Did I miss the memo that announced that people loved playing short characters?
That playing short people was so popular that we needed stuff like a race who's major defining trait was that they were really short people?
Was there a survey? I don't think I've played with anyone in the last few years who even enjoyed playing a short human.
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small is cute and cute is cool.
People are just following the meme "shortstacks".
They're not small, they're fun-sized.
On more serious note, while size certainly can be impressive, we have reached the point where it's entirely viable to get smaller, advantageous even. Heavy lifting is done by machinery and fighting is done by sophisticated weapons. If people were 30% smaller on the average we would save considerable amount of space on housing and other urban areas. Not to mention such people would need less food. Obviously this can't be done in a leap, it needs to be done gradually.
Its an easy starting point to thinking of how and why a character acts differently. Why does the goblin thief move as he does? Because he's plying his trade in a town where everything is made for people more than twice his size.
It fires up some people's minds where not every action can just be treated out of hand but with consideration to the limits of their character's physicality. This extends to other races as well, like a centaur who has to worry about going up sharp inclines or stairs - because its going to be very difficult going back down, or through tight spaces and having to make a turn would be near impossible.
We're always going to want our soldiers to be big and strong, and until they get that Big Dog robot project actually up and running, that's going to remain the case.
That "meme" has been around for years.
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I play fairly silly gnome, it's fun.
Also when considering what races to include in a homebrew setting, I wound up with some of the classic shorties for the sake of variety. Envisioning a lineup of the various races with noticeable extremes just seemed interesting.
By playing an immature and short humanoid I can indulge in my loli and shota fetishes without my DM catching on. It's great.
>without my DM catching on
Why do people assume that just because no one says anything, no one's figured it out?
I make predominantly small characters because I like the aesthetics of it, beating up things larger than you is fun, and because I want my characters to be bullied.
People do enjoy playing short characters, even short humans, in my experience.
Well, except for gnomes. Few people enjoy gnomes. But halflings and goblins and dwarves sure all day errday.
I used to play with this girl in a wheelchair who would always roll a halfling and would always hook up with the biggest, burliest NPC or willing PC in the campaign. Usually an orc, sometimes a dragonborn or just a big beefy dude.
>Girlfriend joins game
>Makes Halfling Thief
>I make a Goliath Barbarian
>Fastball special every combat
I don't even know what meme means anyore.
>a race
Don't you mean "three races minimum"?
Don't worry, you're far from the only one. Luckily, education on the internet is pretty easy.
en.wikipedia.org
I don't get the hate for gnomes. They're much more interesting than a halfling. A halfling is a small human. A gnome is a subtly magical thing, or driven by a need to tinker. Goblins are great and so are dwarves. Halflings I don't see the point of.
>Extremely volumptious shortstacks literally made to be impregnated (and headpatted)
How can other races even compete against Draph women?
Blame WoW for poisoning the gnome well.
Halflings take the "SUPERSERIOUS" route, where they're a race characterized by pretending they don't have the inferiority complex everyone assumes they have, while specializing as thieves, burglars, and other "we reject your common conventions" occupations.
I like the "new" gnome models, they're great.
It's because "tinker" is utter bullshit as a concept.
That's nothing special.
I've always felt them the most redundant. Halfling are a thing because they were a thing in Tolkien's stuff. Tbh I find them largely pointless in most settings, as they generally don't have much reason for existing, or really do anything in the setting, besides "Tolkien had them so we must do", but at least there is a reason why people feel the need to ahve them. Gnomes on the other hand fall into a kind of vague spot between several other races. They're like halflings in size, but either very magical (like elves but smaller, or fairies but bigger), or technological (like dwarves except even smaller, and often with technology that feels wildly out of place).
I'm not talking about the look, but the aesthetics. It's territory D&D has often stepped into as well (ironically Eberron gnomes which are almost in exactly the same space get a bit better just because of the secretive-and-more-serious fluff they get too). The whole tinker gnome thing is tiresome as hell, and it steps into the same space as dwarves. The subtly magical aspect gets overridden by other fey creatures.
Halflings are better than gnomes because even though they have less in their space it's easier to play around with and develop into something that is theirs. Most of the time gnomes are just nutty dwarves.
Not really, it is firmly set in a more sci fi theme though with the focus of technology. I thought it strange they're driven by the need to tinker and invent, like technology itself is a force that drives them on. Then I see Rock Gnome and I think "oh some Gnomes found some weird rock (that likely fell from space) that fucked with their brains to make technology. Technology wants to propagate" That's weird and cool to me.
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Sci-fi without any of the things that make sci-fi good, like logical consistency or social commentary.
So something more rooted in the pulps then. I'm perfectly fine with that.
Because they've never been done very well in D&D, most likely.
Classic gnomes are at best an awkward mishmash of dwarfin and elfin traits with a sprinkle of "lol, we're comedic relief" pranksterism.
Dragonlance gnomes, on the other hand, are incredibly fucking stupid. They're an entire tinker gnome race being played "for laughs" by the same geniuses who gave us kender. They're fucking irritating as all hell and a huge turn off for anyone who might actually like the tinker gnome concept, because they've given us the preconception that all tinker gnomes are incompetent, short-sighted, brainless bunglers.
Have they ever been done well outside of D&D?
>tinker gnome thing is tiresome as hell, and it steps into the same space as dwarves
I disagree with this.
Dwarves are all about the past. The past is much more important to them than innovation is. Their legacy, their clan, their traditions, their grudges. It's all about the past, and preserving and honouring it. The dwarves are a nostalgic people. Their technology reflects this. Why do they fight with axes and hammers, and not spears despite living mostly underground? They were the tools, made into weapons. If they're good enough to chop a tree, or beat metal, it's good enough to kill.
Rock Gnomes on the other hand are all about technology moving forward. Innovation, invention, iteration. Even things that don't need fixing are built upon and "improved" because the drive is there. It's totally unhealthy, progress for the sake of progress. Always moving forward, never reflecting on the past. That's a dangerous road that can have great consequences.
Name me a fantasy game that does them? In real mythology, gnome is just one name for the seemingly infinite array of "small, human-like, magical faeries who may occasionally do things for humans if properly respected".
As far as I'm aware, though, gnomes tend to default to the "small comedic race", often with bungling inventor thrown on top of that.
When you take something serious and make it silly, you get something entertaining.
When you take something silly and make it serious, you get something weird and compelling. That's adventure fuel.
Because gnomes are generally shoe-horned into almost all settings as 'Not-ugly "goblins" ' or 'Tinkerer pranksters' who are perpetually tied to themes like 'co-existing with Race X' or 'Have seamlessly integrated into modern society'.
They basically occupy a half-assed concept slot that could have belonged to more interesting races. It's the same issue for "Dragon-men" "Everyone is High-Society" and "Furries". I'd take quadrupedal insect folk or Elemental people over them any day.
I don't even know how people can say Alliance races are anything other than reskinned humans; even the exotic 'drainei' are just gypo's. At least the Horde manage to actually have a diverse racial list.
Honestly, people either don't know that Dwarves are conservative, even with technology, and assume they'll be th efirst to make guns and shit, or they just don't know Gnomes are all about tinkering, 'technology'.
Because Gnomes are the lolrandumb race for D&D they are presented as trickers, which for many players indicated free reign to burn down the houses for laughs.
Only time I've ever seen Gnomes done non-stupidly is the Witcher which essentially made them more dexterous Dwarves.
Thats a consequence of players having no imagination with the concept of a trickster.
>When you take something serious and make it silly, you get something entertaining
If it is done well, then this is so. If it is not done well, then you merely get something ridiculous, perhaps pitiably and disgustingly so.
>When you take something silly and make it serious, you get something weird and compelling.
Rarely. More often you get something like One Punch Man powerlevel discussion, or Smogon.
Anons? Morbidly curious; in a scenario where the party is helping to make peace between a human kingdom and a dwarf kingdom, and the dwarf king demands the human kingdom's prince marry his three daughters, who look like the linked pic below (NSFW, by the way), how much of a sacrifice is he demanding of the prince?
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hentai-foundry.com
For me, it's Dragonlance. Dragonlance tinker gnomes planted a festering seed of hate in my heart for gnomes and all variants of are tainted by association.
Was the link really necessary, or are you trying to demonstrate the princes shortstack fetish?
>how much of a sacrifice is he demanding of the prince?
Judging by the image the prince doesn't seem to mind. Isn't it the human kings right to marry off his son in order to secure peace between nations, the continuation of his bloodline, and ensuring a relatively high quality of life for his son? Or will there be unrest in either nation that the next generations ruler will not be racially pure? Or does the prince have a brother willing to make a bid for the crown and not a care who gets hurt on the way? Or does one of the daughters have her own plan that does involve the human prince?
Smogon is where childhoods go to die.
Because they are ugly. Gnomes are all gross to look at.
I rolled a short character
so thats why i play it
Halflings have existed since the fucking 60s OP.
Ya dropped this
Literally zero sacrifice.
Arcanum had them as what was essentially jews.
And holy shit, did they do some horrifying stuff.
>the half-ogre bodyguard breeding conspiracy and the fact that there's nothing you can do to stop it
I vividly remember killing every single gnome I came across after that, reputation and laws be damned.
The hate is justified. Gnomes are known to push their narrative, and bussiness models on to other races. They especially push it on adventuring parties; wanting them to use their Travelocity to book rooms in Inn's.