Posts Tagged by gming aids
| May 9, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Written by award-winning authors Phil Vecchione and Walt Ciechanowski, the fourth book from Gnome Stew and Engine Publishing is coming in July: Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management. Opening with a foreword by RPG industry legend Kenneth Hite, Odyssey is, to our knowledge, the first book of its kind. It offers up 200 pages of system-neutral advice on starting, managing, and ending campaigns for game masters of all stripes and experience levels. Tell me more! You may have guessed from the title…
| April 10, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Jesse Butler of Calico Games offered me an advance copy of Short Order Heroes, his combination light RPG, character creation supplement, and spontaneous NPC creation aid, and liking how it sounded I accepted his offer. It’s on Kickstarter for $20, with more cards possible if stretch goals are met. It’s that last use — NPC creation — that interests me, and that I think is most likely to interest Gnome Stew readers. I’m a sucker for anything that lets me quickly develop characters, like our…
| March 26, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Lately I’ve been on an RPG reading tear, and I’ve been fortunate to find, stumble upon, and have recommended to me four excellent GMing books that I’d like to recommend to you in turn. Apart from all being good books, they share a slant towards fantasy and setting creation, but also another important trait: It’s easy to use them for other genres, too. Red Tide If I could only have one book about building a sandbox fantasy campaign, it would be Red Tide. The first…
| February 14, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Gnome Stew and Engine Publishing are partnering with Lone Wolf Development to integrate the content from all three of our books into their forthcoming Realm Works campaign management software. Backers of the Kickstarter campaign for Realm Works will be able to access Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep, Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game, and Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters within Realm Works for free. What’s Realm Works? Realm Works is a system-neutral tool that enables…
| January 15, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
This is the third and final article in my sporadic series on Lamentations of the Flame Princess products: a look at my favorite aspect of Vornheim: The Complete City Kit. (The previous two articles covered Carcosa and Isle of the Unknown.) Like its predecessors, this is a product spotlight and not a review; Phil reviewed Vornheim back in 2011. Vornheim is a neat book in all sorts of ways. Written by Zak S., the author of Playing D&D with Pornstars (which is NSFW and excellent…
| October 3, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
I was recently offered a free review copy of The GM’s Field Guide to Players, by Cherie “Jade” Arbuckle of Evil Machinations, and it immediately piqued my interest. There need to be more system-neutral GMing books out there, and I like to spread the word about books like this on the Stew, so I was more than happy to review the Field Guide. Format The Field Guide is a 60-page PDF available directly from Evil Machinations for $7 ($6 until October 31, 2012), as well…
| April 11, 2012 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
One of our goals for Gnome Stew in 2012 is to be more selective about reviews. Each gnome approaches that goal in a different way — for me, it means saying “No” a lot and generally only reviewing things that are specifically GMing-related. Not “GMs can use this,” or “It’s a game with a GM.” GMing tools and resources. (Unless something is really good/bad or I’m really excited about reviewing it, of course.) And I’ll be honest: A lot of the time, I don’t enjoy…
