Gnome Stew won a Gold ENnie for Best Blog in 2012 and silver ENnies for Best Blog in 2011 and 2010 -- thank you for your support! Since 2008, we've published 2,300 articles packed with GMing tips and advice. Our top 30 articles make a great starting point for new readers.
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| May 21, 2013 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article is by Richard Dansky, who tabletop gamers are most likely to know for his extensive work with White Wolf, particularly Wraith: The Oblivion. He’s a GM, a 14-year veteran of the video game industry, and the author of six novels, including Firefly Rain. His latest novel, Vaporware, comes out May 24th. Thanks, Richard! Nobody gets GMing right the first time. To be fair, most people don’t get anything right the first time, but GMing can be particularly tricky. After all, the novice…
| By Walt Ciechanowski May 20, 2013 |
Random luck affects us all the time. Just last week, the sewer line backed up in my house. As it happened, a local plumbing company dropped off a coupon the next day, fixing our headache at a very reasonable cost. Conversely, several years ago, my brother called me to announce that my first niece was due to be born any minute. I ran out to my car – only to find one tire completely flattened. Neither of these situations had anything to do with my…
| By Phil Vecchione May 17, 2013 |
I love my Underground campaign. Its been one of the best things I have run in some time, and it has done wonders for breaking me out of my slump. The game has been rolling along well, until we came to a small bump in the road…the rules. After some debate, we decided to pull a rules shift, and swap out one set of rules for another. This is the first of two articles about Rules Shifting. In this article I will talk about the…
| By Martin Ralya May 16, 2013 |
Preorders for our next book, Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management, will be opening on June 3, and we want you to be able to check out the book before deciding whether to preorder. You can now download a free 9-page PDF preview of Odyssey that includes the cover, table of contents, introduction, and opening section. This should give you a good idea of what topics the book covers and how it approaches them. The initial announcement of Odyssey also offers some…
| By Don Mappin May 13, 2013 |
Having just wrapped up its first season, the FX Cold War spy show seems a natural selection to spend some time dissecting, looking for elements to use (or avoid!) in your games. Suffice it to say that there will likely be some spoilers involved, so if you haven’t seen up to the season finale, you may want to come back a bit later. The Setup The Americans is about two KGB deep-cover operatives who are put together by design to act as a newly married…
| By Martin Ralya May 12, 2013 |
Five years ago today, Gnome Stew went live with 10 articles and around 250 RSS subscribers. In that five years we’ve published around 1,400 articles, had 1.7 million visitors, drawn 25,000 comments, won three ENnie Awards and an RPG Site of the Year Award, and published three GMing books (soon to be four). The Stew has gone places and done things I never expected. We’ve had some downs, but it’s been mostly ups — and the ups have been pretty damned awesome. And much of…
| By Phil Vecchione May 10, 2013 |
Last week, one of the groups I play in decided to end our Pathfinder campaign, and after some discussion it was decided that Bob is going to run Numenera for us. It has been a little while since Bob has run something, and we got to talking about getting back behind the screen again, along with some concerns that Bob might have. Having just come back from my own slump, I thought I would share some advice with Bob…and you all as well. A Little Background Our group…
