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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ptolemy18" data-source="post: 1962169" data-attributes="member: 24970">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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )Obviously dwarves, halflings and gnomes all have their own distinct traits in D&D. 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.However, this doesn't mean that all gnomes are alike. Basically, I've smooshed halflings, dwarves and gnomes together. I'm acting on the assumption that, just like people in different cultures, there are tons and tons of different varieties of gnomes, and these gnomes range across most of the different "cultural traits" of halflings and dwarves in D&D. Therefore, in some parts of the world, gnomes are mysterious little people who live in the woods and talk to animals. In another part of the world, they are bearded little people who make weapons and armor and build mines. In yet another part of the world, they are easy-going little people who farm and raise cattle and build little houses. And these different types of gnomes consider eachother as different as, say, an uneducated Medieval Euopean would consider himself different from a Medieval East Asian. Why did I do this? Well, I was trying to make a more "realistic" campaign setting, and I decided that by cutting down on the number of races, it'd help answer the question "Wouldn't all the stronger and more numerous races have killed the wimpier ones off in the dawn of prehistory?" (Yes, I am a cynical person. :/ Actually, in D&D terms I'm assuming the answer is "Because they had their own gods helping them out.") Of course, it's more fun if there's lots of races... but strangely enough, none of the players have complained about the lack of halflings and dwarves. (I'm actually sorta surprised myself...) Anyway, I'm keeping all the EVIL humanoid races, all the lizard men, goblins, orcs, gnolls, hobgoblins, troglodytes, yuan-ti, other freaks, etc... it's fun to have them around roaming outside the borders of human civilization... but I thought that it would be more realistic if humans didn't share their world peaceably with QUITE so many different races.Jason</blockquote>

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