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
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No, it’s not another article on the game charter (a/k/a the social contract). This is about an organizational charter or license for a group of adventurers. While I originally used this in a traditional fantasy game (it doesn’t get more trad than Greyhawk), it can be adapted to nearly any genre with a little manipulation. Call it deputizing the party, Letters of Marque and Reprisal, or a license ...
At our last roleplaying meetup, we cast about for a good game. We had kicked around the idea of playing Diaspora on the message board, but no one had studied enough to lead everyone through the process. Or so we thought... until we agreed that building a cluster together sounded like fun, and decided that we'd share the responsibility instead of relying on a GM to guide us.
So ...
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 ...
One of the keys to the success of any campaign is the party of characters. The party, using the classical term, is the group of characters who are working together (for the most part) to advance the plot within the campaign. Who those characters are, what talents and skills that they bring, and how they react to one another, can propel your campaign into a Tolkien-like greatness, or ...
Hey all! I just thought I'd share a personal GMing issue with you.
A couple years ago, I started running a game at a friend's house on alternate Sundays. Most of the group played in a second game on the Sundays I wasn't there. Occasionally, the two groups would swap Sundays if there was a scheduling conflict. This was never a problem, as both games were held at the same ...
For the past five years, I have attended GenCon with an average of 10 of my friends. On the larger years, it has been as large as 14 people and on the smaller years around 8. Coordinating a group that large, at the largest gaming convention of the year, is no easy task. Over the years, I have figured out some tricks for organizing such a large group ...
