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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

Campaign Prep: Engine Style

With the conclusion of my most recent Corporation campaign, I have been working on the prep for my new All For One campaign. As with any new campaign I run, I like to try to shake things up, doing things differently from campaign to campaign. In my previous Corporation campaign there were very few reoccurring NPCs (largely because the players did not leave a lot of witnesses), and ...

Prep-Lite Wireframe How To

In my last installment of Prep-Lite, I talked about the concept of Wireframes & Skins; using and re-using condensed NPC stat blocks, as a way to reduce prep time. In this article I am going to discuss, in more detail, some of the assumptions I was working under, how I condensed the stats I needed, and how I populated different tiers of NPC’s. The Assumptions So lets start with a ...

Keeping The Focus

Jokes. Movie quotes. What happened in Fringe last week. Talk about the new supplement that is coming out. Dinner plans. Discussion about why the new WOW update is the reason to join/leave. These things swirl about the game table every session. When left unchecked they can break down the 4th wall of the game, cause players to miss key information, and grind a session to a halt. It ...

Mechanics, My Favorite Things

While I love the creative and storytelling aspects of being a GM, also I love the mechanical aspects of games. In my downtime from running games and stirring the Stew, I read a lot of rulebooks, many for games I am not planning to run, just to read about different mechanics. I love to see how different designers handle skill checks, car chases, or character growth. With my ...

The Rebound Game

Let me tell you a story. Late last year, I concluded a three-year long Iron Heroes game. It was a great campaign, but it was a lot of work, and not without its drama. We parted company on good terms, but I was kind of happy to be out of that long-term relationship. However, I am not the kind of GM to be without a game, so after ...

Meeting The Corporate Mastermind: An Interview With James Norbury

Yesterday, I gave a review of the Corporation RPG, and today, we I present an interview with Corporations lead designer, James Norbury. I Recently got a chance to ask James some questions about Corporation, as well as GMing, in general. About James James, can you tell us a bit about yourself, and your RPG background. I’m James Norbury. I live with my fiancée Ruth and my herd of animals in ...

A Review of Corporation RPG: Fast, Brutal, and GM Friendly

A Bit of Background The Corporation RPG was released in the UK in 2006 by Brutal Games. The game was available in print in the UK, but there was not a US distributor, so we Yanks could only get it directly from Brutal Games, shipped internationally. The PDF was posted on RPGnow, in May of 2008, which was how I first encountered this game. In the time since its ...

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