, the GM simply ruled that her top was somehow snagged up.  First chance she had free, which wasn't for another in-game minute of battle, Salt simply removed her top.  Taking the time to put it back on when the rest of the group is in trouble is a bit much.

This is where I should probably mention that Salt's Looks (Comliness) score was recently raised....to a 6!  As I put it, she went from Fugly to simply Ugly.  So we now have a topless, ugly, hairy Dwarf bathed in zombie gore running around.

Doesn't that give you a wonderful mental picture?

Probably not, and not for the obvious reasons.  I don't know why gamers have such a problem accepting that Dwarven women have beards, or at least they should have beards.  With the advent of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, the folks over at Hasbro have decided that not only should Dwarf women be beardless, but they should be "sexy" by our accounts.  I wish I could link to where I read this in the 4th Edition pre-release info from years ago, but I kid you not....they specifically referenced "sexy Dwarf women".

I don't get why people have a problem with this.  Tolkien, probably the greatest single source material for Fantasy Role Playing Games, was pretty clear that Dwarven women had beards.  Heck, even if you have only seen Lord of the Rings, Gimli clearly indicates that Dwarven women look so much like Dwarven men that only a Dwarf could tell them apart.

Try to find a female Dwarf with a beard.  It isn't easy to do.  The only miniatures I can find were those made by Kenzer & Company so long ago.  I know that there is an outfit getting ready to cast otherwise OOP K&C miniatures, so there is hope of getting more.  If I want a female Dwarf I pretty much have to make a paper miniature using Hero Machine.  I tried to do an image search for "female Dwarf" on Google and I think it was page 9 or 10 before I finally found one with a beard.

What the heck people?  I would think when playing a fantasy game that the imagination could be broadened just enough to accept that standards of beauty for another race (as in species, not ethnicity) could or would be different than our own.