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
1,110 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
I love it when my gaming interests intersect with real life — or at least — the lives of our family's mini-mes.
The First Born’s final class assignment for her social studies unit on the medieval period was to construct a catapult. So, armed with scrap wood from my shop, an instructional video from the good folks over stormthecastle.com, a table saw and good length of rope, we set ...
One of the best ways to learn is by watching other GMs work. Being a player gives you perspective — often a better perspective than what’s offered from behind the screen. Good practices. Bad practices. You can learn from all of it.
Here are some of things I’ve learned about the GMing craft by observing others:
Silence is golden
As a teen I got invited to Bill’s game. That was fortunate ...
First Time GM is a series of articles dedicated to the newly-minted game master, making his or her first tentative die rolls behind the screen. Today’s article deals with techniques used to prepare for a game. A broader look at the process is here. GMing is an art form; no two GMs will prepare in exactly the same manner. In addition, the list of techniques for game ...
First Time GM is a series of articles dedicated to the newly-minted game master, making his or her first tentative die rolls behind the screen. Today’s article deals with preparing for the gaming session, commonly called game prep or just prep. For some GMs, game prep takes far more time and effort than the actual gaming sessions. We could spend weeks on game prep, but this ...
First Time GM is a series of articles dedicated to the newly-minted game master, making his or her first tentative die rolls behind the screen. Today’s article deals with establishing the ground rules of the game, and of the group itself. This is commonly referred to as the Social Contract, but I prefer the term Game Charter. What? More Rules? Over the years, a gaming group ...
First Time GM is a series of articles dedicated to the newly-minted game master, making his or her first tentative die rolls behind the screen. Today’s article deals with finding a group of players, deciding on a time and a place to play, and ensuring that everyone is on the same page once the game starts. Finding players Some GMs are lucky enough to inherit or ...
Over at the Suggestion Pot, Inumo wrote: As a first-timing DM, one thing that I’ve noticed lacking in many first-time-DM articles is just the basic, taken-for-granted stuff; how to use secret information, how to paint an environment picture, easy ways to keep track of initiative/char. stats/etc. for all the PCs and monsters, how to avoid MMO-style number-crunching, that kind of thing. Which ...
Welcome to Gnome Stew's Introduction to Game Mastering series. If you're new to GMing, this series is for you -- and even if you're an old hand, you might pick up a trick or two.
Want to read other articles in this series? Click on the "introduction to game mastering" tag at the end of this article.
In writing this series, I assume you have some familiarity with gaming terms ...
Welcome to Gnome Stew's Introduction to Game Mastering series. If you're new to GMing, this series is for you -- and even if you're an old hand, you might pick up a trick or two.
Want to read other articles in this series? Click on the "introduction to game mastering" tag at the end of this article.
In writing this series, I assume you have some familiarity with gaming terms ...
Welcome to the first article Gnome Stew's Introduction to Game Mastering series. If you're new to GMing, this series is for you -- and even if you're an old hand, you might pick up a trick or two.
Want to read other articles in this series? Click on the "introduction to game mastering" tag at the end of this article.
In writing this series, I assume you have some familiarity ...
