The Languages of Seaward, pt 1: Dwarven

  My oldest son was kind enough to begin writing up the details of the various languages of my AD&D 1e campaign.

Dwarven

The standard dwarven language is assumed to be Dethen as spoken by an educated Granite Dwarf with a neutral accent borne of native dwarven lands. Dialectic variations and some aspects of the ancient Dethek are mentioned separately.

Pronunciation

Dethen may be transcribed into English using the following letters and digraphs: A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, Z, Gh, Th, Kh, and Rh.

Each vowel has only a single pronunciation: A as in father, E as in bet, I as in machine, O as in bone, and U as in tune. Diphthongs do not natively occur.

Consonants match up to their normal English versions except as follows. Q and Gh signify unvoiced and voiced uvular stops, respectively, as in the Arabic ‘ayin and Farsi “swallowed G (geyn).” R represents the guttural R, like the second sound in, “croissant,” while Rh stands for a more English-like R; these two sounds standing in contrast is one of the more distinctive feature of the language.

Additionally, Dethen fricatives should be spoken of specifically. The language has three fricatives, V like in van, Th like in thy, and Kh like the modern gamma, the first sound in the name of the gyro sandwich. At the start of a word, these devoice, becoming F like in fan, Th like in thigh, and kh like the sound at the end of loch. These sound different, and the first is transcribed differently for intelligibility, but native speakers consider them the same letter, just like most English speakers spend their entire lives doing with the two forms of Th.

Dwarven syllable structure is highly fixed. All syllables have a core of a consonant and a vowel, as in gu-, to which one can add an ending consonant, as in gut-, and either form of R at the very beginning, as in rhgut-. Additionally, a word may begin with only a vowel, and a syllable may begin with a nasal before the consonant if it is not at the beginning of the word (as in the word, “isambar,” which means, “pearl”); note that these nasals are always assimilated (i.e “-and” is possible, but “amd” is not). Finally, the clusters bz, dz, and gz may occur in the consonant position. Thus, the maximal Dethen syllable is, “rhbzonk.”

Grammar

Dethen is largely an analytical language, like real-life Mandarin. Words only change form if they are pronouns or if they are verbs conjugating for politeness; otherwise, all meaning is conveyed strictly through additional words and word placement. Sentences follow a strict verb-subject-object order, though prepositions, indirect objects, and so on are flexible in position. Verbs do not explicitly track time, number, or anything else except politeness. Similarly, nouns and adjectives do not track gender, number, or anything else, unless they are pronouns.

Moving on to other details, the language is not pro-drop (meaning that in Dethen, words whose presence can be inferred cannot be ignored, like in English, where, “I am,” cannot be shortened to just, “am”), and is head-initial (the noun comes before its adjectives, like in Spanish), and postpositive (meaning prepositions follow their word, instead of proceeding it). The only article is the definite article, kus, which is not actually mandatory even when the object in question is definite; a noun being unmarked could mean it’s indefinite, or could mean that the speaker is not asserting its definiteness.

A major part of Dethen grammar which flummoxes foreign speakers is the politeness of verbs. Verbs conjugate into 6 levels of etiquette: unmarked (the unmodified verb, used when speaking impersonally to large groups, or when making statements of fact or simple commands to those on intimate terms. Its use elsewhere is considered dismissive), familiar (used normally with those on intimate terms. Too informal elsewhere), colloquitive (used in normal conversation and discussion in formal environments. Odd and stilted if used incorrectly), requesting (used to make polite commands and inferences to one’s superiors. Also used to express general hope and wish, when begging one’s equals, in self-deprecating humor, and in similar contexts. Literally gibberish if used incorrectly), laudative (used to express thanks and praise. Also used to reply to or affirm certain questions, requests, or commands, and is the default level for certain obscure contexts, such as speaking to someone of high religious rank. Improper use is very likely to create a major faux pas), and imperious (used when speaking from a position of official authority, and implies that the speaker bears the full weight of the law behind him. The imperious and requesting levels can be mixed in certain situations that imply familiarity within this context. Improper use is not just pretentious, but actively deluded). These mix with a few basic grammatical words to form a very complex dwarven concept of etiquette, which tends to not be understood by other races, and tends to be the only form of etiquette they ever learn.

Pronouns, similarly, actually decline for person (1^st, 2^nd, or 3^rd), number (singular, plural, or dual), gender (masculine, feminine, or mixed), and clusivity (if the speaker and one spoken to are in the pronoun together, or not).

Otherwise, Dethen tends to be fairly easy to understand. Except for a family of particles bearing emotional content, the grammar is somewhat simple, and not dissimilar from other languages in the region.

Variation

The above pronunciation is the standard accent of Iron Dwarves and educated Granite Dwarves. Provincial or colloquial speech amongst Granite Dwarves has a few variations. For example, fricatives often also devoice at the end of a word, and some bumpkin-sounding groups pronounce them voicelessly in all contexts. It is also very common to assimilate r to rh before labials and dentals and rh to r before uvulars; not doing so is one of the biggest markers of an upperclass accent. Many Granite Dwarves have also imported a letter y from human loan words.

Conversely, some Mithril Dwarves voice the fricatives even word-initially, but this is an improper hypercorrection. The other common indicator of the Mithril Dwarf accent is the retention of Ws; the letter W existed in archaic dialects, but vanished some time ago. Its use is retained by some upper crust speakers, thus lengthening some words. In a similar vein, the ancient language had a uvular fricative and a uvular nasal in addition to the uvular stops. These are still spelled, but are now pronounced as Ns, Vs, or khs, depending on the context. Some snooty aristocrats and scholars continue to pronounce them correctly, however.

The biggest divide between dialects of Dethen, however, arises from vocabulary, not pronunciation. While the three major divisions are mutually intelligible, they have some differences that can lead to confusion and loss of meaning. For example, most speakers decline the second person pronoun from the stem *rom-, but many Mithril Dwarves use the older *rhuq-, instead. Another, more humorous instance is the use of the word gzumi, meaning iron or metalwork. In colloquial Granite Dwarf usage, this word is obsolete, and the word gzurhkan is used instead. However, gzurhkan originally referred to pig iron or shoddy metalwork, a usage it still sees amongst Iron Dwarves, and in Mithril Dwarf circles, it has become a profanity used to insult poor worksmanship, thus leading to embarrassment when Mithril and Granite Dwarves mix.

Ancient Forms

In addition to W and the uvular nasal and fricative as listed above, Dethek had an ejective (emphatic or “spat” form) consonant at each point of articulation, p’, t’, k’, and q’. These fell completely out of the language centuries ago, and are unpronounceable to all but the most learned of scholars and clerics.

Much more severely impact understandability, however, is the radically different verb and pronoun structure of the ancient language. Originally, the dwarven languages had no declining or conjugating parts. Dethek used a family of dozens of particles marking formality, station of speaker, station of listener, social context, and sentence content that, over the millennia, collapsed into the modern politeness and pronoun system. Thus, formality in Dethek is even harder to understand, and some ancient texts remain obscure to even the most knowledgeable of scholars.

Five Sample Words

In addition to the words here and there above, here are 5 more words to give readers an idea of the sound of the language:

Karadig: the name of the ancient dwarven pagan religion. A Mithril Dwarf would say it, “Kawaradig.”

Nobze: spear.

Rhnogadiz: first person dual inclusive feminine pronoun; literally, “us two women.”

Lomvano: a verb meaning, “nurture/heal/respect.”

  Khut: an interjection, meaning something along the lines of, “hark/attention/look out!”

A Hot Meal and a Cup of Tea

  When I DM and when I play I am often surprised by the simple little things: player treat horses like bicycles; they never ask about the weather, and they treat fire as nothing but a light source.

  I already talked about the weather a bit and I plan to write about horses, so let's talk about fire.

  We'll start by talking about encumbrance.
  No matter where you fall on the matter of encumbrance (and I am a hard-ass stickler that will slow you down, give you penalties, and expects you to track every 1/10th of a pound) on a long journey it will be very hard to bring enough food and essentially impossible to bring enough water since the minimum a person needs is 10 lbs of water a day. So we must assume that adventurers are getting water from somewhere (streams, springs, and wells above ground. And you have water sources in your dungeons, right?) and that these sources aren't always (maybe never) pure water.
  Have I mentioned my disease and parasite rules?
  In Real Life over 3 million people die each year from water-borne diseases. Even crystal-clear water from an alpine creek can cause lethal diarrhea. Now, there are a few ways of avoiding this ranging from adding 1 part red wine to 3 parts water (which does an amazing job purifying drinking water, thus why the ancients did it) to drinking only beer to Purify Food and Drink to being a paladin.
  But one of the most direct and best is - boiling the water, which also kills parasites.
  There are other impacts, too. A series of studies in America and the UK show that office workers are more mentally alert and observant if they have a hot beverage (tea or coffee) in the morning. World military forces have been aware of the positive impacts on morale of plentiful hot beverages, as well, and I have very rarely seen a canteen, chow hall, etc. that didn't have hot tea or coffee available 24 hours a day.

  Another thing to think about is, well, the temperature. In the modern world where we go from heated home to heated car to heated office it is easy to forget that it gets cold. Imagine being dressed in chain mail on horseback in a biting wind and cold drizzle for 8 hours on a late Autumn day. Or sleeping in the open on the ground in early Spring. The Wilderness Survival Guide had some great ideas about dealing with cold weather (or hot weather, for that matter) but I often just do something simple - at a certain point travelling in the cold without adequate shelter and heat is force marching. Eventually just being out in the elements is force marching, too, even if you aren't moving.
  Dungeons are pretty chilly, I suspect. Remember, it tends to be cool underground and is often damp. According to my friends who are into caving and online caving guides one of the biggest dangers of caving, if not the biggest, is hypothermia. I assume that this is probably a problem in any deep underground place, even a worked dungeon. So PCs are going to need to warm up and/or dry off routinely.

  Last is food. I have certainly lost track of the parties that blithely announce that they will supplement their rations by 'hunting along the way' when in the wilderness. If they are very far from civilization they will also state they are having a 'cold camp' without a fire. I then ask them how they are preparing the food they hunted....
  I did mention my disease and parasite rules, right?

  Rick's disease and parasite rules are included in his supplement Far Realms, available in print and as a PDF. Far Realms also includes new hirelings, such as the healer, new PC classes, like the barbarian, and more than 30 pages of new spells. Suitable for any old-school campaign, please consider buying Far Realms today!

  Anyway, while cooking your food does greatly reduce your chances of dying horribly from disease or parasite hot meals are important to alertness and morale, too. British and American forces in combat reveal that eliminating a hot breakfast has twice the negative impact on soldier morale than doubling the amount of time they are in active combat zones. That's right, soldiers are twice as upset over no bacon and toast than they are about getting shot at more often! Just giving soldiers the ability to heat field rations has a notable positive effect on morale and performance.

  So all this long rambling is to support my actual point.

  Characters in fantasy RPGs should worry about being able to start and maintain a fire.

  So why aren't coal and charcoal seen more often on equipment lists and in character inventories?

  Yes, I am starting another 'stop thinking like a modern person and think like a medieval person' rant, why do you ask?

  People have been making charcoal for thousands of years, so far back we aren't sure when it started. But since charcoal is critical to metalwork, I have always assumed it is readily available in virtually any fantasy campaign.
  Now, actual charcoal looks very little like those briquettes for your grill. Lump charcoal looks like what it is - chunks of charred wood. from finger to fist size. Lump charcoal can range from low quality stuff that has a strong smell and a fair amount of smoke when it burns to expensive types that have virtually no odor and very little smoke when burning.
  In any case, lighting charcoal is relatively simple - flint & steel with a good tinderbox should do it as log as the charcoal is dry. Lump charcoal gets to temperature quickly and burns hotter than briquettes and the more expensive types leave less ash behind. A handful of lump charcoal will burn long enough to bring a gallon of water to a boil and maintain a boil for a full minute; a double handful is enough for 2 gallons and a meal for four-5 people.

  Coal can be more expensive or hard to find than charcoal and its quality varies from lignite to anthracite. Bituminous, which is the type usually used by smiths, is fairly easy to light (easier than charcoal), doesn't burn as hot as charcoal, and makes more smoke and ash than good charcoal. But it will light and burn when wet (although it smokes more) and the same volume of coal burns longer than charcoal. Anthracite burns with much less smoke and ash than bituminous and burns a long time but can be difficult to light. A lrge lump of bituminous coal can boil 2 gallons of water and a double handful can boil 4 plus cook a meal for 4-5 people.

  I should also mention peat - a sort of 'pre-coal' from bogs and mires, when properly dried peat can burn for a long time and produce a nice amount of heat. It has a distinctive smell and a fair amount of smoke, though.

  In each of these cases, charcoal, coal, and even peat, you get more heat for the same space/weight than wood. Also, since most wood needs to cure and dry for a while to make a good fire (and it might be wet, besides) these are great ideas outdoors as well as underground.

  Field cooking equipment is very old. Romans had all sorts of things to make army cooking in the field better and by Medieval times field cooking gear was fairly well developed with small portable iron fireboxes (about the size of a helmet), fire stands, griddles, field cauldrons (again, about like a helmet), and such. Wooden and earthenware mugs we also pretty common back then.
  The small iron fireboxes typically had a lid and such so that the airflow (and thus temperature) of the fire could be controlled. This lets them double as a heater for tents and small areas and for a small amount of fuel to last a long time. In my opinion, each party should have at least one iron fire box, a field cauldron, a small griddle, a fire stand, and some charcoal or coal.

  Which brings us to another point; air. No matter how little smoke is made, fires consume oxygen. Even in AD&D you should make sure there is enough fresh air to safely make a fire.

  No, this post is not a description of camping gear and a safety statement.
  Well, not just those things, at least.

  I concern myself with these details for a number of reasons.
  First, I want verisimilitude in my campaign - I track water usage, encumbrance, weather, etc. because it makes the world I built more internally consistent, which makes the rest of my job easier.
  Second, in my experience it allows the players a better chance to immerse themselves into their characters and the world and gives many opportunities for roleplaying - little bits like who is good at building a fire and who can't cook are fun and add a ton of depth, all on the cheap.
  Third, it is another way to weigh down characters while vacuuming money out of their belt pouches.

  Fourth, it has implications that can be plot hooks.
  For example, where does the coal come from? In Real Life the easily accessible coal was gathered very early. Are there coal mines? Where? You need coal and charcoal to make things like, oh, iron, so - do the dwarves mine it/make it? If they don't they have to get it from somewhere!
  Charcoal can have a huge impact on a region. Interesting fact - no forest in Finland is more than 300 years old. Why?
  They cut down all the trees for charcoal over the course of about 250 years!
  Mainly to get wood tar, but it was the charcoal process and it really, really changed Finland for a century+. In my Seaward campaign colliers slip into the forests between civilized lands and the orcish city-states to make charcoal to sell. Very, very risky, but very profitable. The gnomes of Gladdenstone make a lot of money mining anthracite and selling it to the dwarves. The barbarians of Eiru have to collect peat from the edges of the haunted Moorlands to heat their homes in the harsh winters of their island nation.

  So think about it. Maybe have a henchman demand more pay or have a hireling quit suddenly because there is never a pot of tea at dawn, or have the party suffer a -1 to hit from fatigue after 3 days of near-hypothermia in a dungeon's depths. Gnomes increasing prices for coal might push the dwarves to the brink of war and orcish raids in Autumn could lead to suffering as the poor run out of charcoal to heat their homes in deep Winter.

  Or just imagine going 3 days with no tea, coffee, or hot food yourself and build an adventure from that. Mine would have lots of murder and naps.

The Dwarf Chieftain Has What?! Demi-Humans and Intelligent Swords

  All of the discussion in the last article led me and the sons to go through the DMG and Monster Manual (1e, of course) and do some more number crunching. We looked specifically at two things:

  1) the powers of swords with intelligence, and
  2) the number of magical swords in the hands of NPC demi-humans

  The results are very fun.
  First, the Primary Abilities chart has a surprising amount of powers that are, well, demi-human; they mimic the racial abilities of dwarves, elves, etc. Many of the rest of the powers on the Primary Abilities chart are clerical. 38% of the powers are demi-human and 53% are at least possibly clerical, if not exclusively clerical. Only 5% are arguably only arcane (the total isn't 100% because some results are 'see other table', etc.).
  About 95% of magical swords with special abilities only have Primary abilities so the implication is that about 90% of intelligent magical swords are made by demi-humans and/or clerics.

  That changes how I look at item creation, how about you?

  Gary tells us that demi-human NPCs can make magic items, even (maybe especially) powerful ones.

  Quick aside: ever notice that when Gary discusses the creation of really powerful items he mentions that they may have been the result of lost technology?

  And we know clerics can make magic items and, unlike magic-users, they don't risk the loss of constitution to do so.
  This makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Clerics and NPC demi-humans don't risk the loss of constitution to make permanent items - of course a great many weapons would be made by them! Suddenly all those +1 swords and axes make a bit more sense - it is either a cleric praying to God for a weapon to smite evil or a gnarled old dwarven smith chanting a battle hymn over an anvil as he shapes an axe head.

  I mentioned in the last post that one of the reasons most intelligent swords are Good is because good creators are more motivated to do so and good wielders are less likely to kill the sword maker.
  Another reason most intelligent swords are good is because a large number of the creators of intelligent swords are demi-humans.

  The Extraordinary Powers chart, however, is very, very different. Only 6% of these powers are racial (and gnomish, at that!) and 6% are exclusively clerical. The other 82% are arcane (like above, the total isn't 100% because some results are 'choose', etc.).
  This implies that the 1% of swords that are really smart and really powerful are made by magic-users or illusionists.
  This also makes a lot of sense. If a wizard is going to give up a point of constitution (or an illusionist give up years of life) he probably isn't going to make a +1 sword, he is going to make as powerful a weapon as he can!

  Last, but certainly not least, we looked at the Special Purpose powers. As I mentioned previously, only about 3 in 1,000 magical swords have a Special Purpose and the Special Purpose powers are pretty much evenly divided between magic-users and clerics, although clerics have a bit of an edge.
  Say it with me - this makes sense. Really, really powerful clerics and magic-users that can make a powerful swords probably would, but clerics would be more likely to do so because they don't face the same penalties.

  After we did this analysis we did some number crunching on the demi-human listings in the Monster Manual. In the middle of this we realized something; the fact that only humans and demi-humans have specific listings for individual magic weapons, etc. while humanoids do not is entirely consistent with what we are learning by examining these charts - demi-humans and humans can much more readily make enchanted items! While we can assume that shamans and witch-doctors can and do make magic items these are probably almost always scrolls and potions; they rely upon evil humans and gifts from extra-planar creatures for the magic items they do not steal.

  [my oldest son is creating a supplement with write-ups for humanoid shamans and witch-doctors and item creation rules for them]

  Anyway, after crunching the numbers we discovered the following things to be statistically so;

  - 1 out of 2 large dwarven lairs has an intelligent magical sword (this is because dwarves prefer axes and hammers, or the number would be higher)
  - 2 out of 3 large halfling lairs have an intelligent magical sword
  - Each large gnome lair has an intelligent magical sword
  - Each large elven lair has an intelligent magical sword

  As I said in the first post  - HOLY MOLEY! This really changes how we look at NPC demi-humans, doesn't it? After all, it looks like each and every elven chieftain has an intelligent sword!

More on smart weapons next!

Dungeon Master's Log - Blackstone Campaign background Part I

  NOTE: MY PLAYERS SHOULD NOT READ THIS ENTRY

  My 2e campaign world is relatively new, only 4 years old. I use the Skills and Powers, Combat & Tactics, and the Spells & Magic rules in this campaign.  In this post I am going to review the steps I went through to provide in-universe reasons for certain racial traits.
  I began with a world map created with AutoRealm. I created a world with 2x the diameter of Earth because I wanted to introduce certain ideas into the campaign about elemental forces. Plus, big maps!
  There are three major continents - one in 'the North', one in 'the South', one the crosses the equator. The north pole is covered with a massive plateau of 6,000 square miles and the south pole is a flat plain.
  Then I went into a history that stretched from before the use of metal tools until the year before play started. Key historical events are;
 -in the the late Paleolithic all the demi-human races were concentrated in the tropical southern continent. Humanity was enslaved by Elves. The long-lived elves and their natural magic allowed them to dominate the other races. Dwarves hid in the mountains, working on weapons, Gnomes hid in the forests, Halflings skulked about, and Humans were slave labor. Humanoids lived on the northern and eastern continents.
  -a human, furious about the inability of Humans to use magic, had a breakthrough and began to understand preparing spells. He and his descendants developed the magic-user abilities over three generations eventually culminating in the magic-user class.
  -Humanity began developing magic-users in secret until they staged a mass uprising. This began generations of warfare between Humans and Elves and a civil war between the Elves. The pro-Human branch of Elves lost the civil war were driven underground by the winning Elf factions.
  -Surface Elves gained a limited ability to use prepared magic at the expense of much of their innate magical ability.
 -The subterranean Elves used magic to darken their skin to aid in underground stealth.

Note: This is used to explain in-universe a few points:
  1) Humans have unlimited potential as magic-users because they invented the use of prepared spells.
  2) The limit on maximum level as magic-user for Elves and Half-elves is because the use of prepared magic is alien to them - it is literally against their nature.
  3) Gnomes are good at Illusion because they had to hide from Elven slavers
  4) Dwarves are resistant to magic because of their long war against the naturally-magical Elves.
  5) A real reason why Drow are black-skinned as an underground race and their hatred of other elves.
  6) The plot twist that the Grey Elves are the ancient villains of the Elven civil war that drove the Drow underground.

  Next will be how I built a histroy

Fantasy Demographics, or: Why Elves and Orcs Fight Different Wars

Note: This post deals with Real World ideas, concepts, or choices that are very personal. It is not meant to offend but is just a discussion of how these factors impact fantasy role playing game campaigns. Thanks.
  Waaaaay back when, my Dad took me to see Soylent Green. Now, I was very young, but in my father's defense we both love science fiction movies, so we went anyway. This began my rather odd hobby of studying demographics (which led me to reject the threat of overpopulation by 5th grade, but that is another story). Thus there was something in both the Complete Book of Elves and the Complete Book of Dwarves which just intrigued me. In the complete CBoE they state that the average Elven female has 2 children. In the CBoD they state that the average Dwarf female has 3 kids, but 2/3 of all births are males.
  Why does this matter?
  Math.
  Not to get too wonky (although I can talk about demographics for literally hours. And I am not using 'literally' for emphasis, I mean it literally) (see what I did there?), but a key metric in demographics is Total Fertility Rate (TFR for short) which is, simply, 'how many children does each woman in a population have, on average?'. TFR means a lot - it allows you to calculate the growth or shrinkage of future generation, determine the demographic momentum of a society, all sorts of really... boring... to... anyone... else... stuff....
  Yeah.
  Anyway, when the books say 'the average Elf female has two kids' this means 'the TFR is 2'. This is important because in the Real World replacement TFR (the TFR where the population neither grows nor shrinks over generations) is between 2.1 and 2.4 - each woman has just over 2 kids each on average. Since a certain number of people never have kids for a variety of reasons, it must be above a flat 2.0. In a modern industrialized nation like, oh, France, 2.1 is equilibrium. In a modern nation with a higher rate of mortality for youth it is more like 2.4.
  Here's the point, though - in pre-modern societies replacement TFR was more like 3.5-4.5. Why? Poorer health care and a higher mortality rate. Remember, the reason the average lifespan before the mid-20th Century was 35-40 for most of the world was because so many children died - if you lived to be 14-16 you were almost certainly going to live to be 75-80! Well, barring other factors. Like war.
  Chronic war really increases the replacement TFR number, for obvious reasons. Plague can do the same.
  Well, the CBoE said 2, but maybe they reaslly meant, oh, 2.3. With magical healing, a natural resistance to disease, etc., this probably means that Elves have a stable population, barring war.
  Let's talk about Dwarves for a moment.
  In the Real World we assume a gender ratio of about 50/50, so the 66/34 male/female of the Dwarves is really important.This means if you start with 300 Dwarves you will only have 100 couples (it takes two to make little dwarves and, more importantly, TFR is tied to the number of females). If they have a TFR of 3 that means the next generation will be = 300 Dwarves. Also perfect equilibrium since that generation will also have 100 females
  "OK," I hear you say, "so the generations are stable, so what?"
  One, it means that if you accept these numbers Dwarves and Elves can't really expand - if there is already a city that houses 2,000 Dwarves why build a new one? After all, there is no population growth. Sending people off is a drain of the most important resource of a society - the people. There are probably a number of social pressures to avoid this.
  Two, it will have a huge impact on how Dwarves and especially Elves go to war. Here are some of my thoughts on this:
  While Dwarves have an 'excess' male population (the 33% of each generation that will have no wife) allowing them to go to war relatively easily, women and children are virtually irreplaceable. So while male Dwarves roaming the mountains prospecting and killing Orcs for fun might be common, they will almost certainly guard their women and children fiercely. This is a simple explanation for why you traditionally never see Dwarven women - they are quite directly the most precious thing in Dwarf society.
  For Elves it is even more extreme - any loss of life might not be replaced for two or more generations. That is pretty serious.
  This means the Elves must really strive to limit battle deaths and while Dwarves can sustain some heavy losses of life on the battlefield women are too precious to risk.
  Which leads me to a fantasy element - lifespan of non-humans.
  It takes a human about 16 years to be considered an adult and human generations are counted as about 25 years. If we follow the age guidelines in the DMG (and why wouldn't we?) it takes a Dwarf about 60 years to mature and an elf about 120. With a bit of extrapolation we can guess that a Dwarven generation is about, oh, 60 years and an Elven generation is about 250.
  Wow. That's big.
  Why? because it takes at least a generation to recover from a major loss of life. World War I caused the death of a huge number of young men. One of the reasons World War Ii was a generation later is, arguably, the hostiles needed to wait until the next generation finished growing up to continue the fighting. The Black Death caused so much loss of life that it really took five generations for Europe to recover.
  This means that it would take the Dwarves 75 years to recover from a war that killed their 'excess' males and about 30% of the rest of the males. This means an Elven society struck with something like the Black Death wouldn't recover for more than a millenium. That is high stakes stuff.
  Let's change tacks just a little bit and think about Orcs. We can extrapolate that they mature around 12 and that an Orcish generation is, oh, 20 years. We know they are 'fecund' because we are told they are. What does this mean in comparison with Elves? Well, in the Real World there are societies that reached TFRs of 9+ in the 20th Century, so 'fecund' could be quite a large number! But let's just assume that between disease, violence, and generally being Lawful Evil Orcish societies grow about 25% per generation.
  What does this mean? More directly, what does this mean for a campaign (since this is about a game, after all)?
  Here is a scenario;
  The Orcish tribes and the Elven kingdom have been on edge for a decade, but now war is really begun. The Elves are smarter, better trained, have better gear, and have more spell casters. The Orcs are more disciplined and there are many more combatants. When they begin the war there are 3,000 Elven soldiers (out of a kingdom of 20,000) and 7,500 Orcish warriors (out of 20,000 Orcs).
  After 5 years of brutal fighting the Elves prevail; they slaughter over 5,000 Orcs while losing only 1,000 Elves. The Elves return to their homes, triumphant, and the good feelings and other factors cause a spike in births, meaning the next generation of Elves will be about 10% larger.
  Humiliated, the Orcs retreat to their homes. There is no surge for them. At this point, the Year of the Great Battle the two sides are roughly as follows;
  Orcs: 3,500 surviving warriors. 7,500 potential warriors not yet mature from the 2nd generation. And 6,000 females with mates available to birth the 3rd generation.
  Elves: 2,000 surviving soldiers. 3,000 potential soldiers not yet mature from the second generation. And 9,000 females with mates to birth the 3rd generation.
 In Year after the Great Battle (YGB) 20 the second generation of Orcish warriors are mature and ready to fight - all 7,500 of them! They face off against - the first generation Elvish warriors again. After all, the young Elves still have over two centuries to mature! The Orcs are young and the cream of their army dies in the Great Battle. The Elves are battle-hardened and fierce, so this time the Elves kill another 4,000 Orcs but only lose 500 Elves. So in the second generation we have;
  Orcs: 3,500 surviving warriors. 7,500 potential warriors from the 3rd generation (25% growth, remember?). 6,000 females with mates to birth the 4th generation.
  Elves: 1,500 surviving soldiers. 3,000 potential soldiers from the 2nd generation. 9,000 females that will eventually birth 2,700 soldiers in the 3rd generation.
  Reeling from two defeats in two generations, the Orcs wait, biding their time and skirmishing with Humand and Dwarven forces in raids, raids which whittle down their comabt numbers but mean their warriors are experienced.. Finally in YGB 60 the 4th generation of Orc warriors, whittled down to 7,500 (remember that 25% growth?) but battle-hardened face off against - the 1,500 surviving 1st generation Elven warriors! As evenly matched individually as the first battle, but incredibly outnumbered, the Elves fight as defensively as possible. They barely manage to drive off the Orcs losing another 1,000 elves to 4,000 Orcs.
  Barely able to send 500 soldiers to the field, the Elves retreat into the mountains.
  As you can see, the humanoid races, with their higher fertility and shorter generations, have a massive advantage in warfare over multiple generations!
  In other words, if Elves and Dwarves do have such low fertility, they are going to be wiped out. As a matter of fact, as DM you need to explain why they haven't been wiped out already.
  Please allow me to digress from fantasy to reality for just a moment. I am going to assume that most readers of this blog like most roleplayers are from nations with low birthrates. This is, historically, an anomaly. While real world demographics do show periods of stability and periods of decline, these were caused by bad weather and plague - birthrates remained high relative to modern birthrates. While the majority of the current world is below replacement TFR this is very unusual.
  Back to FRPGs. As you can see from the example I give above, have only replacement TFR is a big problem because it means that societies can't replace major losses in anything approaching a reasonable amount of time! For this reason in my campaigns I tend to have birthrates higher. Add in the fact that FRPG worlds tend to be shockingly lethal, I tend to make them much higher than you see in the modern world, much more akin to Europe of the High Middle Ages. I essentially assume that per generation population growth for Humans is about 30%, for Halflings it is 25%, for Elves, Gnomes, and Dwarves it is 15% and for the major humanoid races it is 40%-60% (not counting war or disease for any of these). I also have the sex ratio be about 50/50 for everyone but Dwarves where it is 55/45 male/female.
  Even with more reasonable TFRs, though, the issue of the length of generations remains - Orcs can go through almost 4 generations before Dwarves get to 2. For Elves it is closer to 12 generations to 2. This will have a profound effect upon how the various races wage war.
  First, the various bonuses Dwarves and Elves have (bonuses vs. certain races or with certain weapons) make sense because of their longer lives. The same applies to the greater numbers of powerful individuals in their forces. In any given battle Dwarves or Elves will prevail over Orcs of the same number. It will be more lopsided in their favor against Goblins and much more even against Hobgoblins. But Dwarves and Elves must do their utmost to avoid a long-term war of attrition because they simply can't win such a war.
  Suddenly, there is a reason Dwarves built such strong mountain fortresses and Elves live in thick forests with many sylvan allies; these positions are defensive, giving them the advantage, and can give them better warning of potential attacks. Both races will be as selective as possible about engaging forces they cannot overwhelm and must limit their losses as best they can.
  In a similar vein, Gnomes and Halflings make a lot more 'sense', too. The Halflings have great stealth and skills with missile weapons because they rely upon avoidance and ambush. Gnomes, with their illusions, are natural commandos. Like Dwarves and Elves they have these skills because they need them to survive as a society.
  Humanoids, on the other hand, are much more like hammers than rapiers. Their goal in war is to close with and engage the enemy with as much force as possible. With their numbers than can afford to be profligate on the battlefield because they recover from the loss of soldiers faster than their foes. Wave attacks by Goblins to 'soften up' the front lines for the hammer blow of a Hobgoblin charge may seem like a terrific loss of life but every Dwarf they kill is one less Dwarf their grandchildren will have to fight!
  This can also explain why Humans so often seem dominant in FRPGs; with a birthrate and generation length much closer to the Humanoids they are both much more capable for fighting humanoids on their own terms and invaluable allies to the other demi-human races.
  Please think about it and I hope this can add to your campaigns.