Alas, Poor Gnome, We Knew Him... Not So Well.

(Images from Claudio Pozas' Art Gallery, hosted here on ENWorld!)

Okay, let's talk about gnomes, perpetual whipping boys of the D&D core races.

I like gnomes. I consider their omission from the core race set of 4e unfortunate. To me, they are a mystical race without the Tolkien-baggage of elves. Which is cool, I like elves, but it's nice to get away from that.

But in a way, the gnome as it exists in the minds of D&D players is largely a result of its history. It's easy to see how the negative attitudes around it arose, and how the degenerative cycle of perception carried on.

Gnomes would become cemented in my list of defining D&D characteristics in AD&D first edition. Their specialty with illusion built an image of them that was distinct from elves and halflings.

The gnome, however, did not appear as a core race in the Basic/Expert game series; this was where the trouble began for our poor little heroes. It's not that hard to understand this decision. Each race was a class in BX,and the designers were probably looking for a short race list (also excluding the half-races), so just went with the Lord of the Rings races. Which went some ways to cement the parity between LotR races and those perceived as the "real" core D&D races.

Dragonlance showed up during the tenure of 1e. Gnomes featured prominently in Dragonlance. There, they received a new coat of paint as "Tinker Gnomes". This added an image of gnomes as mechanistic masters, one that persisted beyond Krynn. However, in the fiction of Dragonlance, this isn't the only image influx they received. Tinker gnome inventions had a tendency to explode and otherwise cause chaos. This added an image of chaos and incompetence to gnomes, which doubtlessly impacted the way they were played in games.

Half-orcs would disappear from 2e, but gnomes were spared. The expansion of specialists from one school to all 8 made gnome's specialty seem all the more limited in scope by comparison.

Further, 2e was a time of great innovation in D&D settings. Gnomes were not core options in Dark Sun or Planescape (though in the latter case, they weren't alone).

When 3e arrived, gnomes were in a similar condition to the state they started 2e in. However, the old multiclassing rules were supplanted with the concept of a favored class. Now anyone could take or combine any class, but multiclassing was more efficient with your favored class. As gnomes had the dubious distinction of having a single wizard specialty--illusionist--as a favored class, that made their options more limited than other races.

Further, and perhaps more telling, all race-class limits were lifted. Gnomes and elves were no longer the only "demihumans" that could use magic. Halflings and dwarves had that option open to them too. Without mechanical reinforcement, the different races blurred when it came to their perceived roles. If you wanted a diminuative wizard, you could play a halfling just as easy. Though it's unfortunate that many players can't see past the game mechanics aspects of defining racial charateristics, that's the way it is, and soon gnomes were "just another short race" alongside the more familiar LotR refugees that are halflings.

3.5 was probably where the worst niggling injury to the gnome's image as a playable race happened. Someone at WotC probably came to the good observation that it wasn't a good idea to have the gnome have a specialist as a favored class when elves had the wizards class as a favored class. But they chose the bard as an alternate. This is probably for the worse, because the bard is commonly regarded as only being a viable character in a party if you already have your "basic four" filled, and futher, I've always thought the bard was conceptually too limited. Artificer or beguiler would have both been much better choices, but those came later.

Eberron made what was the best boost to the gnome image in a long time. In Eberron, gnomes have an image of savvy knowledge brokers that are not to be trifled with. While conceptually compelling, it came too late and again, those who pay little attention to setting (or Eberron, for that matter) don't see this image boost.

The final straw, as I see it, comes from outside the hobby. Numerous Travelocity commercials showed their trademark garden gnome commercial, cementing the image of the garden gnome statue as the definitive gnome. Of course, online poster created echoes of this little character in avatars and joke threads, cementing the image of gnomes as silly.

When the decision came forth that the first 4e PHB would exclude the gnome, we should really not have been too surprised. But Wizards wen't out of their way to mock gnomes, just to make sure nobody took them seriously.

So, to those that love gnomes, on this 4th of July, let us light one off for our little buddies this evening (well, assuming you are a USA'n, otherwise devise your own dedication to the little fellow.)

As a final dedication, I'll tip my hat to Claudio Pozas, who not only brought us the cool image of a gnome psion in the adventure Of Sound Mind, but also put out some great images of the gnome (which adorn this blog) that showed us how cool the little guy can be.

-Psi