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
Arrr, ye fair and gentle readers. Ye be knowing what today be, donch'a? Why of course it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. That be meaning we ought to be talking about, and like, Pirates. Well ole redbeard Johnny has a small treat for ya. In honor of the day, I'll be dropping some nuggets o'wisdom on how to make your game a little more piratical. ...
As Game Masters, I think we’ve all been in the place where we get wrapped up in creating a world or game with an intricate backstory or lots of details. (When I refer to backstory throughout the rest of this article, I mean the intricate details that surround a world or campaign. ) Whether it is the detailed story of the intricate social-politcal relationships at court, the ...
Ahhh convention season. It’s that glorious time of the year when I get to romp about at Conventions (the next one I’ll be at is Origins from June 22 to 25th), meet lots of new people (I’m friendly. If you see me, say Hi. Just look for the dorky guy in a kilt and flight jacket.), and run 4 hour games (chances are I’m running anything with the ...
It’s safe to say that I’m a bit of an easy sell when it comes to miniatures. Every time I go into a game store, I buy dice or miniatures from their bargain bin. The fantasy games I generally play call for odd or unique minis, so your standard knight in armor rarely works, especially when I need minis to represent the vast array of unique enemy personalities. ...
Right before all of the Halloween craziness of this year occurred, my buddy decided to run a Halloween themed game instead of having the weekly Kilt and Beer night (yes, there is a weekly Kilt and Beer night). Not having been a player in a long time, I said sure why not. We only had a few hours, so knew it would be short and crammed with stuff, ...
I just recently got back into a game of D&D 3.5, a short game run by a friend before we start a new campaign. My friend (fairly new to running a game) setup a fairly complex horror themed plot. There was some necessary railroading, which he mentioned beforehand and got our buy-in for, and it worked out fine. Due to circumstances beyond his control the game (which ...
While prepping for my regular Sunday game yesterday, I came across an incredible link on Boing Boing. This might already be floating around out there in the general gaming geekdom, but I hadn't found it yet and felt it needed sharing! A gamer who seems to go by the online name of Burntwire took two years to build his gaming space into a great place to fit ...
I’ve been running my gaming group through a dungeon using Dungeonaday.com. In the last session the group came across a really well written puzzle and it got me thinking about the use of puzzles in games. Puzzles can be incredibly fun or incredibly frustrating. From the GM’s perspective, you don’t want to give the players something so easy it won’t feel like they have overcome anything, but ...
While I was watching old movies and cleaning out my basement a few weeks ago, I watched a movie that made me go “Wow! That was totally someone’s role-playing game!”. It wasn’t the first time that happened to me, and this isn't the first time that the idea has been discussed here on the stew ( 1 | 2 ). There are a lot of movies and ...
It is no secret that I’m a fan of shared narrative in the games I run and create. If you are unfamiliar with the term, shared narrative is essentially handing narrative control of the story over to the players instead of the Game Master. If you want a more detailed explanation of shared narrative, here is an article that I wrote on the subject a while back. ...
I've always had a bit of an issue dealing with money and loot in-game. Depending on the game system and setting that we are playing, money is very important. For some game systems, like D&D and Shadowrun, it enables the PCs to get gear that enhances their abilities. In other game systems, where the mechanical effect isn’t as tangible, it gives the PCs a resource with which ...
The Gnome Stew suggestion pot has 2 questions about a tricky situation that comes up every so often. Parties and gaming groups that have grown too big. This is something I just finished dealing with in my current gaming group, so I thought I would tackle the issue. The first comment was from Zaraphina: Zaraphina I’m ...
With Halloween being tomorrow, I figured I would lay down a few ideas for horror/monster themed games that I’m not going to have time to run. My regular game will take the party into a city where necromancy is legal. My party plans for Saturday night will have me carrying along a block tower and characters so that I can co-opt whoever is awake at 3 in ...
No form of entertainment is entirely realistic. Movies, video games, books, and pretty much any other form of media cut a lot of corners when portraying the world. If they didn’t, they would be bogged down with boring minutia and detail. However, a lot of gamers like the complexity and detail of “realistic” gaming. Without the challenged presented by these small challenges a tabletop game might not feel ...
To those of you who do the convention circuit, you’ve probably heard about this thing called Con on The Cob – Games, Art, Freaks & Fun. It’s a small-ish convention in northern Ohio from October 15th –17th. It generates a lot of buzz for a very good reason. I went to last year’s Con On the Cob with my gaming company and had a blast. I have ...
