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
Yesterday marked the end of Gnome Stew's first annual New Year, New Game (NYNG) challenge and blog carnival, and today I'm here to share a smorgasbord of excellent blog posts from all over the world about running new games.
This was our first blog carnival, but it won't be our last -- and with 14 participants (15 with us), I'd say it was a great first outing. A big ...
Thanksgiving day is over. The fried turkey didn’t burn my house down or even singe me (actually, it was pretty danged tasty), so instead of some amateurish video of me running around, panicking like a sorority girl in a horror movie, you get this very-incomplete list of RPG-related sales. “Stay home? But it’s Black Friday!” Yes, stay home. (And get out of my article.) ...
Gnotes from Gnome Stew HQ
RPG Mapping Software
For many years, I've felt like I wasn't a true gamer because I didn't have a world I'd been building since I was a little kid. I've built pieces of worlds, and helped write plenty of worldbuilding fiction, but never had a world all my own, like so many gamers do -- one that I'd been adding to, bit by bit, until ...
Gnotes from Gnome Stew HQ
GMing Roundup
Play a New RPG Month is just what it sounds like: damned good advice for any GM (or player). If you've only run, or played, one RPG -- or even mainly one RPG -- you owe it to yourself and your group to try another one. It can be a fling, a temporary thing, but if you choose wisely it will open new ...
Gnotes from Gnome Stew HQ
The first installment of Martin's Mentions seemed to go over well, so I'm sticking to that format for this edition. If you have an item to suggest, please email me: martin (at) gnomestew (dot) com.
GMing Roundup
The two latest "The Architect DM" articles over on Critical Hits were quite enjoyable. On Sandbox Campaigns looks at how starting a sandbox-style campaign (one where the PCs pick ...
Gnotes from Gnome Stew HQ
Now that I've resurfaced from working on our second book, Masks, one of the things I want to get back to is posting Gnome Rodeos (link roundups) -- but I think the format could use a shakeup and a fresh coat of paint, so I'm relaunching this old regular series as "Martin's Mentions: Gnotes from Gnome Stew HQ."
I want Martin's Mentions to feel more ...
It’s Black Friday! No, not that kind of Friday. (But now I want to watch that movie again.) And not the kind where nerds stand outside electronic stores in the wee hours, waiting to buy something that will probably cost less in a couple months, either. And no, we’re not talking about the kind of Black Friday that leads stockbrokers to autodefenestration. (Although ...
The Stew's first book, Eureka, is currently nominated for a 2010 Golden Geek Award for Best Supplement, which is crazy awesome for a book with barely a quarter of sales under its belt.
Voting for the awards closes 10/31, and if you haven't voted for Eureka already I'd like to ask you to take a couple of minutes and do just that. Here's how it works.
You need to be ...
This set of links is eclectic, but does have a few themes. Major topics this week include interesting ways to rethink your campaign at the level of what scenes an adventure contains, how your scenes/encounters can be structured to show distinct regions and reflect player actions, and how to coordinate a game heavy on characterization when different players show up each week. Then we peek into the ...
Gnome Rodeos are the Stew’s periodic link roundups — articles packed with pointers to excellent GMing material we think you’ll enjoy.
We usually feature a few regulars plus our favorite discoveries from around the web, all with an eye to making your time behind the screen easier and more fun.
If you wrote or read something you’d like to see featured here, drop us a line. There’s some awesome ...
Gnome Rodeos are the Stew's periodic link roundups -- articles packed with pointers to excellent GMing material we think you'll enjoy.
We usually feature a few regulars plus our favorite discoveries from around the web, all with an eye to making your time behind the screen easier and more fun.
If you wrote or read something you'd like to see featured here, drop us a line. There's some awesome stuff ...
Newbie DM, author of the killer blog of the same name, Newbie DM, emailed me about his latest project: an ultra-light mini-RPG geared towards 4- and 5-year-olds.
You can read about his system and download the free three-page PDF on his blog. The PDF includes character sheets.
The system itself is essentially mechanics for combat that turn it into a fun counting exercise for kids -- you grab some minis, ...
That's right, only 6.7 eons after our last contest -- celebrating 500 Gnome Stew articles by asking you, our readers, to contribute new taglines for the site -- we finally winnowed down the list and got them all set up.
Well, I say "we."
While we all winnowed down the list, someone else actually created the graphical versions (my good friend Darren, who did our site design) -- and the ...
Gnome Rodeos are the Stew's periodic link roundups -- articles packed with pointers to excellent GMing material we think you'll enjoy.
We usually feature a few regulars plus our favorite discoveries from around the web, all with an eye to making your time behind the screen easier and more fun.
If you wrote or read something you'd like to see featured on the Stew, drop us a line. There's some ...
Gnome Rodeos are the Stew's periodic link roundups -- articles packed with pointers to excellent GMing material we think you'll enjoy.
We usually feature a few regulars plus our favorite discoveries from around the web, all with an eye to making your time behind the screen easier and more fun.
If you wrote or read something you'd like to see featured here, drop us a line. There's some awesome stuff ...
