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

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

A simple look at the wiki for "gnome" will show you that simply isn't true.

Scanning an annotated Grimm's Faerie Tales or an omnibus review of European mythologies would further weaken that assertion.

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 preordered mine as soon as the option to do so was made available to me.

No one else in my groups has even considered purchasing them- they're waiting to see my copies.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

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.

I had the CBoH, and I didn't know there were half-orcs in it. Whaddya know?

 

[AllisterH]

There have been multiple TSR./WOTC campaign settings and I think only in DL (where the gnomes became a joke race as they were all depicted as madcap scientists/inventors) and Eberron (by actually changing the fluff behind them) did gnomes get any attention.

Darksun and Birthright killed the gnomes off, planescape and spelljammer had more interesting races (who plays a gnome in planescape when you get things like tieflings and genasi?) while mystara, the Realms and Greyhawk basically ignore the race (*quick, name for me 5 gnome PCs among the three campaign worlds* betcha can't even name 2.).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There have been multiple TSR./WOTC campaign settings and I think only in DL (where the gnomes became a joke race as they were all depicted as madcap scientists/inventors) and Eberron (by actually changing the fluff behind them) did gnomes get any attention.

They got a full sourcebook of their own in Mystara.