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A thing I observed in the last games I played is the constant "Dwarves extinction" or "Dwarves are being extincted" plot in the game lore.

Some examples are Skyrim (Dwemer), Guild Wars 2 (Dwarves) and Dragon Age (Dwarves).

I believe this happens due to a "Tolkienish" background common to all fantasy RPG games, but still, the question remais, why dwarves are extinct or dying in some fantasy games? Where do this "cliche" comes from?

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Two comments: I don't know if this kind of question suits gaming.stackexchange. I couldn't create a tag named "lore" os "story". – Eduardo Copat Dec 18 '12 at 18:54
7  
This question is far too broad to be able to be answered. The answer is essentially, "Because story." – fbueckert Dec 18 '12 at 18:55
2  
This might work at SF&F. – Fluttershy Dec 18 '12 at 19:21

closed as not constructive by fbueckert, Zero Stack, Iszi, LessPop_MoreFizz, Fluttershy Dec 18 '12 at 19:17

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1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Dwarves are recognized as a strong, resistant, resilient and stubborn race.

When you get those "qualities", they are a very strong threat to any evil (and even some civilized races).

So, when some evil appear, he tends to go for the strongest enemy and convert him to his side or finish their existence.

Or in the case of a "civilized" race, they usually tend to clear the "noise/different" that mess with the way of think/act. (The same as the Europeans did in the Americas). And, let's say that the Dwarves have a unique way of living that doesn't take too much outside influence and "don't care" too much about the outside culture too...

About the Tolkien reference:

Unlike Elves and Men, the Dwarves are not counted among the Children of Ilúvatar. Their creator was Mahal, known as Aulë the Smith. Aulë created the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves somewhere in Middle-earth, from whom all other Dwarves are descended. Aulë though, did not have the divine power to grant independent life to any creation; Aulë repented and confessed to Ilúvatar and promised to keep them; the voice of Ilúvatar though spoke to Aulë and agreed to grant them true life, and include them in His plan for Arda. Ilúvatar granted the Dwarves life, and therefore they are known as the Adopted Children of Ilúvatar and they were to awake after the Awakening of the Elves.

Source

as you can see, they are really "stone heads" that even "challenged" god (without knowing but ...).

As developers/gamers/DM/Bards... usually use some base for reference for their "tales", you can see that almost (every) time that there is a Dwarf, he is the bad-ass of his group (usually their leader or at least has his word take in consideration).

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It is both interesting and disgusting how 7 fathers managed to procreate. – kotekzot Dec 18 '12 at 19:32
"This answer is not useful" T_T /cry – Michel Dec 18 '12 at 20:26

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