Well, if the objective here is to come up with plausable interpretations for why dwarves are like the way they are, and there are meaningful differences between that and humans, then there's nothing wrong with making a suggestion that doesn't fly, it just means you need to go back to the drawing board for another one. "I'm just thinking out loud about concepts," is a line signifying disowning your idea.
First off, I was referring to the fact that we shouldn't discount ideas just because some of the game's current limitations pose problems for them. For instance, you mentioned just building walls around things; yes, that's currently an impenetrable defense, but we shouldn't assume that will always be the case, as it shouldn't be and probably won't be. I'm also not implicitly disowning my ideas, just saying that the first step is to consider the conceptual possibilities,
then consider which of those are worth implementing and how.
Saying that dwarves don't farm aboveground because of the risk of death while humans are willing to put up with a few attacks implies either that attacks against humans are not as bad as attacks on dwarves, human villagers are stronger and better at combat generally than dwarves, or that dwarves are either cowards or humans are suicidally brave.
This is untrue. It could also imply that dwarves have an alternative that humans don't have access to.
My point was that dwarves are more capable of living underground than humans, and already do so, so farming above-ground instead of underground would provide unnecessary added risk to them. With humans, yes, they have to deal with that risk, but only because living underground is a much worse option to them for other reasons (including risks dwarves are more equipped to deal with). There are risks associated with above-ground and below-ground living, and each race is equipped to handle with one or the other more effectively, and even disregarding that, a race exposing themselves to
both sets of risks is unnecessary unless there's damn good reason for doing so (see: the few examples of real-life underground settlements). That's what I was getting at.
I'd also have to ask "why don't they know, aren't there dwarves on the surface?" Also, if the only bar to entry as an aboveground farmer is needing to do some research, then once it's done, there's no reason not to farm like a human.
Yeah, but it's research that, to some degree, every farmer would have to do. Stuff we take for granted, like being able to tell when it might rain. My point is that there's more effort involved in training farmers when they don't even have the level of knowledge (of weather, seasons, etc.) that pretty much all humans take for granted. It doesn't make it impossible, just presents an additional barrier to entry, so to speak. Obviously on a
societal level it would just become a sunk cost, but even then, it's much harder for even a society as a whole to learn about things they don't expose themselves to daily, and you still have to explain that stuff to the farmers involved. Point is, underground is just more intuitive to them.
Eh, maybe their metabolisms (or something else) just don't function quite the same way as those of humans. Also, retaining your body heat doesn't necessarily mean you'll be as good at fighting off things like frostbite.
That's fairly vague. How could someone's metabolism be "different" in a way that they retain heat well, but are still vulnerable to frostbite?
I didn't mean to imply that; metabolism has little to do with frostbite. My point was that even if your core retains heat well, it doesn't prevent your extremities and skin from becoming frostbitten, at least not to the same extent to which it protects you against hypothermia. I guess being stocky still is an advantage overall in that sense, though (considering what you say about neanderthals).
I mentioned metabolism because the way the body
regulates metabolism is very important to thermal homeostasis, and dwarven bodies might differ a little from humans, and might not be able to adapt to the same kinds of changes in environment, or in the same way.
It takes some serious work at acclimating to surface life for a dwarf, and maybe the dwarf could be seen as a little odd for having done it.
Yep, and in some ways, it needn't be entirely
possible, in the sense that you can't make up for every physiological disadvantage. You can't exactly become farther-sighted that much just by trying, or gain greater resistance to
all forms of disease (you know, like expecting a cat to build up a human-like Tylenol tolerance), or rewire your brain's sensory systems all that much.
That being said,
some acclimation would certainly be possible.
The starting seven might be "surface acclimated", and capable of eating the strange above-ground food, but migrants might very well not be, and will be unhappy and probably even incapacitatingly sick until they can acclimate their bodies to aboveground food in small but gradually larger doses.
Yeah, I see the founding dwarves as being either foolhardy, or tough-as-nails, or otherwise just willing to brave extremes (by their standards) in order to found a new settlement. Sort of like human expeditions, in that sense. Of course, in the future, we'll probably have more complicated starting scenarios than "seven dwarves on a mission".
Maybe lumberjacks are the lowest rungs of dwarven society, while legendary microcline mug crafters, weaponsmiths, soldiers, and maybe miners are the highest-praised.
Yeah, there's definitely some room for play there. However, I like to see dwarves as being a little more egalitarian than humans tended to be. Seems to be way things are shaping up anyway, nobles aside.