Blingdenstone and Deep Gnomes

[Xotaes]

Deep gnomes suffering light blindness must be a FK specific thing.

3rd ed FRCS, Drow have "Light blindness", Duregar have "Light sensitivity". Blah blah, bright lights, dazed in Daylight etc. Sverfneblin ... don't.

The sverfneblin sort of pay for that by having a +3 level adjustment, compared to +2 for Drow, and +1 for Duregar - but they have a very large heap of powerful abilities as well (Including a +4 dodge bonus to AC, on top of their size bonus!), and innate Nondetection... which reveals a bit of a design bias towards "good strong, bad sucks" in the source material. Of course by the time the 3rd ed Underdark supplement came out, Blindingstone was a blasted wasteland inhabited by even more xenophobic wererat sverfneblin.

I suppose the lesson you could draw from that is... "Don't go to the surface, you'll catch lycanthropy from one of those filthy, filthy human cities."

[Gwain]

I don't know if its still tangible but I remember early references to underground gnomes in a fantasy setting being sort of like mole people...near-sighted and hating the surface world.

[Mele]

Just want to bump this up for our new influx of deep gnomes.

Someone once said a perfect quote to me recently, something along the lines of: Why be different if you're just going to be the same?

How this translates specifically now is - why be a deep gnome if you're going to live on the surface, befriend other races and generally act like a human.

Your kismet is valuable and you use it for the roleplay opportunities associated with the shiny races you may play with it. You're trusted, having earned this kismet, to play that race with a general knowledge of it's standards and way of life.

When you betray that trust and do as you please simply for quests, loot and game mechanics you open the opportunity for IC repercussions - especially when you follow a god who embodies these ideals.

Other characters should remember that deep gnomes are not an 'exotic race' - to a surfacer they are horrid underdark creatures - therein creating these potential IC repercussions.

A lot of work went into the lessons in generation that teach you specifically about your race, as a deep gnome, as well as your community and the ideals you should hold high.

Creating a deep gnome is an invitation to learn a whole different side of FK. The underdark, and all it has to offer - which is a great deal thanks to builders like Solaghar and Talos. It is essentially re-learning to game to stick to the places that are proper to the race. When you do this properly, you stand out significantly as a well played and well rounded player capable of being from the surface or the Underdark - this invites roleplay opportunities your way that could yield things much greater than ignoring your race's behavior and living on the surface and off of surface quests.

So the choice is yours! Is YOUR kismet worth creating a character just to do the same exact things a human would? Or is it worth the experience and adventure of learning a new place and behavior - and having bonds with your fellow deep gnomes no other race gets to experience?

Adventure on!

In only five short months I feel like this needs to be said again. Come on, guys. If you make a new character from a new area kick the old habits. The surface is not your main place to exist. ESPECIALLY if you are following Callarudran. Expect to lose His favor if you are not following His dogma.

[Brocc]

Just so everyone here knows. This was me. I was on the surface for less than five hours, and literally lost all my acrued favour at that point (praised to ignored). This seems a bit ridiculous to me. It's not unheard of for Deep Gnomes to travel to the surface for small amounts of time, I'm obviously not going to live up here.

I feel like this just need to be said.

[Althasizor]

Deep gnomes do not enjoy the surface, and five hours is actually not a small amount of time. What were you doing for five hours in a place, and with people, the race innately disdains and the patron god encourages distance from?

Anyway, I do think more attention should be paid to actual details of a character's race/background, and not just what statistics they allow. Deep gnomes should be another way of experiencing the game, not just a reskin for the same ol' surfacer.

[Brocc]

As a cleric, I was visiting the surface to learn more spells, spells not available in the Underdark, also I ran into a couple of quests that I felt my character would take the time of his life to help/not help in those quests. During this time, I happened to run into some surfacers, and I also felt I RPed that out fine, especially as how we, the Deep Gnomes are raised.

As has been said in this thread before, Callarduran's dogma is that Deep Gnomes should not ever consider returning to the surface as a home. Our home is Blingdenstone, and the Underdark.

[Althasizor]

I wasn't witness to your RP interactions, but Deep Gnomes are -deeply- mistrusting of others. I don't know how much sense it makes to go to the surface, work for surfacers, hang out with surfacers, learn from surfacers, etc. Not to mention, if we're going to look at this from the IC point of view, how would your deep gnome even know where to go to find these prayers? Why would he want to?

(And on that, there have been a large number of updates to the Underdark to make it more accommodating to adventurers and denizens alike - I'm skeptical that there is a great number of prayers unavailable from more IC sources)

There have been several other times on the forums where "There's precedent for it" is used as a defense for dicey RP decisions. Firstly, and this is more of an observation than anything, this is mostly used in the defense of twinking by deriving IC choices from OOC desires - IE. I want to do this thing, even if it makes little sense, so let me come up with an excuse for my character to wind up doing it.

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, just because there's precedent doesn't mean it's sensible for everyone to go that route. Is there precedent for drow being good? Yes. However, because the drow race as a whole is evil and we want to represent overall Realms accuracy here, they're limited to evil alignments. For the same reason, we need to use good sense when making decisions as to where we take our characters and what we do with them: Yes, there is precedent for Deep Gnomes coming to the surface, but they are the exception.

I could go further as to say that, examples of Deep Gnomes on the surface are exceedingly rare in Realms canon. If one is using other PCs as the measuring stick as to what's acceptable,('Another PC Deep Gnome went to the surface, therefore there are example of it occurring') they are just as fallible and - In my opinion(!) - rather poor at it if they're making a habit of hanging about a place explicitly stated to be hostile toward Deep Gnomes.

As for that last part, I would encourage players of races other than Deep Gnomes not to RP omniscience. No, the race is not evil, but they are thought to be by surfacers. It only worsens the issue when everyone shoehorns their modern-day ideals of acceptance and inclusion awkwardly into roleplay between two races with very little contact.

'Sup.

[Enig]

I don't want to go too in-depth on this since I don't know the situation entirely, but I do get the impression that a lot of deep gnomes have really underplayed the significance of going to the surface. It's not a Forgotten Realms source but I'm sort of reminded of the dwarves from Dragon Age and how they dealt with going to the surface. A dwarf who left the undergound would be kicked out of their family, branded an outcast, they were said to be cut off from their ancestors(ie. the closest thing they had to gods), that they'd lose their 'stone sense', and so on.

Now, Dragon Age isn't the same as Forgotten Realms, obviously. But I think there's something we can take away from there. Leaving your home is a significant thing; leaving your home to go to an incredibly alien environment which is nothing like you're used to at all is even more significant. Like the dwarves who fear falling into the sky, I think culture shock should play a significant role in the RP of those who do visit the surface and that there needs to be an *incredible* reason for doing so beyond just 'I want to learn how to use flamestrike' or whatever.

[Brocc]

I think there's a lot of misconception here. To anyone who has played the deep gnome area, you would know that they explicitly tell you that it's okay to venture to the surface. Also, if management truly does not want deep gnomes going to the surface, then do not make it possible. This was my first attempt at even going to the surface, and I immediately feel like a criminal. In a perfect world, I would role play with other deep gnomes, but sorry to tell you, they are in short supply. In fact, my last RP interaction I had with another player in the Underdark, a drow, he just RPed that he slit my throat

My point is: I know I'm playing an exotic race with unique RP. I know it's not everyone's fault that no one plays the side. However, the one time I go to the surface, I shouldn't be ICly shunned by the deity I have devoted my life to, simply for being on the surface for what equates to a week or so.

[Dranso]

Would it be considered bad rp for a deep gnome to travel to the surface to aid others? For example: a close friend, who is lets say a rock gnome, asks his svirfniblen friend to join him in a mining excursion in the sunset mountains. Or perhaps the rock gnome friend needs help with a quest killing drow that have made it to the surface.

I imagine it would be different if a human or elf were asking for assistance going on the assumption that deep gnomes would be more inclined to help out Garl's People than just regular surfacers. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that deep gnomes are not known to be super good little gnomes like forest and a lot of rock gnomes. So if called upon to aid others of the surface, how would a deep gnome react most of the time?

[Mele]

While it's not especially logical to be 'close friends' with another race - the situation described above is what could be viewed as logical reasoning to visit the surface.

This is as opposed to having a qlog of surface quests that make little sense; quests in areas you deliberately seek the quest out (Howling Peaks, Rat hill, Kobold Tower - these areas and others like it do not offer sales or trainers that could potentially be used as reasoning to attract a deep gnome)

You're absolutely right, an elf or a human etc would be very illogical for a deep gnome to befriend - or even likely adventure with.

TLDR; Going to the surface to save another gnome 'friend' would be a favourable reason to visit, assuming it did not involve random quests and excessive time.

That was a fine example, thank you!

[Atraos]

Hi

If I may just add one point for the UD as a whole, Drow and Svirf.

There are a lot of quests in Menzo and the surrounding areas that are fetch quests. 90% of the required items are surface items. Without Surface interaction of some sort how are the items to be gained?

Would this allow for acceptable RP to go and locate them? I take into consideration your points in regards to not ploughing through quests etc whilst up there, but is the retrieval of surface items a good excuse for being up top?

Ideally as a Drow, we would have agents to get these items for us. But obviously at some point or another there has to be IC interaction with the surface.

I would presume that, that is acceptable?

[Ungtar]

There aren't many deep gnomes as it is, and roleplay interactions for them are incredibly scarce. I can only think that after this thread they're going to get more scarce.

Which will diminish us all.

[Althasizor]

Ungtar:
I think it would do more to 'diminish us' to have many poorly played characters of an exotic race than a few well-played ones. Roleplay opportunities being scarce is both a matter of opinion, and player climate. People will play what they want to play, and if you'd like to call for more Deep Gnome players, I think that's a separate but interesting topic to open. There would be more opportunity to roleplay between Deep Gnomes if there were more Deep Gnome players, but if every Deep Gnome must go to the surface to find their kin, we go back to why there should be fewer of them.

Atraos:
That does seem logical on the surface(Ha!) to me, but then, a drow wouldn't know where on the surface to go for those things. Imagine you're a drow or Svirfneblin, and you've -never- seen the sky, or sun, or grass.. Would you acclimate well enough to this new environment to find what you're looking for, after a life underground and - in the Svirfneblin case - cultural isolation?

Surfacers do make delves into the Underdark though, and I myself play several characters who would be open to a 'trade agreement' with the dark denizens, for their own rare wares, guidance through the twisted and ever-changing caverns, or what-have-you. I'm not sure if that's the sole solution, I'm sure other people will come back and post their own thoughts on the subject!

[Harroghty]

I have avoided tossing in my two cents because I do not have a deep gnome. Heck, I've never ever had a PC who was not human. Still, I believe that my point is germane because of my staff perspective here.

I see a lot of PCs of a lot of different races who, because of the necessity of certain adventures, conduct themselves in ways contrary to their race's typical opinions in Faerun. The problem appears to be partly a lack of interest or education in lore (the game, deep gnomes in particular, provides some good stuff but not the full breadth of knowledge), but also a natural reaction to environmental conditions (the scarcity of training, experience, components, objects, etc.)

I don't see anything wrong with interactions between denizens of the Underdark and surface dwellers, but these should be illicit and rare, not as common place as they are now. Our game, like many fantasy games, suffers because that which should be rare is mundane and that may be unavoidable in some instances (no one wants to RP as the groom at the stables or cook in the tavern), but it is certainly avoidable in some of these which we're discussing.

[Ungtar]

*deleted the giant wall of text that nobody will care to read anyway and just left the summary*

When I ran into a deep gnome, it was thoroughly enjoyable and I talked about it IC for a RL week. If I had ran into the same deep gnome on the surface while he was trying to get to Yuirwood or someplace, it would have been an epic, player-driven quest that would become a permanent part of my character's lore. Even if you threw off ALL restrictions on where they could go and what they could be, they still aren't going to become a large portion of the playerbase for the same reasons that forest gnomes aren't.

[Gwain]

When and if the game ever holds more than 30-40 players a day regularly at any given time, this might be something to look into, otherwise I'm more for what the staff and admins have decided for our current playerbase averaging 14-20 players a day.

[Ungtar]

When and if the game ever holds more than 30-40 players a day regularly at any given time, this might be something to look into, otherwise I'm more for what the staff and admins have decided for our current playerbase averaging 14-20 players a day.

This thread was a dragon, and Gwain has just slain it.