*shrug*
I'm still using the burrowing, nature-friend gnome. They have Druid as a favored class in my campaign.
One of the very few things that will get a character a "smote by the hand of god" death in my game is to play a gnome who is good, but unpredictable with technology. Actually, you can scrap the "but unpredictable" part. Gnomish inventors have incredibly short lives punctuated by quick, but painful deaths. Tinker gnomes are one of the main reasons why I'd never play in a DragonLance campaign (gully dwarves are the other). I dislike them beyond my capacity to articulate.
Illusionist gnomes, I never really understood, but it wasn't particularly offensive. More of a "shrug and move on" deal.
Bard gnomes are pretty lame, though. Gnomes as a race of inspirational performers and exemplars of diplomacy, information gathering, and intrigue is about in the same boat as dwarves as an abstractly intellectual race bent on the study and perfection of magical means and wizardry. Neither really makes sense as a core "staple" of the genre.
Then again, I don't think gimble looks so much like a gnome as he does a rakish halfling appearing on the original Star Trek as a Klingon.
