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<blockquote data-quote="The Scythian" data-source="post: 8682719" data-attributes="member: 6875986">I believe that the AD&amp;D gnome was directly based on Hugi the woods dwarf from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, a novel we know that Gary Gygax read and was inspired by.In the novel, Hugi is depicted as being just shy of three feet tall, with a comically oversized nose, earth-brown skin, and white hair.&nbsp; His people have &quot;working arrangements&quot; with the creatures of the forest and live in a &quot;woodsy burrows,&quot; and Hugi himself is such an adept burrower he is able to identify sloping passages that confuse his human companion and also tell when his party is nearing the surface.The AD&amp;D Players Handbook refers players to the Monster Manual for details about the gnome, and what do we find there?&nbsp; Most gnomes have skin that is &quot;wood brown&quot; but some range to &quot;grey brown.&quot;&nbsp; Their hair ranges from &quot;medium to pure white.&quot;&nbsp; They stand three feet tall and up.&nbsp; Most live in the hills, but some make their home in burrows.&nbsp; They tame badgers and wolverines to serve as guard animals.&nbsp; They are able miners so, like dwarves, they are able to detect various features underground, and they are slightly better at it.&nbsp; In fact, turning back to the Players Handbook, we find that gnomes are specifically better than dwarves at detecting sloping passages and figuring out how far they are underground - the two abilities Hugi specifically displays in the novel.The correspondence between Anderson's wood dwarfs and the AD&amp;D gnome is so great than when the character was adapted for AD&amp;D in Dragon #49, he was just referred to as a gnome with no changes made.It's possible to see a sort of evolution to this even earlier, starting with Chainmail (where dwarves and gnomes are identical in every respect), through to the OD&amp;D boxed set (where dwarves are given Hugi's ability to identify sloping passages, and gnomes are slightly more differentiated from dwarves), and then to Supplement I: Greyhawk (where an expansion to character creation lists different types of dwarves players can choose from, including burrowers &quot;such as gnomes&quot;, making it clear that, at that point at least, Gygax saw dwarves and gnomes as essentially the same).At some point between Greyhawk and AD&amp;D, Gygax decided to break off gnomes from dwarves almost completely, probably due to players expecting dwarves to be Tolkienesque, making dwarves less like Hugi and gnomes more like him.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Scythian, post: 8682719, member: 6875986"] I believe that the AD&D gnome was directly based on Hugi the woods dwarf from Poul Anderson's [B][I]Three Hearts and Three Lions[/I][/B], a novel we know that Gary Gygax read and was inspired by. In the novel, Hugi is depicted as being just shy of three feet tall, with a comically oversized nose, earth-brown skin, and white hair. His people have "working arrangements" with the creatures of the forest and live in a "woodsy burrows," and Hugi himself is such an adept burrower he is able to identify sloping passages that confuse his human companion and also tell when his party is nearing the surface. The AD&D [B][I]Players Handbook[/I][/B] refers players to the [B][I]Monster Manual[/I][/B] for details about the gnome, and what do we find there? Most gnomes have skin that is "wood brown" but some range to "grey brown." Their hair ranges from "medium to pure white." They stand three feet tall and up. Most live in the hills, but some make their home in burrows. They tame badgers and wolverines to serve as guard animals. They are able miners so, like dwarves, they are able to detect various features underground, and they are slightly better at it. In fact, turning back to the [B][I]Players Handbook[/I][/B], we find that gnomes are specifically better than dwarves at detecting sloping passages and figuring out how far they are underground - the two abilities Hugi specifically displays in the novel. The correspondence between Anderson's wood dwarfs and the AD&D gnome is so great than when the character was adapted for AD&D in [I][B]Dragon #49[/B][/I], he was just referred to as a gnome with no changes made. It's possible to see a sort of evolution to this even earlier, starting with [I][B]Chainmail[/B][/I] (where dwarves and gnomes are identical in every respect), through to the OD&D boxed set (where dwarves are given Hugi's ability to identify sloping passages, and gnomes are slightly more differentiated from dwarves), and then to [B][I]Supplement I: Greyhawk[/I][/B] (where an expansion to character creation lists different types of dwarves players can choose from, including burrowers "such as gnomes", making it clear that, at that point at least, Gygax saw dwarves and gnomes as essentially the same). At some point between [B][I]Greyhawk[/I][/B] and AD&D, Gygax decided to break off gnomes from dwarves almost completely, probably due to players expecting dwarves to be Tolkienesque, making dwarves less like Hugi and gnomes more like him. [/QUOTE]

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