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
If you've ever played or run just about any edition of D&D, but especially 3.x or 4e, imagine this scenario:
Your party of 1st-level PCs all start the game with +5 weapons and 9th-level spells (or for 4e, 20th-level powers).
In the context of the average D&D game, those characters are essentially gods. Sure, they're fragile, inexperienced gods, but boy are they going to be able to make up for ...
Martin's note: This is the 1,000th article on Gnome Stew! We went live on May 12, 2008; here are our initial welcome article and all of our launch day articles. Thank you for reading the Stew, spreading the word, and supporting the site for the past three years! We love sharing GMing advice and we love our readers -- happy gaming to you all!
And now, on to today's ...
Most editions of D&D have featured a spell called speak with dead (which I'll call Speak with Dead for readability) that allows the caster to, for the span of a brief conversation, talk to a corpse.
In D&D, it's a pretty minor spell -- cool, but it's got nothing on flinging fireballs and waving around your finger of death.
Except here's the thing: Speak with Dead would change the world.
And ...
Last year, my group had two simultaneous D&D 4e games going, one set in the Forgotten Realms and one in Eberron. They both ended, and I don't see myself ever playing a long-term 4e game again -- and I just realized that this isn't the first time this has happened.
A quick aside: I could care less what anyone else plays -- as long as you're having fun, you're ...
I usually save links for Gnome Rodeos, but I'm so swamped with last-mile work on Eureka (Gnome Stew's upcoming book) that I haven't had time to do a rodeo lately -- so this one gets a quickie article of its own.
The University of Michigan (my alma mater -- and believe me, the irony isn't escaping me) recently completed a study of niche hobbyists, including gamers. They looked for ...
If you play D&D 4e, there's a decent chance you use WotC's D&D Insider Character Builder.
It automates a lot of things that frankly would otherwise be a pain in the ass, like creating power cards and calculating 99.9% of what's on your character sheet.
For a crunchy, tactical, numbers-heavy game like 4e, it's a real boon. My whole group relies on it, and anecdotally I'd say most D&D players ...
Reading a post over on Story Games, I began to get a bit nostalgic for the days of my youth that I spent on Red Box DnD. The subject of the article I was reading was "Did we (indie game enthusiasts) enjoy DnD back then, and can't now or Did we never enjoy DnD that much and didn't realize it at the time?" and as someone who enjoys "indie" RPGs ...
Our first anniversary contest ended last night, and rather than dawdle like lazy little gnomes, we decided to get the lead out and announce the winner the next day -- today, in fact.
The only catch is that because of the way Gnome Stew is set up, we need a certain amount of pointless, filibuster-style text at the start of this article, or you'll be able to read the ...
My group is currently playing a D&D 4th Edition campaign, and I love having lots of accessories in front of me when I play. I have a couple hundred D&D Miniatures from past sets, and they rock -- for the price, they simply can't be beat. And I've been using fan-made power cards, printed out on cardstock, ever since we started our campaign.
As a GM, I like any ...
A couple of weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast offered Gnome Stew -- and several other RPG blogs -- the chance to write an article about the Player's Handbook 2 in exchange for a pre-release copy of the book. Specifically, an article about the book from a GMing perspective. We jumped at that chance.
I've been poring over the PHB 2 since early March -- reading, taking notes, and ...
Courtesy of Wizards of the Coast, Gnome Stew is one of a handful of RPG blogs lucky enough to receive a pre-release copy of the Player's Handbook 2. Ours came on Tuesday, and the book won't be in stores until March 17th.
Understandably, we're not allowed to post excerpts from the book -- but how about a couple of photos? Here's a shot of the front of the book ...
D&D 4th Edition blog At Will recently interviewed several of the gnomes -- DNAphil, Matthew, myself, Patrick, Scott and Telas -- for their d12 Interviews series, and that interview has been posted today: d12 Interviews: Gnome Stew.
The focus of the interview is on D&D 4e, and the hook, of course, is that we were asked 12 questions. We're all felt hats and hot air, so naturally we had ...
Combat plays a significant role in most RPGs, and where there's combat there're characters getting hurt. Something I've observed is that rules for healing time are a major factor in setting the tempo of your campaign.
How so? Let's consider a few dramatically different approaches:
D&D -- Push the Healing Button!
D&D in all its forms has always made healing spells, items and potions pretty readily available. How many parties go ...
As soon as I'd read -- and loved -- the 4e core books (reviewed right here on the Stew), I was excited about seeing the 4e Forgotten Realms setting book. I paid full price for the privilege of getting it at the one store in my area that had it on release day (our lone Borders), and tucked into it right away.
After several days with it, here are ...
With D&D 4e out (and looking awesome so far), I wanted to start building a collection of prepainted fantasy minis for future use. While I plan to buy some boosters as well, I figured I'd kick things off by ordering a host of cheap minis for representing PCs. Even if creatures get counters instead, it's always cool when the PCs have their own minis.
Back when I was collecting ...
