Since dwarves are such a traditional people, I'd like include elements of dwarven ancestry to highlight the passage of time and to tie the dwarven PCs to their people's history. I figured a simple way to do that would be to refer to dwarven generations as a rough unit of time such "One hundred generations ago". I just need to figure out the overall average amount of time between a dwarf being born and the age at which he/she is most likely to produce offspring.
Naturally dwarves can marry and produce offspring and different times in their lives. But being a generally traditional people, I imagine there is a period of life in which it is considered most appropriate to marry. There are likely outliers who marry young or old but, given enough generations, such anomalies tend to iron themselves out over time.
According to the aging charts dwarves reach young adulthood at 40, proper adulthood somewhere between 50 and 64 (depending on vocation), reach midlife at 125 and the end of their reproductive years (if they're anything like humans) maybe somewhere around 150.
Thoughts?
Given the numbers you quoted, I'd go with around 50 years. Assuming a human generation is around 20, that is.
Say that dwarves start their apprenticeship around age 20, and that dwarven parents would not want to be still raising children once they're middle aged. Assume also that some form of birth control is known and used. That would make the normal end of actual rather than possible fertility 105. If we take the start of this period as full adulthood, and the typical point for that as 55, then the average is 80. A lot of uncertainties but that sounds like a reasonable length of a dwarven generation.
Edit: the length of a generation is a lot shorter if you're only counting the firstborns, obviously. Close to 55 years, probably.
Thanks for the feedback. :)
Been reading a bit more on the subject; I figured a good place to start would be in seeing what the average length of a generation has been historically for humans in the real world. According to this article, it would seem the human average is around 31.7 years in recent centuries and likely a little younger in centuries past. Using that as a benchmark the dwarven equivalent would be around 111 years or so.
Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to simply round it down to an even 100 and call it a day. ;)
whatever number of years it takes for a dwarf to become an adult.
Generation is vaguely defined as the time from the birth of a parent to the birth of a child.
For humans this is 20 - 25 years. Given ages for adulthood and some comparisons between humans and dwarfs I would estimate a generation being somewhere between 60-70 years for dwarves.
The starting age of humans is 15, which is about the age human females will start having children in quasi-fantasy-medieval-land.
One could reasonably expect the majority of human females to become pregnant or have at least one child between the ages of 15-20. There will be some 13 and 14 year olds getting pregnant and having children too. Just as there will be some who don't until their late 20's or later. And there will be some who never get pregnant or have children.
My understanding is that this has happened to every human culture that has ever existed. Why make any fantasy race any different?
Dwarves reach the equivalent of a human's 15 at 40, expect most dwarven women to become pregnant or have a child between the ages of 40-55.
Just pick an age 40 - 45 - 50 - 55, whatever feels right for your game.
The same would apply to every humanoid race.