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[Deboche]

nanomage, that makes sense for humans and maybe elves but dwarves could be an exception.

They could breed for longevity and prefer mature traits since it means that person has the right genes for a long life. It would make sense given that most dwarves are depicted as middle aged or older men. Not to mention the fact that human women are often attracted to older men.

We could go into how elven and dwarven evolution would occur and how evolution would select for cave-adaptation but I think that goes beyond the scope of this thread. In the end, it'd all be up to Toady and his infinite wisdom.

Attraction/repulsion based on traits further from the mean could be controlled via personality traits, too. "Urist almost exclusively prefers/strongly prefers/cares little about/has a distaste for/is repulsed by exotic features."

Not only that but all features. "Urist bla bla bla high cheekbones/big nose/protruding chin/curly beard etc". Individual interactions between dwarves would have to be very complex indeed for something like this to have a meaningful impact in-game though.

[Putnam]

Very much planned:

PowerGoal68, MAGICAL IDIOT PEEPER, (Future): Hearing of her exotic beauty, the young knave uses a ring to open a portal in the wall of the princess's bedroom, wrenching a small cylinder of stone out of the wall via its magical powers. However, the stories had all been told by Southmen, and she was in fact quite unattractive by the different standards of his culture.

[nanomage]

It would be made so that dwarves hated the elves much easier: just by having adolescent dwarves not look like elves. For example, by having them resemble well-fed human toddlers instead. Then tree-huggers would be out of luck there.
And yeah you're right I was talking mailny about women. In men, youth is not apreciated that much because for them the ability to provide for the family is much more important than fertility. (which stays nearly constant compared to women's throughout the life)

nanomage, that makes sense for humans and maybe elves but dwarves could be an exception.

They could breed for longevity and prefer mature traits since it means that person has the right genes for a long life. It would make sense given that most dwarves are depicted as middle aged or older men. Not to mention the fact that human women are often attracted to older men.

We could go into how elven and dwarven evolution would occur and how evolution would select for cave-adaptation but I think that goes beyond the scope of this thread. In the end, it'd all be up to Toady and his infinite wisdom.

Attraction/repulsion based on traits further from the mean could be controlled via personality traits, too. "Urist almost exclusively prefers/strongly prefers/cares little about/has a distaste for/is repulsed by exotic features."

Not only that but all features. "Urist bla bla bla high cheekbones/big nose/protruding chin/curly beard etc". Individual interactions between dwarves would have to be very complex indeed for something like this to have a meaningful impact in-game though.

[Button]

It would be made so that dwarves hated the elves much easier: just by having adolescent dwarves not look like elves. For example, by having them resemble well-fed human toddlers instead. Then tree-huggers would be out of luck there.

Dwarven boys crawl out of the womb with facial hair already grown. I think we're already there .

And yeah you're right I was talking mailny about women. In men, youth is not apreciated that much because for them the ability to provide for the family is much more important than fertility. (which stays nearly constant compared to women's throughout the life)

The gender roles you cite are an oversimplification even for humanity - and why should they extend past humanity?

Dwarven women remain fertile til the day they die. Dwarven mothers don't need to be provided for - they can and do keep working, even when they've just given birth. This fertility/provider evopsych bullshit (but I repeat myself) just doesn't apply to dwarves.

[Dirst]

It would be made so that dwarves hated the elves much easier: just by having adolescent dwarves not look like elves. For example, by having them resemble well-fed human toddlers instead. Then tree-huggers would be out of luck there.

Dwarven boys crawl out of the womb with facial hair already grown. I think we're already there .

Well, for a straight Dwarf male, an Elven female would have a significant deviation score from the Dwarven female population average.  Elven males aren't exactly Dwarfy-looking either.  So outside of Tolkien (where everyone is just in awe of everything Elfy), I wouldn't expect any Dwarf to find any remotely normal-looking Elf attractive.

This system would lead Human females to find Dwarf males unusual but not hideous (too short and too broad).  Dwarf males would find Human females scrawny (and bald if the raws are corrected to give beards to Dwarf females).  Dwarf females are pretty far from the Human female population average, even moreso if they are bearded.

And yeah you're right I was talking mailny about women. In men, youth is not apreciated that much because for them the ability to provide for the family is much more important than fertility. (which stays nearly constant compared to women's throughout the life)

The gender roles you cite are an oversimplification even for humanity - and why should they extend past humanity?

Dwarven women remain fertile til the day they die. Dwarven mothers don't need to be provided for - they can and do keep working, even when they've just given birth. This fertility/provider evopsych bullshit (but I repeat myself) just doesn't apply to dwarves.

This placeholder behavior applies to all fertile creatures in DF, it's not that Dwarves are intentionally non-human here.  Once some kind of childcare is instituted, someone will need to care for the baby.  Without a nursery to consolidate all of the baby beards, Mom or Dad is going to be interrupted constantly.  Hopefully by then we'll also be able to prioritize labors to keep the fort's work from grinding to a halt.

---

J. R. R. Tolkien's Dwarves have beards on the females but also keep them hidden away with some hinting that they aren't permitted to engage in anything (crafts, wars, etc.) that could ever make them a Dwarf of note.  For one thing, Dwarven lineages don't even note the females.  In this world, Dwarves are 2/3 male, leading them to be waaaaaay over-protective of their females to the point of objectifying them.  D&D and MERP use these Dwarves, though they leave out the part about repressing any female ambition.

C. S. Lewis's Dwarves are all male.  Gimli's line "...And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground!  Which is, of course, ridiculous." was Tolkien poking fun at Lewis.

Terry Pratchett's Dwarves have males and females that are indistinguishable from one another, and it is considered impolite to ask.  This is done for comedic effect rather than any deep statement about Dwarf biology (even Dwarves can't tell the genders apart, which leads to some uncomfortable dating situations).

It's obvious that Toady isn't using any of these directly.  I imagine that Dwarf females look an awful lot like Dwarf males (and I do tweak the raws to put beards on them), but at least the Dwarves themselves have no trouble telling them apart.

[SixOfSpades]

C. S. Lewis's Dwarves are all male.  Gimli's line "...And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground!  Which is, of course, ridiculous." was Tolkien poking fun at Lewis.

I know that quote was in Jackson's LotR movies, but then those movies included dwarf-tossing references, too. Is there an actual text source for this, or for bearded female dwarves in general?

J. R. R. Tolkien's Dwarves have beards on the females but also keep them hidden away with some hinting that they aren't permitted to engage in anything (crafts, wars, etc.) that could ever make them a Dwarf of note.

Actually, I got the strong impression that they were kept hidden inside major strongholds simply because an orc attack that killed/captured many females (which was in fact a very real threat) would essentially decimate the race. I'll buy the males being over-protective, definitely, but I read nothing about how they socially repressed their females. Admittedly, Tolkien himself was a staunch misogynist, but seems to have "limited" his dwarves' androcentrism simply by not mentioning the women at all. There's no reason to assume that Dwarves are as bad as, say, Ferengi.

D&D and MERP use these Dwarves,

Just wanted to note that different D&D campaign settings have different normalizations of female dwarf facial hair. In the Forgotten Realms, they grow full beards & mustaches, but in Greyhawk, they only grow muttonchops. In another, their hair is limited to the scalp, like a human's, and in yet another they can grow beards, but it's considered more socially acceptable to keep them clean-shaven.

[Dirst]

C. S. Lewis's Dwarves are all male.  Gimli's line "...And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground!  Which is, of course, ridiculous." was Tolkien poking fun at Lewis.

I know that quote was in Jackson's LotR movies, but then those movies included dwarf-tossing references, too. Is there an actual text source for this, or for bearded female dwarves in general?

Not the only place I've seen this assertion, but this Tolkien-centered wiki seems to gather everything in one place.

J. R. R. Tolkien's Dwarves have beards on the females but also keep them hidden away with some hinting that they aren't permitted to engage in anything (crafts, wars, etc.) that could ever make them a Dwarf of note.

Actually, I got the strong impression that they were kept hidden inside major strongholds simply because an orc attack that killed/captured many females (which was in fact a very real threat) would essentially decimate the race. I'll buy the males being over-protective, definitely, but I read nothing about how they socially repressed their females. Admittedly, Tolkien himself was a staunch misogynist, but seems to have "limited" his dwarves' androcentrism simply by not mentioning the women at all. There's no reason to assume that Dwarves are as bad as, say, Ferengi.

The exclusion of females from genealogy is a pretty strong hint.  Like you said, it reflects more about the author than a realistic culture for Dwarves.  I really only brought it up to contrast it with how DF Dwarves behave.

D&D and MERP use these Dwarves,

Just wanted to note that different D&D campaign settings have different normalizations of female dwarf facial hair. In the Forgotten Realms, they grow full beards & mustaches, but in Greyhawk, they only grow muttonchops. In another, their hair is limited to the scalp, like a human's, and in yet another they can grow beards, but it's considered more socially acceptable to keep them clean-shaven.

Fair enough.  Been quite a while since I've handled any polyhedral dice.  That last one sounds like the Centauri from Babylon 5.

To steer this back in the direction of the original topic, the idea would be to come up with a population average for each male and female caste.  A creature near the population mean of a caste compatible with the viewer will be seen as more attractive and thus get some positive encounter modifier.  How strong that is can vary with some personality trait or other.

This does require reworking the body part modifiers a bit.  Right now the Dwarf has

   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:75:95:98:100:102:105:125]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]
   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:75:95:98:100:102:105:125]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]

and this gives no indication that its proportions are different than an Elf or Human.  100 is seen as typical for a Dwarf.  If we set 100 as the average for a Human, then the Dwarf might end up as:

   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:HEIGHT:55:75:78:80:82:85:105]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]
      [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:60:70:75:85:90:100]
   [BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER:BROADNESS:95:115:118:120:122:125:145]
      [APP_MOD_IMPORTANCE:500]
      [APP_MOD_DESC_RANGE:100:110:115:125:130:140]

This would still yield descriptions like "average height for a dwarf" but differentiate it from the average height of another creature.

Hair and skin colors are a bit more complicated.  The likely solution is to calculate a centroid based on RGB values, though it may be necessary to treat red, green and blue separately for both mean and standard deviation.  Large swings in a skintone's red aren't that odd-looking, but large swings in blue make something look alien.

[SixOfSpades]

. . . the idea would be to come up with a population average for each male and female caste.  A creature near the population mean of a caste compatible with the viewer will be seen as more attractive and thus get some positive encounter modifier.  How strong that is can vary with some personality trait or other.

That would probably be ARTISTIC_INTEREST, what with its "greatly appreciates art and natural beauty." But it should also show up in an individual dwarf's preferences as well, so that one dwarf likes her men quite short, while another is more interested in the length of their beards. I'm not saying we should go as far down as having nose-bridge curvature influence a dwarf's choice of mate, but height, breadth, muscle mass, and body fat should all definitely be considered. (Heck, scrap the "within 10 years" rule and have individual preferences for age ranges, as well.) In addition, each civilization of each race could have different averages for things like size, hair/skin color, etc. If one has a chance to interact with (members of) more than one civ from each race, this would add a lot of flavor.