Talk about gnomes and halflings here.
What have you done with either race in your setting? What do you like about each race? What do you dislike? Which race has the better artwork? Which edition has your preferred portrayal of them?
And which got the worse deal in Dragonlance?
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went extinct because they couldn't reach over the counter
I tend to think gnomes suffer from a lack of their own niche, and the tech focus they're often given doesn't fit in a setting I'm working on. So we've gone back to paracelsus, with Gnomes being a form of Earth Elemental.
Do you think that might be why WoW gnomes seem to be the "Face" of gnomedom in the wider fantasy world? Because WoW gives them some kind of focus as "the tech guys" without doing what Dragonlance did and making them useless bunglers?
Probably. They do kind of lack a strong identity out of that, since halflings and dwarves are so much more prominent, and they share conceptual and thematic links with both, as well as similar mythological origins.
the difference between gnomes and halflings has been a tricky issue to deal with for a long time now.
I eventually dropped halflings from my setting because I could not find a single place where they would be interesting. I tried to put them into the history, but it just ended up putting "and halflings were also there" at the end of every sentence.
Gnomes I have a bit more fondness for, either as the tech-guys or as garden gnomes, but they ended up having the same problem as the halflings.
I eventually just dropped both, and currently use Kobolds and Goblins, because they're more interesting.
Oh? Sincerely interested here; what did you find about kobolds and goblins that made them more interesting?
I use the entirely descend from dragons version of Kobolds. I like them, I prefer short lizard people over short humans, and I like making them snarky.
For Goblins, they just work in my head better than gnomes.
Also, Kobolds and Goblins have a definite benefit over halflings and gnome in one regard: It's impossible to imagine an evil halfling or gnome that isn't just a psycho murderer, while kobolds and goblins have always generally been villains. It's much easier to make a villainous race feel heroic than for a heroic race to fell villainous.
>[Spoiler?]
i find goblins act as good foils to orcs. cunning and petty as opposed to the brutal and strong
Halfings, due to their breeding habits, have managed to become the most numerous of the exiled Colonials, though the press towards conservatism has meant they've pulled back into tight (if huge) family circles and try to keep a hidden 'halfling community' no matter how intermixed they are in a multi-racial one.
This has given rise to them forming a countering force to the illusive 'Thieves guild' with the Halfling Mafia looking out solely for the interest of halflings. (and thus, why they seem so skilled to being rogues!) Interestingly, organized crime aspects aside, this means they're acting a bit more like agrarian dwarves.
Gnomes, on the flipside, were largely a well-respected scholarly and innovative race back in the old, but their own push back towards pre-empire traditionalism has meant most gnome families have taken to returning to using their intellect for entertainment, often in the form of crude jokes. From a meta-standpoint, they've gone from the promising college grad student to the eternal frat boys. Some still try to work towards more scholarly pursuits, but their families at large will proceed to accuse them of being 'downers'.
The native variants are a bit of a different story, especially with gnomes who are a bit less... Sane. Feytouched is the commonly accepted reason for their mental instability and tendency to vanish and appear in odd places doing odder things including forming cults around a levitated plate of stolen pasta. More worryingly, they seem to have a good standing with the cryptic native Wood Elves.
dwarves and halflings picked up most of their defining traits directly from gnomes.
Technically, it's more that D&D dwarves are based on Nordic dwarves by way of Tolkien, ad D&D gnomes are based on dwarves from other European & Germanic countries.
Halflings are just litigation-free Hobbits, which were short, fat English rural country folk.
I normally handwave this in my settings be having dwarves, gnomes, and halflings technically be the same race. Just vastly drifted like elf subtypes. Referred to as 'dwarf races' though halflings are actually the older ethnicity.
I'm now imagining rock gnomes mocking moutain dwarfs as 'le 56% dorf'
Pick one halfings or gnomes. They are the same fucking thing.
exactly, so based on my post above yours and using 5e:
>Tall Halflings = Southern English Countryside dorfs
>Stout Halflings = Scottish Dorfs
>Forest gnomes = German dorfs (specifically living in the black forest region)
>Rock Gnomes = German/Austrian Alps dorfs
>Moutain Dwarves = Scandinavian Mountain Dorfs
>Hill Dwarf = Swedish/Denmark dorfs
>Do you think that might be why WoW gnomes seem to be the "Face" of gnomedom in the wider fantasy world?
WoW gnomes have this problem that they're not even in any way the face in their own game, having pretty much no representation, and their eternal role since WC2 was to provide support units, but no heroic figure at all whatsoever.
Males are ugly potatoheads that do not look appealing at all (any of my male gnomes work by wearing cool headgear) and females are, admittedly successful, shortstack fetish bait, but it's still really hard to imagine your standard qtpie with pink pigtails frolicking with a turnipfaced gnome male.
It's like that Alfie thing where the first step in awakening a halfling woman is them realizing that they'd much rather fuck the tallfolk.
>be blizzard
>make an incredible lore for more than 10 years
>release your mmorpg
>pick fucking gnomes instead of high elves
not hating but they were stupid.
the shortstack fetish could've perfectly worked as a female dwarven counterpart. think about it. compare the number of male dwarves and female gnomes vs female dwarves and male gnomes.
You weren't the first to think so. There's a reason WoTC tried to pretty up female dwarves for 4e, before backpedalling on that like everything else as part of 5e.
Seriously, take a look at this pic: this is an official 4e female dwarf. Is she ugly?
What I meant was, if you go looking for gnome artwork - especially female gnome artwork - you're most likely to run into artwork deliberately styled after WoW's depiction of gnomes.
WoW gnomes are typically identified by their wildly advanced tech compared to everyone else, and their unending scientific curiosity they put towards anything they do. They also have a niche as one of the most-devastated sentient races on the planet - their subterranean city was invaded by troggs, irradiated and taken over by a crazed pretender to the gnomish throne; it's why they were missing from the entirety of Warcraft III - they were dealing with their city suffering a literal nuclear meltdown. All the survivors fled to their next-door neighbors, the dwarves of Ironforge, and they've been hanging out there ever since while slowly retaking their city.
Despite their sorry lot in life and the horrors they've suffered, the gnomes try not to let it dampen their spirits, hence their almost perpetually-upbeat attitude for most of them. Plus, their perpetual rivalry with the goblins helps keep them focused. They'd be admirable if they were actually taken seriously.
Which is understandable, since WoW gnomes are the most famous gnomes out there that don't have "garden lawn" attached to their species title.
We can save an argument like that for the weekend Warcraft lore thread tomorrow.
>there might be anons ITT that dont love garden lawn gnomes
you disgust me
>Plus, their perpetual rivalry with the goblins helps keep them focused.
fucking this. since their introduction gnomes vs goblins has been a thing. hell even one profession is divided between gnomish and goblin schools. IF goblins would've been introduced as a race since vanilla both of them wouldn't be a joke.
>hell even one profession is divided between gnomish and goblin schools.
Engineering used to be split between Gnomish and Goblin, but not anymore, I think.
I used to really dislike small races and found them annoying, but then I played Little Nightmares and it endeared me to Gnomes in a way I never thought possible.
The problem is, though, it's made me hate "gadget" Gnomes even more.
These are the only true gnomes
>using 5e
Dont even bother evey one is just going to pick teiflings anyway.
In one of my settings, halflings are the favored race of the dragons -- or at least they were, back when there were dragons. These halflings are given to be lighthearted, cheerful, gregarious, inquisitive, and musically-talented, all of which traits helped to endear them to the dragons. Dragons tended to take halfling settlements under their protection, and the halflings revered them as benevolent guardian deities.
However, the dragons were wiped out at some point in the distant past by a great cataclysm. Most of them died, and those that did were reduced to faint shadows of their former majesty. Now, some centuries after that incident, there are a variety of lesser draconic animals, ranging across a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and ecological niches. Halflings have a particular affinity for these draconic critters, seeing it as their duty to look after them as the true dragons had looked after the halflings in the prior age. The draconic animals, for their part, although no more intelligent than any other somewhat clever animal, do seem to retain some manner of racial memory of their forebearers' liking of halflings, and are much more cooperative with halflings than others.
As a result, halfling communities usually have a great number of draconic animals kept as house pets and working animals. Indeed, it's rare for halflings to keep *any* non-draconic animals except as food livestock (eating draconic meat is strictly taboo in halfling society). Draconic animals exist in such variety that a draconic equivalent can be found for most any more conventional tame or domestic animal you care to name. Of course, halflings are hardly the only ones to keep such animals, but they are far more successful at it and do so to a far greater degree than most other races.
>play a gnome
>aquire hide in plain sight
>stand perfectly still and every one just things your a decoration
I like gnomes as Paracelsan elementals, but they prefer to manifest as lawn-style looking dudes...who also happen to be deceptively tanky for their size, and highly talented earthbenders.
>not developing other races even if other players or the game only allows one playable race.
I'm sorry, do I fucking look like Bethesda?
I'm going for a bit of a compromise. Their true form is a rather amorphous little rock-dude, but they're excellent at illusions and project the appearance of the more classic idea of the gnome when interacting with humanoid races. In terms of racial powers, manipulating stone or moving through it as if it was water are things we're going with conceptually, just trying to figure out how to balance them mechanically.
>just trying to figure out how to balance them mechanically.
See, I just make them an NPC-only race, since I'm running them as straight-up Paracelsan elementals. They stand on the same footing as salamanders, sylphs, and undines.
Fair. I'm trying to figure up how to make races inspired by Paracelsan elementals playable, interesting options. Reinterpretations of them, but still drawing a lot from the themes of the originals.
What about letting them have the Mold Earth cantrip as a spell-like ability (Elemental Evil Player's Guide or Xanathar's Guide) and a Burrow speed with the Earth Glide (you leave no visible passage, so you can't take others with you when burrowing) racial trait?
Unless you're not playing 5e, sorry.
All my players hate gnomes with a passion and wanted them extinct, decided to do something similar because I knew they'd never play them. Mostly built off the idea that they'd jokingly state that "gnomes aren't people."
Turned them into the first civilization of the continent which ruled everything, they built an ancient obelisk meant to commune with the gods and find their purpose in life but the obelisk wiped out all life on the continent.
A few gnomes survived but they're now basically automatons, they are still flesh and blood that don't age but have no basic desires and don't do anything unless commanded.
If commanded, they're supernaturally amazing and it's led to the nations colonizing the world to take the Gnomes into advisor/tactician roles.
Having a gnome outside of being the ruler of a nation is a crime worth death and most rulers have gnomes separated far apart because interaction between gnomes leads to both of them trying to cannibalize the other for an unspecified reason.
only underages and edgelords could possibly hate gnomes. to me they have been a good filter.
I love the idea of Dwarfkind being children of the earth, so in my setting the Dwarves are all gathered in clans/houses according to what metal they are descended from. And I mean that literally. The first dwarves were sentient metallic creatures. The farther generations become from the first dwarf become flashier and flashier, and so you are able to determine how old or where in status a dwarf is based on how metallic they are. Additionally working with the metal from which one is descended is seen as an incredibly holy experience, and it is extremely rare to be given a dwarf-forged anything, as they see such an act as giving away their own flesh and blood. Only the closest of dwarffriends are ever accorded such an honor.
With Gnomes, I envisioned them as descended from the living earth as opposed to the mineral earth like the Dwarves. Each gnome clan comes from a root vegetable and as with the Dwarves. Bear resemblances to said vegetable. Druidry is common in Gnomes and farmers are seen as almost priests, for their tilling and nurturing of the land. They typically grow the same.kind if vegetable from which they are descended, but do not eat it. With enough work, druidic magic, and time, new gnomes are made in this way, in addition to the more regular method. In this way, even a lone Gnome can rebuild a people.
As for halflings, I didn't really have a way for them to be in the world or a niche for them to fill until I started realizing the stories of the setting. So, the halflings came to be by way of a spelljammer. One day, their massive ship appeared, and amid a very tension-wrought first contact, explained that they were refugees, seeking a new 'verse to live in after theirs was destroyed. Additionally, they have hopes to have arrived with enough time to help this 'verse escape the same fate. So, interdimensional refugees/prophets of doom is how I worked halflings in. Thanks for reading yall.
this is a nice idea but still the halflings do feel as they dont belong there.
Gnomes are pretty much split between Warcraft and David the Gnome for inspiration, but they always had better art than halflings whenever it wasn't being done by WoC's commissions. I always liked gnomes because they're able to both be naturalistic without having to eschew technology in the process. I think where a dwarf or human would use technology to exploit nature, a gnome would try and figure out how to use technology in order to help it, which is what sets their approach apart from elves and the fey, except for when the fey are gnomes, or approach a close enough niche as to be related.
The Halflings are a similar idea in that they're a rural civilized people in tune with nature in a less direct sense, but where gnomes are constantly adapting and expanding their knowledge, halfings prefer to remain stagnant and at most dull reactionary in adopting small conveniences and curiosities that don't cause social upheaval. They'll gladly accept a fidget spinner or the latest fad tuned to their sensibilities, but you're more likely to get a barbarian tribe to accept cellphones than they if it means having to adapt their infrastructure.
I suppose one can cut out the middleman and say that they're merely different cultures of the same race, where you can have industrialist gnomes who are playing the dangerous game of trying to balance expansion with ecology, naturalistic gnomes who live in the woods and serve as caretakers to animals, and rural countryside gnomes who prefer to keep to their own self-sustained communities in careful equilibrium.
What these all have in common is that they require planned thought and coordination in order to keep sustainable: it's inconceivable that a gnomish or halfling community destroy itself from measures preventable by forethought.
>WoW gnomes are typically identified by their wildly advanced tech compared to everyone else, and their unending scientific curiosity they put towards anything they do.
Their intelligence, in general, is what sets them apart from most of the sentient races. Warcraft gnomes pride themselves on being the smartest motherfucker in the room at any given time, barring edge cases. A lot of that can be thanks to, again, their naturally inquisitive nature and willingness to push the envelope in the name of knowledge.
>tfw statistically some of us won’t literally live to see the weekend
Unfortunately, gnomes and halflings have been ruined by pedophiles.
Whenever i have tavern settings, there's always a pack of three roided out gnomes that act like dicks to everyone. I call them Juggergnomes and they're usually the ones who start any brawls. Sometimes my players will pick on them though, so their actions can be justified every now and then.
And also, that they used to be robots.
That's just a quirk of the Warcraft universe: ancestral humans, dwarves and gnomes were all metalforged or stoneforged, but an eldritch curse gave the later generations flesh. Dwarves can still use a stoneform occasionally.
>Omae wa mo shindeiru
>>GNANI?!
I like my gnomes to be a mix of 4e and Pathfinder: Paranoid hedonists who are obsessed with preserving their freedom and revelry due to struggling to survive in the feywild. Those that make it to the prime material plane find it to be a glorious land whose hazards are little compared to what they once faced but at the same time the gnomes find their new safe existence dull if they are not consistently being exposed to new sights, sounds, etc. and as a result many take-up adventuring. Many meet their end due to biting off more than they can chew but those gnomes that survive long enough to become old are the craziest bastards in the setting.
The whole forest gnome tinker gnome split came about due to an ancient debate among the recently arrived gnomes about whether the creations of sentiments or nature was more wondrous.
When I find my first game I'm going to make a gnome. Ideally a warlock or cleric and visually I prefer wow or 4th edition dnd Look. Where they're tiny wild elves.
Halflings can get fucked though. One or the other works and tiny little tech-elves beats out barefoot gluttons
I've been making a homebrew where demihumans are just different types of humans(not!Europeans are tall, pale, have pointed ears and live 200 years, etc.) since my group almost never plays humans.
I've made a fairly good niche for Halflings (Stouts live like Hobbits near the Half Elf nation, Tallfellows are gypsies who ride giant birds) but I haven't found a proper niche for Gnomes. I already have a group of Imperial humans who are divided between various Asian Archers/Warriors and Middle East Tinkerers/Merchants. The Imperials are already allies with Indian Drow and against Mongolian Orc/Supermutants.
How can I fit in Gnomes?
make them jews or nips
Interestingly, Orcs in warcraft are technically fungoids via a convoluted process when titan-forged stone giants which would become the ancestors of ogres and orcs had their bodies gradually replaced by organic matter from the spores of the giant fungus monster they slew, Ship of Theodosius-style.
Dwarves are already Abrahamic African Pygmies (Between Jewish/Christian Hill Dwarves and Zoroastrian/Muslim Mountain Dwarves).
High Elves are already Great Britain/Japan.
Combine gnomes and halflings into a single race of short elves. The kind of fae that will cobble some shoes or curdle your milk depending on how much they like you. The ones that make toys in a magical northern retreat.
Be a good neighbour and a good neighbour they will be, call them mischief-makers and mischief you will see.
make them incas or some other peruvian pre-incaic culture. i can provide you some intel if you want (south spic antropologist)
That's brilliant! An user in another thread mentioned Inuits, and I'm a huge subverting monoculture.
What do you think Incan/South American Gnomes would be better as, Rock Gnomes or Forest Gnomes?
Forest and Deep Gnomes are the natural sort, with origins in the fey. Rock Gnomes are aberrations mutated by a fallen asteroid.
Halflings are basically humans. They are born of humans, and as a human or halfling parent you never know if your child will grow up or not.
This has made halflings born in largely human communities very marginalized and treated poorly in the public eye. This makes disenfranchised halflings into a sort of shifty orphan kid gang, or working in the home as the help, sort of like a house spirit.
There is a whole kingdom of halflings though, and humans born in this society are basically raised in prison farms that resemble farms and human villages if not for the Master Blaster guards on Hill Giants. These farms supply the foodstuffs for the halfling cities, which are lined with bakeries, gin parlors, and round doored tenements all built and stacked on the hill, to preserve the hillside real estate. Halfling cities look like hills of buildings with valleys of paths and roads.
i'd recommend you to pick the Tiwanaku civilization since they had the Ekeko. He's a god of prosperity which remains until today (although he's now perceived more as a superstition rather than a god).
You should treat the Ekeko as a guest of honor placing him in an "important" spot at home and you always have to lit a cigarette for him and let him smoke it.
The Ekeko is a weird and unique folk creature who posses some traits of the leprechaun, forest gnomes and goblins. You would'nt regret about having them in your setting.
If you do chose the Ekeko i'd suggest that you go with the Andean Antiplano theme.
I have a lawn gnome sitting on a small shrine in my apartment. I pray to him for strength sometimes.
So, query; half-gnomes have existed in both Dragonlance 3e and Kingdoms of Kalamar 3e. Do you think they should become a mainstream race?
Gnome stand-ins in my setting are basically FF9 black mages - sapient blobs of mana in protective suits. Their existence also blatantly ignores limitation of conventional magic - the law that magic cannot create true sapience and is the sign of eldritch fuckery going on in the setting.
Halflings do not exist.
I'm a big fan of gnomes as "the underground non-monster race," much moreso than dwarves for whom I've never felt much fondness. It's probably just a big holdover from having been raised in the first world cult of humanity-fuck-yeah, but I love the idea of an otherwise unassuming race surviving on plucky ingenuity and persevering in the face of adversity. Unlike dwarves who seem to be borne from the earth and are naturally have a place there, to me gnomes feel more like "small humans" who adapted to the underground environment and made it their own.
I've been trying to find something to do with my setting's Gnomes for years now. Thank you kind user. I am stealing the fuck out of your genius.