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BreaktheStatue
2019-01-27, 04:48 AM
I've yet to run across it personally, but it seems like there's a pretty sizable contingent of DMs/players who hate gnome characters, some to the point of blanket banning them from games.

As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason. Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?

Florian
2019-01-27, 04:56 AM
Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?

Kender, for similar reasons.

Millstone85
2019-01-27, 05:10 AM
Kender, for similar reasons.Kender are disliked because you are supposed to forgive their kleptomania, right? How are gnomes anything like that?

I actually prefer gnomes to halflings. I feel that forest gnomes have got the halfling themes covered, and then rock and deep gnomes offer interesting alternatives.

Kaptin Keen
2019-01-27, 05:49 AM
Gnomes - in their standard version - are boring. Of course I think all the races, as described by PHB, are boring, but gnomes particularly so. Gnomes in Eberron, just as an example, are awesome.

So for me, it's a flavor thing. Oh, and everything that's had the misfortune to be tainted by Dragonlance is just way beyond awful.

Neknoh
2019-01-27, 05:55 AM
A lot of DM's hear Gnomes and think of Warcraft, purple beards and cooky voices, rather than small naturefolk.

Kaptin Keen
2019-01-27, 05:58 AM
A lot of DM's hear Gnomes and think of Warcraft, purple beards and cook voices, rather than small naturefolk.

Ha! I'm a lot older than WoW, and the thought would simply never have occurred to me - my image of gnomes precedes WoW by two decades. But yes, I'm sure that's part of it too.

I still maintain that the gnome fluff is the worst of all the player races, and the standard is very low to begin with.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-27, 06:08 AM
As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason. Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?

I think the standard list is:
-Gnomes: people dislike either the tendency towards comic relief or the technological leanings they've had at least since Dragonlance. Proposed solution: play up the arcane magic aspect (and play up the elves' druidic magic).
-Kender: disliked because while a skilled roleplayer can make them work, their racial tendency towards kleptomania and 'innocence' make them attractive to disruptive players. Proposed solution: replace with 3.X halflings.
-Halflings: disliked because 'they rarely have a reason to go adventuring'. Proposed solution: give them mercentile leanings.
-Elves: disliked due to 'I an superior' fluff and being one of the most played races. Proposed solution: burn down the forests.
-Humans: disliked due to being boring. Proposed solution: but effort into world building.
-Half-orcs: disliked due to unfortunate backstory implications. Proposed solution (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0555.html).

the_david
2019-01-27, 06:24 AM
I don't think I've met any people who dislike gnomes. My pet peeve is special snowflake races outside of special snowflake settings.

My idea for the Gnome Liberation Front adventure got a lot of good responses in my group. Maybe you could try something like that. (Everybody plays a gnome and the goal is to liberate your petrified friends from the gardens of rich people.)

Mechalich
2019-01-27, 06:52 AM
Out of the 5 'core' D&D races 1 is humans and 3 pull their fluff heavily from Tolkien, to the point that Halflings were initially called Hobbits until legal issues were raised. Gnomes are the odd race out, and because they are the odd race out there has been no real consistency to their fluff over time. In 3e Gnomes have Bard as their favored class, largely because no one could come up with any better ideas. At the same time, Gnomes are old enough in the legacy of D&D that there is fluff accretion and it's not really acceptable to simply totally redefine their existence for a new edition they way newer and less realized races like Catfolk or Tengu might be.

Beyond that basic, 'nobody really knows what to do with us but at the same time no one can do anything truly interesting with us' paradox, gnomes have several other problems that cause people to dislike them. First, they're small, and odd-sized races tend to find reduced love in gaming simply because they make certain interactions awkward in a human-sized built environment and because they may naturally lend themselves to absurdity (Belkar is a prime example here, the idea of a 'sexy, shoeless, god of war' who can't reach high enough to stab most of the party in anything actually vital is simply comical). Second, they suffer from niche competition with Dwarves and Halflings in the 'small human' space, which is particularly bad when combined with their ill-defined fluff. This isn't unique, Hobgoblins have this problem too in that they share the 'goblinoid' space with Orcs, Goblins, and even Bugbears.


As for other races, well Kender has been mentioned and they are indeed truly horrifying alongside several other Dragonlance origin races like Tinker Gnomes and Gully Dwarves (the latter being so problematic isn't against forum rules to even talk about why).

Beyond that I generally find that 'construct' races such as Warforged, Androids, and Wyrwoods have been done poorly, with insufficient interrogation of what it would mean to actually be such a being whose sapient existence bypasses the majority of the Hierarchy of Needs from inception.

Khedrac
2019-01-27, 07:15 AM
Amongst the ex Living Greyhawk players I know, Gnomes have a reputation for always being evil.

It's not true, there are neutral and good NPC gnomes in the LG adventure set, but enough are evil (and usually pretending not to be) that their general reaction on sight of a gnome is to assume that they are actually evil and should probably be destroyed.

BreaktheStatue
2019-01-27, 07:20 AM
Yeah, I get reluctance to the whole Kender/Gnome klepto thing, or just seeking to avoid annoying RP characteristics...but why not just say "You can be a gnome, but don't use it as an excuse to be obnoxious or he's dead."

Yora
2019-01-27, 07:58 AM
People hear gnomes and think of tinkering kenders. I think that's all there is to it.

And kender are an abomination.

Poor gnomes.

Talyn
2019-01-27, 09:44 AM
I hate gnomes as a player race - I am happy to have them in my campaign world as NPCs. Feywild tricksters (like they did for them in 4e) works nicely.

The reason why is because there is no narrative or thematic space for gnomes that couldn't be done with either halflings or dwarves just as easily, and it makes my world-building less cluttered if I don't have to accommodate yet another intelligent, crafty, civilized species.

Jophiel
2019-01-27, 09:51 AM
As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason. Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?
As noted, gnomes never started with much of a culture. In 1e, they were basically forest dwarves, sharing the same skills like detecting new stonework or sloping tunnels but less effectively. But they also didn't really have the same "dwarf" feel to them which made them both an odd man out and redundant at the same time. The most you could say about them was something something practical jokes and illusionists. Then you had Krynn which started the steampunk tinkerer thing which doesn't do much for me but, if that's what you like, then at least they have a place in society. But even now with 5e, I don't have a real feeling for what a gnomish settlement or village would be like. And, again, they feel redundant with halflings and dwarves as small races and elves having fey connections. I allow them in my game but they're basically tolerated hangers-on in Elvish society with no real home or civilization of their own.

I have no interest in Tieflings or Dragonborn -- both feel like the sort of edgelord nonsense people would come up with decades ago with "My guy is a half-dragon, half-demon vampire werewolf paladin with dual-wielded vorpal Holy Avengers!". And I really dislike the amount of draconic and dragonblood critters these days. It makes dragons feel cheap and baseline to me, much like how humans are used to mix up and make centaurs and medusa and Yuan-Ti and merfolk and a billion other things. That's fine because humans in fantasy worlds are generic; I don't want my dragons to be generic. At least in my own world, I can control it and no Dragonborn, go back to old kobolds, change Dragonblood sorcerers to "Elemental", etc. Save the dragons for the real thing.

King of Nowhere
2019-01-27, 09:57 AM
At the same time, Gnomes are old enough in the legacy of D&D that there is fluff accretion and it's not really acceptable to simply totally redefine their existence

that's an interesting point to be raised here, because me and my table have never used any of the official fluff very much. Sure, there are some expectations, but if a DM totally changed the fluff of some race, nobody would complain. In fact, I did, and while it took my players a little adjusting to internalize that, for example, you can't tell the alignment of a dragon by its color, they got into it well.

Generally, I don't like too much adherence to official fluff. It has too much of a "been there, done it" feel. I'd rather use the mechanical building blocks to create something original.




in a human-sized built environment and because they may naturally lend themselves to absurdity (Belkar is a prime example here, the idea of a 'sexy, shoeless, god of war' who can't reach high enough to stab most of the party in anything actually vital is simply comical).

that makes no sense.
how is that any different than your average medium-sized fighter skewering large ogres? heck, you routinely fight stuff up to three size categories bigger than you, four sometimes, and nobody says "hold on, this sword is too short to reach the dragon's vitals, there's no way I can deal alll that damage to it", or "it picked me up with its mouth and chewed me, how can i possibly be still alive (and with only mild damage taken)?".
No, those are part "high level characters are superhuman", and part acceptable breaks from reality.
But suddenly, throw a gnome in and it's not acceptable anymore!
"oh, woe on me, I am one meter tall and so I have no hopes against this 10-meters dragon. If only I was one meter and a half, that would totally change everything!"

EDIT:



The reason why is because there is no narrative or thematic space for gnomes that couldn't be done with either halflings or dwarves just as easily, and it makes my world-building less cluttered if I don't have to accommodate yet another intelligent, crafty, civilized species.
How is that different from any of the dozens upon dozens of published races? Don't they clutter the worldbuilding too?
(My answer is yes, and therefore most of them don't exist in my campaign. Now, if in session 0 a player wanted to play one such race, I could insert is, all right, but as a rule of thumb, non-core races do not exist unless stated otherwise")

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-27, 10:00 AM
People hear gnomes and think of tinkering kenders. I think that's all there is to it.

And kender are an abomination.

Poor gnomes.

It's a bad hobbit. Unfair to the gnomes as well.

FWIW I think that they could pull something interesting out of the tendencies towards illusions and mechanics. In fact in many ways Gnomes are more dwarf-like then Dwarves, remember that in Germanic myths it was the dwarves who were great magicians and crafters who made many things, including Thor's hammer.

AvatarVecna
2019-01-27, 10:11 AM
You're right that gnomes are more in touch with general mythology tricksters...but D&D isn't primarily inspired by those, but rather by Lord Of The Rings. That leaves us with humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, and hobbits halflings. Add gnomes into the mix and they just kinda come together as a mish-mash that's distinct enough to be worth separating but a lot of people find annoying. You could play a skinny dwarf, or a short elf, or just...a halfling and you'd be hitting a lot of the same beats, but where Halflings fall into the "small guy who has to outwit the big dumb guys" by virtue of their size and their pluck, gnomes are inherently tricky, and as a species lean towards the traits of the fae that people really don't like. It's kinda like having the option to play a pixie of the Seelie Court, but also you've got racial options explicitly and implicitly rewarding you for really RPing that exact kind of behavior that made the fae carefully-navigated obstacles at best and outright capricious antagonists with a non-mortal concept of morality at worst. When a friend first described gnomes to me as "they're like classic fae from Arthurian legend, except they're really friendly and people love 'em", my response was "so, nothing like classic fae", and oh joy it turns out we were both wrong - me for thinking they were different, and him for thinking that was charming.

Of course, there's also that some players (myself included) hear the word gnome, and their first thought can be less "classic fae, but friendly*" and more "you're playing a lawn ornament?"

Neknoh
2019-01-27, 10:58 AM
Personally, I skew my gnomes into magical tinkerers, even as mages or warriors.

Not full on dwarves with runes and pure mechanical effects, and not full on elves in magical ivory towers, rather something in between.

Gnomes like making things which they then imbue with magic, a bird toy made by a gnome will not fly through clockwork and cogs, but rather through enchantment.

A gnome tool will be less refined than a dwarven one, but will be enchanted in some small way to be equally good.

Gnomes are played like the elves/dwarves of norse mythology rather than gygaxian dwarves.

It also differs them from halflings as well.

The Jack
2019-01-27, 11:00 AM
This wasn't exactly I was thinking of, but it fits


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrjStSqu_w4

Jay R
2019-01-27, 11:02 AM
The main reason I prefer humans, elves, dwarves and hobbits* is that I'm interested in them totally apart from D&D. I've played an elf that was raised away from any other elves, and knew nothing of elven culture. But I treated him like a Wendy Pini elf; that's still playing a role I loved before I come to the table.

The truth is that I don't have any favorite gnome characters from literature. Nobody like Bilbo, Sam, Frodo, Legolas, Elrond, Cutter, Skywise, Puck, Trumpkin, Gimli, Thorin, Andvari, Doli, Doc, Dopey, Casanunda, etc. From Paracelsus to the present, no author has presented me a gnome type that looks like it would be fun to play. Certainly not the earthmen of Narnia, the pests of Harry Potter, or the nomes of Oz.

So all I have to go on is D&D fluff, and I never went to D&D for a D&D-only creation.

Similarly, I would never play a hobgoblin unless he could be green, small and quick, and go out walking with his black thorn stick.

After 44 years of D&D, I am currently playing a gnome for the first time. I'm using as much of the fluff as possible, but I'm using it to bring in ideas from other literary non-humans. Two of his names are Doli and Gwystyl (from Prydain's Fair Folk) and the name he uses around elves is one I invented from Sindarin. While I'll never tell anybody at the table, his character is built primarily around Robin Goodfellow's playfulness and Skywise's curiosity.

[And I've built in a tribute to Alan Rickman that won't come out for a long time.]

* Yes, yes, I know. The PHB says "halfling". When I started playing, they were called hobbits, and we played them because we loved hobbits. Then the Tolkien estate sued and said that TSR couldn't make any money off of their intellectual property. But I'm not making any money from it, and in my games, they are still hobbits.

gkathellar
2019-01-27, 12:23 PM
There's a lengthy collection off specific reasons, but I think the central issues are that people feel they're out-of-place, ill-defined, and sort of annoying in most of their implementations.

There's an argument to be made that they exist in fantasy games entirely as a particularly weird and unasked-for D&D-ism (although the other side of that coin is that tricksy magical little people occur in mythology all over the world, and gnomes have at least a vague relationship to that archetype).

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-27, 12:36 PM
I'll admit I was a gnome-hater for a long time.

All the characters I saw using the race were obnoxious (playing up either the "mad scientist" or the "trickster/kender" archetypes or just plain cartoonish). They didn't fit into my world at all and were only there for legacy reasons in version 1. So when I did a time-skip, I genocided them. They existed in history, but were extinct.

I've backed off that position now--now they're just rare (in the main play area). Gnomes are the result of goblin tribes being exposed to large amounts of "fey" spirits, the kami of nature. This mutates them into gnomes, where the type of gnome depends on the exact nature of the fey influence. They do breed true and occur at the tribe level unlike aasimar, tieflings, or genasi, all of whom are of similar origins (stemming from humans) except celestial, fiendish, or elemental influenced--all of these rarely breed true and only occur in individuals rather than groups.

Jophiel
2019-01-27, 01:03 PM
(although the other side of that coin is that tricksy magical little people occur in mythology all over the world, and gnomes have at least a vague relationship to that archetype).
The problem is that, without more than "magical trickster", they make fine one-off NPCs but lackluster PCs. And you can't swing a dead displacer beast in a Monster Manual without hitting a dozen other magical fey tricksters which takes us back to the "redundant" issue. It's unfortunate that one somewhat unique trait they were given (steampunk tinkerers) is also one of the more obnoxious things about them.

In the Paksennarion novels, gnomes are super-lawful and orderly. Their stonework abilities rival the dwarfs' but their aesthetics are Soviet-utilitarian blandness versus the richly decorated and gem-encrusted dwarven architecture. The gnomes are also superior scholars and military tacticians as well as being traders renown for their fairness. "Measure for measure" is their creed and favors or gifts are very rarely given -- a gnome given aid will expect to pay you back for it and a gnome rescuing you will expect payment. I liked that take on them since it gave them a society both fairly unique yet understandable. It also helped that dwarven/elvish society is barely touched on so it didn't feel as though they were stepping on anyone's established toes.

Xuc Xac
2019-01-27, 02:05 PM
And I really dislike the amount of draconic and dragonblood critters these days. It makes dragons feel cheap and baseline to me, much like how humans are used to mix up and make centaurs and medusa and Yuan-Ti and merfolk and a billion other things.

For a game called "Dungeons & Dragons", the dragons should be a lot more common at least as far as PCs are concerned. Maybe there aren't a lot of dragons in the world, but adventurers should be running into them regularly.

Gygax sold us a bill of goods!

Jophiel
2019-01-27, 02:18 PM
Dragons got second billing for a reason!

Now, "Raisin Bran" -- there's a legitimate complaint.

Deophaun
2019-01-27, 02:41 PM
There is no such thing as gnome hate. There is, however, a psychosis where people don't murder the things on site.

Talyn
2019-01-27, 04:27 PM
How is that different from any of the dozens upon dozens of published races? Don't they clutter the worldbuilding too?
(My answer is yes, and therefore most of them don't exist in my campaign. Now, if in session 0 a player wanted to play one such race, I could insert is, all right, but as a rule of thumb, non-core races do not exist unless stated otherwise")

It really isn't. Like you, I don't use races that aren't in the core rulebooks in my campaign world, for that exact reason.

Xuc Xac
2019-01-27, 06:00 PM
It really isn't. Like you, I don't use races that aren't in the core rulebooks in my campaign world, for that exact reason.

I don't think being in the core rulebook is a valid reason for including them. I pick the races that I think are appropriate for the setting and those are the only ones that exist.

Jophiel
2019-01-27, 06:09 PM
It really isn't. Like you, I don't use races that aren't in the core rulebooks in my campaign world, for that exact reason.Unfortunately for 5e DMs who hate gnomes, they're not only in the core rulebook, they're even in the "Common races" section instead of the "Uncommon, go ask your DM" section :smallyuk:

Millstone85
2019-01-27, 06:35 PM
Unfortunately for 5e DMs who hate gnomes, they're not only in the core rulebook, they're even in the "Common races" section instead of the "Uncommon, go ask your DM" section :smallyuk:Gnomes are in the 5e PHB, but they are listed in Uncommon Races.

Jophiel
2019-01-27, 06:40 PM
Gnomes are in the 5e PHB, but they are listed in Uncommon Races.
That's what I get for not double checking. Thanks for the correction. Take that, gnomes!

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-27, 06:58 PM
It really isn't. Like you, I don't use races that aren't in the core rulebooks in my campaign world, for that exact reason.

I tend to go with a mixture of: humans, elves or beastfolk, dwarves or gnomes, halflings, lizardfolk (if those aren't counted under beastfolk). I find that elves and dwarves are generally more readily accepted by players, but I have a distinct preference for beastfolk and gnomes despite each race being redundant archetype-wise (both elves and beastfolk tend to be nature themed races, while we've covered gnomes versus dwarves in this thread). I'm also on the fence about halflings, but I find that in a small enough number of races I can normally carve out a spot for them.

I actually find that a smaller number of races tends to be better, and I also have a soft spot for playing lizardfolk (partially because I never get the opportunity). I actually think that the sheer number of races and subraces in the 5e PhB is a bad thing, there's too many to easily give everybody a place in a small setting without significant overlap or stereotyping (and too many 'not from around here' races gets boring). I think old BD&D actually got it right by focusing on four core races and giving each an archetype, even if three of them were classes. Three to five seems to be the sweet spot.

Interestingly Gnomes have gone from the race with the most innate magic in 3.X to just having magic resistence as standard and Forest Gnomes coming third place in terms of magical powers (Drow and Tieflings get more spells, High Elves get more flexibility in their Cantrip but lack an equivalent to FG's beast speech). I sometimes wonder if D&D should have moved away from magical ability being based on race, I actually liked how in BD&D all elves got spellcasting unless they were from the Hollow World (I remember thinking that Warrior Elves were cool because they didn't get magic).

Anyway, I guess my point is that we need more support for the nonmamallian player options, and that elves should get more spellcasting if they're going to be the magical race. Really getting the itch to play a lizardfolk shaman.

Kaptin Keen
2019-01-28, 01:52 AM
It is time to ... Make Gnomes Great Again! =)

As I've stated above, I like the gnomes in Eberron. Clever little schemers that everyone is just a little bit scared of. I think we can all agree that tinker gnomes are awful - yet I still feel like gnomes have a slightly better technology level than everyone else. Slightly more inventive by nature, I guess. So while I certainly don't want the 'gnomes can invent anything, but it explodes' trope, I do feel they likely have hot air ballons, gaslight, maybe some sort of alchemical battery and electrical pocket watches?

But the main point about gnomes is that they are clever. Not more intelligent than many other creatures - just more prone the scheming and plotting. It also helps that they're neutral. While good and evil have a tendency towards duking it out, neutral is much more likely to manipulate or negotiate.

Oh and .. no mythology! Then they become leprecauns, and that's just straight up unacceptable.

oxybe
2019-01-28, 02:03 AM
gnomes have the unfortunate racial identity of DwElfLings.

They share some of the secondary traits of other races: love of gems and shinies with dwarves, some innate magical nature with elves and some trickster nature (and being the group shortie) with halflings.

but outside of this they lack any big standout traits. dwarves are gruff and husky metalworkers, elves are flighty and aloof maestros of magic and protectors of nature, halflings are homebodies occasionally struck by wanderlust and chock full of gumption.

admittedly a lot of this is due to tolkien influence, but that's something at least. for the most part gnomes seem to be added due to legacy, rather than a strong identity.

the other issue is that having an elf, dwarf or halfling in the party isn't a liability. A kender is annoying and will likely get themself or the party killed (usually through antagonizing the wrong guy by taking something they shouldn't, stealing something off a PC that could use it right now, or touching a bad thing). a mad scientist tinker gnome, especially if they carry around half-functional dangerous magical devices, is a ticking time bomb one bad dice roll from a TPK.

I'm not saying you can't make interesting gnome races, but the default leaves a lot to be desired.

Kaptin Keen
2019-01-28, 02:37 AM
I'm not saying you can't make interesting gnome races, but the default leaves a lot to be desired.

All the standard races are more boring than a cardboard sandwich - to me, that's hardly the issue. No, the problem with gnomes is that we have no proper frame of reference for them. In short, we simply don't know what to do with them.

The more I think about it, the more - to me - gnomes are gentleman adventurers (m/f). Well dressed, polite, mannered, groomed. For all their superficial qualities, deep down they are tricksters at heart, and always have an angle, a scheme, a plot they're working on. They always have a trick up their sleeve, and while they're certainly capable of trust, that doesn't mean they cannot have a contingency plan in place, in case that trust turns out to be misplaced.

They're a race of tiny, late 17, early 18 hundreds James Bonds, loaded up with magic, alchemical gadgets and rodent friends who spy for them.

Florian
2019-01-28, 02:40 AM
I think one of the most annoying aspect about Gnomes is their depiction as either being tinkers or tricksters, at least in D&D. Both aspects draw the kind of people that can have a tendency to be extremely annoying, very similar to the whole cat girl stuff.

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 02:48 AM
I've yet to run across it personally, but it seems like there's a pretty sizable contingent of DMs/players who hate gnome characters, some to the point of blanket banning them from games.

As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason. Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?

I don't understand it either. I understand banning halflings, but not gnomes.

I have noticed that the people who want to ban gnomes tend to love halflings and the people who ban halflings tend to love gnomes

Particle_Man
2019-01-28, 03:05 AM
The first dungeons and dragons gnome role model was a secondary character whose main claim to fame was dying in battle at the hands of the first dungeons and dragons troll role model in the Poul Anderson novel “Three Hearts and Three Lions.”

Other than that the trouble with gnomes is that there’s no there there.

Other authors have tried but how do you top Tolkien? And he didn’t have them. Neither did Howard. Lieberman didn’t and Vance didn’t. Kudos to Moon for trying but the game did not follow her (although Castles and Crusades did a bit by making them lawful neutral).

In D and D they are known as favoured enemies of kobolds. I think kobolds may be more popular as pcs.

I don’t hate gnomes but they don’t thematically attract me.

Eldan
2019-01-28, 03:15 AM
I'll just say that Gnomes are the last race I'd drop from the lineup. Why? Because they are what dwarves should have been, as far as I'm concerned.

What's the D&D dwarf? It's Gimli. The D&D dwarf has all of Gimli's abilities, Gimli's talents and Gimli's weaknesses. They even use axes, when just as many or more dwarves in Tolkien are mentioned to use spears or swords.

Gnomes on the other hand? They are dwarves in general. They not only do everything mythological dwarves do (they are small, sneaky, use illusions, curses and craftsmanship), they even do Tolkien dwarves pretty well. Because Tolkien's dwarves are also small, often quite sneaky and master craftsmen.

I'd drop elves and dwarves from the game before I'd drop gnomes. They are the number one fairy tale and mythology race and the ones who are closest to representing their origins well.

Yora
2019-01-28, 03:46 AM
Gnomes are also better hobbits than halflings are.

Eldan
2019-01-28, 03:55 AM
That one I'm not so sure about. The classic halfling stats definitely feel to me as if someone went through Lord of the Rings chapter by chapter and wrote down everything the halflings did. "Okay, so here, Merry and Pippin are throwing stuff at orcs. That means halflings get a bonus to thrown weapons. Here, Sam and Frodo are walking past Minas Morgul and there's some kind of paralyzing fear effect, but they make it through. So halflings have a bonus against fear...."

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 04:33 AM
The first dungeons and dragons gnome role model was a secondary character whose main claim to fame was dying in battle at the hands of the first dungeons and dragons troll role model in the Poul Anderson novel “Three Hearts and Three Lions.”

Other than that the trouble with gnomes is that there’s no there there.

Other authors have tried but how do you top Tolkien? And he didn’t have them. Neither did Howard. Lieberman didn’t and Vance didn’t.

Terry Pratchett did and had them

Mechalich
2019-01-28, 04:54 AM
Terry Pratchett did and had them

Terry Pratchett gnomes are six inches tall. In D&D terms such a being is a slightly different class of Fey, a slight variation on the Atomie (also in Pratchett), not an actual PC race. In fact, that's another major problem with gnomes, the fluff floating around in popular media corresponding to 'gnome' corresponds to either a ceramic garden accessory or a helpful Fey creature that doesn't come up to your knees. In fact, during much of the heyday of 2e D&D the go to mental image most people had for 'gnome' was probably David the Gnome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_David_the_Gnome), airing on Nickelodeon, who was six inches tall and looked suspiciously like Santa Claus.

I mean look, one can defend or not defend pulling depictions from somewhat strained readings of Tolkien, but Tolkien influence on the culture is undeniable. Heck we only call them Dwarves because Tolkien was messing with language. His contemporary CS Lewis used the plural properly in Narnia and called them dwarfs. Most D&D races are shamelessly ripped from popular culture, even when that becomes needlessly recursive - the design of the Thri-kreen is based off the design of the Phraint which is based off the original design of the Ice Devil - the Gnome is the odd race out that in order to put them into the game everything about the popular culture image of the gnome had to be discarded. What was imagined in its place has never really stuck. Heck, the Tinker Gnome variant from Dragonlance, which is not a race, it's a bizarre long-running gag, is probably better known than any actual gnome-fluff from standard D&D.

Eldan
2019-01-28, 05:00 AM
The first dungeons and dragons gnome role model was a secondary character whose main claim to fame was dying in battle at the hands of the first dungeons and dragons troll role model in the Poul Anderson novel “Three Hearts and Three Lions.”

Other than that the trouble with gnomes is that there’s no there there.

Other authors have tried but how do you top Tolkien? And he didn’t have them. Neither did Howard. Lieberman didn’t and Vance didn’t. Kudos to Moon for trying but the game did not follow her (although Castles and Crusades did a bit by making them lawful neutral).

In D and D they are known as favoured enemies of kobolds. I think kobolds may be more popular as pcs.

I don’t hate gnomes but they don’t thematically attract me.

As soon as you get away from the name "gnome" and accept that they could also be "kobolds" or "dwarves", you find a million role models for them, in fairy tales, norse mythology, Alemannic mythology and in fantasy literature.

As for Tolkien, how about Mim, the Petty Dwarf? (https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/M%C3%AEm)

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 05:20 AM
Terry Pratchett gnomes are six inches tall. In D&D terms such a being is a slightly different class of Fey, a slight variation on the Atomie (also in Pratchett), not an actual PC race. In fact, that's another major problem with gnomes, the fluff floating around in popular media corresponding to 'gnome' corresponds to either a ceramic garden accessory or a helpful Fey creature that doesn't come up to your knees. In fact, during much of the heyday of 2e D&D the go to mental image most people had for 'gnome' was probably David the Gnome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_David_the_Gnome), airing on Nickelodeon, who was six inches tall and looked suspiciously like Santa Claus.

I mean look, one can defend or not defend pulling depictions from somewhat strained readings of Tolkien, but Tolkien influence on the culture is undeniable. Heck we only call them Dwarves because Tolkien was messing with language. His contemporary CS Lewis used the plural properly in Narnia and called them dwarfs. Most D&D races are shamelessly ripped from popular culture, even when that becomes needlessly recursive - the design of the Thri-kreen is based off the design of the Phraint which is based off the original design of the Ice Devil - the Gnome is the odd race out that in order to put them into the game everything about the popular culture image of the gnome had to be discarded. What was imagined in its place has never really stuck. Heck, the Tinker Gnome variant from Dragonlance, which is not a race, it's a bizarre long-running gag, is probably better known than any actual gnome-fluff from standard D&D.

Hobbit knockoffs are the opposite problem though. They're a knockoff of a very specific intellectual property that has no basis in folklore (or at least none beyond the fact that folkloric races are often unnaturally short). It's equivalent to if they had a PC race that was very obviously Smurfs or very obviously Gungans. (edit: or even moreso it's like if they had a PC race that were very obviously Smurfs but they were all inexplicably based on one of the more misfit smurfs like Grouchy Smurf or Smurfette, resulting in the knockoff being skewed and inaccurate)

The gnome race's issues pale in comparison

Son of A Lich!
2019-01-28, 05:47 AM
I'm just going to go ahead and say because they are redundant.

Master Craftsmen? Nope, that's dwarves.

Master arcanists? nope, that's elves.

Master Thieves? Nope, that's Hobbits Kender Halflings

Clerics could work, but they have no historical backing for that claim. Humans and dwarves fill the role better, if Asimar are not in the picture.

Naturalists (Druids/rangers and the ilk)? Nope, Humans or elves.

Faustian devil bargainers? Nope, Tieflings are way cooler.

Potentially evil critter to be redeemed? Nope, just... no... Almost all of the other races have much eviler versions that fill this work better.

...

I think the general pretense of Gnomes is just a bit jarring as they stand. Tinkering is really the only place they can hold themselves as distinct from other races, but the rules themselves don't really support that. Had we a gun smith fighter class, a warlock pact for artifacts of magical prowess, a techno-druid of some kind, and some general steam punk support they could work.

As they stand now, I just place them as a off breed of the goblinoids and connect the Goblins to the fey wilds. Whether goblins are a successor of gnomes or vice versa is dependent on the culture in question and how they look at their history. Personally, I would rather Goblins get the half-orc treatment and Gnomes fade into the background, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Deophaun
2019-01-28, 06:01 AM
Terry Pratchett gnomes are six inches tall. In D&D terms such a being is a slightly different class of Fey, a slight variation on the Atomie (also in Pratchett), not an actual PC race. In fact, that's another major problem with gnomes, the fluff floating around in popular media corresponding to 'gnome' corresponds to either a ceramic garden accessory or a helpful Fey creature that doesn't come up to your knees.
Larry Corriea's Monster Hunter series has gnomes as the mafia, based on the old "give us food or we'll burn your house to the ground" stories.

He also has elves as trailer trash.

Eldan
2019-01-28, 06:06 AM
And what exactly makes elves master arcanists? Racially, they have no bonus whatsoever to magic. If anything, they are gishes or half-fighterish types, with all their free weapon proficiencies and their dexterity. And meanwhile, the gnomes have actual bonuses to magic.

Or craftsmen? Sure, the dwarves have a bonus there, but so do the gnomes. And if you look what else they get, I just think that gnomes are actually much better craftsmen, fluffwise. I mean, what do dwarves actually do in the fluff? They build giant fortresses and then stand around being tough and stoic. The gnomes, meanwhile? They are ideally suited to building wondrous hidden underground kingdoms, hidden behind false tunnels and illusions, full of gems and gold and a thousand magical wonders. They are small and weak, so they can be caught by humans or gods and buy their freedom in exchange for magical trinkets.

Just like dwarves do in just about every mythological story where they show up.

I mean, really. Between a gnome and a dwarf, who of them would forge a chain out of a cat's footfall and a the breath of a fish? Brew the mead of poetry? Know the doors between worlds? Who is mostly known for their invisibility cloaks, but deathly afraid of violence? Who would have a king with a garden of magical roses and a palace made of translucent quartz? Who, exactly, among the dwarves as portrayed in DnD, would have the genius idea to make a golden pig that glows in the dark? Would they invent a ship that can be folded up like a handkerchief and stored in a pocket? Hm? Yes, they could manage a Mjöllnir or a Gungnir, but they barely make anything wondrous that isn't a weapon.

D&D dwarves fail at being dwarves.

Mechalich
2019-01-28, 06:35 AM
Hobbit knockoffs are the opposite problem though. They're a knockoff of a very specific intellectual property that has no basis in folklore (or at least none beyond the fact that folkloric races are often unnaturally short). It's equivalent to if they had a PC race that was very obviously Smurfs or very obviously Gungans.

The gnome race's issues pale in comparison

Legally, sure, but as a matter of popularity and connecting with the playerbase, not in the slightest. D&D halflings aren't a hobbit knock-off, they are Hobbits, straight-up, in a blatant act of copyright infringement that absolutely did get Gygax in hot water. And they aren't the only example. The Githyanki and Githzerai were stolen from Dying of the Light by George RR Martin by Charles Stross (TSR got away with this because it was the pre-internet era and no one bothered to tell Martin until years later). D&D has never concerned itself with a viable basis in folklore, they've always wanted a basis in nerd culture. In the 1970s, when the game was created, that was Tolkein plus a heavy dose of Howard, Leiber, and Vance. It's shifted over time of course. Pathfinder, for instance now includes a whole lot of Lovecraft and the Deep-One Hybrid has been established as a playable race. Beastfolk (catfolk, lizardfolk, and dragon-people, among others) are a way bigger part of D&D now than they used to be because of anime, the general furry movement, and other developments, as are playable construct races because android-types are way more prevalent now than they were in the mid-seventies.

If they can get away with it a gaming company will pull anything and everything they can out of the current trends in order to try and make a splash. Sometimes, if they get really lucky they may even help drive trends, as White-Wolf did at the height of their powers right around 2000, and then those trends will drive them in turn. Halfings, for instance, have become fairly common in contemporary fantasy, and you get things like FFXIV's Lalafells (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/5/57/Lalafell_CG.png/revision/latest?cb=20130407184433) as a result.

D&D Gnomes are the very unusual example where the TTRPG incarnation is almost completely disconnected from the popular culture iteration, admittedly not entirely the fault of the game, there's not a whole lot you can do with ceramic garden accessories, and as a result they have no resonance.

BreaktheStatue
2019-01-28, 08:00 AM
If I had to create a solution that would include both gnomes and halflings, it would be something like this: halflings are settled, urban/civilized creatures that regularly interact with other common races, while gnomes are fey and feral. The two are as dissimilar as humans and elves.

Ghostwise halflings get cut for encroaching too much on forest gnome territory, and tinker gnomes get eliminated because...well, it seems like much of the gnome-hate is due to the more obnoxious tinker gnome RP.

Plus, I just like the idea of gnomes being more primeval and mysterious, and the whole tinker gnome idea, at least as presented in Dragonlance/WoW, can be grating.

Sir_Chivalry
2019-01-28, 09:14 AM
Honestly I second the Eberron lore being the best version. But you can even backport the origins from Eberron into other dnd settings with almost no problem.

Gnomes just wandered out of Thelanis (plane of Fey and stories) and dropped into what is their part of the world by accident. There are still the Thelanis variety of gnomes (chaos gnomes) on that plane, but the denizens of the Fey plane are moldable by stories, so the varieties of gnomes represent groups of distinct subraces that only formed due to conflict with the surrounding goblin empire and the native jungle/mountain kobolds. Deep gnomes, like most underdark versions of core races, are gnomes that dwell too close to the underground realms of the aberrations of Xoriat (plane of madness).

The gnomes are diplomats, scribes and alchemists, experts in binding magics, scholars and all around friendly. They have survived because they surrender, they submit to bigger races, they wait and make themselves indispensable. Halflings run away, avoid and migrate to get out of conflict. Gnomes smile while you drink the poison. They can flavour your food 1/day after all.

I also swap halfling and gnome sizes around so gnomes are small and feylike but that's just me

Jay R
2019-01-28, 09:23 AM
It really isn't. Like you, I don't use races that aren't in the core rulebooks in my campaign world, for that exact reason.

The core rulebook is not my determinant. I generally don't use races unless they have a literary history (that calls to me and/or my players) outside of D&D. My most recent world had Fair Folk (from the Prydain chronicles) but no gnomes.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-28, 09:36 AM
The core rulebook is not my determinant. I generally don't use races unless they have a literary history (that calls to me and/or my players) outside of D&D. My most recent world had Fair Folk (from the Prydain chronicles) but no gnomes.

One of the goals of my setting was to be a kitchen-sink, done right. That is, have all the 1st-party, generic setting player options somewhere in the world, but with lore and personalities, etc. fitted to the world.

I'm not really fond of lifting races from other media wholesale, because they don't fit nicely into my decidedly non-standard setting. Instead, I take the presence of the race as a given and then mutate the history/lore/etc until it fits the world.

Pelle
2019-01-28, 09:42 AM
I don't think being in the core rulebook is a valid reason for including them. I pick the races that I think are appropriate for the setting and those are the only ones that exist.

Agreed, but when introducing new players, I find it's a lot easier for everyone when you can refer them to the core rulebooks without having lots of extra exceptions they need to manage.

Pelle
2019-01-28, 09:56 AM
One of the goals of my setting was to be a kitchen-sink, done right. That is, have all the 1st-party, generic setting player options somewhere in the world, but with lore and personalities, etc. fitted to the world.


A challenge I find with this approach is that it's hard for players to accept the unique take on the races, and just assume that the stereotypical image they have from before is relevant. No matter how much you try to demonstrate in-game otherwise, many players are stuck with seeing gnomes as tinkers, short people with beards as greedy and so on.

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 10:48 AM
I'm just going to go ahead and say because they are redundant.

Master Craftsmen? Nope, that's dwarves.

Master arcanists? nope, that's elves.

Master Thieves? Nope, that's Hobbits Kender Halflings

Why not drop the halflings instead?

Eldan
2019-01-28, 10:49 AM
I'd argue that gnomes are better arcanists than elves and better crafters than dwarves, since crafting requires magic.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-28, 10:54 AM
A challenge I find with this approach is that it's hard for players to accept the unique take on the races, and just assume that the stereotypical image they have from before is relevant. No matter how much you try to demonstrate in-game otherwise, many players are stuck with seeing gnomes as tinkers, short people with beards as greedy and so on.

I guess since I play dominantly with new players, they don't have a well-formed mental image of most of the races beyond the Tolkenian ones. Feeding into that, the Tolkenian races only have minor tweaks--it's the more D&D-type ones (drow, gnomes, tieflings, etc) where I get more off-the-beaten-path. And when there's a possibility of misunderstanding, I'm quick to share the differences in the moment (ie "you would know that..."). I'm very free with information. I don't play hidden-message games about setting details.

With established players, I make it clear at session 0 (and beyond) that this is not your stock D&D world. For one thing, I've thrown out "alignment as a cosmic force", and so no one has fixed alignments. Things may look superficially the same, but they're all different under the hood.

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 11:11 AM
Legally, sure, but as a matter of popularity and connecting with the playerbase, not in the slightest. D&D halflings aren't a hobbit knock-off, they are Hobbits, straight-up, in a blatant act of copyright infringement that absolutely did get Gygax in hot water.

Not just legally, thematically and culturally and folklorically as well. Elves, dwarves, and gnomes are everywhere, and orcs while not everywhere are at least in most other fantasy games and have a history as a regional spelling of ogre. Halflings on the other hand don't appear anywhere except for a single mid 20th century book series. They avoid the problem of contradicting folklore only by being something that isn't in any. There's plenty of places where they're equivalently shoddy as a literary adaptation though, starting with the very fact that someone thought they'd make good adventurers as a matter of course. In the book the hobbit race's whole thing was that they were boring, and that with the exception of Bilbo, Grand Took, and the hobbit members of the Fellowship of the Ring none of them ever left the shire or did anything at all interesting.

Tanarii
2019-01-28, 11:57 AM
Because of WoW. At least that's my experience. That's where the whole "squeaky voice" & "steampunk" crap that most people that seem to dislike gnomes comes from.

Also because of Dragonlance. Like Kender, Tinker Gnomes eventually saved the race from its unfortunate progenitors, which were disasters. But both new races were a step too far into the absurd, which sadly generated a backlash and made them controversial. Before they were merely generally disliked or overlooked, but afterwards a vocal minority despised the offshoots.

Ultimately in the next edition, the best traits of Kender were separated, replaced the awful hobbit-halflings, and something amazing resulted. Gnomes were similarly given the "best of" treatment. Although for gnomes it took a while longer.

5e has unfortunately done a lot of damage to the image of halflings. But for gnomes, it's been nothing but more forward progress.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-28, 01:02 PM
It may just be me, but I like the tinkering focus for at least some gnomes. Mainly because my dwarves don't do that (being stodgy tradition-obsessed folk instead of experimenters). Since my gnomes are really fae-influenced goblins, I've taken the goblin inventiveness/lack of common sense or safety protocols and refined it for gnomes. While goblins take shortcuts and invent all sorts of things (mostly useless), but don't refine their inventions much ("adequate is good enough" is their watchword), rock gnomes are the first to really take a scientific approach to mechanical technologies and alchemy. Instead of the goblin scatter-brained, cat-like curiosity, gnomes have obsessions and specialize to tremendous levels.

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 01:04 PM
I don;t understand why people hate gnomes tinkering either

Jay R
2019-01-28, 01:14 PM
Why not drop the halflings instead?

Because love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did.

Jophiel
2019-01-28, 01:20 PM
I don;t understand why people hate gnomes tinkering either
Probably because it quickly jumps from "tinkering" to full-blown steampunk airships and telegraphs and cannons and elevators and rockets and robots. If your desired milieu is high fantasy, it detracts from that. If you're happy with that stuff in your world then, sure, have gnomes cranking it out.

If it was constrained to minor tchotchkes or little things like some sort of compass then it's less offensive to the setting. And that's where 5e rock gnomes are at as PCs but the idea of tinkerer gnome culture quickly explodes into much larger things. Probably doesn't help that they're portrayed as goofy mad scientist types going "Woo-Hoo-Hoo-- Oh NOOOooo!" as their motorized wagon hilariously crashes into a pig sty before exploding rather than Leonardo DaVinci types.

If I did want to give a race a culture of engineering, dwarves would be a much more obvious choice since (until recently) they didn't have any magical tradition. Hard to justify rigging a place with wires and electricity and lightbulbs when Continual Light orbs are a thing.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-28, 01:25 PM
Probably because it quickly jumps from "tinkering" to full-blown steampunk airships and telegraphs and cannons and elevators and rockets and robots. If your desired milieu is high fantasy, it detracts from that. If you're happy with that stuff in your world then, sure, have gnomes cranking it out.

If it was constrained to minor tchotchkes or little things like some sort of compass then it's less offensive to the setting. And that's where 5e rock gnomes are at as PCs but the idea of tinkerer gnome culture quickly explodes into much larger things.

I've actually added "technomagic" as an additional source of power in my world (practiced by "savants"). It's limited in that it's powered by the practitioner's own power (like spell slots power regular magic). So these things either don't work for anyone else or fail quickly if they leave his possession. And none of them are really scientific--they work because the savant expends energy. Gnomes are especially primed to act as savants.

The other "magitech" is all soul-powered. And since finding willing souls to sacrifice is rather difficult in most areas and the forcible version spawns demons (more specifically converts the practitioner and anyone who happens to be around them into a demon) and tends to get the forces of the Astral Plane down on your butt pretty darn quick...

Yeah, it means that the "magitech == evil" trope is in full effect (although occasionally subverted by willing sacrifices).

Eldan
2019-01-28, 03:11 PM
Because love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did.

You say that, but I've had a lot of discussions about why D&D dwarves don't turn invisible or make weird magical contraptions, like dwarves are supposed to. The fairy tale dwarf has a lot more resonance with quite a few people I've played with than Gimli does.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-28, 03:23 PM
Why not drop the halflings instead?

A lot of it is because hobbits halflings are seen as more standard due to having been there from the word go.


5e has unfortunately done a lot of damage to the image of halflings. But for gnomes, it's been nothing but more forward progress.

Care to elaborate? I tend to skip halflings these days to get to the gnomes.

Millstone85
2019-01-28, 03:43 PM
Care to elaborate? I tend to skip halflings these days to get to the gnomes.They are probably referring to the literal "image of halflings". As in, the art is horrendous. What madman thought up halflings with overly tiny feet and overly big heads?

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 04:12 PM
A lot of it is because hobbits halflings are seen as more standard due to having been there from the word go.

I personally tend to view gnomes as more standard fantasy fare due to them having been around from he 1500's, rather than only dating back just a little more than 80 years

EDIT:
Also,man aside about the kender. I think they have a place. While the name kender is new from dragonlance, the concept of a tiny humanoid being that is benevolent but has no sense of personal or property boundries is well attested in folklore. Usually in the form of elves breaking into someone's workshop at night to work for free. But D&D's elves are already doinf otner stuff, so we need something different to fit that niche.

gkathellar
2019-01-28, 04:39 PM
If it was constrained to minor tchotchkes or little things like some sort of compass then it's less offensive to the setting. And that's where 5e rock gnomes are at as PCs but the idea of tinkerer gnome culture quickly explodes into much larger things. Probably doesn't help that they're portrayed as goofy mad scientist types going "Woo-Hoo-Hoo-- Oh NOOOooo!" as their motorized wagon hilariously crashes into a pig sty before exploding rather than Leonardo DaVinci types.

Some of this comes down to status quo: in many fantasy settings, gnomish technology is narratively disallowed from ever going anywhere (FR and Dragonlance are two very obvious offenders). This, in turn, makes the tinkering first-and-foremost a wacky affectation, a sort of unfunny running joke about "haha look at those gnomes aren't they silly." If this is your main impression of gnomes - and I think for a lot of people it absolutely is - they become an extremely tired caricature. Hell, even in settings where they're allowed to go full steampunk, those innovations usually aren't allowed to have a meaningful impact on the world, so it just becomes their wacky hat.

The prankster/trickster archetype suffers from similar problems: gnomes are presented as "silly," and even when you try to make them scary illusionist trapmasters, they can never quite shake their joke character baggage. When we encounter "cool" gnomes, we all know that the reason they've got all of these cool affectations stapled on is because there's a joke character underneath.


I personally tend to view gnomes as more standard fantasy fare due to them having been around from he 1500's, rather than only dating back just a little more than 80 years

For better or for worse, fantasy as a genre really isn't about 500-year-old folk tales. "Standard fantasy fare" is what appears in standard fantasy genre material. That's ... mostly Tolkein-ish elves, with some Tolkein-ish dwarves and halflings thrown in sometimes. It's only really in D&D and its imitators that gnomes show up.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-28, 04:40 PM
I personally tend to view gnomes as more standard fantasy fare due to them having been around from he 1500's, rather than only dating back just a little more than 80 yearslore. Usually in the form of elves breaking into someone's workshop at night to work for free. But D&D's elves are already doinf otner stuff, so we need something different to fit that niche.

I was talking about the beginning of D&D, should have clarified :smallsmile:

Tanarii
2019-01-28, 04:48 PM
They are probably referring to the literal "image of halflings". As in, the art is horrendous. What madman thought up halflings with overly tiny feet and overly big heads?oh lord yes. Nothing could be further from awesome. And the descriptions match the old hobbits, Halflings are back to short and pudgy. Oh, I mean "stout" of course. ;)

I'm not that big on the lore trying to serve two masters: hobbits vs wandering gypsy-like nomads. But it's not terrible to have choices, of course. I just happen to think the latter is fantastic explanation of why they are a "major" adventuring race.

Son of A Lich!
2019-01-28, 05:06 PM
Why not drop the halflings instead?

Because Gnomes encroach on the toes of other races without the support of their tinkering.

So, to address the other question (Why dwarves are master craftsmen and Elves are master arcanists, when Gnomes could do both just as well), Gnomes don't have the internal lore supporting it as a truth.

Elves and arcana are intertwined due to their absurdly long age and having lived through the golden years of arcana. When it comes to the background of the world, there are usually a number of Elves in the history of wizardry, while gnomes are little more then a foot note. Mechanical bonuses aside, Elves and Gnomes both clink for positioning in Arcana and the Fey Wild connection.

Where Gnomes are excellent tradesmen of their tinkering, due to the fact that it never seems to manifest within the lore itself outside of Maybe Airships, Dwarves making golems, superior runework, and just excellent magic items in general (Note dwarven throwing hammers and the ilk, but there are no Gnome lineage magic items unless you homebrew it). If I have a magic weapon and say that it is clearly of gnomish make, I get eyebrows piqued. If I say it was dwarven made, it's considered a good weapon until proven otherwise, even if it isn't magical.

So, if I dropped halflings instead, I still get the same clash and overlap gnomes have with everyone else. At least Halflings are known for throwing weapons and cooking and that doesn't stumble on anyone else's toes.

halfeye
2019-01-28, 05:13 PM
For better or for worse, fantasy as a genre really isn't about 500-year-old folk tales. "Standard fantasy fare" is what appears in standard fantasy genre material. That's ... mostly Tolkein-ish elves, with some Tolkein-ish dwarves and halflings thrown in sometimes. It's only really in D&D and its imitators that gnomes show up.

That's because the books are lost.

Cervantes rails about fantasy knights not being for real in Don Quixote, he apparently really hated those books. Apparently the hate survived but the subjects of the hate didn't. Some of us would probably love those if they were translated from the Spanish.

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 05:54 PM
That's because the books are lost.

Cervantes rails about fantasy knights not being for real in Don Quixote, he apparently really hated those books. Apparently the hate survived but the subjects of the hate didn't. Some of us would probably love those if they were translated from the Spanish.

And also because it becomes blurred with folklore the further back you go

LudicSavant
2019-01-28, 06:03 PM
I've yet to see a single person who didn't like gnomes in Eberron.

Finding someone who like gnomes in the Forgotten Realms has proven much more challenging.

This leads me to believe that the culprit is the quality of fluff writing between different settings.

Millstone85
2019-01-28, 06:07 PM
I think that gnomish tinkering is at its best in the form of magical toymaking.

https://nerdarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/gnome-848x400.png

It is not something I would associate with halflings, dwarves, or elves. Except maybe Santa's elves, which D&D gnomes somewhat resemble. It is not worldchanging like an element-powered train would be, and may in fact be no more useful than a real-life electronic toy. Except of course when it is, acting as a drone familiar or such.

hamishspence
2019-01-28, 06:24 PM
It is not something I would associate with halflings, dwarves, or elves.
I think in the LoTR novel, for the Unexpected Party, Bilbo gives away a few magical toys that had been made by the dwarves.

Eldan
2019-01-28, 06:25 PM
Whereas I think gnomish tinkering is best in this form:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9eYG8aXgAEGohm.jpg

Or perhaps, as they are more well known today:

https://static0.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/infinity-war-dinklage.jpg

That's a gnome.

Eldan
2019-01-28, 06:26 PM
That's because the books are lost.

Cervantes rails about fantasy knights not being for real in Don Quixote, he apparently really hated those books. Apparently the hate survived but the subjects of the hate didn't. Some of us would probably love those if they were translated from the Spanish.

I mean, we have the Song of Roland. This is Roland's Breach:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/La_breche_de_roland_2.jpg/280px-La_breche_de_roland_2.jpg

He cleft it into that mountain range with one blow of Durendal. If you look very closely, you see the human in the middle for scale.

Mildly Inept
2019-01-28, 06:44 PM
I think the best idea for gnomes I've ever seen floated is to have to take their tinkering and industrious nature, combine it with German militarism, and create the Holy Gnoman Empire. Like the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy. But with gnomes.

Granted, it's going to get a few groans and eyerolls at the table, but still...

Jophiel
2019-01-28, 06:59 PM
Whereas I think gnomish tinkering is best in this form

Or perhaps, as they are more well known today:

That's a gnome.
But that's just it -- I don't see those guys chanting incantations or waving scrolls or going into zany feats of engineering to make weapons. I don't picture them making weapons by sitting on top of a pile of books to reach their desk and wearing anachronistic spectacles and a weird hat with a candle on top. They're not making those weapons because they can make small illusions or chat with otters. They're just REALLY good at making weapons and use materials with inherent magical qualities brought out by their superior weapon-smithing process. That sounds like dwarves to me.


Holy Gnoman Empire
See, this is why no one likes gnomes. Go think about what you did.

Millstone85
2019-01-28, 07:17 PM
But that's just it -- I don't see those guys chanting incantations or waving scrolls or going into zany feats of engineering to make weapons. I don't picture them making weapons by sitting on top of a pile of books to reach their desk and wearing anachronistic spectacles and a weird hat with a candle on top. They're not making those weapons because they can make small illusions or chat with otters. They're just REALLY good at making weapons and use materials with inherent magical qualities brought out by their superior weapon-smithing process. That sounds like dwarves to me.This matches well with what Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, a 5e book, has to say on the matter.

Dwarves are of two minds on the topic of magic. They view divine magic as a gift from their gods, a direct helping hand meant to aid them in their effort to follow their gods' examples. Indeed, many forms of divine magic are essential for the smooth operation of any stronghold and the continued survival of the clan. For that reason, clerics are more common among the dwarves than in other races. Dwarves who are especially devoted to the clan are believed to have a special connection to the deities, and often learn how to use that conduit to bring forth divine magic.

Arcane magic in all its forms is a different matter. Dwarves have no innate fear or hatred of such things, but arcane magic has no true patron among the dwarven deities. As such, the dwarves ignore it in their daily lives, and clan members who take up the practice are exceedingly rare. Using arcane magic to assist in the creation of one's works is anathema to almost all dwarves, because the act amounts to nothing more than cheating. The few dwarves who embrace arcane magic tend to venerate Abbathor, if only in secret.

Eldan
2019-01-28, 07:17 PM
But that's just it -- I don't see those guys chanting incantations or waving scrolls or going into zany feats of engineering to make weapons. I don't picture them making weapons by sitting on top of a pile of books to reach their desk and wearing anachronistic spectacles and a weird hat with a candle on top. They're not making those weapons because they can make small illusions or chat with otters. They're just REALLY good at making weapons and use materials with inherent magical qualities brought out by their superior weapon-smithing process. That sounds like dwarves to me.


See, this is why no one likes gnomes. Go think about what you did.

They made a golden glowing pig any a folding boat and are master illusionists. How are they not gnomes in D&D.

JAL_1138
2019-01-28, 07:19 PM
Just as a bit of an aside: while plenty of replies have been the genuine complaints from folks who don’t see the point or actively dislike gnomes, the gnome hate on this forum may also seem a bit over-represented, due a bit of a running gag I’m somewhat responsible for, stemming from some posts I and several others made in various “Things I May No Longer Do While Playing” threads. Due to a propensity for playing insane tinker-gnomish characters who alternatively either build ridiculous but alarmingly effective contraptions (e.g., using green slime as a siege weapon out of a homemade trebuchet) or ridiculous Rube-Goldbergian contraptions that fail spectacularly in some way, or for as using tinker gnomes as a DM to create all sorts of groan-inducingly silly, high-bathos enemies and setting lore (e.g., the grisly serial killer the party has been tracking turning out to be a gnomish “patent automatic-clockwork combination barber and weed-whacker” run amok, or multiple types of monster having descended from escapees from an ancient Giant Space Hamster breeding program), multiple DMs and groups have given me a lifetime ban from using gnomes in any capacity whatsoever, both as a player and DM. It eventually resulted in one of the “Things I May No Longer Do While Playing” threads getting titled “GNO GNOMES,” and a running gag (which is not that exaggerated at all from Dragonlance and Spelljammer canon) regarding tinker gnomish insanity and the tendency for gnomish inventions to explode (unless they’re supposed to explode, in which case they either fail to explode, or explode in a manner and/or at a time they definitely weren’t intended to).

gkathellar
2019-01-28, 07:37 PM
They made a golden glowing pig any a folding boat and are master illusionists. How are they not gnomes in D&D.

Well, first off, none of that is in the image you posted, which just depicts a couple of smiths. And there’s the matter of aesthetics to consider: the historical presentation of D&D gnomes hasn’t been that of Norse dwarves, no matter how cool that might be. You can reasonably propose that the Norse dwarf aesthetic is the one gnomes should have (although I think that makes pretty slim pickings for a PC race), but it’s not the one they have already. As Jophiel says: I don’t see no candle hat.

Mildly Inept
2019-01-28, 07:43 PM
See, this is why no one likes gnomes. Go think about what you did.

If I did any thinking at all, I would not have made that post to begin with.

Jokes aside, I don't particularly care for gnomes myself, but I don't find them offensively bad, just kind of... uninspiring overall. Though I've considered using them as antagonists for a kobold campaign. I think the history of horrible atrocities and ancient hatreds between gnomes and kobolds has potential.

Pelle
2019-01-28, 07:50 PM
I think the best idea for gnomes I've ever seen floated is to have to take their tinkering and industrious nature, combine it with German militarism, and create the Holy Gnoman Empire. Like the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy. But with gnomes.

Granted, it's going to get a few groans and eyerolls at the table, but still...

Oh lord, I think that's a great idea! I have to steal that for an evil empire as villain, gnomes lend themselves well as sinister bastards.

Mechalich
2019-01-28, 07:56 PM
a running gag (which is not that exaggerated at all from Dragonlance and Spelljammer canon) regarding tinker gnomish insanity and the tendency for gnomish inventions to explode (unless they’re supposed to explode, in which case they either fail to explode, or explode in a manner and/or at a time they definitely weren’t intended to).

2e Tinker Gnomes truly are a running gag, one that was sometimes stretched out to novel length - there really is a Dragonlance novel where a mechanical gnome ship flies to the moon - and because of the prominence of the Dragonlance depiction in the novel line and a relative absence of gnome characters from FR, that was the depiction that dominated throughout the 1980s and 1990s and to some extent still holds in memory today. I mean, even in BGII they chose to make the most notable gnome character, Jan Jansen, into a complete joke. It's hard to take a race seriously when it's been used as comic relief for so long.

BreaktheStatue
2019-01-28, 08:09 PM
2e Tinker Gnomes truly are a running gag, one that was sometimes stretched out to novel length - there really is a Dragonlance novel where a mechanical gnome ship flies to the moon - and because of the prominence of the Dragonlance depiction in the novel line and a relative absence of gnome characters from FR, that was the depiction that dominated throughout the 1980s and 1990s and to some extent still holds in memory today. I mean, even in BGII they chose to make the most notable gnome character, Jan Jansen, into a complete joke. It's hard to take a race seriously when it's been used as comic relief for so long.

His name is actually "Jan Jansen?" As in the goofy Upper Midwestern/Scandanavian caricature in the "Yon Yonsen" poem from Slaughterhouse Five and elsewhere?

Ha, the name itself is a total in-joke.

druid91
2019-01-28, 08:12 PM
I hate gnomes as a player race - I am happy to have them in my campaign world as NPCs. Feywild tricksters (like they did for them in 4e) works nicely.

The reason why is because there is no narrative or thematic space for gnomes that couldn't be done with either halflings or dwarves just as easily, and it makes my world-building less cluttered if I don't have to accommodate yet another intelligent, crafty, civilized species.

I mean. That being said, you could axe literally every race apart from humans. There's no reason to have ANY of the extra races.

JAL_1138
2019-01-28, 08:46 PM
2e Tinker Gnomes truly are a running gag, one that was sometimes stretched out to novel length - there really is a Dragonlance novel where a mechanical gnome ship flies to the moon - and because of the prominence of the Dragonlance depiction in the novel line and a relative absence of gnome characters from FR, that was the depiction that dominated throughout the 1980s and 1990s and to some extent still holds in memory today. I mean, even in BGII they chose to make the most notable gnome character, Jan Jansen, into a complete joke. It's hard to take a race seriously when it's been used as comic relief for so long.

Also, I should point out, the entries in the Spelljammer sections of the Monstrous Compendium that mention Tinker Gnomes and their various creations present them as just plain ridiculous.

For instance, gnomish spelljammer ships are powered by literal hamster wheels. There are an absurd variety of Giant Space Hamsters, including such gems as the Miniature Giant Space Hamster (Boo of Baldur’s Gate), the flying carnivorous giant space hamster (a bit of flavor text quotes gnomish hamster breeders: “a regrettable if understandable line of inquiry”), the two-headed lernaean bombardier giant space hamster (flavor text: “Well, we’re certainly not likely to make that mistake again or at least not more than once again anyway,” lack of appropriate punctuation intentional), the fire-breathing phase doppelganger giant space hamster (flavor text: “We completely fail to see what everyone is so upset about, especially since biology is such an inexact science and for every step forward there must be two steps backward but anyway we said we were sorry and we’d like our funding back so we can pay our bail and go home,”) and the Tyrannohamsterus Rex, a massive colossal creature that is an utter coward and only likely to do damage if it steps on someone while it’s trying to run away, and the now-defunct gnomish colony that first bred it supposedly did so “because it was there.” Tinker gnomes across all of space live in fear (“although they laugh nervously and claim otherwise”) of the dreaded and horrifyingly aggressive Hamster of Ill Omen, named “Wooly Rupert,” rumored to be larger than a Tyrannohamsterus Rex, highly intelligent, and capable of both spellcasting and spelljamming.

Seriously, the Giant Space Hamster entry tells you just about all you need to know about tinker gnomes. What that doesn’t tell you, the Autognome entry does.

Dragonlance tinker gnomes (from whom Spelljammer gnomes are drawn) fall into two groups. One, the much larger group, considers the other smaller group to be insane and sad because their inventions actually work, which means they’ll never know the joys of learning from spectacular failures and constant attempts to improve like proper, sane gnomes (well, at least the ones not currently being scraped off the ceiling of their workshop and gathered in an ash-bucket, but of course we they can at least learn from the terminally-crispy ones’ mistakes, and gno gnome could regret givigng their life for the sake of sciegntific progress after all).

So yeah, they’ve kinda been a running gag since Dragonlance was first published.

EDIT: Some people, it seems, don’t find the silliness and frequent explosions fun. Such as the groups and DMs mentioned in my prior post who have banned me from gnomes.

icefractal
2019-01-28, 08:46 PM
I have no interest in Tieflings or Dragonborn -- both feel like the sort of edgelord nonsense people would come up with decades ago with "My guy is a half-dragon, half-demon vampire werewolf paladin with dual-wielded vorpal Holy Avengers!". Yeah, like that well known edgelord Geoffrey of Monmouth. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin)

Nothing against LotR, but it's not the start and finish of fantasy. IDK about dragonfolk, but people with some demonic blood are a lot more common than Halflings or Dwarves in fantasy/myths/folklore.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-28, 09:03 PM
Honestly, I'm not a fan of gnomes or halflings.

Then again, neither of my WIP settings has standard elves, or any sort of dwarves, either.

Particle_Man
2019-01-28, 10:33 PM
Maybe part of the problem is that gnomes are associated with illusion magic and that is one of those DM-Player argument nodes.

Bohandas
2019-01-28, 11:07 PM
I mean. That being said, you could axe literally every race apart from humans. There's no reason to have ANY of the extra races.

Why not the humans?

Xania
2019-01-28, 11:46 PM
Why not the humans?


I don't know, there are enough human-centric worlds around, removing them for once sounds fine to me.

About gnomes, as everybody said, a race must be mutilated to know who they are (halflings being a race of commoners or magic being removed from elves for example)
Right now they are "house elves" for me, wich is not very inspiring by any measure.
The other option being make them walking weird beards full of magic, doesn't sound like a PC either.

Swaped their name with dwarves though, and their size with halflings.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 12:53 AM
Yeah, like that well known edgelord Geoffrey of Monmouth. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin)

Nothing against LotR, but it's not the start and finish of fantasy. IDK about dragonfolk, but people with some demonic blood are a lot more common than Halflings or Dwarves in fantasy/myths/folklore.
The number of people I've seen who want to play a "half-demon" in the mold of the mythical Merlin is... zero. Which is kind of a good thing because the 5e Tiefling is also nothing remotely like the mythical Merlin.

Look! It's Merlin! :smalltongue:
http://www.5esrd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/DeanSpencer-tieflingwizard-reduced.png


They made a golden glowing pig any a folding boat and are master illusionists. How are they not gnomes in D&D.
Your "tinkering in its best form" images were two dudes making a hammer and a movie dude who made an axe.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 02:24 AM
Yeah, there's surprisingly few images of dwarves forging pigs or Freya's wig to be found on the net.

But it's the same characters.

Alternatively for magic dwarves, Alberich.

Florian
2019-01-29, 03:05 AM
I don;t understand why people hate gnomes tinkering either

Tinkering basically breaks with the basics we need to keep a faux medieval setting running. D&D-likes use magic as a replacement for modern tech and makes most of the concept needed to play work as such, like the Cleric being the equivalent for a Field Medic, because no-one wants to retire their character for having lost an arm or due to long rest and recuperation. Tinkering gets us on the road to handle stuff with mundane tech as we know it, something that will more or less simply break the whole concept of most fantasy settings.

Mechalich
2019-01-29, 03:43 AM
Tinkering basically breaks with the basics we need to keep a faux medieval setting running. D&D-likes use magic as a replacement for modern tech and makes most of the concept needed to play work as such, like the Cleric being the equivalent for a Field Medic, because no-one wants to retire their character for having lost an arm or due to long rest and recuperation. Tinkering gets us on the road to handle stuff with mundane tech as we know it, something that will more or less simply break the whole concept of most fantasy settings.

Tinkering also doesn't make much sense in terms of tech level. Dragonlance Tinker Gnomes have technology that is centuries ahead of everyone else in their world - one canonical short story by Jeff Grubb has a Tinker Gnome invent a nuclear bomb - but does this without any reasonable technological progression or without any of their technologies disseminating to change the world. The Tinker Gnome reality is a world like the universe of Girl Genius, where mad science does what it wants, but it is dropped fully-formed into an otherwise quasi-medieval setting and authorial fiat is used to prevent one from influencing the other in any way. It's bad worldbuilding, bad plot construction, and thematically dissonant.

JoeJ
2019-01-29, 03:53 AM
Tinkering also doesn't make much sense in terms of tech level. Dragonlance Tinker Gnomes have technology that is centuries ahead of everyone else in their world - one canonical short story by Jeff Grubb has a Tinker Gnome invent a nuclear bomb - but does this without any reasonable technological progression or without any of their technologies disseminating to change the world. The Tinker Gnome reality is a world like the universe of Girl Genius, where mad science does what it wants, but it is dropped fully-formed into an otherwise quasi-medieval setting and authorial fiat is used to prevent one from influencing the other in any way. It's bad worldbuilding, bad plot construction, and thematically dissonant.

Tinkering is no less out of place in than ki powers or psionics are. Clockwork tinkering was a feature of both the renaissance and the ancient world. Gnomes turn clockwork into something more like clockpunk, which aesthetically works in either time period (although arguably not during the time in between).

Mechalich
2019-01-29, 06:35 AM
Tinkering is no less out of place in than ki powers or psionics are. Clockwork tinkering was a feature of both the renaissance and the ancient world. Gnomes turn clockwork into something more like clockpunk, which aesthetically works in either time period (although arguably not during the time in between).

You do realize that both ki power and psionics are massively out of place in D&D right? And that a huge fraction of players and GMs have hated on them for decades? The monk got dropped for the entirety of 2e, regularly gets ragged on, and has only a marginal place in the published fiction. Psionics has even less of one, has never been supported in core in any edition, and has barely ever made it into the fiction at all.

Additionally, whatever the merits of 'clockpunk' as a storytelling method, Tinker Gnomes don't represent that. Their 'science' is fundamentally about telling jokes, not making a point. Tinker Gnomes are the only characters in the Dragonlance Chronicles that manage to make freaking Tasselhoff, a kender whose mental development hovers at around the human-ten-year-old level, seem serious.

Now, the actual gnomes presented in 3e and later editions of D&D are far more serious creations than anything in Dragonlance, thankfully, but they are less memorable, and that's a problem. There hasn't even been a strong attempt to define the non-tinker gnome in the fiction. There's plenty of fairly famous iconic D&D elves, dwarves, and halflings, but very few gnomes, and those characters that do exist like BGII's Jan Jansen of Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Jubilost (a pompous and pedantic alchemist) aren't exactly working hard to move away from the tinker gnome stereotype. The original gnome was never the most popular D&D race, and when Weis and Hickman buried them in an explosive crater, no one ever bothered to try and dig them out.

NorthernPhoenix
2019-01-29, 06:39 AM
I sometimes wonder how these discussions on gitp are 20-40 years behind the fantasy zeitgeist. Is 2e Dragonlance and old as dirt fairy tales really a greater reference point than anything popular in the last 20 years?!

Millstone85
2019-01-29, 07:02 AM
I sometimes wonder how these discussions on gitp are 20-40 years behind the fantasy zeitgeist. Is 2e Dragonlance and old as dirt fairy tales really a greater reference point than anything popular in the last 20 years?!Very well put.

Kaptin Keen
2019-01-29, 07:11 AM
I sometimes wonder how these discussions on gitp are 20-40 years behind the fantasy zeitgeist. Is 2e Dragonlance and old as dirt fairy tales really a greater reference point than anything popular in the last 20 years?!

Yes?

I mean, Dragonlance is really good if you're looking for an example of something that's really bad. But any more recent sources of inspiration on gnomes that you have - please share. I may have entirely missed a vast plethora of popular publication on gnomes that game out the last 20 years. Books, magazines, movies and tv-shows, all are welcome.

=)

Eldan
2019-01-29, 07:37 AM
I sometimes wonder how these discussions on gitp are 20-40 years behind the fantasy zeitgeist. Is 2e Dragonlance and old as dirt fairy tales really a greater reference point than anything popular in the last 20 years?!

How are old as dirt fairy tales not a reference point for fantasy? Surely a lot more people know at least some Grimm fairy tales than know all but the most well known fantasy books. And everyone has at least heard some names from Norse mythology. Which, of course, also inspired fantasy in turn.

Millstone85
2019-01-29, 07:46 AM
But any more recent sources of inspiration on gnomes that you have - please share.Then I offer the 5e Player's Handbook and, from the same edition, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

I opened those without any defined idea of what a gnome was supposed to be. I mean, I had read stories about gnomes before, but they were everything from living lawn ornaments to Pratchett's lilliputian shoemakers.

Anyway, after reading those 5e books, I am far more interested in playing a gnome than a halfling.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 07:54 AM
Dragonlance informed the gnomes of Everquest and World of Warcraft which are probably the most relevant fantasy cultural touchstones of what a gnome "is" in modern times aside from children's movies.

If you want to go with Gnomeo & Juliet as your modern gnome zeitgiest then that's certainly an option.

Millstone85
2019-01-29, 08:09 AM
If you want to go with Gnomeo & Juliet as your modern gnome zeitgiest then that's certainly an option.I was actually thinking about a story I read as a child. Can't remember the name, so maybe not much for zeitgest, but it started with talking animals having parties and such, then the gnomes saved them from a flood, then together they met a giant, a winged unicorn, pixies, great fairies, dinosaurs and more. I really liked it.

Edit: Pretty much my introduction to fantasy, now that I think of it.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-29, 08:20 AM
Dragonlance informed the gnomes of Everquest and World of Warcraft which are probably the most relevant fantasy cultural touchstones of what a gnome "is" in modern times aside from children's movies.


Here's a different perspective (from someone who played both EQ and WoW and who has read Dragonlance, although not for a while):

EQ, WoW, and DL gnomes have similarities and are obviously drawn from the same pool of ideas, but are very different. Origin is not destiny, neither for words nor for concepts.

Just like D&D, while informed by LotR, is not LotR (nor can be held to the same standards, nor can be faulted for deviating from those tropes), nor are D&D gnomes (or gnomes in general) tied to Dragonlance or to myth. Nor are D&D druids tied to tribal and religious leaders in certain ancient populations. Heck, 5e X are not bound by 4e things that share the same name, nor 3e, nor all the way back. They're free to be their own thing. Gygax's pronouncements about (well, anything, really) may be informative and persuasive, but they're not binding on anybody but Gygax.

I find it very important to not be held down by the dead hand of the past. Mythical depictions of creatures and settings are absolutely not important to me except as a place to mine for nuggets of "cool things" I can file down and agglomerate (or dissolve and rebuild entirely) into my own setting. Previous depictions do not bind me. It's not that I intentionally try to subvert or invert the tropes--I just build what seems good and let the chips fall where they may.

Context in world-building is key. It's why I bristle when people want to import characters from other media or settings--they fundamentally don't fit the context without being completely rewritten from the ground up (and inevitably making massive changes to the fundamental character). Tinker gnomes worked (sort of, as a joke) in DL. WoW gnomes work in WoW. But neither works in Dreams of Hope (my setting). Instead, you get something with the same name and a few surface similarities but with significant core changes.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 08:25 AM
If druids were inspired by history, they'd be bards. Highly political orators and philosophers, not reclusive nature mystics.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-29, 08:38 AM
If druids were inspired by history, they'd be bards. Highly political orators and philosophers, not reclusive nature mystics.

Right. Despite sharing a name, they're very different things underneath. And that's fine. Polysemy is a normal part of human language and context disambiguates just fine.

Kaptin Keen
2019-01-29, 09:11 AM
Then I offer the 5e Player's Handbook and, from the same edition, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

I opened those without any defined idea of what a gnome was supposed to be. I mean, I had read stories about gnomes before, but they were everything from living lawn ornaments to Pratchett's lilliputian shoemakers.

Anyway, after reading those 5e books, I am far more interested in playing a gnome than a halfling.

That's .... nice. Far as I can see, the 5e gnome is basically no different from any other version.

Willie the Duck
2019-01-29, 09:13 AM
I sometimes wonder how these discussions on gitp are 20-40 years behind the fantasy zeitgeist. Is 2e Dragonlance and old as dirt fairy tales really a greater reference point than anything popular in the last 20 years?!

If we're going to discuss how gnomes never really got an exclusive niche in A/D&D, going back to when they were really integrated into the game (which was arguably 1e, just like Dragonlance, although gnomes did show up in oD&D and the basic line a bit) is probably an important place to start. As to fairy tales, well, those, plus LotR, are why D&D has races. If it were exclusively Vance and John Carter and the rest of the Pulp/Western inspiration of D&D, everyone would have been playing humans (or maybe lizardfolk, Barsoomians, Leiber ghouls, and such).

Still, I am aware that people who started more recently than the 70s and 80s are not fond of grognards pretending that those things that were part of their childhood is more important than anything a younger generation had. I'll was thoroughly impressed by Howard Taylor (https://www.schlockmercenary.com/) telling some old coot asking what his favorite sci fi novel was (and then rattling off a bunch of Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, "Doc" Smith, etc.) that it was The Martian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)), and why would the guy assume that we all had to stick with first-half-of-20th-century writing? (which I still had the link for that exchange).

That said, what has come since that is so memorable (for gnomes)? Gnomes in 4e were definitely afterthoughts. In 3e they were core races, but they continued the AD&D trend of no one having a clear picture on what to do with them. Most fantasy novels of the past 20 years have moved past the ironclad D&D races regime, so that's not likely a good source. If you have a different suggestion, please put it forward, rather than mindlessly neg on what others have said.

Bohandas
2019-01-29, 09:15 AM
Nothing against LotR, but it's not the start and finish of fantasy.

Agreed.

Though I think the point should be split into 2 parts

1.) Tolkien is not the start and finish of fantasy
and
2.) Lord of the Rings is not the start and finish of Tolkien



If we're going to discuss how gnomes never really got an exclusive niche in A/D&D, going back to when they were really integrated into the game (which was arguably 1e, just like Dragonlance, although gnomes did show up in oD&D and the basic line a bit) is probably an important place to start. As to fairy tales, well, those, plus LotR, are why D&D has races. If it were exclusively Vance and John Carter and the rest of the Pulp/Western inspiration of D&D, everyone would have been playing humans (or maybe lizardfolk, Barsoomians, Leiber ghouls, and such).

What's wrong with ghouls, martians, and lizardfolk?

Willie the Duck
2019-01-29, 09:37 AM
What's wrong with ghouls, martians, and lizardfolk?

Literally nothing, but they're certainly not the standard D&D player races. And if Gygax, Arneson, and co. had been inspired by nothing but pulp (as opposed to pulp, plus fairy tales and the like), they might have been.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 10:01 AM
I find it very important to not be held down by the dead hand of the past. Mythical depictions of creatures and settings are absolutely not important to me except as a place to mine for nuggets of "cool things" I can file down and agglomerate (or dissolve and rebuild entirely) into my own setting. Previous depictions do not bind me. It's not that I intentionally try to subvert or invert the tropes--I just build what seems good and let the chips fall where they may.

[...]But neither works in Dreams of Hope (my setting). Instead, you get something with the same name and a few surface similarities but with significant core changes.
I have no arguments with that. But most people are going to expect gnomes, elves, dwarfs, half-orcs, etc to adhere fairly closely to the manual or, at least, are going to base their initial expectations that way. And, in a general conversation about gnomes in RPGs, people are going to default to the official standard since they have no knowledge of your homebrewed ideas. You can make your gnomes into tree-monkeys or cannibalistic necromancers or shape-changing fairy otters with underwater coastal cities and there is nothing at all wrong with that but they're not standard 5e (or any-e) gnomes. I think it's legitimate to both think "Hey, these otter-dude gnomes in this specific setting are pretty cool" but still be exhausted with "gnomes" as generally set forth in D&D and modern fantasy in general. For an "official" example, someone liking Dark Sun campaign halflings doesn't mean they can't grumble about the much more standard Tolkienesque hobbit/halflings and their three breakfasts and rural shires and pipeweed.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 10:08 AM
Maybe that's actually a language issue? I grew up with material where gnome, kobold, dwarf and a few other words all described the same creature. So I have no problem saying that the "dwarf" in the manual is a Tolkien dwarf and the "gnome" in the manual is a "fairy tale dwarf".

Bohandas
2019-01-29, 10:21 AM
Maybe that's actually a language issue? I grew up with material where gnome, kobold, dwarf and a few other words all described the same creature. So I have no problem saying that the "dwarf" in the manual is a Tolkien dwarf and the "gnome" in the manual is a "fairy tale dwarf".

I thought kobolds were more like goblins and/or tommyknockers

BreaktheStatue
2019-01-29, 10:26 AM
I thought kobolds were more like goblins and/or tommyknockers


Maybe that's actually a language issue? I grew up with material where gnome, kobold, dwarf and a few other words all described the same creature. So I have no problem saying that the "dwarf" in the manual is a Tolkien dwarf and the "gnome" in the manual is a "fairy tale dwarf".

It seems like if you go far back enough, most fantasy creatures were variations on territorial/household fae spirits who would either bless or damn you based on your behavior.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-29, 10:38 AM
If druids were inspired by history, they'd be bards. Highly political orators and philosophers, not reclusive nature mystics.


Right. Despite sharing a name, they're very different things underneath. And that's fine. Polysemy is a normal part of human language and context disambiguates just fine.

If they were historical, they'd be an entire social "class", made up of priests, bards, "lawyers", and other highly educated/skilled individuals.

The "nature priest" thing is a conglomeration of Roman fears and propaganda, Victorian "scholarship" and bored stifled "upper class" twits trying to be "subversive", and a century of New Age silly.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 10:41 AM
It seems like if you go far back enough, most fantasy creatures were variations on territorial/household fae spirits who would either bless or damn you based on your behavior.
Pretty much. My kid has a big book of fairy tales from the early 1900s and it has fairies, elves, gnomes, sprites, pixies, dwarfs, etc with very little distinction between them (I think the fairies & pixies have wings) and certainly nothing to suggest distinct cultures or what sort of RPG style abilities they might have. They're all just different flavors of "small magical person".

Not to suggest that fairy myth began in the 1900s, of course, but rather that no one had much reason to care about categorizing them and the whole concept was fairly nebulous.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 10:45 AM
I thought kobolds were more like goblins and/or tommyknockers

Sure. But we don't have words for either of those and "Kobold"and "Zwerg" are pretty much both just small underground things that are often moderately mischievous to quite malicious. "Wichtel" and "Heinzelmännchen" are small household spirits. "Gnom" falls under both categories, I feel and can be either or. The "Klabautermann" is similar too, but only found on ships.
Goblin wasn't really a word here as far as I know before American fantasy became a thing. Not even sure what old Lord of the Rings translations translated that as.

Edit: Looked it up. Apparently, older translations either used "Bilwiss" for Goblin, which I've never heard before, but there's a note in some translation that "Kobold" would be the best translation, if everyone didn't see kobolds as tiny and harmless friendly chaps. One translation apparently uses "Unhold", which is a very general word just meaning "Not a nice fellow" to be a bit flippant. My dictionary gives me "wretch", "blackguard" and "fiend" for translations of "Unhold".

Double edit further down the rabbit hole: "Bilwis", also "Bilwisse", "Bulwechs", "Pilwis" or "Belewitte", a most often female nature spirit and/or demon . Amongst other things known for tangling the hair of sleepers, shooting them in the back and causing sudden pain, trampling corn and causing whirlwinds. Huh. Apparently more a North German thing.

No idea why you would use that for goblin.

Malphegor
2019-01-29, 10:56 AM
I think it's because, as others have said, they blur into other stuff.

Industrious folk! Oh- like dwarves?

Connected to the fey! Oh- like elves?

Always jovial, but have a heart of steel! Oh- like a halfling?

Wild people! Oh- like orcs?

They make traps! Oh- like kobolds?


If you go into some myths, some steal your breath whilst you sleep by sitting on your chest! Wait- like a weird toned down version of a succubus?

I think this is why they fit bard pretty well. They're not just jacks of all trades as a favoured class, they're jacks of all trades as a race too. They sort of fit this weird undefined mythic space that connects a lot of different creatures that are the more concrete races we see otherwise. It can work, but it's just not my cup of tea.

Personally, the only character that seems fun when someone says 'gnome' to me is some kind of cheerful assassin-spy based on the David Bowie song the Laughing Gnome. "I'd tell you, but I can't. Gnome Office regulations! Teeheeheehee!"

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 11:00 AM
Maybe that's actually a language issue? I grew up with material where gnome, kobold, dwarf and a few other words all described the same creature. So I have no problem saying that the "dwarf" in the manual is a Tolkien dwarf and the "gnome" in the manual is a "fairy tale dwarf".
I think it's more an issue of presentation in the books (both rule and novels, etc). Saying gnomes are "fairy tale dwarfs" isn't especially helpful since "fairy tale dwarfs" spans the gamut from people who stand seven inches tall with a 280lb hump on their back (!) to festering like maggots within the earth to working diamond mines and caring for wayward young women to lusting after and kidnapping human girls to holding up the night sky to living in orange trees in the desert to forging Mjollnir. Which of those is the D&D gnome?

Pelle
2019-01-29, 11:04 AM
I think it's because, as others have said, they blur into other stuff.

Industrious folk! Oh- like dwarves?

Connected to the fey! Oh- like elves?


I think gnomes can work quite well in settings without elves and dwarves.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 11:07 AM
I think it's more an issue of presentation in the books (both rule and novels, etc). Saying gnomes are "fairy tale dwarfs" isn't especially helpful since "fairy tale dwarfs" spans the gamut from people who stand seven inches tall with a 280lb hump on their back (!) to festering like maggots within the earth to working diamond mines and caring for wayward young women to lusting after and kidnapping human girls to holding up the night sky to living in orange trees in the desert to forging Mjollnir. Which of those is the D&D gnome?

More than half of those really, I'd say. I mean, they are certainly taller than seven inches, but diamond mines? Of course. Lusting after women? Why not, they are lusty folk. Kidnapping? I mean, some are going to be evil and there's going to be slavery, like in most human cultures. Living in trees is not impossible either, since, well, we have elven tree cities, why not forest gnomes in desert oases. And forging Mjöllnir, absolutely. That's like their number one thing, craftsmanship.

But if I had to some them up: much smaller than humans, actively magical, especially in illusions and invisiblity, but also with a hand for curses, live underground or high in the mountains, masterful craftsmen, appreciation for beauty, especially in the forms of fine craftsmanship and valuable gems.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 11:12 AM
Except most of those are NOT gnomish tendencies as portrayed in the books and certainly not to any greater extent than other races (and usually to a much lesser extent). And gnomes in the game are not spoken of as great weaponsmith but rather eccentric and zany tinkerers. So someone going into the game expecting that gnomes meet those things is going to either be disappointed or you're going to be changing the race into some homebrew version to fit their expectations.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-29, 11:20 AM
If druids were inspired by history, they'd be bards. Highly political orators and philosophers, not reclusive nature mystics.

In the D&D5e setting I'm currently putting together Druid is just a term for Nature Clerics. The actual Druid class is banned along with several others to make magic more thematically focused (either you get your magic from your ancestry, in which case you're a Sorcerer, or you borrow it from a supernatural being, in which case you're a Cleric).


I think gnomes can work quite well in settings without elves and dwarves.

Yeah, I'm currently considering just using the 'Uncommon Races' in my setting, substituting Lizardfolk for Dragonborn. Orcs as the strong race, (Forest) Gnomes as the nature race, Tieflings as the supernatural race, and Lizardfolk as the divinely inspired race. The exact theming might shuffle around slightly, but I think the end result will be a more unique looking setting than what I've tended to end up with before.

As an aside there was a time where I was going to run a 3.5 game where the Gnome stats were used for elf/dwarf hybrids.

MoiMagnus
2019-01-29, 11:23 AM
I've yet to run across it personally, but it seems like there's a pretty sizable contingent of DMs/players who hate gnome characters, some to the point of blanket banning them from games.

As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason. Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?

Some DM reasons:
+ They're small. On top of potentially being a balance problem in some RPGs, this mean your race will quite probably have a narrative influence other than "what kind of culture were you raised in". Like having a race with wings, or a race which is large. This may be something the DM don't want. (Hence forbidding gnomes and halflings, while allowing dwarfs since they almost behave as medium-sized races)
+ They don't have a place in the world-building. Some race just don't have a standardize place in the world building. "Technological Gnomes" can be in contradiction with the setting. "Fairy Gnomes" are reasonable in a low-magic universe, but feel out-of-place in a high magic universe (unless if the plane of faeries exist in the world building, but even then, you may not want a PC to have a race native from another plane).
+ They have illusion-linked powers. And you would be surprise of the number of DM that just straight up disagree with D&D interpretation of illusion (i.e "illusion is a trick of light, just because you succeeded at your will save should not allow to see trough darkness, it should just allow you to know that the darkness is an illusion"), hence would rather avoid anything that play too much with illusions.

Note that my last PC was a Gnome, so I have personally no problem with them in the campaign, but I don't really like them.
They are for me like Eldar: a race too far from "standard D&D" to have a clear place, but too near from it to really feel "different" (compared to dragonborn, for examples)

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 11:24 AM
As an aside there was a time where I was going to run a 3.5 game where the Gnome stats were used for elf/dwarf hybrids.
I'm half hopeful someone eventually plays a gnome in my campaign (where they exist but are exceedingly rare and stay in elvish lands) just for the "Must have elf and halfling parents" comments they'll get in the greater world.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 11:55 AM
Except most of those are NOT gnomish tendencies as portrayed in the books and certainly not to any greater extent than other races (and usually to a much lesser extent). And gnomes in the game are not spoken of as great weaponsmith but rather eccentric and zany tinkerers. So someone going into the game expecting that gnomes meet those things is going to either be disappointed or you're going to be changing the race into some homebrew version to fit their expectations.

Sure they are? They are known to be tinkerers and crafters, they live underground or in the mountains, they have mines, they have a bonus on illusion magic. All the basics are there. The rest is just building societies based on those things.

LibraryOgre
2019-01-29, 12:02 PM
How are old as dirt fairy tales not a reference point for fantasy? Surely a lot more people know at least some Grimm fairy tales than know all but the most well known fantasy books. And everyone has at least heard some names from Norse mythology. Which, of course, also inspired fantasy in turn.

Partially, they aren't as much of a reference for D&D because there's 45 years of D&D to draw on. In a lot of ways, D&D is Jupiter in the solar system of Fantasy... practically a solar system in and of itself, with its own worlds trapped in its orbit, and with such a massive influence on modern fantasy that they actually orbit each other. D&D has massive influence on the literary market, not just because WotC publishes books, but because the people who write fantasy today often grew up with D&D and were influenced by it. D&D isn't the SOLE reason there's a video game market today, but it's a big reason there's Final Fantasy and Skyrim in the forms there are (wizards in the original Final Fantasy were practically the sorcerers of 3e), and influential anime like Record of the Lodoss War are also D&D derived. D&D is such a huge gravitational force on the universe of fantasy, and in ways people don't think about.* Gnomes are cousins of dwarves and tinkering illusionists because that what they've been for 40+ years; perhaps the only bigger influence on gnomes than Dragonlance is David the Gnome, and the modern presentation tends to teeter between the two, resulting in 5e's uneasy balance.

Gnomes, IMO, are the race that no one really knew what to do with in AD&D. They weren't Dwarves, which is to say Gimli and his successors. They weren't Elves, which is to say Legolas and his successors. They weren't Halflings, which drew on the various Shirelings. They just... were. Hi. We're gnomes, and we don't have a clear niche.

As editions went on, their niches changed. The 1e DMG had a brief reference to them being practical jokers; this was reinforced in UA and D&DG/L&L, where the racial pantheons were expanded and helped solidify the niches they were intended to fill. And "practical joker" in a game is, for a lot of people, license to be a bit obnoxious (ignoring, as they do, that most gnomes are LG, so a LG practical joke is gonna be a bit different than a CN one). After Dragonlance, there was a need to balance the tinker and the illusionist... I think a lot of younger folks today underestimate the WEIGHT Dragonlance had in gaming back in the day... I'd say that the next comparable one would be Drizz't and the flood of "outcast good drow" that followed, and I maintain that the kender of Dragonlance and their popularity (and the reasons they're hated) is a big part of the reason halflings were redefined as they were in 3e.

But, again, gnomes never got truly defined, and were easy to hate because they were either amorphous, or obnoxious. Playing them BTB in AD&D could be two different flavors of obnoxious... the practical joker (who, in 1e, would also likely be a thief, with the problems that class entailed), or the over-the-top tinker. They didn't have any notable mechanical distinctness aside from dwarves and halflings "Can be illusionist" (which became less significant in 2e), and so they were easy to leave out... you could look at a world and say "You know what, I don't really need gnomes". And that's why you get gnome hate... there's a solid 20 years of them being obnoxiously or poorly defined, followed by another 20 years of everyone trying to figure them out while still keeping them recognizably "gnomes."

*Slightly aside: You can Seven Steps of Kevin Bacon from D&D to Fifty Shades of Grey. D&D begets Vampire. Vampire results in a resurgence of popularity of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire, originally published in 1976. Interview with a Vampire and the resulting vampire resurgence leads to Twilight... and Fifty Shades of Grey, poorly written porn about bad BDSM practices, has been confirmed to be a Twilight fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 12:25 PM
Sure they are? They are known to be tinkerers and crafters, they live underground or in the mountains, they have mines, they have a bonus on illusion magic. All the basics are there. The rest is just building societies based on those things.
That's becoming painfully generic though and mostly back to "They're Tolkien dwarfs except not" which is the same milquetoast spot they've gotten since first edition. The actual unique stuff from the fairy tales isn't there aside from vague "They... like tricks?" although D&D gnomes are supposed to be affectionate pranksters whereas fairy tale dwarfs are kidnapping young girls and trying to trick/coerce/force them into *cough*cough* "marriage" or stealing children. Or handwaving "Well, one of them could live in a tree..." although that's nothing indicative of gnomish society as reflected in the books.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 12:48 PM
If you strip them down that much,every race is painfully generic. That's "every elf is legolas and every dwarf is Gimli, except stupider and Scottish".

They are basic outlines. You're supposed to build both cultures and characters around that.

Bohandas
2019-01-29, 12:48 PM
If druids were inspired by history, they'd be bards. Highly political orators and philosophers, not reclusive nature mystics.

At least the name isn't abused as blatantly as "monk" is

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-29, 12:48 PM
I'm going to suggest that the problem isn't with gnomes themselves, but that D&D has so many races that overlap is impossible to avoid.

Kobolds are small trappers, which is similar to (rock) gnomes being small tinkerers.

Lizardfolk are savage people who live in swamps and deserts, while (half-)orcs are savage people from the edge of civilisation.

Any nature themed race is enroaching on elf territory. Any crafter races compete with dwarves. Any small races compete with halflings. Gnomes just get the worst of it due to sharing aspects with two core races while being a core race themselves.

Bohandas
2019-01-29, 12:52 PM
I'm going to suggest that the problem isn't with gnomes themselves, but that D&D has so many races that overlap is impossible to avoid.

Kobolds are small trappers, which is similar to (rock) gnomes being small tinkerers.

Lizardfolk are savage people who live in swamps and deserts, while (half-)orcs are savage people from the edge of civilisation.

Any nature themed race is enroaching on elf territory. Any crafter races compete with dwarves. Any small races compete with halflings. Gnomes just get the worst of it due to sharing aspects with two core races while being a core race themselves.

Why can there only be one of each?

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 12:59 PM
If you strip them down that much,every race is painfully generic.
Well, you're the one who stripped them down to that point to try to force them into the mold of "Fairy tale dwarfs". My point is that they don't really fit "fairy tale dwarf" is any meaningful sense until they're distilled down to the point where they're just... basically dwarfs. Except they can talk to sparrows.

Willie the Duck
2019-01-29, 01:18 PM
. D&D isn't the SOLE reason there's a video game market today, but it's a big reason there's Final Fantasy and Skyrim in the forms there are (wizards in the original Final Fantasy were practically the sorcerers of 3e)

No, the Mages of the original final fantasy were practically the sorcerers of 3e (well, only in that they used spell-slots instead of vancian casting, Black/White/Red Mages were still dagger-using Magic Users, Hammer using Clerics, and Sword wielding B/X Elves). "Wizards (https://guides.gamercorner.net/ff/monsters/wizard)" in FF1 were... copyright infringement dodges, I guess? :smallbiggrin:

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-29, 01:18 PM
TL;DR--Culture matters more than race. There shouldn't be mono-culture races (at least if those races are wide-spread.

I just realized that part of the reason I'm a bit bewildered by the "they're all the same" complaints is that they seem (to me) to be relying on the "racial hats" trope too hard. That is, each race (except humans) is a monolithic culture with a uniform language, social structure, cultural markers, etc. And that, to me, is the problem. It smacks of lazy world-building.

Races should put a (light) thumb on the scale but should also have varying cultures. So you might get some gnomes that are burrow-dwelling tinkerers. Others that are arcanists. Other that are pastoral. Once you accept that culture is the most important thing and that members of multiple races can have the same culture, the whole overlap problem goes away. Yes, that makes race less important. Which, in my eyes, is a feature.

Any time you say "dwarves are X", where X is cultural, rather than physiological, you're on shaky ground with me.

As to the "default assumptions", I find that those are much weaker than one might think when they concern culture rather than physiology. Yeah, if you say "gnomes are cat-lizard hybrids with 3 legs", people will have a hard time. But if you say "halflings are small, stout humanoids and the halflings from this area are matriarchal with a lot of infertile females, a few breeding females, and not that many males (who are carefully coddled but not given a lot of privileges) and tend to live in large clans in agricultural areas," people will find it easy (or at least easier) to remember.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-29, 01:19 PM
Why can there only be one of each?

It's not that there can't, it might just be that Gnomes should be removed from the PhB.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 01:43 PM
I just realized that part of the reason I'm a bit bewildered by the "they're all the same" complaints is that they seem (to me) to be relying on the "racial hats" trope too hard. That is, each race (except humans) is a monolithic culture with a uniform language, social structure, cultural markers, etc. And that, to me, is the problem. It smacks of lazy world-building.
Eh, I think distinct racial/cultural markers are fine for a massive gaming franchise that is relying on a certain amount of consistency and familiarity to carry its players from table to table. And the subraces are intended to divide the cultures to some extent -- dwarfs who live their lives underground in tunnels versus those who live outside of mountain delves, elves who prefer to be deep in the forests versus those who build beautiful urban structures, etc. But there's still ultimately a mental view of what a "dwarf" is, what a "halfling/hobbit" is and so forth which doesn't seem to work as clearly (or offer as clearly a role) for gnomes.

Is that lazy? Maybe it can be. I think each campaign is still going to put its own mark on it: these dwarves hate outsiders, these dwarves trade freely with neighboring elves, these dwarves eschew magic and these have an arcane college. But just offering a consistent base view of what a dwarf is beyond "short guy with a beard and +2 CON" is a feature, not a bug, in a game as expansive as D&D (or RPGs in general) so people aren't forced to re-learn it at each table.

Willie the Duck
2019-01-29, 02:00 PM
I certainly think that, were D&D to have ever had a single consistent default game world the way that lots of other TTRPG have had, it would have been easier for them not to treat species (or whatever we mean when we discuss what D&D erroneously calls race) as culture as well.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-29, 02:27 PM
Eh, I think distinct racial/cultural markers are fine for a massive gaming franchise that is relying on a certain amount of consistency and familiarity to carry its players from table to table. And the subraces are intended to divide the cultures to some extent -- dwarfs who live their lives underground in tunnels versus those who live outside of mountain delves, elves who prefer to be deep in the forests versus those who build beautiful urban structures, etc. But there's still ultimately a mental view of what a "dwarf" is, what a "halfling/hobbit" is and so forth which doesn't seem to work as clearly (or offer as clearly a role) for gnomes.

Is that lazy? Maybe it can be. I think each campaign is still going to put its own mark on it: these dwarves hate outsiders, these dwarves trade freely with neighboring elves, these dwarves eschew magic and these have an arcane college. But just offering a consistent base view of what a dwarf is beyond "short guy with a beard and +2 CON" is a feature, not a bug, in a game as expansive as D&D (or RPGs in general) so people aren't forced to re-learn it at each table.


I certainly think that, were D&D to have ever had a single consistent default game world the way that lots of other TTRPG have had, it would have been easier for them not to treat species (or whatever we mean when we discuss what D&D erroneously calls race) as culture as well.

But as soon as you step outside the very basics, you're making it harder to have different worlds. And that (having different worlds) is much more important to me than consistency. In fact, I find consistency a bug. For me, having a "default game world" (especially one where the system and the world are tightly connected a la World of Darkness or Shadowrun) is a hard no-sell. I get most of my enjoyment from worldbuilding and from experiencing different things, things I hadn't thought of. Exploring the unknown. D&D, without the freedom to build lots of "conforming" worlds (and thus without the "genericness" of the content) would not be D&D, and would not have been successful. D&D with a strong default world would, in my opinion, be no different than any other game.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 02:41 PM
That's cool and I enjoy world building myself but, without a fairly consistent baseline for the races, it's impossible to have a conversation about them because everyone is "Well, that doesn't count because in MY world..."

I don't think it's hard at all to use D&D and have different worlds. People do it all the time. But in a conversation like this one, you need to set aside your individual worlds and return to the source because that's the only way to have the conversation on even ground. In this case, the source is the PHB and other supporting "player race" materials and much of the fluff and lore comes from Forgotten Realms simply because WotC chose that as their best supported game world. It's great for me to have a world with six-legged horses provided I'm willing to accept that most horse-related discussions will be about four-legged large mammals that live in herds and eat grass and run swiftly and have been domesticated for riding and burden.

Eldan
2019-01-29, 02:49 PM
Well, you're the one who stripped them down to that point to try to force them into the mold of "Fairy tale dwarfs". My point is that they don't really fit "fairy tale dwarf" is any meaningful sense until they're distilled down to the point where they're just... basically dwarfs. Except they can talk to sparrows.

That's my point, though. They are "basically dwarves" because they are better at being dwarves than the race labelled "dwarf" in the PhB.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-29, 02:53 PM
TL;DR--Culture matters more than race. There shouldn't be mono-culture races (at least if those races are wide-spread.

I just realized that part of the reason I'm a bit bewildered by the "they're all the same" complaints is that they seem (to me) to be relying on the "racial hats" trope too hard. That is, each race (except humans) is a monolithic culture with a uniform language, social structure, cultural markers, etc. And that, to me, is the problem. It smacks of lazy world-building.

Races should put a (light) thumb on the scale but should also have varying cultures. So you might get some gnomes that are burrow-dwelling tinkerers. Others that are arcanists. Other that are pastoral. Once you accept that culture is the most important thing and that members of multiple races can have the same culture, the whole overlap problem goes away. Yes, that makes race less important. Which, in my eyes, is a feature.

Any time you say "dwarves are X", where X is cultural, rather than physiological, you're on shaky ground with me.


I've had to keep this in mind for both WIP settings... "races of hats" can be a hard trope to avoid, given its proliferation and frequency in science fiction and fantasy genre fiction and games.

In one WIP, the non-humans are culturally diverse, and have crossover with the human cultures. There are some things that are biologically determined (such as one species being obligate carnivores) and some things that are deeply ingrained (another species that is spiritually attached to forests to a degree that if they live in cities, they have to plant trees there to be fully healthy). In this setting, interbreeding is not a thing without serious and just about lost magic, so there's less fear of being literally subsumed on the part of the other species.

In the other, there's a bit more monoculture for the "non-human" Peoples, but in part that's because of pushback against the unrelenting pressure from being surrounded by far more numerous humans with their "aggressive" cultures. In this setting, much more of what separates one People from another People is cultural, and there is interbreeding for most of them, so there's a fear of being overwhelmed and subsumed that pushes them to maintain their own specific culture even if they're scattered. And they've seen it happen before, so it's not just their imagination.

Willie the Duck
2019-01-29, 02:54 PM
But as soon as you step outside the very basics, you're making it harder to have different worlds. And that (having different worlds) is much more important to me than consistency.

And that's why we still have dwarf as 'race' and culture. Let's be clear, I wasn't advocating a base D&D game world, just explaining why the way it is incentivizes the other things we have.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-29, 02:56 PM
That's cool and I enjoy world building myself but, without a fairly consistent baseline for the races, it's impossible to have a conversation about them because everyone is "Well, that doesn't count because in MY world..."

I don't think it's hard at all to use D&D and have different worlds. People do it all the time. But in a conversation like this one, you need to set aside your individual worlds and return to the source because that's the only way to have the conversation on even ground. In this case, the source is the PHB and other supporting "player race" materials and much of the fluff and lore comes from Forgotten Realms simply because WotC chose that as their best supported game world. It's great for me to have a world with six-legged horses provided I'm willing to accept that most horse-related discussions will be about four-legged large mammals that live in herds and eat grass and run swiftly and have been domesticated for riding and burden.

That's just it. I don't count "being able to have a discussion online" as something worth supporting if it conflicts with anything else.

And you can have discussions, you just can't be prescriptive. You have to actually be descriptive instead of letting the names do the work. Which doesn't work anyway, since no two settings even within the same edition do it the same, and edition-to-edition differences are huge (outside of very basic physiology). There is no default. There are only certain trends.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 03:01 PM
That's my point, though. They are "basically dwarves" because they are better at being dwarves than the race labelled "dwarf" in the PhB.
But "real" dwarfs do the same stuff -- small, live in the earth, collect gems, master craftsmen, yadda yadda. And they got into the game first so, by the time gnomes came along, they were second-rate knock-offs -- really, they had dwarf racial skills but with worse percentages -- whose big defining feature was practical jokes (they didn't even have tinkering yet). Oh, and they could be illusionists... just like humans. But not as well as humans since gnomes, the supposed masters of trickery and illusion, couldn't advance past 7th level in the class (which means only a single 4th level spell). Literally everything gnomes could do, someone else did better and TSR/WOTC has struggled to change that tone ever since.

Jophiel
2019-01-29, 03:05 PM
That's just it. I don't count "being able to have a discussion online" as something worth supporting if it conflicts with anything else.
I'm not suggesting that the value in baseline races is having a discussion on this forum. I'm saying that any discussion about races on this forum should revert to the baselines offered by source books. I think there is value in a baseline race definition (especially since nothing stops you from going outside it if you like) but it's not so people can burn up a couple pages of GitP server space :smallbiggrin:

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-29, 03:14 PM
That's just it. I don't count "being able to have a discussion online" as something worth supporting if it conflicts with anything else.

And you can have discussions, you just can't be prescriptive. You have to actually be descriptive instead of letting the names do the work. Which doesn't work anyway, since no two settings even within the same edition do it the same, and edition-to-edition differences are huge (outside of very basic physiology). There is no default. There are only certain trends.

Yeah, just saying "he's a dwarf" doesn't tell us all that much beyond "probably shortish" given that it could mean so many different things depending on the context and specifics.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-29, 03:16 PM
I'm not suggesting that the value in baseline races is having a discussion on this forum. I'm saying that any discussion about races on this forum should revert to the baselines offered by source books. I think there is value in a baseline race definition (especially since nothing stops you from going outside it if you like) but it's not so people can burn up a couple pages of GitP server space :smallbiggrin:

But we went outside the PHB definition (which PHB? Which part of the definition?) at about post 3. I find the source material absolutely lacking and the worst at the "race of hats" thing. There's nothing to discuss other than "ewwwww" for any race in any edition.

Instead, if we take the very basic core of it ( and then see how we can expand that, extrapolating or explaining why it's that way, then we can have an interesting discussion.

For gnomes, here's my "core points" for the 5e, PHB version.

* Smallest of the "non-monster" races (smaller than halflings).
* Culturally shy (living in smaller groupings away from major population hubs)
* Intelligent and resistant to mind-affecting* magics
* Two major groupings--
** One is sylvan and animal oriented.
** The other is more urban or "technological", with minor tinkering.

That's about it. Differences to other "similar" races:

Unlike dwarves, gnomes:
* are not clan oriented.
* are not traditionalists.
* are arcane oriented when magic is involved, rather than divine-oriented. Wizards, not clerics.
* live mostly in surface burrows, not deep caves.
* aren't known as large-scale crafters or builders. They build small things or mechanical things, not cities or weapons/armor.

Unlike halflings, gnomes:
* are intensely curious, not homebodies.
* aren't particularly mundanely stealthy or nimble
* are magically-apt.
* are craft/tech oriented, not agricultural.

I see very little overlap in important things there.

* as opposed to blasting-style magic forcing dex, con, or str saves.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-29, 04:39 PM
But as soon as you step outside the very basics, you're making it harder to have different worlds. And that (having different worlds) is much more important to me than consistency. In fact, I find consistency a bug. For me, having a "default game world" (especially one where the system and the world are tightly connected a la World of Darkness or Shadowrun) is a hard no-sell. I get most of my enjoyment from worldbuilding and from experiencing different things, things I hadn't thought of. Exploring the unknown. D&D, without the freedom to build lots of "conforming" worlds (and thus without the "genericness" of the content) would not be D&D, and would not have been successful. D&D with a strong default world would, in my opinion, be no different than any other game.

While I also like games not tied to a setting, I can find that a default setting can give me a lot to work with. And any fluff you add means there's some form of setting there.

It's not actually a problem, having a starting point can make worldbuilding easier just as too much makes it harder. But although it's not as clear as in 4e the fluff in 5e is very much directed towards a specific style of world (some sort of High/Heroic fantasy mix with a lot of intelligent species).


That's my point, though. They are "basically dwarves" because they are better at being dwarves than the race labelled "dwarf" in the PhB.

I have to agree here. The 'race' labelled 'dwarf' is Gimli, while the race labelled 'gnome' is much closer to how they were presented in Norse myths. Although strangely none of them actually represent any other Middle Earth dwarves I know of very well, while the PhB Dwarf is very much Gimli I can't see them as Kili or Fili, Bofur, or any of the other members of the company in The Hobbit.

Bohandas
2019-01-29, 04:56 PM
I've had to keep this in mind for both WIP settings... "races of hats" can be a hard trope to avoid, given its proliferation and frequency in science fiction and fantasy genre fiction and games.

In one WIP, the non-humans are culturally diverse, and have crossover with the human cultures. There are some things that are biologically determined (such as one species being obligate carnivores) and some things that are deeply ingrained (another species that is spiritually attached to forests to a degree that if they live in cities, they have to plant trees there to be fully healthy). In this setting, interbreeding is not a thing without serious and just about lost magic, so there's less fear of being literally subsumed on the part of the other species.

In the other, there's a bit more monoculture for the "non-human" Peoples, but in part that's because of pushback against the unrelenting pressure from being surrounded by far more numerous humans with their "aggressive" cultures. In this setting, much more of what separates one People from another People is cultural, and there is interbreeding for most of them, so there's a fear of being overwhelmed and subsumed that pushes them to maintain their own specific culture even if they're scattered. And they've seen it happen before, so it's not just their imagination.

I think it's more that the cultures in the non-humans diverge harder and more sharply to the point of actually becoming different things (ie. all the elf, dwarf, and gnome subraces. Or, to give an example in science fiction, the Romulans and the Vulcans)

halfeye
2019-01-29, 05:17 PM
In the other, there's a bit more monoculture for the "non-human" Peoples, but in part that's because of pushback against the unrelenting pressure from being surrounded by far more numerous humans with their "aggressive" cultures. In this setting, much more of what separates one People from another People is cultural, and there is interbreeding for most of them, so there's a fear of being overwhelmed and subsumed that pushes them to maintain their own specific culture even if they're scattered. And they've seen it happen before, so it's not just their imagination.

Mostly, this thread goes straight over my head, but sometimes things stick out, like the above.

A wildcat is wild, and it's a cat. I don't see the point of trying to exclude domestic cats from breeding with wildcats, the kittens will be wild and they will be cats. Those of us who don't procreate (I dropped "breed", because cloning might be a thing) aren't part of the future. Those of us that do breed are always and forever the bridge between past man and future man, and the same is true of cats, rats and bats. If wildcats crossbreed with domestic cats, the snapshot race of the wildcat will be gone, but it was always going to be gone, natural selection leads to evolution, and things always change.

With luck there will be no human races in 500 years, and good riddance to bad rubbish, and in the longer run the same for all differences between beings, though getting rid of them may take longer.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-29, 06:56 PM
Mostly, this thread goes straight over my head, but sometimes things stick out, like the above.

A wildcat is wild, and it's a cat. I don't see the point of trying to exclude domestic cats from breeding with wildcats, the kittens will be wild and they will be cats. Those of us who don't procreate (I dropped "breed", because cloning might be a thing) aren't part of the future. Those of us that do breed are always and forever the bridge between past man and future man, and the same is true of cats, rats and bats. If wildcats crossbreed with domestic cats, the snapshot race of the wildcat will be gone, but it was always going to be gone, natural selection leads to evolution, and things always change.

With luck there will be no human races in 500 years, and good riddance to bad rubbish, and in the longer run the same for all differences between beings, though getting rid of them may take longer.


Quick sidebar, and then I'm not touching this hot potato again.

On the issue of interbreeding domestic and wild cats in certain parts of the world -- because those wild cats are an integral part of the ecosystem where they live, and the domestic cats are not. They have different adaptations and different behaviors (some of which they are inclined to genetically). The interbred cats are less fit for that environment, and cause ripple effects. The domestic cats are only present in the wild in those areas due to human irresponsibility, and so it's humans who need to mitigate and counter their effects. And lastly, if the wildcats end up gone, they're gone, forever, no getting them back -- and it will have been OUR fault. Not evolution, not nature, US.

On the issue of race -- no. If you're reading anything about the baseless and skin-deep notion of human "races" into my comment about my fictional setting with actual "genetic" and "essential" differences between "Peoples" that simply don't exist in any way in the real world, then you're barking up the wrong tree. In the wrong forest. On the wrong continent.

And I'll leave it at that, I'm not getting into a debate that will only cause trouble.

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-29, 06:58 PM
I think it's more that the cultures in the non-humans diverge harder and more sharply to the point of actually becoming different things (ie. all the elf, dwarf, and gnome subraces. Or, to give an example in science fiction, the Romulans and the Vulcans)


That's a third option, specific to those settings, undoubtedly.

There are a lot of ways that we can handle it that don't fall back on "races of hats" or conflating culture with genetics.

Jay R
2019-01-29, 07:50 PM
You say that, but I've had a lot of discussions about why D&D dwarves don't turn invisible or make weird magical contraptions, like dwarves are supposed to. The fairy tale dwarf has a lot more resonance with quite a few people I've played with than Gimli does.

That's right. But it is also irrelevant to the point I made and you replied to: "Because love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did." That is true; your comment does not refute it in any way. No matter how many other sources for elves and dwarves there are, it remains true that love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did.

I already pointed out the multiple origins of elves and dwarves. In my earlier post, I wrote, "The truth is that I don't have any favorite gnome characters from literature. Nobody like Bilbo, Sam, Frodo, Legolas, Elrond, Cutter, Skywise, Puck, Trumpkin, Gimli, Thorin, Andvari, Doli, Doc, Dopey, Casanunda, etc. " [Emphasis added.]

That's eight dwarves from six different sources. I never said or implied that Tolkien was the only source of our love of fantasy creatures. I even went on to cite four different sources for gnomes -- Paracelsus, Narnia, Harry Potter, and Oz.

I said that love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did. This is true. No statement about dwarves can ever refute it.

Mechalich
2019-01-29, 08:02 PM
I think it's more that the cultures in the non-humans diverge harder and more sharply to the point of actually becoming different things (ie. all the elf, dwarf, and gnome subraces. Or, to give an example in science fiction, the Romulans and the Vulcans)

It's actually easier for a smaller population to undergo speciation than a large one, because small, isolated populations can be subjected to much stronger selection pressures by localized events and they can be far more effectively impacted by genetic drift. So, if the non-human species all went through some kind of population bottleneck, you'd expect them to have a much greater level of internal diversification. Additionally, if human population numbers remained much higher subsequent to said bottleneck, then that would serve to cement the sub-populations in place by preventing genetic exchange between the isolated groups.

Interestingly, in the meta-setting of Planescape and Spelljammer, which means in the 'standard' generic D&D campaign world as well, just such a bottleneck exists. For a considerable period of time the Illithids held a massive empire that controlled a huge fraction of the multiverse. The Illithids favored humans as slaves and largely exterminated most of the other species. When the Empire fell the humans escaped and they started from state massively more populous than the other species. This wasn't even that long ago. It was 156 Githyanki reigns plus 1 lichdom extended reign in the past (Vlaakith, the Lich Queen of the Githyanki, was the 157th of her title, and all the preceding rulers were called that). Githyanki reign times a kind of weird to try and estimate because of the timeless nature of the Astral Plane, but Vlaakith CLVII ruled for 'over a thousand years' as a lich, so we can take 157,000 years as a maximum figure.

KorvinStarmast
2019-01-29, 08:05 PM
Ha! I'm a lot older than WoW, and the thought would simply never have occurred to me - my image of gnomes precedes WoW by two decades. I still maintain that the gnome fluff is the worst of all the player races, and the standard is very low to begin with. +1.
And kender are an abomination. Poor gnomes. I disliked AD&D 1e gnomes long before I hated kender.
There is no such thing as gnome hate. There is, however, a psychosis where people don't murder the things on site. +1. And for me this is a real problem, since in our first two 5e campaigns, my older brother picked gnome wizard as his PC. Arrggh, slaying that pointless creature was not within reason ...

I'm just going to go ahead and say because they are redundant. They were an appendage in AD&D 1e when they showed up. (And I played one, an illusionist, and still got frustrated with the pointlessness of being a gnome ...

Why not drop the halflings instead? NOt a bad play. I've played hobbits and halflings since the 70's: they need to go back to the Shire and let the more capable races do the adventuring. We can do comic relief without them.

I think the best idea for gnomes I've ever seen floated is to have to take their tinkering and industrious nature, combine it with German militarism, and create the Holy Gnoman Empire. Uh, that was done in a campaign I was in a bit over 30 years ago. I will say that our desire to slaughter them all did run into the problem of all of those damned illusions ... it was a near run thing.
I say: Go for it! Maybe this is the great redemption that the gnomes all crave ...
I mean. That being said, you could axe literally every race apart from humans. There's no reason to have ANY of the extra races. Yeah. Was in two campaigns that was humans only. AD&D 1e. Refreshing. Lethal. The first one ended before anyone got to level 6. The second one was going well and then the DM moved to another country. So it goes.

Maybe part of the problem is that gnomes are associated with illusion magic and that is one of those DM-Player argument nodes. Lived it. :smallfrown:

In a lot of ways, D&D is Jupiter in the solar system of Fantasy...
Nice turn of phrase.

Gnomes, IMO, are the race that no one really knew what to do with in AD&D. It felt that way when I first got the 1e PHB, which was shortly after it came out ..

Particle_Man
2019-01-30, 01:38 AM
Maybe they could have killed two birds with one stone and made gnomes the psionic race. Gnomes would have a niche of sorts, and psionics would be more integrated into the game. I personally have not seen much action on the psionic races front for pcs. I came closest in my circle by playing a Blue in a 3.0 game.

Eldan
2019-01-30, 02:56 AM
But "real" dwarfs do the same stuff -- small, live in the earth, collect gems, master craftsmen, yadda yadda. And they got into the game first so, by the time gnomes came along, they were second-rate knock-offs -- really, they had dwarf racial skills but with worse percentages -- whose big defining feature was practical jokes (they didn't even have tinkering yet). Oh, and they could be illusionists... just like humans. But not as well as humans since gnomes, the supposed masters of trickery and illusion, couldn't advance past 7th level in the class (which means only a single 4th level spell). Literally everything gnomes could do, someone else did better and TSR/WOTC has struggled to change that tone ever since.

They may not really be masters of illusion, but they at least have some, which the Gimli dwarves don't. And I think that illusion magic is vital to being a proper dwarf.

Eldan
2019-01-30, 02:59 AM
That's right. But it is also irrelevant to the point I made and you replied to: "Because love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did." That is true; your comment does not refute it in any way. No matter how many other sources for elves and dwarves there are, it remains true that love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did.

I already pointed out the multiple origins of elves and dwarves. In my earlier post, I wrote, "The truth is that I don't have any favorite gnome characters from literature. Nobody like Bilbo, Sam, Frodo, Legolas, Elrond, Cutter, Skywise, Puck, Trumpkin, Gimli, Thorin, Andvari, Doli, Doc, Dopey, Casanunda, etc. " [Emphasis added.]

That's eight dwarves from six different sources. I never said or implied that Tolkien was the only source of our love of fantasy creatures. I even went on to cite four different sources for gnomes -- Paracelsus, Narnia, Harry Potter, and Oz.

I said that love of hobbits brings a lot more people to D&D than love of gnomes ever did. This is true. No statement about dwarves can ever refute it.

And as I said above, my gnome characters are Alberich, Sitri and Laurin. Most sadly don't have names. Plus Andvari is mostly famous for cursing his treasure and turning into a fish, so that's magical too.

Millstone85
2019-01-30, 07:59 AM
I hate gnomes as a player race - I am happy to have them in my campaign world as NPCs. Feywild tricksters (like they did for them in 4e) works nicely.
As they stand now, I just place them as a off breed of the goblinoids and connect the Goblins to the fey wilds. Whether goblins are a successor of gnomes or vice versa is dependent on the culture in question and how they look at their history.What I would do is portray gnomes as being effectively the dwarves of the Feywild. Indeed, D&D dwarves do not mesh well with that whimsical plane, leaving an empty spot in the mining-and-forge department.

KorvinStarmast
2019-01-30, 10:03 AM
What I would do is portray gnomes as being effectively the dwarves of the Feywild. Indeed, D&D dwarves do not mesh well with that whimsical plane, leaving an empty spot in the mining-and-forge department. Nice idea, make their creature type fey. (I'll keep this in mind for my campaign in our shared world ...)

Son of A Lich!
2019-01-30, 04:32 PM
What I would do is portray gnomes as being effectively the dwarves of the Feywild. Indeed, D&D dwarves do not mesh well with that whimsical plane, leaving an empty spot in the mining-and-forge department.

I agree with Korvin on this front. Honestly, the fabricators of the Feywilds is very fitting and you can simply cut Elves out of the feywilds and connect them more strongly to the material wilderness in it's place.

You'd have to do something about the Eladrin, but I think elves stemming from the material and branching into the Feywilds via the Eladrin makes more sense and keeps the two races more distinct.

I still think solid Tinkering support is necessary to keep Gnomes relevant. Otherwise it's the "No Take Candle!" problem of something that is supposed to be funny but is completely irrelevant to the story as a whole.

Come to think of it, Matt Mercer's Taldorie has a lot of tinkering craftsmenship in it, and I don't think Gnomes are particularly jarring there. I just made that connection and had never thought about it before.

The Jack
2019-01-30, 05:46 PM
I think DnD just needs more useful tinkerer devices. But I don't think DnD needs a tinkerer race. Gnomes work better when they're on the same level as everyone else (Maybe slightly above average in quality, but a reasonable difference)

Guns don't need their own class, that's rediculous. I've always hated any ideas of a 'gunslinger' class. Just give a gun to a rogue or a fighter or a paladin and call it a day. If they can use crossbows, they can use guns.


Other than my irrational hate for short people (except goblins, Goblinoids are the master races) I guess I don't use gnomes so much because I think they work best either as recluses or as -just another race- that work nicely in multicultural cities. If I make them wizards I'd prefer to use 'honourable member of the ruling mage council' rather than 'I'M A WIZARD!!' types.

Gnomes work better when they're boring and just like everyone else. Be they like elves who live in different places, or they me like hobbits and are paid little mind by other races.


I don't have any drive to play one, because I don't want to play a short race which isn't drenched in charisma. They have an int bonus but I like humans as wizards, because I think they've got the most to gain from the practice.

Millstone85
2019-01-30, 05:50 PM
Nice idea, make their creature type fey. (I'll keep this in mind for my campaign in our shared world ...)Thanks! But what do you mean by "our shared world"?


I agree with Korvin on this front. Honestly, the fabricators of the Feywilds is very fitting and you can simply cut Elves out of the feywilds and connect them more strongly to the material wilderness in it's place.Uh, I do not see the connection between making gnomes the dwarf-like fabricators of the Feywild and removing elves from that plane.


You'd have to do something about the Eladrin, but I think elves stemming from the material and branching into the Feywilds via the Eladrin makes more sense and keeps the two races more distinct.If we mix 4e and 5e lores a bit, we have:
* Eladrin, who live almost exclusively in the Feywild.
* High elves, who like to live in planar overlaps between the Feywild and the Material.
* Wood elves, who have embraced the wilderness of the Material.

The idea of inverting the order seems very strange to me, and how would that make them more distinct?

Xania
2019-01-30, 07:33 PM
I think DnD just needs more useful tinkerer devices. But I don't think DnD needs a tinkerer race. Gnomes work better when they're on the same level as everyone else (Maybe slightly above average in quality, but a reasonable difference)

Guns don't need their own class, that's rediculous. I've always hated any ideas of a 'gunslinger' class. Just give a gun to a rogue or a fighter or a paladin and call it a day. If they can use crossbows, they can use guns.


Other than my irrational hate for short people (except goblins, Goblinoids are the master races) I guess I don't use gnomes so much because I think they work best either as recluses or as -just another race- that work nicely in multicultural cities. If I make them wizards I'd prefer to use 'honourable member of the ruling mage council' rather than 'I'M A WIZARD!!' types.

Gnomes work better when they're boring and just like everyone else. Be they like elves who live in different places, or they me like hobbits and are paid little mind by other races.


I don't have any drive to play one, because I don't want to play a short race which isn't drenched in charisma. They have an int bonus but I like humans as wizards, because I think they've got the most to gain from the practice.


Exactly this, sometimes somebody who is a wizard, a priest or crafts objects happens to be a gnome instead of a more common race.

BreaktheStatue
2019-01-30, 09:03 PM
Gnomes work better when they're boring and just like everyone else. Be they like elves who live in different places, or they me like hobbits and are paid little mind by other races.

Exactly. If I do play a gnome (or any other character), I usually try to base the RP on a non-race specific idea I have, not just an exaggerated racial stereotype.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-01-30, 09:19 PM
Exactly. If I do play a gnome (or any other character), I usually try to base the RP on a non-race specific idea I have, not just an exaggerated racial stereotype.

I agree. Race informs (but does not dictate or define) background, which informs (but similarly does not dictate or define) personality. And personality is a major part of RP.

Ignimortis
2019-01-31, 03:17 AM
I've yet to run across it personally, but it seems like there's a pretty sizable contingent of DMs/players who hate gnome characters, some to the point of blanket banning them from games.

As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason. Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?

I don't use gnomes, because they have no particular good niche that's not "tinkers" or "comic relief", and I don't need any of those. Besides, if I had to use a short race, I would use Halflings first, because plucky lucky big eaters are usually something that players like and understand instantly.

As for races that I dislike - I can attest to hating every beastman race that exists (werecreatures too). I don't like this sort of thing and I don't allow them in my games. Even dragonborn are refluffed to look more humanoid, with human-like faces and in general being more like Shyvana from League of Legends than D&D canon.

In fact, I actually draw the line based on how the race looks - if it's got an animal's head, it's a no go. Something like "catgirls" where the only thing from cats are ears and tails - I can tolerate, although I haven't had to deal with requests to play such a character.

Floret
2019-01-31, 03:46 AM
My personal experience with D&D is, admittedly, limited (It's not that big in Germany... but I did once build a 3.5 character! Never played him, mind you. Never will. Not my style of game. Anyways.).

But I do, when looking at it for inspiration or the impact it's had on culture wonder... why gnomes. I mean, I wonder a lot of things, but the goddamned bloat of races? With so much overlap between everything, but especially amongst the small ones... I wouldn't even know how to tell them apart in art! A bearded gnome fighter would just read as a dwarf to me. Probably a non-bearded one would as well. So as an outsider: None of this DnD stuff is comprehensible without knowing DnD, and for differenciating core player concepts, I'd consider that a problem.

In the end, there are two angles for I actually like about dealing with "Short people" races:
1. The Dark Eye. All of those are dwarves. You'd be surprised how well a variant dwarf culture can pull off hobbit stereotypes. Not so much gnomes, but hey. They also have four more cultures, supporting Gimli dwarves with traditionalist, highly religious almost theocratical dwarves, modern-thinking dwarves with a focus on beauty rather than sturdyness, very willing to incorporate new ideas, and barbarian dwarves who have literal mud armor. And that's not counting the dwarves who have simply abandoned the big cultures to make their own ways, or live amongst humans. One of the most prominent arcane mages of the setting is one.

..then again Dark Eye also has Grolmur, and the less said about those the better. It'd just noone would know about them unless they read rather obscure lore. Until 5ed dug them out. Urghs. They are insignificant enough for the setting cutting them doesn't do ****, thankfully enough. I guess they fullfill some of the gnome stereotypes, but have never been playable, and are basically evil by default, or at least greedy bastards. Thinking about it those indeed fit the bill of mythological dwarves, except they rarely produce things themselves.

2. Warhammer 40k. Ratlings are the best execution of halflings I have come across as of now. Them being a variant of human also fits with my sensibilities of preventing race bloat very nicely.

Eldan
2019-01-31, 03:53 AM
In my current world, the playable races turned out to be elves, humans, dwarves, gnomes and shifters. It's working well so far. Though the only gnomes the players met so far was one couple who had abducted and murdered two young children and then taken their place in the community in an illusory disguise. Made them quite popular with the party.

Florian
2019-01-31, 05:27 AM
One of the best executions of Gnomes so far is how they are handled in Golarion: The whole race migrated from the First World to the Prime Material and is heavily based on having been Fey quite a while back. In this setting, they are expressly build about being "not from around here" and "do not fit in" (and yes, they use WoW hair color and such).
Halflings are also interesting, as they are depicted as having co-developed alongside Humans and work based on a "other side of the coin" motive, an underdog race that will fill out any nice available in their "host society".

But I tend to agree with Floret. Compared to DSA (Dark Eye) or Splittermond, D&D races tend to be a bit shallow.

Eldan
2019-01-31, 07:48 AM
One of the best executions of Gnomes so far is how they are handled in Golarion: The whole race migrated from the First World to the Prime Material and is heavily based on having been Fey quite a while back. In this setting, they are expressly build about being "not from around here" and "do not fit in" (and yes, they use WoW hair color and such).
Halflings are also interesting, as they are depicted as having co-developed alongside Humans and work based on a "other side of the coin" motive, an underdog race that will fill out any nice available in their "host society".

But I tend to agree with Floret. Compared to DSA (Dark Eye) or Splittermond, D&D races tend to be a bit shallow.

Splittermond? Really? I mean, I haven't read all of the fluff, but what I've seen is one giant pile of shallow fantasy clichés.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-31, 08:09 AM
In fact, I actually draw the line based on how the race looks - if it's got an animal's head, it's a no go. Something like "catgirls" where the only thing from cats are ears and tails - I can tolerate, although I haven't had to deal with requests to play such a character.

I'm the opposite, if a race is animal based than it's an anthropomorphised version of that race with a humanoid frame. Catgirls spontaneously combust from sheer stupidity while cat people get on with their lives.


1. The Dark Eye. All of those are dwarves. You'd be surprised how well a variant dwarf culture can pull off hobbit stereotypes. Not so much gnomes, but hey. They also have four more cultures, supporting Gimli dwarves with traditionalist, highly religious almost theocratical dwarves, modern-thinking dwarves with a focus on beauty rather than sturdyness, very willing to incorporate new ideas, and barbarian dwarves who have literal mud armor. And that's not counting the dwarves who have simply abandoned the big cultures to make their own ways, or live amongst humans. One of the most prominent arcane mages of the setting is one.

To be fair The Dark Eye has done really nice things with both elves and dwarves. I like how the hobbits are dwarves, it fits with the crafting of the other dwarf cultures in the same way that art does, and feels very natural. Plus I find the different elven cultures interesting, in a way that D&D's high/wood/wild/grey/drow/aquatic/chaotic good drow thing.

Wish there were seafaring elves that weren't aquatic as a more standard element of settings, elven divers feel so natural.

Knaight
2019-01-31, 08:29 AM
I've yet to run across it personally, but it seems like there's a pretty sizable contingent of DMs/players who hate gnome characters, some to the point of blanket banning them from games.

As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason. Are there any other fantasy races you also dislike?
Absolutely. Elves, dwarves, and orcs. I generally favor just having humans, but if you're not going to have humans at least either draw from broad sources (e.g. centuries of myth and folklore) or do something original. Tolkien himself did exactly that and in his works all three are fine, the imitators in a tightly centered subgenre that only takes influence from itself less so.

I'm not saying that if I see an elf I want to see a term like "sidhe" in close proximity, but that does at least get the gist across.


I mean. That being said, you could axe literally every race apart from humans. There's no reason to have ANY of the extra races.
Agreed, and I'd love to see more of it.


I sometimes wonder how these discussions on gitp are 20-40 years behind the fantasy zeitgeist. Is 2e Dragonlance and old as dirt fairy tales really a greater reference point than anything popular in the last 20 years?!
Old as dirt fairy tales absolutely are. The zeitgeist tends to follow two main paths - really old classics which remain classics for generations, and fairly modern works not yet forgotten. Being 20-40 years behind would only swap the latter for whatever forgettable works were made, read, then forgotten about during that period.

On top of that, let's talk about some modern fantasy as pertains to gnomes. There's been a resurgence of works that hew more historical (e.g. 90% of what Guy Gavriel Kay writes), historically inspired (e.g. the powder mage series), humanocentric low fantasy (A Song of Ice and Fire, which is a really big series right now), books pulling from a variety of cultural traditions historically less represented in the genre (A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Throne of the Crescent Moon), and urban fantasy. Gnomes aren't particularly likely to appear in any of these, and if they do it's not D&D gnomes. There's Artemis Fowl, I guess, which does technically have elves and dwarves and gnomes but pulls from very different traditions as for their depiction. Mulch isn't Gimli, Holly isn't Legolas. There's also the new weird subgenre, and to some extent magical realism which while technically a different genre does have some audience overlap.

Looking further back then, you have Tolkien as a giant in the genre who made a classic that genuinely holds a lot of weight, with the movies being less than 20 years old and fitting in the modern category anyways. You have some of the bigger pulp authors who are still read and who have clearly influenced modern fantasy. Then you have fairy tales, folklore, legends, and myths which are often far older and tend to exist in a lot of different forms. Arthurian literature is a whole subgenre which continues unfettered into modern fantasy, to say nothing of Journey to the West and its enormous number of adaptations. Then there's the matter of the cultural phenomenon that is Disney movies, and how incredibly heavily those pull from fairy tales.

Roughly none of these feature gnomes. Tolkien has elves, dwarves, orcs, hobbits, and ents, the last two of which tend to get copied with the tiniest changes. The pulp authors tended towards beast-people of various sorts, especially apes, lizards, fish, and spiders. The fairy tales and similar are about the only place we see gnomes, and they rarely make it in more modern portrayals of the old (e.g. Disney). Arthurian literature has humans, giants, ogres, dragons, fey, and various strange animals. Magical realism is generally just humans, with magic doing weird stuff in the background.

The Jack
2019-01-31, 09:06 AM
On cat people...

I think they work great as monsters and nothing else. I like the Khajiit from TES and the Bastet from WoD, but they're very distinctly their own thing and aren't just humans-with-cat-traits. If a player said they wanted to play a fox/cat/dog character, I'd be extremely suspect towards their motivations, because it's usually private interests or ill-fitting anime ideas that get this ball rolling, and I'd have to think of some way to include these races in my setting. If anyone asked me for -animal people- I'd conclude immediately that they are problem players, unless they had something in mind beyond -anthro race-

Lizard folk are alright because they're monsterous. Dragonborn I don't like but can tolerate because they're not-very-human. Honestly, I'd prefer people play sentient cats than cat-people. Monsterous cat people would be fine.

I care about all the players on my table. I'm not adverse to adult themes at my table. But If they're a sleazy cat person looking for love, they're going to have a bad time, I'll dial the racism up to 11. When people say 'but it's fantasy', I'll point out that it's for all the players, and I don't throw out all the rules because 'it's fantasy'.


Look for love as an elf, a humanoid with an exotic skin colour, a gnome, one of star trek's many aliens. But don't base a character around that, and people who want to play these races are usually doing that.

Eldan
2019-01-31, 09:07 AM
If you want modern gnomes, Dresden Files has Svartalfar that fit quite well.

Floret
2019-01-31, 10:30 AM
To be fair The Dark Eye has done really nice things with both elves and dwarves. I like how the hobbits are dwarves, it fits with the crafting of the other dwarf cultures in the same way that art does, and feels very natural. Plus I find the different elven cultures interesting, in a way that D&D's high/wood/wild/grey/drow/aquatic/chaotic good drow thing.

Wish there were seafaring elves that weren't aquatic as a more standard element of settings, elven divers feel so natural.

Oh, absolutely. There would be space for a lot more cultures, but there is a lot there, especially when you include older editions, where even Orcs, Goblin and Lizardmen get at least two cultures. Still have to play a Goblin from the Ghetto in Festum. I'm curious when 5e will make them playable...
But Hobbit dwarves are an amazing idea, and how they just sort of coexist with the humans in the same region - the cultures very clearly influenced by one another, but still their own different thing, informed by the respective species' history... A beautiful case study of "What can culture and species add to a characters outlook, and why does it make a difference if one is a dwarf from the Kosch, or a human."
(Fun fact: The dwarven count of Ferdok used to be a player character. I know the guy who used to play him personally.)

But maybe that's what happens when you have an RPG that, at character creation, asks you, after species selection "Alright, so which culture are you from?" before offering up the "classes". Growing up with that makes mono-culture races seem even more jarring, though. God-damn Tolkien had multiple, rather distinct elves! And dwarves! Why does noone copy that one?

Seafaring elves sounds great. I once homebrewed gull witches... There is a weird lack of nature-themed ocean mages.


Splittermond? Really? I mean, I haven't read all of the fluff, but what I've seen is one giant pile of shallow fantasy clichés.

Oh, Splittermond is absolutely chock-full of Fantasy chliches, but that is rather the point of the setting, as far as I can tell - but that doesn't stop it from having a big focus on culture, and that informing characters more than merely race, while still retaining race as a relevant factor. But then that's hardly surprising for being written by the some of the same people that were resposible for putting culture in the foreground in the Dark Eye...

LibraryOgre
2019-01-31, 11:02 AM
As for races that I dislike - I can attest to hating every beastman race that exists (werecreatures too). I don't like this sort of thing and I don't allow them in my games. Even dragonborn are refluffed to look more humanoid, with human-like faces and in general being more like Shyvana from League of Legends than D&D canon..

Oddly, I'm the exact opposite. I'm exceptionally tired of races that are "humans but slightly not"... pointy ears, shorter, sized like toddlers, etc. Give me Thri-kreen. Give me Palladium's Wolfen. Let me play a minotaur.

And I really liked the suggestion above that gnomes are fey dwarves, and it gives me an idea... dwarves and gnomes are cousins, right? What if dwarves are the descendants of gnomes who were cut off from the Feywild? And elves are eladrin who were the same? Now, both races have undergone some changes because of their disassociation from the Feywild, but it gives you a "related but not in the way you think". (I'm not thinking "If you lock a gnome in a dimension-proof box, a dwarf will come out"; more a case of large populations, divergent evolution, and perhaps a touch of mutation). I'm not saying this is THE explanation, but it would be a NEAT explanation.

Eldan
2019-01-31, 11:25 AM
Well, I mean, I did once rule in a setting that elves meditate instead of sleeping because their ancestors escaped from Fairy and there are fey hunting them in their dreams. That goes a bit in the same direction. (Elven child mortality is frighteningly high. Well, not mortality. They either fall into a coma or become possessed wild hunters. But you really have to teach them meditation as early as possible, or they get enslaved.)

Bohandas
2019-01-31, 12:53 PM
Oddly, I'm the exact opposite. I'm exceptionally tired of races that are "humans but slightly not"... pointy ears, shorter, sized like toddlers, etc. Give me Thri-kreen. Give me Palladium's Wolfen. Let me play a minotaur.

In fact, why even have humans at all. And if you do have them, why should they be disproportionally important to the setting; It taxes the versimilitude of most of the default D&D worlds. If you are going to have human characters it would be much more plausible if they were included in a context similar to Adventure Time, or Spirited Away, or Guardians of the Galaxy, or anything by H.P.Lovecraft

The Jack
2019-01-31, 01:08 PM
I ran a game with no humans (they were free to pick human stat blocks and make up races to match) and everyone expressed shock at the notion.

Triple Decker
2019-01-31, 01:43 PM
My personal feelings on gnomes are admittedly based on the Warcraft version, but that's true of almost anyone I will or have played with (as far as I know, it's 100% true of all of them), because we all got into the hobby around the same time.

That said, looking at what is available in the PHB, there's very little a gnome has to call its own. Gnomes may be based on folklore, a different version of this or that, but as presented, they tread on other races' toes, and I'm not keen on wedging them into a homebrew setting just because they're in the PHB. If we're in the Forgotten Realms or Eberron where there is an established place for them, fine, whatever, but it always feels forced to me and that's a turn off.

Rehashing the list:
Elves are the ones that live in harmony with nature (plants, animals, the elements, etc) and have an affinity for scholarly things (magic, lore, art, etc). MToF also tells us that Elves are the fey-race, so gnomes don't even have that to themselves.
Dwarves are the good and hardworking subterranean race with an affinity for stone and metalwork, and for crafting.
Halflings are the small race with oversized, courageous hearts and adventurous spirits.
Gnomes have... bulbous features and whimsical names? (Like Rimplestump Wonderwilly Snackerpompadilious the XV, or some other Benedict Cumberbatch meme.)

All of the other three are more iconic than the gnome. There are three things that come to mind when I think of gnomes: 1) David the Gnome, a glassblower and holistic veterinarian (a neutral-to-good example, but a poor one for typical D&D), 2) Troll dolls, and 3) WoW gnomes, which are probably based on troll dolls, have ridiculous polysyllabic names, regularly blow things up at inopportune moments, and are sure signs that someone wants to cause havoc in the campaign for laughs. Regardless of their history, they've become a comic relief race, and I believe that is a horrendous design decision.

I don't hate gnomes, but I have had bad experiences with gnome players, and I can't be bothered to find a niche for them when I could have a more monstrous player race instead (which is probably a separate discussion). I let wood elves have the option of trading Mask of the Wild for the ability to talk to small animals, and I have a separate dwarf subrace for makers.

LibraryOgre
2019-01-31, 04:11 PM
In fact, why even have humans at all. And if you do have them, why should they be disproportionally important to the setting; It taxes the versimilitude of most of the default D&D worlds. If you are going to have human characters it would be much more plausible if they were included in a context similar to Adventure Time, or Spirited Away, or Guardians of the Galaxy, or anything by H.P.Lovecraft

Nah, I'm cool with humans being there... it's a staple of fantasy and science fiction that you've got humans in amongst the various races. But we're not as limited as Star Trek: TOS in our alien species... we don't have to be "human with pointy ears" and "angry eyebrows brown human" to make our fantastic races.

Florian
2019-01-31, 04:30 PM
Splittermond? Really? I mean, I haven't read all of the fluff, but what I've seen is one giant pile of shallow fantasy clichés.

At first glance and for easy access, yes, true. But it places a premium on culture and actually manages to depict how certain cultures are informed by the races that generated them, which is a pretty cool thing. It´s also pretty refreshing that some races are not the "premier" merchants, inventors or warriors because of their racial stats but just because they live in a place that makes that a necessity, like elves being a naval power and gnomes covering mounted combat.

LibraryOgre
2019-01-31, 05:08 PM
At first glance and for easy access, yes, true. But it places a premium on culture and actually manages to depict how certain cultures are informed by the races that generated them, which is a pretty cool thing. It´s also pretty refreshing that some races are not the "premier" merchants, inventors or warriors because of their racial stats but just because they live in a place that makes that a necessity, like elves being a naval power and gnomes covering mounted combat.

Earthdawn had dwarves as a premiere mercantile power because, after the Scourge, they had a functioning economy.

Anonymouswizard
2019-01-31, 06:41 PM
Oh, absolutely. There would be space for a lot more cultures, but there is a lot there, especially when you include older editions, where even Orcs, Goblin and Lizardmen get at least two cultures. Still have to play a Goblin from the Ghetto in Festum. I'm curious when 5e will make them playable...
But Hobbit dwarves are an amazing idea, and how they just sort of coexist with the humans in the same region - the cultures very clearly influenced by one another, but still their own different thing, informed by the respective species' history... A beautiful case study of "What can culture and species add to a characters outlook, and why does it make a difference if one is a dwarf from the Kosch, or a human."
(Fun fact: The dwarven count of Ferdok used to be a player character. I know the guy who used to play him personally.)

But maybe that's what happens when you have an RPG that, at character creation, asks you, after species selection "Alright, so which culture are you from?" before offering up the "classes". Growing up with that makes mono-culture races seem even more jarring, though. God-damn Tolkien had multiple, rather distinct elves! And dwarves! Why does noone copy that one?

Firnelves and Hill Dwarves were one of the things that essentially sold me on Aventuria as my favourite RPG setting (to the point where I'm somewhat annoyed that my group is using D&D do that two players don't have to get used to new rules as well as playing in English). Both are not what I'd expect from the race which developed the cultures, but make a lot of sense when you consider the combination of race and environment (oh how I want to play a Hill Dwarf merchant or performer at some point).

I'll also note that The Dark Eye is responsible for making me dislike how D&D5e handles race and subraces. There's just so much unnecessary stuff in 5e races, and subraces feel like they try to shove as many cultures in a setting together as possible for ease of play.


Seafaring elves sounds great. I once homebrewed gull witches... There is a weird lack of nature-themed ocean mages.

I do plan to use Seafaring elves in a campaign of mine, but I was originally inspired by the Sea Elves of Midnight. It just struck a chord with me by not making them aquatic, and instead just having a culture based around the fact they lived on the coast and had the skills and technology to make a living out of the oceans and nearby Islands.

Although to be fair seafarers tend to get the short stick in many settings due to the tendency for them to follow the Middle Earth model of being based around a large landmass (something that I'm often guilty of as well). I've been considering a setting based around either an archipelago or other group of Islands, although I'd need some decent sailing rules.

And ah, ocean themed mages, I'll steer clear just so my home remains dry :smallwink:

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 07:03 PM
Oh, absolutely. There would be space for a lot more cultures, but there is a lot there, especially when you include older editions, where even Orcs, Goblin and Lizardmen get at least two cultures. Still have to play a Goblin from the Ghetto in Festum. I'm curious when 5e will make them playable...
But Hobbit dwarves are an amazing idea, and how they just sort of coexist with the humans in the same region - the cultures very clearly influenced by one another, but still their own different thing, informed by the respective species' history... A beautiful case study of "What can culture and species add to a characters outlook, and why does it make a difference if one is a dwarf from the Kosch, or a human."
(Fun fact: The dwarven count of Ferdok used to be a player character. I know the guy who used to play him personally.)

But maybe that's what happens when you have an RPG that, at character creation, asks you, after species selection "Alright, so which culture are you from?" before offering up the "classes". Growing up with that makes mono-culture races seem even more jarring, though. God-damn Tolkien had multiple, rather distinct elves! And dwarves! Why does noone copy that one?


5e missed an opportunity by putting Backgrounds after Class, instead of between Race and Class.

Jophiel
2019-01-31, 09:27 PM
WoW gnomes [...] they've become a comic relief race, and I believe that is a horrendous design decision.Even back in Everquest, it was all players yelling "GNOME POWAH!!!" and "GNOMERCY!!!!!" as seemingly their primary reason for choosing the race. And developer questions about what new race/class combinations should be added were always "We need gnome [whatevers] because lol gnomes!!!"

Max_Killjoy
2019-01-31, 10:12 PM
Even back in Everquest, it was all players yelling "GNOME POWAH!!!" and "GNOMERCY!!!!!" as seemingly their primary reason for choosing the race. And developer questions about what new race/class combinations should be added were always "We need gnome [whatevers] because lol gnomes!!!"

In MMOs, a lot of people who played a gnome did so because the smaller character model was harder to zero in on visually, and then click on / hit, in PVP.

Jophiel
2019-01-31, 11:33 PM
In MMOs, a lot of people who played a gnome did so because the smaller character model was harder to zero in on visually, and then click on / hit, in PVP.
Maybe, but EQ has (had?) distinct PVE/PVP servers and the PVE servers were still full of the "lol it's funny because gnome" stuff. Plus halflings (and probably dwarfs) shared the same basic body model so gnomes wouldn't offer any unique advantage. And you could just target nearest opponent with a key press anyway -- no aiming or clicking required.

Luccan
2019-02-01, 01:47 AM
I like taking the tinkering idea and applying it to setting-appropriate engineering. So Eberron is fine, because everybody has magitech anyway, gnomes or gnot. In more "medieval" settings, yeah maybe they have some clockwork devices, but unless you have magic backing it up, the creations will be pretty small*. So instead, they build siege engines, design complex and efficient irrigation systems, and generally are constantly trying to improve within the setting limitations.

You could also make that their flaw. Dwarves are greedy, elves see themselves as superior, but gnomes think they can rebuild things better than they are. They are prone to hubris because they love to create and innovate and are really good at it, but as we all know, that comes at an ironic cost. Perhaps their easy-going nature leads to them under-reacting to catastrophic failures. When a gnome's workshop burns down from his experiments, he shouldn't be delighted it all went wrong, but he might sigh and simply continue the same line of experiments without even stopping to think if he should.

*I think the solution to steampunk gnomes in D&D is to make them more magic artificers than seemingly anachronistic tinkerers. Everyone seems to object to an automaton with spinning gears of brass and bronze. But if it's an iron golem with a fire elemental bound to it, it's suddenly fine. So, really, that part is all about presentation.

Eldan
2019-02-01, 04:40 AM
For all the people who seem a bit hung up on the name: Tolkien had gnomes. The Noldor elves. So Feanor, Fingolfin, Gil-Galad, Celebrimbor, partially Galadriel and Elrond? ALl gnomes.

There's your fantasy precedent for gnomes.

Anonymouswizard
2019-02-01, 06:24 AM
Why do we need precedent? Down with the elves! Up with the Kil-zwads! (Now all I need to do is work out what a Kil-zwad is.)

Eldan
2019-02-01, 07:29 AM
Mostly because people said on the last few pages that since there's nothign called a gnome in Tolkien or similarly popular fantasy literature, there's no place for them in the game.

Which is not something I stand behind, so I came up with the most facetious example I could.

Kaptin Keen
2019-02-01, 07:32 AM
Everyone seems to object to an automaton with spinning gears of brass and bronze. But if it's an iron golem with a fire elemental bound to it, it's suddenly fine. So, really, that part is all about presentation.

See, this part puzzles me somewhat. We all hate the 'a wizard did it' trope - but then, if and when a wizard didn't do it ... suddenly we're even more unwilling to accept that. I personally love the idea of gnomes having an entire bagful of weird tricks. It's just the Dragonlance tinker gnomes I can't stand.

And anyways it's by no means as if the gnomes don't have magic. As has been stated repeatedly, they're the most magical of the core races.

Jophiel
2019-02-01, 09:27 AM
Mostly because people said on the last few pages that since there's nothign called a gnome in Tolkien or similarly popular fantasy literature, there's no place for them in the game.I think they have a fine place as NPCs. I think that, as a player race, they're particularly redundant, bring little to the table and the effort of including them as a society/culture in the game isn't worth the rewards (and the cultures offered in the source books range from ill-defined to obnoxious). This can be said about a number of player races, especially the Johnny-come-lately ones but, since gnomes have been like this for many editions, they seem most egregious. It can also be said about a number of monster races but those can be left out easier -- players might want to play a Dragonborn but wouldn't notice/care if you never included a gnoll in game -- and the effort of including them is less because less is expected of them. "There's a camp here with six goblins" is generally good enough.


See, this part puzzles me somewhat. We all hate the 'a wizard did it' trope - but then, if and when a wizard didn't do it ... suddenly we're even more unwilling to accept that.I doubt anyone objects to "A wizard did it" because they don't want magic in their game (aside from the weirdos who run games and only allow non-arcane fighters/rogues). You object to "A wizard did it" because it's dismissive and used to cover poor plot devices or story-telling.

"Hey, how come the distance from town to castle was one day going and now it's taking us three days to return?"
"A wizard did it."
"How come there's an ancient red dragon in the 10th floor of a dungeon with no entrances or exits larger than five feet?"
"A wizard did it."

That's not made any better by "A steampunk gnome did it" or "Aliens".

Ignimortis
2019-02-01, 09:32 AM
I'm the opposite, if a race is animal based than it's an anthropomorphised version of that race with a humanoid frame. Catgirls spontaneously combust from sheer stupidity while cat people get on with their lives.



Oddly, I'm the exact opposite. I'm exceptionally tired of races that are "humans but slightly not"... pointy ears, shorter, sized like toddlers, etc. Give me Thri-kreen. Give me Palladium's Wolfen. Let me play a minotaur.

Some part of my dislike for non-humanoid races stems from the fact that I think that races that are "human, but not really" like elves and dwarves are more relatable and understandable to the average person. Animal people would require a lot of thought to actually be worth their time, because the further away you go from basic human, the more you have to take those differences into account - culture and behaviour, and so on. I mean, I'm not even sure there exists a race description that would make animal people feel like not-human enough to be believable and yet human enough to be playable/relatable/not frustrating.

Meanwhile, catgirls and all the other stuff are probably far closer to humans, because they are built along the same lines aside from a few superfluous features.


In fact, why even have humans at all. And if you do have them, why should they be disproportionally important to the setting; It taxes the versimilitude of most of the default D&D worlds. If you are going to have human characters it would be much more plausible if they were included in a context similar to Adventure Time, or Spirited Away, or Guardians of the Galaxy, or anything by H.P.Lovecraft

Because humans are usually portrayed as adaptable, mentally flexible, tenacious and as paragons of individualism. They're jacks of all trades, the renaissance men of fantasy, with an unyielding strength of will. A single human can be anything they want to be, while other races are quite more focused and restrained either by their innate characteristics or society. Therefore, a race that adapts incredibly well and never gives up eventually becomes the most important, because they can do anything well enough and possess the drive to go out and do things.

Take note that in those things you mentioned, humans are protagonists, both as point-of-view characters and someone by whose actions the plot is shaped. Humans take action and bend the narrative to their side. Sure, they might not win the day by themselves, but they are still the most important figures in the story.

Jay R
2019-02-01, 09:46 AM
That being said, you could axe literally every race apart from humans. There's no reason to have ANY of the extra races.


In fact, why even have humans at all.

Between the two of you, you've just eliminated all PCs, and in fact the entire game. Which is the problem with this approach from the start. A lot of this thread boils down to "Let's get rid of what other people love but I don't."

There is a reason to have the extra races: many players want to play elves, dwarves, hobbits, and others.

And why have humans at all? Because more players want to play humans than any other race.

Bohandas
2019-02-01, 10:36 AM
And why have humans at all? Because more players want to play humans than any other race.

Because an extra feat is OP in the early game and 23 extra skill points is OP in the late game

Knaight
2019-02-01, 10:55 AM
Because an extra feat is OP in the early game and 23 extra skill points is OP in the late game

Humans seem to pretty consistently be the most played regardless of how optimal they are.

Anonymouswizard
2019-02-01, 11:01 AM
And why have humans at all? Because more players want to play humans than any other race.

After having been in a seven person party where the only human was my character (everybody else was an elf out half elf) and a four person party where nobody was human (halfling, dwarf, tielfling, dragonborn).

Now I'll admit, I like playing 'short' characters. Most of my human characters are a few inches shy of their gender average, and I'll generally play a dwarf or gnome these days if I get the chance. But I've noticed a massive tendency towards nonhuman characters, especially among newer players (after a few years the novelty of playing an elf tends to wear off and a decent number of players begin rolling humans).


Because an extra feat is OP in the early game and 23 extra skill points is OP in the late game

Yep, that's the reason I went human last time I had choice of race. Pathfinder seemed to think that Fighters are bumbling idiots, not even 14 INT gave me a decent number of skill points.

Knaight
2019-02-01, 11:20 AM
Yep, that's the reason I went human last time I had choice of race. Pathfinder seemed to think that Fighters are bumbling idiots, not even 14 INT gave me a decent number of skill points.

It's almost like 2+int skillpoints and 35 different skills (counting knowledges separately) are an example of straight up bad design for any class that isn't int based.

Anonymouswizard
2019-02-01, 11:45 AM
It's almost like 2+int skillpoints and 35 different skills (counting knowledges separately) are an example of straight up bad design for any class that isn't int based.

What's worse is that the classes with ways to avoid the skill system are SAD, can bump INT, and so get okay numbers of skill points without dumping other stats, while classes like Fighters are lucky to get enough skill points to scratch their rears!

Don't get me started on Bards. 6+skill points, intelligence as their second or third most important stat, access to spellcasting, it's just bonkers!

While I think 5e is too stingy with skill proficiencies it at the very least gives you four at minimum out of a shorter list.

(My game starting up tomorrow is using DIY backgrounds with 2 free skill proficiencies plus additional proficiencies equal to your Intelligence modifier to be spent on Skills, Tools, or Languages. I'm legitimately interested to see what the result is, especially as it opens up the possibility of five background skills.)

PhoenixPhyre
2019-02-01, 02:26 PM
While I think 5e is too stingy with skill proficiencies it at the very least gives you four at minimum out of a shorter list.


And doesn't require proficiency in them to actually do the task. Only tool-related tasks (thieves tools, specifically) require proficiency.

5e's "skills" are really a misnomer, but I won't open that can of worms here...:smallbiggrin:

Millstone85
2019-02-01, 02:40 PM
And doesn't require proficiency in them to actually do the task. Only tool-related tasks (thieves tools, specifically) require proficiency.And from recent semi-official tweets, it looks like not all locks require you to be proficient with thieves' tools.

Max_Killjoy
2019-02-01, 03:13 PM
And from recent semi-official tweets, it looks like not all locks require you to be proficient with thieves' tools.

So, like, cheap locks and quality locks? Or simple locks and complex locks?

PhoenixPhyre
2019-02-01, 03:18 PM
So, like, cheap locks and quality locks? Or simple locks and complex locks?

The locks from the PHB (equipment section) explicitly require proficiency. Other locks are at the discretion of the DM.

So it could really be either or both.

I personally like it because it gives me the flexibility to model a wide variety of items--
* the complex gnomish puzzle locks that require Intelligence checks to crack the code
* the "straightforward but decent quality" locks from many societies that require a DC 15 Dexterity (Thieves Tools) check, proficiency required
* the crappy Byssian locks (not a metal-working culture, nor a high-security culture) that are a DC 10 Dexterity (Thieves Tools) check, no proficiency required,
* etc.

Mordar
2019-02-01, 03:22 PM
I started back in the dusty days of long ago (1981). While I almost immediately jumped into AD&D, we did splash around in Basic/Expert D&D as well. I just happened to be reading the Basic rulebook published in 1981, and was pleased to see the entry for gnomes. While only available as monsters, they are presented as distinct from dwarves. The tl;dr differences?

Dwarves

Stubborn but practical
Love hearty meals and strong drink
*Value* good craftsmanship and love gold
Sturdy fighters resistant to magic


Gnomes

Smaller than dwarves, but related and friendly
Better infravision
Excellent metalsmiths and miners
Love gold and gems and have been known to make bad decisions to get them
Love machinery of all kinds


So this has the gnomes as the geeks of the stunty races, and the dwarves as the party jocks.

Noteworthy that the later dwarves (say 3e?) absorbed the metalsmith and miner roles as well, which would certainly make gnomes more niche.

In my decades of play (stopping maybe a year after 4e hit, but with the majority of D&D play in the AD&D (1e) era and prior), I don't think I've seen any PC gnomes. No one hated them...but no one jumped up to play one either. That being said, dwarves were very rare as well...certainly less than 10% of the PCs. Halflings were probably about the same, perhaps a bit behind. It was humans, elves, half elves and a few specialty creatures now and again (depending on setting). So for us, anyway, the short races just weren't popular at all...and the sample size of short race characters was limited.

So, this really excludes us from having been WoW/EQ tainted, and the majority of the Dragonlance universe was developed after we'd moved to other fantasy games (RoleMaster ftw!). Even so, gnomes were overlooked.

- M

Bohandas
2019-02-01, 04:08 PM
IIRC Dargonlance's explanation for the similarity between dwarves and gnomes was that gnomes were literally mutant dwarves who had been touched by the power of chaos

Jophiel
2019-02-01, 04:27 PM
Dwarves have been superior miners since AD&D 1e, with better bonuses (and more bonuses) to underground stuff compared to gnomes. I think there's one item where gnomes are 5% better (slopes?) and in everything else they're either inferior to dwarves or else lack the skill entirely (detecting architectural traps).

That's the defining feature of gnomes -- slightly better at telling when they're walking on a slope :smalltongue:

The Jack
2019-02-01, 04:47 PM
Both
short
Like to drink
Live in mountains (except for forest gnomes... which might live in forests on mountains!)
Great with metal, Jewels and machinery.
Make superior magic items.

Dwarves
few rules that must be followed
Tradition bound
More muscles

Gnomes
Many rules that aren't that important to them.
Open to new ideas.
The hats are to hide their ginormous brains.

series rant;
I like morrowind's dwemer a lot. They're inversions of a lot of what people think of when it comes to dwarves, well, at least until Skyrim came out and they became more generically dwarfy.

Tanarii
2019-02-01, 04:49 PM
IIRC Dargonlance's explanation for the similarity between dwarves and gnomes was that gnomes were literally mutant dwarves who had been touched by the power of chaos
Or possible vice versa. Or possible both came from one common stock. The lore was never consistent on it.

LibraryOgre
2019-02-01, 04:58 PM
Or possible vice versa. Or possible both came from one common stock. The lore was never consistent on it.

"The Lore Was Never Consistent On It" is pretty much a description of Dragonlance...

Slipperychicken
2019-02-01, 05:00 PM
As someone who happens to like gnomes, for both mechanical and RP reasons, just curious as to the reason.

I love gnomes, but kitchen-sink fantasy games like dnd have too many short player-races. In terms of mechanical and lore-roles, the traditional ones (gnome, dwarf, halfling) all step on each others' toes a lot, so it's simpler to just get rid of one of them. Unfortunately, gnomes usually get the axe there because they're less commonly played.

JoeJ
2019-02-01, 05:01 PM
Dwarves have been superior miners since AD&D 1e, with better bonuses (and more bonuses) to underground stuff compared to gnomes. I think there's one item where gnomes are 5% better (slopes?) and in everything else they're either inferior to dwarves or else lack the skill entirely (detecting architectural traps).

That's the defining feature of gnomes -- slightly better at telling when they're walking on a slope :smalltongue:

That's not accurate. There's only partial overlap between dwarves and gnomes wrt applications of their mining ability. Dwarves can detect new construction, sliding or shifting rooms, and stonework traps. Gnomes can detect unsafe walls/floor/ceilings and determine their direction of travel underground. Both races can detect slopes and determine how far beneath the surface they are, with gnomes being better at both.

Also, gnomes have no modifiers to their ability scores; dwarves have a +1 constitution and a -1 charisma. You can play a gnome with a lower minimum strength and constitution, but it requires a higher minimum intelligence. The maximum constitution of gnomes is lower, but their maximum intelligence and charisma are both higher. Male gnomes can be as strong as male dwarves, but female gnomes can't be as strong as female dwarves.

Gnomes are the only non-human race that can be illusionists. They can also take any class that dwarves can, although they can't reach as high a level in any of them except thief (which is unlimited for both races). Gnome thieves are not as good as dwarves at opening locks, finding/removing traps, and climbing walls. They are better than dwarves at moving silently, hiding in shadows, hearing noise, and reading languages. A multiclassed dwarf can only be a fighter/thief. A multiclassed gnome can be a fighter/thief, fighter/illusionist, or illusionist/thief.

Both races have the same bonus on saves vs. magic (based on constitution). They both have a +1 to hit certain enemies, and a -4 to be hit by others, but the specific creatures that it applies to are different.

Bohandas
2019-02-01, 09:09 PM
series rant;
I like morrowind's dwemer a lot. They're inversions of a lot of what people think of when it comes to dwarves, well, at least until Skyrim came out and they became more generically dwarfy.

everything in Skyrim was more generically dwarfy

Luccan
2019-02-02, 12:31 AM
everything in Skyrim was more generically dwarfy

Not inaccurate, but I think it would be fair to say around Skyrim/Oblivion, they started taking the retcon axe to the more unique aspects of Elder Scrolls.

The Jack
2019-02-02, 05:11 AM
I don't think oblivion did much damage, other than no jungle and no no niben/colovial divide (I would've liked tattoo-faced wizards lords, but I can imagine that as a bygone era that still happened) With the Dwemer armour being actual armour rather than robot parts... That's totally fine, Dwemer need their own armour, and it was definitely one of the best looking sets in that game.

Skyrim screwed with ancient races that we'd already been exposed to.

They added a book on dwemer architecture that perfectly contradicts everything they've done. Honestly, I feel like Dwemer ruins were actually going to be nordic ruins that they changed last minute. Markarth would've been an old nordic city just like Windhelm.

Falmer are just dumb.
I get it, that's totally something the Dwemer could do.
But not to the entire race.

But Dwemer were awesome.
-Unlike tolkien, where dwarves were wholesome craftsman and orcs were vile industrialists, TES had the Orcs as the wholesome expert craftsman and the Dwarves as vile industrialists.
-They weren't traditionalists, they were creepy dudes who broke all the rules and did everything profane.
-Their halls suggested terrible craftsmanship or an eccentric sense of style for the most part. They did have some very nice things and mosaics, so one can conclude that either they weren't very focused or they they made almost everything look poorly made on purpose.
-Were probably wine drinkers.

Everything was so perfectly inverse of the dwarf trope. It was great.

Eldan
2019-02-02, 06:35 AM
I also liked that the dwemer technology was all about the music. That's one part of Tolkien that I'm actually pretty sad the classical fantasy dwarves lost. Tonal architecture was a great idea to bring music back to industrial dwarves.

There were only three things i really missed in Skyrim: the Nord gods, Nord magic and the real bardic tradition. Even Shor was just barely mentioned. And that entire idea that the Nords, would mistrust magic is just silly. They are magic. Nords breathe ice and piss lightning. They are the children of the sky, everything they do is magic. And there should have been much, much more focus on the bardic traditions. Especially the fact that the Nordic bards can tell tales of the future, because time is circular and so the ancestral tales are also prophecies.

KarlMarx
2019-02-03, 06:53 PM
See, Gnomes actually have a special place in my heart, because they're less defined by the conventions of Tolkenian fantasy. I can do what I want with them as I want to, because they have fewer preconceived notions. In the past I've made them the primary "diaspora people" of a human-dominated world, in a parallel to real-world peoples from the Roma to the Irish Travelers. Right now I'm working on an idea that sets them up as being the Fir Bolga in a setting heavily inspired by Gaelic myth, with Giants as the Formoire, and humans as the Tuatha de Danaanu. They can be what I want them to be.

Theodoric
2019-02-04, 04:43 AM
Forest Gnomes fit kabouters from Dutch folklore perfectly and I love them for it. One of my players is playing a forest gnome Druid in 5e and he's really nailing the 'diminutive fey woodland person' angle (apart from regularly turning into a tiger eight times his size, because fun).

Bohandas
2019-02-04, 04:11 PM
Edit: Looked it up. Apparently, older translations either used "Bilwiss" for Goblin, which I've never heard before, but there's a note in some translation that "Kobold" would be the best translation, if everyone didn't see kobolds as tiny and harmless friendly chaps.

Thay's odd. My main reference for folkloric kobolds is the idea of them tricking miners and metalurgists looking for nickel into mining out toxic cobalt arsenide instead (which is where the element cobalt got its name from btw)

Eldan
2019-02-05, 03:03 AM
Folklore, yes. The problem is popular imagination, especially in the 50s, with not as much fantasy literature, but 200 years of Romantics and Victorians getting their way with fairy tales.

This is what comes up for Kobold on Google search, exluding D&D dragon-kobolds:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Kobold_artlibre_jnl.jpg
https://comps.canstockphoto.ch/kobold-frech-zeichnung_csp13421407.jpg
https://www.spielbude.ch/platform/apps/shop/images/obj-211012-20317-original.jpg
https://www.crazypatterns.net/uploads/cache/items/2017/04/26249/haekelanleitung-doppelpack-kobold-und-opa-kobold-637x450.jpg


The lines between different small fairy tale creatures were always pretty blurry. Those might just as well be gnomes or dwarves, about half of them. And yes, Leprechaun is most commonly translated as "kobold" too.

In fact, the most well-known kobold in the German speaking world is probably still this little chap: (At least in my generation. I have no idea if children these days still know him.)
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/ef/9a/f2/ef9af26b6f42aa72c7eb95305239d04d--meister.jpg
https://cdn.muenchen-p.de/.imaging/stk/responsive/image980/dms/aktuell-2017/dpa/pumuckl-meister-eder-hp/document/pumuckl-meister-eder-hp.jpg

Pumuckl. He's a delightful friendly little prankster in childrens stories.

Tolkien wrote a few times that he was afraid that the English version of the book might have the same problem: that when he called his creatures elf, no one would think of the Alfar or the Sidhe, but of Christmas Elves or Tinkerbelle-style flower pixies.

Xania
2019-02-05, 08:12 AM
Folklore, yes. The problem is popular imagination, especially in the 50s, with not as much fantasy literature, but 200 years of Romantics and Victorians getting their way with fairy tales.

This is what comes up for Kobold on Google search, exluding D&D dragon-kobolds:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Kobold_artlibre_jnl.jpg
https://comps.canstockphoto.ch/kobold-frech-zeichnung_csp13421407.jpg
https://www.spielbude.ch/platform/apps/shop/images/obj-211012-20317-original.jpg
https://www.crazypatterns.net/uploads/cache/items/2017/04/26249/haekelanleitung-doppelpack-kobold-und-opa-kobold-637x450.jpg


The lines between different small fairy tale creatures were always pretty blurry. Those might just as well be gnomes or dwarves, about half of them. And yes, Leprechaun is most commonly translated as "kobold" too.

In fact, the most well-known kobold in the German speaking world is probably still this little chap: (At least in my generation. I have no idea if children these days still know him.)
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/ef/9a/f2/ef9af26b6f42aa72c7eb95305239d04d--meister.jpg
https://cdn.muenchen-p.de/.imaging/stk/responsive/image980/dms/aktuell-2017/dpa/pumuckl-meister-eder-hp/document/pumuckl-meister-eder-hp.jpg

Pumuckl. He's a delightful friendly little prankster in childrens stories.

Tolkien wrote a few times that he was afraid that the English version of the book might have the same problem: that when he called his creatures elf, no one would think of the Alfar or the Sidhe, but of Christmas Elves or Tinkerbelle-style flower pixies.


Judging by what i read, kobolds were no uniform and were also house elves, the ones as nasty spirits in the mines are the main ones though.

Same for hobgoblins, my Italian friend told me they are known as joke elves for them and they don't really care if their prank is to hide a pair of shoes or make a person fall to his/her death for the window, but most people have them as friendly in their minds.

Glorthindel
2019-02-06, 06:14 AM
Ultimately its a kind of reverse-Santa Claus issue. In the case of good old Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas/Nikolaus, etc, etc, the modern version is an amalgamation of multiple similar folklores. In modern RPGs the reverse has happened, where TSR (and others) have taken the many different names for fundamentally very similar entities, and has tried to spin them into seperate and individual species. In some cases this is fine, while in others, there just isn't the design space, and the creatures are kinda tripping over each others niches. In my mind, this doesn't just go for Gnomes (who are kinda squashed out between races that have had more appearances in modern culture), but I would say also Hobgoblins (do you really need a new race for "more orderly orc"), Eladrin (a more fey elf is really just an elf) and even Kobolds (who got a reimagining into their current image of tiny dragonoids in order to get some breathing space away from Goblins).

Its too late now, since regardless of how superfluous a race might seem, there will always be someone who so dearly loves it they will defend it to the death, so it is more aggrevation to cut a species (or heavily reimagine it) than to just leave it in, and mostly ignore it

Eldan
2019-02-06, 07:04 AM
Yeah, that. Plus, for any given world, I would really only select 3-4 intelligent species anyway (Plus maybe a few magical mutations of the existing ones) and leave it at that.

Pronounceable
2019-02-06, 12:25 PM
Gnomes suck. This is science.

Jay R
2019-02-06, 03:41 PM
Pick what works for your game. There is no reason to use all races, and no reason to look down on races that other people choose to use.