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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

Oct 4, 2011 by 10

Enabling Player Fun – Changes After Character Creation

"Well it says I have blue, but I decided I wanted grey eyes..."   The Situation We’ve All Been In I’ve recently found myself running a new game. It is only a few sessions old, but one of the players sheepishly approached me asking if he could change some stuff about his character. The character was cool, but it wasn’t fitting ...
Feb 17, 2011 by 24

Networking: Going Beyond the Gaming Group

Warning: This article is not really focused on GMing advice today. Instead it is about shaping the future of GMing and gaming. It is also a request for proposals and ideas. At the core of our hobby there is the gaming group. The games are not why we gather. We gather to play games with each other. This is what distinguishes tabletop RPGs, card games, and board ...
Aug 7, 2009 by 12

Getting Back on 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 ...
Mar 27, 2009 by 31

D&D 4e: One Change, One Addition, & One Deletion

I have been running two 4e campaigns, and while I enjoy the system it certainly is not my favorite. Combat tends to be longer than other games that I enjoy, and while one of 4e's strengths is its tight rules system I find it limits my creativity as a GM in some cases. I am now ready to start adding the house rules to my games. Once you have ...

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Metagaming, Noooo

It's why you always kill the grand vizier.