Why Gnomes? Why Anything?

So why have I been banging on about Gnomes for so long?

I had the mistaken belief that they were an untapped resource! I was wrong. If anything, Gnomes have been tapped out many times. They're been in the D&D system, sidelined, made central, excised, reinstated and reinvented, and now seemingly are a step down from the whimsy machines of previous recent editions... I dunno. I'm a purist. But I like the Gnomes in my head (a sentence I never thought I'd write, folks), and these are they: diminutive woodland humanoids, wary of the ways of the larger world, but fueled with invention and curiosity.

But I also need to acknowledge those who came before me in drawing the classic D&D Gnome, and for me that's David C Sutherland in the 1e AD&D Manuals. I assumed they were Gnomes, of course - they might well have been Dwarves. But they had big noses, which is an important signifier (even if it may have been one of the characteristics that got them canned in the later years) After your David the Gnomes, Sutherland's version of what I fancy may have been a grudging inclusion of the race in Gygax's blueprint, gives them armour, weaponry, and those very cool helmets with eyeholes and noseguards. Yeah, boy. They may have been as impractical for close-up fighting as any helmet with a grippable centrepiece, but they looked cool, they looked purpose-built, and therefore they looked Gnomish. 

Turns out the model was a Dwarf. Ah well. 

My concession above is without colour, so imagine wood tones, laminated panels and some salvaged polish. where it counts: the bridge of that big, beautiful hooter.

Tomorrow: another Gnome, with some different stuff to talk about!