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
1,110 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
What do Data, Odo, and the Pathfinder Gunslinger class have in common? Why is it that playing Amber with new players is so much better than with players who have played before? Why is it that splat books almost always dilute, if not ruin, the games they are made for? What the hell is the Weirdo Card? Want some answers? Lets get started.
Note: I am going to make some ...
"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 ...
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 ...
In a previous article on running a game with minimal prep I mentioned that “Players build their character’s classes, skills, and special powers based on what they want to do in the game.” and Rafe pointed out in the comments that this was one of the most fundamentally important things that a Game Master can realize. I hadn’t really thought ...
Reading the fantastic web comic Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic in which a recent story arc features a god-touched mute half-orc girl named Jone and her mouthy kobold sidekick, a seer from a family where every 5th female generation is gifted with prophecy, I was reminded of the fairy tales of my youth with whole menageries of characters touched by the spark of destiny, with strange magic artifacts, ...
One of the challenges in a new campaign occurs when the players discover that they do not like their characters. Given time, the lack of excitement on the players’ part will degrade any efforts to sustain the campaign and ultimately lead to its collapse. Even the greatest plotline or the most richly described world will not hold your players at the table if they have no passion or ...
One of the keys to the success of any campaign is the party of characters. The party, using the classical term, is the group of characters who are working together (for the most part) to advance the plot within the campaign. Who those characters are, what talents and skills that they bring, and how they react to one another, can propel your campaign into a Tolkien-like greatness, or ...
I've been to three gaming conventions (GenCon 2007, 2008, 2009) and played in a lot of games. The overwhelming majority of these have involved pre-generated characters with little or no customization. I usually have a blast with these. Obviously, with only a 4-hour investment, it really doesn't matter to me what I play; I'd rather not waste time generating a character and be stuck with a 2-3 hour ...
Raistlin50201 has a good question: How do you get your player to meet the first time?
I have been in a few dozen campaigns myself and am GMing one. In most that I played, I was in military situations so we were just ordered together as a unit. I also often hear of the classic “You meet in a tavern and decide to travel together” stuff. For my campaign ...
This is the fourth and final article in this series -- the home stretch. My definition of "roleplaying-intensive" is in Part 1, along with tips 1-3; tips 4-6 are in Part 2 and tips 7-9 are in Part 3.)
10. Driftable Mechanics
(This topic was suggested by Gnome Stew reader Irda Ranger -- excellent suggestion, IR.)
"Drift" just means taking an element -- usually a mechanic -- from one RPG and ...
What's the Crock Pot? Just a simmering bowl of lentils and herbs, with a dash of DMing observations. Don't be afraid to dip in your ladle and stir, or throw in something from your own spice rack.
Characters with class
One of the new online features for Fourth Edition, once Wizards of the Coast gets the DDI rolling, is supposed to be a character creator. But in addition to generating stats ...
(The first three steps, and my definition of "roleplaying-intensive," are in Part 1; tips 4-6 are in Part 2.)
7. Make Good on Your Promises
By this point, you've made two promises to your players, one explicit and one implicit:
Here's the kind of game I'm going to run. This is the explicit promise you made in in step three, when you pitched a roleplaying-intensive campaign to your players. The follow-through ...
(The first three steps -- and my definition of "roleplaying-intensive" -- are in the first post in this series.)
4. Choose Your System Wisely
Suggested by the Stew's own Patrick Benson in the comments on the first roleplaying-intensive game post, picking a system that reinforces the kind of game you want to run is critical.
Some games are just better suited to a focus on roleplaying than others -- despite all ...
