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[Janizary]

I was looking around and couldn't really find too much talking about it, but maybe I am just not using the right search variables...  Here goes anyways.

Has much thought come up in regards to having each of the different Mountainhomes be of a different Dwarven race?  The distinctions allowed by such a modification to the current situation could create interdwarven wars due to evil/neutral/good dwarf relations.  This concept of course could easily apply to the other races as well, allowing for not just the wild elves we have now, but maybe dungeon and dragons' style drow and tolkien's high elves.

These dwarven subraces could rise from schisms which take place in histories after the death of a king, maybe for whatever random reason, the dwarves in the mountainous region support Thob the Terrible, an insane dwarf with very good noble skills, while the dwarves in the costal region support Tun Jabberwocky, a champion.  This split turns one group into two, and may start an all-out war.  With this split the two sides differentiate, one going towards madness and brutality and the other becoming more war-centric, maybe opening up the creation of additional weapons for both sides, dwarven thrashers for all!  These Madwarves and Wardwarves now have independent policital interaction, though a shared history and initial set of enemies/allies, but the schism allows for two new factions to change the status quo, perhaps these Madwarves become true-blue allies of the goblins, and adopt some of the more undwarvenly traits of their new friends, slavery and murder become more acceptable within the new mountainhome, while the Wardwarves become more resistant to sunlight and enjoy fighting more.

I understand that the political system isn't where it would need to be for such a thing, but perhaps some time down the line, we can look at the Legendary records and see the coming together of two dwarven factions after a brutal war, and it's eventual split into three different cultures due to a horrific volcanic eruption, which just happened to destroy the mountainhome.

There could be all kinds of different attitudes and with work, weapons and skills to be split between the Petty, Disney, Mountain, Wood, Mad, Dark, High, Plains and Sea Dwarves.  There is a great deal of possibility within the concept, I just don't know if it's entirely worth the effort, so I'm tossing the idea out.

[alfie275]

In the devs sorta, they are known as 'castes'.

[Craftling]

WTF Disney?
What about elves and goblins and kolbolds and humans?

[Creamcorn]

Personnaly I hate sub races, mostly because of the elven sub races. Not to mention I don't see much of a difference between a hill or a normal dwarfs, they have beards, dig and have an affinity for metals.

[Mel_Vixen]

I would say this are (sub-)cultures and not sub-races. A sub-races would be more like different Dog-breeds.

In the devs sorta, they are known as 'castes'.

Thats a misconception i think.

Castes can be Biological and Social. Ants for example have warriors, workers and queens - a biological polymorphism - as castes.

Social castes most often restrict people to certain Partners and jobs. People are most often born into a caste which is determined by theyr parents. This Social castes are a part of a culture but not a culture for them self.

DF allows to create biological castes with social aspects in the new version. This means you create a caste and link a creature, job, gear devs to it. This allows you two create two castes that use the same Creature dev.This creatures even thought they are the same kind will thought perform different tasks.

[Craftling]

Do we have subraces of Humans? or Kangaroos? or Hedehog?

Not to mention I don't see much of a difference between a hill or a normal dwarfs, they have beards, dig and have an affinity for metals.

I agree with this.

[Vucar Fikodastesh]

Hopefully, someday worldgen entities will change their equipment, materials, building designs, and even ethics in response to wars, peace, natural disasters, and the environment.

How many subraces are there in real life?

All you have are different people in different places living and acting differently, and that is all subraces really are.

[Mel_Vixen]

Culture(/civ) not (sub-)race.

After the shism (see example from OP) the two factions will be still the same race but develop different Cultures.

Realworld example: A German and US-American guy are the same "Race" (Humans) but the German is member of the German-culture and the US-American is member of the US-American-culture.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I agree with Heph. Races within a species take thousands of years, and genetic isolation.

That's not to say that there might not be more than one race of dwarfs. Dwarfs seem much more prone to isolating themselves than humans do. They also live both longer, and in less hospitable places, than even humans typically do (a wider range even than khosians, inupiat, etc.), so it's certainly possible.

[Janizary]

Culture(/civ) not (sub-)race.
...
Realworld example: A German and US-American guy are the same "Race" (Humans) but the German is member of the German-culture and the US-American is member of the US-American-culture.

The US-guy may be a member of any race or a mix thereof, but your German guy would likely be of one of a select set of races of people - Slavic, Saxon, Nordic and other groups exist which differentiate based of physical and mental traits, not just cultural differences, they are all German by nation, but they are of different ethnic origins and for a long time held different versions of the germanic tongue.  It's like how there are Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Northumbrian, Saxon, Anglo and Nordic peoples who make up the majority of English people...  But they are different people, regardless of all being English.

The Japanese are identified as a singular race to many, but Okinawans are not the same as Ainu, or Emishi peoples.  They hold different traits.  I didn't mean to imply that all of a sudden the difference between one dwarven people and the next would be night and day, or the difference between Indians and Scandanavians, but perhaps the difference between the various Germanic tribes would be more akin to what I thought.

These things would have happened during histories, so the growth of these different cultures into full-fledged ethnic groups could take place then, but not during a game's actual play.  It would allow for one world to generate with Helldwarves, Seadwarves and Highdwarves, while the next may generate only a singular type of dwarves, but four mountainhomes of them.  I used the term subraces because it was the easiest identifier I could come up with to indicate these differences, but I suppose ethnicities work equally well.

Environmental, political and random factors could allow for these different variations of the standard dwarven people to be allowed on each world.  And to those that questioned the types of dwarves I selected, they were just some random names, I had Disney on the list because I initially joked about DF being a Snowwhite simulator when I heard the name of the game, but the names don't really matter, each dwarven civilization would have it's own name anyways, they were just ideas to convey vague concepts of differentiation.

[Leafsnail]

You could mod in a dark version of dwarves, with evil sounding names, nocturnalism, eat bones/ corpses etc.

[Enzo]

OK, I am of the mindset that subraces* are modding material and not vanilla material. But...

Do we have subraces of Humans? or Kangaroos? or Hedehog?

Could someone explain to me how the Pygmy tribes and "baseline" humans are fundamentally different than wood elves and high elves? Pygmies are just the example I can name off the top of my head. There were some similar, mostly isolated tribes in asia too that developed noticeable differences from the rest of mankind without radically altering their DNA over millions of years.

But yeah. Keep your chocolate out of my peanut butter, vanilla DF is fine for races IMO.

*although OP seems to describe something closer to sociocultural schisms...

[SirHoneyBadger]

I like the idea of dwarf ethnicities a lot more than I do "subraces", which to me imply more Neanderthal dwarfs, than they do Italians/Ethiopians.

Or atleast...I think there could be a lot of profit in developing several different cultures among the dwarfs, each with their own history, idiosyncracies, likes and dislikes. Considering the international nature of these boards, and level of creative talent present, it seems like we ought to be able to come up with some goodness. 

Although, the more I think about it, the more intrigued I am about the idea of some genetic subgroups within the Dwarf species. Humans have plenty of different genetic ancestors, so why shouldn't dwarfs have some, too? What role they might take, I don't know, but I'd hope we could do better than D&D.

On that note, I strongly disfavor the idea of an "evil" subrace/ethnicity/whatever, though. It's an unrealistic and irrelevant holdover from D&D, one that replaces intricacy with steriotype, and should be kept as far away from DF as possible.

[Janizary]

To me, the two are linked.  Of course that was to me a mechanic to allow for these different dwarf types to be around on the same world map, but it's just an idea, toss those ideas about.

It's like seadwarves would really dislike being away from the ocean, mountaindwarves away from their mountains.  They would have unhappy thoughts just for a player starting in an area without whatever they are great lovers of.  Hilldwarves would be more inclined towards massive fortresses built from stone, instead of carved from mountainsides.  But if there were ever a graphical interface, it'd be swell to see the different ones each have a different range of skin and hair colours.

In a way, it inflicts penalties on people for taking fortresses great distances away from their mountainhome, it would also allow for a benefit to those who keep it close to home.  One would hate to have a dwarf who is constantly depressed because he is pining for the fyords.

The idea of evil dwarves works well to me, since we currently have evil races, if we were to drop evil and good flags, and just let politics run their course based on civilizations' preferences and their consequential interactions, that would be nicer to me, say goblins tend to run into problems with everyone because of their raiding and such.

And elephants could then become genuine enemies to dwarves, due to a history of dwarves hunting them down for ivory on one world gen...  And elephants being as loyal as horses on the next, just because history was rolled that way.

[Enzo]

I see what you're getting at Janizary, and it's an interesting idea. However I'd be pretty pissed if I wanted to make a mountain fort, genned up a world, and had to play with arbitrary penalties because the only available dwarven civ were seadwarves.

And yes, DF already has evil races but they really are an obsolete carryover from D&D. This is a pet peeve of mine as well. I mean, for one thing the definition of evil is completely relative. Self serving, violent, untrustworthy, greedy? If you have a race where these are the main characteristics of the populace you could hardly form a tribal society without it falling completely apart.

Civilizations with different cultural norms, sure. Aztecs held brutal sacrifices, some places in Africa still practice female castration.

Civilizations with evil leaders, sure. We've seen it happen. We could probably point out a few currently.

Races that are inherently evil? Not so much.