This is the end of Gnome Stew's second calendar year (we launched on May 12, 2008), so it's time for another State of the Stew! (Past State of the Stew articles live here.) In 2008, we surpassed all of the milestones I thought we might approach, and I wasn't sure what things would look like in 2009. To say that 2009 turned out to be a good year would ...

Our annual Christmas break (12/24 to 1/3, back to normal posting on 1/4) is in full swing, so while we're off shagging dwarves spending quality time with our favorite liquors families, we're serving up the best of the nearly 300 articles we wrote in 2009. Whether you've been reading the Stew since we launched in May 2008 or just discovered us yesterday, there is a LOT of GMing material ...

Our annual Christmas break (12/24 to 1/3, back to normal posting on 1/4) is in full swing, so while we're off shagging dwarves spending quality time with our favorite liquors families, we're serving up the best of the nearly 300 articles we wrote in 2009. Whether you've been reading the Stew since we launched in May 2008 or just discovered us yesterday, there is a LOT of GMing material ...

Our annual Christmas break (12/24 to 1/3, back to normal posting on 1/4) is in full swing, so while we're off shagging dwarves spending quality time with our favorite liquors families, we're serving up the best of the nearly 300 articles we wrote in 2009. Whether you've been reading the Stew since we launched in May 2008 or just discovered us yesterday, there is a LOT of GMing material ...

Our annual Christmas break (12/24 to 1/3, back to normal posting on 1/4) is in full swing, so while we're off shagging dwarves spending quality time with our favorite liquors families, we're serving up the best of the nearly 300 articles we wrote in 2009. Whether you've been reading the Stew since we launched in May 2008 or just discovered us yesterday, there is a LOT of GMing material ...

Our annual Christmas break (12/24 to 1/3, back to normal posting on 1/4) is in full swing, so while we're off shagging dwarves spending quality time with our favorite liquors families, we're serving up the best of the nearly 300 articles we wrote in 2009. Whether you've been reading the Stew since we launched in May 2008 or just discovered us yesterday, there is a LOT of GMing material ...

Gnome Stew is taking a Christmas break, but we won't be leaving you high and dry with no GMing material to read over your holidays. We're going to blow out the fire under the stewpot and serve up five articles highlighting our favorite Gnome Stew articles from 2009, with six blasts from the past featured each day. We did this last year, and readers said that they enjoyed catching ...

That's right, only 6.7 eons after our last contest -- celebrating 500 Gnome Stew articles by asking you, our readers, to contribute new taglines for the site -- we finally winnowed down the list and got them all set up. Well, I say "we." While we all winnowed down the list, someone else actually created the graphical versions (my good friend Darren, who did our site design) -- and the ...

Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Volume 2, will be entering development shortly, and the nomination period for entries is open through December 31st. Last time around, the gnomes missed this entire process, soup to nuts. We found out two of our articles had been nominated for OGT Volume 1 after the fact. They made it to the final book, and it's an excellent book: 40+ ...

There are lots of ways to metagame, including: Using out-of-character knowledge for your in-character benefit, generally regarded as a bad thing Discussing mechanics during a session, which runs the gamut from useful and fun to a terrible idea Considering the rules in a way that your character probably wouldn't, which I consider to be common to most RPGs, and often just fine Sharing mechanical tips with other players, a real mixed bag ...

The Stew makes money from advertising (which is split among all of the authors, and which we're currently re-investing in a secret project), and since the economy tanked that revenue has all but dried up. But just since the start of this month, the RPG ad network we're part of has signed up 12 new advertisers. Advertising revenue is what keeps the lights on in our stew pot, and ...

This idea hit me like a bolt from the blue, and I knew I had to write an article about it. It's weird, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Welcome to the Decamer Campaign concept, which I hope features just the right amount of crazy. "Decamer" is short for "deca," as in 10, plus "merde," as in shit. Step 1: Choose D&D's 10 Stupidest Monsters I'll ...

One of the best ways to convey the theme of your campaign, the tone of your game, and the flavor of the game world is to use reinforcement -- specifically, reinforcement of small things. This technique is based on two principles: Choose elements that represent what you want to convey, and repeat them. As part of your game prep, consciously choose a few things you can reinforce. They don't ...

If you play D&D 4e, there's a decent chance you use WotC's D&D Insider Character Builder. It automates a lot of things that frankly would otherwise be a pain in the ass, like creating power cards and calculating 99.9% of what's on your character sheet. For a crunchy, tactical, numbers-heavy game like 4e, it's a real boon. My whole group relies on it, and anecdotally I'd say most D&D players ...

Gnome Rodeos are the Stew's periodic link roundups -- articles packed with pointers to excellent GMing material we think you'll enjoy. We usually feature a few regulars plus our favorite discoveries from around the web, all with an eye to making your time behind the screen easier and more fun. If you wrote or read something you'd like to see featured on the Stew, drop us a line. There's some ...