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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hong" data-source="post: 1890604" data-attributes="member: 537">Exactly. Put it down to careless game management on the part of the DM, in allowing this situation to develop.But the DM should have provided a hint that not all the gnomes would have been on the party's side. That's ESPECIALLY if these gnomes got swayed by the super-high Diplomacy check, unless they're like vat-grown gnomes who have never checked the grapevine in their own organisation. By not providing relevant information, the DM significantly curtailed the possibility that the players would be able to influence the outcome.So what if the group got into a fight with the gnomes 35 sessions ago? Do you remember every fight from back in the mists of time? In particular, since the party was willing to talk to these gnomes as opposed to drawing weapons immediately (and similarly on the gnomes' part), any bad blood between them can't have been very close to the surface. That's all the more reason why it's entirely reasonable for the players to get pissed off at bait-and-switch tactics by the DM, and all the more reason why a smart DM makes a plan to head off that possibility.Hint: the climax had already occurred. They tracked down this artifact for 35 sessions (a tad longer than most 2-hour movies), went into the dungeon, killed the bad guys, and got out again. For all intents and purposes, especially in a game like D&D that tends to have a more highly structured setup than most RPGs, that constitutes successfully finishing the plot arc. The DM deciding to pull a trick like this during the denouement is nothing more than an anticlimax, and the way the players reacted during the session shows that they knew it.So why did it suddenly start being the case now?Strawman. NPCs can and will betray the party in any campaign. That doesn't mean it's something that happens without making damn sure you know what you're doing. In particular, a DM who pulls a completely out-of-the-blue betrayal like this, at a moment in time when the group was understandably feeling like they'd finally done all the hard work, cannot complain if the group starts becoming a lot more suspicious of people.</blockquote>

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