Honestly, how often have you used gnomes?

[pawsplay]

Which part of gnomes do you want to emphasize?

Their coolness.

Small, tough race that is not super agile.

Race that does not come from an austere ancient culture or one-note joke characters from Dragonlance.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Is the single most spurious statements about fantasy I think I've ever read

Gnomes have no place in a fantasy world? Are you high, or just utterly out of touch with reality

You are aware that Gnomes have held a place in folklore and fairy takes in the west that spans centuries right? If not I'd suggest you look into it. Start with the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.

Looking back on it, do you really think it was necessary to be this rude to someone you don't know over the literary background to a DnD race?

I agree with you that Gnomes have one, but educating is nearly always a better choice than berating.

Have I used them? Yep... more than once. Particularly a couple Gnome thief characters in a Greyhawk campaign starting in and near the Kron hills.

The thing is... if they kill gnomes off completely... what happens to Greyhawk?

The Kron Hills (Flann-aerich in the old Flan tongue) are a range of mineral-rich hills spilling from the eastern side of the Lortmil Mountains and onward into the western Gnarley. The Kron Hills form the northern border of Celene, and the southern border of Verbobonc.

The northern region of the hills form a gnomish realm known as the Free Assembly of the Kron Hills, ruled by Urthgan the Eldest of Tulvar.

We know they aren't planning on killing gnomes off. In all probability you can play a gnome straight out of the MM.

They just aren't going to be in the PHB, which is fine since the PHB is including races that highlight the advantages of each class in the PHB, more or less, and, as you point out, since at least 3ed there hasn't been a distinctly Gnomish role.

I like them for Barbarians and Thieves, myself, but that doesn't really fit with the literature.

We know they're taking some time to tinker with Illusion and so that it works really well with the new system.

When that's done I have a good amount of faith that we will in fact see a full write up of gnomes with all the racial feats the PHB races normally get, and that both the Gnome and the Bard and/or Illusionist class they highlight will be all the better for the wait.

 

[Sir Brennen]

A 1st Ed campaign I ran, a couple of players ran gnomes, forming the Black Gnome Suicide Squad. They patterned themselves after the title characters of "Time Bandits". They did have a halfling as an honorary member, explaining him away as another gnome who had an unfortunate accident with a run-away wagon crushing his feet...

 

[Hussar]

Currently playing a gnome binder in Eberron. Fun. But really, it's the class that's fun, not the race.

 

[Khaalis]

Personally, for me, I don't like the D&D Gnome as it is presented. They do not exist in my homebrew world as a player race. They are instead based more on real world folklore, making them Fey. In folklore/mythology the gnome derives primarily from German fairy tales including the Grimm’s tales. They are most often depicted as 2” tall subterranean fey that look like gnarled old men. They are tricksters, pranksters and guardians of fey treasures. However, even in folklore the gnome is rare, most often referred to in generality rather than as featured characters. This I think, is why there really is no true source for defining details on what a gnome should be.

If D&D wants to define a gnomish player race, they should create a unique race that redefines the concept. However, what is more likely is that we will see what the gnome has become in most pop culture like Warcraft & Everquest with gnomes being predisposed to magic and tinkering skills (thanks to the infusion of Dragonlance into the common view of gnomes).

Overall I am glad to see they are not in the PHB if the design team hasn’t truly been able to define the race correctly yet. I would rather them add gnomes at a later date after redefining what their vision is for the gnome. JMHO. YMMV.

 

[Lanefan]

As a (mostly 1e) player, Gnomes aren't my favourite race...but others like 'em; no big deal.

As a (1e) DM, I just can't kill 'em off.

In my first big campaign, Fimble-Cymbal-Cybal (yes, he-she changed his-her name twice and gender once) was the *only* major character not to die at least once, a record that still stands today. Not many other people played Gnomes, however, and so for Riveria I seriously considered sinking them; almost at the last minute I changed my mind and kept them in. End result: 3 of the 10 most successful characters in the game - Pearl, S'nel'be, and Mrikle - were Gnomes! And believe me, the ratio of played Gnomes to played everything else was *way* less than 3 in 10...more like about 1 in 25.

And so for Decast (next campaign), here I am again trying to decide whether to keep them or not....and like last time, I probably will, just.

The race that's never got any love in my games is Part-Orc.

Lanefan

 

[ivocaliban]

More often than half-elves, half-orcs and halflings.

Far more often than tieflings or dragonborn or flying monkeys.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I have never played as a gnome myself. I have seen some played, but only briefly.

As a whole, I don't like D&D gnomes. I never knew what to do with them in homebrew settings. They are forgettable at best, and annoyingly awkward to do anything with without turning them into a parody at their worst. Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Trolls, and many other things can fit into place easily for me, but I just don't know what to do with gnomes.

As a whole, I would prefer gnomes to be moved away from being playable, and closer to being a magical fey creature like they are in myth. Gnomes are a creature of folklore, sure, but not D&D gnomes. Folklore gnomes are Tiny magical creatures that live in the earth, and might help a cobbler make shoes or something. Alternatively, they are elemental spirits of earth who work alongside Undines, Sylphs, and Salamanders. It might be my childhod spent watching the cartoon David the Gnome and playing videogames like Secret of Mana or Tales of Eternia, but that is how I prefer gnomes.

I am glad they are going to be changed and moved to the Monster Manual, myself.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Which part of gnomes do you want to emphasize?

Hmm, I think the issues you bring up become even more complicated with the inclusion of the Eladrin.

But off the cuff I think my solution would be to make the Eladrin, Elves, and Gnomes three different generations of Fey Exiles.

I'd say that the Gnomes have been out of the Fey Wild the longest, and that they have transferred a lot of their allegiance to the earth itself. The urge towards the higher planes is still a part of their culture, however, and this expresses itself in song and their attempts to arrive at a magical understanding of the world around them. Thus their mastery of song magic as an attempt to express their constantly evolving sense of understanding, and as a means of expressing their near fetishistic love of beauty. It's not that they are obsessed with gems, but rather that gems are an expression of their desire to free beauty from the earth that surrounds it and prevents it from being appreciated. At their worst Gnomish obsession with beauty can lead them to attempt to preserve it so that only they might appreciate it.

Their natural environment would be hills, and though the Snirvfneblin are an exception it is not that they are subteranean so much as they tend to get at the heart of their environment. Gnome houses are often a strange mix of burrow, hollowed out trunks, and arboreal patios. All cleverly hidden, of course, as the true sign of beauty is that it is found and then celebrated, rather than celebrated in order to be found. They practice highly advanced mix-use agriculture built around multi-species orchards. A Gnomish 'farm' is nearly indistinguishable from the forest that surrounds it save that the diversity can actually be greater and parasitic species are carefully managed.

Gnomeish merchants go to markets rather than have markets come to them or making any themselves. Often Gnome bards and druids with their goods will just seem to show up at human crafts fairs. What humans fail to realize is that they do the same thing among Gnomes, working as sort of orchard to orchard salesman. Gnomes often have a strong mechanistic tradition, viewing it as a form of 'emergent' rather than found beauty. Some communities become more obsessed with invention than others, but in those cases their machines often then seem to adopt a 'found' or inspired quality.

Dwarves admire Gnomes, but the first exiled often find Dwarves too dour. Gnomes view Tieflings and Eladrin with a sort of disdain for their inability to connect to the world. They think of Elves almost paternalisticly as their most successful project. Halflings, Gnomes, and humans seem to accept each other very easily just as rivers move through hills and plains and plains move into hills. Dragonborn and Gnomes are strangely distrustful of each other. Each sees in the other too much of their own love of treasure, and too little understanding of what the other seeks from it.

Favored Classes:
Bard - taking special advantage of the Races and Classes new Bards as spirit ridden song crafters/illusionists, representing the last of their connection to the arcane aspects of the Fae Wyld.
Druid - their new kinship to beasts and the last of their divine connection to the fae wyld/new connection to the earth itself
Barbarian - their badger riding martial caste

Minor Favored Classes:
Warlocks - Some gnomes renew their connection to the fae wyld or seek power from other planes.
Thieves - Theft is, of course, the highest compliment one can pay to beauty.

 

[med stud]

From wikipedia:

Often featured in Germanic fairy tales, including those by the Brothers Grimm,[2] the gnome often resembles a gnarled old man, living deep underground, who guards buried treasure.[3] Because of this, Swiss bankers are sometimes disparagingly referred to as the Gnomes of Zürich. Gnomes feature in the legends of many of central, northern and eastern European lands by other names: a kaukis is a Prussian gnome, tomten in Sweden, and barbegazi are gnome-like creatures with big feet in the traditions of France and Switzerland. In Iceland, gnomes (vættir) are so respected that roads are re-routed around areas said to be inhabited by them.[4] Some confusion arises as the gnome is one of many similar but subtly different creatures in European folklore; mythical creatures such as goblins and dwarves are often represented as gnomes, and vice versa.

Individual gnomes are not very often detailed or featured as characters in stories, but in Germanic folklore, Rübezahl, the lord over the underworld, was sometimes referred to as a mountain gnome.[5] According to some traditions, the gnome king is called Gob

The gnome described in wikipedia is nothing like D&D gnomes. D&D gnomes are close to nature, dealing with illusions. The folklore gnomes behave like asses and they have no direct affinity for just illusions. In old Sweden, if you messed with the tomte you had real problems.

Besides, many times there was confusion between what creature was what in the folklore. Tomtar (gnomes), vättar (goblins), troll (trolls) and dvärgar (dwarves) were used pretty much for the same phenomena. Which means that the only thing that is consistently common between folklore gnomes and D&D gnomes is the name.

Personally it took until the (IMO excellent) CRPG Arcanum before I had a role for gnomes IMC. I have never played a gnome and my players don't like small sized races so they haven't played gnomes either.