Oh Yeah.. Gnomes...

[theemrys]

Gnomes...

I used to really dislike gnomes... in fact, I loved the Birthright setting in part because it had no gnomes in it. All that has changed...

I was playing in a game set in the forgotten realms, and since I'm usually a DM, I was looking for something new to try as a player. The party needed a rogue, but I didn't want to play the stereotypical halfling rogue... so I decided to try gnome on a whim. I have never looked back!!! I fell in love with the race. As a player it was great. Sure, small weapons kind of sucked, but they were fun to roleplay. Shortly after I joined, that group went on hiatus for a while and I DMed, but the next time I got to play, it was a gnome... and I brought friends.

I was able to convince two others in our group to play gnomes as well. It was a blast. One played a rogue, one a wizard (illusionist really), and I played a druid. We ended up being quite a force to be reckoned with and were able to complement each other really well. Also, it was fun playing small pranks on the party when things got dull (but walked that fine line between disrupting the game and having fun). We even got the rest of the party to play along for a while when we encountered someone who had been frozen in time for centuries... we convinced him (for a short time) that gnomes now ruled the world...

Personally, I've never liked the tinkerer gnome thing... I like the more traditional style.

If you're every looking for a REALLY well written book about gnomes and gnome culture check out the Friends and Foe: Gnomes and Kobolds for the Kalamar setting. It's "official" D&D and is great for flavour, as well as some very well done gnome specific feats/PrCs, and even better in my opinion, good ways to use skills in different ways.

 

[Nyaricus]

This is a game. Design decisions should be made on what's best for the game. If D&D were truly trying to ape mythology, it'd look very different.

Instead of creating new cultures, D&D designers for decades have insisted on new cultures actually being separate subraces (and people worry that D&D is politically correct!). There's a handful of times where it's needed -- obviously drow really are different from surface elves -- but most of the time, slapping a new typical alignment and new behaviors on them would be sufficient.

But then, it's hard to stuff a monster book with them.

Well, I understand that; even 'race' is a bad descriptor, since elves and humans and dwarves and hobbits could all get together and in a couple generations have a half-dwelf/half-hobbman. Species, I beleive is the correct term. But this is besides the point.

Have you seen Primitive Screwhead's Races and Culture thread? It's a great little idea he has going, with each race having a set of racial abilities, and everything else is cultural; ie dwarves all have darkvision, but not all have +1 to hit vs orcs and goblins, etc. THISis the way it should be done in 4th edition, wth each race having a set of racial abilities, and cultural ones. Heck, it even makes balancing a bit easier, since you are dividing their "racial abilities" up into two bite-sized portions. I know for my campaign setting, I will be using this as a model, alog with a few other modifications for what I will be doing. For ex, I have 3 groups of dwarves, all the same race, with different bonus profs and bonuses to damage versus certain enemies. I didn't want to regurgitate this info 3 times, and now I don't have to - it's much more cohereant now. In my house rulesbook, you choose a race and then you choose a culture for that race, which gives you a specifc background and list of bonus abilities you'd get along with your standard racial list. It's simple, linear and works.

As for gnomes, they are an interesting bunch. How many differnet types/cultures are there?

• Tinker Gnomes
• Forest Gnomes
• Fey Gnomes
• Deep Gnomes
• Illusionist Gnomes

That's quite varied, actualy. Any more though?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

TSR/WotC keep insisting on the existence of Rock Gnomes, which seems to mean "race without any particular flavor or hook."

And yeah, I like the idea of cultural components that can swap out. In the PHB, I'd have a default cultural component for each race, just to make things simple, but identify it as such, so that players would know that the splatbooks for the races would have other cultural plug-ins.

But even having cultures so broadly defined doesn't sit well with me. We live in an information age economy in America in 2006, yet not everyone works with computers, owns computers or even knows how to use a computer. (A lot of people don't even know how to type.) Why would a fantasy kingdom be more homogeneous than that?

I would come up with a baseline culture that bridged several categories and encompassed more flavor. Forest/Fey/Illusionist all can fit together well (the fey do it just fine) and both ties gnomes back to many of their earliest roots in D&D while still giving us a more complete picture than we've had more recently.

 

[Nyaricus]

And yeah, I like the idea of cultural components that can swap out. In the PHB, I'd have a default cultural component for each race, just to make things simple, but identify it as such, so that players would know that the splatbooks for the races would have other cultural plug-ins.

Exactly. Gnomes is the PHB would be the gnomish race with the Rock Gnome culture. the components would now be twofold, but it would be, IMO, a better system by far.

I know these are broad, sweeping generalizations, but it's no worse and even a bit better than what is currently being done, and I like it JMHO, of course.

 

[Gargoyle]

For some interesting size contrasts (inspired by Arcana Unearthed) I made gnomes Tiny for my next campaign, and wrote up a medium-sized giant race called the Vos who have the Powerful Build trait (same as the goliaths in Races of Stone). We'll see how it goes.

I like gnomes, but they seem forgettable sometimes. The problem for me with gnomes as written is that they seem a little bit too much like a combination of dwarves, elves, and halflings. "Oh yeah, gnomes..." is something I've seen a lot of in D&D.

 

[Sykopup]

Gnomes can be awesome in the right hands. It is unusual for one of our adventuring parties to be completely gnomeless. I had a tinker gnome once that was arrested on many occasions for doing xorn impersonations (think about it). He was totally convinced that the magical effects he created were the product of his many inventions. The one invention that the DM would not allow was the Dragonbreath Containment and Dispersal Unit. Don't know why.

 

[Corroded]

In my old campaign, which I tragically haven't dusted off in years, Gnomes are traveling tinkers, kind of like the romaticized Gypsies. They wander the continent in brightly colored wagons, fixing pots and pans, selling love potions of dubious value, and getting out of town just moments before being kicked out by the local Sheriff.

Interestingly enough, their languages are based off of old Jewish names, and consider themselves a disposessed race. They are barely tolerated, and often find themselves on the wrong end of a pogrom when the locals need a convenient scapegoat.

The only reaon they survive is their mobility and the fact that half of the population of their camps are half-ogres. The two races are practically symbiotic; hayseeds are a lot less likely to beat on the little guys when they have to keep an eye out for a nine foot tall greenskin lurking around the corner.


As for elves, I don't consider any being that may reaonably live over a thousand years to be a viable player race. In the same campaign, the True Elves sweep out of their Vales every four or five decades to go Hunting. Entire populations disappear during those dark times; the ruins are quickly repopulated by humanoids, providing a generous supply or ruins for adventurers to re-plunder.

 

[Nyaricus]

In my old campaign, which I tragically haven't dusted off in years, Gnomes are traveling tinkers, kind of like the romaticized Gypsies. They wander the continent in brightly colored wagons, fixing pots and pans, selling love potions of dubious value, and getting out of town just moments before being kicked out by the local Sheriff.

Interestingly enough, their languages are based off of old Jewish names, and consider themselves a disposessed race. They are barely tolerated, and often find themselves on the wrong end of a pogrom when the locals need a convenient scapegoat.

The only reaon they survive is their mobility and the fact that half of the population of their camps are half-ogres. The two races are practically symbiotic; hayseeds are a lot less likely to beat on the little guys when they have to keep an eye out for a nine foot tall greenskin lurking around the corner.

That's actually really cool. Huh, amazing how a thread with a miazma of posters can come up with more fluff than 3 and a half editions of a 30+ year old game. Damn, this si why I love EN World

Thansk for posting, Corroded

 

[MonsterMash]

I like Gnomes, but they are much more illusionists or forest creatures in my approach rather than the tinker gnomes who I dislike nearly as much as Kender.

 

[Nyaricus]

I like Gnomes, but they are much more illusionists or forest creatures in my approach rather than the tinker gnomes who I dislike nearly as much as Kender.

Damn DragonLance, anyways....