What's with the Gnome Hate?

[Kzach]

Why are we arguing when we could be killing gnomes?

This subject shouldn't divide us, it should unite us! Unite us in the one, true goal of all noble and ignoble humanoids alike!

The extinction of the gnome race!

Let us gather and pray, for it is time for us to go forth, as one blood-thirsty horde, and destroy all that oppose our gnome hatred!

Once more, et tu gnome, dear friend, once more!

 

[Vocenoctum]

Also, aside from Eberron, Midnight's gnomes were quite well represented. I also think they were very important to Greyhawk, but that's me.

 

[AllisterH]

Personally, I think the real problem is WoTC messed up by making the Gnome's favored class the Bard, they arbitrarily changed the appearance of the Gnome, had pretty lame artistic depictions of the Gnome in the core rulebooks, probably had little familiarity with Gnomes of myth having been themselves grounded more on videogames than books, and are simply trying to whitewash the whole thing by excluding them in the new edition. It also erases one of the great contributions by Gygax & Co., thus further marking their territory.

That's a lod of revisionist thinking.

Just LOOK at the history of TSR with regard to gnomes.

Spelljammer and DL gave us tinker gnomes (yeah, that's a real incentive for the player)

Birthright and Darksun killed them off.

Al-qadim, PS and Ravenloft pretty much ignored them (of the 2E core races, even halflings got more mention in those books)

Mystara and FR toned the tinker aspect but again, they were a technologocial race (FR with Lantanese gnomes being responsible for guns and Mystara gnomes being aircraft)

Do gnomes even exist in OA?

So, how in the nine hells is this the fault of WOTC. Hell, I challenge anyone to look at the 2E PHB races picture and tell me that gnomes doesn't look like Santa and that it sticks out like a sore thumb (every other race has a serious/somber experession whereas the gnome has a ruddy complexion with a honking big nose to boot)

p.s. where's this fey angle coming from. In Mystara (and IIRC GH), gnomes' origin is tied directly with DWARVES.

 

[Barastrondo]

That of course is consistent for a game of Indo-Asian flavor--or at least one in which Asian elements are present. As my game is mainly Euro-centric (if anything RW-based), elements such as Rakshasas don't come into play. In fact, I've never used one as a DM or seen one in a game as a player since I started with original D&D in 1979. As a monster. I might add, this is the first time I've heard someone suggesting a Rakshasa as a Core Race for PCs. Certainly more appealing to me than the wet-rag Tiefling.

The point that I'm trying to make is that to look at gnomes from a neutral enough standpoint to actually understand why people might not care for them, you have to be open to the idea of games that are not Eurocentric, players that didn't start in 1979, and the like. When you asked me what I thought of as a race associated with illusions and I didn't respond with "gnome," what I'm saying is that gnomes are not strongly associated enough with illusions in my head that I feel they're a vital component of the fantasy experience. In that same level, I also don't think that "a race associated with illusions" is a vital component of the fantasy experience; when you do see them, they tend to be villains anyway, like L. Frank Baum's Phanfasms.

This is going to be true of other people.

Largely because none of these were PC Classes in 1st Edition? Nor in myth and folklore?

See, that's exactly it. What classes were available for PCs in 1st edition does not matter. Myth and folklore doesn't have an Illusionist class, either; it has a lot of very hazily defined magicians, and "enchanters" or "transmuters" are probably far more common than "illusionists." There are plenty of players that don't think an illusionist is a core part of the D&D experience, so saying that gnomes have a vital role because they're illusionists isn't a winning argument there.

But again, that's the static point of view that completely ignores myth and folklore of gnomes.

It doesn't have to ignore them completely. It just has to attach importance to them below a certain threshold. Let's say that the minimum amount of "care" to want to play a race or have a race in your campaign world is 10 units. People can be aware of gnomes, both in video games and in folklore, and still have from 1-9 units of "care." It's faintly insulting to assume that someone is ignorant or poorly educated on a topic if they don't like it as much as you do.

(For the record, my favorite mythic gnomes are Paracelsian.)

Aren't there already about a dozen possible answers?

Not to that level of detail. The point is, though, that making the argument that the game invents a very specific description for a race does not necessarily make that race vital to a player.

This is pure sophistry, I've given counter examples, and you aren't really arguing against my point. This sort of thing can be done with any race, any monster, possibly even animal. The association with Illusion (to give one example) is deeply grounded in myth going back hundreds (possibly thousands of years in oral tradition), and is well-established in the game, going back to almost the beginning.

But if people don't see the basic need for a race associated with Illusion, particularly capital-I, then the argument that gnomes fit that particular niche is not particularly compelling. It doesn't matter that the race exists in folklore.

If you want to actually understand why people don't like gnomes, you should think about what people are looking for in a race, particularly if they don't already have longstanding opinions about the good old days of AD&D 1st edition. If you want to tell people who don't like gnomes why they're wrong, well, you certainly can, but you're not going to get very far with that.

 

[The Little Raven]

Gnomes are a well-established Core Race in D&D (and in myth/folklore) and they aren't going away anytime soon.

What's funny about this is that they are no longer a core race in D&D, so they did go somewhere.

And comic relief and the trickster archetype are not the same. Gnomes, with their traditional pointy hats, red rosy cheeks, and Santa beards, are comic relief, not the trickster archetype. Anansi would roll over in his grave if his mythological archetype was reduced to a cutesy gag like gnomes.

 

[Desdichado]

Gnomes are a well-established Core Race in D&D (and in myth/folklore) and they aren't going away anytime soon.

No, they're not. They're not well established in D&D (obviously not even showing up as a core race in 4e) or in folklore (where they represent generically smallish fairy creatures, not unlike leprechauns, brownies or non-Tolkien folkloric elves) and they most certainly have already gone away.

I don't follow your argument at all; it sounds more and more like "I really like gnomes, so everybody else is wrong for not liking them."

 

[Barastrondo]

And comic relief and the trickster archetype are not the same. Gnomes, with their traditional pointy hats, red rosy cheeks, and Santa beards, are comic relief, not the trickster archetype. Anansi would roll over in his grave if his mythological archetype was reduced to a cutesy gag like gnomes.

On the other hand, a spider-totem African-looking gnome would be pretty neat — but then you're back into the same question of "do I need the gnome race in particular to do this, or could I make this work with, say, a halfling?"

 

[I'm A Banana]

"do I need the gnome race in particular to do this, or could I make this work with, say, a halfling?"

In my mind, it's really bizarre that the halflings have stolen the gnomes' schtick in so many places.

Gnomes are the fey. Gnomes are the tricksters. Gnomes are the earth-spirit druids. Gnomes are the lorekeepers, the SECRETKEEPERS. Gnomes are the laughing jester spirits of the world. They're shape-changers, illusion-masters, the uncanny and unknowable, the eternal ciphers.

Halflings are the rural Brittish. Halflings are the sturdy, the determined, the resilient. Halflings are the survivors, the cunning. Halflings are the rats of the world. They dwell in shadow only to leap out and take what they want, you cannot exterminate them, you cannot intimidated them, they are the eternal shadow-dwellers.

Those are both really cool and very distinct archetypes, each very close to their roots (laughing trickster-spirits of shape-changing faerie and tough survivors who dwell unseen at your feet).

But halflings and gnomes, in D&D, both suffer from the horrible consequences of the Dragonlance series. There, both were comic relief, but the kender/halflings became a hero while gnomes/tinkers languished as pure comic relief NPC's.

It is this burden which ultimately helped kill both the halfling's solid role and the gnome's solid role, because it became hopelessly muddied. The halfling wound up getting half of the gnome stuff attributed to it, while loosing a lot of the "halfling" stuff that was its legacy from Tolkein (which has now gone to kobolds and goblins and other such small evil guys).

Instead of re-focusing the halfling and going back go the gnomes' roots, 4e decided to further distort the halfling and to ditch the gnome entirely as a race, using it only as a monster.

Now we have insanely vague and unfocused halflings (mostly only focused because of their exclusive role in the PH), and gnomes who kind of kick ass, but who don't have much left of that trickster spirit of old.

Halflings don't need 3/4ths of the junk that has been tacked onto them. They don't need to be LotR sticks-in-the-mud, but working with the idea of halflings as doughty survivors and "rat-like" (while keeping the idea of ticksters and nature-spirits from waffling too far into elf territory) would keep things fairly rewarding for me.

Until D&D figures out what the heck Halflings are actually supposed to be, they get the banhammer in my games. Gnomes are cool, though.

 

[Barastrondo]

Something else that hasn't yet been touched on is the opening up of every class to every race. In a lot of old-school RPGs and particularly in the video games they inspired (even World of Warcraft), you had to pick from certain races if you wanted a certain class.

As a result, there isn't niche protection based on class access. The gnomes likely suffered worst from this because they had some specialized combinations of spellcaster and "little guy". Concepts that you had to do with a gnome because they were forbidden to other races (save human) suddenly weren't exclusively gnomish, and there wasn't really anything to replace them.

This is also probably where halflings flourished, because to many people they come across as the race most "like us," yet distinct enough thanks to their size that they merit a separate existence. When they had many classes opened up to them, they became even more accessible.

(From a purely fluff benefit, halflings also had the benefit of strong female archetypes, such as having, you know, goddesses as well as gods. I wouldn't be surprised if gnomes looked like they were purely intended for goofy male characters until WoW finally unleashed pink-pigtailed squeakers on the public consciousness.)

 

[AllisterH]

Where does this gnome = fey angle come from?

When I was playing 1e/2e, gnomes were tied with DWARVES and were most assuredly not fey/forest dwellers.