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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

You Picked It: Microscope

Back before Gencon, Phil threw out an article asking for Gnome Stew fans to pick games for us to pick up and review. Phil reviewed Vornheim – The Complete City Kit and I am now reviewing Microscope. We got no compensation or free copies for these games. I take a long time to do my reviews, mostly because I want to get deeply into what I’m reviewing ...

My Theory for RPG Design & Good GMing

My nine month hiatus from Gnome Stew was spent designing my own role playing game rules and setting using the Fudge system.  Over the next few months I will be taking that material and publishing it to one of my sites with the intent of opening the project up to the public.  This personal project taught me two wonderful lessons: 1)  I like designing RPGs, but I ...

The GM Sounding Board

No GM should be an island of ideas. As a GM we are a creative bunch and have many ideas floating around our head: a plot for a future session, a killer encounter, a new artifact, an NPC, etc. Let’s be honest not all of our ideas are great, and worst a lot of them sound great to us, but fail to impress the players when we drop ...

Johnny’s Five – Five Ways To Get Your Players On The Other Side Of The Screen

Troy’s article on Dave Arneson and Scott’s article on rethinking your play group got me percolating on ways that players can benefit from a change of pace and constant involvement in the game. So, while I don’t prefer to pop 2 Johnny’s Fives back to back, it seemed like the best format for this. Without further adieu, here are five ways to keep your ...

12 Ways to Use Google Apps at the Game Table

I won't deny it, I'm a big fan of Google. My place of employment recently switched to Google Apps, and I've had an opportunity to dive head first into the Google world. But of course being a gamer, I can't help but see some uses for Google at the gaming table, especially since everyone in one of my groups has a laptop. I'm not thinking of the obvious things ...

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