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
"fantastic blog for game masters, dungeon masters, and rpg fans" -- Wil Wheaton
"If you aren’t reading Gnome Stew, you’re missing out." -- Wolfgang Baur
Here's one way that you can tell that our first annual New Year, New Game challenge had some excellent entries: After the first round of secret ballot voting for our favorites, there was a three-way tie. We broke that tie with a runoff vote between those three entries.
Because we received over 50 entries in the contest -- the threshold for awarding a second prize -- we'll be giving ...
Gnome Stew's first annual New Year, New Game (NYNG) contest and blog carnival both end January 23, a bit less than a week away.
The contest features a grand prize worth over $150, courtesy of our four sponsors: DriveThruRPG, Engine Publishing, Obsidian Portal, and Tabletop Adventures. You can enter it right here on the Stew.
The NYNG blog carnival, also hosted here, is themed around running new games -- tips, ...
Have you sent us email at martin at gnomestew dot com in the recent or not-so-recent past? And if so, did you not get a reply?
That would be because I only NOW figured out that this address is not forwarding properly to my "hub" account and likely has not been for a very long time. I respond to every single legitimate (IE non-spam) email I get from readers, ...
Welcome to our final article of 2011, my twice-yearly State of the Stew rundown on our stats, milestones, and so forth for the past year. We do one of these in December and one in May (the site's birthday), and while they don't make for scintillating read or appeal to everyone, I'm a big believer in marking milestones, I enjoy reading these kinds of posts when other sites ...
With the publication of yesterday's article by JavaDragon, we officially kicked off our new guest article program. If you're interested in writing for Gnome Stew, read on!
Why post guest articles?
First and foremost, because we have an amazing community of over 3,700 smart, talented GMs of all experience levels, and we want to highlight your work here on the Stew.
Sure, you could all write blogs of your own (and ...
Two quick items of news to share:
Gnomes on Atomic Array
DNAphil and I were just on the excellent Atomic Array podcast discussing the Stew's latest book, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game. The hosts, Ed Healy and Rone Barton, put on a professional -- and killer -- podcast, and Phil and I managed not to embarrass ourselves.
One of my favorite parts was when they put Phil and ...
This year, we're trying something new: A Cyber Monday sale, today only, on DriveThruRPG: $16.95 for the Masks + Eureka PDF bundle (normally $26.95, or $16.95 individually), and $9.95 for Masks or Eureka separately (normally $16.95).
This is the best price we've ever offered on Masks and Eureka in PDF, and it will only last until the end of the day
Here are the links:
Masks + Eureka PDFs for $16.95
Masks ...
The Stew has teamed up with Fear the Boot and Engine Publishing to bring you a charity auction to support the March of Dimes!
We've put together what we think is a pretty awesome package of goodies for this auction:
One copy of Eureka in softcover, plus the PDF.
One of the final copies of Masks in hardcover, plus the PDF.
Be a gnome or command a gnome: Either write the first-ever ...
Imagine, if you will, a geek dad who has a lot on his plate who knew that Gnome Stew's 1,000th article was fast approaching, but kind of lost sight of it over the past few days.
And imagine that on that fateful day that fellow posted a request for Gnome Stew readers to help our book, Masks, get nominated for a Golden Geek Award...and totally didn't catch that that ...
If you've been waiting for Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game -- Gnome Stew's second book -- to come back into stock, your wait has ended!
You can now order Masks in print (with a free PDF copy) from the Engine Publishing online store.
It's also available as a standalone PDF, as well as in a package deal with our first book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire ...
If you've been waiting for the standalone PDF edition of our latest book, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game, your wait is over!
Order the Masks PDF directly from Engine Publishing
Order Masks from DriveThruRPG
We've also made the Masks PDF available in a bundle with our first book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, for 20% off:
Order Masks and Eureka for 20% off from Engine Publishing
Order ...
Please vote for Gnome Stew in the 2011 ENnies!
Gnome Stew was nominated for Best Blog in the 2011 GenCon EN World RPG Awards (the "ENnies"), and we have our beady gnomish eyes on the gold.
Voting is open to anyone, takes 30 seconds or less, requires no registration or other bullshit, and ends today. We would greatly appreciate your vote!
Here's how to vote:
Visit the ENnies voting page
Scroll down to ...
Update: Preorders of Masks are now sold out!
I need to make a couple of changes to the preorder process for our newest book, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game. I'll explain the changes first, then the reasons behind them.
Here's what's changing:
The hardcover edition will now be a limited print run
There will only be two opportunities to buy the hardcover edition: by preordering it from Engine Publishing ...
Gnome Stew is nominated for Best Blog in the 2011 GenCon EN World RPG Awards (the "ENnies"), and I would like to ask for your support: Please vote for Gnome Stew!
Voting takes about 30 seconds, is open to everyone, and doesn't require registration or any other fiddly stuff. You can vote in just the Best Blog category, if you like, and voting is open through July 24th.
It's this ...
When the 2011 ENnie Award nominees were announced last Friday, we were floored to see that Gnome Stew was one of them. For the second year in a row, the Stew has been nominated for Best Blog.
Congratulations to all of the nominees! I see fantastic products in every category, including a number I'm unfamiliar with and now want to check out.
Special congratulations to our fellow Best Blog nominees ...