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
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"If you aren’t reading Gnome Stew, you’re missing out." -- Wolfgang Baur
In the first installment of Gnew Years Resolutions for 2012 some of the Gnomes offered gaming resolutions and readers were invited to join along with us. Here's how we've been progressing for the first quarter:
John: My resolution was to be more conscious about prepping for games. I tend to fall back on improv as a Game Master, but I've been hitting the prep phase hard for games lately. ...
A few weeks back my wife's pregnancy was taking its toll and she had to take a break from gaming until after the baby is born (it should be this week!). Rather than cut out gaming completely (mostly because we'd miss the socialization) I decided to run a game of Hellfrost for the rest of the group. I just had three problems.
First and foremost, I'd never played or ...
This is a milestone month for me. We are expecting our third child to come any day now and I turn 40 this Saturday. I started gaming with the Moldvay Basic Set of Dungeons & Dragons, making this my 30th year of gaming as well!
Given the fact that I need to lighten my load a bit, and the fact that yesterday was April Fool's Day, I thought I'd ...
When it comes to RPG systems, I've found that the five senses are usually either lumped together into one score (D&D 4e, Pathfinder, Savage Worlds), or parceled out for sight and hearing (Call of Cthulhu, D&D 3.5). Advantages and disadvantages generally only deal with sight and hearing as well and, even when the other senses are touched, it's rare for them to actually matter in play.
I'm guilty of ...
Back in ye olden times when dice were marked with crayon, notebooks were spiral-bound, and the bombs were going to drop any minute now, what a player character purchased in town was often more important than anything else on her character sheet. Various tools and gear were used in creative ways while we pillaged our way through dungeons, from our 10' poles locating pit traps to our 50' ...
A couple years ago I wrote an article about how, while I consider myself a Gnome-worthy Game Master, I never managed to finish most of my campaigns. Sometimes I couldn't do anything about it; circumstances ended the campaign. At other times, I was lucky enough to have some time to wrap things up.
Gnome Stew Reader Jason recently asked: A campaign I am running needs to wind down early. ...
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) ...
