Excuse the cliché of telling you about my campaign, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do here. Except that this is about the techniques used to run the game, and not the clever divine dynamic or the really cool twists on the basic fantasy races. My last campaign was traditional D&D v3.5, which I ran almost entirely from a laptop, learning enough to write not ...
In what must be the most brazen or naive scheme ever devised by those foul-smelling doglike lizards, some Kobolds have asked us Gnomes to review the latest issue of their magazine, tempting us with a free PDF issue.
Do these Kobolds really think that a new edition means that all the old rivalries are forgotten? Do they think that a simple bribe will make up for past atrocities? Can ...
Reading fellow Gnome Scott Martin’s article on “Setting vs. Cast” made me realize that I generally don’t enjoy RPG settings borrowed from books, movies, or television. (For the sake of this article, let’s call them literary settings.) Asking “Why not?” led to this article, which includes advice for using literary settings. I recognize the popularity of literary settings; entire systems are written for them. But they ...
Why aren’t you running a game? Do you have a good reason for not running a game, or is it just an excuse? Take your time, look at this picture, and think about it for a few minutes. If you really want to run a game, very few things should truly prevent you from doing so. Some of them include: ...
Happy Black Friday!
Doesn’t sound so cheery, does it? Well, whatever the origins of the phrase, here in the USA, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, when it is the patriotic duty of all Americans to rush to a retail establishment and buy something, anything. Sometimes as early as midnight, for those of you without a life.
(Yeah, that’s right. A gamer just said you need to get a ...
Do your adventures read like a published module? Do they have the precise mix of clues, red herrings, and challenges to keep the players interested enough to work hard for the final reveal? When you’re writing your adventures, do you agonize over maintaining the perfect balance between challenge and reward? Then you’re doing it wrong. Wait, what? Bear with me for a ...
Today is Veterans Day in the United States, also known as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day in many other countries.
Serving in the military is simultaneously dangerous, boring, stressful, exhausting, and frustrating. And the pay frankly sucks. But it’s also one of the most satisfying jobs you can ever hold. Soldiers (and sailors, airmen, and marines) not only volunteer for it, quite a few of them reenlist, and even ...
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it. –W. Somerset Maugham We’ve all been there, when the randomness and challenges of a game prove to be too much for one of the characters and he shuffles off the mortal coil. Kicks the bucket. Takes the Big Sleep. Pushes up daisies. ...
Dinna mind the intrusion. ‘Tis just meself, Captain Hyman Grinder and me crew, taking liberty with your Stew. (Arr, a poet and dinna know it…) Listen up, sea-dogs! Thar be a right powerful day on the morrow… ‘Tis International Talk Like A Pirate Day. So swab your poop-decks and polish your hornpipe, me laddies and lasses, or I’ll be teachin’ ye the real meaning of “Jolly ...
Lots of random and silly stuff in this one, only some of it vaguely GM-centric. If you’re interested in my RPG-specific experiences at Gen Con, try here. Seminars My ‘normal’ Gen Con experience is a number of seminars, maybe a game or two, and lots of time at the Exhibit Hall. This year, I played in a few games and gave two seminars, but didn’t actually ...
Normally I don’t actually game much at Gen Con, aside from a rare pick-up game or an after hours card/board game with friends. I prefer to cruise the near-endless Exhibit Hall and attend seminars, but this year I decided to check in on the gaming. Games Played Out of the four RPGs I played in this year, two were excellent, one was just okay, and ...
I’ve got this really super-cool idea for a campaign/adventure/encounter. I mean, it’s the coolest thing ever, like Shaft meets Napoleon Dynamite in a deep freeze kinda cool, you dig? It’s such a cool idea that when it happens, the whole table’s going to have to put on their shades, just to keep from going blind from the sheer coolness of this idea. It’s so fucking cool that Quentin ...
Gaming can be one of the least expensive hobbies you have. A movie is close to $10 these days. For the cost of two movies for yourself and five friends, you could buy one of the most expensive RPGs out there (the D&D 4E core books) at full retail price, and have far more than a few hours of alleged entertainment. ...
In the Suggestion Pot, BryanB wrote: I was wondering if any of the gnomes have played Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition and what your thoughts about the system are. Also, what setting books have you used and which ones are your favorites? Since I’m pretty much the Savage-in-Residence (“Call me SIR”), I’ll field this one… But I have to thank the Savage Worlds Yahoo Group for their assistance ...
If you’re like me, you love the old-school D&D adventure modules from the 1980s, with the white-on-blue maps inside the covers. If you’re like me, you are overwhelmed and/or frustrated by almost every mapping program out there. If you’re like me, you’ve resorted to the old “graph paper and pencil” technique from the late 70s. (And I’m a self-proclaimed computer geek!) But ...
New to the Stew? There are 618 articles packed with GMing tips and advice in our archives. Why not start with our 
