Question for DL fans about tinker gnomes

[Henry]

Keep in mind: Three steps forward and two-and-a-half steps backwards is STILL a half-step forward.

Tinker gnomes are meant in the novels as much for comic relief as the kender are more than anything. As a regular campaign element, I would say that they do have inventions that work, but they are always suboptimal. Even in the Dragonlance Adventures rules for Tinker Gnome gear, it could work, even if it was ten times bigger than normal and had lots of bell and whistles.

Remember Doc Brown's refrigerator from Back to the Future III, the one that went through tons of sturm und drang for one ice cube? That's a good example of a Gnome invention.

 

[Cam Banks]

Vocenoctum has it right, actually. Most gnomes believe in the inherent usefulness of common tools, because they need them to help them make their contraptions. Sometimes, you'll get gnomes who feel they can improve upon those tools and do so to the point of absurdity, but those gnomes are likely members of the Guild of Useful Tools With Which To Accomplish Diverse Tasks, and they're going to do that kind of thing anyway.

We have a whole chapter on gnomes in the upcoming Races of Ansalon. The book's being sent for approval as we speak; the chapter in question covers the tinker gnomes, the mad gnomes (or thinkers), wild gnomes, and even half-gnomes. There are rules for creating contraptions, a reprint of the gnomish tinker prestige class which originally appeared in War of the Lance, and a whole bunch of other things (like alternative class features and new uses for skills). I co-wrote the chapter with kender expert Sean Macdonald and the contraption rules are a revision and expansion of Jamie Chambers' original materials which engineer-in-real-life Clark Valentine gave a once-over and then handed over to me to add in all the weird stuff.

So, yeah - I don't believe gnomes are one-trick ponies or solely comic-relief characters. We went into this book hoping to expand the perception of all the races of Dragonlance, shedding some stereotypes, celebrating others, and pretty much trying to do to the cultures of Krynn what we did with the Holy Orders of the Stars, the Wizards of High Sorcery, and the Knightly Orders - jazz it up for 3rd edition.

OK, now it's back to work for me.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Nepenthe]

We have a whole chapter on gnomes in the upcoming Races of Ansalon. The book's being sent for approval as we speak; the chapter in question covers the tinker gnomes, the mad gnomes (or thinkers), wild gnomes, and even half-gnomes. There are rules for creating contraptions, a reprint of the gnomish tinker prestige class which originally appeared in War of the Lance, and a whole bunch of other things (like alternative class features and new uses for skills). I co-wrote the chapter with kender expert Sean Macdonald and the contraption rules are a revision and expansion of Jamie Chambers' original materials which engineer-in-real-life Clark Valentine gave a once-over and then handed over to me to add in all the weird stuff.

I'm not the kind of guy who camps outside the box office for Star Wars tickets, but if I ever were to do it, I would do it to get this book as soon as possible

/N

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Where?



It isn't that their inventions never work right. It's that their inventions are overly-complex. Gnomes believe that if one pulley will do a job, imagine how much better the job could be done with twenty pulleys!

"Small, simple machines are made by small, simple minds."
-Gnome proverb

Gnomes believe that bigger is better. They will invent something, and even if it works, they'll try to perfect it ad infinitum. Gnomes embrace failure. If an invention doesn't work, then gnomes can learn from that to make improvements, or to open up a new field of research.

Not every invention explodes. Sometimes, they have added side effects. For example, a vegetable picker might also pick up small animals. A clothes washer might wash clothes, but it may also wear the gnome wearing them! The autognomes from Spelljammer are programmed to protect babies. Problem is, they protect all babies - even the dragon babies. And so on and so forth.

Point is, gnome inventions work. Gnomes just don't know when to quit fiddling with them. This, in turn, causes malfunctions. It does produce chaos in gnomish society at times, but they do have the basics with which to function. It's just when they try to advance to the next technological level that they run into problems.

Hope that makes sense.

Hmmm. Mind if I run by you something that crossed my mind when I was reading through DL7 a while back?

This takes place in my "Alternate War of the Lance" storyline...

Sturm, Laurana and company are in Foghaven, having just been attacked by Thunderbane and his giant and ogre cronies.

Theodenes, the gnome they were chasing, pulls out his oversized guisarme for battle, attaching it to one of his own inventions, an extended lattice-work arm with a hand attached on the end of it, that Theodenes manipulates with the with the control panel to swing the weapon, fighting while keeping his enemies too far away to hit him.

Attaching his guisarme to the weapon, Theodenes comes out swinging, skilfuly working his strange mechanical arm. He slays one ogre, and then another, but then something happens and the strange contraption jams. Theodenes struggles to get it to work, but it's stuck.

All of a sudden, an ogre grabs onto the device, ready to swing it and send the little gnome flying. However, as the ogre begins to lift Theodenes off his feet, the emergency release finally works and the arm recoils, flinging the ogre into the air like a shot put, sending him flying some fifty feet into the air before crashing a fair distance away.

Needless to say, the ogre doesn't get up.

Is that how a gnome invention might work? It starts out alright, but then misfires in an unintentionally helpful way?

Needless to say, once he returned to Mount Nevermind, Theodenes set back to work trying to modify his mechanical arm, ready to turn it into a monster-flinger! Works just the gnomeflingers gnomes use to get from one level of Mount Nevermind to another, only this one works on monsters!

Would that work?

 

[Tinker Gnome]

CruelSummerLord: That is exactly how I would run it!

 

[Dragonhelm]

Is that how a gnome invention might work? It starts out alright, but then misfires in an unintentionally helpful way?

That's one possible outcome, yes. A gnome invention could also misfire in a bad way (i.e. exploding and blowing the gnome's arm off), or just not work at all. Or it could produce some totally different and unexpected result.

 

[Cam Banks]

Theodenes is actually one of the cast of characters in the Dragonlance novel that I'm working on. I always thought it hilarious that his statistics in DL7 Dragons of Light included pretty much all the oddball polearms in the game at the time (bardiche, guisarme, etc) so I've given the novel-version of Theodenes a Swiss Army knife polearm that he can change with a twist of a button. One click and it's a poleaxe, another click and it's a Bohemian ear spoon, etc etc.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[WayneLigon]

It's commonly depicted that tinker gnomes' inventions never work right.
How is that even possible?

Jeff Grubb suggested that they would be like real engineers, spending their time repairing things previously created by other engineers, based on his own experience as engineer. Tracy Hickman found the idea hilarious, and both adopted the new characterization for the novels and gaming modules.

The gnomes of Krynn live in Mount Nevermind, on the isle of Sancrist. Gnomes are the tinkerers of Krynn, designing grand machines for every imaginable task. They were humans that were cursed by the God Reorx to be short as him and took from them the skills he taught them but left them with the desire to build, invent, and construct.

Depending on the accuracy of Wikipedia, of course, there you have both sides of what's been said above. They're like that not because of any grand plan or huge far-reaching worldbuilding consideration or anything, they're like that because it's funnier for them to be like that. The curse thing gives them a bit of pathos, but really they're just there to be funny comedy relief. After all, something had to be done to them to differentiate them from dwarves.

 

[jonesy]

Depending on the accuracy of Wikipedia....

It seems to be very close to the fourth answer on this interview from 2001:
http://www.dl3e.com/features/interviews/11253.aspx

 

[Cthulhudrew]

OT- but welcome back, Nightfall. What's up with your post count, though- when I first saw your post in this thread two days ago, it was at 34 (which I knew couldn't be right), yesterday it was around 200, and today it's bloomed to over 18,000!!!