On Gnomes, and Player Expectations

Have you heard of Global Agenda? I know nothing about Global Agenda except apparently it doesn't have elves in it, and they would have you believe this is a big deal. Also, creepy eyes.

Looking through old campaign settings (remember when there were new ones every so often? I miss that), you'd think elves were sacred animals. Lots of settings add races (thri-kreen, giff, kalashtar, modrons) and tweak races (cannibal halflings, fascist biomancer elves, corporate conspiracy dwarves... the clueless?)... but usually make it a point of being as inclusive as possible for the person who just HAS TO play a half-orc or whatever.

Not hard to see the hand of commerce here - Elves sell. Eberron used "everything in D&D is in Eberron" as the first bullet point in its pitch, and 4th Ed kept up the trend in everything. A warforged/drow/half-orc/dragonborn party on Athas, a world without metal, an underdark, or orcs, and only one dragon? Sure why not. Writers, find us a way.

Homebrew campaigns and small press settings are generally much more open to weird experimental builds with no clerics or dwarves or whathaveyou. Look at Carcosa (or better yet, Carcosa). And the sheer volume of available monsters means when you're making a world for yourself you pretty much have to be selective about what gets thrown in. (Or you can fiddle with the fiddly bits. That's wholeheartedly encouraged.)

But for the core races especially, players have expectations. D&D is as much about elves and dwarves as it is about actual dungeons and dragons - arguably more, since the "dragon" is more often a lich or mind flayer or one of ten thousand other big bads. When you're getting together a group of friends not so sure about this whole "role-playing" thing, or if playing a game with friends is worth giving up a Friday night and learning all these stupid rules, it helps if the DM can say "choose someone from Lord of the Rings, you're basically like that" instead of "You're an elf, but 'elves' in my world are dream-eating reptiles from another dimension who live in crystal cities in the hyperborean north." There's a place for that too, but it's nice having a default to fall back on.

Which brings me to the more crunchy, less rambly question of: what the hell is up with gnomes?

Humans are obvious. Elves, dwarves, and orcs you may get questions of "Tolkien or Warcraft?" or "So I've got a Scottish accent?" but at least everyone has an image to start with. Halflings are a little sketchier because the D&D race has migrated a fair bit from its hobbity roots, but still... brave little murderkids. You can play up the peasant hero angle or the backstabbing klepto angle or the Dickensian youth angle and it's all still recognizably Halfling. But gnomes? As in, David, the? As in Garden?

Some options. In d6 random table format, in case you need a random gnome. (God help you.) Admittedly these are not the most original, nor the most compelling archetypes in the fantasy ouvre, but they're at least images from the pop culture zeitgeist that aren't part of a Travelocity commercial.

1. Gnomes of Zurich. You know the goblin banker guys in Harry Potter? You're kind of like that. Scheming, shark-toothed, impeccably dressed. Merchant princes, profit over all, commerce as a weapon - somewhere between the Illuminati and the Dutch East India company. Probably get a chance to notice hidden treasure just being nearby, the way elves can with secret doors. As with halflings you're going to look kind of ridiculous if you're a fighter in full plate, but gentlemen boxers or duelists with cane swords could be a thing.
2. Professors of Magic. You know the Fraternity of Order from Planescape, or the Asura from Guild Wars (2)? You're kind of like that. Backstabbing ivory tower blowhards with a bit of 17th century natural philosopher thrown in the mix.Out to prove your latest hypothesis, gather rare ingredients or specimens, catalog new species, and map the unexplored. Lots of incredibly petty rivalries based on competing theories or research grants. Schisms within subfields based on disagreements on fine points of minutia. Arcane knowledge in both senses of the word. Your intern is trying to poison you and your nemesis in Applied Phrenology just stole your collection of basilisk skulls, but you're not worried about that you're off in the Weeping Steppes digging up dragon bones and wow the markings on those spider wasps...
3. Against the Dying of the Light. Sigh. Going to have to deal with this eventually. Okay so you know the gnomes of Warcraft, or Spelljammer, or Dragonlance I suppose except eww? You're... no, you're not like that at all. I've no  problem with the anachronism or the silliness per se but when the entire race is a joke the joke isn't funny. Take fun seriously. An alternative: instead of being all insufferably twee and whimsical all the time inventing the wizz-bang future from nothing, you're trying to keep your civilization alive when everything else is giant and trying to kill you. Maybe you're marooned in the barbaric middle age after a time travel accident or maybe your race got conquered/cursed/blown up, and now every year more machines fail, and the blueprints are lost, and ogres eat the young ones.
4. People of the Earth. You know the four classical elements? And how Paracelsus wrote about an embodiment of elemental Earth two hand-spans tall and able to swim through stone like a fish? And how these got conflated with all sorts of other folk tales of little magical craftsmen beneath the ground? Okay maybe not. But anyway... you're kind of like that. Tiny and hunched with big black eyes and claws like a mole, speaking with stones and herding the mountains like ents do trees. Big overt magic like this works better for monsters than playable races but dwarves and elves had similar powers in the old stories - maybe just the elders are mountain-movers. Pretty much everything subterranean in D&D is evil, so maybe you help other not-quite-as-homicidal travelers who delve in deep places. Or maybe you were forced out by some cataclysm.
5. Laughing Monstrosities. You know all the stories about Coyote, or Anansi, or Sun Wukong, or Bugs Bunny, where the hero a nice guy but also an incredibly infuriating dick? You're kind of like that. You can disguise self or mimic voices or pick pockets at range or turn into four different forest animals - some little glamour with no combat utility but lots of ways to confound and annoy. If you're going to be an obnoxious little twit you might as well be the sort people like to have around.
6. The Men In The Walls. You know in Hansel and Gretel, when the witch has the kids in a cage fattening them up to be eaten? You're like that, if Hansel and Gretel were a whole race and the witch was a faerie prince who liked to drink tears. The usual gnome suite of prestidigitation magics are tricks stolen/copied from their fair folk jailers, and they speak with rats (not burrowing animals, rats) because there's rats everywhere, fighting for the food, and in fairy tales the rats can talk. Worked half your life sewing dresses out of roses and gossamer, got sold to the drow to be tortured, but you learned to hide and you learned to kill and now you're free and so very, very mad.