March of the Gnomes!

All this and "Speak with Badgers" too.

Now, I pretty much knew from the get-go that no one liked Flumphs but me. That's to be expected. However, it's only been in recent years that I discovered people's strange dislike for gnomes.

When I started playing AD&D regularly with Second Edition, there were a lot of cool gnome characters in our games. The badass gnome assassin, the vagabond gnome bounty hunter, and a variety of gnome illusionists and professor-bards. Maybe it's because we were all Dragonlance fans, and we thought tinker gnomes were cool*. Certainly the gnomes in Soldiers of Ice were bad ass. Maybe Belwar in the Drizzt books was a positive influence. I don't know. Gnomes were just always welcome in our games. (Halfings, on the other hand, got a lot of hate.)

So, I was dismayed a few years ago when I discovered that so many people didn't like the little guys.

“They don't have any place in the ecology or society!” I hear you say. “They're disruptive pranksters!” you opine. “I hate their stupid noses!” you shout.

Well, we'll see about that. I've declared the third month of 2013 shall be the March of the Gnomes here at the Bernie the Flumph Show. I'll take a look at gnomes and present some ideas on how to make them “cool” without changing their intrinsic gnomishness. Stayt tuned!

*For what it's worth, I like Kender, too...