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
At the beginning of my last game session I asked my players if any of them spent their experience points (this for WitchCraft, if it matters). Only one of them did, and he announced that he'd spent some points on improving his Martial Arts. That's when I threw him a curve ball.
I asked him to justify it.
He looked stunned, primarily because it's not something I normally ask. I ...
2011 proved to be an interesting year for me at GenCon. Normally, I have large blocks of time to hit the dealer hall or meet people. This year, my schedule was crammed, not the least because I only chose to attend 3 days without cutting back on my usual number of events.
As a Gnomie, this was a special con. We won our second silver ENnie (I have it ...
A while back I was playing in a game where almost all of us were in our mid-20s to late-30s. The sole exception was a gamer in his 50s, whom many of us hadn't met before this particular campaign. No one had any problem with someone one or two decades older than us joining the campaign.
A few sessions in our host (not the GM) wanted to let his ...
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, ...
Last year I wrote a series of articles on my experiences from Gen Con 2007 and 2008, focusing on my prepping to be a GM. This year was a bit different, as I wasn't sure that I'd be able to go so I made no GMing plans.
That left me with a lot of time to play, so play I did! While I had a lot of fun, there ...
Fang asks, What Makes the Perfect Gamemaster?. It is having fascinating world, scenarios and characters? Being able improvise, but not railroad? Perhaps if one lets players act whenever / however they like? I’m a big proponent for keeps things moving; is that it? Maybe a perfect gamemaster can handle a split party with perfectly equal spotlight time? Memorizes all the rules? Is fair to the players but not ...
In my last Pathfinder session, one of the PCs was hit by a confusion spell from an unseen enemy and began attacking the rest of the party. As it turned out, this PC had only joined the existing group in the previous session under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Given the situation (and numerous failed Sense Motive checks) it wasn't a stretch for the PCs to feel that they were betrayed. They ...
Not long ago, I was surfing the boards (I won't mention where) and I came across a post from a gamer who insisted that it was the GM's job to serve the players. I'm paraphrasing, but it seemed to me that he was saying that the GM should always allow player decisions to trump her designs. It's a viewpoint I've heard echoed before.
In the early 90s, I played ...
I've been involved with many campaigns over the years that were location-based; that is most, if not all, of the campaign took place within a single location. The classic example is the superhero city; other examples from my campaigns include seaside resort towns, space stations, and pirate ports. I really enjoy running location-based games; over time, the location really gets fleshed out. I get to know the streets, ...
