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
At our last roleplaying meetup, we cast about for a good game. We had kicked around the idea of playing Diaspora on the message board, but no one had studied enough to lead everyone through the process. Or so we thought... until we agreed that building a cluster together sounded like fun, and decided that we'd share the responsibility instead of relying on a GM to guide us.
So ...
I’m sure many of our readers would like to know more about particular individual gnomes, and if the topic of your creepy internet man-crush happens to be Patrick Benson, you’re in luck because today, we’re presenting an interview with this rising star in the RPG industry.
Patrick and I made a pre-Thanksgiving weight loss bet with the stakes that the loser had to interview the winner. Patrick lost 3.07% ...
If you are like me you are always looking for new material to inject into your games. The more versatile the source material the better, and Brother Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom is just that: versatile source material that you can easily plug into your current campaign. The Hidden Kingdom is the first print offering from Nevermet Press and according to the press release for the product’s launch ...
I finally played A Penny for My Thoughts for the first time at a recent RPG meetup. I ran the group straight from the book, following the written guidance and cues. It was a good session-- with prep so light I could never complain-- but many of the pitfalls the author warned about did come true in our session.
Later, I played a pair of games on Halloween ...
Despite the well-known enmity between gnomes and kobolds -- AKA scaly halflings -- the Stew hearts Kobold Quarterly. Why? Because it rocks.
KQ is the brainchild of Wolfgang Baur, one of the most famous game designers around, and among the many other irons he has in the fire he publishes the Kobold Guide to Game Design series. Volume III came out in print last Friday, and Wolfgang asked if ...
Last week, I posted the first preview from the Stew's soon-to-be-released book, Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters.
The sci-fi plots chapter has come back from layout, so without further blathering, here's the second sample: Eureka sample PDF #2.
This time around, you'll see a different group of authors -- all of the gnomes contributed 55 plots apiece to Eureka, give or take a plot or two.
You'll also ...
I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay back in junior high, and I've always loved the game. When Green Ronin got the license a few years back, they put out a dead sexy edition -- updated, prettier, but still very much WFRP.
Now the license has changed hands again, this time heading over to Fantasy Flight Games -- and they've produced the single most sumptuous, extravagant, viscerally awesome roleplaying product ...
A few weeks ago, I reviewed Fiasco (here and here), by Bully Pulpit Games; a game about ordinary people, attempting ambitious plans, and flailing miserably. During and after my review, I had a chance to exchange emails with Fiasco's creator Jason Morningstar, and got to ask Jason about his GMing philosophy, about his company Bully Pulpit Games, and of course about Fiasco.
Jason, let us start by having you tell ...
This weekend I sat down in the player's chair again. After an extended and glorious fight two weeks ago, the D&D game reached a "chapter break" and we picked a new game to play for a few months while my brain recovers from high level D&D 3.5 prep.
The game we selected is Aces and Eights. We have played around with it a couple of times in the past-- ...
Over the last couple of years, I have been lucky to play in two linked series of Star Wars Saga games. My experience with the system has been as a player, but my GM and I have discussed the system quite a bit. He'll chime in with comments in italics throughout the article.
Katana Geldar wrote a nice post about the recent announcement by Wizards of the ...
Recently fellow gnome John Arcadian and I attended “Con on the Cob” where we hung out with the crew from Windmill Game Co. They are the creative power behind the new Dread: Tales of Terror series which are supplements that provide wonderful scenarios and questionnaires for the fabulous game Dread.
Now every year I run a very simple RPG for non-gamers around Halloween time. In the past I have ...
One of the most fun things for me to do at GenCon is to wander the Dealers Room and check out the new stuff. GenCon is a natural place for RPG Publishers to launch new books and this year was no exception. One of the books that caught my eye was Fantasy Craft by Crafty Games. After the con, I received a free copy of Fantasy Craft for this ...
This past GenCon, Paizo Publishing released the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Now if you've been a GM (or DM, I'll use the generic here since it's what the Open Game Content and Pathfinder uses) for more than a couple of weeks then you probably know that Pathfinder is a refinement of the previous (D&D3.5) version of Dungeons & Dragons. Today's article takes a look at Pathfinder from a prospective ...
On May 13th, 2009 (I suggest that you read that article first if you have not already) I posted a review of the EpicWords web site and service. I gave the site a solid “C”, and I mentioned that the site was constantly improving. Well I believe that it has improved in enough ways for me to revisit my original review and to add this follow-up. Hey! ...
Dogs in the Vineyard is a popular roleplaying game, published by Vincent Baker's Lumpley Games. It won the Indie RPG of the Year and Most Innovative Game awards way back in the 2004 Indie RPG Awards. I'll tell you all about it-- but if you're looking for multiple opinions, other gnome comments are scattered throughout.
So what are Dogs and what do they do?
The characters that the players make ...
