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
A card game that’s played by creating the cards with which it is played, 1000 Blank White Cards is a perfect game for those times when your group is between games or unable to play your regular game for whatever reason.
According to lore, 1000 Blank White Cards was created by Nathan McQuillen of Madison, Wisconsin. During a coffee run, he spied a box labeled, “1000 blank white cards” ...
Just before Gencon, Charles Ryan of Cubicle 7 shot an invite to the Gnomes to come by the booth and talk with the designers of The One Ring. We shot a couple of potential questions back and forth and I decided to haul along my video equipment to see if we could get the interview on tape. More than just get an interview though, Charles comped me a ...
Every Game Master has been in the situation where a player starts pursuing some course of action that you just can’t divine the purpose off. They attempt a long complicated string of skill rolls, roleplaying interactions, and other hare brained interactions to get to … well, you never quite know until the very end. Maybe they just wanted that extra +2 bonus, or to get a better ...
A little while ago a buddy of mine decided to run an impromptu game. It was his second attempt and he did pretty well. There were only a few newbie GM mistakes and the game went over pretty well for the limited time we had to play. The biggest thing that I saw, and that sparked a thought in my head, was that the game was overpacked with ...
A lot of my gaming friends and I are into gaming as a storytelling experience. I tend to talk about improving games and focusing on the story at the table. That is how a lot of my games go. However, some of the recent books I’ve been reading, some of the movies I’ve recently seen, and some of the games I’ve run in and played ...
