It's really too bad I couldn't think of a synonym for "mastering" that started with an N, isn't it? Gnome Rodeos are our regular link roundups. Provided everyone doesn't simultaneously stop talking about GMing for a week, you should see one most Fridays. GMing Regulars → Dungeon Mastering: DMing.com celebrates its first birthday! Yax's site remains one of my favorite RPG blogs, and comes highly recommended. From this week, try this: ...

There are lots of ways to use NPCs to motivate your players to take a particular course of action (by motivating their PCs, of course), but I've recently discovered one that surprised me: lying. Specifically, having an NPC that they would like to trust -- or perhaps have trusted in the past -- turn out to be a filthy, lowdown liar. This is along the same lines as stealing the ...

Meet Gnome Stewart: Look at those dead, soulless eyes, their thousand-yard stare aimed firmly at a point just above your right ear. The sickly, greyish skin (which I completely failed to capture here, but trust me: he's grey-green). And the flowers, mother of god, the flowers. Does he carry them to remind him of the days before he started sniffing glue, when he still had a sense of smell? To ...

Yep: One hundred posts old. My custom dice tray review was our 100th article since we went live on May 12th, 2008. I expected us to have posted about half that many articles by now, so my first thank you goes to my fellow gnomes: John Arcadian, Patrick Benson, Walt Ciechanowski, DNAphil, Scott Martin, Adam Nave, Matthew J. Neagley, Kurt "Telas" Schneider and Troy E. Taylor (click on any ...

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to buy my first dice tray. My druid character in our ongoing D&D 3.5e campaign uses a lot of dice, and our GM (who comments here as Sarlax) has always used a dice tray and seems to quite like it. I knew I didn't want the generic light wood/green felt octagon that I've seen in most gaming stores. It's too large ...

It's early because it's Thursday, not Friday, but also late because I didn't do a rodeo last week. It's special because it contains a metric ass-ton of GMing links (the metric ass-ton, of course, is an official gnomish unit of measure...). Gnome Rodeos are our regular link roundups. Provided everyone doesn't simultaneously stop talking about GMing for a week, you should see one most Fridays. GMing Regulars → Dungeon Mastering: Yax ...

Immortal. Classic. Throbbing with manly manhood. Everything a roleplaying game should be. Synnibarr! All others are just pale imitations. Never heard of World of Synnibarr? You owe it to yourself to buy a copy on eBay (mine was $10), or at the very least to read the classic RPGnet review. Thus Continues the Gospel According to Synnibarr III. Ptoing! Your puny missile cannot penetrate my medieval plate armor! Armor in Synnibarr offers ...

The second annual Worldwide Adventure Writing Month starts tomorrow, July 1st. Last year's WoAdWriMo generated seven free adventures that you can download or read online. The guidelines last year included a goal of 32 pages, but that suggestion is gone from this year's event -- you can write as little or as much as you like. The many lazy gnomes who write Gnome Stew will be climbing out of our ...

With D&D 4e out (and looking awesome so far), I wanted to start building a collection of prepainted fantasy minis for future use. While I plan to buy some boosters as well, I figured I'd kick things off by ordering a host of cheap minis for representing PCs. Even if creatures get counters instead, it's always cool when the PCs have their own minis. Back when I was collecting ...

I've tried different approaches to game prep over the years, but lately I tend to do it all in one big rush. The rush is preceded by brainstorming and outlining, but most of my prep happens all at once. One thing I've found about this method is that it's almost inevitable that I'm to going to get GM's block during prep. I reach a point where I just don't ...

Okay, I write one little bastardized lyric for a title, and suddenly I'm picturing eighties music videos with gnomes in them... Gnome Rodeos are our regular link roundups. Provided everyone doesn't simultaneously stop talking about GMing for a week, you should see one most Fridays. GMing Regulars → Dungeon Mastering: You should give your GM

(The first three steps, and my definition of "roleplaying-intensive," are in Part 1; tips 4-6 are in Part 2.) 7. Make Good on Your Promises By this point, you've made two promises to your players, one explicit and one implicit: Here's the kind of game I'm going to run. This is the explicit promise you made in in step three, when you pitched a roleplaying-intensive campaign to your players. The follow-through ...

Instead of, ahem, resting your eyes at your desk this fine Friday, why not check out some GMing links? Gnome Rodeos are our regular link roundups. Provided everyone doesn't simultaneously stop talking about GMing for a week, you should see one most Fridays. GMing Regulars → Dungeon Mastering: Yax gathers up past articles and PDFs on starting up a new campaign and looks at the six As of DMing. They're good ...

When it comes to your campaign, if you come across something you like -- an idea, a character from a novel you're reading, a cool scene from a movie -- steal it and use it in your game. Period. There is absolutely no reason to be bashful about shamelessly borrowing and stealing elements from any source under the sun. If you like it and you think your players will ...

In Boss Around the Gnomes, I asked Gnome Stew readers what you'd like to hear about the 4e core books from a GM's perspective. I wrote a lengthy, detailed post about my first impressions, and now I'm ready to tackle the specifics. Rather than C&P large chunks of my other post, if a question was substantially covered in my review I just pointed thataway for a few answers. It ...