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7/24/2025, 12:40:43 AM
>>96164421
Gnomes in OD&D were originally just a monster you could encounter - smaller dwarves that hoarded treasure. They only became a player race in AD&D because Gygax wanted more racial options
>“I added gnomes to D&D to broaden the choices for non-human PCs, as I did in AD&D. This was done because a number of players, myself included, were tired of having so many dwarves, elves, and halflings in the group of adventurers. In my campaign a party of 12 would have three front rank halflings, a second rank of dwarves, elves in the third rank, and the fourth rank the humans…” (Gygax 2002 178)
They remained "smaller, illusion-focused dwarves" until Dragonlance gave them an entirely unrelated identity as tinkerers and artificers, which became the new standard and spread to things like Warcraft. After that, they wallowed in this nebulous, disassociative space until 4e decided they should be connected to the feywild because 4e wanted more fey-aligned races that weren't Elves. And so you have two unrelated gnometypes (tinker gnomes vs fey gnomes) which got solidified in 5e as Forest and Rock Gnomes, but which have little enough to do with each other and basically nothing to do with classical Poortvielt, Paracelsian and European folklore gnomes.
Gnomes in OD&D were originally just a monster you could encounter - smaller dwarves that hoarded treasure. They only became a player race in AD&D because Gygax wanted more racial options
>“I added gnomes to D&D to broaden the choices for non-human PCs, as I did in AD&D. This was done because a number of players, myself included, were tired of having so many dwarves, elves, and halflings in the group of adventurers. In my campaign a party of 12 would have three front rank halflings, a second rank of dwarves, elves in the third rank, and the fourth rank the humans…” (Gygax 2002 178)
They remained "smaller, illusion-focused dwarves" until Dragonlance gave them an entirely unrelated identity as tinkerers and artificers, which became the new standard and spread to things like Warcraft. After that, they wallowed in this nebulous, disassociative space until 4e decided they should be connected to the feywild because 4e wanted more fey-aligned races that weren't Elves. And so you have two unrelated gnometypes (tinker gnomes vs fey gnomes) which got solidified in 5e as Forest and Rock Gnomes, but which have little enough to do with each other and basically nothing to do with classical Poortvielt, Paracelsian and European folklore gnomes.
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