Sean Does Games

A Collection of Gnome Encounters You'll Not Soon Forget Ladies and gentlemen! Back for another repeat performance! Gnome encounters for fun and profit! Yep. Gnomes. That's what I said. Same old, same old here. Read them. Enjoy them (or not, I'm not the boss of you). Use them as side quests or as full story arcs. This is the eighth set of ten encounters. Check out my previous posts for the earlier hooks. The Encounters (71-80) 71. Two identical gnomes are locked in a cage with the mark of the gnome god Garl Glittergold*. They are dressed in identical clothes which are tattered and soiled in the exact same way. They both beg to be released, each pleading their innocents and accusing the other of heinous crimes. A pile of gems sits between them. 72. The party finds a group of gnomes who are ill-prepared for their adventures. They won't return home until they complete their mission...which by strange fate is the same as the party's.

In Dungeons and Dragons, a natural 20 occurs when a  20 is rolled on a d20 for an ability check, attack roll, or a saving throw. It is generally treated as a success no matter what the actual difficulty class (DC) happened to be. If you score this on an attack roll, you get to double your damage dice. That's awesome, but there are a host of other activities characters participate in that don't get the same sort of helpful boost. Because of that, and because as a DM I like to see my players succeed as much as I like to see them suffer, I use natural 20s as an opportunity to inject some positive vibes into a story that is literally created for the sole purpose of making the characters' lives difficult. The intent of these windfalls is never to transform a character into a superhero or de-fang an enemy. They are always meant to give the PC (or NPC because they too can score a natural 20) a chance to shine with an heroic moment of their own. The following describes a f