Do We Need Gnomes, Halflings AND Dwarves?

[Christopher Lambert]

Hello everybody,

I assume that most people's D&D campaign worlds use all the core player races (gnomes, elves, half-orcs, halflings, dwarves, etc.). And frankly, it's such a D&D tradition that I wouldn't expect otherwise.

But... just in your personal homebrews... does anyone else think that's gnomes, halflings and dwarves are an awful lot of races of what are all basically "little people"? I guess it goes back to Tolkein, who created hobbits as his own distinctly British-middle-class race distinct from dwarves, which seem mostly influenced by the Norse idea of burrowing, metalworking dwarves. D&D took these two races pretty much unchanged, then added gnomes, which have a little bit more "feyness" about them. (In the "magical faerie creatures of the woods" sense, that is. )

In Ankh-Morpork, calling a dwarf a "little person" is a good way of getting yourself killed.

I don't see dwarves as "little people" and have no problems with them, either.

Obviously dwarves, halflings and gnomes all have their own distinct traits in D&D.

Name one for gnomes.

However, in my own campaign, I've radically scaled back the wee folk and reduced them to ONE little-people player-character race: just gnomes.

Gah! The worst one of the lot!

Well, it's your setting, but I have to say I'm surprised you replaced dwarves with wimps... err... gnomes.

 

[Thanee]

Name one for gnomes.

They are naturally attuned to illusion magic.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Turanil]

Do we need anything but humans, anyways?

Yes. We need at least 40 PC races to be as much diverse and interesting as is the Talislanta setting in the roleplaying industry.

 

[alsih2o]

Do we really need Hobgoblins, Humans AND Orcs? Frost, Fire AND Hill Giants? Sprites, Pixies AND Fairies?

It is color, it is range. We don't need any of this. A buddy of Tarchon and I wishes to run a campaign that is based all on different types of humans, with racial modifiers differentiated within the specie.

Need? No.

Do they add soemthign to the game? I think so.

 

[Turanil]

Sorry for hijacking this thread.

[Hijack](Psi)SeveredHead, I think you can go back to your true virtual self now, as unfortunately the 22nd century game is dead for good.[/Hijack]

So back to the topic. I too think there could be much lesser races, but as PCs loves different racial traits to choose from, have humans with alternate racial traits. It's what I have done for my upcoming d20 Call of Cthulhu campaign: only humans, but some humans are less humans than what they appear to be...


BTW: I agree with the opinion that gnomes look like whimps...

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Heck, no. Axe the gnomes and bake them in a pie -- they're like a half-dwarf, half-halfling race.

 

[Greenstone]

In previous campaigns, although I have used Dwarves and Elves, I've ALWAYS dumped halflings and gnomes -the former I've always regarded as having no place outside of Middle Earth, and the latter I always though of as 1' high garden ornaments!

In addition, I always dump orcs - again too Tolkien - and just use goblins, ogres and trolls in their place. The only demi-humans and humanoids I thus use are those whose names are part of common English fairy-tale traditions.

However, in my new campaign world, I've combined Halflings and Gnomes into one race.

They're called Gnomes, and look like the the D&D3E renditions of the race (but are hardly ever bearded). They travel the setting in groups of brightly-painted gypsy-style wagons, and have Wise Women as their leaders. They have a very "druidic" feel, and are close to nature and animals. But - like the real world gypsies - they have been persecuted in the past, in particular by dogmatic human religions frowning on their "heathen" beliefs. In addition, their size and dexterity make them good thieves, and now - again like the real world gypsies - they are often thought of as a race composed solely of scoundrels. I thought this was all original and great, until I learned that the Morningstar's halflings are almost exactly like this.

I want to start the campaign with the characters helping a group of gnomes out of some trouble in a human village, and then have them tag along with the gnomes afterwards... the various areas that the gnome wagons travel through will steer the adventures in the campaign... . A nice way to keep the PCs on the move, and the gnomes will always be getting into some kind of trouble... I want the 30+ gnome group to feel like the character's extended family, and will basically be their mobile home-base.

One idea I'm still working on is that there is a purpose to the seemingly random routes all these gnome gypsies take, and that actually they are gathering something/s (?) needed for the day when they will all meet up for some important druidic rite... maybe something to do with the campaigns BBG... we'll see.

 

[Insight]

I got rid of gnomes and halflings in my campaign setting, mostly because I didn't feel that I had to include them. I was working from the concept of what was essential to the fantasy genre: humans (obviously), elves, and dwarves were definitely in, for their various places in both real-world mythology and their prominence in popular fantasy.

Because halflings are basically figments of Tolkien, and I didn't feel gnomes really added a lot to the game, I got rid of both of them. I am tempted to add a rare group called Wee Folk, and I guess they would take some of the attributes of both, but would likely be shorter versions of elves with perhaps a bit more fey in them.

We allow a lot of latitude in player character races, so the 'basic player character races' concept is really a misnomer in the campaign. Now, most of the player characters in our game do belong to one of the PHB races, but we don't necessarily restrict characters to those races.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've never had gnomes in any of my campaigns. The main reason - if I may go diaglo for a moment - is that they weren't in the original rules (at least I don't remember seeing them until the 1e PHB).

Cheers

 

[Ibram]

Though I have kept each race seperate from a stat pov I have brought them closer together from a plot pov...

The original race that gave rise to Dwarves, Halflings, and Gnomes is extinct (though Dwarves are very close to the original race). Gnomes are the decendents of a group of pre-Dwarves driven into exile for practicing sorcery. When that kingdom fell the survivors relocated to another continent and slowly became Dwarves. After the new kingdom was smashed by a half-fiend great wyrm red dragon and his armies some of the survivors relocated to another mountain chain, still others were forces to take up a wandering lifestyle that they have maintained to this day (becoming Halflings).