I love those gnomes!

[Tonguez]

Halflings have the benefit of a LOTR to help establish an example of their mindset, even though that has kinda been thrown out in favor of the Kenderized halfling. Gnomes don't even have that going for them.

So seriously, what is a gnome and what is their culture like in your game?

SMURFS provide an adequate example of gnomish behaviour IMHO and as long as the Crypto-anthropologist is able to discern fact from the child-orientated presentation of the source material it is possible to draw conclusions about a complex culture which not only reflects much of what Gez has intimated re Gnosis but which gives gnomes a place in the Cosmology of a World which would be the envy of many

* Gnomes Know (as Gez indicated above)
* Gnomes are (if it is given for one to be a sweeper - then sweep")

IMC Gnomes are eusocial clanbased creatures 15" high and associated with fey. Gnomes are hermaphrodites and only develop sexual characteristics on reaching maturity
However Gnome maturity is triggered by enviromental and not temporal factors (ie gnomes can stay the same 'age' indefinately). All Gnomes in a clan are the children of a single mature female and her brood mate.
Gnomes beleive that the Land Provides and thus live simple lives, however working in cooperation they are capable of increidble feats of engineering and inventiveness (the tinkering aspect is a misintepretation of this inventiveness coupled withthe need for a 15" person to interact with a world built for 6 ft tall humans)

 

[Kaiyosama]

What about my dead sexy gnome...

 

[Oni]

Psionic gnomes !

careful, I think the thought of gnomes and psionics together would cause some peoples' heads around here to explode.

 

[Gez]

I've been Gnomed !

Thanks, Darkness. What an honor.

It's just sad I can't translate my "title" in my mothertongue, where we speak of garden dwarfs rather than garden gnomes. Bah!

 

[Zander]

So seriously, what is a gnome and what is their culture like in your game?

Check out the book Secrets of the Gnomes by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortoliet. It's OOP but easily found and not expensive. This book gives you a view of what gnomes could be like: environmentally friendly, shy, inventive (without being high tech), good with their hands and possessing some magical abilities.

Hope that helps.

 

[Sir Edgar]

Poortoliet.

Hehe, sounds like someone who'd write a funny book about gnomes.

Thanks for the book suggestion, btw.

 

[Moleculo]

in my homebrew i am crafting, i made gnomes an evil race, and the elves and good humans drove them off the main continent onto three prison ilse kind of like alcatraz. All the "saved" gnomes live in small clusters, and have given up the way illusion and trickery. hahahahahahah!

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Excuse me, folks, but all of you are badly, badly - I mean really badly - underestimating gnomes!!!

Have you no shame?

Did not the gnomes start the industrial revolution on Toril?
Did not the gnomes invent the technology that exterminated the elves of Realmspace?
Did not gnomish inventions build anew the cities of Faerun, so that their towers touched the heavens?
Do not gnomish inventions span the continents, linking everyone with superscience, starships, instantaneous teleportation, and security grids around entire regions?
Was not the UCT Starfleet not created with gnomish technology?

For that matter, did not Anabstercorian build the Great Ring around Oerth's sun with technology he gleamed from the gnomes?

Is Gond the Wonderbringer not a prominent diety among the 6 dieties of the Church of Toril, a Church that encompasses tens of billions of worshippers and thousands of diverse races?

It's an outrage, all this talk of gnomes being inferior!
Edena_of_Neith, says so!

 

[Tokiwong]

Gnomes are pretty lame, now halflings, halflings kick the can of justice real good.

 

[NiTessine]

Gnomes are pretty lame, now halflings, halflings kick the can of justice real good.

Zogen Feuermacher disagrees with your views. Justice is a notion for fools and the dead, he speaks. And then he shoots your kneecaps off with his muskets and cracks a jar of alchemist's fire over your head. After that, his cousin Nozge Feuermacher, a priest of Shar, comes in and repeatedly stabs you in the back under the cover of magical darkness. To finish off the job, the gnome sorcerer Glaselen Gliesenal will fireball the area.

In short, don't mess with the gnomes. It's the small, quiet, and underestimated who always turn out to be the most violent, smartest, most resilient, most skilled, or just plain coolest of the group. Haven't you ever read Tolkien?

Pun unintentional.