When I played my first tabletop role playing game it was an experience that I instantly enjoyed. I and my friends immersed ourselves into a world of imagination that I still to this day find intoxicating. We spent all day telling a collective story of our characters exploring a dungeon, and although the storyline was cliché compared to the RPG sessions that I am involved in today the ...

One of the things I learned early on from my father was that it makes no sense to keep a huge laundry list of projects around.  Critical projects crop up with alarming frequency, pushing less urgent projects to the bottom of the list time and again. At some point, the list can simply become too long to ever complete. He taught me this by counter example, keeping huge ...

Before we went on our Christmas break (12/24 through 1/4, returning to normal posting 1/5), I asked all of the gnomes to choose their favorite three articles they'd written since our launch in May 2008. These guys have written a massive amount of GMing material -- 260+ articles! -- in the past seven months, and I thought this would be a good way to highlight some of the ...

Social contracts. The concept isn't new to gaming, nor is it a foreign entity to the great gnome stew readers. While most of us are familiar with the concept, it is one that benefits from being brought up and discussed regularly. I'm hoping that this post will outline social contracts and point people to other sources that delve much more deeply into the subject. An outline and paraphrasing ...

Here's a situation that should be familiar to just about any GM: You pick up a new RPG, and you're stoked about running it. You've got the player buy-in you need to make for a good game. So...how do you actually go about, you know, running it for the first time? I wrote about the general case back in May, in the article 17 Steps to GMing a New ...

V.Hobbs asks about gaming on a budget in the suggestion pot. Because I have little money to spend on all of the gaming materials that I wish that I could, and so I always end up looking at my friends’ impressive collections and wondering how they do it. How do you accumulate a large collection? There are several ways to do it-- I'll list a few below. ...

Well its that time of year. If you are a Christian you can celebrate the Christmas holiday on December 25th. If you are Jewish you can celebrate Hanukkah from sundown on December 21st to December 29th. If you are of the new school pagan variety you’ve got Winter Solstice on December 21st and if you are of the old-school pagan variety then you can celebrate the Christmas ...

What’s the Crock Pot? Just a simmering bowl of lentils and herbs, with a dash of DMing observations. Don’t be afraid to dip in your ladle and stir, or throw in something from your own spice rack. Providing news about the community your player characters use as a home base is an excellent way to make the setting come alive for your player characters. The previous post discussed sources of ...

With the holidays approaching and schedules becoming more and more hectic many Game Masters are likely to suffer from cases of GM burnout. GMs aren't the only ones susceptible to burning out on gaming though. Players can burnout on gaming and not bring their usual gusto to the table or even decide not to show up at all. Here are some reasons for gamer burnout and some ...

During our last session at my friendly local gaming shop where I am a player in a Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game I picked up a copy of the recently released Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons. I am currently running a 4e game where dragons are a major part of the story arc, so I was considering whether or not to purchase the title. I skimmed the contents and I was ...

What’s the Crock Pot? Just a simmering bowl of lentils and herbs, with a dash of DMing observations. Don’t be afraid to dip in your ladle and stir, or throw in something from your own spice rack. One way to help players feel like they are taking part in a dynamic setting is to always have things happening in the background. (While mentioning that there’s a two lovebirds snuggling in ...

I didn't come up with this, but it's become a truism in my current gaming group -- one worth articulating here: When it comes to choosing a game or campaign, player buy-in trumps GM interest. What do I mean by that? Let's talk about a few terms, then pull them all together into a useful rule of thumb (bearing in mind that these are all defined in the context ...

Oh the weather outside is frightful. Waiting four hours overnight in the parking lot of a Casey’s General Store for a snow plow to come by and clear a path home certainly provides plenty of time to think about the game effects of winter weather. Historically, winter has been the bane of warfare. While there have been notable exceptions, the general rule was that armies suspended their campaigns once the ...

This past week, I wrote the final session of my three year long Iron Heroes campaign. In the final session, the heroes confront the Demon King, the main villain whom they have spent the past thee years amassing enough power to confront him. In this session of Lessons From The Long Campaign, I am going to talk about how to deliver the climax for your epic ...

In Lessons from the Long Campaign: Prep Only What You Need (part of his excellent Long Campaign series of articles), the Stew's own DNAphil said: Over the past few weeks, I have been writing about the lessons I have learned, from running my three-year long Iron Heroes campaign (here and here). As this campaign charges into the its final sessions, I am starting to realize just how much ...