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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reprisal" data-source="post: 1249610" data-attributes="member: 1161">Secular GnomesAs they're presented in the PHB, the gnomes seem to be a good intermediary race between elves and dwarves -- perhaps it was the momentary preoccupation of the gnomes that the archetypal elf-dwarf grudge got its start. Gnomes seem to be easier to fit into a campaign world than halfings, and as a result, it's often halflings that find themselves without a raison d'etre as far as world creation goes... In some previous musings of mine, I ended up having the gnomes take up the agricultural side of the three good races that predated humanity. Dwarves, elves and gnomes all had a clear part to play in their struggle with their evil contemporaries: orcs, goblinoids, and ogres. The dwarves served as the manufacturing and mineral supply side of the Triad, the elves provided magical and sustainable forest product support, and gnomes tended to agricultural and most of the secular intellectual development.It ended up fitting quite nicely, since dwarves were LG, elves were CG, and gnomes, being NG, served as a good mediating force between the two martial forces.Then, we throw humans into the mix and things get all messed up...Anyway, the gnomes in this world would have a connection to nature, but at the same time would take a decidedly agnostic view on the matters metaphysical. I tend to think of them as an idealized version of some New Green Revolution that may or may not happen in our own universe -- as some odd mixture of secular science and natural spiritualism. As a result, it's the gnomes who developed a sense of democratic political sensibilities... (The elves being mostly individualistic, to the point of atomistic, and the dwarves espousing authoritarian virtues like something akin to Confucianism.)*shrug*Didn't say it was a particularly fantastic idea, <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> - Rep.</blockquote>

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