How do we make gnomes relevant again?

You say that, I have them as basically escapees from the plane of elemental earth - they went crazy and got mild claustophobia after filling the plane with weird caverns and catacombs.

Of course, people from the elemental planes are pretty much "no sense of right and wrong", so they hit the prime material like kender on crack - basically those who got over their claustrophobia got agoraphobia and end up becoming the "house elves" or "kobolds" of old german fairy tales, else the rest prefer to hang in the forests causing mischief.

Of course, what kinda mischief can a little fella do?

Well they can travel through walls and the ground as easily as through air, though thankfully they can't fly in air, but they're pretty much uncontainable or imprisonable.
They can manipulate the earth at will, and in large enough groups, cause earthquakes, literally tear kingdoms in half etc...
Now fortunately the house gnomes tend not to operate more than one at a time in a home, but they've been known to steal, destroy the property of people who live in those houses unless mollified, so if you don't keep the place tidy or don't keep it warm and cared for the little fuckers will do all manner of things, upto and including drag people into the earth itself and entomb them alive so they can suffocate and never be found.

Forest Gnomes aren't much better, usually they'll only fuck with travellers through their woods, changing the land around them to get them lost or trap them.
But on occasions they've been known to kidnap babies from local villages.

Hunting especially malignant ones is a fairly tough job for adventurers or similar who get roped into taking them on, the only upside is that the gnomes don't seem to care if one of their own is killed unless they were owed something or were close to the fallen gnome in question.

However if the gnomes get wind that a mass culling might be at hand, it is often a good idea to leave the area before they pre-emptively retaliate.

God bless this fucking game

Gnomes were a mistake

Where can I get my own creepy porcine girl from?

Make 'em smaller than halflings and have the ability to speak to animals 24/7.

>Anime

Almost, it is getting an anime now

Well, a hentai

JESUS FUCK
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS THAT

AAAHHH

KILL IT GODDAMN

I'm gonna need a source on that

Not OP but I believe it's from this one Australian artist, she make creepy anthromorphic sculptures.
I've forgotten her name and can't be bothered hunting it down again.

Make your own setting. Make them a feature of your campaign.

Just use the Gnomes from Eberron as a template instead of making them Half-ElfDwarves like they did for way to long or autistic nutty professors that cant do anything right

What the fuck is that?

WHAT'S UP GUYS DRAMA ALERT NATION I'M YOUR HOST KILLER KEEMSTAR LET'S GET RIGHT, INTO THE NEWS!

Monster Girl Quest

there's nothing better than mud

WOW! WHAT A MEEEEEEEME!

You call them Noldor.

These are how I operate the Gnomes in my setting. Love of gold. Own and operate most of the shops. Have an "ancestral homeland" that they took from the Dwarves living there after a major continent spanning war. Build settlements in Dwarven lands. Defend themselves with magic, arms and armor sold to them by the largest Empire in the setting. Pic very related.

I like this, but I also think it kind of pushes them out of PC territory

Call me a shill, but I'm just going to quote this guy whose advice I like.

(1/3)
>[Gygax introduced gnomes] as a sort of a magical alternative to the martial dwarves and the tricksy halflings. And initially, gnomes were a magical race. And they got along well with the other races. Elves liked them for their ties to the natural world and their friendship with animals. Dwarves appreciate their craftwork, as they were excellent jewelers. And halflings liked them because they were friendly and good natured and rarely prideful. But they were curious and intellectual. Scholarly. And that lent them to the study of magic.

>The problem was that made the gnomes a weird sort of hybrid race. So as the elves became more and more strongly associated with magic – which was the gnome’s unique selling point – gnomes became a sort of hybrid of all the races. [In 2E,] elves made good wizards, but gnomes were better at illusion. And that lead to playing up their personalities as deceptive forest tricksters.

>Meanwhile, along came Dragonlance. The books, I mean. And one of the things Weis and Hickman tried to do in the Dragonlance novels was to give the races unique identities. That’s why they invented their own halfling – the kender – which would later supplant a lot of the original halfling identity as the everyman hero. And that is where the first hints of the tinker gnome started to show up.

[Snipped: Personal opinion about not liking wacky bullshit and clockwork steampunk crap, which I agree with, but isn't relevant]

>The problem is the gnome is now carrying ALL of that baggage. They are magical forest folk, friends with animals, craftsmen, inveterately curious, wacky pranksters, and steampunk mad scientists. No one is going to play up the forest folk, craftsman, or curiosity aspects because those aspects are in elves, dwarves, and halflings. So, the only players attracted to gnomes are the ones attracted to the wacky. And THAT is why I ban gnomes in my game.

>[...] Do you want gnomes in your game? The first step is to figure out what role isn’t being filled on the race list and decide if that’s something gnomes can do. For example, there isn’t a good tinker and trader race. There’s isn’t a good race of tradesfolk and businessmen. Dwarves are craftsmen, sure, but they are also martial and traditional and socially strict.

>Gnomes as a sort of race of traveling gypsy folk could work. Not gypsy gypsys. But wandering tinkers and traders and salesmen. Think, like, good natured Ferengi. They aren’t the best at ironwork or stonework, but as village tinkerers and tradesmen, jewelers and cobblers, tradesmen, they are renowned. They are well liked and they set up shop everywhere. Maybe they even have a gift for the intricate. They don’t have to be wacky inventors and your world doesn’t need gear-powered robots. They could just be good at inventing useful things like spyglasses and astrolabes and clocks and other useful fare that is just slightly too advanced for a fantasy world without being goofy.

(3/3)

>Or gnomes could be the speakers for the forest. They could be Loraxes and the David the Gnomes of the world. They could have a gift for druidry. They reject the gods and have direct ties to the spirit world. They live in burrows in the forest, tend small gardens, and live as gatherers. They are healers of animals and protectors of the natural world. Whereas wood elves are stealthy hunters and tribal woodsfolk, gnomes are spiritual creatures, intrinsically tied to the magic of the natural world in a way elves are not. There really isn’t a race that is strongly tied to druids and the natural world without also being tied to the arcane or to hunting and living off the land.

>Or gnomes could be artificers and alchemists. Again, that doesn’t require wackiness. Honestly, if you take the forest dwelling aspects, gnomes could just be the best alchemists and herbalists and mediciners and chemists in the world. They could know every plant and animal substance and ingredient and be renowned for their expertise in those areas. In fact, you could combine that with the idea of gnomes as skilled craftspeople and traders. Their love of fine craftwork combined with their direct connection with the natural world could help them excel as druids or herbalists or gardeners or animal handlers as well as as cobblers and jewelers and tinkers and knife sharpeners.

Pick a kind of gnome and stick with that one for the majority of them.

I like to stay with 5e's Forest Gnome, who are subtly fey and can speak to small animals.

Rock Gnomes are very much the tinker gnome, and I still use them but as a mutation due to the effects of a fallen asteroid or Rock. The Rock drove the Gnomes that discovered it mad with knowledge and the drive to invent and innovate. It's like technology is a malign influence on the world trying to infect them. I can see a sort of Ferngully War between Forest and Rock Gnomes.

shortstack pornography

I'm capable of dissociating fey Forest Gnomes and Elves by basically having the Gnomes be the commoners to the Elfin aristocrats. It's natural that an elfs place in nature is a noble one. When an elfin child is born the birds of the forest add a new note to their song. When a new Gnomish child is born, the news spreads like gossip among the animals and other gnomes, but it's not a thing of grand honour or ceremony.

Labyrinth had some cool gnomish looking creatures and provides enough of an excuse to share this hopefully.

youtu.be/fhGIkttRiQs

meh

>gnomes
>not halflings
FWP,G

A better question is how do you make household fairies and brownies relevant?

bump

Play up the tech aspect of Gnomes. Make it really central to everything.

Hard Alternative: Ban humans as a player race. Take away Halflings, they're just taking up the same space.

Suddenly, your more "standard" choices are Elf, Dwarf, or Gnome. You've got your magic specialists, your builders, and your inventors. Easy enough.

Delete halflings, that way gnomes get to be the main "little people" race.

Alternatively, play up the gnomes' magical nature and make them the main spellcaster race.

Basically, just give gnomes a niche that isn't already filled by another race.

How magical, exactly?

Confession: I like gnomes better than dwarfs. In fact, I think gnomes better represent dwarfs from literary and mythological sources earlier than The Lord of the Rings (including The Hobbit) better than actual dwarfs. I wouldn't make it canon for all my games but I wouldn't dislike the idea of a setting which simply has dwarfs (in the D&D sense) replaced with gnomes wholesale (in the D&D sense). Maybe even make the names synonyms for the same kind of creature.

>Play up the tech aspect of Gnomes. Make it really central to everything.

Don't do this. Everyone and their grandmother has done this.

...

I'd like the idea of combining both aspects of gnomes - gnomes are subtly fey and have a connection to nature, but in civilized lands what would normally be in interest in wildlife or growing things is instead expressed by complex 'growths' of machinery.

Sadly, they fulfill too many stereotypes. You can't have a fantasy race be both industrious AND nature loving. It's too complex. Only humans can have TWO cultural traits.

>Only humans can have TWO cultural traits.
And then not in the same fantasy culture (it's okay, humans are allowed more than one)

Those are some good ideas. I especially like the travelling tinker thing. Reminds me of Name of the Wind.

Except that they haven't. It seems like its obvious and therefore overdone, but lots of players have never actually experienced it.

Make druid an Int based class. Elves and Gnomes are known for being the forest loving fags, yet, they aren't good druids. What the fuck are dwarves doing as guardians fo nature?

That concept works surprisingly well.

bump? I hate feeling like gnomes are something I have to leave out of everything, and I'd love more ideas on how to work them in settings.

Just do this with them.

that's a greenskin

that's a goblin you fuck

you don't

>dat 'stache

Reminds me of a tangent my group got off on once, where we speculated about gnomes having a mustache-based economy. We proposed that they had the ability to increase their own 'stache by absorbing the mustache hairs of other gnomes, so they pluck out their mustache hairs and exchange them as a form of currency. Thus, the wealthiest gnomes have the biggest, most magnificent 'staches.

I think he's suggesting you do to gnomes what that pic does to goblins.

He's suggesting you turn them sexy.

Make them bad.

Exactly

I can't play that game. I want to butcher all gnomes in it.

here's an idea someone had on another site, been contemplating writing up a game inspired by it(although I'd tweak some things around);
Which suggests a weird idea to me - humans as a big minor race in a setting. Here, we're the giants, and most of the world measures their height in inches (or apples or whatever). Humans live in relatively isolated villages, and walking into the wrong part of the forest means you could get a magical rapid-response team deployed to "subdue the giant".

* Pointy-capped gnomes live in homes carved out of tree-roots...when they aren't building cities (with spires fully twenty feet tall!) beside calmer rivers. They're smart, practical, and long-lived, though home-bodied and rather slow due to stodgy builds and lack of flight. Introducing urban living to a world of tiny (really tiny) villages and isolated homesteads has transformed life for the major races, putting gnomes in a far more prominent and active role than they had before.

* Bug-winged fairies sleep rough in forests - or they used to, before they could get apartments in those gnomish cities. They're fast, curious, and unreasonably brave, though ...variably dependable. Some of them make good wizards or gifted (if excitable and eager) military officers, but they're generally stereotyped as best in odd, independent jobs. Oddly, they tend to do well in politics if they can get someone to keep track of the details for them...

* Cunning, large-eared pixies sometimes lead travelers astray on dark roads...but they also have a reputation for being talented in many forms of magic, particularly an innate ability to teleport away when nobody's looking. They're also total fashion hounds, though a pixy's idea of "fashion" may be tailored spider-silk finery or a really bright, red ribbon wound around his body. Their behavior tends to extremes of cruel prankishness or hard-working, unasked benevolence, sometimes in the same pixie.

1/2

* Sprites rarely show up in cities, because they're not generally interested in them, being elemental in nature. Though they can (and prefer to) assume a humanoid form much like one of the other races when dealing with them, their true forms are little, animated figures of earth and rock, lily-leaf and water, cloud and wind, twig and leaf, or flame and embers. Though they're individually rather formidable, they don't organize beyond small band or tribes and are the least civilized of the major races; they're rarely magicians or crafters of magical items. This suits all but the most adventurous of them fine.

* Goblins lurk in the shadows of society. Gangly, rough, shaggy things, they're stereotyped (often accurately) as uncouth, barbaric, aggressive, and opportunistic, but other races will grudgingly admit that they're fiercely loyal to friends (and downright scary towards enemies). An overlooked aspect of their nature and/or culture is that they tend to learn fast and work very well with anyone willing to work with them; goblin workers are becoming more and more important in the construction of new "gnomish" cities, and some goblins want more than fringe existence out of the society they're helping build.

2/2

Elves can too! Just make sure one lives in the woods and the others don't.

By identifying a compelling reason to do so.

It would certainly not be something you would choose off the bat, but if people can get commoner PCs to work, having a one-hit wonder gnome who has a situationally useful ability wouldn't be impossible. So long as there isn't already a druid.

So...the problem with gnomes is that they're too three-dimensional as a race? That hasn't stopped humans from becoming a staple, but then again, it might be because gnomes and humans occupy the same niche and having both is redundant. In fact, every way you shape it, gnomes are redundant. They do everything the other races do and defy stereotype!

They're silly as hell with racial +int, I love my gnome wizard.

>a fantasy race with two stereotypes
Well, we can't have that, can we?

Interestingly, in 19th century romanticism and the associated fairytale revival there was a period in which gnomes were synonymous with goblins. This is actually referred to in Changeling: The Dreaming, in which goblins are the Thallian (dark) version of the very gnomelike knockers. They look and act basically the same but the goblins are nastier and more brutal and everything they build is used for violence (as opposed to knockers, who build all kinds of stuff).

According to Wikipedia,19th century fantasy writers also used them as an antithesis of sorts to fairies (gnomes being masculine, industrious, ugly, humorless and living in the ground while fairies are feminine, frivolous, merry and live in the air), or to elves (gnomes-ugly, elves-pretty). For the most part, there doesn't seem to have been much distinction, if at all, between gnomes and what we'd think of as dwarfs (in the pre-Tolkienese sense of being sneaky magical creatures who mine for gems all day rather than a race of Gimlis).

Also the archaic name for a female gnome is a "gnomide".

What game is it?

>that's a goblin you fuck
Yes, that is a goblin you fuck.

>Make gnomes relevant again
>Gnomes relevant again
>Again
That's the problem...
They were never relevant in the first place.
Either off brand halflings (themselves off brand hobbits) or chaoticrandumb tinkerers. There wasn't even a vaguely decent idea at the core to start with.

Oh, the cogfop tinkering gnome shit came from Dragonlance? I only knew warhammer/craft cemented it in the mind of the public.