Award-Winning GMing Advice
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2011 and
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My planning cycles for my current game are, for me, pretty short -- usually one week. That's actually a good thing, because it forces me to focus on the important stuff and helps me avoid getting bogged down in crap that won't hit the table, but it does mean that I'll take all the help I can get.
One thing I find helpful is having a list of adventure ...
Mashing genres can be a fun way to put a fresh spin on a new campaign. It allows you to to draw upon tropes and plots from one genre and give them a new "desktop theme." When I started this series of articles I planned on keeping to the hypothetical, but as it turns out I began a new campaign last weekend that is a genre mash-up.
At the risk ...
Back in January, I wrote about using PC backgrounds as a campaign roadmap, and I've been putting a version of that concept into practice in my current Star Trek game. It's been fun and it's saved me time, so I thought it might be useful to you.
Specifically, I used a version of the Three Things approach created by the Stew's own Don Mappin: I asked my players for ...
When I think back over 20-plus years as a gamer, only a few gaming products have ever felt truly magical to me. Two, to be precise.
Oh, there have been LOTS of standouts -- awesome products that have given me years of enjoyment and shaped how I game, and, by extension, that have played a role in making some of my best memories with friends.
Which is a pretty fucking ...
Along with DNAphil, I've recently switched to using a template for my session prep. Phil uses a template he created; I'm using the one from the Decipher Star Trek RPG Narrator's Guide.
The Trek RPG template is really two templates: an outline for the episode (adventure) as a whole, which follows the three-act model common to Star Trek and many, many other TV shows (and movies, and books, and ...
Martin's excellent article on episodic gameplay made me think about my own episodic campaigns. For many of the reasons he outlined, I've found episodic campaigns to be a fun way to run a game and I've run several successful ones.
That said there were a number of pitfalls that I've encountered along the way, and some of these did derail episodic campaigns. I thought it might be a good idea ...
My group is three sessions into a Star Trek series with me in the GM's chair, and last night's episode cemented one of the things I like most about running this game: the episodic structure.
I've played episodic games before (notably Stargate) and enjoyed them, but until now I'd never run one. There are different ways to approach them (and the Decipher Star Trek RPG Narrator's Guide offers excellent ...
As I continue to use and love Obsidian Portal for game prep (Going Digital: Using Obsidian Portal to Prep for, Run, and Document a Campaign), it occurs to me that a basic wiki principle can be applied to non-wiki-based prep, too: Add it now, build it later.
The prep I've been focused on recently has been creating NPCs. I asked each of my players to include three NPCs they'd ...
In le Pot de Suggestiones, Gnome Stew reader scoopsy asked this excellent question:
I’m fairly good at coming up with adventures and adventure hooks (and Eureka! is there for those times when I’m not), but I frequently find it difficult to tie them into a larger, compelling campaign. If we spend more than 2-3 sessions on a villain or plotline, it seems I start losing people and then it’s ...
During a break at the Saturday Gaming Group’s last session, I brought up the notion of doing a steampunk campaign when the current Steffenhold campaign reached a natural stopping point.*
Save for one other member of the table, I got a round of quizzical expressions. “Steampunk? What’s that?”
I was surprised. I really thought the genre of brass goggle-wearing adventurers and steam-chugging flying contraptions was more widely understood. No matter, ...
When you're running a longer campaign, there's always a danger that the story arcs you had in mind at the outset won't be the best option as you progress through the arc of the campaign itself.
This is often a good thing: Static, predetermined stories can be awesome, but they can also feel static and predetermined to your players -- not so good.
Planning things out in broad strokes (or ...
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 ...
It's getting to be that time of year again where some shows I follow will finish their new episodes and I'll have to wait until some time in 2010 for another new one. While I generally dislike the wait, I can certainly see the value in keeping the audience interested while managing resources. It's simply not feasible to run a weekly series 52 times a year (soaps excepted, of course) ...
I recently started a modern fantasy campaign set in 1983. My goal was to somewhat emulate the teen movies of the 1980s (rest in peace, John Hughes) with episodic "monster-of-the-week" style adventures. It went very well for the first few adventures, but then something happened. I started to stray.
I've always been a fan of long story arcs and conspiracies and, through the introduction of a couple of mysterious ...
I love quotes; movie quotes, inspirational quotes, Biblical quotes, and even fortune cookies. In geek culture, quotes are very popular. If I say:
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.”
I am betting most of you know the movie (Aliens), the speaker (Ripley), but more importantly you know scene that the quote came from. In my group of ...
