How do you make gnomes interesting as opposed to halflings?

How do you make gnomes interesting as opposed to halflings?

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Play up the fey side.

Gnomes are inventors, innovators, and tinkerers. They build clockwork mechanisms, study alchemy, and investigate the way things work and why things work. They are at the forefront of integrating magic and technology into a cohesive whole. When faced with a new problem, a gnome likes to look for a new solution to it. When faced with failure, a gnome simply tries again.

Halflings are more agrarian and traditional, though not to the point of stupidity. They use the inventions of others but rarely make strident advances themselves. They generally like things the way they are and prefer to keep their lives uncomplicated. When faced with a problem, a halfling prefers to wait for it to go away on its own. When faced with failure, a halfling simply shrugs and moves on with his life.

Dwarves are traditionalist and arguably regressive. They not only don't like change, but actively oppose it in every facet of their society. They are master artisans, but prefer to minimize machinery in favor of hand-crafting whenever possible. When faced with a new problem, a dwarf prefers to find a similar problem from the past and apply that solution. When faced with failure, dwarves tend to become depressed and abandoned the endeavor entirely.

First make gnomes smaller than halflings. At maximum they should be half as tall - a halfling's halfling. Second you must remember that gnomes are not magical halflings. They are whimsical fairy folk that are somewhere between dwarves and elves. Little men of the forest. Third, and this is the toughest part, you have to find a Tolkeinesque spin to them to fit in with the Tolkein style elves, dwarves, halflings, and orcs.

Make them really really small.

They're also better writers, inventors, blacksmiths, and poets than elves, halflings, and dwarves combined but the problem is all of their products are far far to small for humans to enjoy.

What do you mean by tolkienesque spin?

Small fucking forest people that are tricksters, fond of illusion and speak to the small animals. Skullkid can easily be an example of one. They have some sort of relationship to the fey and spirits of nature, but it was never made clear.

Make it so that if a gnome had popped up in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, it wouldn't have felt out of place, I'm guessing. Probably this will involve inventing at least one language. Personally I use Gaelic for gnomes, but I'm not sure Tolkien would have.

Gnomes are a 100% carnivorous race. The abilities of the D&D5e forest gnomes are both merely tools used for hunting. When a forest gnome interacts with a small animal, they're basically going "I am going to eat something today. Your predators have more meat than you. Tell me where they are and I will leave you alone". It's almost always coercive in nature.
The illusion magic likewise is chiefly a tool for distraction and luring potential game, as well as escaping danger by misleading their foe.

The rock gnomes that are better at artificing do so chiefly because they lack the innate magic. The tools they make helps them emulate the abilities of the more magically inclined ones. All the given clockwork tools in the PHB are used as tools for hunting and survival. The firestarter is obvious, and the clockwork toy and music box were originally just tools used to distract and herd game.

Everything they are comes from a history of killing creatures bigger than them by superior intellect and strategy. They're not a particularly strong race, but they are smart and cunning; no gnome is considered an adult until they've killed something twice their size. In fact social standing is often measured in the size of the biggest thing killed and most gnomes will happily brag about their best kill.

>TL;DR
If you want to rough someone up, hire a half-orc.
If you want someone dead, hire a gnome.

The way that dwarves and elves are often portrayed in tabletop fantasy ultimately derives from Tolkein. Orcs are ultimately Tolkein's take on goblins and halflings are original to Tolkein. No one bats an eye at these races being in a fantasy RPG setting but gnomes stick out because they are in no way derivative of Tolkein.

Here's a more gonzo take with gnomes once being homes.

dndwithpornstars.blogspot.ca/2015/07/ok-weird-gnomes.html

Why bother having gnomes and halflings in the same setting in the first place?

Humans -> Halflings
Elves -> Gnomes

Because someone with more than two brain cells to rub together is more than capable of differentiating them from one another. And dwarves, too! See

But fellas, these gnomes are goblins...

>Orcs are ultimately Tolkein's take on goblins
not in RPGs

Because Napoleon (Halfling) was advised by a Little Red Man (gnome) in matters of war.

Classic D&D (and derivative) elves, dwarves, orcs and even halflings would feel very out of place in any of Tolkien's work. Even in The Hobbit.

Don't. Make them the same creature, the distinction being rooted in tradition.

I don't see the point of having them both.
The worst WoW players play as male gnomes btw

I've honestly never understood this. Gnomes and halflings have never been portrayed as being remotely similar in D&D. Forest gnomes are more like elves; rock gnomes are more like dwarves. Halflings are their own entire thing.

OP is asking how to make gnomes interesting, as they tend to come off as just "smaller, goofier elves or dwarves" depending on subrace, in the same way that halflings have apparently managed to surpass their "short bucolic humans" roots to become an interesting race.

Gnomes are children who got lost on the forest. There, they are raped by the spirit of the evil, and ancient until their bodies and souls twist beyond recognition and lose their former identity.

Adults who get lost become werewolves instead.

What if they were the Dwarven equivalent of goblins? Or more accurate, grots? More nimble, better with machinery and learning to use new tech, but weak, fragile, and useless with a pickaxe. They live alongside their marginally taller brethren, building, improving, and maintaining their mining equipment and other complex in exchange for protection.
That has absolutely zero in common with the way gnomes are normally portrayed. You might as well give them a totally different name

REMINDER
>The best way to give a fresh spin to a staple of modern fantasy settings is to just play it straight from it's origins

I would unironically use Gaelic as the human language given the chance.

In my setting, halflings don't exist. Gnomes appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and have weird psionic magical abilities no arcane master can seem to puzzle out or understand. One of these abilities is an aura that makes people more relaxed and friendly to the gnome. Which doesn't do much to endear them to people not affected by that. It's really fucking suspicious. Especially since they're perfectly formed shortstacks oddly consistently attractive.

They're actually a servitor race sent to the surface by the Illithid to spy on the world of mortals and lull everyone into a false sense of security, so they can easily invade. Unfortunately Illithid don't really understand what mortal races see as attractive and the apparent perfection of the gnomes is slightly unsettling and fey-like unless you're close to them, which has already led some fringe scholars to theorize they were manufactured. Unfortunately, I said "fringe".

So they're basically Kender but without the pointless "borrowing" and people find the fact that its hard to stay mad at them disturbing rather than endearing.

It's concerning that we have this thread every other day, because that means nothing discussed in them ever takes off and works. Halflings should be the odd shortfolk out, they were just stolen Hobbits, repurposed pieces of pop culture, rather than a mythical race. Gnomes' place at the table shouldn't ever be questioned, they were always here like dwarves were.

Well, it probably doesn't help that whilst halflings began as stolen hobbits, they have a longer history in D&D than gnomes do; halflings/hobbits were present in the original Men & Magic in 1974, whilst the first appearance of gnomes wasn't until 1978.

Plus, default gnome fluff for d&d gnomes is very... uninspiring. They come off as basically a cast-off magical offshoot of prank-loving dwarves and/or halflings.

We're talking about a 44 year old game here - I don't think 4 years either way makes a difference.

I like pathfinders colorful skinned, constantly curious gnomes but also the bleaching. The big bad in my last game was a gnome affected by the bleaching early, convinced they'd die young, slowly becoming numb to the world, blaming it for becoming stagnant and dull, she decided to shake things up and hopefully get cured by making a pact with demons and planning to release them on the world because the danger was all that made her feel alive again.

Why is op a skullkid tho?

I'm highly unoriginal so I don't differentiate any of them. They're all "The Small Folk." Culturally they are different depending on where they live.

>Forest gnomes are more like elves; rock gnomes are more like dwarves

That's the problem. They have no place of their own, both elves and dwarves fit their conceptual space.

Gnomes need their own thing.

How would you depict Gnomes in this way then?

They're earth elementals. Their bodies probably have alchemical properties related to earth and plants. They live in secret villages which they cover as with their elemental manipulation, they hide from other races because of arcane value of their bodies. Also they're too small, they could sit on a halfling's shoulders without ever slowing it down

Basically the Smurfs with earth powers

Well how the fuck would you do that ironically?

Right, how do you consolidate that with people who want to play gnomes?

I always imagined them as a half-way point between the two.

Not as magical as elves, more magical than dwarfs. Illusionary magic is 'less tangible' than Elfin magic.

Tougher than an elf, not as tough as a dwarf

Creative like a dwarf, but not as disciplined - artsy like an Elf, but not as refined.

You know, like dat...

Here's a secret.

Little blue men living in mushrooms that an old alchemist wants to eat is a parady of pislocybe seeking magicians.

Play as swarm of gnomes instead of one. Each hp is 1 gnome. Healing can be knocked out gnomes waking back up. And reinforcements from the gnomeville. Can split into smaller groups. Not terribly effective in fights.

Have gnomes be city halflings.
Normal halfling live in the countryside, work their land, always pay their taxes and stay out of trouble.
City halflings live among other races and being smallest and weakest would be natural targets to all the scum that cities attract. They have learned to be sneaky and vengeful. Many use magic or at least fake it.
Could also have complicated attitudes between the communities. And the rare one who moves or marries to the other side would be a source of happenings (i.e. plot hook).

They could be a party of gnomes and other small races like pixies. Either that or they would have to accept to play as a character the size of a mouse in comparison to other players

That's the problem though. They aren't their own thing, they exist only in comparison to elves and dwarves.

I think that's why the Tinker Gnome archetype has gotten such traction. They're now have a sort of anachronistic trait that's unique to them.

I'd like to figure out a place for the gnome that is it's own thing. I was considering something like gnomes and gnosis and knowledge. Like they have a drive to seek knowledge sort of like the Mul's of Dark Sun and their Focus.

That's pretty gonzo, but the mechanical implications can get pretty broken.

Gnomes are in this weird place because initially they were a sort of burrowing cousin to the dwarf. Later, when dwarves distinctly has antimagic traits and couldn't do magic, they were able to as illusionists.

Problem is now that dwarves can do magic, their place as magical dwarves doesn't really work.

They've tried to replace their niche with a sort of tinker gnome, or strengthen some sort of tie to the fey, but that's really just putting a bandaid on the underlying issue.