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
Ok, I’ve been contemplating this one for a while, and I don’t think it is actually too controversial, but I can see where it might open a can of worms. I don’t mean anything here disrespectfully, and I open any and all constructive feedback. The other day I was reading gaming blogs and articles that were filtered into my feed reader. I came across this article ...
Martin's recent article on inking his new GameScience dice naturally led to a spirited discussion about GameScience's claims that their dice are the best dice available in terms of randomness, which quite naturally leads one to ask: "Is my favorite die fair? How can I tell?" One possibility is to perform a chi*-square goodness of fit test. This doesn't include any difficult math, though it can be tedious ...
Today's guest article was written by reader Andrew Bell. He's about to swap places with the GM of a long-running successful campaign, and he's got some excellent ideas to share about making sure his game is every bit as good -- but different, too. Thanks, Andrew!
In a few short weeks, the game in which I currently play is coming to an end after seven years. Loose threads are ...
This is a milestone month for me. We are expecting our third child to come any day now and I turn 40 this Saturday. I started gaming with the Moldvay Basic Set of Dungeons & Dragons, making this my 30th year of gaming as well!
Given the fact that I need to lighten my load a bit, and the fact that yesterday was April Fool's Day, I thought I'd ...
Like Most GMs, you probably find your self wondering from time to time just how competent your players are. Are they the well oiled, expertly min-maxed team they claim to be, or are they a bunch of bumbling monkeys? Luckily there’s a simple mathematically accurate method to test their claims based on simple linear algebra:
Start with your dungeon map. Here’s a sample randomly generated dungeon from Donjon RPG ...
I recently killed my All For One campaign even though there was nothing seriously wrong with it. It was doing ok, but it was not doing great. Overall I would give the campaign a solid C. It was missing that spark. The spark that separates an OK game from a great game. Once I admitted that spark was not there, it was time for it to go. I ...
I've read a number of interesting posts this week about Mass Effect 3, how very right it got its gameplay--and how its ending just didn't match. Shamus Young, who used to write DM of the Rings, wrote a few posts analyzing issues from the game's ending. If you're playing the game, the next linked post leads to posts with massive spoilers. Click carefully.
In Mass Effect 3 Ending Controversy, ...
In preparation for the release of the upcoming DCC RPG from Goodman Games, I recently acquired a set of GameScience dice.
If you're not familiar with GameScience, Col. Lou Zocchi, or why these dice are different from the dice you're probably used to, these two GenCon 2008 video sales pitches by the colonel himself are a good place to start: part 1, part 2.
Here's the short version: GameScience is ...
This is the fourth year that the annual One Page Dungeon Contest has been held online, and it's well worth checking out.
The idea behind one-page dungeons is that...wait for it...they have to fit on one page. It might not sound like you could get much dungeon on a single page, but you can. Like any limitation, the format forces you to be creative within its constraints, and that's ...
We get reader feedback about the Stew regularly, and we listen to it. As a result of that feedback, and of our own internal efforts to continually improve Gnome Stew, we've just rolled out three technical upgrades: multiple login options, comment editing, and RSS feed improvements. Log In With Facebook, Google, Twitter, Windows Live, and Yahoo We’ve opened up our commenting to allow you to login ...
It sits there in your hand, this awesome module that has an incredible story, a great concept, a well thought out adventure path, and it’s perfect for the game you’ve always wanted to run…. except it’s not in the system you or your group likes to play. While standing in the game store, you mull over your options. You could pick up the source books for the ...
Over the next few months I will be sharing with you the process of one of my campaigns in the occasional article. This is the first of that series of articles, and it deals with getting the overall scope of the campaign in order before focusing on the more granular details.
If all goes well, the current GM of my regular group's game will be wrapping up some plot points ...
Phil's been hinting at it on Google+ for months, but today we're making it official: Gnome Stew's own Phil Vecchione (DNAphil) has written a book for GMs, and as the publisher I'm thrilled to be able to announce it here.
The book is Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Session Prep. To the best of my knowledge, it's the first gaming book devoted entirely to preparing for ...
As a GM, you’ll often have extra ideas that you have no current use for or ideas for some future game. Stealing an idea from writers, you can write a few sentences about each one (so that you don’t end up stumbling across a note like “junkyard angel and transceiver of the gods” and wonder what the hell you were thinking) on a post-it note and stick the ...
Need a spiffy map for you game and are strapped for cash? Want to make it large and visible, but don’t have a plotter at home...or the dough to have your local printshop take care of it for you? Provided you’ve the source art—or access to a community willing to share—here’s a low-cost way for you to manufacture maps, maps, maps to your hearts content!
If you’re like me—good ...
