What about Gnomes?

[Schrumpfkopf]

I always really liked Kobolds but wasn't paying too much attention to their arch enemies.
To me the Gnomes were mostly playful dwarves. They don't really are as bulky and they lack the massive beards of the dwarves.
I think they don't really live in dungeons either, even tho they like to mine. And traps, they do like traps.

Anyway - now that I am doing a full range of Kobolds, the Gnomes were making a come back and I'd like to offer a set or 2.

What would you like to see in a small range of Gnomes? Outfits, equipment, physique?

Thanks!

 

[Hobby Services]

The old Garden Gnomes fad from my childhood has kind of ruined the subject for me.  They weren't super-interesting to begin with, and now I can't hear the word without thinking of those cutesy pointed hats.

[robh]

My idea of Gnomes has never changed from the first time I saw the Rackham paintings as a kid.
I have no problem with beards or pointy hats, but Gnomes are lean and spindly, worn characterful faces and big feet.

Outfits: lots of big hats, tunics or jackets with many patches, hose or mid shin trousers, pipes always pipes (meerschaum or long stem clay). Plenty of books and scrolls. Bottles of spirits.

Aim for Rackham or Froud images in miniature form and you will be spot on.

[Nord]

To me gnomes are more at home in the forests, they are almost a woodland spirit, like faerie, pixie, etc. Not sure how you would depict this, difficult to avoid them looking like smaller dwarfs, or hobbits with beards, or garden gnomes.

[Cubs]

Chinny beards without the moustache, otherwise quite dwarf-like with big noses and bushy eyebrows, but as you say, a little less stocky and perhaps a smidge shorter.

Less armour, more peasanty than warrior like. So spears, bills and mattocks for weapons. Perhaps slings and darts for missiles. I miss darts, nobody seems to do them any more.

[von Lucky]

Along with Rackham, Poortvliet's artwork. I was obsessed with those illustrations as a little kid.

[Andrew May]

[MattW]

Hmmm. This is a bit of a tough question, really. Whatever you do, I'd like a similar reinvention to the one you did with halflings (I.e from cutesy little people inadvertently caught up in war, to cutesy little people with a belligerent streak).

I guess it depend on how gnomes fight in your world- if they're trap-setters, and prefer to avoid putting themselves in harm's way,  maybe cloaks and hoods, with the troops being mostly missile troops? I can't imagine them being up to much hand-to hand fighting, but can see them using repeating crossbows and other such advanced technology. Maybe some pole-arms to poke things caught in traps (from a safe distance)?

I'm too young to know the posted artwork, so I can't say I've ever really been exposed to gnomes outside of the pointy-hat garden gnome variety...

Edit: are your gnomes magicy animal-whisperers or inventors/engineers?

[Hobgoblin]

Originally, gnomes are spirits of the earth - earth elementals. And I guess that if they're fighting those (marvellous!) kobolds, yours are also going to be underground creatures.

I think the tricky thing is making them distinct from dwarves - most gnome miniatures have essentially been "second-rate dwarfs". For a slightly more distinct look - and to echo what's been said about Rackham and Froud and peasanty weapons, I'd aim for something like the old Citadel gnolls. They've always seemed gnomish to me. They were designed, I presume, to fit the original D&D description of a gnoll as a "cross between a gnome and a troll".

[mweaver]

I would love to see some Rackhamish gnomes.

-Michael

[LeadAsbestos]

Like a good goblin. Hat, beard, pointy ears.and nose. Short, good natured, but doesn't want to be disturbed from their own inscrutable projects, and if they are, all hell breaks loose. Very much part of the fairy world.

[Helen]

Gnomes rock! Rock Gnomes would be lovely, thank you.

[Nord]

Been thinking about this a bit more and had a couple of ideas if you went down the forest route. The gnomes would make use of the natural materials around them, so maybe a few wearing masks or even armour carved from tree bark, use of discarded deer antlers in weapons/helmets, perhaps capes made from fern leaves. Facially I reckon big noses and smallish beards, almost goatees would look the business. A few with pointy hats of course.  

A druid gnome with a staff bedecked with acorns would be a real treat. With a squirrel familiar!

[Rob_bresnen]

I see gnomes as more connected to nature than dwarves, so that they use nature rather than forcing it to do their bidding. (Like Radagast in the hobbit film- only shorter)- so they may live above ground in homes that are sympatheic to nature, or in underground homes that are more cave-like and less vast-stone-halls.
 In combat I think they would avoid close combat as much as possible, as they are small, and not as warlike as dwarves. They would prefer ranged weapons and traps. Pointy hats might be fun to set them apart from dwarves, and only natural armour. The peasant weapons is OK as long as they don't end up as hairy hobbits.
I also see them as tinkerers, making weapons and tools form natural things (If you have ever seen any of the Tinkerbel movies you will get the idea). As they are closer to nature they might have natural allies such as giant badgers, or even fairies and such. I think this would make them very different to dwarfs and hobbits.



This is a good look- slimer than a dwarf with an old face, big nose, eyes and ears



This picture illustrates what I mean abou using nature...only a bit less silly/childish



Badgers and other burrowing creatures would be gnomes natural allies



Gnome settlments would use nature and be part of the enviroment rather than trying to force their will onto nature

Anyway. That's my twopence worth.

[Severian]

Difficult question, this. The problem I've had with gnomes (apart, of course, from the garden statuary connotation) is that the name seems to be an invented one, with no folkloric roots whatever.

Paracelsus uses it for the elemental spirits of earth (parallel to sylphs, salamanders and (I think) nereids for the other three elements) but he probably invented it (maybe meaning it to be a sort of cod-Greek for "earth dweller") to use in a scientific treatise. My guess is that insofar as he had a model, he had in mind the sort of earth- or mine-dwellers usually known as, you guessed it, kobolds...

So here we've got another orc/goblin sort of situation, where a purely verbal distinction (two words for the same thing) has generated the idea that we have two distinct races; only, in this case, the confusion started about five hundred years ago.

Anyway, having said all that, I think we're now all most familiar with the "classic RPG" gnomes as sort-of-dwarves, and shouldn't try to etymologize them out of existence; I'd echo the calls for a Rackham-like effect, though. And certainly less obviously warlike than we've come to expect dwarves to be; and dwellers in mines/caves rather than necessarily makers of them, although they'd presumably have some stone-working skills.

The thing to avoid, in my view, is just making them smallish dwarves (with perhaps slightly different facial hair). The classic example of this that comes to mind are the old Ral Partha dwarves, which were rebranded as gnomes in the 1st Citadel Compendium.

Sorry, not sure I've added much to the debate...But certainly interested in seeing what you make of them.

And the kobolds look great, by the way!