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The gnome identity's always seem kinda confused to me. Forest gnomes just feel like halfling elves, rock gnomes like halfling dwarves. However, I think you can reconcile those two identities and make them feel more distinct by basically playing them as brownies or other sorts of helpful fair folk. Mischief? Check. Loves to tinker? Check. Intertwined with the natural world? Check.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:14
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Yeah. The at-one-point-printed-in-core existence of tallfellow (elf) halflings and deep (dwarf) halflings really leaves no room whatsoever for the forest gnomes and rock gnomes, so agreed.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:18
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Somebody in a Discord I'm in plays up gnomes' connection to the fey realms by making them work on explicit cartoon logic, like they're Roger Rabbit in the live-action world the rest of the characters inhabit. I feel like that could be brilliant or dreadful, depending on the player you get.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:20
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The Bee posted:The gnome identity's always seem kinda confused to me. Forest gnomes just feel like halfling elves, rock gnomes like halfling dwarves. However, I think you can reconcile those two identities and make them feel more distinct by basically playing them as brownies or other sorts of helpful fair folk. Mischief? Check. Loves to tinker? Check. Intertwined with the natural world? Check. This would be a pretty decent summary of 4e gnomes, yes. i.e. probably not maximally informative but representative and I’ve seen that basically given as the elevator pitch.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:21
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Night10194 posted:I am trying very hard to think of an RPG improved by gnomes, and I cannot. Setting, not RPG: Midgard has a great story for their gnomes.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:28
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potatocubed posted:Somebody in a Discord I'm in plays up gnomes' connection to the fey realms by making them work on explicit cartoon logic, like they're Roger Rabbit in the live-action world the rest of the characters inhabit. This sounds like the kind of thing I'd love to play in a game with close friends, but would never, ever trust a rando with. Kinda like Kender. Of course, while we're discussing all of this, it's important to also consider the recent pushes to divide culture and physiology with DnD races. I wonder how much impact this will have on features like subraces, or trying to figure out the "difference" between Halflings and Gnomes. I wonder if instead of race and subrace, we might instead see Ancestry and Culture in future editions of DnD, potentially with the ability to mix and match the two. The Bee fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 30, 2021 23:30
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To be honest, the best way I've found to make Gnomes work in a setting was just by having them replace some of the more common races: Dwarfs get replaced by Rock Gnomes, Forest Gnomes are basically Christmas Elves and Hobbits get replaced by regular, city-dwelling Lawn Gnomes who'll fix your shoes for a thimbleful of milk.The Bee posted:This sounds like the kind of thing I'd love to play in a game with close friends, but would never, ever trust a rando with. Kinda like Kender. I mean, there's already been a pretty big push among third-party developers on DM's Guild to introduce separate Ancestry and Culture attributes, so it wouldn't surprise me if WotC eventually follows suit.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:44
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Race as Culture being poo poo aside, Dragonlance did fine with gnomes being singled out as tinkerers, too bad about the kender.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:45
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Calico Heart posted:Talking bout Eladrin, the elves who are canonically sad and brooding for 1/4 of their lives and who in half their art look like they’re wearing tranchcoats Please post some of this art because I'm incredibly curious to know what the gently caress you're talking about.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:47
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kender are probably why DL gnomes aren't horrible.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:48
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World of Warcaft has more or less cemented my idea of gnomes, and they're... fine, I guess? Manic pixie steampunk not-dwarves dont stand out as being any more dumb than the rest of mainline D&D-type fantasy, to be frank.
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Dec 30, 2021 23:58
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Haystack posted:World of Warcaft has more or less cemented my idea of gnomes, and they're... fine, I guess? Manic pixie steampunk not-dwarves dont stand out as being any more dumb than the rest of mainline D&D-type fantasy, to be frank. Which is just the tinker gnomes from Dragonlance.
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Dec 31, 2021 00:07
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Kai Tave posted:Please post some of this art because I'm incredibly curious to know what the gently caress you're talking about. Say you haven't read 4E without saying you haven't etc.
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Dec 31, 2021 00:07
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Also I have to admit I'm pretty baffled by the idea that 4E removing gnomes as a race from the PHB1 was an attempt to make D&D more serious and gritty and edgy and less "whimsical" when the iconic gnome character art for D&D3E is a smirking douchebag flipping a dagger.
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Dec 31, 2021 00:16
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Mr. Maltose posted:Can anyone explain to me how a gnome is different than a halfling in any way that actually matters. It's not wrong to say that 4E gnomes are "basically just" fey halflings. Halflings are a people out to live their best lives in a world where pretty much everyone in power is bigger than them, so they're courageous in the face of danger, given to cunning over brutality, deeply appreciative of the comforts of an own-sized home, and they live largely in the margins, in the roads and rivers and places between. Gnomes are basically that but if they and their homes could also be invisible, which vastly expands the definition of "in the margin". I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the 4E feywild there's a gnome village actually in a little-traveled corridor of a brooding fomorian fortress, just because they can.
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Dec 31, 2021 00:45
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Glazius posted:It's not wrong to say that 4E gnomes are "basically just" fey halflings. Halflings are a people out to live their best lives in a world where pretty much everyone in power is bigger than them, so they're courageous in the face of danger, given to cunning over brutality, deeply appreciative of the comforts of an own-sized home, and they live largely in the margins, in the roads and rivers and places between. At the same time, I.think 4E does the best of any edition on making gnomes more unique than "fat hobbits."
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Dec 31, 2021 01:56
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wait a minute, I always thought of halflings as fat gnomes
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Dec 31, 2021 02:19
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Haystack posted:World of Warcaft has more or less cemented my idea of gnomes, and they're... fine, I guess? Manic pixie steampunk not-dwarves dont stand out as being any more dumb than the rest of mainline D&D-type fantasy, to be frank. It also helps that WoW sidesteps the usual gnome problem by not having halflings in the first place.
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Dec 31, 2021 02:20
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Gnomes aren't a distinct species just a culture of elves that were enslaved by Melkor and forced to live within his dayless realm. Unfortunately the name was deemed too silly and renamed the culture and made them another group of humans.
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Dec 31, 2021 02:34
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I was putting together my own homebrew setting once for an attempt to reskin Edge of the Empire over to fantasy, and I just couldn't ever figure out a good niche for gnomes myself either. Like the only thing that really stands out to me is the WoW-style whacky-steampunk-tinkerer thing, and that immediately grates against the desired tone for both the players that want something a little more serious and the players who don't think guns or steampunk belong in their fantasy. I'd much rather make orcs and/or ogres playable and largely represented within the world than some kind of thematic hybrid of elves/halflings/dwarves.
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Dec 31, 2021 02:34
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I usually just play gnomes as little squeaky sociopaths. If goblins are self-destructive illogical misanthropy, gnomes are rationalist solipsistic misanthropy. They're fun in dungeons this way, because they can offer a lot of genuinely helpful intel/etc, but are also just as likely to Cause Problems On Purpose if you ever leave yourself open.
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Dec 31, 2021 02:43
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OtspIII posted:I usually just play gnomes as little squeaky sociopaths. If goblins are self-destructive illogical misanthropy, gnomes are rationalist solipsistic misanthropy. Oh.
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Dec 31, 2021 02:47
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Vanguard Warden posted:I was putting together my own homebrew setting once for an attempt to reskin Edge of the Empire over to fantasy, and I just couldn't ever figure out a good niche for gnomes myself either. Like the only thing that really stands out to me is the WoW-style whacky-steampunk-tinkerer thing, and that immediately grates against the desired tone for both the players that want something a little more serious and the players who don't think guns or steampunk belong in their fantasy. I'd much rather make orcs and/or ogres playable and largely represented within the world than some kind of thematic hybrid of elves/halflings/dwarves. Compare 3.x gnomes who like gadgets but not like dwarves like gadgets and play pranks because uh they're curious I guess??? They have innate illusion powers because ??? and can talk to badgers because ???. They have +2 con and look like taller halflings BUT ARE NOT DWARVES OK But yeah 4e is the one that does gnomes bad. e: personality wise 4e gnomes are just happy to be here. They're stoked 24/7 about how you can just walk down the street and hardly anybody will try to turn you into a frog or nothing. Your house is almost always where you left it and if it's not it probably just burnt down or something. There's so much to see and very little of it is malicious near- godlike entities toying with you for their amusement! What a great place to set up a spy ring! Splicer fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Dec 31, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2021 03:11
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Bottom Liner posted:wait a minute, I always thought of halflings as fat gnomes As someone who was introduced to fantasy by way of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, and a bunch of other random JRPGs, learning that halflings were a thing was wild to me. They just look like short humans, it's weird! Similarly "gnomes are just halflings" felt weird because again, in all those things I knew gnomes were always tinkerers or machinists, not hobbits.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:20
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Splicer posted:4e gnomes are cool. They've got a distinct and coherent flavour: I mean I don't think that anyone has been saying that 4e did gnomes poorly, 4e correctly side-lined gnomes into the monster manual where they belong.  I'm admittedly not super well-versed on my elf-lore, but isn't "fey creatures with innate magic powers who like to live in the woods and are good at hiding" an exact description of elves too, or wood elves at the least? That just makes gnomes "elves, but smaller" again.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:24
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:That and most nerd tabletop games don't have a way to be "frictionless" even though the best possible efforts have been made. Good news ! The more complex models absolutely have assembly guides, very detailed and with colored highlights. I've got the Sisters of Battle box and the Kill Team box, and both have pages of instruction for single figures since they all have multiple assembly options. Kill Team is another way they're reducing friction for new players. A Kill Team is 4-14 models, and a good starter team can be had for the low $30s (Deathwatch veterans box). Find a group, look up which options you want in someone's Compendium, then just show up with models and play. They also added a Crusade campaign option for 40K. A group of players each starts with a small force, fights battles with narrative elements, then paints up a set of additions to their for ce for the next meeting. It looks like a good option for new folks at the FLGS. potatocubed posted:Just a side comment here. The friction with GW isn't 'how do I assemble and paint miniatures', it's having to assemble and paint the bloody things at all. Bad news ! Both 9th ed 40K and Kill Team award VP at the end of a game for having a completely assembled and painted force. In 40K it's up to 45 points from Primary objectives set by the scenario you're playing, up to 45 from Secondaries which you pick, and 10 for a painted army. Good news ! At least a Kill Team force can be only 5 models.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:29
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Terrible Opinions posted:Gnomes aren't a distinct species just a culture of elves that were enslaved by Melkor and forced to live within his dayless realm. Unfortunately the name was deemed too silly and renamed the culture and made them another group of humans. Gnomes were originally (as in, the 16th century works of Paracelsus) diminutive earth spirits that lived underground and by the 19th century picked up a few fae aspects to go with them.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:44
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Vanguard Warden posted:I mean I don't think that anyone has been saying that 4e did gnomes poorly, 4e correctly side-lined gnomes into the monster manual where they belong.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:45
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Vanguard Warden posted:I mean I don't think that anyone has been saying that 4e did gnomes poorly, 4e correctly side-lined gnomes into the monster manual where they belong. 4E took elves and split them into two, you have Elves who get the living in woods part of things, they're fast and stealthy and athletic and good with bows, and then you have Eladrin who are basically quasi-fae who are good at magic and fencing and can teleport. Notably, 4E Elves are much more in tune with the mortal side of things and so they sleep like everyone else does, while Eladrin get the whole "you don't need to sleep, you just spend 4 hours in a meditative trance" schtick. As mentioned, this was largely an attempt to actually try and give elves something resembling a coherent thematic and mechanical identity rather than cramming a dozen traits and qualities into a single playable race. This still doesn't explain how they're supposed to be "edgy" which I'm still deeply curious to know more about.
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Dec 31, 2021 03:56
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Okay, that actually sounds like an interesting enough distinction to justify gnome inclusion as the more-fey-than-elves guys hanging around, if you're keeping the elves a little more distant from that. They still sound like they'd be a little more uncommon than all the more core folks though, especially with the emphasis on being the super-secret-hidden people. Now somebody explain to me why tieflings keep getting into the PHB rosters, they're supposed to be this super rare recessive thing and shunned as outcasts but every adventuring party has like two of them. 
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Dec 31, 2021 04:02
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Because they're hot, OP.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:05
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Vanguard Warden posted:Okay, that actually sounds like an interesting enough distinction to justify gnome inclusion as the more-fey-than-elves guys hanging around, if you're keeping the elves a little more distant from that. They still sound like they'd be a little more uncommon than all the more core folks though, especially with the emphasis on being the super-secret-hidden people. 4e significantly changed the backstory of tieflings from the rare descendants of humans and fiends to the legacy of a recently (couple hundred years) cursed human nation that is transmitted to descendants. So they decreased the rarity and gave it a specific reason to be more common in 4e which put them in the PHB.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:05
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Kai Tave posted:Also I have to admit I'm pretty baffled by the idea that 4E removing gnomes as a race from the PHB1 was an attempt to make D&D more serious and gritty and edgy and less "whimsical" when the iconic gnome character art for D&D3E is a smirking douchebag flipping a dagger. Man, can I just take a moment to voice my disdain for the era when all the art of Gnomes and Halflings had them as small, fully-proportioned humans? Vanguard Warden posted:Now somebody explain to me why tieflings keep getting into the PHB rosters, they're supposed to be this super rare recessive thing and shunned as outcasts but every adventuring party has like two of them. Man, I have seen this attitude expressed elsewhere and it never fails to baffle me. The supposed rarity of a particular race has absolutely no impact on how frequently they show up as player characters and this idea that adventuring party composition needs to match the fantasy census demographics is just such a case of flawed logic. D&D doesn't take place in a single, shared-universe in which every player character ever created exists alongside one another: If you have a party of all Tieflings it just means the game is going to be focusing on an unusual group of PCs. How rare a race is supposed to be in the fiction dictates how a PC of that race will be regarded in-universe and potentially how some NPCs will treat them. KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Dec 31, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2021 04:06
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They look cool and people like them.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:06
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I personally always want to play funky races, I don't want humans in the core book. Let them show up in a suppliment or alternate rules if someone insists they play themselves instead of sentient rocks, a robot, or bird person.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:07
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Vanguard Warden posted:Okay, that actually sounds like an interesting enough distinction to justify gnome inclusion as the more-fey-than-elves guys hanging around, if you're keeping the elves a little more distant from that. They still sound like they'd be a little more uncommon than all the more core folks though, especially with the emphasis on being the super-secret-hidden people. Vanguard Warden posted:Now somebody explain to me why tieflings keep getting into the PHB rosters, they're supposed to be this super rare recessive thing and shunned as outcasts but every adventuring party has like two of them. Splicer fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Dec 31, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2021 04:18
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KingKalamari posted:How rare a race is supposed to be in the fiction dictates how a PC of that race will be regarded in-universe and potentially how some NPCs will treat them. I agree completely. But then when your party winds up being (real non-hypothetical example I had in a group) 2 tieflings, a ratfolk, an ogre and a drow, that in-universe treatment winds up being "uh, I'm not sure how you guys aren't going to get attacked on sight by the local redneck militia all the time". I love it when players make cool characters using outside-of-the-box race/ancestry options, but when everyone does it at the same time the campaign kind of needs to be About That™ now.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:28
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Vanguard Warden posted:I agree completely. But then when your party winds up being (real non-hypothetical example I had in a group) 2 tieflings, a ratfolk, an ogre and a drow, that in-universe treatment winds up being "uh, I'm not sure how you guys aren't going to get attacked on sight by the local redneck militia all the time". A party that makes a group like that is signaling to the GM that having them constantly attacked by "local redneck militias" is not a thing they're especially interested in. I will be honest, the idea that player groups need to be punished in-game for choosing races outside the standard human-elf-dwarf poo poo is a really baffling one that seems to come up repeatedly even though D&D and D&D-alike games love giving people a zillion weird fantasy races to choose from. "Here are all your cool options but don't pick TOO MANY or the GM will be forced to subject you to fantasy hate crimes in this magical realm of wizards and dragons" is some real dysfunctional poo poo. e; I think it was Matt Colville who used to post on RPGnet about this poo poo all the time, how his players always wanted to pick weird non-human races and it was ruining his verisimilitude, but for some reason he couldn't just tell them "I'm only allowing races X, Y, and Z" like a normal person, don't be that fuckin weirdo and just talk to your group.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:34
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KingKalamari posted:Man, can I just take a moment to voice my disdain for the era when all the art of Gnomes and Halflings had them as small, fully-proportioned humans? I agree with your post but I really like Wayne Reynold's art and he's probably the only artist my idiot brain can always recognize. I just love all the detail and realism he brings. I also hope he's not problematic in some way.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:36
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Alternatively, if you talk to the players and they’re not interested in that and just want to be cool monsters without monster racism being a thing, you can declare that it’s just not a thing in your setting. It’s all fiction! You can change it.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:36
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