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
1,183 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
Often times, the ideas we have in our head don’t translate to paper very well because they’re just too darn complex. Case in point, years ago, inspired by the 1986 adventure Night of the Seven Swords and by the play reports of a friend of mine, I wrote my own adventure “Return to The Carnival of the Damned” and it’s follow up: “Son of Return to The Carnival ...
Longtime readers will know that I'm obsessed with gaming widgets, especially little boxes and other containers. Office supply stores are dangerous places for me; to a lesser extent, so are craft stores, housewares stores, and the like.
I recently dropped into Pier One to kill some time, and wouldn't you know it: I walked out with a new gaming widget. Behold the false tome of holding!
Why a false tome, ...
1000 Blank White Cards is a fun game on it’s own, but it’s also a tool that can be twisted to any number of uses. Here's just one way to make it’s creative synergy and frenetic energy work for you: use it to design your campaign world. Like other collaborative world building methods, this system allows your entire group to have input into your campaign world. It also ...
GMs must populate their settings with plenty of fun and interesting locations and after a while it can be tough to create new and fresh locations and to keep similar locations distinct from one another in your head. Over time every creepy forest tends to blur together and you don’t remember the difference between Fenwood and Bramblescar.
Locations also have the capacity to be a major prep time-sink. Good ...
This past week, I finished entering and rating my entire RPG collection on RPGGeek, something I've been putting off for two years. I first posted about RPGG -- which is part of Geekdo, the umbrella site that also includes BoardGameGeek and VideoGameGeek -- almost exactly two years ago: Geekdo.com: Pure, Distilled Awesome.
RPGG is an amazing tool, and one that many GMs -- and gamers in general -- could ...
In this episode I talk about what I am including in my GM’s kit for Gen Con 2011. I also refer to Kurt Schneider’s Index Cards for Prep articles, as well as my own Three of My Favorite Items for GMing article.
What do you have in your GM’s kit? Tell us by leaving a comment below.
I admit it. I’ve resisted using a mounted whiteboard for my game for a long time.
It’s not that I have anything against dry-erase markers. On the contrary, a dry-erase initiative tracker and a basic Flip-Mat brand 5-foot base map are both fine GMing tools that have a place at my table.
(And yes, I realize, they are just smaller versions of the same thing.)
My resistance to the mounted whiteboard ...
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 ...
This is part two of a two-part series on index cards. The first part dealt with using index cards during game prep, and included a brief overview of what kinds of cards are available, and how to store them. While no single approach is ideal for everyone, this article will focus on how I’ve been using index cards, along with some ideas that I’ve seen in use, ...
This is part one of a two-part series on index cards. The second part will deal with using index cards at the gaming table. Unless you’re new to gaming, or live and die by the laptop, you’re probably familiar with index cards at the gaming table. A stack fits in your hand, and they can be used for any number of things, from notes to character ...
It has long been known that index cards are the duct tape in any GM's kit. Cheap, plentiful, and versatile, index cards are great for everything from taking notes to improvising terrain for miniatures. So start using index cards if you do not already.
Now that I have tackled the obvious choice for any GM's kit, let me share with you three items that I think should be just ...
My wife is a neat freak. Spring cleaning never truly ends for her, but when the seasons change suddenly the house is redecorated right under my nose. Winter themed knick-knacks are replaced with spring themed knick-knacks. Artwork changes, colors change, and everything seems to change ever so slightly.
My utilitarian mind cannot comprehend why she does this. Do we really need a little banner in the garden that changes ...
The Stew's own Kurt "Telas" Schneider uses a cigar box instead of a GMing screen, and I decided to try that myself when I started my current campaign. Six months later, what do I think of it?
I love it, and I'd recommend it to any GM.
Why a cigar box instead of screen?
I love GMing screens. I'm a lifelong fan with numerous screens in my collection, and I used ...
Luke Crane, the creator of the Burning Wheel RPG and one of the best GMs I've ever gamed with, often does something very clever for convention games: He runs replayable scenarios.
"Replayable" as in, even if you've played the exact same event before, it will be dramatically different -- but just as fun -- every time.
That sounds like a pretty handy thing for a GM to have on hand, ...
Happy GM's Day! To celebrate this, the Earth's finest holiday, I wanted to highlight some resources we've posted that relate to seven specific topics:
Setting up your gaming space
Props and materials
Technology
Prep-light GMing and improvisation
Adventures
First-time GMing
Treasure
With over 850 articles, these aren't the only seven topics we've covered in depth, but they offer a good cross-section of the Stew and its 10 current authors, and they all feature evergreen articles -- ...
