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Gnomes and their role in your game


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bulletmeat

Adventurer
Galeros said:
Okay, what are Gnomes role in your world? Are they the stereotypical mad scientists? Ot are they something different?
I've ended up switching the stats (including height and weight) of the gnome to the halflings. I feel 'Kender' should stay in Dragonlance. The gnomes are now more like brownies, or forrest fey.
 

Malar's Cow

First Post
I still have no idea what to do with the gnome race. Right now I conceive of them as a combination halfling and dwarf, but that doesn't really give them racial distinctiveness, and I hate the idea of the prankster or the mad tinker. I'd love to see what others have done with this race; I'm at a loss.
 

Lord Pendragon

First Post
In my homebrew the races live together, much like the "melting pot" of the modern US. However the gnomes have traditionally been a farming people, and often gravitate to agricultural work. It can be something as simple as farming, to something as grand and complex as enviromental design. And of course not every gnome falls into this stereotype. But enough do that gnomes are thought of as farmers and cultivaters.
 

am181d

Adventurer
In my current campaign, gnomes are protectors of the natural world. They're not born, but rather incarnated out of the earth.

In the campaign I'm creating now, gnomes are once powerful faeries who have been tricked by humans into giving up most of that power. Gnomes are often kept as slaves by human wizards.
 

bulletmeat

Adventurer
I've always felt that the problem with gnomes has been creating the 'niche' that a race fills in any given world. Elves always had the 'magic woodlands', humans are everywhere, dwarves have their mountain halls/empire, half-elves/half-orcs are the outsiders of almost all societies, etc.
 

Yair

Community Supporter
Some nice ideas here.

In one game (where my PC is a gnome) the gnomes are an agricultural people. I play a gnome soercerer who was banished for being a "witch" (sort of).
In another the gnome PC is the prankster, playing a Jester (base class); I am not aware of other gnomes in that setting (Raveloft).

Otherwise, the topic never came up.
 

Gez

First Post
Gnomes are the wise ones, the scholars, the loremasters.

It's a niche often given to elves, but D&D elves, with all their prancing and dancing naked by moonlight, are not serious enough IMO for this role. And when they're not prancing and dancing, elves are overpompous fops that take themselves too seriously.
 

Bigwilly

First Post
Recluses

In my homebrew campaign, the gnomes have withdrawn from the rest of society and live on an island shielded from the rest of the world by strong illusions. Most people have forgotten that they ever existed and only two are active in the current campaign - one is a PC and the other is his mum. Even then most people think of them as short, skinny dwarves - including the dwarves.

Bigwilly
 

robberbaron

First Post
Kind of hippy dwarves. Do a bit of mining, brew a little beer, wear outrageously coloured clothes and flounce about being friendly.

And they have no special Illusion ability.

There is a race of "Deep Gnomes" who are seriously religious, chanting mantras constantly as they work, who mine better than dwarves but are seldom seen on the surface.

There is also a mythical race of Abyssal Gnomes who, supposedly, live so far into the crust that the rock is hot, but these are thought to be imaginary.
 

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