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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

Sep 9, 2008 by 18

Fail? Can the world survive failure?

Von Bek has an excellent question about making character failure interesting. Hi all, One thing I sometimes struggle with is player failure, I’ve come up with a few simple failures, like taking more time, or breaking something, but wondered if there were others I might have missed out on. I know of GUMSHOE, I believe a system that treats failure differently? But are there other systems out, or things that work ...
Jul 23, 2008 by 9

High Tech and Secret Identities

Clem had a question in the Suggestion Pot: Supers gaming: In a world with ubiquitous security cameras, DNA analysis that can identify someone from a skin cell scraped from their knuckle by an evildoer's five o'clock shadow, image and profile matching software, huge fingerprint and medical ID databases, easy wiretapping and bugging etc.; how does an enterprising vigilante protect his/her/their/its secret identity? I just finished an interesting book, Superpowers ...

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