D&D General Does Your Fantasy Race Really Matter In Game? (The Gnome Problem)

MNblockhead · Jul 15, 2019

Doug McCrae said:
Non-humans in D&D, and fantasy in general, are humans with funny-shaped ears. I have trouble understanding what the point in them is, they all merely represent subsets of humanity. It stems from the source - Tolkien. Tolkien's dwarves are dour, hard-working, hard-drinking Scots Presbyterians. His elves are his view of an idealised human - in harmony with nature, artistically-inclined. Hobbits are the rural English. You could do all that with humans.

You could. Or you could assume that there are different distinct sentient, humanoid races, that can or can't interbreed and enjoy worldbuilding and roleplaying around what that might look like.

I've been thinking of creating a campaign based on real-world archaeology. Set 50,000 to 80,000 years ago when homo sapiens was spreading out an encountering the neandrathals (homo neanderthalensis), denisovians (Denisova hominins), and Homo floresiensis (flores man). I like the idea of exploring that period when various archaic human began encountering each other and throwing in a bit of fantasy. You could look at this an argue that these are just different humans. But I think if you really get into the roleplaying and world building part of the game that this would be a very different flavor of game than an all homo sapiens game.

Also, dwarves, gnomes, elves, orcs...these races touch on some deep archetypes in our cultures. They may not be true to a specific historical folk lore and tend to be Tolkien-influence mash-up of different folklore, but the early creators and players of D&D and the writers who influenced them tapped into some powerful archetypes that remain compelling today. I like a surly Scotsman as well as the next, but he's not a D&D dwarf.

The Crimson Binome · Jul 15, 2019

MGibster said:
I just don't think having a plethora of available races necessarily adds much of anything to the setting. Anyone with me or am I out on a limb here?

As a DM, you should only add a race to your setting if it makes sense for them to be there. Personally, it's hard for me to justify more than six races on a single planet.

The only settings which should come close to having a dozen races or more should be something like Forgotten Realms (which is basically just a joke setting, haha wouldn't it be funny to have a world with everything in it?) and Planescape. Even then, a kitchen-sink setting with every race that's ever been printed, doesn't have nearly as many things as there could be. The truly bizarre thing about Forgotten Realms is how it canonically includes everything that's first-party published content, and nothing from third-party or homebrew sources. If you try to add your homebrew race of squirrel aliens into the setting, then it's not canon anymore, because there canonically aren't squirrel aliens in that setting (probably).

Dannyalcatraz · Jul 15, 2019

jasper said:
Ok DMs, Have you made any race a scape goat/unwanted in certain towns?

I do not recall having done so, but I have played in campaigns where this was so.

...which had no effect on what I played, just how I played it.

Dannyalcatraz · Jul 15, 2019

Saelorn said:
As a DM, you should only add a race to your setting if it makes sense for them to be there. Personally, it's hard for me to justify more than six races on a single planet.

The only settings which should come close to having a dozen races or more should be something like Forgotten Realms (which is basically just a joke setting, haha wouldn't it be funny to have a world with everything in it?) and Planescape.

See also Spelljammer.

Cobalt Meridian · Jul 15, 2019

In my current campaign I started with just six races that player characters could choose from. My players had input into which races these were so that their 'favourites' would be available to them and (I am happy to say) the end list included Gnomes. Over time they've encountered a few other humanoid races (Goblins, Hobgoblins and Gnolls) and are aware of a few more but starting with a small pool enabled me to spend time incorporating each humanoid race into the setting in a way that made some sense (to me at least).

I have checked with my players and they didn't feel that they've been short-changed by having a restricted race choice to start with and I feel that if I had kept open dozens of possible PC races then my world would lose a lot of its character.

However YMMV and I'd never want to criticise any GM having dozens of different character races available to players.

Celebrim · Jul 15, 2019

MGibster said:
Would there be a noticeable difference in the campaign had your human Fighter been a goliath, an elf, or a dragonborn? At the risk of sounding presumptuous I'll bet the answer is probably no.

Well, you are making presumptions.

If I invited you over to play some D&D it would not be unreasonable of you to expect to play any one of the races from the Player's Handbook.

I would never assume that. There are too many settings (more than half are homebrew), too many editions, too styles of campaign.

As I was figuring out the broad strokes behind my setting I had humans, various elfs, dwarfs, halfings, orcs, and even tieflings figured out but then I got to gnomes. I

Not every fantasy race works for every campaign setting. Personally I think dragonborn and half-orcs don't belong anywhere near Ravenloft. If you've got a setting where demons don't mate with demi-humans then tieflings probably won't work. At least not as written and then why bother having tieflings in the first place?

I just don't think having a plethora of available races necessarily adds much of anything to the setting. Anyone with me or am I out on a limb here?

No, I think sanity is finally returning to you. Not every race is in every setting. My preferred homebrew has the following approved PC races: changling, pixie, sidhe, goblin, half-goblin, hobgoblin, elf, human, dwarf, orine, and idreth. And that's it.

No one in the setting has really heard of a gnome, goliaths, orcs, dragonborn, half-orc, tieflings or what not. They have heard of kobolds, gnolls, minotaurs and so forth but they would treat these things as monsters because that's actually what they are. (Bugbears are technically people but not suitable as a PC race, for the same reason that effreeti and hill giants are arguably people but not suitable as a PC race.)

D&D has acquired a sort of Star Wars cantina shtick where all sorts of different aliens are living together and despite the different bumps on their forehead, none of that really matters. The great irony of this approach is that if everything is alien then nothing is - it all becomes familiar and as you put it there is no noticeable difference between characters of different races beyond that they were chosen entirely to acquire attribute bonuses or the like.

Dausuul · Jul 15, 2019

I am also not a fan of kitchen sink settings. It's why I allow and even encourage variant human as a race option, even though it's way overpowered: If all of my players pick variant human, it takes off a lot of the pressure to incorporate races that make no sense in the setting.

Umbran · Jul 15, 2019

Ralif Redhammer said:
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.

I am not sure that this is somehow more true of gnomes than it is of, say, elves, with all the sub-races that have been out there.

And, heavens forfend you can't summarize *an entire race of people* in a neat little stereotype! The horror!

CleverNickName · Jul 15, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
I’m always flummoxed by folks having a hard time seeing a place for Gnomes.

I’m curious. What is your general conception of the identity of the Gnome race?

Back in the red-box days of BECM, gnomes were just pointy-nosed dwarves that love gold. And that's how I treated them in the game, and I never really paid much attention to them otherwise. There was the odd adventure where the party would have to go retrieve something that was stolen by gnomes, but that was about it.

Fast forward a few dozen years (ugh, am I really that old?) and I realize that how I see gnomes hasn't really changed. To me they are, and probably always will be, pointy-nosed dwarves that love gold. So if I were ever inclined to include gnomes in my game, I would just shrug and make them a subrace of dwarf. Something like:

[SBLOCK="Gnome (Dwarf Subrace)"]GNOME
Gnomes have the dwarf traits in the Player's Handbook, plus the traits below.

Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Artificer's Lore: Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to magical, alchemical, or technological items, you can add twice your proficiency bonus instead of any other proficiency bonus that may apply.

Gnome Cunning: you have advantage on Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma saves against magic.

Tinker: you are proficient with Tinker's Tools.
[/SBLOCK]
I'm sure it could use a little bit of polish, but anyway. You asked me what my general conception of gnomes is, and that's pretty much it in a nutshell (or rather, an SBLOCK tag).