Question for DL fans about tinker gnomes

[CruelSummerLord]

It's commonly depicted that tinker gnomes' inventions never work right.

How is that even possible?

How can the gnomes do even the most basic things-wash their clothes, cook their food, get from one place to another-if they insist on building inventions to do it, and then those inventions never work right?

How have the tinker gnomes managed to survive as a society, or get anything at all done if every single project they build turns into a disaster?

How can they produce anything of value at all, for either themselves, their neighbors, or Krynn in general, if they have never managed to get a single one of their projects to work properly?

How have they managed to survive without starving to death, dying of plague caused by a lack of sanitation, or simply blowing up Mount Nevermind?

I can't understand tinker gnomes.

How can they do anything of use, both in a metagame sense and from an in-world perpective, if their inventions are all but guaranteed to royally screw up?

 

[Nightfall]

*waits for Cam Banks to show up*

If it's any consolation to you, there are gnomes that do make things that work.

 

[theredrobedwizard]

It's not that they screw up, it's that they never work as intended. For example, one Tinker might try to make a toaster. He fiddles around with some parts and after a while, his invention is complete. It looks like a toaster, but it's got extra cogs and wheels and washes clothes.

Another Tinker decides to make an elemental powered spanner to help tighten bolts. He monkeys around with some miscellaneous junk until he finishes his invention; a perfectly capable music box.

Since inventions never turn out the way they're intended, you'll always have all of your bases covered, albeit through careful application of chaos theory.

Or was it Chaos theory, as in the malevolent false deity that twice tried to bring about oblivion on Krynn?

Either way.

-TRRW

 

[Nightfall]

Robed,

Technically Chaos wasn't false so much as crazy and therefore considered itself the creator of everything and nothing.

It wasn't.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

*waits for Cam Banks to show up*

If it's any consolation to you, there are gnomes that do make things that work.

Don't get me wrong, Cam Banks and company are doing yeomen's work with the new DL setting, but the one thing about DL that really rubbed me the wrong way was how gnomes were portrayed as inept bumblers.

I didn't mind the tinkering, but it was the implication that they were a race of blundering imbeciles. Hence my question-if they're a bunch of klutzes that make Tim Taylor (Tim Allen's character from Home Improvement) look skilled, how have they managed to get anything at all accomplished?

 

[Nightfall]

Cruel,

I can't answer that. That's why I suggest you wait for Cam. Me I just accepted it as the same reason there are vampiric kender in Ravenloft.

It just happened.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I usually just go with the idea that their inventions often work in a way they never expected. Lets say a Gnome is trying to make a device that washes clothes, and he ends up with an oven instead. Well, he then decides to use it to cook food instead of washing clothes and goes back to trying to make a machine that washes clothes, probably inventing all sorts of other things other than a washing machine, which get spread to his friends, and then to the rest of Mt. Nevermind.

 

[Nightfall]

Thanks for that insight Galeros!

Btw good to see you.

Anyway point about tinker gnomes, they just function despite themselves. Much like kobolds do.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Thanks for that insight Galeros!

Btw good to see you.

Why thank you! Good to see you too!

 

[Nightfall]

Yeah it's nice to be back and posting...especially with NORMAL people.

Anyway any DL questions, Cam should answer.

If not I think I saw Dragonhelm around here...somewhere...