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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 4374082" data-attributes="member: 3820">As a thought experiment, I tried mucking around with core races to make them more than just one-note stereotypes; figuring out how to make multiple halfling cultures that felt different, giving them effectively almost as much versatility as humanity. I found that sufficiently versatile halflings and dwarves made gnomes a redundancy: there was no gnome concept that couldn't be done with a halfling or dwarf concept, save the one reliant on "gnome" as a concept.Now, the more limited your baseline assumptions for the scope of a fantasy world, the more niche protection you get. For example, when we worked on Relics & Rituals: Excalibur and its Olympus sister volume, races fit into niches rather neatly because you weren't trying to make the setting truly multicultural. If everyone's a riff off of Greek myth, then there's definitely room for a race of philosopher-magicians that aren't the same thing as the more far-roaming, adventurer-trickster, beloved-of-Hermes halflings. But if you're going for a big multicultural world with multiple races who have multiple cultures, gnomes can get a bit too samey. Of course, that's mainly theory. Someone who had the best D&D game of their life next to someone playing a gnome well would probably see gnomes as essential, and someone who had to endure the gnome-as-vehicle-to-make-bad-geek-jokes-all-night model would feel exactly the opposite. And there's not much theory can do about that.</blockquote>

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