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
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"If you aren’t reading Gnome Stew, you’re missing out." -- Wolfgang Baur
If you've been GMing for any length of time then you've probably allowed your characters to have something you soon regretted. Sometimes it's handing a low-level character the +5 Holy Avenger, sometimes it's letting the investigative psychic have the mind-reading power, and sometimes it's letting the military characters acquire a lance of the most powerful mecha on the battlefield.
When such things happen, it can be difficult to "take ...
Have you ever needed to reverse-engineer a character sheet? Have you ever run a flashback scene and wish you knew what your PCs' stats were during that time? Have you ever cloned a PC or had her meet an alternate universe version of herself that diverged from a common point and wished you could have built the new version's experience on top of the old stats? Has a ...
Many RPGs treat skill selection as an even playing field; when purchasing ranks each skill costs the same as any other skill. There's no distinction in the difficulty in learning how to shoot a gun versus studying anthropology. Players are free to spend points in any way that they wish, which often leads to min/maxing.
Skills deemed most useful (typically combat-based skills or the Call of Cthulhu trifecta of ...
New Year's Day is a time of renewal. The festive season is over; decorations are being taken down, trees hauled to the curbs, the last candles burned out. The ball has dropped; an old year gives way to the new. Those of us that went to New Year's Eve parties probably heard one question more than once: what's your New Year's Resolution?
For us gamers, New Year's Day is ...
Fantasy worlds, especially those based on the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game (a.k.a Dungeons & Dragons), can suffer from a bit of "same-ness." The World of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Shadow World, Mystara, the Palladium World, Harn, Yrth, Eberron, Krynn, and others all offer the usual suspects when it comes to fantasy races. Sure, there's an occasional swap-out (the Kender) or exotic choice (Dragonborn), but these are the ...
Sandbox games often get criticized for being static and devoid of any real plot. To use a stereotypical example, the player characters start in a town that's surrounded by the Caves of Doom, the Tower of Death, and the Dungeon of Discomfort. It's up to the PCs whether they want to explore each of these and in what order. Alternatively, the PCs may decide to hang around in ...
It's no secret that I love investigative adventures (heck, you only have to go this far back to know that!). I like playing them, I like running them, and I like writing them. That said there's a lot of prep that has to go into building a mystery adventure and I thought I might share some of the tips I've come up with over the years. This is ...
I have an affinity for mystery/investigation adventures. I love setting up a crime scene and having the PCs uncover clues and follow leads until they reach the final confrontation with the perpetrator.
Mystery adventures require careful planning. All of the clues need to fit (or be dismissed as red herrings) and the players need to be able to weave them together effectively. A mystery that is too convoluted can ...
As a "mature gamer" (which means I'm old enough to remember when "bringing my notebook to a game" involved something spiral-bound) I often find it difficult to maintain a regular schedule with a gaming group. Cancellations are frequent and, in some cases, last-minute. This can be quite a problem if a particular character is essential to the current session's plot (typically a "no-no," but let's face it, it happens) ...
How long is it okay to make a player wait to rejoin the game after losing a character?
As I peruse RPG forums or read articles, I'm struck by the number of times I've come across some variant of this scenario:
Rob Roleplayer finally gets to play in Mr. Legendary GM's totally awesome campaign. Much fun was had by all and Rob Roleplayer remembers, with fondness, his character imprisoned for ...
At the beginning of my last game session I asked my players if any of them spent their experience points (this for WitchCraft, if it matters). Only one of them did, and he announced that he'd spent some points on improving his Martial Arts. That's when I threw him a curve ball.
I asked him to justify it.
He looked stunned, primarily because it's not something I normally ask. I ...
As I write this, I'm waiting for Hurricane Irene to arrive within hours. Being a Pennsylvanian (and New Jerseyan before that), I'm not used to dealing with hurricanes (or earthquakes for that matter - now both events in one week!). We all know it's coming, preparations have been made and evacuations in highly threatened areas are underway. Given that Irene is taking her sweet time to get here, ...
I've seen it a thousand times. Two PCs are facing a problem and some variation of the following exchange occurs:
GM (looking at Player 1): What do you do?
Player 1: I'm going to do X.
Player 2 (glancing at Player 1's character sheet): X? Are you kidding. You have Y, why wouldn't you use that?
Player 1: Fine, I'll use Y then.
This is a classic example of a player using OPC ...
2011 proved to be an interesting year for me at GenCon. Normally, I have large blocks of time to hit the dealer hall or meet people. This year, my schedule was crammed, not the least because I only chose to attend 3 days without cutting back on my usual number of events.
As a Gnomie, this was a special con. We won our second silver ENnie (I have it ...
Recently I returned to a WitchCraft campaign that I originally ran back in 2001-2003. Rather than pick up where we left off, I advanced the timeline to the present day. The young college student PCs of the first campaign were now hitting 30, with professional careers and families. The new campaign had a very different feel as a result. As my group (ranging from the mid-30s to early ...
