Award-Winning GMing Advice
Gnome Stew won the silver ENnie Award for Best Blog in
2011 and
2010 -- thank you for your support! Online since 2008, we've published
1,109 articles packed with GMing tips and advice, as well as
two books for GMs. Our
top 30 articles make a great starting point for new readers.
"I check Gnome Stew every day." -- Monte Cook
"fantastic blog for game masters, dungeon masters, and rpg fans" -- Wil Wheaton
"If you aren’t reading Gnome Stew, you’re missing out." -- Wolfgang Baur
“Is professor Yell doing this now, or wait, when did I plan to have him introduce that plot point. Oh crap, I was supposed to have the spider queen attack the group after they got the idol, not beforehand. Shoot! Who was it that sent the quicklings after the grey ladies!” My latest game is NPC heavy, and almost all of the NPCs are politically motivated ...
A while back I dropped an article talking about a prep method I used, called 3-3-3 Quick Prep. It’s a method composed mostly of bullet points to give some minimal structure to a game but allow for improvisation at the table. There were some requests in the comments to show some examples of it in play. Well, I am more than happy to oblige and dug up some ...
This wasn’t the article I had been planning on doing for today, but it is in the vein of articles I’ve been thinking about for a while. The comments and feedback on Martin’s State of The Stew article are pretty thought provoking to us here at the Stew. Reading the multiple opinions that proclaim meat over meta, I’ve been looking at my writing style. It would be an ...
I was just reminded of an interesting concept the other day. My room-mate and I were hanging out in our shared office and talking about the game I am going to be starting up soon. He mentioned, offhandedly, that I’ve been doing a lot of prep for a game that hasn’t started yet. And then he said these bell-ringing words “Oh well, strike while the iron is hot, ...
I recently did a review of Open Design’s Courts Of The Shadow Fey 4e adventure, an excellent little romp through the interaction between the fey courts and the mortal world. I was incredibly impressed by the adventure, and it reinvigorated an old similar campaign idea that I had been kicking around for a while. The game I’m playing in is trailing off and it will be my turn ...
I sat there at the gaming table, waiting to actually game. We’d started an hour ago, and after all of the usual bullshitting around, looking up youtube videos, and sharing jokes, we’d finally gotten into it. A brief encounter that set us on our path and the Game Master had to look up some info. While we waited, one of the other players started asking advice about leveling ...
Anymore, I’m pretty much an improv only Game Master. I like getting down and making an awesome, intricate, and detailed game, but so often those types of games just blow up when the players get into them. You either have to reign players in to preserve the spiderweb of the plot, or you have to help set it on fire and fiddle away. So I’ve taken ...
Back before Gencon, Phil threw out an article asking for Gnome Stew fans to pick games for us to pick up and review. Phil reviewed Vornheim – The Complete City Kit and I am now reviewing Microscope. We got no compensation or free copies for these games. I take a long time to do my reviews, mostly because I want to get deeply into what I’m reviewing ...
"Well it says I have blue, but I decided I wanted grey eyes..." The Situation We’ve All Been In I’ve recently found myself running a new game. It is only a few sessions old, but one of the players sheepishly approached me asking if he could change some stuff about his character. The character was cool, but it wasn’t fitting ...
Arrr, ye fair and gentle readers. Ye be knowing what today be, donch'a? Why of course it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. That be meaning we ought to be talking about, and like, Pirates. Well ole redbeard Johnny has a small treat for ya. In honor of the day, I'll be dropping some nuggets o'wisdom on how to make your game a little more piratical. ...
As Game Masters, I think we’ve all been in the place where we get wrapped up in creating a world or game with an intricate backstory or lots of details. (When I refer to backstory throughout the rest of this article, I mean the intricate details that surround a world or campaign. ) Whether it is the detailed story of the intricate social-politcal relationships at court, the ...
Just before Gencon, Charles Ryan of Cubicle 7 shot an invite to the Gnomes to come by the booth and talk with the designers of The One Ring. We shot a couple of potential questions back and forth and I decided to haul along my video equipment to see if we could get the interview on tape. More than just get an interview though, Charles comped me a ...
A while back (quite a while back actually) I was given a complimentary PDF copy of Courts of the Shadow Fey for review purposes. The concept was interesting and I was looking for an excuse to get my group to give 4th ed. D&D a valid try. My goal was to give the mini-campaign a decent play test. Sadly, before my group could get familiar enough with 4th ...
I’ve been wanting to put up part 3 in my “Physical Space Of The Game” series for a while, but because of the subject matter the format of part 3 needed a little more than a post full of words and pictures. After acquiring some equipment and help, I finally got around to making this Video Gnoment. I had some issues with my camera telling me it was ...
At Origins this year I ran a lot of games. Most of them went according to plan, many of them weren’t planned until the group sat at the table (which resulted in fighting Nazi Showgirls From Las Vegas), and one of them somehow turned into PvP session but still came out well. That is a horrible moment for a Game Master - when one of the players ...
