D&D General Why Do People Hate Gnomes?

[Parmandur]

You can? I literally just tested myself on this after reading your post here. Brought up, sight-unseen, the Google image search for "5e halfling" and "5e gnome." I tabbed between browser windows with my eyes shut, then looked at which one came up without looking at the search. It was gnomes; I misidentified them as halflings. They have very similar proportions (particularly their weird-looking feet and large heads), and the only real difference I can see between them in art is gnomes tend to have bigger, pointier ears--but

Absolutely, the proportions are entirely different, and as you point out you can tell with even just a look at the facial features.

 

[MNblockhead]

When I started playing D&D back in the 1980s, gnomes were monsters: they were listed in the Monsters section of the red box rulebook, and they were described as greedy, pointy-nosed dwarves that only cared about money. So that was my first, and lasting impression of gnomes...long before there was a such thing as a 'tinker' or an 'artificer.' Gnomes were cannon-fodder, moneygrubbing little dwarves that only wanted to rob or cheat you.

And that remains my impression of gnomes, and nothing has been able to change it. "Oh but they're good tunnel engineers," you might say. "They're really good at machines and metalwork, they're really clever craftsmen, they're..."

Let me finish that last sentence for you: they're dwarves.

"But but but illusions!" you will declare. "But forest magic, and nimble fingers, and..."

Sorry to interrupt, but you're just talking about a dwarf with levels of wizard, or druid, or rogue. This is not enough of a case to create an entire character race off of. If you simply cannot help yourself, if you absolutely cannot live without gnomes in your game for some reason, be honest with yourself and make them a subclass of dwarf. Because they're dwarves.

Could not the same be said of Halflings?

Halflings have always been my least favorite race in D&D for the reason other complain about gnomes. But, then again, I'm absolutely fine with races that are not radically different. I see no reason why there would not be races that to an outsider would seem pretty much the same to one another other than some minor variations. The differences come out in the world building. The petty narcissism of small differences are building blocks on which entire group identities are built.

I can see the argument for wanting more mechanical differentiation, but recent options in Tasha's for customizing origins give tools for doing that.

I've also become a big believer in making more use of custom backgrounds that are only available to certain races or certain cultures or regions. I think the rules for custom backgrounds are one of the most underused parts of the bog-standard RAW. I find in most games that DMs and players just pick a background from the PHP or another published book rather than treating them as examples.

Ultimately, gnome are a core part of DnD for me and I think there are enough people who feel the same that they will stay core races. Tieflings and dragonborn are generally not part of my main campaigns, but there are many players of the game that love them, and they will also stay core to the game.

 

[MNblockhead]

More or less, my argument is that both gnomes and halflings come across as somewhat incomplete. By combining the two together, you can get a whole more viable than the sum of its parts. This is not true of humans and elves; instead, humans and elves are almost too full, potentially inviting division into smaller subsets, though I prefer what I have above.

I can grok where you are coming from, even though I have a visceral reaction against the idea. Part of the problem in these discussions is that our views are going to be heavily influenced by our personal play experiences, the literature we read, and the personal imaginings and nolstalgia these inspire in us. Illusionist, trickster, iconoclast, isolationist are not adjectives I associate with halflings but are strongly associated with gnomes for me.

BTW, I know the "trickster" reputation is one thing people hate about gnomes, but "trickster" has much deeper layers to it for those who are steeped in folklore. Whether in European folklore or Algonquin stories of Raven or the Great Hare, tricksters play an important role in teaching values and fighting hubris. If I were to give more mechanical flavor to gnomes beyond a penchant for illusions, I would look for something like the luck attribute in Halflings that instead has the ability to counter power with a fumble. For example, once per long rest a gnome can turn any critical hit against it into a fumble. I would add a fumble table with some possible effects from the fumble. Such as the creature slips and falls prone, hits itself, drops its weapon, etc.

 

[Hussar]

189 pages... for Book 1. Of Seven books. Book two is 354 pages, and THAT'S the book where Fizzlesprocket is introduced. And 350 pages is clearly a novel, right? Or do I have to combine the entire thing? That is 2,865 pages for the main series and 625 for Fizzlesprocket's spin-off book. That's more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, probably more than the entire body of work published by J.R.R. Tolkien is we want to compare bodies of work, but since this book was published as an E-Book it doesn't count? Because, it isn't like publishing and the book industry has changed at all since 1937 right?

And the other seven series I mentioned just... don't count? I guess it is pretty easy to dismiss the works of Baum on Oz. Or to ignore that Artemis Fowl was not only published, but had a movie adaptation and I think a proposed TV series. Or that the Dark Profit Saga also was pulished in paperback.

I don't ignore the difference of scale, but you didn't ask for "give me a gnome that hundreds of millions of people will know" you said "give me gnomes in literature". Well, specifically you wanted "classical" fantasy, which you still never addressed how biased THAT was either.

And that's what this is. Bias. Too short to count. Too new count. Published in the wrong format to count. I've never claimed any of these works had millions of followers and were pop culture icons. That wasn't the point.

Yeah, this is pointless.

Are you seriously claiming that gnomes have significant traction in the D&D hobby? And that gnomes are so popular that they are widely known in other media? Really?

Ok, it comes down to this. Never in the history of the game have gnomes been popular. At best, they're an after thought if even that. They never play a significant role in anything. They just kind of sit there, taking up space.

Other than the Gnome Effect, if you pulled gnomes out of the PHB, most people wouldn't even notice. It would have pretty much zero impact on most campaign settings. Even in settings which do strongly feature gnomes, like Dragonlance, if you pulled gnomes out of Krynn, it would make ... zero difference.

Look, I get that you seem to think gnomes are this widely beloved concept where everyone is just chomping at the bit to play them, but, I really don't see the evidence for it. True, there is one, and only one, gnome in the entire Candlekeep mysteries module. There was none in Ghosts of Saltmarsh that I recall (although I haven't read the adventures in a while, so, it could just be me forgetting). Curse of Strahd doesn't have any gnomes. Were there any in Hoard of the Dragon Queen? In fact, in any of the, what, ten major module releases for 5e (10? 13? I forget), have gnomes featured in any significant way, ever?

It's not bias to note that gnomes are barely present in the game. Barely played by players, barely feature in any of the adventures or supplements. How is this bias?

 

[SakanaSensei]

Yeah, this is pointless.

Are you seriously claiming that gnomes have significant traction in the D&D hobby? And that gnomes are so popular that they are widely known in other media? Really?

Ok, it comes down to this. Never in the history of the game have gnomes been popular. At best, they're an after thought if even that. They never play a significant role in anything. They just kind of sit there, taking up space.

Other than the Gnome Effect, if you pulled gnomes out of the PHB, most people wouldn't even notice. It would have pretty much zero impact on most campaign settings. Even in settings which do strongly feature gnomes, like Dragonlance, if you pulled gnomes out of Krynn, it would make ... zero difference.

Look, I get that you seem to think gnomes are this widely beloved concept where everyone is just chomping at the bit to play them, but, I really don't see the evidence for it. True, there is one, and only one, gnome in the entire Candlekeep mysteries module. There was none in Ghosts of Saltmarsh that I recall (although I haven't read the adventures in a while, so, it could just be me forgetting). Curse of Strahd doesn't have any gnomes. Were there any in Hoard of the Dragon Queen? In fact, in any of the, what, ten major module releases for 5e (10? 13? I forget), have gnomes featured in any significant way, ever?

It's not bias to note that gnomes are barely present in the game. Barely played by players, barely feature in any of the adventures or supplements. How is this bias?

Dalakhar is in Dragon Heist and... kind of is important in a backstory kind of way, but doesn't interact with the players for reasons related to mortal coils. Does he count?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This, incidentally, is part of why I think halflings and gnomes make sense to be merged into a single, more diverse group.

I can't grasp the need to do anything with gnomes or halflings. If someone wants to play one, they can play one, otherwise they can be simply ignored.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I can't grasp the need to do anything with gnomes or halflings. If someone wants to play one, they can play one, otherwise they can be simply ignored.

Space efficiency. As I mentioned upthread, my goal* was to come up with exactly 4 variants within each option. I hit a dead end with gnomes, but after wracking my brain about them for ages, I realized that svirfneblin and ghostwise halflings are surprisingly similar, and forest gnomes and lightfoot halflings had some similarities (even moreso if you consider lotusden halflings). If one ancestry had those four variant lineages/clans (forest gnome/lightfoot halfling, stoutheart halfling, rock gnome, svirfneblin/ghostwise halfling), it would slot perfectly into that overall system, preserving most of the unique character of the individual options while streamlining a significant amount of space.

And it's not like I'm alone in thinking there's a connection here. In Dragonlance, the local equivalent of halflings (kender) came into being, allegedly, from those gnomes who chased after the Greygem because they were curious. (Allegedly that's also how dwarves came to be, coming from the gnomes who sought the gem because they coveted it, but the dwarves apparently vehemently deny any shared origin with kender, so who knows?) And Dragonlance is by far one of the most influential sources in terms of defining what gnomes are, given that it is the origin of the whole "eccentric genius whose technology is reliably unreliable" trope associated with them.

Keep in mind, I see this as exactly the same as having (wood) elves, eladrin, drow, and shadar-kai all being "one ancestry," despite their significant differences in physiology and implied culture, or the differences between the various types of genasi, or the three extant types of dragonborn (metallic, chromatic, gem). That is, perhaps rock gnomes and svirfneblin/ghostwise halflings are known for being more "serious" (but also a bit more unhinged), while forest gnomes/lightfoot halflings(/lotusden halflings) and stoutheart halflings are known for being more grounded but also a bit more trickster-y. By analogy, very similar to the split between "wood" elves and "high" elves (or just "elves" and "eladrin," as far as I'm concerned); as Red from OSP puts it, "Elves are generally nature-loving hippie archers, except their cousins, the naughty word Elves who are always pretentious with massive superiority complexes." That both things are "elf," despite cashing out in different ways, doesn't weaken either, but shows how both depictions fit into a broader concept or understanding.

*I succeeded on this for every race except human, given the "gnome/halfling" combo, because I couldn't come up with a clear, distinct, interesting, and most importantly NOT RACIST fourth option for humans. After giving it a fair shake and still coming up empty, I settled for humans having only three "lineages" rather than four, because I'd much rather have them be a little weird mechanically than perpetuate racist stereotypes. That left me with standard, Dual-Blooded (e.g. half-elf, half-orc, half-dwarf, etc.), and SPACE(!) (e.g. slan, Solarians, potentially Vulcans, etc.)

 

[MNblockhead]

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.

In the 70s the hobbit animated movie was also shown in my elementary school. And as another poster stated, the books were required reading in some schools.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Space efficiency.

The most efficient use of space is for something to not exist until it becomes relevant.

 

[FrozenNorth]

should we bring it back to the topic of gnomes?
where should gnomes go if they are in any form to stick around?

Ummm…Zilargo is a totalitarian state, like 1984?