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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

Dec 8, 2011 by 10

History, Verisimilitude, and Messy Settings

Recently, I've been reading the five Otori novels, and have really enjoyed the complex world that they've created. I don't know a lot about Japanese history, so I have no idea how closely the concepts correlate to real world events, but it's a great, complex world that I'd love to game in. But it'd only work well under unusual circumstances. Playing in her world is similar to playing ...
Dec 6, 2011 by 5

Eating an Apple with Your Nose: Aligning Out-of-Game Expectations with In-Game Reality

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 ...
Feb 14, 2011 by 11

Iconic Archetype or Hackneyed Stereotype?

Public Service Announcement: Today is St. Valentine’s Day. Please remember to give the loved ones in your life a symbol of your appreciation. A greeting card, a box of chocolates, and/or a floral arrangement are all traditional gifts. Flowers, chocolate, and the ubiquitous mass-produced gift card may seem dull and stereotypical to some, but millions of them will be given today. And nearly all ...
Jan 27, 2010 by 7

Heroes in Horror: When GM expectations and PC design don’t mix

A modern variant of the mythical "grim and gritty" fantasy campaign is the "standard horror" campaign. How many of us have dreamed of running a horror adventure (horror generally doesn't lend itself well to campaigns without high PC turnover rates) where all of the PCs are regular people forced to confront something horrific? How much fun would it be to have a flight attendant, a bookish college student, ...

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Metagaming, Noooo

It's why you always kill the grand vizier.