D&D 4E Rich Baker on Gnomes in 4E

[Hussar]

Early adopters always matter- that's a simple principle of marketing.

True. But, nothing says that hard core gamers will be the majority of early adopters. It's equally plausible that casual gamers, who are not invested in multi-year campaign homebrews that will require massive reworks, will be the majority of early adopters.

Or, to put it another way, there's no reason why a small subset of the group - hardcore gamers - will be any more significant at release or at any other time.

The 150 k RPGA gamers who WILL upgrade to 4e if they want to continue with the RPGA are far more significant than you or me.

 

[Incenjucar]

You know.

Elves and dwarves and dragons haven't gotten to co-star in their own 4E flash toon.

Gnomes have.

I'm just sayin'.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

How did 1/2 orcs get a boost in 2e when they were removed from core?

I don't know for sure, but I suspect its because of the same reason you started seeing more non-Core PCs (like my first Drow, a Rgr/Druid/MU PC) at the end of 1Ed: Dragon Magazine.

Remember, at that time, it was the official in-house company organ. What got published in Dragon was quickly adopted.

You have to stop and ask why though? Why did all those bits get given away to other races? Is there some grand anti-gnome conspiracy, or is it because gnomes were never a popular race?

I always did ask why.

No, I never suspected any conspiracy. (Not even against the Gnomes of Zurich...)

My guess was that few designers were as familiar with gnomes (esp. the name's interchangability with other terms) as I was. Sometimes they're fey pranksters, sometimes they're elementals, sometimes they're the greatest craftsmen in the world, sometimes just twisted little men...

I suspect that many of them got their main exposure to the term "Gnome" and the like in works of fantasy by modern writers (JRRT, Lieber, etc.), who, recognizing that confusion would result from a single race being called by 5 or 6 names, settled on one, be it "Elf" or "Goblin" or whatever.

With that as a basis, a designer might not be aware that one author's "Elf" derives from the same font as another's "Goblin."

I'm not saying I know more mythology, etc. than the game's designers, just that my exposure was different. Were I designing a FRPG based on the Kalevala based on my single reading of it (esp. without underlying or surrounding cultural context), I'd probably make similar mistakes. Similarly, it was years before I found out about the origins of "Drow."

Not an excuse, just a reason.

 

[Hussar]

I brought up the RPGA and that gave me a thought.

I think that when you register for a Living campaign, you have to state your character class and stats like race. ((Someone please correct me if I'm wrong)) That would give a pretty good insight into how popular gnomes are with a very large group of gamers if true. I'd be curious to see if gnomes are commonly played or not.

As far as half orcs go, well, I have no idea about your groups, but, I never saw one in 2e. Barely saw them in 1e except as NPC's. When I polled Enworld a week or so ago, they were dead last in being played in any edition.

 

[The Little Raven]

Why did all those bits get given away to other races?

They were already parts of those other races, and gnomes were trying to move in on that territory, since "mythological gnomes" were simply the alfar/duergar that were the inspirations for elves and dwarves. Gnomes showed up after elves and dwarves and halflings were given their iconic places in D&D, and kinda stole from everyone since they didn't have their own space.

 

[Imban]

True. But, nothing says that hard core gamers will be the majority of early adopters. It's equally plausible that casual gamers, who are not invested in multi-year campaign homebrews that will require massive reworks, will be the majority of early adopters.

Or, to put it another way, there's no reason why a small subset of the group - hardcore gamers - will be any more significant at release or at any other time.

The 150 k RPGA gamers who WILL upgrade to 4e if they want to continue with the RPGA are far more significant than you or me.

The RPGA gamers I know are pretty hardcore, and honestly, a huge segment of early adopters are going to be the hardcore gamers. Casual gamers and mostly-nongamers, to the best of my knowledge - the kind who might have heard of D&D once or twice and maybe played Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate - aren't the kind of people who are go and lay down $100 on a preorder of the corebooks sight unseen. Hardcore gamers will, and I know many on these boards have.

I mean, there are certainly RPGA gamers who play in the RPGA and nothing else, but of the people who are likely to have preordered the books, they're the only ones who WotC can really market to solely through inertia.

I brought up the RPGA and that gave me a thought.

I think that when you register for a Living campaign, you have to state your character class and stats like race. ((Someone please correct me if I'm wrong)) That would give a pretty good insight into how popular gnomes are with a very large group of gamers if true. I'd be curious to see if gnomes are commonly played or not.

As far as half orcs go, well, I have no idea about your groups, but, I never saw one in 2e. Barely saw them in 1e except as NPC's. When I polled Enworld a week or so ago, they were dead last in being played in any edition.

You are correct for RPGA games. They would have an accurate read on how many people play gnomes in the RPGA, and I would wager that it isn't very many at all proportionally. As long as the new gnomes are close enough to the old ones that I can reasonably wave my hands and say a gnome's a gnome, I won't complain too hard. (See: Any previous change in gnomes. 2e -> 3e Kobolds were pushing things. 3e -> 4e Archons are no.)

As far as half-orcs in 2e (and to a lesser extent, why people are complaining so hard about the status of gnomes in 4e) go, when you remove something from the core books, you remove it from being a choice in the minds of a lot of players - I'm not sure a lot of 2e players knew that Half-Orcs were written up in the Complete Book of Humanoids, and I'm not sure a lot of 2e DMs allowed stuff out of that book anyway.

Even things intentionally written up as player races outside of the corebook in 3e, like Star Elves or what have you, faced pretty tough opposition getting into a lot of the games that actually got played. A lot of DMs do think the response to "I want to play a Gnome!" is "Geez, pick one of the player races like a normal person."

 

[glass]

And for those of us who don't want to start new campaigns? I would have preferred to convert my 3.5e campaign into a 4e campaign, much as I converted my prior campaign seamlessly from 1e to 3e.

To do seemless conversions in the past, you would have had to make stuff up because no new edition can ever have as many options as the edition it replaces, by definition. Therefore, if you were able to do it before you will be able to do it again.


glass.

 

[glass]

- Have 4E released now, but wait to 2009 for Gnomes and Druids.

Er, Gnomes are coming in June 2008, in the MM. There will be literally no wait for them.


glass.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Er, Gnomes are coming in June 2008, in the MM. There will be literally no wait for them.


glass.

It was a logical "and", which means both conditions must applyfor the whole expression to become true.
So Eval(Gnome and Druid, 2008) = false
but Eval(Gnome and Druid, 2009) = true

 

[Stoat]

It's the Professor's fault.

Gnomes are the only legacy race that aren't present in Tolkien. D&D's Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Half-Orcs and Half-Elves have JRRT's thumbprints all over them. (Although I'll concede D&D's Half-elves share little in common with Elrond.) If you've read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, you recognize them.

Gnomes, not so much. The archetypical gnome in pop culture wears a pointy red hat.

Tolkien sifted through the various mythological sources Dannyalcatraz mentions and created his races from the elements he found. Then he used them to write the most popular and recognized books in the fantasy cannon. If he'd thrown the word "gnome" into his books, we wouldn't have this thread.

Re: Gnomes in the 4E MM. The question depends entirely on how good the guide to using them as PC's is. We won't know that for a while.