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
Back in October we partnered with Fear the Boot to run a charity auction benefiting the March of Dimes and raised $200. One of the things that the winner of this auction, Gnome Stew reader JavaDragon, won was the opportunity to write the first-ever guest article on the Stew -- this one.
JavaDragon did a killer job, and turned out exactly the sort of article the Stew is known ...
At Origins this year I ran a lot of games. Most of them went according to plan, many of them weren’t planned until the group sat at the table (which resulted in fighting Nazi Showgirls From Las Vegas), and one of them somehow turned into PvP session but still came out well. That is a horrible moment for a Game Master - when one of the players ...
Gripe all you want about 4E, but I’ve learned more than a few things from everyone’s favorite whipping-boy RPG. As a player, I spent more than a few tense moments at the beginning of many encounters, wondering how the party was going to survive this onslaught. Once I recognized the pattern (thanks to a comment by Martin), it all made sense. A number of factors contribute ...
Sometimes being a Game master feels like being in a five on one bar fight, with every other person in the fight having had time to workout and prepare for it for the last 3 months. Games are often weighted towards the players, providing many more options and possibilities for the players than there are for Game Masters. Most splatbooks and setting books provide new powers and ...
Over in the Suggestion Pot, Gnome Stew reader renner asked us to write an article on this topic:
How do you handle a narrative combat? Mainly, if you are used to miniatures and maps, and don’t want to use them anymore.
Prior to D&D 3.0, the majority of RPGs used narrative combat -- IE, combat that's largely descriptive, with a sketchy map if a map is used at all. From ...
In yesterday’s article we looked at the character creation system in HackMaster, but let’s face facts, if you are interested in HackMaster, you want to know about the Combat system. So let’s not waste any time and get right into it…
Combat Overhaul
With the new edition of HackMaster gone is THACO! The new combat system focuses around competing attack and defense rolls, but that is just the tip of ...
I recently ran a game that had a far too long and not fun combat in it. The party size is a little bloated, and I had planned out a combat with lots of combatants (mostly mooks who got taken out very easily, but a few actual threats) that became very un-fun. The mooks didn't get creamed like I expected, one character decided he wasn't going to participate ...
In our Suggestion Pot, Sektor asked:
Perhaps a list of interesting combat tactics to use during an encounter? It could really beef up sessions, trying to get beyond the ‘You swing, you hit’ situations.
I see two questions there: what are some interesting things I can have happen in a fight, and how do I get beyond boring hit/miss attacks? (Yes, I'm interpreting a bit.) I'll start with the second ...
Faster than a Tectonic Plate
Do your combats seem to take forever to resolve? Do you hesitate to begin an encounter in the last hour and a half of a session? When a combat is taking place, are your players’ eyes glazed over, or are they looking around for something less boring?
Good news: We can rebuild your combats. We can make them better… faster… stronger.
I find that faster combats ...
