From publisher blurb: Dear Reader, I confess that I’ve always had mixed feelings about the traditional fantasy portrayal of dwarves. Fantasy dwarves have a specific Gimli shaped box that has for years gone unchallenged. They are defined by being long lived, hard working, quick to anger, loyal to those they love, often obsessed with the grandeur of the past, and motivated by greed. A fantasy human can have any sort of personality and draw inspiration for a diverse array of cultures and backgrounds. Humans in most game settings can be good at just about anything. I can think of at least a half dozen sub-races and variant traits for elves that make them nearly as diverse as humans. Even Warhammer, which expanded the Gimli box a bit, still confines itself to it. This is not to say I don’t enjoy dwarves. If anything, the thing that makes dwarves interesting is that they are frequently portrayed with flaws and act as a counterbalance to the aloof-near-perfect elves they are often portrayed in contrast to. Flawed characters make for better stories. The trouble I find is that while J.R.R. Tolkien drew from mythology and folklore, which seem at least partly a caricature of stereotypes that are anti semitic in nature (greedy hairy short men that once had fantastic kingdoms.) This was not corrected by Gygax, and in turn it moved forward into the genre and games of generations of gamers. Mythological dwarves had an array of magical powers that seem antithetical to what we see from more traditional fantasy. They were more fey-like in folklore. It is hard to break dwarves out of the Gimli box, but I think that it is worth doing. Dwarves are always portrayed as the good guys despite their frequent forays into racism and toxic levels of masculinity. Yet some of my favorite characters in fiction are dwarves, and this comes down to those very flaws. Dwarven character arcs often involve them getting past a stubborn streak and admitting they were wrong, and frequently sacrificing their own lives to save their friends. This makes them compelling. From a design standpoint we tackled this from the perspective of expanding what a dwarf can be without completely changing who they are. Within these pages you’ll find the traditional mixes with more innovative concepts. You’ll find dwarves who cast the arcane, the divine, and dwarves that use all manner of weapons (including an enemy’s greed or their own beards and braids.) We pushed out the sides of the Gimli box while also trying to respect decades of interesting characters. To some, our design choices may be jarring, but take what you like and leave the rest.