D&D General Why Do People Hate Gnomes?

[Snarf Zagyg]

It is legit an amazing series with some awesome lore.

The mythology and cosmology of the setting is one of my favorites.

I am not sure if this a sterling defense of the series ... or an implicit rebuke on my juvenile sense of humor.

WHY NOT BOTH?

 

[Parmandur]

Serious question, as I've seen a ton of people online that play D&D make jokes about Gnomes or say how much they hate them. More than Kender, actually.

So . . . what is it about Gnomes that makes people hate them so much? Or such easy targets for jokes online?

I think a big part of it is Generation Gaps, first between Gygax and the Youth who started playing in the early 80's, and them between those aged youth and yourself.

Garden Gnomes were a big thing back in the day, like really big: and it is noticeable that even AD&D makes use of that aesthetic. So for Gygax, tapping into the common idea of Garden Gnomes (there was a popular coffee table art book at the time) and Poul Anderson stories made as much sense as anything else.

The Gen X kids, however, probably hadn't read Poul Anderson, and saw Garden Gnomes as a dorky Grandma thing rather than cool adventure fuel.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I agree that seriously mocking a race and saying it shouldn't be in D&D is mean. And even if you are just joking, there are probably people that will take offense to it. (I know people before have complained about you joke-mocking elves and bards.)

Any bit of comedy that employs satire or irony in a proper and correct fashion requires that some portion of the audience be confused (or even hurt) by the joke.

Ambiguity is not a bug, but a central feature of any type comedy that plays with or invokes satire and irony.

See, e.g., Linda Hutcheson.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I have never listened to any of Nickelback's songs. (I'm only 20 years old, so most of your pop culture song references are lost on me.)

Oh ... no you DINT!

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, garden gnomes being a source of D&D communities mocking gnomes kind of makes sense. But, also, why don't people mock Elves for the Elf on a Shelf? Pretty similar concepts, and gnomes are the only ones getting made fun of.

Elf on the Shelf didn't exist in 1982, but Lord of the Rings did. Tolkien permanently made Elves cool.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I have never played a gnome. I never thought much of them really after 1e. Level limits were a turn off. As was the giant nose. I play the game to escape, not live my big nosed life!

But in all seriousness, I have after reading all of this, decided I could play a gnome.

He would wear a spell book like a backpack. Because it’s big and he is small. And it is bound by big heavy locked hinges.

Now the most light hearted thing about him is his pointed hat. Maybe like David the gnome or a Christmas elf. But he is dead serious and carries a wicked curved dagger. And a wood flute but he plays it only when drunk because it makes him miss home.

He is sort of resigned to his adventuring life. He would rather be back in the burrows and hills stoking a fire, but the world interfered and he had to make the world a little safer for his clan.

He is usually a nice fellow but his adventuring friends have seen him spit on a dead goblin or two that he had to firebolt. With a sneer he says “heh. Only right to put out a campfire in the land of elf-friends.”

Not a lot of tolerance for the wicked, but he doesn’t talk a big game. He sort of sneers around his silver beard and is pragmatic when he does the necessary dirty work.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Elf on the Shelf didn't exist in 1982, but Lord of the Rings did. Tolkien permanently made Elves cool.

Okay. I can understand that. I still don't think it's the whole story, but it's probably part of it.

(Also, minor point, but didn't most people not know about the Lord of the Rings until the movies? At least in the USA?)

 

[Guest 7034872]

Elf on the Shelf didn't exist in 1982, but Lord of the Rings did. Tolkien permanently made Elves cool.

I can get with that, yeah, but why didn't George MacDonald equally make gnomes permanently cool? The gnomes in Phantastes were awesome.

 

[Mecheon]

Really? Examples please. Of D&D style gnomes in pop culture that people have actually read or heard about.

Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon!

(i love dungeon meshi)

 

[Parmandur]

Okay. I can understand that. I still don't think it's the whole story, but it's probably part of it.

(Also, minor point, but didn't most people not know about the Lord of the Rings until the movies? At least in the USA?)

Oh, goodness, no, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were already cultural mainstays before then. The Lord of the Rings has sold 150 milliona copies, and 100 million of that was before the movies came put. Prior to the movies coming out, Lord of the Rings had more printings than any book except for the Bible. It was a huge hit in the 60's, and then stayed consistently popular through the 70's, and the 80's, and the 90's, without the movies at all. The movies surely didn't hurt their popularity, though.

 

[Steampunkette]

Why should I care about what a rando on the street thinks about elves? D&D is a really personal game, that means different things for different people. We keep trying to find "the real" answer to things... that doesn't exist. Some people need their game to resonate with pop culture, others don't.

Maybe so, but a company publishing a game can't afford to devote attention to every "personal" game. The product needs to resonate with pop culture.

D&D today is big enough to have the power to influence (to an extend) pop culture. A lot of D&D races don't have resonance outside the game, but are really popular...

I stepped away for a while, but I wanna come back for this exchange, 'cause it is... y'know... accurate enough?

But also: Writers are part of society and absorb Pop Culture and shared cultural momentum of various concepts. We create new stuff, it is absolutely true and impossible to dispute unless you wanna break things down to quintessential elements and track them through all media.

When I write stuff about Sins of the Scorpion Age it's all going to be based on my experiences and perspectives and the media I've been exposed to. Some of it because I'm shunning it, some of it because I'm embracing it, and some of it because I'm aping it with only fractional understanding but a deep enjoyment of that concept.

And it's the same way with -every- writer.

Some Rando on the street who thinks "Legolas" instead of "Santa's Helpers" is helping to shape the cultural momentum of Elfness. And as a part of culture I can swim against the current and make Elves something new, I can swim across the current and make elves but slightly different, or I can swim with the current and make Legolas. But I'm not going to -change- the current by myself. And no amount of willful ignorance on my part will allow me to reasonable claim that I "Invented" elves whole-cloth and everyone else is somehow doing it wrong 'cause I didn't grow up in a cultural vacuum.

And for most people, this is a gnome:

That -includes- Writers. Everything D&D does with gnomes is swimming against or across the current. But because every setting basically reinvents gnomes (or excises them as the case may be), TSR, WotC, Paizo, and EN Publishing aren't even working together to create a new cultural momentum to try and turn things in the same direction.

We're all wandering off in our own, and gnomes remain where they are. With big beards, little red hats, and 3 times out of 100 their buttcheeks hanging out of their pants in a playfully tacky manner.