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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 1,109 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

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 ...
Nov 24, 2008 by 15

Player Backgrounds

Tell us a little bit about yourself... You’ve probably come up with some oddball character backgrounds, either trying to justify your twinked and leveraged character build, or just because a Somali Pirate-Ninja would be cool. (What’s not to like about a swashbuckling sneak with his own supertanker?) But have you given much thought as to your own background? What elements from your own past have you used, either to run ...
Aug 21, 2008 by 20

Character Histories and Background

When does a character's story start? Books and novels often begin just as some exciting event kicks the characters out of their routine and pushes them on a new path. Occasionally the movie will give you a few minutes, or the book a few chapters, to get used to the character's normal life-- then it all changes. Thanks to A Butterfly Dreaming for inspiring this post and ...

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Written by a team of veteran GMs, Gnome Stew is the most widely read game mastering blog on the planet.

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Metagaming, Noooo

It's why you always kill the grand vizier.