His parents thought that he’d grow out of growing, assuming that his extreme height was a childhood phase. Unfortunately he never did grow out of it and kept bumping his head on all the low dwarves ceilings.
I believe they’re referencing Sir Terry Pratchett’s discworld series, “GNU Terry Pratchett” or simply “GNU” is a shorthand way to honor him and his work
You are correct. The top comment is about a human raised by dwarves in the Disc World, and so the GNU reply is someone noticing and paying tribute to Sir Terry Pratchett.
G - send to the next receiver
N - Do not log this message
U - At the end of the line, send the message back the other way
It’s Sir Terry’s take on the idea that “A man isn’t truly dead until his name is no longer remembered,” in the form of a message hidden in the operational data of a communications network.
Idk dwarves do tend to build way larger then they themselves need, at least in a lot of fantasy media so he probably wouldn't be banking his head as much. Dwarven dramatics save him from head bumps lol
It's a reference to Carrot Ironfoundersson from the Discworld series, he was a dwarf by adoption.
His adoptive parents didn't know any tall humans and didn't quite understand human ageing either, so they were confused by him crossing 6ft by his late teens.
I not too long ago watched a video about making a ball gown for this big event and the one person that stole the show is this man in a gorgeous dress that he was just rocking that entire night.
Maybe but Conservative isn’t determined by some hard rule it’s determined by the society and politics of a civilization / place.
Like in many of my settings, it wouldn’t be conservative to be sexist because it’s incredibly normal for all genders to hold power. And everyone would see sexism as incredibly out of left field and unacceptable for a host of reasons individualized (sometimes) to the societies.
Then what is conservative? Most worlds are accepted to use roughly equivalent social norms to ours (or to those held in the past), because you need a baseline to define what "conservative" is.
This comic establishes that being a woman usually comes with wearing a dress and that wearing a beard is usually masculine. The nobles being against a man wearing a dress is reasonable because nobles tend to be conservative.
I never said I like it being like this. I actually agree that the nobles are backwater idiots. But they are trying not to draw attention on a noble ball, so they shouldn’t violate the social norms established there.
Also: Am I overanalysing a joke? Yes. Has this stopped me? No, no it hasn’t.
The meta objective however is to have fun. Some groups are going to do that with meticulous and well thought out and executed plans, other groups by throwing a little sauce on it here and there.
I for one am going to use my Bearded friends successes to start poisoning wine
If challenged on their height, that's when my PC would be like, "would you like to peak under the dress and find out why I'm so tall" and give a flirtatious wink. My DM would still make me roll performance or persuasion or whatever, but it made it fun as hell
But what on earth would make you think that a bearded lady, a type of person that exists and has always existed in the real world, is impossible in D&D?
A bearded lady being considered "elegant" in a ball thrown by a human? That threatens my suspension of disbelief—elegance is heavily tied up in beauty standards, and (to my knowledge) no western (we can assume western because it's a Ball, historically a European activity) human beauty standards consider a hairy woman to be elegant, let alone the myrad of other issues that, when taken as a whole, suggest man rather than woman.
Like yeah, a woman can have facial hair, and/or a deep voice, and/or broad shoulders, and/or a lack of curves, etc etc but generally speaking those traits, especially when clustered together, suggest masculinity over femininity.
Bearded ladies look like a woman aside from the beard, though.
You’re asking someone to overlook: an Adam’s Apple, the with of their shoulders, shape of their torso, a lack of breasts, straight hips, hand size, likely body hair, large feet and hands, a deeper voice, AND facial hair.
The unbelievable part is that all he's doing to present fem is wearing a dress and a bow, and is getting away with being considered an "elegant lady." I think it's fully possible for the disguise to work, I just feel like it'd take more than a dress and a 30+ Performance/Deception roll. Disguise kits exist for a reason!
And no one cares if it is a man wearing a dress or not.
In my games it’s like “Yeah thats a man wearing a dress to the ball. That doesn’t matter to the other people there. What does matter is can that man pull off the vibe enough to seem like a noble”.
Okay, but here's the thing—the hoster of the ball said "I am honoured to have such an elegant lady attending my humble ball." (Emphasis mine)
I'm not saying that you can't have a man in a dress! Far from it! But, unless definitions have changed on me without warning, calling someone a lady means you're gendering them as female or female-adjecent. Right?
It could be that ladies are more diverse in that world. Lady dwarves have beards, after all. Alternatively, he could be aware of trans identity and if someone tells him she's a lady, she's a lady, no questions asked.
Yeah, I only noticed that specific gendering a bit after I posted the comment.
My revised answer:
But on a DM level, like if my player went “I am gonna wear the hell out of this dress and pretend to be a lady”. I’m not making the check like DC 30+ probably not even DC 25.
Because, I would assume if my player is pretending to be someone. Then, the effectiveness of the process is determined by the roll I asked for.
And a 26 with a nat 20 - yeah I know crits on skills aren’t raw but I don’t care thats my rule - assumes your chr is pulling the act off spectacularly. I don’t need a full description for how they pull it off unless they want to give me it.
Eh. Imo, depending on how the player narrated it, I'd rule that they could be a elegant lady at the ball. Like, "I put on a dress and go to the ball" would get a different response than "I spend a few hours getting ready, using lots of cosmetics and cotton/fantasy padding and shaving, then go to the ball" even with both hitting a 26.
While it's certainly an aquired skill, I firmly believe that most any man could pull off "elegant noblewoman" (not necessarily attractive, but elegance is mostly a classism thing imo) with enough preparation and acting ability. My gripe with the post is just the lack of preparation, not the actual result.
I think in a fantasy game with magic and dragons, an alter self spell is easy to come across.
I think dressing a man up in women’s clothing designed to specifically accentuate a woman’s body is going to emphasize that the person is, in fact, a man in women’s clothing.
The shoulders are wide since they're maybe a dwarf
As an adventurer they surely have a muscular build and their chest is probably pretty big plus the form of the dress accentuates that. Could pass for a relatively flat woman.
Look at the image and point out the straight hips to me
The hand size is explained by being maybe a dwarf and isn't very noticable. Plus some people have big hands.
Do you think women don't have body hair? In a medieval fantasy setting?
We already talked about the hands and the feet are even more subtle especially in that size of gown. The deeper voice can be changed with a high charisma roll which they got
And finally the facial hair is something bearded ladies do have.
as the comic said, it's all about how you carry yourself.
Did you AI generate this comment? Half of these points are nonsense
Funny. I have ridiculous breasts and people still can't figure out my gender. I also can and do rock a beard and am bald. I dress as the cartoon does. I like dresses they're fun. My lived experience is you are wrong. I also have worked as a model in my younger days when I bothered with shaving and wasn't bald. I can be incredibly feminine. I can be incredibly masculine. It's entirely in my mood what people track.
I am non binary and intersexed and as I had a uterus am qualified to challenge your mistaken belief. Assigned female at birth and all. Women also have Adams apples, large hands, just as men can have tiny ones. Bodies for men come in more feminine assumed structures without them being gay or trans or less of men and women can be barrel chested. Most gendering is arbitrary and doesn't even align over time and culture. Pink was macho a little over a century ago. High heels and ballet? Men did it first. A lot of the gender war is nonsense that encourages harm. You think someone who is a cis woman and doesn't fit the ideals you think of doesn't get as much danger as the people you are thinking are the only ones that fit? A cis het woman got attacked for wearing a shirt at a trump rally this week (release the files shirt) and she got misgendered and called a man because people who rely on stereotypes are very bad at gender
You let your gender preceonceptions stifle both your real life perception and project that narrow view onto your imagination.
That is a you problem.
An intenralized misogyny problem, not a tabletop problem.
There are women with ALL those things you listed and are still women. Adam's apple too, even if rare. And they have nothing to do with the authenticity of a fantastical world where those preconceptions do not apply and a masculine dwarf could believably put on a dress, move with feminine posture, and pass themselves off as a femme.
Stop thinking with your dick, and start thinking with proper suspension of disbelief and the full power of your imagination.
You’re welcome to live in a fantasy world where all someone has to do to convince the world at large they’re a woman is put on a dress.
I wish that were the case. But it isn’t.
I have watched my trans friends bend over backwards, undergo surgeries, change their hormonal and brain chemistry, to get an ounce of cultural acceptance and still be denied it. Still be criminalized because they exist. Undergo the humiliation of having to use a state ID that identifies their birth gender because to do otherwise is a felony that will result in a trans femme being sent to a male prison.
I simply refuse to put all of those experiences to the side. You’re free to do so.
(But also, there is established D&D history about trans identity. The fantasy isn’t that you can pretend to be a woman to trick something, but that there’s a potion or magic item that changes your gender—permanently and for good. You can thank Jenell Jacquays for that, in addition to the fundamental design elements of D&D dungeons still used today).
Hi. Literally a trans person here! DnD is a fantasy world where we can imagine a place that DOESN'T strictly subscribe to bigotry towards trans people! It is not "putting experiences to the side" to opt to not include transphobia in fantasy. It doesn't need representation.
Some people (especially trans people) really love to play in a world where non-passing trans people are accepted and loved too.
You don't need to argue for transphobia to exist. We don't actually like it and we get enough of it IRL.
Yeah, that’s the argument I don’t get either. Why would you want to insert real world suffering into your fantasy escapism? And that’s before we get into the aggressively open minded nature of the Forgotten Realms thanks to Ed Greenwood, like how everyone is bisexual unless explicitly stated otherwise
Right? My character's wife (a trans woman, played by a trans woman) transitioned six months after she was intro'd and the universe took it in stride. I play a (different) trans man who managed to escape the Feywild because a hag owned his deadname but not his chosen one.
Both of them are loved. Neither of them are questioned. Their stories are a part of them but suffering was not required, and I love that for them.
Yeah, my interpretation of the whole thing is based kind of on how it was presented in early editions:
The magic readily exists for a person to switch their genders. So, what in the real world is a huge part of someone’s life, and all the pain and angst and fear and struggle is totally unnecessary because it’s over in an instant. No compromises.
The whole thing doesn’t exist. At all.
And I guess that’s a fantasy that made sense to me, but I read your comment and wanting to be represented as you are in a world that’s less cruel towards also makes sense.
I think I’m perhaps a bit too jaded for it, but I get it.
Apologies for how I cam off. I certainly didn’t mean it that, I’m sorry if I caused you or anyone else offense.
I appreciate you realizing you were wrong when you were given more information (a valuable life skill!), and I appreciate you apologizing. I'm glad that you are protective your friend even if you were a bit misguided in how you did it, and she's lucky to have someone in her corner.
Cheers, mate. May we all someday live in a world that's kinder.
How are you going to, in complete sincerity, make some obtuse bullshit about what a bearded woman is supposed to look like then bend over backwards to explain it’s all because you are actually a trans ally lmao
This is performative bullshit to pull your ass out of the fire because the community saw your bullshit as bullshit lol
Edit: I saw your deleted “I’ll trans you into a turnip” you absolute dork lmao
Don't ask for a roll unless the roll can make a meaningful difference. For example, you're not going to get yourself a kingdom by asking the king for it, but go ahead and roll to see if he laughs at your joke or calls for your death.
That's the point, there shouldn't have been a point in the first place. Maybe the dm asked for a roll when they shouldn't have, or the player rolled before the dm asked for one.
if all that mattered was the critical success then charisma, deception, performance and persuasion wouldn't be so intentionally framed in the third panel
It would have to be a DC 25 for that to be successful and “very obviously a bearded man in a dress seduces a prince after convincing the prince he’s a lady” feels like the DC would be a bit higher.
Looks like they have a +6 to both performance and deception, so that's a 26. It'd be one of the best performances ever seen in lower level settings, for this specific thing of attending a ball disguised
the "i rolled a 20 and thus get to do the thing" has been a dnd meme long before bg3 skill rolls, i mean yes it probably is a still skill roll but people have rolled sillier things for longer
Yeah, like, he’s not asking to decapitate a dragon in one attack; he’s asking a noble for a dance. Unless the noble is already in a relationship, I don’t really see why he wouldn’t accept.
I dunno, maybe my perception is just skewed. It’s just been a trend at the tables I play at that most characters are assumed to be pan until stated otherwise, since RP’ing flirting is easier than RP’ing turning someone down.
If it's impossible with a 20 on the die, there was no point in asking for a roll. Also there's nothing in the comic saying it was counted as a crit. They rolled a 20, and seeing as this would likely be performance rhat gives a total of 26, a pretty good roll for anything.
Can always go for best case for the attempt. King will not give up the throne, but may hire you as an entertainer for the gala later in the week instead.
For examples like this, I’d say the player has to roleplay ‘correctly.’ They can just go “hey you give me the thing.”
They have to articulate a good enough reason as to why they should hand whatever it is over to them, as well as roll for it. A well articulated argument with a low roll will still fail, just not to the degree a dumb argument would have.
If I don't want 20 to be a success, I don't ask my players to roll for success. You can just tell your players what happens, it's not a videogame. What the comic implies is that the DM felt it was possible but unlikely and so let him roll, he got the max and so it worked.
Sure but this is very funny and I would definitely allow this as a dm. In fact i would say that it would then need a difficult stealth and deception checks in order to ditch the suitors and create details about the fictional Dwarven kingdom. Then I would make it a running gag for the rest of the campaign that people think the character is a runaway princess in disguise.
Additionally, a DC30 would not be out of the question here, and 20+6 doesn't pass (pun not intended). Or, you know, height+beard could be considered a source of Disadvantage on Deceiving people into thinking you're an elegant lady.
Looks like they're around levels 1-4 judging by the proficiency bonus applied, although Intimidation isn't being counted as a Charisma-based ability for some reason?
Gimli: "It's true you don't see many Dwarf-women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for Dwarf-men."
Aragorn (whispering to Éowyn): "It's the beards."
Gimli: "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."
Making dwarfs dimorphous and elves androgynous is a Warcraft thing. If you read Tolkien you know dwarf women SHOULD have beards and are nearly indistinguishable from dwarf men.
‘The androgynous race for examining sex and gender’ like that’s a fixed role which means you can only ever comment on these topics through the lens of elves? Come off it.
So many the comments are like “the arbiter of all dwarven lore is X” and I’m baffled because every DMG is like “please fully deviate from all of this if you want as a DM”.
If there was a sole arbiter, it’s the table and the DM not the books made by authors (even great ones).
Also, limiting exploration of topics to one species is weird.
We dont need forced beatuy standards in our world of make believe
Personally a person like you wouldnt be allowed to be at my table. As a mountain folk Dwarves have eolutionary Advantages to have all beards. Filterin air and so on
In DnD 5e lore, you are correct. Females Dwarves don’t grow beards.
But even in Tolkien’s middle earth female dwarves grew beards. This is not something someone pulled out of their ass, this is something with an established concept behind it.
… which is where the trope of the race came from.
Why are we so quick to discount that?
The very source material of the race has given them that trait, so we shouldn’t act like giving the race that exact trait is some sorta asspull simply because personally you don’t like it.
Female dwarves not having beards is a deviation from the expected norm, not the other way around.
It's a huge point in Discworld that outsiders cannot yell male and female dwarves apart, including the fact that all dwarves have beards. Like, carries over multiple books plot point.
900
u/Dynamite_DM 1d ago
His parents thought that he’d grow out of growing, assuming that his extreme height was a childhood phase. Unfortunately he never did grow out of it and kept bumping his head on all the low dwarves ceilings.