Context: I was diagnosed as autistic as a child and feel that's important to mention.
For a number of years I and a friend have been working on a fantasy tabletop role playing system on and off in our free time. Think Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Shadow of the Demon Lord, etc ... In the past couple months we have made a very large amount of headway and are getting into the actual play testing stages. We are currently at the point of adding a lot of meaningful content to play test including Player Ancestries (humans elves dwarves goblins etc...). The way ancestries currently work is each ancestry has three things that it gives your character and one thing you can choose to take from a list of ancestry specific abilities.
Now we arrive at the gnome in the room. I don't particularly like gnomes. I don't dislike them either, I just have never really cared about them. The only gnomes in fiction I think are remotely interesting are Paizo's where the entire race is cursed to stay motivated and happy or they become crippling depressed, ostracized by society for risk of getting infected with sad, and die. However, I don't want to rip off someone else's universe so I want to find my own way to take these guys. To that end I'm wondering if using them as an allegory for autism may make them more interesting and also be drawing from something that I can write from experience.
My worry is that I do want to eventually release this game into the world one day and I can see easily where "gnomes are coded with autistic traits" could easily become "game author compares autistic people to gnomes".
There is also the option of just not including gnomes at all, this is the easiest solution by far but comes at the cost of disappointing a few members of my primary game group who really likes gnomes.
Thoughts, opinions, comments, and criticism are all welcome.
Also any other gnome related thoughts are incredibly welcome.
you might be overthinking a bit. I don't think there is anything wrong with having gnomes whos culture is based on some autistic traits. Like maybe it's common for them to just leave mid-conversation or they see it as an insult if you make eye contact. That sounds like a fun idea.
Just don't make autism their only trait or be afraid of not including an idea because it doesn't fit the autism stick.
As others here have said it might be more about how you do it, not if it's gnomes or any other species. The only thing I really associate with gnomes would be a low body height.