Author: Kurt "Telas" Schneider

At the risk of being ‘that guy,’ I’m going to tell you about my campaign. My gaming group recently wrapped up our 1980s Anomaly Adjustment Agency campaign. This was my first non-fantasy campaign since junior high school, and my first modern campaign ever. It ran for 18 months, went places I never expected in-game, and had a few unexpected out-of-game moments. Here are a few of the lessons I learned while preparing and running this campaign. Inspirations The three biggest inspirations for the campaign were…

Run a campaign for long enough, and one of these will happen: Your players will ignore every subtle (and not-so-subtle) hint you throw at them, and do That One Thing that will tank the entire campaign. For whatever reason, the party swallows the Blue Pill, lets the Ringwraiths get the Ring, or vaporizes New Tokyo. Those opponents you created to challenge the party are a bit too challenging, and half the party is dead or dying by the end of the first round. Chalk it…

After consuming enough fried turkey to deliver 1,000 mg of tryptophan, some very excellent beer, some quite disappointing mead, and putting two over-tired kids to bed, there’s nothing more I like to do than to track down all the RPG sales for your viewing pleasure. Believe me, sleep is the furthest thing from my mind right now… Ha-ha! Gotcha. But let’s keep this tradition going, if for no other reason than sheer momentum. It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and – trust me on this –…

Running a modern game has been far easier than I expected because of a number of modern tools. Most of these are digital, but convert quite well to my archaic retro “index card” style of GMing. An exhaustive list would be near endless, but here are most of my go-to tools. Resources The modern online lifestyle puts an amazing amount of information at one’s fingertips. And since game prep generally involves the management of information, either through outright research or inspiration, it’s no surprise to…

Or, A Funny Thing Happened At the Border This is the first Gnome Stew article written and posted entirely from a foreign country, while I’m on vacation. In honor of that occasion, and of the “no problems” attitude of the Caribbean, I’ll try to make it useful but lighthearted. When travelling internationally, and crossing borders in the legally approved manner, a few things may trip up the unexpected adventurer: It is entirely possible for two people to speak the same language, but be largely unintelligible…

Once again, it’s time for everyone between the ages of five and eighteen to get ready to go back to school. It’s also time to stock up on gaming supplies, thanks to the back to school sales and tax-free weekends across the country. (If you’re not stateside, my apologies at pointing out this annual semi-event. We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled innuendos, GMing advice, and Halfling jokes shortly.) Even if your state is not on the list linked above, take a moment or two…

I like big dice and I cannot lie You other GMs can’t deny That when an attack rolls up at a critical place,  And that 20’s in their face, You get sprung… With my most sincere apologies to Sir Mix-A-Lot, I like big dice when I’m GMing. No, not the monster ones that should sit on a shelf, but the 28mm “Jumbo” size. No, they don’t fit in most dice towers, nor do they transport as easily as their smaller brethren, nor do they come…