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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 1,110 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

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 ...
Aug 24, 2010 by 3

D&D Burgoo (4E): Giving characters some career guidance

One of my initial disappointments with the Fourth Edition’s Player’s Handbook was lack of space devoted to development of a character’s story. Not their abilities — their individual story. As a GM, I love when players bring a concept to the table that allows their growth along storylines. Extra feats and class abilities are fine and dandy — but these are basically add-ons to a character’s combat capabilities. Missing from 4E ...
Feb 28, 2009 by 14

Player Characters: Emerging Complexity is A-OK

As a GM, I used to struggle with player backgrounds and PC complexity. I thought that every PC needed to be extensively plotted out down to the tiniest detail, and ignored the fact that many players don't enjoy doing this. Once I took off my blinders and looked at things from a different perspective -- and once I'd seen for myself how enjoyable PCs who start off simple could ...

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It's why you always kill the grand vizier.