Do games have the lock on "Gnomepunk?"

[elfs]

The video game Warcraft II introduced a new fantasy genre: gnomepunk. In it, gnomes went from being tricksters to being the geniuses of blending engineering and magic, creating giant mage-powered machines that rolled over enemy forces and made a mess of the local ecology.

This genre has been expanded by Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, and more recently by the epic Lineage II game series, in which clanking magically-powered mecha stride across the terrain on their way to battle, stomping everything in their way.

But outside of these video games, I haven't seen a lot of gnomepunk. I've rarely seen it in written fiction, and I've long wondered why. Is there gnomepunk fiction, or is just too juvenile a combination to justify writing about?

Comments

[pieforeveryone.livejournal.com]

Also worth investigating is the D&D setting Iron Kingdoms, from Privateer Press. I'm not exactly clear on whether the D&D setting or the painted miniature wargame came first, but it contains many great takes on the crossover between magic and mecha. It even has a version of goblins taking over the role of the gnomes you mentioned. I haven't read any of the novels from this setting yet, but the setting itself sounds like what you're looking for.