It’s every Dungeon and Dragons player’s divine right to goof off, ignore plot hooks, and indulge in maidenless behavior. Similarly, it is every Dungeon Master’s sacred duty to strike back with even greater bullshit – and boy, are the Worst Gnomes some ever-loving bullshit.
God, they’re just the worst. I hate them so much. These gnomes suck. Your DnD game, once you’ve added the Worst Gnomes to it? Ruined.
Except, no, it won’t be, but don’t let the players know that. You’ve got to sell the Worst Gnomes. Your players have to know that they are the most regrettable entities to curse your game world, and that you, the DM, are sorry that they even exist. “I didn’t want this”, you can say, “Wargamer made me do it”.
These are the key features of the Worst Gnomes:
- Worst Gnomes are just the worst. The worst!
- If you need a mental image to go with that, they’re about one and a half to two feet tall, and shaped like an ornamental garden gnome, except their head goes all the way to the top of their little pointy hat, and instead of a cheery little suit and bushy white beard they’re buck naked except for their profuse body hair.
- Worst Gnomes do not understand “personal hygiene”, and their skin texture is somewhere between “clammy”, “too sticky”, and “suggestively warm”.
- Worst Gnomes will drop a high pitched fart at your mother’s funeral. They’ll pick their nose at a buffet, and then fall face first into the dessert. If you are finally about to hook up with a verified baddie, three Worst Gnomes will fall in through the ceiling. I wish I had never invented these awful gnomes.
- Worst Gnomes are barely sentient, with the exception that, any time it would be funny for them to say something at the party’s expense, they absolutely will.
- Worst Gnomes are insanely strong. Do you want that in DnD Stats? Strength one billion. It doesn’t matter.
- Similarly, Worst Gnomes are invulnerable. This isn’t mechanically represented, it’s pure DM fiat. DnD 2024 Wizard got a wish spell that disagrees? The cosmos itself will write the player a note saying it’s not going to touch the Worst Gnomes.
- Any genuine attempt to harm the Worst Gnomes will result in the PC being folded into a pretzel.
- However, any action that would reduce a Worst Gnome’s dignity – if it had any – will succeed. Casually kicking one into a mud pit? Absolutely. Picking one up by its awful long head and yeeting it into a bush? Sure. It will respond with a fart.
- Worst Gnomes cannot be turned to any useful purpose. If left alone, they pose no material threat, and no actual villain has ever succeeded in using them in their plans.
- Worst Gnomes can, with only a modicum of effort, be put to useless or ridiculous purposes. They almost seem to welcome it. Need to badly cater a wedding? Worst Gnomes will cock that right up for you. Planning to deceive a dragon but don’t really care if it works? Three Worst Gnomes in a trench coat will be all in. Want to make every species of eel on the planet extinct? You don’t? Too bad, the Worst Gnomes are already on the case.
Don’t use these Gnomes lightly. Just because the party min-maxer has found some god-awful hybrid of DnD Classes and DnD backgrounds that lets them one-shot Vecna, that is no reason to make a Worst Gnome take up residence in their Bag of Holding to give them the absolute worst combat advice. Just because the Bard 5e wants to romance anything with a stable outline, doesn’t mean a Worst Gnome should decide to be their wingman.
Fear the Worst Gnomes. Despise the Worst Gnomes. Master the Worst Gnomes.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide is up next on the DnD release schedule. While our site expert will of course be reviewing it, we can guarantee it doesn’t have anything like the Worst Gnomes in it. Thank Christ.
Source: Wargamer
