What's with the Gnome Hate?

[taliesin15]

To be fair, tieflings are as written just as distinctly from other demonic/magical humanoid races as gnomes are from other fey/magical humanoid races. There's not really any charge you could levy against tieflings for being "useless" or "not very imaginative" that couldn't also be applied to gnomes from a completely neutral standpoint.

Not that you get many completely neutral standpoints in a hate thread.

Except for the fact that tieflings have only been around a handful of years, gnomes have been around D&D almost from the start, and gnomes have been a part of Western European myth and fairy tale for hundreds of years.

Besides, there's hardly a dime's worth of difference between a tiefling and a half-fiend or half-celestial.

Personally, I think the root of the problem is fewer and fewer are aware of the legacy of folklore, myth and fairy tale. Its a far cry from video games and anime.

 

[Obryn]

I have no gnome hate. I have plenty of gnome apathy.

One of my players, OTOH, loves gnomes for one reason or another. He played a gnome necromancer in my 3e Wilderlands game, and he's playing a gnome ranger in my 4e game. (FWIW, he thinks the 4e gnome is much cooler than the 3e gnome.)

-O

 

[Nifft]

I have no gnome hate. I have plenty of gnome apathy.

Same here. I tried to make them more interesting in my campaign, but somehow never made a gnome NPC, and nobody was ever interested in playing a gnome PC.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Barastrondo]

I'd wager one can do the same thing with any race, for example making dwarves or elves redundant if one wanted to. The last few years has demonstrated amply that an almost infinite amount of tweaking can and has been done to the core races so one can think of any possible variation.

Absolutely. I just noted that gnomes were the first to go. They seem to fit the niche between dwarves and halflings and perhaps even elves the way that half-elves and half-orcs also fit into between points.

However, playing the devil's advocate here, what race is traditionally (i.e. before 4-5 years ago when 3.5 came out) associated with the Magic School of Illusion?

Rakshasas. Okay, wait, that's just me. (You ask me to think of a race traditionally associated with illusion, and bam, rakshasas: dark like thunderclouds with golden earrings, children of Golden Lanka, cunning and terrible.)

The problem with such a limited niche is that it's not pre-supposed without the existence of gnomes. Remove gnomes from a game, and nobody asks, "Hey, where's the race that's associated with the school of Illusion?" After all, nobody is asking where the races are that are associated with Necromancy, Abjuration, Conjuration/Summoning, Divination, or whatnot. It's a niche created to give gnomes something to do, not a pre-existing niche that called out to be fulled.

And what race typically hides their communities using illusions?

Same thing. It's sort of in the same lines as "What race is typically described as being the smaller and more magical kin of dwarves?", or, to reverse the devil's advocate position, "What race is described as the fallen remnants of a human race tainted with infernal evil?" It's added flavor to help make the race distinct, but it doesn't posit a vital role for the race that couldn't be used by others. If someone says "I want to have a community hidden by illusion" and there are no gnomes in the game, they can use elves or humans or really any other race: they don't have to invent gnomes to make an illusion-hidden community make sense.

 

[Obryn]

Same here. I tried to make them more interesting in my campaign, but somehow never made a gnome NPC, and nobody was ever interested in playing a gnome PC.

Cheers, -- N

I think that's part of the problem - while some people cared about them in 1e, they were a distinct minority. So, ever since, almost every new setting has either gotten rid of them or tried to make them somehow interesting. It's like an admission... "We know these guys are boring, but LOOK! Look what they're doing now!" They've been shoehorned into more crazy roles than any other race.

-O

 

[Barastrondo]

Except for the fact that tieflings have only been around a handful of years, gnomes have been around D&D almost from the start, and gnomes have been a part of Western European myth and fairy tale for hundreds of years.

However, demons and devils have been around D&D from the start (missing only from the versions of D&D that also missed playable gnomes), and demons (used in the more general, non-D&D sense) are a part of Western European, Eastern European, Asian, African, even arguably American and Australian myth for millennia. The allure of the tiefling isn't the specific word "tiefling," it's getting to play with the trappings of one of the oldest and most universal myths there is. There are kids in the US who never heard the word "gnome" in the bedtime stories their grandmothers passed down, but who might have heard about the Devil hanging out at the crossroads or making wagers over fiddles and cards and dice.

You may get hung up on specific details, but the gamble (and I think it's proving a successful one) is that lots of gamers won't. They'll gloss over the details and go for a character type that's tied to one of these huge myths. Same as the dragonborn.

Besides, there's hardly a dime's worth of difference between a tiefling and a half-fiend or half-celestial.

Again, I have to say you're applying a personal bias. There's hardly a dime's worth of difference between a gnome and a kobold or sprite or spriggan. Mythically, they overlap quite a bit.

Personally, I think the root of the problem is fewer and fewer are aware of the legacy of folklore, myth and fairy tale. Its a far cry from video games and anime.

Or maybe people just don't have much of a love for gnomes. Knowing about them doesn't mean that you will discover a love for them, and if somebody doesn't care for gnomes, that doesn't necessarily mean they're ignorant.

 

[Doug McCrae]

How about tricksters, illusionists, tinkers AND master craftsmen?

Halflings got trickster covered, high elves/eladrin got glamour covered, dwarves got craftsmen covered.

IMC, they are miners of the richest gold mines (which they keep secretive), miners of many of the finest gems, master jewelers, the only ones running a bank on the major continent (itself heavily protected by Gnomish Illusionists)

So you're saying gnomes are so uninteresting you had to give them the dwarves schtick?

and, very key, the bridge between the other four core races.

And half-elves.

 

[Agamon]

I had gnome apathy (1 npc, no PCs in 25 years of gaming) until NWN2. The gnome in that was so annoying it grew to hate. Then it became a monster (rawr!) and is a lot more nifty.

 

[Sylrae]

Halflings don't cover trickster, they cover pickpocket. because we all know, in a game of D&D, all halflings take after bilbo baggins. unless you play in FR where there are 4 different races of halfling, and some of them make other options appealing.

what about half elves? they fit no niche whatsoever. They arent versatile like humans, theyre not magical like elves, they arent nature oriented, and they get shafted in like every edition via stats

 

[Desdichado]

Halflings don't cover trickster, they cover pickpocket. because we all know, in a game of D&D, all halflings take after bilbo baggins. unless you play in FR where there are 4 different races of halfling, and some of them make other options appealing.

We do? I thought we all knew that halfilngs were kender now, which very nicely embody the trickster archetype in a playable manner.