Ralif Redhammer
Legend
I like gnomes, but this is definitely a problem. There’s such a palimpsest of identities to the gnome that it can be hard to say what a gnome actually is.
As to race mattering in my campaigns, I think much of that falls to the player. Is the player really into their dwarven identity or is it just a collection of bonuses and abilities to them? My players definitely impact my DMing style, and I react to what they’re putting out.
In most of my worldbuilding, I tend not to restrict what people can play. I have very few ideas that I can justify restricting people’s choices for. My cool homebrew idea will be fine if I allow goliaths in it, even if I didn’t originally plan for such.
As to race mattering in my campaigns, I think much of that falls to the player. Is the player really into their dwarven identity or is it just a collection of bonuses and abilities to them? My players definitely impact my DMing style, and I react to what they’re putting out.
In most of my worldbuilding, I tend not to restrict what people can play. I have very few ideas that I can justify restricting people’s choices for. My cool homebrew idea will be fine if I allow goliaths in it, even if I didn’t originally plan for such.
Are they shorter dwarves that specialize in engineering? Halflings who live in the woods and do illusion magic? Both? Neither? D&D couldn’t seem to make up its mind about what the heck Gnomes were supposed to be, so I did it myself. Now I like them, but they’re not really any of the many disparate things D&D calls “gnomes.”