Sean Does Games

Here's a new gnome NPC, just in time for your Christmas-themed Dungeons and Dragons adventures. She's a Celestial Toymaker living the tinker life in Bytopia. Enjoy! (As a side note, the drawing is inspired by the tinker outfit from Neverwinter Online. And for full disclosure, this is sort of my character in that game.) Breena Vardin (Bree-nah VAR-din) "Here now. Why the long face? I have just the right thing to cheer you up." Breena (NG) is a spritely, 240-year-old female rock gnome who manufactures unique and quirky magical toys for all ages. Her reputation is such that items bearing her maker’s mark are prized delights. She sells her fancier creations at various high-end markets throughout the land as specialty goods. Breena is also the current incarnation of The Tinker Cousin (see The Tinker Cousin below), a legendary gnomish figure known for delivering gifts from her flying broom to those deserving of or in need of a little joy. She keeps this aspect...

I’ve been thinking about glitches for the gadgets in my Epic Gnomish Inventing supplement. The rules as they are now are very much focused on practical mechanics. There’s nothing wrong with this; some folks like concrete rules to follow and I wrote those glitch rules with that in mind. I like storytelling. For me, it’s the most important creative element in any RPG. I already use natural 1s and natural 20s as story elements whenever I DM. It only makes sense that gadget glitches should be treated in the same way. Really, what could be more capable of injecting unpredictable events into a game than a gnome invention gone amuck? I mean, they are perfect for those sorts of shenanigans. To that end, I’ve been toying around with this idea of narrative glitches. Like the dreaded natural 1s, narrative glitches introduce new elements or creative complications into the game that make life a little more challenging for the characters. It’s even possible for a gadget to achieve the desi...