Is this the end of gnomes?

Above is the image of a clearly gnomepunk young woman modeling a protest t-shirt from Zazzle, an online print-to-order store. She is protesting the loss of gnomes, punk or otherwise, from the fourth edition of D&D.

You see, after some development and evolution, D&D settled in for many years (in the 3rd edition and what was called version 3.5) with seven primary races available to players: humans, elves, dwarfs, halflings (hobbits), half-elves, half-orcs, and those most awesome of peoples, gnomes. It was a fine arrangement, but in June 2008 that all changed.

D&D 4.0 arrived in stores, and in the core rulebooks the new, hip core races were Dragonborn (kinda half-person, half-dragon); Dwarf; three kinds of elf: Eladrin, Elf, and Half-Elf; Halfling (not much like hobbits anymore); Human, and Tiefling (kinda half-person, half-demon). Not a gnome in sight, and no goggles, either. Is that a coincidence? I think not.

In one fell swoop, D&D eradicated all gnomepunk and any sense of steampunk from their aesthetic, replacing it with extreme medieval! -- sort of like what Gladiator and the new Clash of the Titans did to classic age adventure.

To add insult to injury, gnome was an entry in the Monster Manual - the core rulebook that lists statistics for goblins, orcs, troglodytes, and other nasty creatures.

But even at this low ebb for gnomepunk, a resistance was forming, and a new icon rose to take the place of the legendary Nebin. We'll meet him tomorrow.

Gnomish Sorcerers Against Change Shirt, as well as lots of other cool stuff, available from Zazzle.com.