If I had trouble establishing for myself the 'perfect' Gnome, then at least it was my own battle and it only lasted around fifteen years. TSR (and I suppose Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro after them) took something closer to a generation. In fairness, it wasn't a well-defined race to begin with, and it wasn't a playable race until AD&D; a lot of things were in play, and in the ensuing years and later editions of the game a good many things would be revised. The Gnome would be one of them.
It seems likely that Gary Gygax's original model for the fighter Gnome of D&D/AD&D is Hugi the Gnome in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. Hugi is woods-homed, a doughty fighter and something of a braggart, but otherwise not much different from a fantasy Dwarf. In AD&D some magic is added in the form of Illusionist spells, and this class preference persists in succeeding editions, past the introduction of the 'Deep Gnome' or Svirfneblin in the 1e Unearthed Arcana and its assumption as a playable class for 2e. The Dragonlance novels and AD&D setting then incorporated that world's Tinker Gnome as a character type, and subsequent editions married the fey magic element with an artificer's skill (though often with hazardous results). Meanwhile, in Basic D&D Gnomes have burst with reinvention as an NPC race in exclamation-mark-bearing madcap flying city adventure supplements (Top Ballista!) and mecha modules (Earthshaker!). The woodland Gnome of old has by now disappeared, as has its appearance, replaced in the wider game by a slimmer, more fey figure with wild hair, less facial hair and elfin eyes. It's a divisive reinvention, to say the least, but the whimsical Steampunk Gnome type endures in World of Warcraft. By D&D's 5e the favoured class of the Gnome has become Bard.
So much for the in-game Gnome, in the history of the Gnome in popular culture, the character has also undergone an evolution...
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