It's March fourth, and you know what that means: we all march fo(u)rth for GM's Day! Happy GM's Day from all of us gnomes, from the bottom of our grubby gnomish hearts* -- GMs of the world, you rock! This year, we're officially lame: We're so insanely busy getting all of our ducks in the row for the upcoming release of our first book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire ...

While watching Star Wars the other day, okay Something, Something, Something, Dark-side, I realized that very few people in the Star Wars stories(aside from Jedi) had that many "special" powers. Sure the Jedi and Sith are the powerhouses of the universe, but for the most part everyone was on the same playing field. Tech of course made some people better *cough cough* Bobba fett *cough cough* and a ...

This is one in a periodic series of articles looking at second cities — places to base a campaign in published settings other than such signature cities as Waterdeep, Greyhawk or Sharn. City: Hardby (5,100) Published setting: Greyhawk (Wizards of the Coast/TSR) Why it’s a good choice: Clearly, the City of Greyhawk is the heart of the Flanaess, which means many of the great adventuring sites are near to the Free ...

We recently got an email from a Gnome Stew reader, Shane Kirby (Shaninator here on the Stew), who is planning to open a gaming store in Alabama and wanted some feedback from fellow readers and GMs. He offered some good hooks for an article, and it's a topic we've never covered here before, so we thought it might interest our readers. Sure, it's free market research, but it's market ...

Many games revolve around the idea of the heroes preventing an end of the world scenario, but I've often found the "end of the world" feel missing when hearing about, or playing, these types of games.  I'd like to see it included more. How could an apocalypse affect the game you are currently running? Whether it is a looming disaster that the party is attempting to deter, a ...

In the December edition of Atomic Array, game designer James Maliszewski of Rogue Games explained why he included random encounters in his latest adventure, “The Cursed Chateau,” which is billed as an old-school  funhouse-styled scenario along the lines of the classic module “Castle Amber.” Interestingly, he said he did it for the GM’s enjoyment. Maliszewski said he loves to include random encounters because it allows the course of a ...

While I love the creative and storytelling aspects of being a GM, also I love the mechanical aspects of games. In my downtime from running games and stirring the Stew, I read a lot of rulebooks, many for games I am not planning to run, just to read about different mechanics. I love to see how different designers handle skill checks, car chases, or character growth. With my ...

There's a fox in the henhouse over at Open Design, Wolfgang Baur's design project that produces d20 OGL and 4E materials for its patrons. This particular fox is games designer John Wick, who was the principal designer for 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings rpgs and has recently released Houses of the Blooded through his Wicked Dead Brewing Co. Wick's been taking aim at some d20 sacred cows, ...

I often find myself walking a fine line when it comes to the level of detail in a game. As both a Game Master and a player, I sometimes enjoy and sometimes hate the level of detail that a game setting provides. Sometimes I loathe being told the exact rights and duties of a particular cleric to a particular god and sometimes I love knowing how the ...

This wasn’t the article I intended to write today. I intended to write my long overdue Realms of Cthulu review, since I played Savage Worlds with Sean Preston and Sean Patrick Fannon at Con On The Cob and now feel familiar enough  with Savage Worlds to review it. But Martin’s article got me thinking, which is always a mixed blessing, and I got this one big question ...

If you play D&D 4e, there's a decent chance you use WotC's D&D Insider Character Builder. It automates a lot of things that frankly would otherwise be a pain in the ass, like creating power cards and calculating 99.9% of what's on your character sheet. For a crunchy, tactical, numbers-heavy game like 4e, it's a real boon. My whole group relies on it, and anecdotally I'd say most D&D players ...

Ryan and Jay, those d20-rolling enthusiasts over at 3.5 Private Sanctuary, devoted   Episode 87 of their podcast to the subject of divinity and the role of gods in a campaign world. And at one point, Ryan and Jay make a solid case for always using default pantheon — the Greyhawk-lite list of gods and goddesses from the Player's Handbook — for every campaign. Basically, their argument boils back to the ...

This article be th' same as Th' Sweet trade Article: Landlubber`s Version, jus' sea dogd up a bit. So if ye dasn't feel like givin' yersef a migrane jus' t' get into th' spirit o' th' tide, click through t' th' other one. `Tis Talk Like a Sea dog Tide, so 't seems only fittin' that we take a eyeball th' issue o' th' sweet trade an' how 't ...

Labor Day in the United States marks the end of summer, a day when municipalities close their outdoor swimming pools. Schools in the northern states used to wait this late to start, but niceties such as high school football and mandated number of school days nixed that. The other seasonal tradition is the fashion-maven's adage: Don't wear white after Labor Day. The origins for this are a bit obscure, ...

Last Friday afternoon, Geekdo.com launched -- and as a gamer, you're going to love it. Geekdo is BoardGameGeek (BGG), but for both board games and RPGs (and it literally is BGG -- one account runs the board game and RPG sides of Geekdo). That's a big deal because BGG gets so much right, from its overall approach to the quality of the content and the community. Apply that to RPGs, ...