The Unified Theory of Gnomes

[helium3]

Have you ever played any of the White Wolf's Storyteller games (Vampire, Werewolf, Exalted...)? They all have extensive social-encounter rules, embedded deep in the system, and yet they're games that consistently and effectively support and encourage roleplaying.

That's precisely my point.

I only have experience with Mage : The Ascension, but from that experience I've come to the conclusion (and presumably this conclusion can be extended to the other WoD products as well) that the MtA engine produces a more role-play heavy game because the rules verbiage focuses much more heavily on discussion of a character's motivations and how they affect actions. That the rules themselves are purposely designed to constantly force players to describe how they work their magic and justify it within their character's world view.

Of course, most people that play MtA (and the other WoD games) know it's a role-play heavy game, so there's probably some amount of self-selection going on there.

This whole connection between how a game's "engine" is written and the kind of game it implicitly fosters is why, when one of my friends comes to me with an idea for a new game, I tell him that the thing he needs to do before he starts scribbling down rules is to spend at least a day imagining what a group of people playing his game will be doing when they're actually playing it.

 

[Klaus]

My Tome of Horrors says spriggan never left.

And hey! I did the art for it in the first Tome of Horrors!

 

[GreatLemur]

Said it before, I'll say it again: To give gnomes their own coherant niche, WotC needs to start thinking about alchemy. It interfaces nicely with the tinker gnome riff (which, let's face it, is the most interesting thing anybody's done with gnomes in decades) and their Artificer role in Eberron, while still fitting easily into a more standard fantasy setting.

I'd love to see the spriggans brought back and made the derro/duergar to the gnomes' dwarves. They "they can grow!" schtick shouldn't be all that defines them, although it has in previous editions, IMO.

Hell, they oughta just make the derro into the evil, Underdark-dwelling version of the gnomes, seeing as the dwarves already have the duergar as their opposite number. There's a lot of potential for a strong "insane, malevolent, secretive artificer" concept where D&D gnomes and the derro's weird source material overlap.

 

[Spatula]

And that is the most iconic fantasy work of our time, so yeah, it makes halflings icons, just as it made the modern notion of elves, dwarves, and wizards (ala Gandalf) into icons.

Unfortunately, as of 3E the D&D Halfling bears zero resemblence to hobbits, aside from height, making the hafllings not iconic at all. Gnomes at least spring from real-world mythology, and D&D tries to stay somewhat true to that mythological concept (trickery, connections with nature).

 

[LoneWolf23]

Decided to dig this thread up because, after looking through "Races and Classes", I felt that D&D's official statement that they don't know what to do with Gnomes without going the "Tinker Gnome" route just showed a lot of laziness there. ...And the recent "4th edition interview" cartoon hints that folks at Wizards might simply not care enough about Gnomes. :\

But thanks to the Feywild, there's a perfect use for Gnomes. Send them back to their mythological roots as a Fey race connected to nature and illusions, with an elemental affinity to the earth. They may be small, but have potent magical abilities thanks to their Fey nature, letting them weave illusions and communicate with animals, and are ingenious, nearly devilish tricksters.

Basically, less Crazy Tinker Gadgeteer, more Wily Trickster Fey.

 

[Mad Mac]

But thanks to the Feywild, there's a perfect use for Gnomes. Send them back to their mythological roots as a Fey race connected to nature and illusions, with an elemental affinity to the earth. They may be small, but have potent magical abilities thanks to their Fey nature, letting them weave illusions and communicate with animals, and are ingenious, nearly devilish tricksters.

This is probably what they will do. For the record, this is the idea progression they gave in Races and Classes.

Idea#1 Tinker Gnomes. Popular, but done to death in WoW and seriously impacts the technology level of the setting.

Idea#2 Replace Rock Gnomes with the more focused Svirfneblin or Forest Gnomes. Didn't like it, feeling it was just shifting gnomes to be more dwarf or elf like.

Idea#3 Base the Gnomes on the Whisper Gnomes and tie them in with elves as advisors and spies. Didn't like the co-dependent race dynamic making both elves and gnomes less cool on their own.

Idea#4 Twist idea#3 so that Gnomes are actually the servants of evil Fey who only recently escaped. Made Gnomes dark and dangerous, but ultimately figured it was too out there and not at all connected to what Gnomes used to be.

Race and Classes says that they hadn't come to a decision on Gnomes yet, but I think they've made some progress since then. Based on the flash cartoon it looks like they're designing gnomes to be some sort of wild fey thing, but not as dark as old idea#4.

 

[Epic Meepo]

Idea #5. Take every possible gnome concept and turn it into its own race in the PHB.

Wait, that would just be silly. That would be like having a magic-only elf and a forest-only elf and a kinda-human diplomacizing elf all in the PHB at the same time.

 

[Spatula]

Well it's not like the plethora of needless elven subraces is somehow new to 4e. 4e is just putting grey / high / sun elves into the PHB for the first time.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Fantastic take on gnomes! I really like this flavor. A buddy of mine played a deep gnome once who fit this model nicely.

 

[the Jester]

Wow. This may be the perfect take on gnomes.