My Gnomes are Weirder than Your Gnomes: Seeking advice on a campaign setting.

[Jeff the Green]

I'm working on a campaign setting and I've found that I'm, consciously or not, doing away with tropes I find overplayed or distasteful in and of themselves (violent drunk dwarves, mystical elves, and x-breathing dragons among them).

The problem I've come to is the gnomes. Dear lord, the gnomes.

See, I've made them into slave-taking semi-socialist sailors.

Their island is pretty much devoid of natural resources--except for trees. There are plenty of trees. They have exactly one advantage: the governments of their two main cities control all knowledge of how to navigate a very dangerous, very important strait. The two other main nations (the dwarves and their client humans to the west and the elves to the east) have to either pay the gnomes to ship trade goods between them, risk the icebergs in the far south, or send their caravans through the Betweens, vast stretches of forest, wasteland, and mountains inhabited only by the more monstrous creatures of the world. This produces an enormous profit that is distributed amongst all residents of the cities and allows even the lowliest gnome to live, if not extravagantly, at least comfortably.

They also are the only major society that doesn't prohibit slavery. The majority of their land-based armed forces are slaves that are either magically controlled or promised freedom. They hold regular gladiatorial games--though usually not to the death, since slaves are expensive--and sorcerer-gladiators are prized because they give a particularly spectacular show.

Finally, their government and religion are about the most liberal in the world. Their gods are distant and really only demand the occasional sacrificed sheep, so the sexual and societal taboos that are prevalent among the dwarven, elven, and human kingdoms are basically non-existent.

But...

I'm worried it will stretch players' suspension of disbelief too far. Dragonlance has so infected our notion of what gnomes are supposed to be that I'm worried that I'd be better off replacing them with some other race and either doing away with gnomes all together or making them just a variant of halflings.

What does the Playground think?

[Yora]

Check out the homebrew forum. I think the Playgrounders Guide to Worldbuilding has a few tips on this.

[The Glyphstone]

The half-hacked solution is to rename them. I solved a lot of problems expectant in my halfling-analogue race by just calling them something other than halflings and giving them a different appearance. But that could be considered getting rid of gnomes, which you don't want to do.

[erikun]

The biggest problem that I forsee is you are basing an entire race on a single city; it could be easy for the players to associate the eccentricities to the city than to gnomes in general. I mean, how is the random wandering gnome to embody taking on a large profit taxing one specific area of the globe and spending that money on social reform?

[Adamantrue]

In the game I'm currently running, Gnomes have a Greco-Roman flavor alongside the fantastic elements (mostly because I thought the "Gnoman Republic" was an interesting name). This new direction included elements such as slavery, imperial expansion, and much more focus on politics.

Most of my players went along with the ride, though one that specifically preferred to play Gnomes said it ruined the feel of the Race, changing how he would have to play his character (he's always a Gnome).

I ended up creating a small sub-set of the race, on the outskirts of the Republic and removed from the majority of the world. They have more of a steampunk feel (mostly stealing elements from Eberron, though there is Dragonlance level silliness involved), along with eccentricities due to their isolation and a certain secretiveness because of their inventions. It was different enough from my main Gnoman Republic that he could play his style too, while exploring the new elements.

My Gnomans were interesting and unique enough, while still having many of the familiar elements, that when he died, he wanted to give one of them a shot.

I'd say explore the new direction full force, but leave yourself some wiggle-room in case it doesn't work for all your players.

[Deepbluediver]

@Jeff
I never liked how gnomes and halfings in D&D 3.5 seemed very similar; both where typically short, happy-go-lucky races with a tendency for trickery.

I'm always happy to see some one give gnomes a different style of treatment, and if you've been doing the same thing all along to the other races, then having gnomes be different is not such a shock. I don't know what your're group is like, but when you read enough fantasy you start to come across lots of variations for the standard fantasy races.

In The Deathgate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, the story starts on one world where the elves fly around in magi-tech airships and have basically enslaved what is essentially a race of halfings (called Gegs, I think). The next book has dwarves who are pretty much communist-pacifists, and get quickly driven to extinction by a group of maurading giant-constructs (the series gets weird and COMPLICATED quickly, I've never actually finished reading it).
My favorite version of gnomes, though, is probably from Elizabeth Moon's Paksenarrion novels, and the follow-up prequel, The Legacy of Gird (where they get more screen time). Her version of gnomes are the ultimate LAWFUL race and everything is viewed in terms of even exchange, to such a degree that they don't even have concepts of gifts or favors. They're not rules-lawyers in the sense that they try to get a leg up on people, they just view a standard set of regulations for everybody as the ultimate goal of a society.

Assuming your group isn't to high-strung with regards to standard fantasy stereotypes, I don't really forsee a problem. If you are really worried that they won't enjoy your version of gnomes though, as an earlier poster said just refluff a little. Instead of simply gnomes, have your gladiator/slave-army city actually run by a version of the 4e tieflings; all that demon blood is what drives them to be neutral at best, with evil tendencies. The gnomes who handle the day-to-day stuff are under just as much control as all the rest. You can even have various gnome-factions, some who want to overthrow the demi-demon's reign, and other who are perfectly happy to peel grapes and fluff pillows.

Most of my players went along with the ride, though one that specifically preferred to play Gnomes said it ruined the feel of the Race, changing how he would have to play his character (he's always a Gnome).

I've played in some games with VERY non-standard characters, and here's how the racial-flavor thing was usually handled: Adventurers are frequently the people who don't fit in with the rest of their society at large, and so can be made with just about any alignment or personality that their player wants; this can be a source of either comradery or conflict whenever your players run into a group of the world's more common type of that race.

[LibraryOgre]

First of all, your description of gnomish society reminded me of Queg from Feist's Midkemia novels. This is a good thing... but it raises a possibility.

The Quegans are the remnants of a great Empire that retreated hundreds of years ago, leaving little pockets of itself. One of those pockets was Queg; another was the Free Cities of Natal. Though they have a lot of linguistic similarities, they're culturally pretty different.

So perhaps your gnomes are the most politically important ones, but there are others (say, living in those Betweens you've mentioned) who more closely conform to standard fantasy traits? Not a full-on subrace or anything (they may have identical racial stats), but just a cultural variant?