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Reassesing Robert E Howards influence on D&D +
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<blockquote data-quote="The Scythian" data-source="post: 9248379" data-attributes="member: 6875986"><p>AD&D gnomes are not like Anderson's woods dwarfs solely in terms of mechanics, though. Like woods dwarfs, AD&D gnomes have brown skin. Like woods dwarfs, AD&D gnomes are explicitly described as living in burrows. Woods dwarfs have an arrangement with the lesser animals of the forest, which is not a perfect match for AD&D's gnomes taming badgers and wolverines, but it's in the same ballpark. Woods dwarfs and AD&D gnomes are right around the same size. Those would be enough similarities to convince me, but the fact that Gygax made AD&D's gnomes better than dwarves at identifying sloping passages and determining how far they are from the surface, the two proficiencies Hugi displays in the novel, confirms it. At least for me.</p><p></p><p>I don't think that Huygen and Poortvliet's gnomes have anything to do with AD&D's gnomes. Unlike Hugi, they're not associated with adventuring. They're about the size of large mice. They have white skin, not brown skin. It's been years since I've read <strong><em>Gnomes</em></strong>, but I don't remember his gnomes being especially good at identifying sloping passages or anything of the sort. About the only similarity is their relationship with animals. In that like, it seems strange to me to point to that book as an influence on the AD&D gnome, when the AD&D gnome is pretty much exactly Hugi, a character from a book that Gygax also took the paladin, the troll, and the law vs. chaos alignment system from.</p><p></p><p>I agree with you that Gygax was attempting to genericize classes and creatures in <strong><em>Chainmail</em></strong> and OD&D. That's why we have Heroes and Superheroes as unit types in <strong><em>Chainmail</em></strong>, and Fighting-Men and Magic-Users in OD&D. A Hero could be Bard the Bowman from <em><strong>The Hobbit</strong></em>. A Superhero could be Conan, Holger (from <strong><em>Three Hearts and Three Lions</em></strong>), or King Arthur. A Fighting-Man could be a barbarian, a knight, a member of the town watch, or a paladin. The Paladin would be added as a subclass of Fighting-Man in the same supplement that Gygax would explicitly mention the gnome as a playable type of burrowing dwarf, which suggests he might have had <em><strong>Three Hearts and Three Lions</strong></em> on the mind.</p><p></p><p>This may or may not be true with creatures, though. In <strong><em>Chainmail</em></strong>, Gygax suggests that only Anderson's trolls are actually trolls, while other trolls are simply ogres. So, we know that he had <strong><em>Three Hearts and Three Lions</em></strong> on his mind when compiling the fantasy unit types. That doesn't prove that he was thinking of woods dwarfs when he listed gnomes as an alternate to (or variant of) dwarves but given that he increasingly identified the gnome with the woods dwarf as the game became more complex and he had more and more room to write, I think a case could be made that he was thinking of them the whole time.</p><p></p><p><strong><em>Edit:</em></strong> One thing that I keep forgetting to put in my posts is that Gygax claimed that he added the gnome to break up the monotony of seeing party after party with the same Tolkienesque races operating in the same ways. This quote is somewhat suspect because he claims he pulled the gnome from folklore, when he clearly pulled it from <strong><em>Three Hearts and Three Lions</em></strong>, but it also might explain why he gave the gnome/woods dwarf an increasingly distinct identity from the dwarf, because people kept showing up at his tables wanting to play Tolkienesque dwarves. (There are things that are related that I want to address in a separate post soon.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Scythian, post: 9248379, member: 6875986"] AD&D gnomes are not like Anderson's woods dwarfs solely in terms of mechanics, though. Like woods dwarfs, AD&D gnomes have brown skin. Like woods dwarfs, AD&D gnomes are explicitly described as living in burrows. Woods dwarfs have an arrangement with the lesser animals of the forest, which is not a perfect match for AD&D's gnomes taming badgers and wolverines, but it's in the same ballpark. Woods dwarfs and AD&D gnomes are right around the same size. Those would be enough similarities to convince me, but the fact that Gygax made AD&D's gnomes better than dwarves at identifying sloping passages and determining how far they are from the surface, the two proficiencies Hugi displays in the novel, confirms it. At least for me. I don't think that Huygen and Poortvliet's gnomes have anything to do with AD&D's gnomes. Unlike Hugi, they're not associated with adventuring. They're about the size of large mice. They have white skin, not brown skin. It's been years since I've read [B][I]Gnomes[/I][/B], but I don't remember his gnomes being especially good at identifying sloping passages or anything of the sort. About the only similarity is their relationship with animals. In that like, it seems strange to me to point to that book as an influence on the AD&D gnome, when the AD&D gnome is pretty much exactly Hugi, a character from a book that Gygax also took the paladin, the troll, and the law vs. chaos alignment system from. I agree with you that Gygax was attempting to genericize classes and creatures in [B][I]Chainmail[/I][/B] and OD&D. That's why we have Heroes and Superheroes as unit types in [B][I]Chainmail[/I][/B], and Fighting-Men and Magic-Users in OD&D. A Hero could be Bard the Bowman from [I][B]The Hobbit[/B][/I]. A Superhero could be Conan, Holger (from [B][I]Three Hearts and Three Lions[/I][/B]), or King Arthur. A Fighting-Man could be a barbarian, a knight, a member of the town watch, or a paladin. The Paladin would be added as a subclass of Fighting-Man in the same supplement that Gygax would explicitly mention the gnome as a playable type of burrowing dwarf, which suggests he might have had [I][B]Three Hearts and Three Lions[/B][/I] on the mind. This may or may not be true with creatures, though. In [B][I]Chainmail[/I][/B], Gygax suggests that only Anderson's trolls are actually trolls, while other trolls are simply ogres. So, we know that he had [B][I]Three Hearts and Three Lions[/I][/B] on his mind when compiling the fantasy unit types. That doesn't prove that he was thinking of woods dwarfs when he listed gnomes as an alternate to (or variant of) dwarves but given that he increasingly identified the gnome with the woods dwarf as the game became more complex and he had more and more room to write, I think a case could be made that he was thinking of them the whole time. [B][I]Edit:[/I][/B] One thing that I keep forgetting to put in my posts is that Gygax claimed that he added the gnome to break up the monotony of seeing party after party with the same Tolkienesque races operating in the same ways. This quote is somewhat suspect because he claims he pulled the gnome from folklore, when he clearly pulled it from [B][I]Three Hearts and Three Lions[/I][/B], but it also might explain why he gave the gnome/woods dwarf an increasingly distinct identity from the dwarf, because people kept showing up at his tables wanting to play Tolkienesque dwarves. (There are things that are related that I want to address in a separate post soon.) [/QUOTE]
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