Editing Gnome (section)

=The Tinker Gnome Phenomenon=
As part of the general and ongoing attempt to make gnomes interesting, many settings have tried the path of making them tinkers. The general logic is that they have a vaguely-dwarfish industriousness and affinity for the sciences, but a distinctly undwarfy knack for magic, inventiveness, and prizing the new over the tried, true and traditional. So, they are a logical fit for a race that tries to create new inventions and things. In settings featuring them, dwarves may be better at rune-crafting or forging masterwork gear, but gnomes will be the ones who create [[steampunk]] and guns.

The very first example of this was in [[Mystara]], where the gnomish civilization is a ''flying city-state'', defended by ''manned machine-gun turrets and fully-functional biplanes''. Sadly, like most Mystaran stuff, it is generally unknown except to a few ancient neckbeards.

The most famous example, sadly, are the [[Tinker Gnome|Minoi]] of [[Dragonlance]]. Unfortunately, as with the [[Gully dwarf|Gully Dwarves]] and the notorious [[Kender]], Tinker Gnomes were intended to be a Comic Relief race. So, once again, the authors failed to realise that A: traits that make one character amusing often become boring/embarrassing/ridiculous when applied to a whole race, and B: a race that is intended to be playable shouldn't come with traits that seem tailor-made for a character to be used as an excuse to piss off the rest of the party. With lore that they used to be humans who served [[Reorx]], the God of Creation, during the mythic era, only to anger him and be cursed and cast from his forge, condemned to never again be able to properly apply the creativity he had given them, the end result is that Krynnish Tinker Gnomes are a race of bungling idiots who deliberately overcomplicate their machinery because they find the extremes of Rube Goldberg design to be more aesthetically pleasing and "scientific", these dumb fucks would actually rather find a new way to fail than a way to succeed -- it's actually considered quite embarrassing by Tinker Gnomes to succeed at making something that does what it's supposed to. There are gnomes in Krynn that actually don't have this curse... Tinker Gnomes have the audacity to call them "Mad Gnomes". Most gnome-fans hate them, as they are implicitly called out as being responsible for Krynn's [[Medieval Stasis]]. Even in The Complete Book of Gnomes & Halflings, there's quotes from "real" gnomes denying that Tinker Gnomes are any relation to them, showing that TSR itself may have been aware of what sort of hack writers they had behind them.

[[Image:Goblins-vs-Gnomes.jpg |300px|thumb|right|Boom vs Zoom]]

Perhaps fortunately, the tinker gnome phenomena has mostly become associated in the modern era with the gnomes of [[Warcraft]], who are kooky and like to try the outrageous, but also prize functionality and safety (in contrast to [[goblin]]s, [[Skaven|who are happy to risk being blown to bits if it means they get it working faster]]).  Within Warcraft mythos, gnomes were Clockpunk-esque constructs created by the Titans to build and repair their big dumb objects, until the Curse of Flesh turned them(as well as the Dwarves and Giants) into their fleshy forms. They are still driven by a will to create for the sake of creation.  If every other race is content to break and train horses or tigers or dinosaurs to ride, a gnome will insist on building a noisy contraption that belches smoke and requires continuous tuning, and proudly call it an improvement. The ''Battle for Azeroth'' expansion also added the Mechagnome, a population of Gnome cyborgs who are the result of their ruler trying to return everything to their original metal/stone forms.