D&D General Why Do People Hate Gnomes?

[rmcoen]

One of my players' first involvement in fantasy roleplay was WoW, where he played a gnome frost mage. Two campaigns later - in a campaign that didn't have gnomes - he played a "dwarf" that was so twisted by torture and experimentation in a Shadowfell prison that he had all the gnome racial traits instead of dwarven ones. (Yeah, I accommodated his desire to play the WoW character.)

I played a male gnome illusionist/thief way back in college. Died, was reincarnated as a human female thief (mostly incompetent due to rerolled physical stats).

And I think that's all the gnome characters I've personally seen in 40 years of D&D.

I will say that I do love the tinker-gnome concept (better than tinker-goblins, but I can make brain room for both if the gnomes are the scientists and inventors and the goblins are the "it probably won't blow up in your face" back-street crazy junkwelders), and actually have "featured" them somewhat in my current campaign as the driving force behind the Alchemist Guild. Which, admittedly, is mostly a storyline "off screen", in the next kingdom over from where the campaign takes place. But their alchemical inventions do pop up here and there.

 

[Horwath]

probably because of lack of identity,
they try to be somewhat hobbitish, somewhat dwarfy, somewhat elfy, and mostly it comes down to bland nothing.


also I hate that with every edition small PC races try to freeload to medium size without any penalties for being small.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Teehee Maccaroni

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

When D&D first introduced Gnomes - and I think it was the first RPG to do so, although I may be wrong - all the other playable races were all taken more or less directly from Tolkien. Elves, Dwarves, Halflings (Hobbits without the trademark), Half Orcs and Half Elves making Gnomes the odd one out. The Halflings already covered the diminutive character archetype, while Gnomes themselves had to emerge as an odd-one-out new archetype.

Gnomes were in the Silmarillion; they were just called the Noldor

 

[teitan]

Gnomes are awesome. I just came here to say that.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Gnomes were in the Silmarillion; they were just called the Noldor

damn elves trying to take over every other option

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

also I hate that with every edition small PC races try to freeload to medium size without any penalties for being small.

We have to pay higher rates for car rentals, actually.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I feel like D&D Gnomes are simultaneously trying to cover too much identity while also having none.

I also feel that there's not enough effort put into exploring haberdashery via gnomes.

That's great. That empowers the DM to make Gnomes into whatever they need or want for their table.

 

[Argyle King]

That's great. That empowers the DM to make Gnomes into whatever they need or want for their table.

Possibly

Though, seemingly for many tables, the result of that approach has been to produce neither a want nor a need.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's great. That empowers the DM to make Gnomes into whatever they need or want for their table.

For my part, I kinda feel like it's the other way around. It gives the DM nothing to work with, so gnomes end up being nothing important, if they even show up at all.

I still think my proposal, which kinda takes a leaf from DL albeit not intentionally, is a better path. Make gnomes and halflings two sides of the same coin. Halflings are the ones associated with forest and field, the wanderers and wardens (lightfoot and stoutheart). Gnomes are the ones associated with crag and chasm, the inventors and mystics (cragstep and ghostwise). Much as "elf" encompasses four distinct branches (moon/forest, sun/faerie, star/underearth, void/shadow).

Of course, part of the impetus there is that, if I had my druthers, every race except human would have four distinct subtypes. Humans would only have three because I couldn't come up with a fourth that (a) actually sounded cool and (b) didn't have unwanted implications. (Those three, incidentally, are ordinary humans aka "earthbound" humans, which would be all humans actually living on Earth; dual-blooded, folks who have a human parent and a non-human parent; and "starbound" humans, which reference things like slann/elan, humans Weirded™ by the bizarro magic of interstellar space.)