Dwarf Women: Miniature Collectors Guide

8 Responses to Dwarf Women: Miniature Collectors Guide

1. Travis McCrea says:

   June 20, 2014 at 5:26 pm

   I am with you about the middle stuff but think you start and end with the wrong conclusion:

   We need an army of all women dwarfs or whatever, but not doing weird women things… just doing “dude” things or you know… dwarf things… Actually it would be a cool storyline for any gamemaker / storyteller who wants to shed some of their cis-het guilt and explain that all the previous stories about mostly male armies were because women dwarfs are the ultimate warriors and they stay at home and train waiting for really big battles or battles to protect their homeland because the men are more expendable, not being as good of fighters.

   Or even just to be more equal you could say that the women fight in battles against other women, and since fantasy tends to follow male characters you don’t typically see the equally grand displays by women (or all races/classes) because they all fight each other exclusively.

   I would love to see more diversity, but if you wanted to quickly fix some things and have it go with the existing cannon that should work.

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2. Luke Maciak says:

   June 20, 2014 at 7:36 pm

   @ Travis McCrea:

   Well, this is kinda what I did with Imperials in Ravenflight, but there I was more interested in inverting the power imbalance between sexes. I wanted them to have an oriental theme, but at the same time I wanted to subvert the strong patriarchal social norms usually depicted in samurai stories. I guess this could also work for Dwarfs… But doing this you are at a risk of doing yet another Asari clone which is problematic for different reasons.

   This post was mostly inspired by the conversation with Dunc we were having in the other thread about how Warhammer is such a mixed bag when it comes to gender representation and how it might be problematic when introducing young girls into the hobby (Dunce is a new father father, and I’m soon to be an uncle).

   So in that light I’m more interested with Dwarf women simply existing as heroic PC’s and NPC’s in the game world. Especially Warhammer, which is near and dear to my heart. D&D on the other hand is actually pretty good at it. For example 4th edition player handbook has this picture next to the entry for Dwarf player characters:

   

   Both genders are represented, and last time I checked the fluff didn’t include any background information about gender roles in Dwarf society, though depicting both genders in full battle gear does strongly suggest they are rather egalitarian.

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3. Travis McCrea says:

   June 20, 2014 at 8:48 pm

   Yeah and I wasn’t specifically talking about gender reversal but I also don’t have a problem with it. Not to get too far off topic, but sometimes we need a little bit of forced inequality in favour of those who have been oppressed or left out. While many people even who are comfortable with the notion of homosexuality dislike pride parades because it seems almost aggressive… there is no denying that pride parades have pushed the middleground on homosexuality to a much more reasonable level.

   In the same sense if more and more writers start adopting these female driven plots and possibly even making males subservient to the women.. it would more than likely drive the moderate writers to at least just include women as normal parts of a story.

   :D Congrats on your upcoming uncleship btw.

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4. Dunc says:

   June 24, 2014 at 4:33 pm

   Thanks for posting this, I completely agree with where you’re coming from. It all went mostly over my head when I was younger, too, although I do remember listening to a radio version of the Hobbit when I was a wee little lad myself, and my mum suddenly said, “Wait a minute, there are no women in this!” (I still love the Hobbit, mind you, although the book’s completely mono-gendered nature seems quite freakish when I think about it.) Really don’t like the “indolent, stupid” females comment in the Skaven book (came across it again the other day) or the phrase “brood mares” in some or other dwarf article I was reading. It seems half-baked at best and spiteful at worst….. I suppose that, despite their perils, dark destinies and broad injustices, these are supposed to be worlds we actually want to visit and spend time in. And I’m generally pretty bored of “men’s worlds”!

   It’s a shame there are quite so few female dwarf miniatures—no danger of that 50/50 army anytime soon!—but I like the ones you’ve tracked down. I’m quite fond of the old Citadel models but thanks especially for finding the Slayer ones, I’ll definitely add them to my Talisman pile [fixt – bought them now!!]. It actually made me think a bit more about your general point. I think there MUST be female troll slayers because otherwise it says bad things about dwarf society and makes me not like them! Why else would there be no troll slaying women, unless
   a) Women aren’t allowed out, therefore are unlikely to be dishonoured in battle or even encountered out in the world.
   b) They don’t have any honour to lose.
   c) Dishonoured women are put to death.
   (None of these are any good!)

   “Making Dwarven society extremely patriarchal is not only sexist (and therefore not cool) but also artificially limits the stories we can tell within the imagined universe.” I think you’ve nailed it there. On the Victoria Lamb website it says, “One can only imagine what grave misfortune could cause such a nice dwarf lass to take the Slayer’s oath,” which piques the interest that bit more and just broadens the whole setting. I often find female leads in ‘standard’ fantasy more interesting than male ones because there’s that one extra barrier to break through/overcome. Vive la différence!

   I’m kinda annoyed at genderisation in the world and I really want to play soccer (a fairly male pastime over here) and geeky board games with my girls when they get older. But I need you to work with me, fantasy genre, otherwise THIS will happen: “Where are all the girl dwarfs, dad?” “Oh, they’re all at home, they’re actually ‘brood mares,’ you see, so they’re too precious to let out of their dwarfholds because they need to stay at home and produce young.” “Oh, ok. And do you get any Skaven who are girls?” “Well, yes, but they all live underground in massive, impersonal breeding pits and are large, indolent and semi intelligent. At most.” “Uh, ok. Maybe I’ll just go over here and read The Hunger Games instead.” “No, no! You mustn’t! YOU MUSTN’T!” Damn you, Games Workshop, see what you’ve done!

   Uh, anyway. Please also accept my congrats on your upcoming unclehood! I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun!

   PS — Apologies for any UK spellings—too lazy to go over it ;)

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5. Yodhrin says:

   August 27, 2014 at 10:20 pm

   Ahoy there, intriguing post. I’m not sure I agree that single-gender or single-sex races are inherently, not bad I suppose you’re arguing but not good either, in terms of fantasy. I do however agree that they’re usually put into practice in a really lazy way, particularly when it comes to Dwarfs.

   On the miniatures front, check out Oathsworn Miniatures, they’re in the UK but they ship overseas and seem to be making a pretty good effort in terms of female Dwarfs, they currently have two armoured warrior types, a pair of rogues, a “not-Slayer”, a duelist, and a priestess. They’re presently fulfilling a second Kickstarter with more Dwarfs, but they’ll be a bit more “civilian” this time round since the models represent a clan of brewers. They look to be roughly on par with GW, 22mm tall and about halfway between the older style and the new plastics in terms of proportions.

   On the Scibor Dwarfs, I own a few of the male ones and they’re actually about 25mm tall, so they’re a tad larger than GW, I think they just decided to follow human conventions on size and so sculpted the female Dwarfs a bit shorter than the male ones. Normally I’d find that a bit questionable, but the males are everything from fat to thin, muscular and not, slightly taller or shorter, so I don’t think it’s a case of “men = big and muscly, women = small and weak” thinking, so they may well add more female Dwarfs with different proportions as time goes on.

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6. Grey says:

   January 7, 2015 at 5:23 pm

   The original dwarves of myth were born of the earth and were male-ish but without actual specified gender. Tolkien wrote what he knew and had few females of any race, because he largely drew on his time in the army for inspiration. I suppose it is completely possible that the dwarven race of common fantasy trope has an intrinsic gender birth imbalance (rare among mammals but not unheard of in the animal kingdom). Perhaps in the fantasy trope the female dwarf births occur significantly less common than male and thus are encourage (if not forced) to stay home. No force necessary nor even a hugely patriarchal culture- just few enough females that there is a significantly fewer showing among ‘adventurers’ (already a small slice of an overall fantasy population) The ladies know they are valuable at home, and don’t _need_ to adventure or join the military.
   I have GM’d a world with the reverse situation for my orc / ferengie analogs , 5% more females born and the high status females keeping harems of what ever males they can get to agree to join them. Made for some interesting role-play when they kept choosing to direct negotiations to the female characters (especially when they were interested in getting the male characters into their harem) Not too overt, but persistent and ongoing, it persuaded the party to waste time looking for other sources for what they needed.
   It was even worse when another culture kept trying to flatter and treat the party’s pets and companion animals to improve their bargaining situation (ignoring the basic needs of the party for such things as water after traveling across a scorching desert for weeks). ;-)
   Honestly though we just use Halfling and gnome female figures where necessary (though, those aren’t too common either).

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7. A. Lynn says:

   June 14, 2015 at 9:26 am

   @ Travis McCrea:

   I always fancied the idea that you couldn’t tell the difference between Dwarven genders because the females could grow beards just as glorious and fantastic as the men, and when they both went to war and beat some orc hide, silly humanoids couldn’t tell the difference.

   In my current campaign, my female dwarf pirate shaves her face but still has quite the furry sideburns and she’s quite proud of them.

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8. Darnizhaan says:

   April 21, 2016 at 8:36 pm

   Take a look at four a miniatures. I think they have a few female dwarves.

   http://www.fouraminiatures.com/

   Also the celtos line at brigade games has some under ‘vanir’

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