What's with the Gnome Hate?

[The Grumpy Celt]

The same thing, incidentally, that happened to the OD&D through 2E hobbit/halflings.

If you were going to rehab gnomes so as to make them interesting, what would you do?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you were going to rehab gnomes so as to make them interesting, what would you do?

If I wasn't allowed to make my Unified Theory gnomes official -- although I think it's the most graceful way to build on what came before -- I would grab hobbits and grab traditional gnomes and go through both their pockets and take all their good stuff.

I appreciate that 4E characters have to KICK ASS, ALL THE TIME, so some of the more parochial stuff seems to not work with that, but there's plenty of good stuff from previous versions of both races in that regard that, put together in one pile, add up to one solid (maybe even overpowered) race.

The hybrid race should be the best at sneaking and hiding and trickery, especially when it comes to sneaking and sniping in the outside world. This also carries over to illusion magic, which are used to hide their homes, which are known as (fairy) mounds, along with clever uses of landscaping. They should make good rangers, rogues and illusionists. (This is not unknown in 4E: Both dwarves and dragonborn make good fighters, for instance.)

* Bonus to thrown objects and slings, illusion spells
* Resistant to fear, illusions
* Speak with animals as the spell, not just burrowing animals
* Bonus to hiding and moving silently
* Cast several orisons or cantrips a day, but broaden the choices to include more druid flavor

 

[Mokona]

That said, for better or worse, the gnome as tinker meme is out there---thanks to EQ and Blizzard if nothing else. I see no reason not to embrace it aside from tradition. And I've never found that a compelling reason for . . . anything.

The tinker meme is the only successful identity that gnomes have or that has gained them traction. I don’t play World of Warcraft but looking at some art, the gnomes there look like techno-goblins (i.e. smart goblins that use machines and still love to destroy stuff). Even the Santa Claus vide for gnomes works in concert with the engineer manufacturing aspect that is popularizing a “fantasy gnome”.

Rightly, or wrongly, Wizards of the Coast has decided to keep technology and non-magic machines out of Dungeons & Dragons. You may disagree with this decision but it is pointless to discuss the popularity of gnomes (which seems to always be associated with anachronistic feats of mechanics) without addressing it.

4th edition gnomes are going to be something entirely new*. Wizards will try to redefine gnomes in a way that can be interesting without the use of inventions. It appears that they’re trying to make gnomes more fae than Elves or even Eladrin.

* - let's call it a revised vision of gnomes

 

[Vocenoctum]

WotC/TSR tried that with Dragonlance, and it didn't go over very well.

You have to understand, Dragonlance as a literary setting worked, but failed on almost all counts on the RPG side.

Tinker Gnomes could be fun, if you used the "mad gnomes" rule variant so they weren't stupid.

Kender can work, if it's not just a sorry excuse of a player trying to be irritating.

Gully Dwarves... ow, why did they give stats for gully dwarves?

Elves never played like they read.

Only dwarves had any real sense of being what the media represented them as, and frankly it was such a focused one-trick pony, it wasn't hard to do.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you were going to rehab gnomes so as to make them interesting, what would you do?

Step 1: Turn halflings back into farmers/survivors/tough little SOB's. Halfling fighters and barbarians and rangers and the like should outnumber halfling rogues. Bonuses to Wisdom and Constitution. This is the Halfling schtick. They're going a little bit back to Tolkein, but not far enough to be boring.

Step 2: Re-monster-ize Eladrin. Unapproachable elite mystic fey should be off hiding in the woods, not drinking at taverns looking for Adventures. Elves remain purely the "wild" elves of 4e, and they're fine pretty much as they are.

Step 3: Make sure that Dwarves are the "engineering" race, with a massive Industrial Revolution vibe. Dwarves should use crossbows, have steam-powered shovels, and should be on the verge of steampunk sci-fi. There will be no tinker gnomes. Maybe adjust the Dwarf ability bonuses to Strength and Intelligence, or Constitution and Intelligence, to reflect this. This prevents them from treading too much on the halfling toes, and makes them good "magical crafters."

Step 4: Develop a good "illusionist" core class. Not a Wizard knock-off, but something like a magical rogue who is a master of stealth and deception. A little like the Duskblade from 3.5, for instance. This is now the class that gnomes will be good at, the class that the bard should have been.

Step 5: The Gnome Itself. It's a Small race that is good at hiding and sneaking. Bonus to Intelligence and Dexterity. They make good arcane spellcasters, and good rogues, but they shouldn't be very good at the frontline fighting (the halfling should be okay at that, and okay at divine magic as well). The gnomes are the "fey" race, the race with links to the Unseen World, they are crafty and dangerous, but they're not engineers. Dwarves craft weapons and build statues and engineer subway systems. They have the big, heavy tech. Gnomes know valuables -- they make magic rings, gnomish clothing with enchantments, gold and gems and fine pelts. Gnomes are associated with luck, with the unseen hand, with the finer points of philosophy.

When you see a gnome, you will see a small, old creature dressed in fox fur holding a gnarled staff, but then you blink, and it's just a fox, and you forget why you ever thought that branch was a staff it was holding. When a gnome goes on an adventure, it is often quiet about the reasons, but it claims that the golden ring whispers to him. Meanwhile, the dwarf is concerned with the flaming magic sword, and the halfling just picks up an axe twice its size off of the ogre it just slew, and the elf makes some arrows out of its bones.

Halflings are warriors; tough and doughty and resilient, fighting for Hearth and Home.
Dwarves are scientists; engineering marvels deep below the surface of the earth to wage war smarter, not stronger.
Elves are hunters; the rustle of branches and the arrow out of nowhere.
Gnomes are wizards; the creature that changes shape before your eyes and makes you believe what is not true.

Possible Alternate Way (To Keep Dwarves Tough): To preserve the "dwarven berserker" and "clever halfling" angles, if you wanted, you could swap those archetypes, so that the dwarf is now "Mr. Small Tough Guy." and the halfling is now "Mr. Tough Clever Guy." You just need to be sure that Halflings are Wise and Gnomes are Intelligent as one of the big distinguishing features. Dwarves can stay as the strong little guys, but they should loose the cleric-y and paladin-y features that they have; those belong to halflings. Dwarves are about SCIENCE!

Possible Alternate Way (To Not Re-Hash So Many Races): If you don't want to re-concept the Eladin, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings all at once, the gnomes might have the Scientist archetype available to them. This means going the Tinker Gnome route and using the great engineering marvels that the dwarves currently don't have. The Dwarves make instruments of war: axes, swords, armor, digging tools, etc. the Gnomes make instruments of art: rings and statues and paintings and books. For this to work the best, you need a good "artificer" class to support the archetype, and you have to be comfortable with a "later-period" assumption than 4e D&D seems to want.

 

[Vocenoctum]

If you were going to rehab gnomes so as to make them interesting, what would you do?

Gnomes are all about Inspiration and cleverness, seeing the advantages to doing something "different". Dwarves build thick armor and warmachines, elves build magical tree dwellings and mythals. Gnomes build street lights, wands of magic hand, escalators.

In the world, gnomes stay low-key, they don't have the military might of the dwarves or personal magical power of the elves, but are still seperate from the humans. Halflings mostly survive in humanity's shadow.

Gnomes are the jewelcrafters and the fine metal workers, they're probably the ones that put the gold filigree in that ancient altar of evil you just found.

In the player group, they tend to Control, though they can certainly be a Leader. They can direct things from a vantage without getting dirty mixing it up. Magical Power doesn't depend on brute strength, and a warlord's brilliant strategy can be yelled from anywhere.

Once 4e gets shapechaning and illusions... maybe they can do more.

 

[Desdichado]

So... The fact that almost every game I've been in has featured at least one Gnome the last few years, or that the other races have always been well represented, means nothing? I guess this goes hand-in-hand with the fact that I've never played in an all male group means that either A. My games groups exist only in my mind, or B. I'm gaming in some alternate universe.

C. You don't understand how statistics work. Of course nobody doesn't literally mean nobody.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Gnomes are one of the least popular races in WoW, which means there's probably only 1 or 2 million gnome players. I suspect that's still enough of an audience to try and play to, on WotC's side.

Less than that. Gnomes represent 6% of WoW's played characters, at all levels of play, so that's around 600-700k gnomes being played regularly (assuming they're played as much in the East, which seems plausible, given that I've seen them in Chinese raiding guilds).

What you're forgetting/ignoring, though, is the reason gnomes are played - because they're the only small/cute race. That's what you need. A small/cute race, and with D&D having halflings, it doesn't need gnomes. Especially not when D&D's gnomes and halflings are so extremely similar in previous editions that often it's impossible to distinguish their females in the artwork, and males can only be distinguished by either shoelessness (pre-3E) or exact facial hair (post-3E).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What you're forgetting/ignoring, though, is the reason gnomes are played - because they're the only small/cute race.

Please don't tell me why I play gnomes. Not only are you wrong, you're also presumptuous.

That's what you need. A small/cute race, and with D&D having halflings, it doesn't need gnomes. Especially not when D&D's gnomes and halflings are so extremely similar in previous editions that often it's impossible to distinguish their females in the artwork, and males can only be distinguished by either shoelessness (pre-3E) or exact facial hair (post-3E).

Unless your game play consists of flash cards made up of illustrations taken from the books, this is utterly irrelevant. The culture, flavor and play of gnomes is and remains different than those of halflings, especially since halflings have been gone since the end of 2E, and we've been given kender instead. If I wanted kender, I'd be using them.

 

[Set]

If you were going to rehab gnomes so as to make them interesting, what would you do?

In the launch of the Scarred Lands setting, Gnomes weren't a part of it, but I wanted to include them, so I envisioned them as a nomadic people called the Rus, who were very much based on cheesy stereotypes of the Romani. Brightly-painted wagons (that doubled as boats), garishly-clad entertainers and tinkers and handymen, wandering the roads (and rivers) of the lands. They would sometimes tell stories about their hidden kingdom, which is concealed by such powerful magics that they couldn't even lead others to it (or describe it's location) if they tried. Other times, they would speak of the wandering 'Invisible College' (inspired by the game Divine Right), a magically concealed cart containing an extradimensional space within it, where gnomes went to learn arcane magics, particularly those of illusion, studying from permanant illusions of books, as the real books themselves are stored away in their hidden lands.

The wandering folk would work with animals (to pull their carts), including some surprising beasties, some of whom would join them for their nightly carnival performances, such as dancing bears or trick-performing great cats (although they would be more likely to use dire badgers or wolverines than either of the aforementioned, for traditional reasons).

A little bit gypsy, a little bit rogue, a little bit bard, a little bit illusionist, a little bit tinkerer, a little bit circus-performer and a dash of fey. Nothing at all like Dwarves *or* Halflings.

WotC/TSR tried that with Dragonlance, and it didn't go over very well.

And yet they've gone and rebooted the Draconians and kept the Kender-ized Halflings. So in two out of three cases, the legacy of Dragonlance won out, regardless of the settings demise.