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
1,183 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
With the conclusion of my most recent Corporation campaign, I have been working on the prep for my new All For One campaign. As with any new campaign I run, I like to try to shake things up, doing things differently from campaign to campaign. In my previous Corporation campaign there were very few reoccurring NPCs (largely because the players did not leave a lot of witnesses), and ...
This year for the annual You Pick It, I Review It , you selected Vornheim: The Complete City Kit. I ventured to GenCon, and in the first hour of the dealer’s floor opening I had this small book in my hands. Now after returning from GenCon, recovering from the Con Crud, and taking care of a few other books that had to get read first (prep for a ...
When I was a younger gamer back in my 20’s - all decked out in flannel and sporting a glorious mullet - I had the fortune and the free time to run my campaign on a weekly basis, and sometimes run more than one campaign in a week. In those days, I never had to worry about keeping up the excitement and interest level of my game, for ...
Those who know me know that I am a polysystemist; a lover of multiple game systems (turns out poly-gam(e)-ist, means something else entirely). While I can remain faithful to a game system for about 6 months to a year, all games eventually are cast to the side for the “next game”. Those same friends also know that when it comes to game mechanics I am kind of lazy ...
I am likely the last blogger on the Internet to get their Gen Con recap posted, but a combination of work deadlines, Con Crud, generating some spousal karma, and my regularly scheduled game conspired against me. Overall it was a very good Gen Con, and I had a great time seeing old friends, meeting new friends, and doing some needed shopping. So here is my 2011 Gen Con ...
Once again some of the Gnomes will be rolling into Indy next week, and today's article is about where we will be and how you can find us. Despite the bad press 4e has been giving us Gnomes, we are a social bunch, and nothing gives us more of a thrill than getting to meet the people who read Gnome Stew, and write the comments that spark the ...
For those long-time readers of the Stew, this is a tradition that I have had a lot of fun doing the past two Gen Con’s. It is the 3rd annual You Pick It, I Review It event. This is where you get to put the last item on my Gen Con shopping list before I pack up and head to Indy for the best 4 days in gaming.
In ...
From the moment I read the Fiasco rules (link and link) I knew that there was something special about this game. Within its short 135 pages was a game of pure brilliance, finely tuned to a specific type of play and yet structured to allow for nearly unlimited re-playability. While I have enjoyed playing Fiasco numerous times over the last year, my inner game designer has been curious ...
The vast majority of people game with their friends, and if lucky their family. In real life, your relationship with them may be at best a democracy or at worst anarchy. In-game decisions are often made in a chaotic group-think where different people within the group assume different roles: the loud one, the peacemaker, the sage, etc. That kind of decentralized cooperation works fine when you are trying ...
In the past few months I have been exploring a new way to create my session notes which I called Prep-Lite. Now several months and sessions into this exercise, I have come to realize a few things about session prep, and am starting to see a general philosophy forming based on some common themes and techniques that I have used and discussed. Today I am going to try ...
Hello. I wanted to let everyone know that myself, John Arcadian, and Matt Neagley were interviewed on the ENnie award winning podcast, Atomic Array (Episode 56), and the episode is now available directly from their site or on iTunes. Ed and Rone were great hosts and we had a great time chatting with them. So download the episode, break out your headphones, and give us a listen.
What? You ...
Hello, DNAphil here. Normally articles about the direction of Gnome Stew are done by our Gnome In Chief, Martin. This week starts the big layout crunch for Masks and Martin is sequestered away helping to put the final touches on what we are expecting to be a worthy sequel to Eureka. So while Martin is locked away pouring over text, I am going to take a few hundred ...
In my continuing Kwai Chang Caine-like quest to find Prep-Lite mastery, I stumbled upon another place in my session prep, that was consuming a lot of my time, and begged for some prep-lite love. This time, my prep-lite scalpel made an incision into one of the cornerstone elements of our hobby...the Map. When I was done, I had once again removed precious time from my session prep without ...
This coming Sunday (May 1st) after you have gotten over your Royal Wedding hangover, is Gen Con Event Registration. For those attending, this is the time for the mad scramble to get into events before your fellow dice monkeys grab all the free seats. For some there will be the sweet taste of victory and for others just a fist full of Generic tickets and a mass of ...
GM’s create. It could be a great scene, an adventure, a campaign, a setting, or a game system. By the nature of our role we create, and we share our creations be it with just our gaming group, the local gaming community, or perhaps with the world. In this way we create a legacy as our creations live on through those that read and play the things we ...
