Given that they don't have a true fairytale background, Gnomes were something of a blank slate for a long time before they were incorporated into the RPG world. The Will Huygen/BB/David Gnomes are reasonably down to Earth, with little in the way of powerful magic to them - if anything, the tease of fairy dust was on them, as many diminutive characters had.
In Dungeons and Dragons of course, their magical abilities come as PC Classes for AD&D, and in the form of Illusionists a Magic User variant. It seems kind of fitting, doffing the pointed cap towards glamour-based fairy magic, but without the obvious heavy weaponry that Human or Elven PCs could muster. Gnome magic in D&D is subtle, tricksy, maybe even cerebral?
That's fine, but I could never really get with the idea that this was a distinctly Gnomish trait. It's maybe a fairy trait - but Gnomes aren't fairies. They're also not Dwarves, so anything they can have that distinguishes them from their more earthy 'cousins' is good. When I developed an idea of what I wanted Gnomes to be for my games, Illusions went, and the fairy aspect soon followed. In the end, the solution was in those old books after all. But that's a story for another day, folks...
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