Jack Daniel
Legend
OP, have you seen the finale episode of David the Gnome? Holy gutpunching tearjerkers, Batman, I did not ask for these feels — not now, and certainly not as a Nick Jr watching tyke.
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D&D General Why Do People Hate Gnomes?
- Thread starter Levistus's_Leviathan
- Start date
OP, have you seen the finale episode of David the Gnome? Holy gutpunching tearjerkers, Batman, I did not ask for these feels — not now, and certainly not as a Nick Jr watching tyke.
MGibster
Legend
It's more than a little odd to see Harvey Weinstein's name attached to that.
Twiggly the Gnome
Legend
Chaosmancer
Legend
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.
In part sure, but as a writer I'm inspired by the gnomes and steampunk aesthetic I've been exposed to. And for a large fraction of the same public culture that only knows garden gnomes, when they hear "elf" they only think of Keebler or Santa. They think Dwarf is a perjorative term used on Game of Thrones And "orc" is just a weird noise that makes them think you were coughing.
The thing is, these cultural currents are highly complex. Are vampires Dracula, Marceline or Edward? Does it matter? I wouldn't say anyone who wrote vampires as one of those three is "going against the current" because they are inspired BY a current.
And I think that is where I am the most frustrated. There is a current for gnomes. There is this recognition. Sure, it is smaller than "Elf" or "Dwarf" but those concepts started much much longer ago in terms of cultural weight. But instead of seeing that gnomes are gaining this weight, they are getting dismissed because they didn't come into their own til a few decades after DnD played around with the concept.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Yeah I'm...not sure where you heard that Tolkien was largely unknown in the US, @AcererakTriple6 , because that's definitely not true, at least in my experience. Both of my parents had read it before I was even born, and all of my friends in high school were extremely excited to see some of their favorite books being put on the silver screen back in 2001. Apparently, there was even an effort by an American publisher (Ace Books) to produce an unauthorized (and non-royalty-paying) edition because the lead editor claimed that the work wasn't copyrighted in the US, but a "grassroots" movement (according to Wikipedia) pressured Ace Books into withdrawing it and paying a nominal fee to Tolkien. Once official "second edition" books (so that there could be no question of whether he had copyright) were published in the US, they sold more than a quarter million copies in the first ten months. From what I can tell, it's never been out of print, and its popularity as a work of fiction has never waned; its reception among critics has waxed and waned over the years, but seems to be overall positive today.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
I mean, I knew that it was popular amongst fantasy/fiction fans, I just meant amongst the general public. I'd heard that the series only really became mainstream because of the movie trilogy.
But maybe I'm just misinformed. In which case, the question is answered.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Oh, no, it was super big before the movies, amd was considered the breakthrough exception to Fantasy not being "mainstream." The movies did boost it to another level, but prior to that it was very well known across the board. Particularly the Hobbit, which received the "well, it's a children's book" figleaf of accessibility for decades.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Welcome to the catch-22 that dragonborn fans have been forced to endure for 15 years now. Our preferences don't have enough traction or historical representation to deserve inclusion, so they never get a chance to develop a foothold, meaning they can't get any traction or historical representation.
The key difference, at least for me, is that gnomes DO have traction within the D&D space. That traction just isn't very interesting for most people, for several reasons. Whose fault that is, I've no idea (well, mostly I think it's the fault of Dragonlance and World of Warcraft, but that's a separate topic.) But the fact of the matter is, even though there are other interpretations of gnomes, the only one that's made any headway in the D&D-and-its-children space is "eccentric expert and usually comic relief/hyper-cutesy twee." That's why they're disliked so much; people who would want to do something serious with them are just usually choosing to play something else.
And I get it. I get that that sucks if you're a gnome fan, for exactly the reason I gave at the start. I've been there, with people (even theoretically friendly/positive ones) straight-up telling me I should be glad that dragonborn got included in the PHB at all.
But the thread was asking why this response occurs. I gave what I consider to be the full and complete answer: they're short (short races will always be less popular than human-height or taller races, except for their potential as twee or comic-relief options), they're often portrayed even by players who love them as completely non-serious, usually comic relief or zAnY wAcKy HiJiNkS types; their major, public-facing appearances in well-known fiction almost exclusively support the latter, with World of Warcraft being the prime offender (since it's much bigger than D&D has ever been, having had easily tens of millions of players over the many years it's been a thing.)
That doesn't mean you shouldn't play them. Hell, it doesn't mean you shouldn't campaign for gnomes to get a different take, something more interesting than the crappy typecasting they've gotten. You should totally do both of those things. But those three reasons are why most players won't play them or even outright dislike them, and it's very hard for individual folks (like you and me) to change any of those things.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
I was reading Tolkien in the late 70's, and I grew up in rural Michigan.
Hussar
Legend
Who?
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